August 2005

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Last night we were flying the Liberian flag

Filed under: Imported

This morning, after arriving home from Kansas City at approximately 6 a.m., I climbed into bed hoping to catch a few hours of shut eye prior to work. I had a very vivid dream that involved Godfrey Tenoff showing up unexpectedly at my Frogtown bungalow. It was not clear from the dream exactly why Tenoff was visiting me at home. I've never had a conversation with the dogged Thunder midfielder previously--unless you count screaming at him from the bleachers of The Jimmy. But the most striking aspect of the dream was that the interior of my house was covered--quite literally--with ants and flies. They were swarming everywhere, crawling over my body and biting me, as I attempted to engage Mr. Tenoff in conversation.

And then I was awoken by the sound of Warren Zevon's "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" coming from the clock radio.

Which can only mean this: Thunder 3, Wizards 1 in last night's U.S Open Cup quarterfinal.

Our tribe of 40-plus fanaticos made our presence felt in K.C. last night. Fueled by a seven-hour bus ride of Town Hall growlers and Steel Reserve lager, we were a red-faced, full-throated horde by kickoff. The feeble K.C. supporters sounded like they were witnessing a synchronized swimming competition by comparison.

Song of the night, penned on the bus ride down:

Oompa Loompa Dompadee Doo

The Royals are crap and the Wizards are too

Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dee

Your best player's in the AARP

I'm sure the Wizards faithful--all 408 of them--enjoyed that one. (Can we please move this franchise to a town that will support it? They've had a decade to establish support and can't get 2,000 fans out for an Open Cup quarterfinal?)

The game was actually quite evenly contested. The Thunder simply buried their opportunities, while K.C. squandered theirs. Johnny Menyongar was a hellion all night, scoring two goals and creating the third. Melvin Tarley was nearly as dangerous, only kept off the score sheet by an acrobatic save from the KC goalkeeper. The Liberian duo are now the top two scorers among the four teams left in the Open Cup. In the Thunder's three triumphs over MLS squads the good guys have scored a remarkable 13 goals. By comparison they're averaging just 1.33 goals per game in 1st Division competition. I'm at a loss to explain the Jeckle-Hyde nature of the team's season.

Owing no doubt to his remarkable Open Cup performances, Tarley has been loaned to Real Salt Lake for the remainder of the season. Great news for him. He's earned a look by MLS--and the Mormons can certainly use some more firepower up front. Given that it's Tarley's third full season with the Thunder, it's easy to forget that he's still just 21 years old. The kid's upside is tremendous. Few forwards possess his combination of speed, strength, and relentless determination to get the ball into the net by any possible means. Even better: Tarley will still be available to the Thunder for the Open Cup semifinals on September 14th against the L.A. Galaxy at the Home Depot Center. Is another road trip in order?

I don't usually waste my breath bitching about the lack of media coverage accorded soccer. I don't really give a flying fuck if Patrick Reusse and Tom Powers get their jollies belittling it as a little girl's game. That's their prerogative. And since I can't convince my own paper to print any soccer coverage it'd be more than a little hypocritical to throw rocks. But the media is missing an extraordinary David v. Goliath story by pretty much ignoring the Thunder's remarkable run through the Open Cup. Can't one reporter assigned with chronicling the relative health of Matt Birk's groin be spared?

One grim side note: As last night's game ended and we were exchanging love with the grateful Thunder players and coaches, a couple of  K.C. cretins came over to our section intent on trouble. They started mixing it up with some Thunder supporters and a small melee broke out. The cops, warily watching over our section all night, immediately pulled out the pepper spray and doused everyone in the vicinity. They didn't even make an effort to sort things out before engaging in this unnecessary use of force.

Luckily none of our tribe were arrested. The two K.C. numbskulls were hauled off to jail. It made for a somewhat crappy end to the night and a rather somber bus ride home. Which is probably just as well. I needed some sleep.

