June 2006

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Yesterday I was on The Current talking about the World Cup and stated that I was cheering for anyone but England. But I misspoke: it's anyone but the diving wanker Italians.

Day 10
One of the outdoor viewing areas in Cologne was next to the Dom. We watched Togo play Switzerland there. Despite the heroic efforts of Emmanuel Adebayor, the West Africans couldn't figure out how to put the ball in the net.

Construction of the Dom began in 1220. It wasn't completed until 1880. For four years it was the tallest building in the world, but was then eclipsed by the Washington monument. I hope they're right about that whole Jesus thing.

Andy, Neal and I walked up to the top of the Dom. We did not write our names on the wall. Jesus surely wouldn't approve.

There were so many insane drunken Brits in town for the England-Sweden game that they set up an English-language feed on the opposite bank of the Rhine. We stopped by to watch Saudi Arabia-Ukraine. The game was so mercilessly dull that Andy and Neal fell asleep on the blacktop.

Day 11
The Ludwig Museum in Cologne is fabulous. It has a redoubtable collection of Picassos. The works span his entire artistic life, from stylistic explorations in the 1920's to massive, flamboyant, lascivious works created when he was in his 80's. But my favorite painting in the Ludwig, by an artist whose name escapes me, was called "The Divers." It was commissioned in honor of the Italian national team.

Speaking of artistic masterworks, this automobile had been converted into a rolling St. George's cross. The genius of the Brits is truly limitless.

If you can't beat them join them.

Day 12
The public viewing area in Nuremberg was sweet. A slew of picnic tables and a whole bunch of big-screen TVs set up in the middle of the old city. Surrounded by food and beverage stands. For some reason there were a lot of Mexicans in town.

You probably can't tell from this photogrph, but these Mexican fans were dancing to a gloriously bad German cover band playing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Andy and Neal were hawking the last of the Bruce shirts.

When inexplicably, midway through Argentina-Netherlands, our hero made an appearance. Upon being swarmed by fans he quickly took off.

Day 13
Caution: jackasses.

The stadium in Nuremberg was adjacent to the old parade grounds, where Hitler held his massive Nazi rallies.

I could be pissed about the absurd PK called against Oguchi. But in retrospect I think Ghana was just the better team.

At this point the battery in my camera died. The last day of the trip went undocumented. But this pretty much sums up the whole journey.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 28, 2006 5:35 PM

 

Free Deco: it's criminal that he won't be on the field for Portugal's next game

Days 5 and 6
It's a wonder that more Americans don't get killed, or at least seriously injured, in Amsterdam. For starters, they're everywhere (Americans, that is). Secondly, a significant percentage of them are stoned. Finally, the traffic patterns in Amsterdam are, at least initially, bewildering. The sidewalks and the streets just kind of blend together. There are practically no cars, but bikes and trams seem to be coming by from every direction. My brother and I spent the first day spinning in circles at every intersection, bewildered as to which way we should be looking to detect on-coming transportation devices. The canals, though, are lovely.

The museums in Amsterdam were somewhat disappointing. Both the Rijksmuseum, with its redoubtable collection of Rembrandts, and the Van Gogh were so crowded that you had to work your way through practically in single file. It's difficult to get too excited about the works when you constantly have to jockey for position. We watched Togo squander a one-goal lead to the Koreans in some British pub and watched Kirsten Dunst endlessly fret about her inability to get pregnant in Marie Antionette. I'm not sure which was more disappointing. The whole city was awash in orange, including my brother.

Days 7 and 8
One of the chief reasons for renting an apartment in Cologne was to do laundry. Our first attempt, however, did not go well. Perhaps that's because we were drinking half-liter bottles of Bitburger and watching Sweden eek out a 1-0 victory over Trinidad & Tobago on a seven-inch TV while attempting to operate the laundry machine. The end result: six inches of standing water in the machine, sopping wet clothes, and a flooded bathroom floor. This necessitated a trip to the laundromat the next morning and consequentially we didn't make it in to Heidelberg until roughly 6 p.m. Just in time to meet up with the rest of the Minnesota posse at one of the city's famed university drinking clubs, the Red Ox Inn.

Day 9
The next morning we hiked up to the castle overlooking Heidelberg. It's home to the Heidelberg Tun, which can hold roughly 58,000 gallons of wine. The views of the Rhine and the town below were quite spectacular.

Prior to leaving for the game in Kaiserslautern, Neal attempted to hawk some Bruce t-shirts outside the train station.

