Fulham dent Chelsea hopes

Chelsea slipped six points behind league leaders Manchester United as DaMarcus Beasley’s first goal for Fulham earned his side a 2-2 draw in the west London derby. The champions fought back from a goal down, thanks again to hot-shot Didier Drogba, only for Beasley to strike late on. Meanwhile, United manager Sir Alex Ferguson watched his side beat Reading 3-2 - the perfect present for his 65th birthday.

Erm…big news. Except for the fact that Carlos Bocanegra scored the goal for Fulham. Because fellow American DaMarcus Beasley doesn’t play for Fulham, he plays for Manchester City. But, in a related story, Beasley scored his first goal of the season in Man City’s win over Wigan.

Strange reporting.

My work ethic has been pathetic thus far and haven’t done much writing, but I’ve had slow but steady progress on One Hundred Years of Solitude. Normally when I read, I try to suss out some of the themes and signifcance of the book as I go. I started to do that with One Hundred Years but quickly surrendered. To put it bluntly, it’s just too damn good to not read for pleasure the first time. I can tell already that it requires a re-read because the first 25 pages or so I was just getting used to the way the story was told and I think I missed a lot. But now I’m about 1/4th through and it’s truly amazing. I’ve enjoyed Catch-22, Titus Groan, In Cold Blood, and most of the other books I’ve read in the past few months, but nothing matches the page-by-page wonder inspired by One Hundred Years. 3/4ths of the book to go and I don’t want it to end.

BreakAway Sports here in Madison runs a noon pickup game of indoor soccer. I paid $100 to play M-W-F at noon for ninety minutes from now through April. I’ve played twice already and it was great. Indoor is a different beast altogether, though, and I’m in serious danger of swallowing my tongue.

The first time I played the teams were fairly even and the ages ranged from guys in their young 20’s to late 40’s. The second time it was overwhelmingly guys in their young 20’s who were home on winter break, and most appeared to play on their university teams. I can’t say it wasn’t fun because I still had a good time, but it underlined why many leagues offer over-30 teams. I was only an above-average player in my heydey and most of my powers have significantly waned, but I’m able to pull off the occasional bit of trickery that makes me smile, but I’m pretty one-dimensional at this stage of my playing career. Indoor emphasizes the glaring weaknesses in my game, most notably endurance and taking guys on the dribble. Because of all the sprinting, my legs go to rubber quickly and then everything goes—shooting, passing, trapping, marking, tackling.

So it took the younger fellas (all of whom knew each other) about forty-five minutes to conclude that maybe it would be better to mix the teams up so not all the over-30 guys were on the same side, getting absolutely waxed because they can’t keep up with players with twice the skill and half the age. But that gracious act was somewhat tempered by the fact that they proceeded to primarily pass to each other, which was annoying. So I can’t really blame them, I’ll be looking forward to when they all go back to school and the crowd gets older, slower, and less skilled. That way I can blend right in.

I finished the first level of my Spanish course; three more to go. It’s been remarkable, and again I have to say that if you’re in the market for learning Spanish and you’re willing to pay a good chunk of change in exchange for gaining proficiency extremely fast, I highly recommend Bilingual America.

Yo he estado estudiando español por solamente tres meses y yo puedo decir muchas cosas. En la escuela secundaria, ellos no enseñaron como hablar en el tiempo pasado o futuro. Pero con Bilingual America, ellos enseñan este primero. Yo puedo hablar en el futuro (yo voy a decir, yo diré, yo dirías) y pasado (yo había dicho, yo he dicho, yo dije, yo estaba diciendo, etc.)

{I have been studying Spanish for only three months and I can say many things. In high school, they did not teach how to speak in past or future tenses. But with Bilingual America, they teach this first. I can speak in the future (I am going to say, I will say, I you would say) and past (I had said, I have said, I said, I was saying, etc.)}

Now, gramatically that’s not perfect but again, I’m only three months in with nine more to go. I have a weekly appointment with Brother Todd (who is nine months in) to speak Spanish for about 30 minutes and we do okay. I won’t be fluent at the end, but I’ll definitely be proficient. Again, it’s a great program.

Current Mood: Okay Enough |
Currently Listening To - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros - “Global A Go-Go”

My final grade just posted and I’ve been waiting to give a recap of my classes. I commented on my initial impressions awhile back at the beginning of the semester and wanted to give my final thoughts as well. Overwhelmingly, this was a good semester but I’m never beyond complaining. My classes were:

Narrative Craft and Theory: The Researched Story
Feminist Critical Theory: Cultural Diversity/Multiculturalism/Globalization-Gendered Debates
The Writer and the Current Literary Scene

As I did last time, I’ll put my comments below the cut so as not to clutter LiveJournal pages with what will likely be a long post. (more…)

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Athena at play. She’s a sweet dog, honest!

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Yesterday, it occured to me that we were in Africa about this time eight years ago. I paged through the scrapbook at saw that from December 18th through the 20th we were at the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania and decided to scan these two photos. They brought back a lot of memories.

