Not All Right At All

Yesterday's game between the US and Portugal was not satisfying at all. I went into it with the idea that America had a fantastic chance of winning and advancing to the next round (the nature of which I would learn just as soon as necessary), but I was chastened considerably at the game's beginning as the Portuguese scored easily in the face of some evidently poor American defense. I hoped that they'd be able to recover.

They did, regaining their wits, toughening their defense and scoring a pair of goals by midway through the second half. I was at this time quite sure once again that this game was, if not a sure thing, then at least nearly one. Both teams were quite fatigued by the heat, which is understandable considering we're talking about a stadium in the middle of the jungle. I'll never know who thought that would be a smart idea.

Turnaround

I watched the USA's first World Cup game yesterday. I was aware of it coming up and had some interest, my words to the contrary aside. In truth, soccer (the World Cup included) is like most things for me: in a vacuum, there's every chance that I'll enjoy it. In connection with other people, that is not so. Other people's involvement in anything is more likely to put me off than anything else, which is too bad. I feel badly about that. I'll own up to struggling with socializing, and that problem of mine leaves me less into any number of things.

I don't have a base level interest in the game, the event and the general prestige of my country in whatever form that takes. I certainly would rather the USA wins than loses, and the game isn't really so bad. If I understood it better, I'd like it better (since the long stretches between shots on goal would have some meaning for me), but I know enough, and it's kind of fun to watch the game. I wish some things about it were different, and I wish we could make it more our own (in such areas as the lingo, songs traditions & such(, but I kind of enjoy watching the game now and then.

The Rest Of The World's Game

The World Cup has been going for a couple days, and my interest level is at an all time low. I care specifically about the sport of soccer as little as I ever have. As I have said during attempts to take American sports overseas, it is fine by me if they never care about our games just like it should be OK by them if we never like their games, but for some reason there are people on either side of the ocean who bemoan this state of affairs with bizarre passion.

In the World Cup they make much of patriotic spirit. I do love my country and in theory wish for it to succeed at all endeavors, but I just don't value success in soccer enough for it to matter whether the US team does well or poorly. I feel as if there are more practical measures by which I would like for America to out-do other nations, most of them having to do with material prosperity in some way. Wouldn't it be nice if we beat the world at math aptitude?

Our Own Games

I'm a fair sports fan. There's one thing I don't get, and that's the constant efforts to take sports popular in one place and extend them to others. Take the generations-long campaign to make soccer take root in the US. They're probably closer than ever to actually achieving that, but I don't think they'll ever get as far as they'd like, and I don't know why they should try. Of course I know the reason is money, and since I don't get any, I can't connect to that. I guess it boils down to eventually being content with how much money you have.

Who wants to talk about money, though? I'd rather talk about letting everybody just have their own sports. It's fine by me that most of the world prefers soccer. They can have that, and we can have our sports. Just as  some enterprising individuals try to push soccer on us, others try to push our sports on them. I've read of a variety of American games being exported. There was a baseball league in Israel. Naturally Jewish Americans were into it, but the rest not as much.

Absurdities In Sports

I think we may have been better off before the pervasive, heavily specialized sports coverage that began with the founding of ESPN. As there has become more and more space in which to cover sports, there has not necessarily been anything more to talk about. Instead, desperate people must find more and more things to say about the same stuff that used to be covered adequately in much less time every week. I could certainly do without sports for most of the week. Just give me the pre-game, the game and the post-game. I'm happy to forget the sport entirely in the off-season.

Other people don't feel that way, and they are the ones getting their way. I guess that's mostly fine with me. Other people's passions only affect me as much as I let them. Still, because I have friends who are so passionate that they must partake in all this dubious news around clock, I would have to cut them off to not hear it anymore. I'm not going to do that, obviously, so I'm just going to wind up hearing this stuff and being infuriated by it.

Olympian Conflictedness

As I write this, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia have begun. The opening ceremonies aren't until later in the day today (Friday), but somehow events are already underway. This year the games are especially marred by politics and controversy. It seems worse than it was in Beijing, where it was not inconsiderable. There's also the actual series of athletic competitions, and I guess I have thoughts on both of those things.

I've always enjoyed the winter games. It's funny to me that people consider them lesser than the summer games. The winter events are admittedly more obscure to Americans on the whole, and the entire event is a smaller, quainter affair (which is also anathema to spectacle-minded Americans), but I don't really see how those are bad things. I like a smaller, more manageable Olympics. Maybe that's just my personality.

Half And Half

It's the Super Bowl today, and indeed by now it may have started already. More likely is that the endless pageantry will delay kickoff well beyond what it would have been. The humble game buckles under all the weight of the spectacle that is heaped upon it. In any case, it's a very happy day for me. I have, as I said yesterday, a comedy sketch that I wrote being staged at a major comedy theater in Hollywood tonight. As I write this, I'm planning to be at a Super Bowl party hosted by friends, but I will probably have to leave it well before I'd like to in order to get to the show.

