Home of the Saves

On the day after the most American of holidays, I thought I’d take a few moments and talk about the most American sport of them all: soccer. Oops, sorry. I meant “the sport hated by most Americans”. Well, hate is a strong word and despite an occasional tirade against it by some mouthbreather on sports radio now and again, I think most Americans don't hate it but rather are just disinterested. Our native sports are so entrenched that it's hard for soccer to get any burn here, no matter how much it annoys the rest of the world (Seriously, why doesn't India get any flak for this? There are many more potential fans over there). So I've been a little surprised about how much publicity this story about David Beckham's relative failure in MLS is getting.

Beckham's arrival in the U.S. a few years ago led to a bunch of speculation whether he could do what no one else had before which was to make soccer popular here. Although he was a solid player, he was probably more famous here as a celebrity and had some notoriety for hobnobbing with an elite Hollywood crowd. So apparently the premise on which Beckham would make soccer big in America was based not on the quality of his game, but rather his celebrity status that would draw more celebrity-obsessed Americans to the game. This premise is of course faulty and shallow and was proven almost instantly wrong as Beckham didn't really draw any more viewers to MLS, much less increase soccer's profile. Beckham's due to come back to MLS from his loan to AC Milan pretty soon, but if both parties were smart, they'd end this failed experiment right now and let both parties go on their merry ways.

I’m not a huge soccer fan by any means, but I do follow the U.S. men's national team. And all it took for a good number of Americans to follow them recently was some success during the recent Confederations Cup tournament. That wasn't all that important of a tournament in the first place so imagine what would happen if the U.S. made a strong run in the World Cup. So what got America interested in soccer wasn't a foreign import, but rather, success by the domestic side. If soccer’s ever going to become a household sport in America, it’s going to have to grow in an organic, natural way here and not be dependent on shallow, superficial pseudo-celebrity foreign imports (sorry Christiano Ronaldo). Imagine if the kid down the street in your neighborhood grows up to be a professional soccer player. Wouldn't the whole neighborhood want to watch him succeed upon the world's stage? They'd certain prefer that to David Beckham, I'm sure. As professional opportunities expand for more American players and we do better in international competitions, the game will grow. There's no need to bring in ringers to appeal to the TMZ crowd.

What I'm Watching

Year One - I'm a fan of Jack Black. I'm a big fan of Michael Cera. I'm a really big fan of Harold Ramis. So my expectations for Year One were high. The trailers were chock full of jokes. The cast looked good. The premise seemed interesting. But despite all of these things that it seemed to have going for it, it never really seemed to click for me. Now don't let that discourage you from seeing it because overall, it was funny and definitely worth a look, but it didn't meet my expectations (admittedly high) and I can't really understand why. There could have been lots of reasons. Maybe they jammed a little too much story in there at the expense of jokes. The timing around the jokes seemed off which leads me to believe that maybe it was poorly edited. The jokes that I had seen before in the trailer and commercials fell flat in the theater probably because the audience had seen them many times before in the oversaturated marketing campaign for this movie. All of these could have been the reason. Or maybe I was just disappointed that I couldn't get into my first choice, The Hangover, because it was sold out. If I had seen that first and then seen Year One, maybe I would have liked Year One just fine.

Fight Club - I avoided this movie for awhile because it seemed to me more hype than substance. Sort of an anarcho-nihilistic themed movie that would have played well with me when I was 17, but not now that I'm a 38 year old mortgage holder. Plus, I'm generally suspicious of anything Brad Pitt (and to a lesser extent Edward Norton) is in. But its solid reputation preceded itself and it slowly moved up my Netflix queue over time. Next thing you know, the movie's ten years old and I finally get around to watching it last night. And wouldn't you know? I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised.

Perhaps the argument can be made that there's more style than substance to this movie, but I think there's enough substance in it to make it credible. This one kind of hit me on a personal level as I'm a sucker for any movie that deals with workplace dissatisfaction and critiques commercialism's ubiquitous influence on modern society. Although the obvious comparison is A Clockwork Orange, in a way, this is a more paranoid, darker version of Office Space. The leads are well chosen as Pitt is great in his flashy role (which makes him more believable to me this time) and Norton is perfect (or at least was 10 years ago) for playing the normal guy with schizophrenic tendencies. I'm sure most people have heard of Fight Club rather than have seen it and have a preconception of the movie as an updated take on Road House. I have to admit that I was part of that group and only now do I realize just how much I sold this movie short.

