The Renaissance

30 September 2006
Charlton Athletic 1 - 2 Arsenal
Bent 21' (A)
van Persie 32' (F)
van Persie 49' (F)

The date attached to this entry is patently false: I am writing eight days after the game in a hotel room somewhere in New Jersey. The reason for this tardiness is a compound of events; I moved the day of the game (into my first real life apartment, no less), and thus had no ability or time to watch the game (clearly, I am not at the level of Nick Hornby - if I was, I would have indignantly refused to move until the following day). As a result of the move, I had no cable tv or internet and thus no way to watch the game after it had occurred. I shut myself off from Arsenal, I became determined to not see the score until I finally saw the game (so I'm the lazy version of Hornby). I am only now finally seeing the game, as I type up these notes I scribbled in the hotel room, a couple hours before my cousin got married. As a side note, the wedding was somewhat ominous for me. Barring any strange events (like my mother remarrying, for example), my marriage to some as-of-yet-unknown lady will be the next for my family. I made some jokes gesturing to this knowledge, but it created a whirlwind of anxiety within me. A subtle pressure to finally find a girl I want to date for a sustained time, to step up to the plate and ask someone out. I've managed to avoid it for most of my life but it looks like I won't be able to any longer. There are now bigger forces at work, and my grandmother turns her attentive maternal eye in my direction. So they day we moved, Kevin (my roommate) and I had a few friends over for a champagne party. I got right smashed and wrestled with my friends for talking some shit about the Gunners. I had my Robin van Persie jersey on and channeled straight up football hooliganism. Afterwards, I stood up to get my glasses and fell flat on my face. Eight days later and my nose is still tender. Jesus. Both my nostrils were bleeding at the time and I got a little rugburn on my face on top of that. So I ended the night pretty well, inaugurating the new apartment with antics that would have made my college dorm room proud. My dorm room, by the by, was witness to some wonderful drunken shenanigans, primary of which was a fine night when I returned so completely drunk that I made a go at destroying our bathroom. I shared the room with three other gentlemen, and two of them woke up to a totally trashed bathroom - complete with a broken overhead light. I had also tried to level our shower curtain but luckily for me it refused to fall. There are other stories from that same year, less specific to my dorm room, that I shall no doubt feel compelled to relate at some point in the football season. My first week here in the new apartment was a depressing comedown. With nothing to do, Kevin and I played a lot of head-to-head Mario Kart while eating ham sandwiches and ramen (a meal you can make for approximately two dollars a night - what a fucking bargain!). I was tired from the weekend hijinx (and, you know, moving) while getting more and more exhausted from my new 40-hour work week routine. I sit at my desk, cranking data into my computer and exploring the fascinating British indie rock scene. Part of it is their standard English charms, but more it's the jangly guitar rock - influenced equal parts by The Strokes and Franz Ferdinand - that, as I discussed previously, reminds one of the 1970s punk scene. What people forget is that 1970s punk was reasonably poppy - a lot of bands like the Ramones, Wire, the Clash, Television, The Jam (and on and on) had substantial pop sensibilities. They took catchy guitar rock, such as The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and removed all the thinking from it, they broke music down to sharp (and easy) hooks with silly-to-pointless lyrics (except of course The Clash, who Hornby professes a love for at varying points: they had something to say whereas the Ramones definitely did not). Well, the hooks and lyrics are back in a lot of the music coming out of England these days. The difference is, these new bands sound a lot more polished - its not their fault, not really, its a symptom of the times, of the digital age. As a couple of my best friends proved during college, all you need is a simple machine to record a four-track demo that doesn't sound half bad. So while there are stylistic similarities and tactile differences, the real question becomes is their worth, value, timeless attributes within this new wave of semi-punk? I'm not sure, to be honest. I may not know until thirty years from now. Punk may have seemed like cheap entertaining rock back in 1977, yet it is still beloved to this very day, and will undoubtedly be enjoyed another thirty years from now. Punk revolutionized rock and roll, burning it from the roots until it howled and screamed. The ripples of punk are found throughout the years since, in 80s American underground, in the 90s grunge movement, and in today’s pop rock. The new wave that I have identified no doubt will hold less sway than original punk for it is only riding the wave without starting it, yet that does not mean it is any less enjoyable, any less fun or brilliant. Let's get to soccer for a minute. I've seen about half an hour of this match so far, and it has been incredibly messy: at least three yellow cards have been handed out along with countless warnings. I didn't know our rivals were Charlton? When did this become such a hotly contested match? I thought we were supposed to be pissed at Chelsea and Tottenham, not some 19th place team (I say that casually, when Arsenal was in 17th about three weeks ago). Once again, Arsenal is back to its finesse football, although it seems slightly out of sync: there have been a number of cute backpasses that were off by half a second. I love Arsene Wenger as much as I love Joe Torre, but both of them seem to be doing something wrong. Torre has lost something with the Yankees, I'm not sure what, but whatever it is has left and ain't never coming back. But now I will completely shut up as my boy Persie just nailed a pass from Hleb into the Charlatan goal! Delightful. I'll save the Torre talk for another time, I already have too much on my plate. It's difficult to deal with your mother when she cries, especially when it is at least implicitly ones own fault. She cried multiple times when I moved out, days before and probably days afterward. The most poignant memory is the morning I moved: she had had a dream about me when I was five, and sat on my bed describing it through ready tears. I don't know what to do when my mom cries, and it's a problem that has appeared a couple times throughout the years. I want to hug her and tell her it will be okay but she often times shoos me away, probably out of embarrassment. When I'm sitting in my new apartment by myself, I sometimes think of her sitting by herself in her own condo, lonely and missing her grown-up son. Moments like these, sports cannot help. There are parallels but rarely can I look to Arsenal or the Yankees when I empathize with my mom's pain and draw on them for strength. Somehow it does not seem like a comparable equation, that I should steel my emotions with thoughts of Thierry Henry when my mom is suffering from something which can now never truly be fixed. I feel bad that I left but I would have had to sooner or later: a child's personal renaissance always comes with an invisible cost to the parent, a sorrow combined with pride for a feeling that is unique and unrelenting, always waiting there in the quiet and lonely hours of a Sunday night.

