Monday, January 23, 2012, 11:09 pm
The saddest place on earth
A real headline: Disney Is Selling a Joy Division Mickey Mouse Shirt.
R.I.P. Walt and Ian.
Saturday, December 31, 2011, 11:55 pm
MMXII
Bigmouth will strike again.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 2:07 am
Racin’ home
A Dale Jr.-endorsed cheeseburger, going for $2.75 in the paper’s vending machine, reminded me of home. I’ll be there Thursday, and I can’t wait to drive down ISB, three fingers in the air for the elder Dale, and speed down A1A like I’m Cole Trickle.
Boogity.
Saturday, September 3, 2011, 1:30 am
The great unknown
At Ben Hill Griffin Stadium on Aug. 7, the first time I walked on Florida Field.
I was talking with a Notre Dame alumnus the other day about the prospects for the Irish in the upcoming season. He told me there was an over/under bet on 8.5 wins for Notre Dame, and I felt pretty comfortable that his team will go over. I have no idea what to think about my own alma mater.
We’ve got a coach who has never been at the helm and a quarterback who, though he has played in the wrong system, has had a career that has fallen short of his — and fans’ — expectations. The wide receivers coach/recruiting coordinator is entangled in the scandal that is about to swallow the program down in Coral Gables.
There’s plenty of talent, sure, but who really knows what’s going to happen? Practices have been closed. Even if they were open, how much would we really know?
We’ll find out at 7 p.m. tonight.
Those outside of Gainesville are giving the Gators little chance of even winning the SEC East, let alone the league. And that drought (if three years is a drought) might yet continue. But Muschamp can’t let happen what Texas, his then employer, went through last season: a 5-7 record and a last-place finish in the Big 12 South.
I’m still not sure what the “Florida way” is, but I know that ain’t it.
2011 schedule
Games I will be attending are in bold.
Sept. 3 – Florida Atlantic – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 10 – Alabama at Birmingham – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 17 – Tennessee – Gainesville, Fla.
Sept. 24 – Kentucky – Lexington, Ky.
Oct. 1 – Alabama – Gainesville, Fla.
Oct. 8 – Louisiana State – Baton Rouge, La.
Oct. 15 – Auburn – Auburn, Ala.
Oct. 29 – Georgia – Jacksonville, Fla.
Nov. 5 – Vanderbilt – Gainesville, Fla
Nov. 12 – South Carolina – Columbia, S.C.
Nov. 19 – Furman – Gainesville, Fla.
Nov. 26 – Florida State – Gainesville, Fla.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011, 9:37 pm
Strange bedfellows
If one was making a statement about the bombings and island massacre that left scores — mostly teenagers — dead in Norway last month, which would be more offensive?
A) Comparing the murdered teenagers to the Hitler Youth
B) Comparing the slaughter to what fast-food restaurants do ever day to animals
The first statement was made by right-wing commentator Glenn Beck on his radio program.
“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth, or whatever,” Beck said. “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.” (Glad you asked.)
The second was made by none other than Steven Patrick Morrissey during a concert in Warsaw.
“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead,” Moz reportedly said. “Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried shit every day.”
It’s hard to imagine Beck and Morrissey on the same side of any controversy — not that they are here. But both were criticized — Beck by Jewish groups and others and Morrissey by (former?) fans and one music blogger who called him “a miserable hateful man” — for their statements on the same topic.
It’s hard not to be at least a little off-put by Beck’s statement, made on nationally syndicated radio, likening dead teenagers to members of the Hitler-Jugend because they were at a political camp and seemed to be engaged in, like, politics. Novel concept. And it’s hard not to be at least a little suspicious that Beck made the comment because the camp was for members of a center-left party.
Like Beck, Morrissey has never held his tongue — in lyrics (“her very lowness with her head in a sling — I’m truly sorry, but it sounds like a wonderful thing“) or anywhere else — though I question whether Moz and Beck are both following the Ann Coulter playbook or the former genuinely doesn’t care.
One commenter on the NME wrote: “No-one else in the music industry or any other industry would dare be this outrageous, he mightn’t look like it but he’s the last remnants of punk, he says what he wants, he doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.”
Indeed, Morrissey backed up his comments in a statement on True To You.
“The comment I made onstage at Warsaw could be further explained this way: Millions of beings are routinely murdered every single day in order to fund profits for McDonalds and KFCruelty, but because these murders are protected by laws, we are asked to feel indifferent about the killings, and to not even dare question them,” he wrote. “If you quite rightly feel horrified at the Norway killings, then it surely naturally follows that you feel horror at the murder of ANY innocent being. You cannot ignore animal suffering simply because animals ‘are not us.’”
