October 2004

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Footyball

Filed under: Imported

I know the legions of footy fans who visit this site regularly have been desperately waiting for my insights on the MLS playoffs. Fear not. I managed to watch at least part of all four games last weekend--even missing most of the opening game of the World Series so that I could bring you authoritative coverage.

What did I learn?

(Warning: the following will probably read like complete gibberish to non-footy geeks. I apologize in advance for making these thoughts available for public consumption.)

1. As I suspected, D.C. United looks like the squad to beat. Playing in New York, they knocked off the Metrostars 2-0. D.C.'s flying monkey of a goalkeeper Nick Rimando made a couple of highlight reel saves (and a couple of completely boneheaded decisions that he was lucky not to pay for), but D.C. largely coasted. Alecko Eskandarian has become one of the most dangerous forwards in the league, capable of cracking in a left-footed bomb from any spot in the box. When D.C.'s clicking--with Jamie Moreno, Earnie Stewart and (renowned sociopath) Dema Kovalenko knocking the ball about the field--they're the most dangerous club in the league.

2. San Jose has been hiding in the weeds. The defending MLS champs stumbled into the playoffs, compiling a foul record of 9-10-11. But a completely different squad showed up for Sunday's 2-0 dismantling of Kansas City. Even playing without key midfielders Ronnie Ekelund and Richard Mulrooney, the Earthquakes dominated the game. Landon Donovan (who I think it's now fair to say is the best soccer player in the country) always elevates his game for key matches. You see it during the World Cup qualifiers and during the MLS playoffs. Sunday was no exception. He terrorized the Kansas City defenders, streaking through the middle of the field at alarming speeds and constantly creating dangerous opportunities. This is why he needs to take another stab at Europe. It's too easy for him to coast in MLS.

3. Colorado is a very boring team. You probably couldn't come up with 10 decent minutes of offensive highlights from their entire season. They scored less than a goal per game. That said, nobody wants to play Tim Hankinson's squad. They played a near flawless game against Los Angeles last Friday, winning 1-0 with tenacious defense and a dangerous counter-attack. Colorado goalkeeper Joe Cannon was forced to make maybe one decent save all night. I was highly impressed with Haitian forward Jean Philipe Peguero. For some reason, after very limited exposure, I was under the impression that he was a one-dimensional forward, capable of knocking the ball into the net when the opportunity presented itself but not much else. He showed otherwise against L.A., creating at least two golden scoring opportunities with lovely through balls. It was also a joy to watch Mark Chung and Pablo Mastroeni. The former knocked in perfect cross after perfect cross all game long (even though he's at least 67 years old), while the latter put on his usual display of fearless, tenacious tackling.

4. Doug Hamilton, general manager of the Los Angeles Galaxy, is an idiot. Here's what he had to say in the L.A. Times last week.

"One of the objectives with this club at the beginning of the year is that I wanted us to have a brand or a style of play that our fans could count on home or away, week in and week out," Hamilton said as the team prepared for tonight's first-round playoff game against the Colorado Rapids.

Hamilton pointed to the NBA to make his point.

"The Lakers have a style," he said, "whether that's run-and-gun, fastbreak, Showtime. The Detroit Pistons had an approach to basketball this year. For Detroit, that worked for them. They were going to pound it into the paint and they were going to muscle people.... They got players who bought into that approach, they coached that way and they played that way. That's their philosophical position.

"I'd like us to be attractive, but more important I'd like us to be consistent. I'd like us to take responsibility for the game, sending numbers forward, being the more aggressive team on the field, creating chances.

You know what I bet your fans would like Doug? I bet they'd like it if your team won some goddamn games.You know, like they used to do when Sigi Schmid was the coach. Before you fired him!

Posted by Paul Demko at October 29, 2004 7:20 PM

 

Free Advice For All You Right Wing Bloggers

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Would you people please stop insisting that the munitions at Al Qaqaa were spirited away prior to the U.S. takeover of Iraq? Or that the KSTP video is not demonstrable proof that HMX or RDX were present nine days after the fall of Baghdad? You sound very, very foolish.

You'll thank me later.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 29, 2004 12:06 PM

 

George W. Bush Busted By Columbo

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The great Jim Roll has finally followed through on his long-standing threat to start a blog:

Columbo stood frozen in a thinking position with his non-cigar hand  exasperatingly massaging his forehead.  HE WAS PERPLEXED!  Or maybe NOT! Dumb like a Fox some might say . . . for Columbo was forming certain conclusions about the intentions of high ranking US officials. He'd have to get back and ask President Bush a few more questions . . . but as that thought was forming, and as Columbo was tromping away from the Iraqi men and the flaming Piñata-thingy, a more pressing issue arose:  Columbo heard footsteps approaching quickly and felt a hood whisked over his head.  Foreign voices with a sense of urgency stammered and sputtered and then Columbo felt a blunt object hit his head.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 28, 2004 4:22 PM

 

Drive-By Truckers

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Tomorrow night at First Avenue

Posted by Paul Demko at October 26, 2004 10:14 PM

 

And The Sky Was Incorrectly Described As Blue

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Fabulous correction in today's WSJ:

NEWS CORP.'S Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article Monday as being sympathetic to the Bush cause.