(photo courtesy of Joe Leyba)

Posted by Paul Demko at August 25, 2005 2:59 PM

 

Fred Flintstone

Filed under: Imported

I was reading through some criminal complaints at the Ramsey County Courthouse this morning. One of them involved a DUI arrest shortly after 1 p.m. on July 1st. The woman had plowed into a parked vehicle on Hawthorne Avenue on the East Side of St. Paul. She promised the vehicle's owner that she'd pay for the damages and then returned home.

When the police arrived at her residence a few minutes later the woman claimed that she was busy entertaining wedding guests in the backyard. Among the purported guests: Fred Flintstone.

The woman was charged with DUI and a slew of other motor-vehicle-related crimes. She'd been convicted of DUI at least 5 previous times in the last 15 years.

Stories such as this one are why I'm taking a bus to Kansas City tomorrow morning. I don't want to find myself explaining to some Missouri cop at 2 a.m. that Fred Flintstone--rather than myself--was responsible for plowing the car into a dumpster in some god forsaken strip mall parking lot.

I'll be joining roughly 45 other jackasses on the bus to watch the Minnesota Thunder eviscerate the Kansas City Wizards tomorrow evening in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open Cup. The Thunder's league season has run completely off the rails. This is all they have left to play for. Hopefully their conduct on the field will reflect this fact.

The Wizards are probably playing better than any other MLS team right now. But they'll be without their two best defenders (Jimmy Conrad and Jose Burciaga, Jr., who had the distinct honor of getting humiliated in Madrid today) and their most dangerous forward (Josh Wolff, injury).

C'mon Thunder

Posted by Paul Demko at August 23, 2005 6:29 PM

 

I didn't even get there in time to score a free Crocrock t-shirt

Filed under: Imported

Good god, what a miserable afternoon at the track yesterday. Didn't cash a lousy cent all freaking day long. Nine bloody races of futile, hopeless gambling. It was like a flashback to 2002, or 2003, or 2004. These are supposed to be the gravy days of 2005! By the third race I knew that every single god-damned bet I laid down was going to be a dog, but I kept going up to the ticket window anyway until the crappy little bank account that I'd allotted myself for the day had dwindled to nothing. Sparks had no better luck, but he doesn't seem to have the psychological constitution (such as I possess) to accept being a loser. By the ninth race he was threatening to knife jockeys and disembowel thoroughbreds and do various unpleasant things that can't be published in a family-friendly forum such as this to Pat Day. We had to spike his beer with some hastily acquired horse tranquilizers and even then we couldn't let him out of our sight.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 22, 2005 3:41 PM

 

Breaking news: Cell phone resuscitated!

Filed under: Imported

Phone sex all weekend!

Posted by Paul Demko at August 19, 2005 5:39 PM

 

I finally got the music issue of the Oxford American the other day. It seems, at initial glance, to operate on the editorial philosophy that southerners (particularly black southerners) stopped creating vital music around 1964

Filed under: Imported

Someone might want to have a talk with Clint Dempsey about this.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 16, 2005 6:12 PM

 

My cell phone has run out of juice. I left the charger in Duluth. Last night I got drunk on Vermouth. That's why I'm not returning your call--if you called me

Filed under: Imported

I wish the U.S. would adopt this technique to combat Muslim extremists.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 16, 2005 3:24 PM

 

High gas prices are a result of the Gorelick Memo

Filed under: Imported

I was just listening to Dan Cole on KFAN. One of his callers asked a good question: "Can all those insane Christians who voted for George Bush still afford to drive to church?"

Posted by Paul Demko at August 16, 2005 2:20 PM

 

Bunky 3, Bunnies 0

Filed under: Imported

The cleansing of baby bunnies from Van Buren Avenue is complete. Bunky felled the last little critter on Friday morning. This one he left to rot on the sidewalk thankfully. No dramatic drunken circling of the beast armed with a litter scoop this time.

The Thunder's (5-8-8) season could come down to tonight's game against Vancouver. They're in a five-way scrum for the final 1st Division playoff spot and need three points badly. The team has been playing better of late--embarrassing Colorado 4-1 in the U.S. Open Cup and then gutting out two ties on the road this weekend against tough competition--but they need some victories. They've been dissapointingly mediocre this season at The Jimmy, going 3-4-3 while getting outscored 17-15.