We’d had a great safari so far and had seen all of the Big Five (the lion, the leopard, the buffalo, the rhino and the elephant) but the only rhino we’d seen was way, way off in the distance in some tall grass, so that hardly counted. Our guide, who was fantastic, said sometimes the best thing to do was wait. He killed the engine and we talked about life. We’d brought a small photo album of Chicago, and we got into a very philosophical conversation about how people around the world were really the same, whether you were working among skyscrapers or in the African bush. We’d been sitting for about two hours before realizing that a black rhino and baby had come up behind us and passed within fifty feet of the truck.

The Ngorongoro can get pretty crowded during the height of the day and the animals all seek shelter from the heat anyway, so the guide suggested we get out at daybreak. Sure enough, we hardly saw anyone else for hours. He switched off the motor on a hill and we listened to some lions roaring in the distance. Then we heard a roar in response from right behind us on the other side of the hill. This old fella walked right past us and didn’t even spare us a glance. He was so close, I probably would have hit his head with the door had I opened it. That’s my shadow in the bottom right corner taking the picture.

We sometimes talk about that trip and can’t believe we went. We were only 24, not married, and it basically wiped out all the money either of us had. There’s no way in hell we would consider doing it now because of the expense, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It seems like a doubly good idea today.

I finished For Whom The Bell Tolls yesterday and my verdict is a hearty thumbs up.

Hemingway has his faults. Okay, he has a lot of faults, with general misogyny being the most glaring. I don’t doubt his portrayal of how many men felt about women during the era. However, I greatly question his portrayal of women of the era and Hem’s ideas of how and why they act the way they do. In FWTBT, the love interest is Maria, a woman who has virtually no character of her own. She submits entirely to the will of Robert Jordan, the Hemingway hero, and the pain of her being gang raped is somehow alleviated by falling in love with him. Odd, that.

Anyway, I give Hemingway a lot of grief even though I tend to enjoy his work. FWTBT has the distinct advantage of being set during the Spanish Civil War, and Hemingway’s love for the country shines through. His description of the Spanish is unerring, and he’s right on the mark with Spanish culture, too—the recollections of the bullfighter and eating paella in Valencia being two noteworthy passages.

The book also piqued my interest in reading more about the Spanish Civil War, since I know very little about it besides the fact that Franco won. I didn’t know, for instance, that the Nationalists were pro-church and the Republicans had banned religion. As a precursor to WWII, it’s also interesting to see which countries provided aid to which side, while other countries like the United States chose not to get involved—which was tantamount to giving the Nationalists support. Ah, remember when the US was an isolationist country? I’m interested in checking out Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia now, and trying to dig up some other major works in English about the war.

I picked up and put down about three dozen books at the used book shop yesterday while repeating the mantra “Focus, focus, focus.” I started One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday and it’s been an easy sell, although I wonder how the book may be different based on the translation. It’s more like trying to translate poetry than prose, I’d imagine.

I can’t decide whether I’ll try to read more early 20th century American stuff (I’m looking at you, Dos Passos) or whether I should hit more South American magic realists. Or more likely, I’ll just run out of time before the semster starts.

Speaking of which, my professor announced two books on the reading list for my writing workshop entitled “Magic and Wonder.” One is Johnathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude and the other is George Saunders’ collection CivilWarLand In Bad Decline. The rest will be short fiction.

I’ll do another post of my classes and reading lists, but not until mid-January. I’m out of school until January 22.

And good news on this front. I cleaned up my story “Sleeping Weather” and got it out today. My story “Pastures of Plenty” is now 3/4ths done and I should finish it tonight, which means some of you should be seeing it shortly.

And can I just say how annoying Glimmer Train’s form reject is? It contains the phrase “It was a good read.” This can’t possibly be true of all the stories submitted, so why say it? “Thanks for sending us your work” is fine, as is “we appreciate the opportunity to read it.” But “it was a good read?”

Current Mood: Fair |
Currently Listening To - Wilco - “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”

Last night we watched Green Street Hooligans starring Frodo Baggins. What starts off being mildly interesting if a bit far-fetched spirals out of control into complete lunacy by the mid-way point making it a laugh-a-minute until the ending.

There’s not a lot of care shown to details here and everything’s just a bit over-the-top. For a sampling:

* The opening scene shows a fight between the West Ham and Tottenham firms which happens the night before Frodo arrives in London. That very day, Frodo goes with the lads to a West Ham football match. Which begs the question, did West Ham play two days running, or is there some other reason why Spurs hoolies (from Norf London) would make it to West Ham (far east London) and cause a ruckus? It would make far more sense if it had happened the week before, but that wouldn’t allow Frodo to arrive on the clean-up scene asking if there had been a terrorist attack. Subtle.

