personal bests; also, losing

FYI: I hate to lose. at anything. Sometimes it's not so bad, but it's never good. sooo...

First game yesterday in the 7v7 Irvine outdoor co-ed soccer "A" league.

It didn't go well. We got spanked 11-0 and it could have been worse. Even the other team's not-good mascot was scoring goals. (You can always identify that player because every time he does anything the girls on his team cheer waaaay too loudly - I felt awkward for him even though we were getting our asses kicked. He really wasn't bad, either, so I don't know what all the fuss was about.)

The other team was good. My team is not. Supposedly we played one of the top teams in the league. That's a comfort. When I take a beating next time it'll be from one of the mid-level teams, and I won't feel as bad. wait, what?

It's hard to be friendly when you're taking a beating like that. As the manager pointed out, the girls on the other team were really hot. I said I didn't notice at the time because we were getting embarrassed, but he was right. I think the manager was more interested in flirting with the girls on the other team than our crummy loss. Maybe because he was out with a knee injury and sat on the sidelines daydreaming about how much better the game would have gone if he were in it (fact: not much better). It's different when it's happening to you.

we get a bye next week, and play again on 13 september. I'll keep you posted.
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speaking of keeping you posted, this post sets a new record for one month of output. or maybe it was the last post. whatever. thanks for reading.
love you --c-

posh spice media whore tracker: update

If you haven't heard, there's new competition for the biggest non-event in American sports. The new contenders are:

1. The ESPYs
2. "Who's now?" on ESPN (an exercise in bloviating self-promotion on par with the espys)
3. The Beckham's arrival in LA.
   

I refuse to post any more pictures of that unsmiling dragon-headed media slut that is David Beckham's wife, but I can tell you that a google search for "posh spice media whore" now returns 103,000 hits. Good work, Posh. Talent will out, eh?

I'm sure the press will eat it up until they actually start playing some games. Then the national prostate tickle that is the media machine will run out of steam, and we can get back to watching baseball. And by "watching baseball" I mean waiting for the premier league to start.

ps. In a recent SI article, Landon Donovan was concerned about the disparity in player salaries, says that it would be nice if Becks came into the locker room and splashed some of his money around. Second-highest paid player on the team? Landon Donovan, at $900k/year. jackass. The same article describes donovan as the US team's best player. That's all you need to know about how much the US sucks at soccer. When your best player is Lando, you're not winning a damn thing. Hey, what's the record for the LA Galaxy, anyway? 12th in a 13 team league? Cool.

alexei lalas hits crack pipe, talks to guardian

that irrepressible idiot Alexei Lalas is at it again, talking out of his ass to major media outlets. I analyzed his unique genius once before, so we're not covering new territory here. but I appreciate it when he says stuff that is deliberately inflammatory and stupid and we can unpack it a little bit.

Lalas and his group did a nice job bringing D. Beckham to the soccer backwater that is the LA Galaxy, but the truth is that a) Beckham is an aging, faded star that was fired from his own national team until very recently, and b) he is moving here for "branding" opportunities, not because he always wanted to play in LA and the other famous soccer cities (salt lake, houston, etc.). but that's not how Lalas sees it. He thinks that MLS is great. They pay him, so he should. I have a television and also a computer that talks to other computers through a cable in the wall, so I know better. so do you. in any case, take it away, Lexi!

We know when we're being patronised and I get so irritated when I hear the experts in England talk about David Beckham as if he's going into semi-retirement by leaving Real Madrid for Los Angeles.

I am an American, in your home market. Allow me to patronize you: Beckham is coming to semi-retirement so his wife can be in movies and tom cruise can try to convert them to scientology. She's skinny w/ obnoxious fake boobs. She was always meant for LA.

PS. Your team sucks and your product is crap.

That's ignorance of the first degree because almost every one of those critics has not even seen a single MLS [Major League Soccer] game. It's insulting to us and to our sport to say Beckham is on his way to Hollywood when he's coming to play in one of the most competitive leagues in the world.

I have watched about 5 minutes of one game and it sucked. I won't watch it again. Let me reiterate: I am in the LA Galaxy home market, and I refuse to watch it because it's shite. I do have the fox soccer channel, so I watch Premier League games. A lot.

There are a lot of stars in European football who would struggle over here. But Beckham has done his homework on this league, and his team-mates, and he recognises the merit of American soccer.

This is reductive and stupid. who cares how many 'stars' would struggle here? How many Americans are having any success in european football? (Aside from the goalies.) Three? Four? At middling or small clubs? And that's the best we can do. That's what I call merit. Man, we rule. America, f*ck yeah.

You know there's no accounting for bad taste. The fact that a segment of the world worships an inferior product in the Premiership is their business. In England our league is considered second-class but I honestly believe if you took a helicopter and grabbed a bunch of MLS players and took them to the perceived best league in the world they wouldn't miss a beat and the fans wouldn't notice any drop in quality.

You are an idiot. Anyone who has watched a soccer game in the states and compared it with the lowliest Watford v. Wigan game on the telly knows you are an idiot. Take your MLS team over there. You will get pummeled.