Comparing a massacre and a bombing to killing animals is hard for many people to accept. That’s logical enough. Most people aren’t vegetarian or vegan. They (me included) eat meat. But for an animal activist, particularly one with a microphone and a penchant for letting everyone from Margaret Thatcher to animal researchers have it, it’s almost expected.
Then again, it’s expected from Beck too.
A or B? Viva hate?
Monday, July 18, 2011, 11:57 pm
Two is the loneliest number
I really hope my children, if I ever have them, don’t inherit whatever it is in me that wants to burst out in a smile, let out a scream and chest-bump strangers when the University of Florida football team wins a big game or, conversely, jump from the top of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium after a loss.
| A nearly banner year |
| UF men’s basketball Lost to Butler, NCAA quarterfinal (3/26) |
| UF lacrosse Lost to Duke, NCAA quarterfinal (5/21) |
| Manchester United Lost to Barcelona, UEFA Champions League final (5/28) |
| UF softball Lost to Arizona State, NCAA championship series (6/6-7) |
| U.S. men’s national team Lost to Mexico, CONCACAF Gold Cup final (6/25) |
| UF baseball Lost to South Carolina, NCAA championship series (6/27-28) |
| U.S. women’s national team Lost to Japan, Women’s World Cup final (7/17) |
It can be a miserable existence, and luckily I wasn’t around in the 1970s. Then again, there were few expectations in those days — at least compared to now.
I guess being a fan — which, according to Ken Burn’s “Baseball” series I’m watching now, originated from references to baseball fanciers or fanatics — is about managing expectations. Really, life, I’m finding, is about that.
My expectations ran high this spring and summer for the various teams I follow, either through birth (UF and U.S. Soccer) or an unexplainable feeling of kinship (Manchester United). But none of the seven that had a shot at the ultimate prize was able to lift a trophy or hang a banner this year.
With three minutes left in Sunday’s World Cup final, I thought the U.S. women’s national team would come through. It was a goal up, and the players could almost feel the elusive (in the last 12 years) cup in their hands.
But Sawa, the Japanese star whose first name escapes me, was able to get a bouncing ball in front of net and tied the match. The rest — and the U.S. team — is history.
While there will be more games and more championships, that heartache does linger, as melodramatic as that might sound, for a time.
But, I suppose, you manage the pain, too, and move on to the next season. That sounds familiar.
Sunday, July 17, 2011, 2:07 pm
World (Cup) domination
Earlier this month, I went to Washington, D.C., for the Fourth of July, and there’s something about the capital — particularly around Independence Day — that elicits faith in the country.
It reminds of the myriad reasons America is good — democracy (even though Washington’s license plates scream in protest “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”), freedom and The Washington Post.
Soccer doesn’t always make the list.
Just ask Abdul.
Abdul was a household name across his country, wowing Afghani crowds with his soccer skill. That was a lifetime ago. Earlier this month, he was waiting tables during the breakfast shift at a hotel restaurant in Arlington, Va.
It’s not clear how much of what Abdul told us was true: whether “everyone knew” him in his homeland when he was a young man. There’s only so much you can discern from chit-chat with a waiter. But it was clear that he had no interest in D.C. United, the professional club in his new hometown.
The skill just isn’t good enough here, he said.
I’m not a savvy enough soccer observer to know how truly poor (relatively speaking) the play is in the American top flight. But I was impressed with some of the shots and passing when we took in United’s 2-2 draw with Mid-Atlantic rivals Philadelphia Union on July 2.
What was obvious to anyone at the half-empty, aging, made-for-baseball-and/or-American-football RFK Stadium that night was that soccer is not an American institution.
But here comes the U.S. women’s national team, which is about to take the pitch in Germany to face Japan looking to win its third World Cup title (which would be a record).
If that happens, the team will be on the front of every major newspaper in the country in the morning and will provide plenty of fodder for sports journalists — and would even outside of the doldrums of summer.
Why? America doesn’t like the game.
Not really, but America does like winning. See: American Revolution.
Cue the Greewood. Go Yanks.
Saturday, June 25, 2011, 3:18 pm
American futbol
Earlier this month I went to my first international soccer match since attending World Cup matches in Orlando in 1994, and it was the first time I’d ever seen the U.S. team.