The one ecstatic night of football. The U.S. came out with a ferocity and determination that was completely lacking in the first match. The Italians dove and writhed all over the pitch as only they can. The crowd was loud and belligerent and wonderful. My favorite moment came when Kasey Keller, retrieving a ball from the corner, looked up to our section and pumped his fist in air, lifting the U.S. supporters into a frenzy. The last fifteen minutes, with the nine-man American squad utterly spent and Keller heroically thwarting the Italians, was torturously fantastic.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 27, 2006 6:15 PM

 

Those dumbass referees are destroying the World Cup with their damn yellow cards

I fully intended to update this space while in Germany. Unfortunately the apartment that we rented didn't have high-speed internet access as advertised. Therefore I would have had to post from Internet cafes and couldn't really be bothered. So over the next few days I'm going to throw up a bunch of photos and stray thoughts. Here's the first batch.

Day 1
Appropriately the journey began in a bar. The Nomad World Pub to be exact. After watching Germany outgun Costa Rica and Ecuador deconstruct Poland, I headed to the airport.

Day 2
The hostel we stayed at in Frankfurt was along the Main river. Protruding from the middle of the river was a massive television screen. There were thousands of people on each shore of the river watching the games. Most of them were drunk Brits.

We watched the late game, Cote D'Ivoire-Argentina, from the third-floor balcony of the hostel. I was so tired from the flight that I had to stand up throughout the second half in order to stay awake. A couple of times, my head jerking down inadvertently, I nearly pitched forward over the balcony.

Day 3
We headed for Cologne, which the Germans call Koln (with one of those umlaut things over the o). I don't understand why it's necessary to have two names. We went to a famous Brauhaus called Paffgen and met up with a bunch of other Americanos. In Cologne they serve a beer called Kolsch (again with that umlaut thing) in really small glasses, perhaps 9 ounces. It's a light, crisp, highly drinkable ale. The waiters at Paffgen were amazingly adept at arriving with a fresh glass of Kolsch just as you were about to finish the previous one. Everyone drank too much.

Day 4
The first U.S. game was in Gelsenkirchen (supposedly the coal capitol of Germany). We ran into Christian Miles, the worst soccer announcer on the planet, in the train station. He seemed like a nice enough guy. Here he is with Bruce.

Getting the train to the stadium was nuts.

The German people were extremely kind and generous. Even the security guards. On our way into the stadium my brother got to experience German hospitality firsthand.

We had swell seats in a gorgeous new stadium.

Unfortunately the U.S. played like castoffs from the Solomon Islands national team. It was a long ride back to Cologne, but we kept up a brave front.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 25, 2006 3:55 PM

 

Has anyone seen my MN 1st Volunteers t-shirt? It has inexplicably disappeared.

I am about to head to the Nomad for the first two games. Then off to the airport. For you poor bastards stuck in the Twin Cities, Andy has put together a list of venues showing World Cup matches. There are a wide array of options depending on your eating and drinking requirements. Here's a few notes to help you make an informed decision about this critical matter.

Nomad World Pub: They're pulling out all the stops. Beer garden. Drink specials. Stupid contests. Prize giveaways. Should be ludicrously fun. Sweet flatscreen TVs for viewing pleasure. Plus they're so damn nice every time I pay a visit. One note of warning: they might not be open for 8 a.m. games. Check ahead.

The Sweetwater: This is the sleeper pick. They will be showing all games in high-def TV. The owner is a swell man of Iranian descent who also spent many years in Germany and is nutty for the game. They open at 6:30 a.m. and will be showing all matches live. They also have wi fi so you can pretend to be working while taking in some futebol.

The Local: They have installed a new 95-inch television! That's eight fucking feet. Incredible. All matches will be broadcast live and in high-def. $3 pints of bass during games. The best hashbrowns in town.

Holy Land: Upstairs they have a huge TV for viewing pleasure. During the African Nations Cup there was an interesting melange of people from all over Africa and the Middle East hanging out to watch games. The food is stupendous. They will be showing all matches.

Billy's on Grand: Not normally a soccer-friendly bar, but they are teaming up with the Thunder to host viewing parties. Great TVs, often-hostile staff, great, um, scenery.

Nochee: Don't know a whole lot about this, but undoubtedly a good choice for Brazil matches. They're promising to show all of them on their patio. My guess is they'll probably be showing other matches as well, but check ahead. Fabulous cocktails.

That's all I got. Send more options my way and I'll update.

Private Demko reporting for duty.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 8, 2006 10:42 AM

 

The Drive By Truckers were on Conan O'Brien last night. I was going to watch it, but fell asleep on the couch.

I'm losing my shit. I'm eating prunes. I'm listening to 17-minute podcasts of third-string goalkeeper (and major Tool fan) Marcus Hahnemann conversing with the media, in German (sorta). In 48 hours I will be on a plane to Germany.

Today I bought a plug adaptor and some books (Miguel Street, by V.S. Naipaul; An Ice Cream War, by William Boyd) to read on the journey. Tomorrow I will cut my grass and hope it doesn't grow too much in two weeks. (If you wish to rob my house now would be an excellent time.)