Rock Dreams

26 September 2006
Arsenal 2 - 0 FC Porto
37' Henry
47' Hleb

This job is starting to heat up, eh? I get a two-week break after this weekend, but after that I get to do these every week (or twice a week!) consistently until the middle of March. That's going to be the real test, especially in the environment that I'm envisioning for my future apartment. If I can get through that period with all entries written of a generally similar quality (good), I will consider this experiment, by and large, a success. These first entries, through August and September, can be considered the introduction. From October 14th to March 17th, the meat of this work will be conducted. It will be an exploration of the depths of a writer's soul, it will scrape the bottom of my creative heart, and there is a solid chance most of it will be utterly terrible. But we didn't start this to eject early, did we? No, I think not. So grab your gear, for we are setting off into the wilderness, and we shall not be returning for some time hence. There are a couple things I want to address, one which pertains to Arsenal, an important topic no doubt, and the other which pertains to England on a more cultural note. Let us save the football for later on in my discussion. You may have noticed my adoption of a stranger tone within this piece, and that reflects my desire to keep this interesting for myself: if I am to write nigh-on sixty of these suckers, I am going to have to spice things up from time to time. So I hope you can excuse me and my wild inclinations. If not, you know where the door can be found. I put my finger on the pulse of the music landscape recently and sensed a strange shift. It went to a land I was not entirely familiar with: incidentally that of Sheffield and the surrounding country. It would appear that a large portion of indie rock is coming from Sheffield and the United Kingdom in general: the Fratellis and Dirty Pretty Things are an exceptionally strong point in this regard, but I literally cannot list the huge amount of bands that are exploding across Britain's radio waves. It's interesting because it is hard to create a new scale for this emerging music: I feel like we cannot simply plop it into the indie sphere, the one populated by the Shins and Modest Mouse and Stereolab and Belle and Sebastian - that is the old world, the world of the Great Transition. We kids, who did not like metal or rap-rock, found safe haven in that old world. Those bands gave us comfort, they smiled at us knowingly for they felt the same way: they were equally terrified by the lumbering pop acts that made MTV a brothel. Yet as always happens in music, as sure as the moon will sometimes appear full and will sometimes appear not at all, tastes are changing and bands are changing. No longer do most of these small indie acts shirk the spotlight, no longer are they surprised when they blow up on the internet. The internet is of course at least partly to blame for all this, suddenly bands do not even have to try to receive publicity: you put up a song and sit back, waiting for the audience to do the work for you. It's brilliant. I think rock and roll, as a cultural entity, lost a lot of self-confidence in the nineties when hip hop, contemporary pop, and big beat all caught on at the same time. Rock lost its relevance, and the real rock-n-rollers disappeared in the mist, replaced by the likes of Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback. These radio-friendly unit-shifters became the rock norm, and for a while we all forgot what fun it could be to just rock out. We got disheartened by Default, Chevelle, SR-71 - the list goes on. So when I first heard The Young Knives and their 1977-influenced bass riff on "She's Attracted To", it was like a jolt of heroin. Oh yeah. Bands can fucking do this. I had completely forgotten. To this realization, my compatriot Zach and I are beginning work on what is known, in the parlance, as a podcast. Of course, exactly what I need on top of this work (and, presumably, the other novel I'm working on) is yet another side project. Sometimes I feel like Mike Patton - except the way lazier, way less successful version. I think the important thing to remember about this budding new music scene - which I desperately want to name, I want to ascribe them their place in Rock nomenclature - is that it finds roots in a scene that it is also inherently very different from. A lot of the bands, The Young Knives especially, hearken back to 70s punk yet with a twist. No longer does the DIY ethic re-enforce humility, or sponsor shying away from the spotlight. The new indie landscape is all about becoming known: no longer are people or bands scared of saying, "we want to be popular; we want to make it." In fact, today's do-it-yourself (DIY for future reference) ethic is all about the spotlight, it consists of ways to seize it and let somebody hear your music. With the internet and the creation of websites like MySpace and PureVolume, users can sample bands quickly, and bands are forced to be readily entertaining or risk losing a listener. Much in the same way that bands used to be forced to create singles rather than albums, I feel like bands are realizing that they need to grab the listener with a great beginning to have them stick around for the rest of the song (let alone the rest of an album; God, who has time to fucking listen to albums anymore?). None of this is to say that punk bands did not want to be famous in the 70s, but it was often far from their minds. DIY is easier today and thus has broader goals. I have to let this digest for a while, but I will broach the topic repeatedly until I feel I have explored the cavern to a suitable depth. What did I have to say about Arsenal? Oh right. The last few games have not been displayed on Arsenal TV but they have provided live audio from the games. So the last couple of matches I have experienced much like Hornby describes listening to on his radio: leaning intensely forward, head bowed because I have nothing to look at, silently imagining the game as reported to me in very confusing British. This game I in fact listened to while at work, adjusting the volume with every cheer. I pumped my fist in a joyful silence as Henry scored and almost went into a state of shock when Hleb put them ahead two-nil. I wanted to tell everyone at my office what had happened but of course did not. That is a sad reality I will have to contend with for my life: Arsenal will always be playing at inconvenient times during the week. However, on the flip side, it frees up my Saturday nights: instead of having to stay in to watch a game that starts anywhere from 5 to 8pm, I get to watch it around Noon. I can go out afterwards and drink up a storm (either out of depression or victory, depending on the result). I anticipate the day when someone at work discovers me listening to a game. I won't be in any trouble because we're allowed to listen to music, but I will have to once more explain my love for a football team in a place I've never traveled to. Which brings me to my final point for the day: how am I going to reconcile this difference in location and time? Additionally, since this book is at least a little bit about trying to get Americans to enjoy football, how do I advise they reconcile the difference? For me, it comes down to whether or not I want to move to London at some point. I want to, of course, but then I will be separated from my family and friends (and the Yankees!). Sometimes I think, maybe when I am old I can move there - but I won't want to, for the same reasons. So I probably never will. However, I most definitely will visit it on occasion, and maybe if I'm lucky my schedule will be flexible enough in a couple decades where I can see a game or two a season. That will most likely be the extent of my live games. Hopefully SkyTV will get its shit together someday and broadcast in the states so I can TiVo games, but until that fine day I'm stuck with live audio in my office and finding copies of games in various corners of the internet. I'm sure most American fans won't be obsessed enough to resort to those methods, and so for them the best they can do is follow a big team in a big market (re: Arsenal, Chelsea, AC Milan, Madrid, etc.) and get live updates, audio or ideally video from their respective websites. It's a tough grind, but one I have found rewarding. The connection I feel to Arsenal now runs very deep, and it is all thanks to this glorious little tool called the internet.

