So in case you’re not in the know, the US beat Mexico 2-0 tonight. That result means the US has qualified for the World Cup next summer. Mexico only needed a single point (a tie) to qualify and they didn’t get it. Both teams were pretty much shoe-ins for the WC coming into this game but it’s always great to beat Mexico. Always. A few random thoughts:

1. The Mexican nat’l team has always been, and will likely always be, a bunch of classless sh**heads. They dive. They whine. And good Lord, do they hack. Especially when they’re down, and even more so when they know they’re going to lose. I think my palms were nearly bleeding from how tight my fists were clenched watching the last fifteen minutes. The Mexican players were going well out their way to deliver late cheap-shots after the ball had left the area. To make it worse, they take dives two seconds after delivering dirty fouls. I hate them. I will always hate them. And it feels so good to beat them yet again on US soil. Did you know they haven’t scored a goal against us on our soil since 1999? (Note: this is not an indictment of Mexico as a whole, its people, or its culture — just against its dirty, spoil-sport, cheating, hacking, classless, sore-loser national team, that’s all.)
2. Oguchi Onyewu rules. He’s my new favorite player. He was a ship lost at sea against Mexico in the Azteca, but tonight he ate up Borgetti. Just pushed him all over the park and completely owned him. Happily, this completely disrupted Borgetti’s game. I wish Onyewu would have gotten that first goal, but whatever. Dude’s young and he’s not going to be playing in Belgium for long, because he clearly rocks.
3. DaMarcus Beasley is awesome. He must drive his opponents nuts. He weighs 100 pounds and looks like the wind could push him over but he just flies right past people. Unfortunately, this generally earns him a decapitation against a team like Mexico and he got scythed down with regularity tonight. The Mexicans were clearly fouling him with an intent to injure and — oh, just reread point #1 before I get worked up again.
4. Before, after, and especially during the game, Frankie Hejduk is a disaster. I don’t know if the camera man was his lover or what, but during the post-game there was more footage of Frankie kissing his US flag and doing his whole surfer-dude impersonation than any other player on the field. Please, please leave him at home. Attention Bruce Arena — dude got cut from a Swiss club team. He sucks. Move on.
5. How awesome is it that the US beat Mexico 2-0 in the World Cup (this can’t be repeated often enough) and tonight they put one over them by the same scoreline when both teams clearly wanted a result? Answer: very, very awesome.
6. Last point about this game. The extended post-game coverage was great, and my favorite part was Landon Donovan’s one-minute interview. In that span, he managed to say that the Mexican national team talks too much, he’s sick of hearing their b.s., and that the US shut them up good by dominating them in a game that really counted for something. It’s nice to hear athletes tell it like it is, isn’t it?

So I’m excited to see who Bruce uses for Wednesday’s game against Guatemala. This gives him a chance to experiment with lots of young players now that the result doesn’t matter. I just hope everyone brings steel shinpads…


On a much less positive note, we sat outside for nearly four hours under a hot sun watching the Wisconsin Badgers. Game day at Camp Randall is always fun but the first half stunk like a dirty diaper. The team finally started to play in the second quarter and eventually hung over 50 points on Bowling Green but the defense — ugh. It’s going to be a long season. Considering that the Packers are even worse on defense, it could be a long, cold fall. Not looking forward to football season.


I picked up my copy of “Deathbird Stories” by Harlan Ellison and the “Dangerous Visions” collection from the library. Two immediate impressions: Ellison is a complete ass, and he has knack for great story titles. I’ve only heard stories about the man, none of them favorable. I’d read somewhere (an Amazon.com review, I think) that the DV collection is somewhat marred by Ellison’s self-indulgent introductions to each story. When I read that I thought c’mon, but it’s true. I recently read (via MSN’s portal) that you should never ruin a speech at a wedding or a funeral by talking about yourself. The same holds true for anthologies. Yet the introductions to the DV stories are basically Ellison jerking off. Unfortunately, reading these introductions is sort of a moth-to-the-flame thing. I can’t stand them, yet I want to read the next one to see if I find it even more annoying. The only story I’ve read so far from DV is one heavy-handed one by Damon Knight that I really didn’t like. Still, it’s a classic in the sf world and there are a number of great writers featured there, so I’ll just keep trying to find the good ones.

From DS, I read Ellison’s story about car-duelling. If it hadn’t been short, I would have stopped reading. The over-the-top main character may be well-depicted, but I suffered heavily from the “unsympathetic character” syndrome. He wasn’t interesting enough to make me want to figure him out, and his misogynistic machismo bullshit seemed like a backlash against women’s lib. I hope this isn’t what Ellison’s all about. I’ve heard a lot of negative things about him but he’s obviously a heavy-hitter in the genre.

One thing that gives me hope from the DS collection is a line from the introduction. Ellison says that gods lose their power when people stop believing in them. I’ve had this very thought — the identical words, even — for a long time and wanted to write a story about it. I don’t think this is a remarkably unique thought but it’s an interesting one, and I’ve never seen it stated so plainly. So I hope the car-duelling story is just one of the lemons.

In other general news, our basement remodeling project will basically be finished by this time next week. It’s been nearly a year since we started and — while the results look great and it has created a very attractive and functional space that may well become the most popular room in the house — I can’t wait for the damn thing to be finished. We put in the last few basement windows tomorrow, then the carpet gets put in later this week. Then the room itself is finished. I still need to finish building a new computer and doing some wiring (I’m going to be able to hook the computer up directly to the stereo system through wall jacks, which will be awesome) but that’s minor — and enjoyable — stuff. We’ll also be picking up the mondo flat-screen television we bought a few weeks back and having the satellite system installed. DVR and high definition coming our way.

Every game of next summer’s World Cup is being broadcast in high-def, don’t you know.

Current Mood – tired |