(By the way, Ives Galarcep is losing his shit as well. That's the only possible explanation for why he's writing about a theoretical ultimate fighting match between Oguchi Onyewu and Jan Koller. The dude's got a seriously scary depth of knowledge of the sport.)

But there are two games taking place prior to my departure for the airport on Friday: Costa Rica v. Germany at 11 a.m. CST and Poland v. Ecuador at 2 p.m. I will be watching these games at the Nomad World Pub. They are running drink specials and contests and all kinds of awesome, inane stuff throughout the World Cup. Come join me.

Barring imprisonment or spontaneous combustion I'll be posting updates here from Germany.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 7, 2006 9:16 AM

 

Did the U.S really only beat Angola 1-0 today despite being a man up for the final 70 minutes?

I previously used this influential forum to slag on the introduction to The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup. I've now read the book in its entirety and can happily report that it's a fabulously informative, deftly written collection. There are 32 essays, one for each participating county. Some of the authors are natives of the country they write about (Peter Stamm on Switzerland, Dave Eggers on the USA), while others have just the faintest of connections to their subject matter. Cressida Leyshon (deputy fiction editor of The New Yorker), for instance, develops an affection for Trinidad & Tobago after the country of barely one million people miraculously qualifies for the World Cup only to immediately see its prospects in Germany cavalierly dismissed by the media.

Many of these pieces are only nominally about soccer. Eric Schlosser utilizes his visit to a Swedish prison to ruminate on the country's legendarily laissez faire penal policies and its struggles to come to grips with a rapidly diversifying populace. Aleksander Hemon hilariously recounts his struggle to lose his virginity while simultaneously keeping, um, abreast of France's brilliant (but ultimately unrequited) run through the 1982 World Cup.

Strangely perhaps my favorite piece is something of an anti-soccer essay. William Finnegan writes elegantly about his love for the poor, isolated Portuguese island of Madeira, where for years he ventured to surf the fearsome Atlantic Ocean waves. Finnegan's surf paradise is ultimately upended by ill-advised development projects guided by cronyism rather than reason.

Then there's Ben Rice's take on Australia's often tortured relationship with footyball. The Aussies are perhaps second only to Americans in their skepticism concerning the world's most popular game. Here's a choice snippet:

A few years ago, in Lightning Ridge, I got into a conversation about the beautiful game with an opal miner who kept referring to it as "wogball" (in Australia "wog" is slang for a person of Mediterranean descent), and seemed convinced that the whole enterprise was up to its neck in drug dealing and mafia connections.

We were playing pool together in the bowling club, and he'd had more than a few schooners of grog. "Poofs, too, the lot of 'em, by the way," he muttered.

He came closer, his breath reeking, and mouth remarkable for its absence of front teeth. "Mean bastards too. Bloody rough bunch."

The miner was of Polish origin, but his father had been "decent enough" to raise him playing Australian sports, a fact for which he was extremely grateful. Otherwise, he said, he could easily have been linked to the mafia scum who were always rioting and causing trouble after wogball matches in that den of filth and corruption--Sydney.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 5, 2006 6:48 PM

 

What's up with Ghana beating South Korea 3-1? That doesn't seem like good news for the U.S.

I almost scored a beautiful goal today for the Indomitable Drinky Crows. All of my goals--owing to the rarity with which they occur and to the utter implausability of someone of my profound incompetence scoring--are beautiful.

I was playing forward. My best spot is as an outside defender. It's where I can do the least damage. But we have an abundance of Drinky Crow defenders at the moment, so I've been slotting in elsewhere. I'm very versatile in my ineptitude. I planned on staying in for just a few minutes before yielding to someone with more credibility as a scoring threat.

It was about midway through the second half. We'd dominted the game, playing far better than we had all season. Knitting passing combinations together in the midfield, organized and composed in the back. But we hadn't been able to score.

Joe brought the ball forward from the left midfield. I was running down the middle, about 15 paces ahead of him. Just as I hit the top of the box Joe slotted a beautifully paced ball in ahead of me. The keeper came off his line quickly, but I reached the ball just before he could snatch it away, nipping it with my left foot around his on-rushing frame.

The ball was heading for the lower left-hand corner of the goal. It did not, however, have a lot of steam. In retrospect, I probably should have followed up my shot just in case something went wrong. But I preferred to admire my handywork and watch it trickle gloriously into the goal. (Plus I try to minimize running as much as possible.) Unfortunately, a heretofore unseen defender suddenly came streaking across the goal mouth. At the last possible instant, with the ball probably two thirds of the way over the goal line, he mercilessly booted it clear. Oh, the heartbreak.

We scored a few minutes later on a freakish ball across the goal mouth that somehow got tapped in. We won, 1-0. Mr. Gbagbo apparently did his job well.

Posted by Paul Demko at June 4, 2006 6:52 PM

 

Successful reconstructive surgery

We'll see how long they last

Posted by Paul Demko at June 3, 2006 11:37 AM

 

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