Aggrandizement

23 September 2006
Arsenal 3 - 0 Sheffield United

63' Gallas
69' Jagielka (og)
80' Henry

And now back to me. I quit my transitional retail job a couple weeks ago and seemingly relentless waves of depression are washing at my shores again. I thought if I moved into some kind of office job that the depression would leave. I would be able to settle into the post-college lifestyle that so many of my older friends have modeled for me. Yet it hasn't happened. The job itself pleases me much more, but that only goes to show how much I didn't like working retail. Maybe it's because I haven't moved out yet: I come home from work exhausted, help my mom make dinner, then watch sports and sit at my computer until it's time I should have gone to bed thirty minutes ago. The worst part about it all is that I don't do any of the stuff I thought about doing while at work: I don't even play video games. I dream about playing games, I dream about writing and watching movies yet when I get home I sit around and just kind of stare into space. I watch TV sure but not religiously, it's just on. I'm not sure where all my time goes and it's massively depressing. The best nights are when I can eke out some writing like this here but they only come when inspired (which is luckily a couple times a week). College is this crazy wild party time and it's awesome, it's fantastic and fun and stimulating, yet post-college is this massive drop-off in comparison and suddenly everything has slowed down. My mom was talking a week ago about my birthday (which itself was two days ago) and we made jokes about me being thirty and having a huge party and then I frowned because thirty is only eight years off. I guess there are some of you out there laughing at me but eight isn't that far when you're used to it being something like fifteen years away. There are some moments in life that sports can not protect you from or prepare you for and this is one of them. The only feeling this compares to in sports is when a great player retires: watching Andre Agassi walk off the US Open courts recently stung as much as leaving college did. The same sense of an era closing is present and it overwhelms you; much like watching Agassi talk to the crowd on that day, walking on my Graduation Day is a moment I don't think I will ever fully come to terms with. This crisis finds roots in a lot of what I have talked about up until this point: not knowing our place in the universe, my fear of never being published, and so on. The building blocks are slowly becoming visible, and indeed as I imagine them my mood improves. Over here to my right is existentialism and to my left is society. On top of existentialism is desire and top of society is experience, and then on the third level in between the two is sport, and above sport is everyday life. We are beginning to understand the world as I see it, humanity as I feel it. My mom tells me I need to get a girlfriend but I think that would just complicate the mess: my future girlfriend occupies a space somewhere in between desire and life and I just don't have any energy to try to squeeze her in there right now. You know, some people like change and some people don't. I don't, not really - it takes me a long time to get accustomed to a situation, longer than for normal people I suspect anyhow, and once I do get adapted, I'm pretty loathe to change it because I'd really rather not have to go through that process again. That pattern has repeated itself throughout my life. I hated to go to a new school for fourth grade (in fact, I hated leaving California after second grade, and then leaving Ohio after third!), and then I was beset with nervous anxiety about going to middle school (after all, only a couple more years and then high school!), and then we left California again right before I started high school! That was the hardest of all - not the worst, mind you, but the hardest. It took me years to fully adapt to high school on a completely different coast. It took me years to truly accept my friends; indeed that did not even happen until high school was over. Going to college was not nearly as bad, although it was pretty nerve-wracking - it felt much more like an extension of high school than something entirely new. It helped that I ended up only going to uni about forty-five minutes away from home: I went home every weekend, and could see my high school friends when they came home from college. I reaped the benefits of my struggles in high school as I befriended more people faster and had removed a substantial portion of my awkward personality (although it is still always here - charmingly so, yes?). By the end of college, I couldn't bear to leave, and it presented an enormous emotional struggle. I had a lot of friends in college, but the ones I hung out with the most lived on the opposite side of campus. I have a lot of memories of walking home from their place and passing the George Mason statue, bathed in a number of lights, knowing I would miss the campus more than I had ever expected. That came true; recently I've been pining for the days of last year, where I would get completely plastered with my friends and wake up at seven in the morning with a spinning head on their couch. Stumble home amidst the constant construction to buildings that won't be complete until 2008. Sack out in my own bed only to wake up around noon with a parched mouth and a pounding headache. I look back on the times we spent staying up ‘til five while rocking out to some of the greatest music we knew with the fondest of eyes, I remember drunkenly playing games and getting ourselves in trouble with everyone: the security guards and other residents alike. Life was perfect because we knew who we were (drunken college students!), we knew what we were supposed to be doing (learning, fucking around!), and that was all there was to it. We reveled in our evolution, we reveled in our freedom. That freedom is gone for now. I suppose it may return once I move out to a place with my friend Kevin in a week (guess what I'll talk about next weekend?), but until then my life has this caged-in feeling, as if I have to rein in what I want to do - and what I do do. I'm nervous about moving, but I'm also excited. It represents some of my first true independence, although I'm only moving about twenty minutes away from home, and it presents an opportunity to completely do whatever I want. Of course, the only plans I have right now are to drink heavily and play video games. I intend to drown the coming year in beer and good times, potentially the last real chance I have to live like this. The real question is, when I turn 23 and am looking for a new house, will I look back on the 06/07 Arsenal season and wish I could do it all over again? I wish I could live college all over again, and it's hard to ignore how the football season wraps around the seasons of my life. I can almost feel the depression from late 2007; what's terrifying is that, this aversion to change that dejects me, I wonder if this is how I will spend the last years of my life? You know, when I'm puttering around at the ripe old age of seventy, a pint of beer in my hand and my vintage 06/07 Van Persie jersey (which my dad just got me for my birthday - greatest present ever!) over my skinny wrinkled bod, will I be assailed by waves of compunction? Will I want to do it all over again? It's funny that I'm despondent because I want to do it all over again: not because I'd change what I did, but because I do not want it to end. The ephemerality of life is what saddens me. Getting a job and an apartment depress me only insofar as they signify moving on: they are the final nail in the coffin, the final cue that college is over. I'll spend the next year trying to recreate college but it will not be the same, it can never be the same again, and in that sense I am already a little dead. I know, as the Leopard knows, that I will not die of cancer or heart disease, although they will say I did: I will die of these constant sadnesses, of having to leave something behind that I truly loved. Every time I do that I die somewhat and someday it will be too much: I will simply keel over, determined never to give anything up again.

Span of History

17 September 2006

Manchester United 0 - 1 Arsenal
86' Adebayor

Let's take a break from this deep talk, these poor analogies and wild declarations that I love to push on you, my gentle reader. I'll get back to them soon enough but I want to bring it all down for a little bit and get back to football. This weekend is huge everyway you can look at it: we have four games between the Yankees and Red Sox in two days - their last series of the season because the Sox are basically out of any kind of playoff contention. In the background, we have American football until Monday; college on Saturday the 16th, and NFL on the 17th. Of course, the highlight of this intense weekend is this match that I'm going to focus on - Manchester United versus Arsenal. This is a terrifying game because Arsenal has started this season so miserably (if the season ended now, they'd just barely be saved from relegation - a scary piece of knowledge considering they've been in the top division since 1919, longer than any other team) and because Manchester United are the best team in the league right now. On top of all that, Thierry Henry and Robin van Persie, our two premiere strikers (that means goal-scorers, America) are doubtful for the match. Yet despite all this working against us, there is an element in the match that has missing of late: anger, desire, resentment. Arsenal hasn't been an underdog of late but suddenly we aren't favorites and we want this win more than we've wanted a win since the Champions League final months ago. Manchester United can laugh at us being in seventeenth place but we're out for blood and we don't fucking care whose it is. I got a lot of topics floating around in my head that I want to touch on. I want to talk about football itself: there are a lot of different kinds of "football" all over the world. There's association football, also known as club football, also known as soccer. Dc United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, River Plate, Juventus, these are all clubs and therefore play association football. Then of course there's American football, there's rugby, there's Gaelic football (which is a combination of rugby and soccer) and of course there's Australian rules football. The oldest evidence of the game comes from China, although there were also similar games in Greek and Roman culture. Football gained popularity in England during the Middle Ages, presumably from Roman influence although there is no hard evidence to prove this. There were many times during this era when various Kings and leaders tried to ban football, and in fact it was banned in England from 1324 to 1667. Early editions of the game seem a lot more violent than it is now and seem reminiscent of rugby - there was even a variation called calcio storico ("historic kickball") where you could actually kick your opponent (oh yeah, and hits below the belt? totally legit). I'm surprised that version didn't last longer. Like all cool things, modern football finds its roots in British public schools; in the sixteenth century, a student and eventual headmaster named Richard Mulcaster wrote extensively on a sport that was played between the boys of these schools. As his descriptions contain the first references to what is essentially the modern game, he is generally considered the father of contemporary football. For the next few centuries, the game's popularity would be confined to schools, as most adults had to work every day except Sunday and thus did not have time for recreational sports. Yet throughout the mid-1800s, both football and rugby gained in popularity as amatuer clubs sprouted up throughout the country. As people the world over began to fall in love with the game, it became obvious that an international body to govern Association football, and FIFA (a French acronym that stuck around) was founded in 1904. Remember when I talked about stories visible in sports? This is an example here: we have the history of this sport, sometimes a little vague and sometimes not, stretching all the way back to the Caesars and beyond. This simple game connects our teams today through human history, and I think that's pretty neat. Even if you just look at Arsenal, and ignore the larger context of football, you can see some interesting points. Arsenal entered the top division of English football in 1919: that was the year the Treaty of Versailles was signed, it was the last year Babe Ruth was on the Red Sox, women were granted suffrage, the Cincinnati Reds "won" the World Series - the Prohibition started in 1919! That helps put Arsenal's history in context for us. You can look back at when something happened and connect it to what was going on at that time and suddenly it comes alive: I can almost imagine following Arsenal in 1919 as peace is reached in Europe. In 1971, when Arsenal won its first Double (which I'll explain soon enough), there was a stairway crush at another football match in Glasgow when the Rangers hosted Celtic and 66 people were killed, which I think is the second worst in history - behind the Hillsborough crush in 1989 where 96 people died. Nick Hornby talks a lot about Hillsborough, it seems it made a huge impression on him and British sports consciousness in general. It's interesting because while he discusses Hillsborough frequently, I think there was only one mention of the Scottish disaster - although he would have only been fourteen, so it probably did not make as much of an impression. The Double. 1971. A Double occurs when a team takes first place in the top division and wins the main cup competition in the same year. So for an English team, they need to place first in the EPL and win the FA Cup. Arsenal did it in 1971, the first time the club had ever achieved the distinction (and the fourth time ever up until that point - there have been six more since, three by Manchester United in the 1990s). Arsenal had been experiencing a mediocre top flight life for a number of years up until that point, but with the leadership of Charlie George and the young spark of Liam Brady they walked away with a Double. The Arsenal would do it again in 1998 and 2002, the most recent time it has happened. For the sake of discussion, the club with the most Doubles in the history of football is a Belfast club named Linfield FC. They've doubled 18 times (one more than the aforementioned Rangers). I don't know much about them, and I don't think many people do. But hey, apparently they rule Ireland. So this match against ManU was terrifying. I got the experience of listening to it via webcast which reminded me of Hornby's book once more, as he would talk about listening to the radio intensely. I sat in front of my computer, my eyes staring into nothing as I tried to visualize the game as it was being reported to me. Every missed goal shot, every close save by Lehmann, made me shout in fury or relief. When the game was rollicking towards its conclusion, I assumed that it would end in a draw - giving us a useless one point, but at least we wouldn't lose. And then Fabregas stole the ball from Ronaldo, passed it to Adebayor who then slid it into the goal - I shouted for a minute. I can't believe we won the match, but we needed it more than we needed anything before. The announcers postulated that in a couple years from now, we might look back on this match as a turning point in the season - a point when the youthful Arsenal finally locked its gears into place and brought their game. I hope that's what we're saying in a couple years.

