Football? No, Futbol.

Sports this time of year are generally pretty boring. The NBA playoffs are over, the novelty of baseball returning has officially worn off, and thoughts of linemen and tailbacks dancing in my head are still at least a month away. Golf and tennis usually provide us sports fans with some interim entertainment but the US Open was a rainy affair (to say the least) with no big push from Tiger, and sure the French Open saw Federer win his 14th Grand Slam title but it's not like he beat Rafa or anything. Thankfully, the FIFA Confederations Cup has kept me going the past 2 weeks.

Now, I haven't been a soccer fan for very long, but, since the '06 World Cup, it's quickly risen to become one of my favorite sports. As any real patriot should, I watched all the United States' matches in the Confederations Cup, and here are the 5 biggest things I took away from the last couple of days...

1) South Africa is definitely ready to host the 2010 World Cup. After a lot of setbacks, including reports of FIFA searching for an alternate host country and a lot of arguing about funding, it seems as if everything has gone according to plan for the host nation. The stadiums looked great and the fans were insane. Sure, those horns were kind of annoying during all the telecasts, but at least it shows that these people are out there having a good time and are ready and willing to display their culture on one of the world's biggest stages in a year's time. Not too long ago, FIFA retracted their ruling that the Cup would rotate every 4 years among each of the 6 Confederations, which I thought was a terrible move. These kinds of events put countries on the major world stage and bring money and life to areas of the world that many people would not otherwise visit. If they, and Brazil in 2014, can pull it off without any hitches it will be a great victory for developing nations when it comes to hosting major sporting events. June 11, 2010 cannot come soon enough.

2) The United States has a long way to go. Players were sent off in 4 of 5 games played. Once we were up we passed and cleared the ball very sloppily, nearly costing us the game against Spain and finally aiding Brazil in their win. Compared to the top-level teams we faced (Italy, Spain, Brazil twice), our conditioning was poor. All things we need to work on. However...

3) ...we will contend in the 2010 World Cup. After 2 very sub-par games, the team dug deep and bounced back in a big way when they needed to. They played as hard as they could and they played with great chemistry. With a lot of young talent and a few guys coming back from injury the future, both immediate and long-term, bodes well for both players and fans.

4) Landon Donovan should be the captain for our World Cup campaign. The bottom line is: as he goes, the team goes. He's fast, knowledgeable, and a great veteran presence on the team. Despite only 2 goals to his name in the Confed Cup, his play in key moments was outstanding.

4) Tim Howard must be mentioned in every conversation about the best goalkeepers in the world right now. If you watched him play, you can't argue otherwise. Period.

This is so sweet...

So I was watching the Yankees lose to the Red Sox yesterday (which sucked) and I came across this commercial. Now, I'm often astounded by the stupidity of the ads that appear on TV, but this was totally awesome. Not only is it cool-looking but they used an awesome song from a band that I have recently grown fond of, Matt & Kim. You should probably watch it.

Inspiration from an Unlikely Source

On Sunday afternoon I found myself glued to my television watching the Masters. Now, there was a time not too long ago when I wouldn't have been caught dead watching golf. I'm not white and I grew up in an area considered inner city. Golf and I were destined to never get along. My recent interest in golf probably stems, in part, from my internship last summer at a country club, but I also think that it's because I have matured as a sports fan. I can now appreciate what it takes to play certain sports and, the more I thought about it, the more I wished I was there, walking the course of Augusta National Golf Club, watching Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson battle their way up the leaderboard and Kenny Perry miss that putt on 18 by a hair, all but sealing Angel Cabrera's eventual playoff win. The course was beautiful and the excitement of the fans was palpable through my television set. Afterward, I sat down and began thinking about some of the great sports venues that, as a fan, I would love to visit, and here's what I came up with:

Baseball
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY - home of the 26-time World Series Champions. Even as the new stadium gets set to host its first game, nothing will ever beat the original. Just think about how many greats have occupied that clubhouse!

Runners-up: Fenway Park, Boston (just to sit atop the Green Monster and catch a home run), Wrigley Field, Chicago (first row of the bleachers so I can touch the ivy)

College Basketball
Cameron Indoor Stadium, Durham, NC for a Duke-UNC game - I HATE Duke basketball, but I can't think of a better place to be than in the student section, amongst the Cameron Crazies, as Coach K leads the Dukies in a close one over the Tar Heels

Runner-up: Allen Field House, University of Kansas (I would love to watch my favorite team play at home. ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK!)