Draft Diary Live Thoughts

I'm live-tweeting my thoughts on the NBA Draft right now on my Twitter feed if you care about that stuff. I thought about having a draft diary here but I decided not to because a) every other sports blog is doing it, b) it's easier to do it on Twitter and c) I'm trying not to be any more like Bill Simmons than I need to be.

Brulepedia

If you're like me and spend most of your day looking for the various and sundry video clips of Dr. Steve Brule on my blog, you're in luck because now all of the good doctor's video clips can easily be found at Brulesrules.com. Hopefully, this is in anticipation of the Brule TV show that is supposedly coming soon, but even if it isn't, you'd well be advised to follow the doctor's orders and watch these clips repeatedly. For your health!

The Late Shift

I believe anyone who reads this blog knows where I stand with this whole Dave vs. Conan thing. I'm a Conan man all the way as Letterman is just a shell of what he used to be. Nevertheless, some people haven't come around to my way of advanced thinking yet and are still making the 11:30PM time slot battle closer than it needs to be. But last week when I heard that Dave had raised the ire of Sarah Palin with some jokes, I was intrigued. Had Dave returned to form? Was he inspired to try harder now that relative newbie Conan was his competition? I read the new stories about it and realized that Dave had done the impossible...he made Sarah Palin look good. Even after her kind-of-crazy interview with Matt Lauer.

Dave's jokes were just lame. Nonsensical even. To me, it shows how far he's fallen in trying to get a laugh. Alex Rodriguez knocking up her daughter? O.K. the one daughter got pregnant and Alex Rodriguez just had a high profile divorce where his infidelities were well on display. I see a connection there, but it's very tenuous. And if I'm using words like "tenuous" to describe a joke, it's just not funny. It's like he just put two buzzwords together to get people to react to it. And although I'm loathe to agree with Palin, teenage daughters (and all young boys and girls really) should be off limits when it comes to comedy programs no matter how lame their parents are. I'm still not sure if Letterman confused the 14 year old daughter for the 18 year old daughter, but whatever the case, he gave the opportunity for Palin to grandstand, make a big deal out of nothing, and raise her profile on something so stupid it just should have been ignored.

In any case, there's a simple solution to all of this: everybody watch Conan instead. Then Dave can retire with dignity and we can leave the nonsensical cheap shots to Jimmy Kimmel.

Stop...Hammertime!

If flash mobs did things like this more often, I would be a more enthusiastic proponent of them. I heard this might be an ad for MC Hammer's new reality show, but I choose to not believe that. I want to believe this comes from a pure place where hearts are selfless and pants are baggy and gold.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Stanley Cup

I've talked about the NBA finals before, but I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the outstanding Stanley Cup Finals which, compared to the NBA Finals, was much more entertaining. In fact, game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals was absolutely one of the best game 7's I have ever seen in any sport. Sometimes at the end of the NHL season, I feel guilty for not watching much hockey even though I think it's a great sport and this year's Finals really reinforced it with me this time. I've pledged my winter/spring sports allegiance to basketball, but hopefully, next year I can cram a little more space for hockey into my viewing schedule.

So while the Stanley Cup Finals were great, the NBA finals were just...eh. Which leads me into a complaint about how the NBA playoffs seem to go every year. I don't know if it's just me but it seems like the NBA playoffs become infinitely less dramatic as the rounds progress. That might be unfair as all it takes is one compelling first round matchup (like Boston-Chicago this year) to be considered a great first round. However, the chances for that dwindle each successive round because there are fewer teams and fewer series played. But even accounting for that, you would think the Finals matchups would be more competitive. Last year seemed like an exception with the Celtics and Lakers, but then the Lakers laid down in Game 6 and made it more lopsided than it should have been. The last NBA Finals to take 7 games to finish was Detroit-San Antonio in 2005 and even with that, it was still boring. When the Finals tend towards mismatches, I tend to lose interest when I'm pretty sure I know who's going to win the championship before it even starts.

Orlando does deserve a lot of credit for beating Cleveland which I didn't think they would do, but nobody picked them to beat the Lakers (except Charles Barkley who tends not to be the greatest prognosticator). If Orlando had won those two overtime games, it would have been a much more interesting series, but instead Orlando just looked like an inexperienced and overmatched team not ready for the big time yet. And all that I really want for the NBA Finals is what the Stanley Cup Finals provided, two teams that were ready for the big time and fought each other in a long, closely-contested series.