Ayn Rand, Eat Your Heart Out

13 September 2006
Hamburg SV 1 - 2 Arsenal

12' Gilberto (PK) (F)
53' Rosicky (F)
91' Sanogo (A)

To be a writer requires an enormous amount of ego. At any given point you have to earnestly believe that what you are writing is actually of note, that someone out there wants to spend their free time reading what you have to write down, to read the slop I dribble onto a page. Somedays I wake up and feel I have nothing to tell people. Those are the hardest days, those are the days I cannot force myself to sit in front of a computer and write. The worst is when I'm in the middle of writing something, in the middle of a very coherent thought that I've held for at least a couple minutes and it crumbles like dust, revealing fog and I say to myself, "who the hell would pay any kind of money - let alone their time - to read this bullshit?" That's the worst feeling I can have in the world, and I've felt it a lot. It's become painfully obvious by this, the sixth entry in what still looks terrifyingly expansive, that this work is no longer just about trying to make Americans appreciate soccer. That may have been my initial goal, and while it was undoubtedly a noble goal, it is no longer the entire scope of this work. I'm forced to admit that this work is a study of sport, a study of writing, a study of myself - if I have any hope of writing over forty entries on the topic of sport and Americana, there is no way I will avoid examining my life with the finest microscope. The first few entries were like entering a tunnel: hey it's dark but there are lights on the side and noisy cars to my right. This will be fun! But by this point, over a full month since I began, the other cars have disappeared and the lights on the walls are flickering. I'm by myself, I see this now, and all I have to light the way is my passion for sports and writing and music and culture. This is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought at the beginning. I'm having those sensations, the ones I talked about: who the hell would pay any kind of money, let alone spend their time, on this bullshit? As any good writer will tell you, the only way through that doubt is to put your nose to the grindstone and write. Creating is really easy if you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you're inspired by the project: then the whole thing practically writes itself. That kind of writing is a blessing, let me tell you, and when it happens I have to seize it like I just found a million dollars in an unmarked briefcase. I wonder how often Stendhal or Kafka sat down and gazed out their windows, wondering if their work was going to waste. They were never appreciated in their time, and only years later were they hailed as brilliant novelists. I'm terrified by the thought of dying before being "found": but what if, like I began in the last entry, what if my dreams are never realized? What will I think when I'm in my seventies and shuffling around with a mug of beer in my hand? I hope I find some other kind of satisfaction in life, because trying to get society to acknowledge me is most likely a hopeless cause. How can you tell someone to abandon their dreams? You can't: it's not right, it's inhumane. But since I've graduated from college, I've been confronted with a massively cruel real world that demands my dreams as some kind of payment: "give me your dreams child, and maybe, just maybe, I'll give you a nine-to-five job that gives you an allowance to buy movie tickets and alcohol." This has become a suffocatingly self-conscious work and for that I apologize. It's that tunnel syndrome. Topics get shaved away as I write and slowly one theme appears, the one theme that my entire life has been built upon, the one theme I face in the mirror in the morning, the one theme I ignore as I lie down to bed. That theme is inadequacy; my own, my parents', my friends', the world's: all our inadequacies fascinate me and confuse me and paralyze me. But inadequacy implies that there is something which is adequate. In sports, the adequate is obvious: an adequate pitcher will win you 13-18 games a season; an adequate striker will score you 10-15 goals a season; an adequate quarterback will get you 14-19 touchdowns a season. There is no such bar in life which may be why so many of us turn to sports. I don't know how to measure my success in life yet so I look at Mike Mussina and I know that, even though he's never won 20 decisions in a season, the motherfucker can still pitch a great game. Sports give me something that I can put a bar too, that I can square up and analyze. I don't think it means I'm inadequate at life, only that I'm too scared to look at my own life. Sports fill time, they supply knowledge and depth to a human creation that has no relevance to the universe. All sports are, are us lining up and running around, figuring out where we stack up in relation to each other because we will never figure out where we stack up in relation to everything else. We create larger systems due to the fact that the largest system of them all remains a mystery to us. We will never figure it out, and instead we manufacture other systems that we hope reflect it in some pathetic way. Writing is the same exercise, although less tiring: I sit in my chair, listening to my music, and attempt to pierce reality with my biting wit and fathomless brilliance. Do you see that ego I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it's right there. I'm not that funny and I'm not that smart, but I hope I'm a little of both, and I hope that combination gives me a worthwhile look into humanity so I can better explain it to you all (and myself), so we all leave this experience with higher spirits and brighter outlooks. I write because I have an ego, but I have an ego because I believe in myself and my ability to make each and every one of you happy, because I know I can touch you and change something inside of you. You're getting close to it, I can feel it: all you need is to peer through the looking glass at sports - to see them the way I do. To see sports with the ego of an artist. To see sports as they are seen by the players, the artists of the field. Our inadequacies then are not mental or physical, at least, those aren't the inadequacies that I care about. Whether or not someone is too skinny or fat, too smart or dumb - those are all just relative. Our inadequacy, our collective inadequacy, is cosmic: we don't understand the system we live in, the system we've lived in since time began. This dearth of knowledge is what fascinates me day in and day out because it drives so much of our society, even though it is this huge gap in our understanding. A long time ago, say, two-thousand years ago, people had these faults and decided to believe in a man named Jesus Christ, because he gave them a system to believe in and they wanted to, they needed to. It's so hard to live without knowing what comes after death and if there's a chance at an afterlife, why not sure Christ is my savior. I appreciate religion for so many things it offers us, such as love of all people and certain social laws (remember that murder is bad thing?), but I do not appreciate the fanaticism it can inspire. This is where social constructionism finds its true value. Because we know so little about everything else, we create our reality here on Earth. It's readily tangible, moreso than stars millions of light-years away, so why not? I can walk to my kitchen, but I can't walk to Alpha Centauri. Therefore I will spend more time thinking about my kitchen. My kids will grow up with the kitchen my wife and I fashion, and to them it will be a tradition. If there is something particularly noteworthy about it, maybe knowledge of the kitchen will be passed down in our family and become a myth. This is how social constructionism works: as generations interact with various things and places, the social knowledge of these things and places changes. What started out as two people agreeing turned into a government, an institution. The whole spectrum of human society is based on our interactions with one another. Religion, in my mind, comes from these interactions mingling with our inadequacies. Modern sports are another response to this. Both sports and religion provide paragons for us. The sufferings of Job remind me of Barry Bonds; direct comparisons aside, both went through very troubling times. Job lost his children, and Bonds has been hauled through public hatred. While Barry is a whole different topic for another time, his recent quiet humiliation has been somewhat calming. He spent much time in the past ranting against the media but of late he has apparently accepted the mockery. "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?"