Rugby
World Cup Final between New Zealand and South Africa - if you know anything about rugby, you know that this is the ultimate match-up of traditional powerhouses. Plus, to see the haka performed live would be intense.

Runner-up: Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland (Ireland v. England in the final match, whoever wins takes the Six Nations crown)

College Football
Michigan Stadium, Ann Arbor, MI for the Ohio State-Michigan game - they don't call it "The Big House" for nothing. It's the 4th largest stadium in the world! This was probably the hardest decision to make, because I've spent the past 4 years of my life watching SEC football religiously and think the Big 10 is overrated, but this rivalry is too intense and the setting is too perfect. Plus, I love college football, so the list of stadiums I would like to visit is pretty long.

Runners-up: Ohio Stadium, Columbus, OH (see above), The Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA (for a USC-UCLA game when both schools are fielding equally matched teams), Beaver Stadium, State College, PA (the largest stadium in college football and third largest in the world, I just want to be there at the beginning of the game when the crowd chants WE ARE! PENN STATE!), whatever stadium they play the Red River Rivalry (University of Texas vs. University of Oklahoma) in because that would just be nuts

NBA Basketball
Tie between Madison Square Garden, NYC and the Staples Center, Los Angles - only if I could score seats next to Spike Lee or Jack Nicholson, respectively.

Tennis
All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London - the site of Wimbledon, the oldest of the sport's four Majors, and the only one still played on grass.

Soccer
Final match of the FIFA World Cup - there are no more vicious supporters in sports than soccer fans, especially when it comes to national teams. The feeling of being there, even if it wasn't to cheer on a favorite team of mine, would be too exhilarating to pass up.

Runner-up: UEFA Champions League Final (the best players in the world play for European club teams and, in theory, the two teams matched up here are the best on the continent), Camp Nou, Barcelona, Spain (for Barcelona v. Real Madrid. Having been in this stadium before when it was totally empty, I can only imagine what it would be like full. The largest stadium in Europe with a capacity of 98,772.), Stamford Bridge, London (home of my favorite team, Chelsea FC)

NFL Football
Lambeau Field, Green Bay, WI - the Frozen Tundra on a snowy Sunday afternoon in December is what football is all about. Also, if I could sit in the end zone and witness the Lambeau Leap first hand that would be bad ass!

Runner-up: Soldier Field, Chicago (DA BEARS!), the new Dallas Cowboys stadium (just to check out all the amenities that $1 billion can buy)

Finally, I also really want to go to the Olympics, both winter and summer. There are a lot of sports there that don't get much publicity otherwise, but these people are all competitors of the highest caliber. I would love the chance to spend the full two weeks there, from closing to opening ceremonies, watching everything from track and field to swimming, fencing, curling, biathlon, and gymnastics.

"This is concrete warfare we're talking about. If you're going to ride you gotta get on that shit."

Being a young lad at the turn of the 21st century, I was subject to some interesting pop culture trends (Furby, Tomagachi, Tickle Me Elmo, Britney Spears, etc.). As I grew up, most of these came in the form of TRL and its firm grip on my pre-teen mentality. However, one of these cultural phenomena that still holds my interest to this day was the explosion of extreme sports. I continue to enjoy most of them, but skateboarding is my hands down favorite. As I was doing some Internet-scouring before writing this, I think that I can trace the specific spot skating has in my heart to the year 1999.

This year sticks out for three reasons. One of them was most definitely this, the second was this, and the third was this. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is still one of my favorite games. Sure, the graphics are comparatively terrible to what we've got now, but the gameplay is totally awesome. As an 11-year-old kid, these were the kinds of things I wanted to be able to do, which is why Tony Hawk's doing the first 900-degree spin was equally important to me. As for blink-182's Enema of the State, it led me deeper into a whole new type of music and culture of which I had only a vague prior knowledge (more on this in a later post, I'm sure). A large part of the "punk rock" culture of the late 90s/very early 2000s also happened to be skateboarding. So these three just happened to pass into my cultural radar at the right time to make me a skateboarding fan.

