What
Posted on March 9, 2007
I saw my Dad for the first time in four years today. I stood in the supermarket in front of the frozen meats and he was at the end of the snack aisle, penned in behind a fleshy, red-faced woman and her cart full of sugar water and canned death. I waved to him, but he looked straight through me, as if he were trying to read the expiration date on the pork chops behind me. I rushed toward him to give him a hug and tell him I’m sorry I never hugged him enough before, and he’d better come back right away and see my new house with the dogs, and the little cave where I do my work, and the quarter-sized hole in the middle of the living room floor, and the big TV in the big living room where we can watch football together.
And if he didn’t come I would be so mad; last time he disappeared on us I wasn’t ready for it and I’m still not ready for it, no matter how many times I act like it doesn’t bother me. You promised us you were done scaring us, I said, and still he stared past me. You promised you would come home.
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Filed Under Philly Sports | 1 Comment
The
Posted on February 3, 2007
On the soccer field, he was alone, but he was never lonely. Like a monk deep in meditation, a Buddhist perched beneath the Bodhi tree, he crouched between goalposts, an 8 foot by 8 yard sanctuary that no one could violate. Every step an opponent took inside the box, even a toe across the 18, was a threat that had to be warded off by any means necessary.
He’d been described, by various terrible writers, as a whirling dervish, an unstoppable force, a madman in a technicolor dreamcoat. He’d been an inspirational story, a cautionary tale, and a flash-in-the-pan, sometimes all at once. The pain of loss, one writer said, was etched on his face, carved into the premature wrinkles around his grey eyes and evident in the military set of his jaw as he assaulted a sailing corner kick.
Eventually, the terrible writers from the local papers were overtaken by mediocre writers from the national papers. They flocked to Northeast Philly to pimp his pain and fill the void of human interest stories, left by a lull between runaway brides and dead American girls in Aruba. For a week, he was the human interest story, the kid whose father had stabbed himself in the thigh during a meth binge and bled to death on the couch, and whose mother was dying of AIDS in a prison cell. A great story, a real American tragedy—the confluence of drugs, violence, and sex in a crumbling city. If only he were black; then they could really push it to the next level.
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Filed Under Soccer | 3 Comments
The
Posted on February 2, 2007
July 4th, 2003
Subject: International Governmental Football League
From: Donald Rumsfeld [mightybombjack@whitehouse.gov]
To: George W. Bush [JesusSon@whitehouse.gov]
Mr. President,
The UN has approved our proposal of establishing the International Governmental Football League (IGFL) as an alternate means of settling diplomatic disputes. The rules are as follows:
1. Kofi Annan will act as Commissioner, unless we can persuade David Stern to leave the NBA.
2. All nations must field a team comprised of, and coached by, government employees. Even some rogue factions—Iraq and Al Qaeda, for example—have agreed to join the league.
3. We will play a 10 game season, followed by a 10-team playoff. Teams will not enter the playoffs based on won-loss records, but rather playoff seeding will be determined by a complex computer ranking system that takes into account fifty-eight carefully chosen factors, including: quality of victory, team colors, attractiveness of cheerleaders, strength of schedule, average yards per punt, number of Hail Mary passes completed, number of flea-flickers run, and an international text message poll.
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Filed Under Football | 2 Comments