Before I go, however, I will have made and presented the jalapeno poppers that were a success at a couple of previous social engagements. I must thank my mother for getting me to make them once back home, because having that as a go-to for a party is a real feather in my cap (as they incessantly said in "Catch-22"). I feel it may even be somewhat expected that I make the poppers, which (if true and not fantasy) is gratifying.

Violenteering

Last night I got back to helping out with my friend's roller derby practice. Some time ago, I helped run the penalty box in a practice game and then a scrimmage. I found that interesting and challenging. I resolved to do more when I could, but my schedule mostly did not cooperate. This year things have changed, and I'm more free to join in the roller derby. I was to be a part of a real game last week, but my birthday interfered.

Last night though, the stars aligned and I went to practice. I assumed I would be there to build on the experience I'd gained with the penalty box. It was not to be. Instead, I was assigned the more important task of timing jams. The game consists of these jams, which can run up to two minutes long, but which can also be cut short for different reasons. I had been afraid to take on the job before, but there was no choice this time, as they don't bother with penalty box timers if there is a shortage of people.

High Roller

Yesterday, I got to do something pretty neat. I've been going to a bunch of roller derby games after getting invited by a friend who plays in them. She had suggested on occasion that I might like getting involved as a referee, and I expressed interest but also fear that I would have too hard a time with it. After some encouragement, though, I finally felt up to the task. The trouble became scheduling, as practice happens while I'm doing improv stuff.

An opening in my improv schedule came along, and I went along to a roller derby practice. I thought maybe I would just be watching and learning, but I found myself pressed into duty. I was given the choice of either timing the game (which is not so very simple) or of timing the penalties in the penalty box. Guessing that the latter would be easier, I took that. I think that this ultimately proved to be a wise decision.

Drafty

Yesterday was the big draft for my fantasy football league. I have been in it a few years now, and I am only beginning to get the hang of the auction-based draft the league employs. It's a little more complicated than a standard draft where you can have the best available player at any moment. Instead, you have a budget of so much money and must compete for every player you want with a series of bids. The top bid wins each player.

One must remain calm and dispassionate, saving enough money to build a deep team, but not so much money that any is left over. I usually have a little money left on account of being overly caution with my money in between an early splurge and the point at which few good players are left. Like I said though, I have gotten a bit better, appreciating that one wants to have a little money left when others are broke and bargain players are out there to be had.

Another Season Of The Same

In the course of making a joke (whose thrust was that I was encouraging a friend to rashly bet a substantial sum on the New York Jets winning the next Super Bowl), I found that an even more unlikely event than the Jets winning the Super Bowl would be my hometown Arizona Cardinals winning the same game. They are presently not an incredibly strong team, although I would argue that they possess one thing lacking in many of the years during which they have played characteristically poorly: hope.

Hope of better days may not be realized for the Cardinals this season, and so a middling or even bad season seems likely or at least possible enough that I ought to be prepared, and I am. I thought they would enjoy better odds of winning the Super Bowl than three hundred to one, which must be as long of odds as they have ever faced, but I did not entertain hopes that they would do even as much as contend for their division.

A New Pastime Joins The Old

I have had the good fortune of coming upon some great live entertainment in Los Angeles. Through friends, I have learned of and enjoyed a great deal such things as improv comedy, pole dancing and burlesque. I have wound up doing a good deal of the first myself, and a bit of the second. Something new has come to my attention though, and I do believe I'll be seeing more, if not doing any. It's roller derby.

This may not be as new to others as it is to me. Really, I had heard of it, and I had the vaguest understanding of how it works. Luckily, a friend is on a local team, and with her encouragement, I finally made my way to a game. It was a doubleheader, and thank goodness for that. I might otherwise not have had enough time to really grasp the rules, which don't work out to be so complicated. I think I get it now.

Rolling

For the first time in a long time, I went bowling yesterday. As I told someone, I used to bowl a bit during summers when working at Boy Scout camp, as they had a bowling alley in the nearest town. Outside of that, I have seldom had cause to bowl. Certainly I'm not going to do it alone, and friends have not expressed much interest until now. Suffice it to say that I am out of practice, or I was going into the evening I'm describing.

The bowling alley was in what looks from the outside like a barn. It was called the Bowling Barn, and I don't know if it was a renovated barn or a fake. I hope it was the former. When we walked inside, we found it was all lit up with bright colors but otherwise subdued lighting. I feared it was one of those "cosmic bowling" situations where you are supposed to pay more because of the various concessions they've made to youth.