Despite the relative lackluster stature of both the CONCACAF Gold Cup and the Panamanian side the Americans were playing, I couldn’t wait. At 2 a.m. the day of the match, Danny Klein and I went to Walmart to get an American flag. At the stadium, we draped it over the wall, which we pounded when Landon Donovan came to our corner to take a kick.
Naturally, the U.S. lost, 2-1, its first-ever loss in the group stage of the Gold Cup.
But it was an incredible scene, even for a Gold Cup group stage match against Panama in Tampa. Panama had thousands of fans, chanting, waving flags and blowing whistles. The American supporters club was throwing flares onto the pitch. There were a few near-fights in our section, instigated largely by Americans who didn’t appear to be true soccer fans — more like guys who wanted to go to a stadium and drink beer, regardless of who was playing or the sport.
After going down 2-0, we were deflated, losing hope with every missed chance. Then, when Clarence Goodson connected on a header in the middle of the second half, the place went wild. In my celebration I accidentally hit my friend Mike McCall in the head. There was hope again.
And though the game ended with more talk about Bob Bradley losing his job, the team has rallied, beating Panama to get to the final against Mexico tonight. What I wouldn’t give to be at the Rose Bowl for that game, win or lose.
Friday, June 10, 2011, 1:25 am
Failure by design*
The other night I had to wipe all the music from my iPod in order to restore it to working order, so I was sorting through and listening to all kids of pop-punk (for good or ill) I hadn’t heard in a while.
Hearing Fall Out Boy always takes me back to the period circa the 11th grade and the day we got our hands on “Take This to Your Grave.” Our band was playing a show in Tampa (our last show, it would turn out) and we stopped at a mall over there beforehand to kill time, as we were wont to do whether in Tampa or at home in Daytona. Acting a fool in malls was a time-honored tradition by then. So, naturally, we went into the Hot Topic store to make fun of the ridiculous products and people you’re guaranteed to find in one.
The store, at least back then, did have the redeeming quality of carrying relatively good music more up our alley, and this store had the new Fall Out Boy album. The band didn’t have much of a name by then, but it had come through Daytona not long before and everyone raved about the show (I missed it for some reason). Anyway, for my money, that was one of the best pop-punk albums to ever come out of that post-blink-182 definition of pop-punk. And, regardless of how douchey Pete Wentz has become, I dig those songs.
Listening to them the other night sparked something else from that time: staying up way too late working on Web design stuff. In those days, a friend and I had a website about the Florida scene that we never got off the ground, and we were always working on sites for our friends’ (or our own) bands.
So I started experimenting with a new design for this blog, drinking too much Gatorade for the late hour (the drink of choice used to be Mountain Dew — or Dewski in our parlance) and getting too little sleep. But I was inspired, and I like where I’m heading — a much better-flowing page and a more stripped-down, Tumblr-like layout. It took forever, though, to figure out how to get a footer to work in the design. I think I finally have it figured out, and I’m hoping to switch over soon.
Like it matters. What does matter is what the music I’m listening to these days (End of a Year, The Mountain Goats, etc.) will trigger in the years to come.
*A reference to the Brand New song.
Monday, June 6, 2011, 11:10 am
A career reborn
In back-to-back years in the 1990s, the Bernkastel Festhaus club dominated Port Orange youth soccer (or at least one age level of it).
Aside from having the best kit sponsor (and by kit I mean a T-shirt), we had the best coaching and talent around. At least from what I can remember. I do clearly recall receiving two gold-painted trophies declaring us champions. I also remember one magical afternoon I was better than Maradona. I don’t remember it well, just that my parents were out of town and that I scored the only two goals of the match.
I don’t know how many more seasons I played — maybe two — before jumping to American football, where I was deemed an offensive lineman. But a few years ago — as I got more and more into watching the beautiful game again — I bought some boots (or cleats, as you colonists would say) and joined a summer league in St. Augustine. I didn’t play well, but my one shining moment came in a game against Flagler College’s summer squad. One of the players was dribbling toward the goal, and I came in with a slide tackle and got the ball. I still got a yellow card (slide tackles weren’t allowed int that league), and that more than made up for my goalless season.
Since then I have been playing off and on at various fields. My buddy Mike McCall and I have recently started going head-to-head with penalty shootouts, and I’ve had a few shots to be proud of.
The next goal is to score one again in league play, even if it’s a league for middle-aged guys in Gainesville who haven’t played since their elementary school days — in my case, the glory years.
