People Who I Am Not

So, I'm playing soccer last night, right? In the second half, we're setting up to defend a corner kick. I'm in the box, marking a player, looking toward the kicker. The ref is about 15 feet away from me. I think I hear the ref say, "David Burns, that's who you look like." Since I don't know any David Burns, I assumed he was talking to another player, but when I don't hear anyone else respond I turn toward him. Sure enough, he's looking right at me.

"You look just like David Burns of the Talking Heads," he says, as if this is suddenly more important than the corner kick that is about to take place in a 2-2 game. "It's been bugging me all game long, who you look like."

There's a long list of famous men I wouldn't mind being compared to. Antonio Banderas. Pierce Brosnan. George Clooney.

David Byrne (not Burns, by the way), is not on the list. Sure, I'm relatively slender and dark haired, but I hope I don't carry the geek factor that Byrne does.  I make a quick wisecrack about the comment and get back into the game.

However, this continues to bother me the following day. This comparison is not an isolated incident. All my life I have been hearing, 'hey, you look like so-and-so.' Don't I look like myself? And, how can I look like so many divergent people, with different looks? Do I have some sort of Zelig-like effect on people. Instead of seeing me, they see the projections of their own inner wishes (yeah, but David Byrne? I know).

Here is a quick list of people I've been told that I "look just like:"
As a kid:
Donny Osmond

Jimmy Connors

Adult:
Rick Springfield
Jimmy Connors (still)

Oliver North (this at a particularly surreal evening at the Blue Moon Tavern at the height of Iran Contra)

Lothaire Bluteau

And there you go...

Community service and a few bucks and for l'animale, a week's vacation and a few lire. BBC Football. And respecting last night's linked article to Newsweek, to the contrary, FIFA will go on pretending that rough and illegal play doesn't happen and isn't marring the beauty of the game.

Back on the Pitch, Part Deux!

I love soccer. Back on the pitch tonight after 7 weeks rehabbing from the latest misfortune of age (a slightly twisted lower lumbar, combined with a weakenend muscle on the left side of the vertebrae that sent everything crashing out of sync and sending me into physical therapy. Oh yes, and there was the three or four weeks I spent in a Vicodin-induced cloud, shuffling around like George Burns, only not as straight...but I digress) and it felt great. No, great is too mild a word. Exhilarating! Elating! Electrifying!

Hey, and we played well. We utilized short passes, and the long ball when it suited us. We maintained posession and distributed smartly to the wings. We pressured the other team. In short, we did everything we usually don't do. We even took the lead 2-1 for a time in the 2nd half, but unused to being ahead, we lost our focus and surrendered the equalizer shortly after. That's the way the game ended. But the last time we played this team they beat us something like 4-0, and they were playing a man down all game long. So, chalk it up as a tie that feels like a win.

The odd thing is how good it felt to me to touch the ball, to run with it at my feet, to feint a move one way, then pull the ball back inside and hit the pass I intended to hit all along. To run like it was the night my legs would ever work again. Seven weeks away. I really missed it. And to think I only picked up the game two years ago. If I'd been playing from my youth, there'd really be no hope for me at all.

I keep saying 'last word on Zidane' and I keep breaking my promise. This time I'm not even going to promise anything. Bill Saporito writes in Time Magazine that FIFA should punish the real villian and dedicate itself to ending the type of ugly, foul-plagued, foul-mouthed football represented by Marco Materazzi. Here! here!

IKEA, I Kee Ya!

I hate Ikea. Several times while shopping their Renton, Washington store over the past 15 years, I've vowed never to return. And yet, like Charlie Brown and the football, I find myself back within the big blue box again, tempted in by the lure of cheap, pine furniture, only to leave in frustration. Yesterday I was back again, and my reward was five hours of furniture-assembly-hell.

My daughter wanted a new closet for her room. She browsed IKEA online and settled on a model they sell. When we went down to take a look at it awhile back. When I saw it, I counseled against buying it. The closet was about what you'd expect for $130, cheap pressboard material that would fly apart if left outside in a mild windstorm. (Since we don't put our closets outside, she thought this was a stupid argument). Anyhow, we left IKEA that day and looked for alternatives. After two fruitless months, I found myself back at IKEA yesterday hauling said cheap wardobe home.

When you buy one of these self-assembled furniture pieces at an "American" store, you get instructions with English words to help you interpret the illustrations. With IKEA, since they're Swedish (and probably hate Americans), you get the illustrations. No niftly little clues, no coded pieces that correspond to numbered parts on the illustrations. Nothing. It's like trying to assemble furniture by Roshach test. This is a big closet, so we're talking lots of pieces.