The Dream is Just a Dream Again

9 September 2006
Arsenal 1 - 1 Middlesbrough

22' Morrison (A)
68' Henry (F)

For the first time in my life, a very specific fear passed through me: that I might not get to see my ideas in print or on the silver screen. I'm a writer (really? you say) and probably the only real goal I have in life is to create something and get paid for it. Sure it's a bit of a capitalistic dream but being paid for what I've created is tantamount to knowing people are actually reading (or watching, or whatever) the damn thing. So if I get myself a nice check (and I'm not talking millions, I don't have any kind of a swollen head - well maybe just a little bit), I'll feel good, like I've met my goal. I'll be able to die that much happier. Then it hit me today; while I was moving through one of few stories that permanently resides in my head, I realized, "it may just stay there forever." Which is terrifying, really. It's roughly as terrifying as realizing that we're all mortal and that I personally will die in roughly fifty years from now. This fear, perhaps irrational perhaps not, comes on the heels of my first successful interview at a temp-to-hire agency. Up until this point in my life, I've only held retail jobs or internships, all of which I've had because I've known somebody (who knows somebody). This is the first time that I sent my resume in blind and they called back because they thought I'd be a good guy to run around in a office at fifteen-an-hour. For comfort I remember the sections of "Fever Pitch" when Hornby discusses working pointless jobs just for some bucks to drink beer and watch Arsenal - which is, at this point, roughly equivalent to what my life has become. I get drunk with my friends, watch dumb movies, and sit in front of my computer breathlessly watching Arsenal in a tiny little window, shouting many miles away from Ashburton to SHOOT THE DAMN BALL, HLEB! I'm not sure but I think this is an existential crisis waiting to happen, except I did that back in twelfth grade and it was not all that it is cracked up to be. Existentialism is a great philosophy, don't get me wrong, and for much of my formative years (we'll say from when I was seventeen to nineteen, 2001 to 2003) it was my prime belief. I don't subscribe to any religion and I was pretty individualistic, as teenagers are wont to be, so I thought that a philosophy built on the idea of "individual experience" was pretty much dead on. Then, a teacher that I shall never forget introduced me to social constructionism, and my life was never the same again. Social constructionism is an unwieldy thing to describe, full of puffy declarations and long-winded definitions (like all rhetoric, I suppose, which helped breed in me a strong distaste for critical analysis in any field - I support analysis but not the methods by which they are discussed). Essentially, social constructionism takes existentialism to the next logical step: everything we know and believe has been socially created and is socially reinforced through everyday interaction. Through such reinforcement, our beliefs become objective realities which are almost impossible to distinguish from "common sense" or "divine will." At some point long ago, one human condemned murder and another human thought that a good idea: so it has become, so it will be. Murder is a sin, murder does not help us progress. Through discourse we create our reality and ascribe various places within our context; murder is not necessarily evil, as animals murder each other for the simple need of food. The idea of murder then, of cruel intention, of deceit and corruption, are human inventions, not by design but by effect. We have plotted against each other and therefore the concept of deceit exists: if deceit did not happen we would have no need for the idea of deceit. I'm a poor person to choose for a definition of social constructionism: I can never explain it well enough to my friends when they ask about it, and I often end up just giving them a book by someone much more authoritative than myself. My point is that sport is a human invention: the concept of drawing up rules by which to compete is pretty much unique to humans (although I'm sure whatever alien races exist in the universe most likely follow similar antics). The reason for rules is because we believe in fairness on the field of battle, our warriors obey a code of honor. If they cheat, if they shirk that honor, we condemn and shun them as they have condemned our agreements: see poor Rafael Palmeiro, a great baseball player who vanished when the taint of steroids touched his legacy. Breaking news: I'm watching Anibal Sanchez try to throw a no-hitter. ESPN just cut away from the White Sox gauging the Red Sox 8-1 to this pitching domination, and the first three pitches Sanchez threw were about as wild as it can get. It's almost as if he sensed the national attention shift; suddenly no one cares about the Red Sox (and why should they, 8 games out of first in the AL East and rapidly falling out of contention for wild card) and suddenly everyone cares about every pitch this guy throws. I don't know anything about him, I'll be honest, but this is why sports fascinates me so much. This pitcher on the third place Florida Marlins team (17 games out of first in the NL east - a little bit worse than the Red Sox, yet somehow they're doing better in the wild card race) has captivated us. He just got a double play! No hits through eight! I was about to go out tonight but I do not want to leave until this gets settled. This guy is not Randy Johnson, he's not Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens, Mark Prior (gag) or whomever: he probably makes the Major League minimum (around $300K last I checked - which is awesome, but peanuts compared to Andy Pettitte's $16 million) and he's all we'll be talking about tomorrow, given he gets another three outs. Let's all hold our collective breath. Let's dream a little: a 22-year-old starting pitcher who's approximately seven months older than me is the best pitcher tonight. Let's let our pride swell as we watch this man assume some kind of invisible talent for the night as he evolves into the untouchable. There is more adrenaline in my body right now than I've had for a number of days. We have one out to go now and this is more alive than I've felt in weeks. He got it! Oh wow. All the adrenaline has flushed out of me, but watching him hug every teammate made my eyes tear up. The first no-hitter since Randy Johnson's perfect game in 2004. Sure this has nothing to do with football, but it has everything to do with sport. I need to recuperate. This stuff is stressful, and I don't even care about the Marlins! I also have a minor confession. I'm not writing this around the Middlesbrough game. I'm writing this sporadically over the course of a week. Why, you ask? Because I have two weeks in between Arsenal games and I have to do something! I should talk about some soccer, though, so let's get on with my talk of the game. Middlesbrough doggedly beat Chelsea when Arsenal took down the Croatian juggernaut Dynamo Zagreb on August 23rd, and when attendees of the Arsenal game were leaving the announcement of the Chelsea defeat was greeted with loud cheers. Any victory against Chelsea is a victory for the rest of the league. They've owned the EPL for the last two years and now it's basically 19 teams against one. Anything to keep the championship out of their hands. That said, I want to take it Middlesbrough. We've started out the season with a draw and a defeat - that's lame. Let's do this up, Gunners! I'm happy because now they've finally settled all the trade talk - Reyes and Cole are out, Gallas and Baptista are in. That's good; I don't know how great these new guys will be, but we got the two out who wanted to be out. Gallas so far, at 10 minutes in, has shown some great mid-field quality (Baptista has yet to play). They've been attacking much more like they were towards the end of the Manchester City match, with a lot of strength going down the middle, which is more exciting and what we all want to see. None of this too-much-passing shit, I can't deal with that. It was like watching a car wreck a couple weeks ago, as they refused to really attack for more than an hour. They've had possession for something like 70% of the game and they have nothing to show but a deficit! How does this keep happening! I want to break something I'm so angry. This is looking like the Yankees in 2005 - talent all over the field yet a complete inability to produce. Wenger looks like he has an ulcer and I might be joining him in a few. If only it wasn't three in the morning with my mom asleep in the room next to me, I could be screaming and shouting like I really, really want to do. Aside from all the great philosophical banter, sports also drive me to fury and drinking. The longer this goes on, the more I begin to fear we're going to suffer another defeat. The way they're playing, it doesn't look at all like they can put a goal together. And now the Middlesbrough captain has been red-carded! If we can't get a win out of this, I will ... I don't know. Get hammered. Tomorrow. Oh thank God. Penalty kick from Thierry - but it was Eboue who produced the penalty. I haven't been a big fan of him, but I am now. He's totally been creating some great opportunities that just weren't capitalized on. This is hurting me. The dream has slipped away. My fears are being realized. Two draws and a defeat. What a fucking way to start a season. Hornby, your curse is slowly appearing above Ashburton. Will the next twenty-four years be spent in agony for me too?