While my own foray into skating was (extremely) short-lived, the sport still has an effect on me, considering that I still listen to some of those same bands from when I was 12 or 13, and also because my closet is full of apparel from companies like Element, Globe, Volcom, and Quicksliver. Since I also love history, I recently Netflixed Stacy Peralta's Dogtown and Z Boys, a documentary about the Zephyr Skate Team of which he was a part.

I had previously seen Peralta's Riding Giants, a documentary about the history of surfing, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and had been meaning to catch Dogtown and Z Boys for a while. The Z Boys, who came together at the Zephyr surf shop in Los Angeles during the 1970s, are skateboarding legends, as they were the first to ride in pools, thereby inventing vert skating. The team also played host to some of the very first world-renowned skaters, many of whom are still prominent in these circles today (Peralta, Tony Alva, Jay Adams). So, for skateboard enthusiasts, this is a must-see.

However, even as a non-skater, I could appreciate Peralta's tale of friendship and sport. I actually think this is one of the best sports movies I have ever seen! Being such an active piece of this period of time helps Peralta tell the story about like very few others could. He is unafraid to touch on the more rocky subjects (commercialism, the break-up of the team) and you can tell that the interviewees, most of whom were his teammates and very close friends, were very comfortable letting the director know how they really felt. Peralta also makes sparse use of Sean Penn's excellent narration and lets these frank interviews really tell the story. The soundtrack is also top notch, making use of timely tunes by Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and Jimi Hendrix just to name a few. I really suggest you check this out.

On a related note, I have been listening to Odd Nosdam's T.I.M.E. Soundtrack a lot lately. The hip-hop producer created the album to be used in the This Is My Element DVD for the Element skate team. The sweet thing is that he apparently created each song to coincide with the style of the individual skaters. While I have never seen the video, this album is great. The production is highlighted by the kind of fuzzy, washed-out tape loops that make me absolutely love a lot of the beats on the Beastie Boys' first four records. Amid these soundscapes there are also some really great samples and excellent detail to these songs that has kept them in heavy rotation in my iPod. For instance, my favorite track, "We Bad Apples," has an opening drum part that sounds like it came right off of a Kinks record. Or how about those sweet sitar-like lines drawing you into a trance throughout "Top Rank"? If only commercial hip-hop were more like this, I probably would really like 50 Cent.

First Victim

Apparently John Mayer isn't very fond of Twitter, calling it "inherently silly and...dumb." As I scanned Yahoo! news the other day, the reason I clicked on the link for this story is because I, too, have a distaste for Twitter. So on top of being a pretty good songwriter and a sweet guitar player he has given me another reason to like him.

You know what, distaste is probably not the word I was looking for before. I think this sentence better illustrates my point: I hate Twitter. I just don't know what people see in it. My first problem with it is that there was already a service out there just like this. It's called updating your Facebook status. However, another of John Mayer's quotes from the article gets down to why I really despise Twitter, as he goes on to say that Twitter is "one step away from sending pictures of your poop." [Note: I found this especially funny because a few weeks ago I said that I was going to start a Twitter dedicated solely to letting everyone know every time I went to the bathroom.]

In all honesty, what makes you think that I want to know what you are up to at every minute of the day? I really don't care. And yes that goes for all of you. If something is that important, you'll remember to tell me next time we see each other. Sitting in front of your computer? Send me an e-mail about it. Am I sitting in front of my computer, too? Hit me up on G-chat. On the go? Call or text me about it. Keepin' it old-school? Write me a letter. Want to be really 21st century? Use your iPhone to post it on my Facebook wall in between texting your best friend and your mom while listening to your favorite album . Just please don't direct me to your Twitter.

On a larger scale, what makes you think the world wants to know your every move? I'll take a shot in the dark and give you an answer: they don't! The only reason you would subscribe to a service like this is because you want as much of the world's population to see it as possible. Why would any of the world's population care about the trivial details of your everyday life? This is especially poignant when you consider that we're friends and I don't really care. It makes you less attractive because it takes away the mystery if I know what you're thinking all the time. Even if you're famous, why does the whole world have to know your business? Just go act, write music, or get back on the court. You say you hate the tabloids and gossip columns, but you're only perpetuating that kind of culture by letting everyone into the details of your personal life.

Anyway, rant over, and, if you'll excuse me, I'm picking up a book and heading for the bathroom. I might be a while...