UPDATE: You have to be a WSJ subscriber to read the original offending story. But here's the paragraph containing the "error" from yesterday's paper:

Mr. Bush believes the key to victory lies in his party's conservative core. He gave a rare interview over the weekend to Fox News, a network sympathetic to the Bush cause and popular with Republicans. Among other things, Mr. Bush voiced doubts about whether the country can be fully protected from future terror attacks. "Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, up in the air," he said. 

Posted by Paul Demko at October 26, 2004 5:07 PM

 

Badnarik!

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Is it possible that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, and not Ralph Nader, might end up playing a decisive role in this year's election?

I was struck a week or so back by a presidential survey of various writers, professors, and other public figures put together by Reason magazine.

Now granted it's a group of iconoclasts and cage rattlers, quite a few of whom profess that they won't even be bothering to vote. But even so I found it somewhat astounding that fully a dozen out of the 47 folks polled expressed either an intention or a desire to vote for Badnarik. By contrast, not one person conveyed any interest whatsoever in voting for Nader (even though a few did so in 2000).

Then in yesterday's Times, John Tierney pointed out (second item) that in the most recent Zogby poll Badnarik and Nader are both attracting 1 percent of the vote nationwide. Tierney further notes that the Libertarian party standard-bearer is on the ballot in all but one of the remaining battleground states whereas Nader is likely to be out of the picture in two crucial states--Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Badnarik is certainly more likely to draw votes from Bush than Kerry. He could hold particular appeal for folks in the isolationist and anti-immigration wings of the GOP (a la Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo) who are pissed off about the war in Iraq and Bush's unwillingness to crack down on illegal aliens.

Badnarik makes an explicit pitch for these disaffected Republicans in his most recent TV ad.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 25, 2004 5:47 PM

 

Footyball

Filed under: Imported

The MLS playoffs begin tonight. Basically the season up until now has been meaningless. That's because a completely asinine 8 out of 10 teams make the playoffs. Consequentially you have a team such as New England, with a pathetic record of 8-13-9, playing in the post season. 

U.S. coach Bruce Arena had the chutzpah to criticize the playoff system earlier this year. Unfortunately, he was subsequently browbeaten into apologizing. I have no idea why MLS has adopted such a lame-ass format. My guess is that they hope to goose attendance by keeping all teams in the playoff hunt right up until the end. (Average attendance per game this season was 15,559, up 4 percent from 2003.) The result: lots of pointless matches throughout the regular season.

Oh well.

The playoffs should be interesting. Since I no longer have any of the fancy cable stations that actually broadcast soccer (although I must add that, pathetically, I've watched quite a few games on my computer) I'm going to show up at Bruce's house tomorrow and demand that he let me watch some footyball.

My fearless prediction: D.C. United will win it all.

(Okay, one other thing to whine about: Why on earth has MLS scheduled New England's home playoff match at the exact same time as the opening game of the World Series? I know it was probably set prior to the Red Sox clinching, but couldn't they have envisioned such a scenario occurring and scheduled the game for tonight? Or do they want 12 people in the stands?)

Posted by Paul Demko at October 22, 2004 6:00 PM

 

Update to Previous Update: Worst Congressional Candidate Ever

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For those who, quite understandably, don't want to subject themselves to the full Patrice Bataglia treatment, Smithers has posted a few choice excerpts on his blog.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 22, 2004 4:58 PM

 

Update: Worst Congressional Candidate Ever

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KSTP has posted the Bataglia interview on its web site.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 22, 2004 11:01 AM

 

Worst Congressional Candidate Ever

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Some hilarious train wreck radio the last two mornings on Ron Rosenbaum and Mark O'Connell's AM 1500 show. Yesterday 4th Congressional District candidate Patrice Bataglia called in, ostensibly to chastise her opponent, incumbent DFL'er Betty McCollum, for ducking debates. Instead, Bataglia, the GOP-endorsed candidate, proceeded to make an utter ass of herself. In fact, the Republicans might now be regretting that Jack Shepard, an alleged arsonist and fugitive, lost in the primary.

Bataglia started out by stating that Saddam Hussein used biological weapons on U.S. troops during the Iran-Iraq war. Now there's been all kinds of assertions made about the evilness of Saddam Hussein--most of them true--but I think I can safely say that this is the first time he's been accused of employing germ warfare against American soldiers during a conflict in which we were ostensibly on his side. Perhaps when Bataglia is elected she can launch a congressional investigation into this previously undisclosed atrocity.