The Definition of Clutch

26 August 2006
Manchester City 1 - 0 Arsenal

41' Barton (A)

The idea of this work is to bring "world football" consciuousness to the American consciousness. Yet for me, a lot of American consciousness is built on underground architecture. I learned to love America with music like Pavement and My Bloody Valentine, those are the types of bands that showed me that American music is worth any sort of chance. Yet if you listen to Dinosaur Jr., back to back with The Jesus and Mary Chain, you'll begin to sense the value we actually possess. It saddens me when I think of the many years I spent dawdling on alt-rock radio stations, listening over and over again to mediocre bands like Soul Coughing and Pearl Jam. I would make mix tapes of songs I enjoyed from the radio, as my mom refused to buy me many albums. Sometimes I wonder if I still have any of those tapes in storage: it would be wild to find one and play it, just for old times sake. I've always been into making mix tapes, either that way (which was very haphazard - obviously I couldn't have any kind of plan) or with a very methodical approach. I make mix CDs now of course, but still with the same amount of planning and thought - it can take over a week to complete a mix for a friend, as I debate my options, find out about new songs, et cetera et cetera. In fact, I'm always making a mix CD - I spend the entire year culling my favorite music into two CDs of what I consider the best of the year, which I often give away with presents around Christmas time. How do mix CDs apply to sports, you ask? Sometimes a mix CD works, sometimes a team doesn't. Chemistry. That's the easy answer, and the truer answer is that they don't really relate except insofar as I dig both. The point is, as I said at the beginning, that I don't view American culture from a mainstream perspective so I might not be the best hand to try and explain to that perspective how to appreciate something the rest of the world already does. The difference between sports and music then is that music is judged by popularity rather than talent. In sports, the popular players are the talented ones (and when the popular turn out to be not talented, well, then they become good SNL jokes!). This is not to say that there aren't any popular musicians who aren't good at their craft (although it sometimes feels that way!), just that skill does not determine success. Of course, skill in music is much more ambiguous - to be skilled in a genre of music, say, grunge, does not mean you're Jimi Hendrix; but you are a master of that craft, and in fairness can be rewarded as such. In sports however, it is much more cut and dry; although certain positions may rise to dominance over others, for the most part your talent determines your success. And of course, talent isn't everything - you must always be training in the off season. Plus, there is insurmountable pressure that would crush a person of normal fiber. That's why Tiger Woods is so impressive: by today's count, when he's entered Sunday with a lead during a major, he wins. Twelve for twelve. He does not lose. Tiger is the definition of clutch, and it is hard not to be mesmerized by his performances. Clutch is an important concept in sports, and it has become an absurdly popular word in everyday water-cooler talk. (sorry, interjection: Thierry just made an incredibly disappointing run. He had a glorious pass from van Persie and instead of charging through to the net, he dragged the ball right, into a web of three defenders! What were you thinking, buddy!?) It is most easily defined as "ice-water in the veins," as in, "Mariano Rivera has ice-water in his veins when it comes to ninth-inning saves." That is to say, a player is clutch when the pressure of the situation does not affect his performance. Examples of such situations are: game seven of the World Series, 1 minute left on a fourth down in the fourth quarter of an American Football game, the last four holes on a Sunday of a major, the last 10 minutes of FA Cup final. That last one, in case you did not guess, is a big to-do in England. I almost do not want to explain what the FA Cup is, because then I'd have to explain the FA and the rest of the mess, and honestly it makes my head hurt. I should stipulate that being clutch indeed must be proven over a long period of time: one great shot in your life will rarely get you remembered for anything (although Bucky Dent might have something to say about that). In other news, the first half of this Man City game has been an entirely frustrating experience, and I'm beginning to feel what Hornby expressed throughout his book. As you may have guessed, I'm writing this while I'm watching the game, a first for this project - and the result is that I just want to write expletives about the referees and Lady Luck. (we've hit the bar twice! Twice!) I find myself screaming every five minutes, at missed chances, at poor calls, at that goddamn Dickov - what a smug sonofabitch! These minutes, these chances, they slip by and I get more nervous; do we have any magic left? We have so much talent, but not so much killer instinct. Can we be the definition of clutch? Every misstep and miscue pains me, and suddenly I realize that maybe we will lose, maybe this season gets off to a terrible start. The Gunners got the Champions League final not three months ago and we're looking at the second half of the Premiere League table as our home for the third week of the 06/07 season. Curse you Hornby, I don't know if I can do this for almost four decades, I don't know if I can handle the stress and pain as you have since 1968. Suddenly the Arsenal players look like ravenous dogs; I can't see it in their eyes but they are bullying and scraping for every possession, assaulting the goal as if it were the Death Star. Every shot is blocked, every pass is intercepted. They recoup, steal the ball, and barrage once more. I can't write anymore. Well then. I guess I should have picked a different game to write about "clutch" - in fact, maybe I jinxed myself and the Guns, but that's the way life is, you can't go back and rewrite history. (On the other side of that argument are the City fans who no doubt praise Barton, a young gun midfielder who nailed a Penalty Kick, as a clutch player) Oh wait, you can. That's a charming thing about sports (and, separately but also not so, a charming thing about the internet): what's done is done, it's in the books, it ain't never gonna be changed. For the rest of my life, I'll know that Manchester City beat Arsenal on 26 August 2006 for the first time since Man City came up into the Premier League. Hilariously, or perhaps not so, they were the First Division Champions in 1968, the same year that Nick Hornby discovered football and Arsenal. Such are the lessons of humility that sports teach.