We get the frame assembled and lift the piece upright and it becomes clear that something is wrong. Very wrong. The closet is reversed. There is a very basic decision early in the process and that is which board is the top of the closet and which is the bottom. Again, the instructions are silent on this point. It's up to you, the consumer, they seem to say. You'll know best. WRONG!

So, down goes the closet again. We dissemble the structure, flip the boards around, and re-assemble. Four hours after we start, the closet is up. My back is sore. My shoulders are sore. I feel like I've been working on the most depressingly dull assembly line job for the last 5 days. But, daughter is happy. I vow never to return to IKEA. Then, she tells me we need to go back today for the desk. sigh...

My Dogs...They're Nuts
I've got two big, beautiful dogs.

One's a labrador-pit bull mix.

The other, a labrador-Rottweiler mix. They are the two most nervous Nellies on four legs. We can't leave them at a kennel because they suffer separation anxiety and become almost catatonic by the time we pick them up again. So, if we go on vacation we have to get a house sitter. They can't stand any change in their routine at home, either. My youngest is having a sleep over party, so we put the dogs downstairs in a hallway with a child-safety gate to keep them from going upstairs again. All day long, they paced and drooled like prisoners awaiting the dead man's walk to the gallows. Then, with my work on the closet - some hammering and nailing, a few mild swear words - the LPB mix would shake like the end had come. Every time they see me come down the hallway, each one looks up at me with mournful eyes that seem to say, "Please, stop the torture." I think they need dog psychologists.

Italians Break The Trophy
Yes, the Italians have broken the damn trophy. I can't think of a more symbolic act for the boring, defensive tactics of the Italians taking the championship.

Well, I lied...
I said no more about Zidane but I couldn't resist when I found this website. And if you think Materazzi didn't have it coming, watch this video. He deserved it just for the last hit on the clip. You think someone who'd take a deliberate whack at another player's testes wouldn't talk a little trash about your mama and sister?

Last thing about Zidane, I Promise

Alright, one last thought about Zidane. It certainly does seem that the saga has taken on a larger-than-life hue, and in many ways has overshadowed the World Cup, which has become a footnote to the Headbutt Heard Round The World. But, let's be clear. This was nothing more and nothing less that one footballer - albeit, an exceptionally talented one - losing his cool and attacking another, lesser player. No psychological dramas. No social or historical overtones. Hey, football is a violent game. People get hurt. People do stupid, rash things.

If any good can come out of this it will be two things: 1) coaches will explain to their youth players that you never, ever, under any circumstance plow the bone shell that holds your brain into anything else on purpose, other than a soccerball, and 2) don't hit another person hard in the chest. Imagine what we'd be talking about if Zidane's headbutt caused Materazzi to suffer cardiac arrest?

And finally, in five years time, any true football fan will still remembe the name of Zinedine Zidane. In five years I will still remember the transcendent game he played against Brazil. However, in five years time, I doubt that many fans will remember Marco Materazzi, except as a goon who ended up on the wrong side of Zizou's dome.

What's That Smell?
Why, that's the stink of Italian soccer. Today, the verdicts were handed down by Italian authorities on one of the worst corruption scandals in the international history of soccer. Juventus, Lazio & Fiorentina are relegated to Serie B. And AC Milan, while avoiding relegation, gets docked 15 points to start the season. I never watch Italian soccer, so the main fascination I have here is a revenge factor for the painfully dull Italian side winning the World Cup, and the potential transfer of top players from the relegated teams. My Gunners are reportedly after Juventus keeper Gianluigi Buffon, which would be a nice pickup, indeed.

Bye Bruce
The inevitable has happened - quicker than I expected. US Soccer has said goodbye and good luck to Bruce Arenas. While the most successful coach in US Mens Soccer history, Arenas appeared to be out of ideas at the latest World Cup and it was clearly time for a change. Kudos to the US Men's Soccer Gods for making the right decision. Now, let's get Juergen Klinsmann on board ASAP.

Apparently, Ashley "Used to be the Best Right Back in Football" Cole is pissed at the Gunners for allowing him to be used by Chelsea when he tried to secretly arrange a deal with the London club that has not been paying him millions of dollars to play football.

So, let me see if I get this straight. Let's say a guy gets caught by his wife meeting another woman on the sly, say in a posh London hotel. They haven't consummated anything, but they're clearly headed in that direction. Instead of being red-faced and apologetic, busted hubby should blast his wife for "hanging me out to dry" and using him to get back at the other woman. And, he should castigate said wife for not rewarding him for "all those years of loyalty." Like to see how that one plays in divorce court.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Ash. Wenger should sell this chump, cash in while he still has high value, and use the money to help buy Saviola and Ribery.