Bataglia then went on to assert that biological weapons are not weapons of mass destruction. I don't know exactly how she might classify them. Maybe she should ask the Kurds about this.

Speaking of the Kurds, when Bataglia was asked to name an instance when Saddam Hussein had actually used biological weapons on anyone whatsoever she went completely silent. It was a painful, protracted silence during which I almost felt compelled to change the radio station for fear of driving off the road. Hint Patrice: It starts with a "K" and ends with "urds".

Apparently Bataglia didn't feel that she had done sufficient damage to her credibility because, after Rosenbaum and O'Connell replayed the segment this morning, she called in again. This time she proceeded to repeatedly insist that she'd said none of the things that Rosenbaum and O'Connell were accusing her of saying. Even though they'd just finished playing the tape of her saying those exact things.

I'm going to give Bataglia the benefit of the doubt and assume she's got some unresolved mental-health issues. Otherwise I'd have to assume that she's a) incredibly stupid and b) a chronic liar.

I gently tweak DFL congressional candidate Teresa Daly in this week's City Pages for not always being on top of the issues, but she's a veritable Richard Lugar of foreign policy by comparison to Bataglia.

(Disclaimer: I didn't hear the entirety of the two-day dialogue with Bataglia, and it's not available on-line, so in recounting the details I may have managed to make a mistake myself. Hey, it's a blog.)

Posted by Paul Demko at October 20, 2004 11:45 AM

 

Dead Air

Filed under: Imported

I'm off to D.C. for the U.S.-Panama World Cup qualifier tomorrow. Then on to New York for a couple of days. This space will be quiet until next week.

Here's a few interesting footy stories:

1. African World Cup qualifiers marred by violence

2. Steven Goff profiles the U.S. team's 22-year-old captain Landon Donovan in the Washington Post. Key passage:

While Donovan's national team career likely will last for many more years, his days in MLS appear to be numbered. The Redlands, Calif., native has been a member of the San Jose Earthquakes since 2001, when MLS acquired him on loan from German power Bayer Leverkusen. But Leverkusen says it will recall him late this year. Donovan has resisted the Bundesliga club's overtures in recent years, but this time the move seems more likely.

3. L.A. Times' scribe Grahame Jones dissects U.S. coach Bruce Arena's recent cogent criticisms of the U.S. Soccer Federation and Major League Soccer

Posted by Paul Demko at October 12, 2004 7:05 PM

 

Borders Union

Filed under: Imported

I've written quite a bit about the attempt by employees of the Borders bookstore in the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis to unionize. The employees voted 15-6 to join United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 789 in October of 2002.

Since then they've been involved in tedious, neverending negotiations that have yet to produce a contract. These sham negotiations are a typical ploy by employers who don't want a unionized workforce. The goal is to discourage workers and delegitimize the union.

The biggest boosters of the Borders effort were Holly Krig and Jason Evans. Jason stopped working there on September 10th. Holly's last day was Friday. In their absence, Borders' management wasted no time before attempting to get rid of the union. Jason sent along this email today:

hey all-

got word yesterday that minutes after Hollys last shift (her last day at Borders was last friday) the general manager at Borders in uptown, Maria Zachmann, distributed letters to all employees asking them to decert the union. as you all know, this action is a violation of the NLRA and employees there could bring a ULP against Borders for this.

so, if you have a minute, please send Borders an email letting them know that this action violates labor law (i know, the NLRB is a joke, but...) and that you and yours wont be going anywhere near a Borders if the employees there arent allowed to vote on a contract without harassment.

if you can, please use Maria's name directly. ill keep you all posted. thanks and spread this news around.

oh, and cc me on these if you want.

please send to both these email addresses

stu@bordersgroupinc.com

ccare@bordersstores.com

Posted by Paul Demko at October 5, 2004 5:38 PM

 

It Don't Mean Shit

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I told you NASCAR was idiotic.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 5, 2004 2:38 PM

 

El Diego

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Diego Maradona has an autobiography coming out. It's called El Diego. Martin Amis muses on the pint-sized futbol phenom with the prodigious coke habit in today's Guardian. My favorite passage:

 Maradona's anarchistic streak also reveals itself in his contempt - no, his disgust - for the law. On the occasions when he attracts the attention of the police he can barely bring himself to say why. "I was arrested, arrested!" he says, and briefly describes the ensuing "farce"; meanwhile, with a polite cough, a footnote steps in to divulge the charge (possession of cocaine). Later, back in Argentina, after being incessantly doorstepped, "I reacted ... I reacted in the way anyone might. It was the episode with the air rifle, yeah, that's right." And again the footnote, itself evasive, adds that this was the "affair" when Maradona fired an air rifle at congregated journalists, without adding that he hit four of them and received a suspended three-year sentence.

The Guardian will be serializing the book starting tomorrow.

Posted by Paul Demko at October 1, 2004 4:01 PM

 

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