The Abridgment

23 August 2006
Arsenal 2 - 1 Dinamo Zagreb

12' Eduardo (A)
77' Ljungberg (F)
91' Flamini (F)

Consider this an abstract, or an argument, for those of you so inclined. I found out a couple years after the fact that the Jimmy Fallon-vehicle "Fever Pitch" was actually based on a book about Arsenal - so of course I ran to the nearest Barnes & Noble that I could find and bought it without so much as a second thought. In fact I had to put extra effort into buying it because I kept looking for it in the fiction section. Sometimes I don't think a lot. Anyhow, I found it and bought it and then read it, even though I had at least three other books I 'needed' to read (and probably should have read; sorry Hornby but Stendhal is, well, Stendhal). As I was finishing the book, staying up way later than I probably should have one night (much the same as I am doing now while writing this) it occured to me that his book was markedly British in approach. Captain Obvious, I know, but the point is that his scope is limited. I'm not faulting Hornby at all, in fact the narrow scope is quite critical to the success of the book. Yet I began to wonder about how some Americans cope with being fans of soccer - excuse me, football. My experiences are perhaps unremarkable but this work is envisioned as the American response to "Fever Pitch," an attempt at international dialogue on the undisputably most popular sport. Hornby framed his collection of short essays around two decades plus of life while my work is being held over a year or two. My modus operandi is more rushed and perhaps the worse for it, yet a conversation cannot wait twenty-four years for a response. Additionally, if I mirrored Hornby's method he might sue me, and I'm far too poor to risk that possibility. I am going to try and refrain from speaking of him too much but as he is the inspiration for the work it is going to be slightly impossible to completely remove him from all this. So let that knowledge sit in the back of your head and stew. It's funny because a lot of this smacks of counter-American-culture but I'm beginning to suspect that is an incorrect stance to assume because over the last couple weeks I've seen a surprising amount of football jerseys on American citizens. I've seen at least 10 in three weeks, compared to the 2 American football jerseys that I've seen (for the record, the jerseys were: Ronaldinho Brazil edition, Ronaldinho Barca edition, Rooney, Henry, Ballack, and a handful of nameless jerseys). I'm not complaining, just confused is all. Most likely it is popularity that accrued during an exciting and well-televised World Cup, cultivating fans out of credulous American viewers. I appreciate the apparent fandom, in fact I'm jealous of their jerseys because I haven't managed to buy one yet, and this obvious interest helped to fuel my desire to write these entries regarding football specifically and sport in general. I want to try and break football down for people who don't understand it yet, and I want to get to the heart of sports. This is an exploration of sport, of activity, of competition. Hornby explored fandom, and I want to take that inquiry a step further. In all likelihood, this great discussion of sport will never be over: much like sports themselves, there is always more to play - there is always more to say. You may never break any records but you can pick up a baseball bat and head out there to have some fun. These writings also find a parent in conversations I had with a friend a number of years ago. When I was really getting into baseball, my first love, I began having tete-a-tete's with a high school compatriot. We talked random statistics and philosophy, we waxed poetic about what baseball symbolized to us. It would be impossible to attempt to recreate those colloquies, I could never do them justice: they are lost forever. Yet those communions live in my head, they drive me every day. When I turn ESPN on and I see highlight reels, analogies to life flash in front of my eyes. Stories become visible, linking today to yesterday, yesterday to last year, last year to the 1990s, and the nineties to the forties. When I watch a baseball game, all that passes through my mind: there is so much more happening than just some strikes and base hits. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I can't throw all my paint on the canvas at once, that wouldn't yield a beautiful work of art. We have to start small, and flesh out the details as we go along. First we need this argument. The more accurate inspiration for this book is Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you are not familiar with it, it's basically a huge text of philosophy weaved around a simple story about a guy and his motorcycle. For him, the motorcycle is the jumping off point for all his ideas, and he ends up talking about a lot of different things that have nothing to do with motorcycles at all. To be honest, I read the book about six years ago so I can't remember all of it now, but I do remember it was good and interesting and I'm a little presumptuous to compare my work to Pirsig's. Aim high, though, right? My journey is Arsenal's journey - they had an underachieving season in 05/06, way too far removed from Chelsea, Man-U, and Liverpool to make any kind of a run. On top of that, they had to bid farewell to Dennis Bergkamp and Sol Campbell (not to mention Ashley Cole and Jose Reyes - there's gotta be a jet always running, waiting to whisk them away from Ashburton), leaving our side younger and less experienced. They need to find their game if they have any hope of taking first place against stiff competition, and I need to buckle down if I have any hope of taking on the "real world," the post-college world. This match against a feisty Croatian team gave all Gunners some hope after the tie with Aston Villa. The beginning was nerve-wracking as it seemed our defense was about as porous as a sponge yet they kept attacking and some opportunities finally came through. The draw for the next stage of the Champions League is tomorrow (and I have an interview!), and until then all us Gunners can dream for a victory against Manchester City on Saturday.

A Love for Game

19 August 2006
Arsenal 1 - 1 Aston Villa

54' Mellberg (A)
83' Gilberto (F)