The Game Of Attrition

It took long enough, but baseball's spring training has finally begun. There are plenty of reasons for interest, although having season tickets at my disposal is no longer one of them as it was a few years ago. Then, the baseball season signified a time when my evening plans were set six or seven out of every fourteen days. That's how often the LA Dodgers were in town and playing a game, although one or two games every homestand were during the day.

These days, I have neither season tickets nor the cable channel that many Dodgers games come in on, so I can watch only so many, but can get the rest on the radio. In recent years, my level of attention has been minimal, as few around me were paying attention. It's human interaction that I am most a fan of, these days, and most people I know aren't sports fans, let alone fans of baseball. That has changed lately.

The Meat Of The Matter

Today is the Super Bowl, and while I have a healthy interest in the game and a fairly personal interest in the commercials, there is room for other intrigue in the day. Looming large for many is the food. I myself have opted to make some jalapeno poppers, and God willing they will be well-received. It's a little more emotional investment than if I were bringing beer or chips. Anyway, that's what I'm doing today.

What others are doing presumably includes chicken wings, or as they are commonly known, Buffalo wings. This is awfully interesting to me. The Buffalo wing is one of those really ingenious creations, on par with the meatball or or the sausage. All three are devised to make use of what would otherwise be regarded as waste. The meatball and the sausage both neutralize low-grade meat with the connivance of potent spice and other distractions.

A Quick And Dirty Mystery

This Manti Te'o story that has gotten into the news in the last day or so is awfully interesting to me. Te'o, a star linebacker for Notre Dame, had been one of the more inspiring stories in sports, mourning the deaths of his grandmother and his girlfriend in short order as his team marched on towards the championship game. It turned out, however, that his girlfriend was fictional, and the party line at the university is that he has been duped.

It doesn't feel right, to me or others. Some are glad to accept it, but I have a hard time believing that he could have maintained a relationship so long without ever suspecting. He was presented with a picture of a girl who wasn't the one he spoke to on the phone or supposedly met. Did he meet a woman who looked like the picture and sounded like the voice? As I say, it's hard to believe. Now, it seems evident that an acquaintance of Te'o's named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo is directly behind this fraud, but was it without the involvement of Te'o and others close to him?

Ride Away

My day yesterday was marked by disappointment in my leisure life. My favorite football team suffered its worst loss in team history, and as if that wasn't enough, they also contributed towards a likely defeat in my fantasy football league. This defeat would keep me out of our playoffs, and so you can see how I was an insufferable basket case. I badly needed something to distract me and lift my spirits. Luckily something came up.

Some friends had concocted a plan to see Christmas lights. What kind of person could remain in a foul mood in the face of that? Although it was against my nature to disengage from the poisonous atmosphere I had, I forced it on myself in the hopes that I would become someone who would be grateful that the angry me had done that. I remained upset at the outset of the experience, but that began to melt away.

Deal Done

It's a harrowing experience sometimes to be in a fantasy football league. One of the more challenging things is to negotiate a trade. I tend to be rather risk adverse myself, which costs me all too often. There have been plenty of times in life where I was afraid to accept the risk and ended up losing more than I would have for fear of making a move. Those were really more significant events than a fantasy football trade, but the latter encapsulates things well enough.

It's lovely, of course, when the first offer someone makes is a fantastic one for you, but that is not too common. Sometimes you have to be the one to make the first move, and that is something I do rather seldom, but I appreciate the truth of it. I certainly would like to think that I was the one preying on someone else, rather than fearing that I was being victimized by any particular trade offer made to me. Perhaps that will be my next trade.

My Day In The Sun

When I was in high school, there was little to recommend me as an athlete. There was more then than there is now, given that I am different only in being that much older. At the very least, I was more earnest in trying to do what the PE teacher asked of us than many of my classmates. Even in their indifference, they tended to outclass me in terms of strength, speed, agility and about any other measure. PE was a subject that I endured more than anything, my affection for sports notwithstanding.

I often thing about something rather interesting that happened one day, when I had the novel experience of being handed a task in my wheelhouse. One of the PE teachers, who was also a coach on the football team, approached me with the request that I think up some codes for audibles that they could call. The simple idea was that each word of a code phrase ought to start with the same letter as its corresponding play name. I was asked to come up with a few.

Time To Kill Time

As summer fades away, it's time again for fantasy football to get going again. I had played consistently in high school and college, but gave it up after a while. It got resuscitated in me recently, and this marks the third year in a row that I play with friends I have here in Los Angeles. I have had tolerable finishes, but not won. That is in keeping with how I ever did before, when I only ever came as close as third or fourth. Perhaps this year I will do better.

I'm lukewarm on the team I have assembled. The method of drafting players in this league is challenging, as you must bid on each player in the manner of an auction. Not only is it hard because of how you must assign value to each player, it is hard because the best players do not necessarily come up for bid all at the beginning. To draft well, you must be the master of your emotions and nerves, subjugating them both beneath solid reason. I struggle there.