From the Stupid is as Stupid Does Dept. (no, I'm not still talking about Cole. Proving once again that desperate and stupid are a volatile mix.

I've always felt that squirrels (at least the nonnative Eastern grays) we get in the Pacific Northwest are trouble. Now, I have the proof. 

Kermit the frog is pretty badass too.

Pretend today was yesterday...

Actually, the previous post was posted yesterday - before Zidane's announcement - but due to some gremlin issues, the blog service did not post it. So, just pretend you're reading it yesterday.

Today of course, all hell is breaking loose with the Zidane-Materazzi fiasco. FIFA announced that it's beginning an investigation of what Marco Materazzi said to Zidane on the pitch. Meanwhile, Materazzi opined that Zidane deserved the Golden Ball award. Of course, Zidane apologized to the children (and that's really all that matters; the kids...) but pointedly left Materazzi out. Still BBC thinks the jury is out.

Newsweek's Ron Borges weighs in to share his shocking levels of ignorance with the world. Yup, the fact that international soccer has not quite sunk to the trashtalking low of NBA streetball basketbrawl, or NFL football, is a condemnation of one of the world's great soccer players. By the way, while Zidane was dumb to overeact, let's face facts. If Materazzi was indeed trashing Zizou's mom and sis, he deserved to be bitch-slapped (or dome-bashed as the case may be) and put to the turf like the bad dog he is. This is the sort of reaction that serves as a reminder to trashtalkers that there are lines best not crossed.

Frankly, I'm beginning to grow weary of this headbutt affair. Let's move on and find out what's going to happen to all the cheating Italians. I'm beginning to think that the whole thing is a well orchestrated provocation by Materazzi and certain other unnamed Italians to distract the world from the fact that Italian soccer is slightly less scrupulous and well-managed than the Bush Administration.

What is this?! Celtic lost to DC United 4-0?? OMG. Even worse, the DC boys were resting several of their starters. Celtic looked to have most of their regular lads on the pitch and certainly should've shown better against the MLS side.

Franck Ribery's agent denies an Arsenal bid. Marseille tell Man United to keep away from the little midfielder. What does this all mean? He'll end up a Gunner for sure. Certainly, Thierry Henry has warned him of the evils of being a Red Devil.

Oh, and I took the kids to see Pirates of the Carribean 2 Electric Boogalo (kidding about the last part). I loved the first movie. Unfortunately, everything that made the first flick work was missing from the sequel (surprise!). The movie was overlong by half, contained too many plot threads with little connecting material, a minimum of character development, and a host of other sins. The thing that amazes me when I see movies this bad is that people made incredibly good sums of money creating a colossal dump heap of celluloid.

Could this be the sign of the impending Apocalypse? Be afraid, very afraid.

A Quick Sift Through the Football News

A little later today, Zinedine Zidane will break his silence on his 'butt - headbutt, that is. Our favorite football troll and master of the long-winded, unecessary quote, Sepp Blatter, has jumped in and said that FIFA may take Zidane's Golden Ball award away. Blatter, or is Blather, did not explain how FIFA would rescind an award that is determined by an independent journalist association. Being Sepp means never having to make sense.

Now what am I going to do with the World Cup over? There's over a month until the English Premiership throws its balls onto the pitch. Even with the Dennis Bergkamp testimonial, there's over a week until 'real football' restarts...

I'll have to make do with player transfer rumours and gossip! Argentine striker Javier Saviola is coming to Arsenal? Could be, according to his agent. I'd be OK with that. Adebayoor is not our answer. Arsene Wenger says that Cesc Fabregas is going nowhere, but back to the Gunner starting 11. Cesc is the present and future for the Arsenal midfield, a huge talent at age 19. The French Professor is smart enough to know to hold on to the kid. Now, how about going out and getting Frank Ribery to play on the wing? And with Sol Campbell leaving (thanks for the memories, big guy!) and Phillipe Senderoos still on the mend, Arsene better find a centre back.

And finally, California Klinsi is stepping down from as the German team's coach. Hmm. Lives in California. Coached a no-hope German team to within a whisker of the finals. World Cup experience as a player. Hello USA soccer. Hire this man. Hopefully, the conversations have already begun. If US Men's soccer is ever to become anything on the international scene, it needs an infusion of a talented and big name soccer coach. Klinsmann has proved himself to be that.