I gotta get me a Powerball. It's up to $92 million.

I interviewed Joe Ely last week. He was kind and funny. Go see him tonight at Lee's Liquor Lounge.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 10, 2005 3:44 PM

 

Guess who hit a $120 trifecta at the track last night?

Filed under: Imported

That's right, me, motherfucker. On the very next race my bro and I were convinced that we'd hit the trifecta and the exacta. But the race came in 5-4-6, not 1-4-6--as our beer-hooded eyes perceived. We were hugging each other and jumping around the track like a couple of gay schoolgirls. When the results came up we felt quite foolish. The bro did hit a nice $38.50 exacta on the seventh race.

The curse of Demko is officially vanquished.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 5, 2005 10:45 AM

 

The Governor will be there, handing out free pickles

Filed under: Imported

When I was a kid, probably nine years old, I played on the Mello Yello, Wicomico County rec league soccer team. Our coach was Mr. Gutierrez, a foul-mouthed fire hydrant of a man who screamed a constant litany of indecipherable commands (think Spanish meets Delmarva Peninsula chicken farmer patois) at us that we never quite managed to follow.

The under-10 Mello Yello soccer team went the entire season without winning a game. In fact, we went the entire season without scoring a goal--unless, that is, you count goals scored in our own net. The games generally ended with marginally respectable scores of 4-0 or 5-0, but would have been infinitely worse if not for Chuck, our goalkeeper, a pudgy, freckle-faced, blonde-haired kid of improbable grace. At age 9, Chuck already had the weary stoicism of one who is resigned to spending his life cleaning up other people's shit stains. By the end of the season he'd more than earned the posture.

Which somehow inevitably leads to this: Minnesota Thunder v. Colorado Rapids, 7 p.m., tonight at The Jimmy!

See you there.

(Anthony and I interviewed Rapids' coach Fernando Clavijo last evening. You can read the phenomenal results here.)

Posted by Paul Demko at August 3, 2005 10:44 AM

 

The Buzzard

Filed under: Imported

Buzz Lagos announced today that this will be his last season as coach of the Minnesota Thunder. He's the only coach the Thunder has ever known, helping found the team 16 years ago. He's tutored numerous heralded pros--including his own son Manny Lagos, Tony Sanneh, Mark Schulte, and Leo Cullen--in the finer points of the game. Under his guidance the Thunder have advanced to six league championship matches, winning the title in 1999.

I've only lived in Minnesota for five-plus years. And I've only been a devoted Thunder observer for the last three seasons. So I can't claim to have a complete grasp on what he's meant to soccer in the Twin Cities. But in recent years I've probably interviewed Buzz a half dozen times, witnessed perhaps twice that many practices, and rarely missed a home match. From those experiences I've gleaned that he's a brilliant student of the game, a selfless teacher, and a tireless proselytizer. One anecdote comes to mind on that latter point:

On July 20th of last year I went to get a haircut at the Grandview Barber Shop in St. Paul. It was late afternoon, probably around 5 p.m. The proprietor and lone barber, Mike, is a curmudgeonly sort whose primary passion (as best I've been able to discern) is fishing. A few minutes into hastily chopping off my hair, Mike began bitching about how he had agreed to attend a soccer game that evening at the Metrodome. He explained that a longtime patron of the barbershop had been haggling him for years to attend a match. Under this persistent lobbying Mike had finally promised to attend the U.S. Open Cup contest that evening against the MLS Los Angeles Galaxy. This bothersome patron was, of course, Buzz Lagos. I've never asked Mike what he thought of the match--a fabulous 1-0 upset victory for the Thunder.

There's only one decent way to honor Buzz: by selling out The Jimmy for Wednesday night's huge U.S. Open Cup match against the MLS Colorado Rapids. The Thunder (5-8-6) have struggled mightily this year, but can go a long ways toward redeeming the season by knocking off this tough, talented Colorado squad.

Posted by Paul Demko at August 1, 2005 8:30 PM

 

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