I didn't think of it earlier, but perhaps I should more accurately detail how and when I picked Arsenal as the be all and end all of football for me. As I explained, it really is my dad's fault: he and his sister became (and still are) quite obsessed with the Italian language and football in general. So after a number of years of football taking over more and more of my father's life, I broke down Christmas 2004 and decided to start following a Premiereship team. I didn't want to pick the team in first place (conveniently Chelsea) because I thought that would be tacky, and I didn't want to root for my dad's team (less conveniently Manchester United) because the point was to give us something to talk about, rather than simply agree about - so I went for the team in the middle, which was Arsenal. I'm silly, I realize that now, but if you can't alter potentially large parts of life on a whim, what can you alter on a whim? Don't answer that. Initially, their presence was barely noticeable on my life. I had no idea who was on the team, I had no idea of their history, and I certainly had no idea what part of England they were from. Slowly, I picked up various details - oh, North London, you say? Highbury? What's that? A Double what? Doesn't Liam Brady play guitar in Oasis? The passion remained dormant for over a year as I followed their fixtures but went no further. It doesn't help that the structure of football in Europe is wildly vexing to my American sensibilities: at any given moment in the season, Arsenal is competing in at least three leagues or tournaments or what have you, and of course they change names sometimes (footnote to the EPL: changing tournament names based on sponsors is just ridiculous!). Yet the passion was ignited when Arsenal made their run all the way to the Champions League Final; seeing them play every few weeks on ESPN was enough to tell me that what had started as a casual fling ran indeed much deeper than I originally intended. Then unfortunately the summer hit, and I suppose any other year there would have been a solid chance that my interest would have dwindled except the World Cup swooped in and captured my interest. Once that was done, there was only six weeks until the start of the EPL season, and friendlies started a week after the end of the World Cup - it seems pretty unavoidable at this point. Football isn't the only sport I like, in fact it was probably the last sport that I came to like. A decade ago, I did not watch much sports; my dad would watch baseball, or hockey, or American football, and I would go hide in my room and play video games. My interest in baseball began to pick up in my high school years (for historical reference, my "high school years" is turn-of-the-century, 1998-2002), and when I got to college my roommate turned me into a serious casual fan. Which is to say, I enjoyed watching sports, but I didn't know who was on any of the teams. I was watching all the standards (minus hockey, which strangely, I still don't really watch - so I guess football isn't the "last sport"), and soon enough I was watching the not-so-standards, at least for a 19-year-old: tennis, golf, cricket. Whatever I could get my hands on, I would watch. If the French Open was on, nice, I'll do that. If I have to watch the Tigers (back when they were terrible! what happened in 2006?!) play Kansas City, sure why not. At some point in my sophomore year of college, a huge, fundamental shift occurred in my view of sport. Whereas I had once seen it as the hobby of jocks and workout freaks, I suddenly saw it as the true demonstration of human ability. Sports are not just physical workouts, they require strategy and courage: don't tell me that during the second leg of a Champions League semi-final there are no emotions involved, that the pressure doesn't weigh on the team like shackles and chains. Sport is the test of humanity: behind all the money, behind all the bullshit about steroids and fixing scandals, there is competition and struggle, loyalty and strength, knowledge and faith. This Arse-Villa game happened in the middle of a very important baseball series (important to me, anyhow). Well, I'll just come out and say it, no use beating around the bush - I'm a Yankees fan. I'm sure some of you just closed the book. Hey, you know what, I love the Yankees and I'm not ashamed of that. My dad grew up in New York as a Yankees fan and he raised me on baseball proper - by following the most storied team in America. So leave me alone. Sorry, I get defensive sometimes. The Arsenal game was on a Saturday, smack in the middle of the most important Yankees series in 2006 - a five-games-in-four-days marathon against their AL East rivals, the Boston Red Sox. These five games would set the tone for the rest of the season, because for the first time in something like seven years, the runner up in the AL East would probably not being going to playoffs, thanks to a startlingly strong AL Central (see: the Tigers comment I made two paragraphs ago). I had sports tension running seven ways to Sunday (not to mention the PGA Championship was going on in the background, with the greatest pairing at the time: Woods v Mickelson, round 2, fight!), and I loved every second, I relished the anxiety and I bathed in my sports neuroses. Sorry, I also wax dramatic sometimes. In sum, the weekend was huge for me, and immensely fun. The Yankees ended up dominating the Red Sox, winning all five games, sweeping the Sox in their hometown. The rest of the season has yet to be played but it sets the stage for a great Yanks playoff run. So the Arsenal ends up tying with Aston Villa in very anticlimactic fashion, although Theo Walcott played a great 20something minutes, creating the opportunity for Gilberto to equalize, saving us from a potentially embarrassing EPL opener. I wasn't able to watch the game as it happened because the Arsenal TV website let me down although I ended up finding a copy by other means. The storylines outside of the game seemed to be more important than the beginning of the season (to the media, at least) - specifically the Ashley Cole trade saga. We don't know how it's going to turn out right now, but fuck, if he wants to leave, get him the hell out - I don't want anyone on my team who does not have Arsenal coming first. I hate when that happens but it is pretty unavoidable in sports. It's unfortunate, the atmosphere it creates, both within the team and the fans: it's like knowing Brutus is going to stab Caesar. Of course, the converse situation is when a great player is entirely dedicated to your team, such as Thierry Henry. When he announced in May that he would be staying at Arsenal, that he believed in our team, we all smiled and allowed our hardened sports exterior to reveal our softer side, the side of us that wants to give him a hug and tell him thanks for being so loyal to us. I'm sure I'll never get a chance to talk to him, but hopefully he knows that he made many casual fans complete and lifelong followers.

Chasing 36

08 August 2006
Dinamo Zagreb 0 - 3 Arsenal

63' Fabregas
65' Van Persie
79' Fabregas

At some point, my interest in Arsenal has to reach some kind of breaking point - pack it up and go home or admit I'm in it for the long haul. But where does the interest come from, why do I insist on a love for a team from a place I've never been, let alone lived in? Is it for my dad - a theory I've seriously been considering for a couple days now, as I've had to explain to a lot of people why indeed I root for a North London team instead of, say, DC United (who I intend to root for - someday, I guess, when I've got my shit together). I tell them, "oh yeah, I started to pay attention to soccer so I'd have something to talk about with my dad," which is painfully true. Of course, I think it applies more broadly to all sports - I think, some time, our distance kicked in, I realized my father was only my father in technical terms. He abandoned the playing field I offered in my youth - Commander Keen, although my life has been filled with video games - and so at some junction I had to adopt the terrain he inhabited: sport. I can't place all the blame on my father; I think something clicked, much like my realization of my distance from my dad, because I also decided that my self-imposed removal from people - father, et al - was ridiculous and unfun for all concerned (and unconcerned, I suppose). It's my way of growing up it seems, by abandoning what I had loved at the age of 10 for something my father loves. So I ditched the anime and game music, and replaced it with sports and indie rock. Who can say which move was mere posturing? The anime with its self-contained art superiority or indie rock with its ambiguous elitest hierarchy - both are intrinsically aloof and annoying, yet both hold "art" as their highest ideal. Of course, I am neither Japanophile nor indie hipster, but the point remains that I deserted one so I would have something to talk about at parties, instead of staying home and talking online. Sports are just as bad as anime, except one has a larger audience. Sometimes I find myself balking at my love of sports - do I really value human achievement? Because that's what it's all about, I think, at the end of the day. Sports can be great because they can provide a sense of pride for your hometown, but the real story is witnessing the limits of human ability. Which is why steroids are the bane of my existence, but that's another story for another time. What of it all, anyhow? "Once you label me, you negate me" - and by claiming anime, or indie rock, or sports - I'm using labels for my interests. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, my options are limited to language, and simply saying "oh I like indie rock" is the easiest route. "I like pop melodies within complicated song structures accompanied by atypical lyrics" is perhaps closer to the truth, but you would never understand unless I played my favorite songs for you in a row. Likewise, trying to explain why sports are great is like trying to explain why love is great, or how a good book moves you. Telling you about following Chase Utley's hitting streak, waiting for number 36 which would never come (C Utley struck out swinging - oh, the pain that caused! And I'm not even a Philly fan!), is silly - describing the shock as I watched Zidane level Materazzi is hollow - expressing the subdued joy as the referees basically handed the Heat the Championship is tedious - and rejoicing because Arsenal's season has fucking commenced and they did it by nailing the first leg of their Championship League qualifier is just pointless because most people here only think of an arsenal in relation to the Stadium-Armory Metro stop (go Nats!). What I'm saying is you can't tell people how great sports are, just like telling them falling in love is amazing; they can only experience it for themselves. Some people never fall in love, some people never care that a team who hasn't the won the World Series in 88 years finally did it. Yet the kind of connections that I religiously search for are not going to be induced by sports, or music - sure, those may oil the gears, but they're not going to start those relationships. So why does a tectonic shift have to occur within my interests? I guess because some relationships, like the one with a father, are forced rather than created, and by assuming sports as a parallel interest, I have also assumed that my father's life is of interest. Instead of relegating sports to the background as something he follows, it is something we both follow, something that concerns us both, something that we each eat, sleep, and breathe. We live for sports and goddammit, we've never bonded more.