Lalas was really good at marketing himself. He had fun hair and a goatee and he was pretty good back in the day. Which is funny, because it's exactly what they will be saying about David Beckham when he gets here.

lalas puts down blunt, talks out of ass

Alexei Lalas (pictured at left), whom you might remember as that red-headed, long haired, goateed, hippy clown from US Soccer 10 years ago, is now the GM of the LA Galaxy. As such, he is gifted in the double-talk and ambiguities you expect from an executive in the "entertainment" business in LA. I don't know if all those years of smoking weed* have gone to his head, but he's also prone to making stuff up. Like in this recent interview with a guy from Sports Illustrated. The article is titled "Lalas goes ga-ga". Appropriate. Here are some excerpts of the ga-ga ness, with my comments. Alexei's words are in bold.

This is a watershed moment for the Los Angeles Galaxy, for Major League Soccer and for the sport of soccer.

true; kind of true if you say so; and maybe true in a signed-a-faded-star-for-his-retirement sort of way.

I think that we will certainly look back at this day and recognize the significance in terms of the growth of soccer.

You sold only 2,000 tickets. In an urban area that has 8 million people. With no american football team. Let's not get carried away.

my bad, by all means, get carried away.

We talk about these big-picture things and they're all very important, but what tends to get lost, and understandably so at times when you're talking about David Beckham, who is this world wide icon, is how good a soccer player he is. Ultimately that's what it all comes down to. He's going to make us a better soccer team.

Pay attention to this part where he says it's about making us a better soccer team. We will come back to it later because it is a) marginally true overall that Beckham makes them better, because the Galaxy are crap (not because Beckham is good), and b) COMPLETE BULLSHIT THAT IT'S ABOUT MAKING THEM A BETTER TEAM. It's about marketing and branding and blah blah blah.

We not only want to be the premier club in the United States, but we want to be considered one of the premier clubs in the world, and in order to do that you have to make bold statements and do bold things, and you can't get any bigger or bolder than what we did.

I applaud the ambition to be one of the premier clubs in the world. Unfortunately, there are some other clubs that have a head start. Like two of your new guy's former teams, Manchester United and Real Madrid. Real Madrid have won their own domestic trophy 25 times. They are like the Yankees of Spanish football. except their games draw 100,000 people. As for getting bigger and bolder, that same Real Madrid team used a similar philosophy and started signing all the big stars several years ago. It nearly bankrupted the club, and once the stars got old, they stopped winning. Which is why they are unloading them to shite teams in Qatar and, ummm, LA. Describing the impact of signing Beckham, he says:

...it raises an incredible amount of attention and awareness of the Los Angeles Galaxy and Major League Soccer.

True. But I thought this was about making your team better?

It is a player who is in his prime at 31 years old, who has played for two of the best clubs in the world in Manchester United and Real Madrid and now is going to what we feel is one of the other great clubs in the world.

Whoa there, Lex! Slow your roll! If by "in his prime" you mean "fired by his own national team" and "unable to make it into the first team on his current club" then yeah, he's in his prime all right. The fact that you feel the LA Galaxy is one of the "other great clubs in the world" says a lot about your tenuous grip on reality.

He is a presence on and off the field, he is known throughout the world; and let's be honest, there are teams all over the world that would love to have David Beckham and he has chosen to come to the United States and has chosen to come to come to the Los Angeles Galaxy. That means a lot and that says a lot to the soccer community in the United States, and even more to the soccer community internationally.

If this is about making your team better, why are we talking about a player's presence off the field? Because this is about publicity and market share and everything BUT making your team better. What Beckham coming to the US says is that he is too prideful to play for a second or third-tier club in England and he can get more money here. Because he is not very good any more.

They all know he's great player and when the ball is thrown out and people start playing soccer, I expect to see all the players step it up a level. That's what happens when big timers come into the mix. You want to impress. You want to do well. Not only will he raise the level of players on our team but I also think he will raise the level of play of other teams. I mean, who doesn't want to beat the team that David Beckham's on?

Ahh... It turns out that the MLS players were not reaching their potential because Beckham wasn't there. They must have been holding something in reserve. They must have not wanted to do well before he got here. When he gets here, look out! People will want to do well like never before. Opposing teams will also play better, because they didn't have enough incentive before. That silly idea of "winning" is not as good as "beating Beckham".

[SI interviewer shits the bed here and draws analogy to ARod, which is ridiculous because baseball is a much different type of game and also because ARod is one of the top 5 best players on the planet at any position. Beckham is not one of the top 10 midfielders, never mind players.]

As far as the Galaxy brand, I can tell you that in the past 24 hours, what we've seen in terms of the attention and the interest domestically and internationally has been unlike anything we've ever seen, and that's the type of impact that David Beckham has.

I thought this was about making your team better? Wait, what? It's about selling jerseys and market share and promotion and attention and "interest"? Weird. i never would have guessed that.
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* I made up that part about smoking weed. Because it is funny to me. And he looks like the sort of guy that would smoke a lot of weed. But I made it up. Even if it is true. Which it isn't.