* For all the videotaping going on (ostensibly a comment on the state of British society) the cops are almost nowhere to be seen. When a mob of Man Ure hoolies is awaiting at the train station for Frodo’s crew, there’s no police presence until after the situation has boiled over. Um. The police may not be super-sleuths, but they are quite familiar with notorious football hooligans—hence the oft-referenced videotaping—so they wouldn’t just ignore a rowdy mob outside a train station. And the small fact that there is zero police presence after a firebomb is thrown through a pub window and a brawl ensues (which is the most ridiculous scene of the movie.) The place is burning, people are dying, yet the police don’t respond? But in an earlier scene, the Millwall hooligans have to flee a chip shop because the owner called the coppers after the hooligan leader assaulted another customer. Makes. No. Sense.

* Poor Claire Forlani, the only woman with any lines in the movie. The director must have told her “We’re looking for an actress who can cry. A lot.”

The movie has bigger faults than these. What chafes me is the distortion of hooliganism culture in Europe. I’ve been to several games in England, a game in Italy, I’ve watched games in bars in Spain, and went to one match in Brazil. The most dangerous situation by far was the Brazilian match. Can you get into trouble at a game? Sure. But it’s probably just as dangerous as trying to catch a USC game at the Coliseum. The vast majority of people get into and out of games without a sight of hooligans. Yet people in America seem to think I’m nuts for going to footie matches. Just like more than one European has asked me if I’ve ever been shot at living in the US. Distortion of reality? You be the judge.

But the overarching problem with Green Street is that it never attempts to tackle the question of hooliganism. Why do these guys feel compelled to go out and fight every weekend wearing their footballing colors? There’s some lame attempt at saying it has to do with keeping your friends’ backs and not backing down from a fight. Which might be a rationale, but not an explanation for why it happens in the first place.

A book like The Football Factory makes a strong case for English hooliganism being a social ill brought on by the wounded ego of a crumbling colonial empire. The hooligans in The Football Factory have dead-end jobs with no future prospects. They’re mad at the world because they’re constantly being shit on. The only thing they can have pride in is their football club, for which they’ll fight tooth and nail. Growing up in Green Bay, this makes a bit of sense to me.

But in Green Street it’s all just a choice. The former firm leader sees a kid die in a hooligan fight and quits hooliganism. He now has a wife and child. And a massive apartment. And he wears expensive suits. And he drives a Land Rover. This is the choice that the hooligans in the movie don’t see: quit your hooligan ways and live a life of marriage and conspicuous consumption. Except in reality this isn’t the choice. The Clash’s “Career Opportunities” comes to mind. The options for many young men are work on the dock or… work on the dock. Hence hooliganism. It doesn’t work the other way ’round, really.

There’s also the question of when this movie is supposed to be taking place. Anyone who knows anything about English footie should know that the formation of the Premier League changed the climate of hooliganism. The game went from being a blue-collar game to a white-collar game. The suits figured out there’s more money to be made by a dad bringing his wife and kids to the game than a bunch of drunken louts spoiling for a fight. Hooligans don’t pop into the club shop and buy a £70 replica jersey, you see. Hooliganism also got English clubs banned from European competition, and in the world of satellite television this means a lot of potential pay-per-view money down the tubes. So to say there’s been an all-out war on hooliganism isn’t much of an exaggeration. Clubs (like Chelski) have intentionally priced blue-collar folks (a small percentage of which were hooligans) out of the game.

Yet the movie wants to have it both ways. The hooligans in the movie don’t have any problem coming up with £50 to see the match each week. They never get caught. The police don’t know who they are anyway. This is a view of hooliganism in its hey-dey of the 70’s and 80’s, not its current state. From my understanding, today it takes a feat of administrative genius for two firms to meet in order to circumvent the cops, and clashes take place far from the stadium.

Don’t get me wrong, hooliganism does still exist and it’s no joke. It just doesn’t look anything like what’s presented in Green Street Hooligans.

Verdict: Big Thumbs Down

Yay! Just sent my final draft of “Miss Pavlichenko - Part I” in, which is my last act of the semester. In rereading the story, I don’t think it’s half bad. Part I ended up being about 8500 words.

Watched the second half of Man Ure vs. West Ham and the first half of Spurs vs. Man Citeh. Cracking stuff, both. But holy goal by Tom Huddlestone! The guy’s built like a linebacker and I do believe he has the potential to be the Next Big Thing. Him settling into the role vacated by Carrick had been a big reason Spurs have settled down, I think.

And even though it puts Chelski within reach of the top of the table, I couldn’t help but cheer for West Ham today. I’m a Curbishley fan and it was good to see the Hammers claw their way up the table. They’re still in the drop zone, but only just.

The table at this point is absolutely nuts. A whopping 12 teams are within 10 points of each other. The festive period will be festive indeed.

Packers winning? Too little too late, but it’s nice to see they’re not just rolling over.

I’m starting One Hundred Years of Solitude tomorrow and I’m greatly looking forward to it.

Current Mood: Relieved |