As the astute followers of my football leanings have surmised, my interest in soccer dried up a bit during the 2006-2007 season. This was largely due to the fact that i found myself unable to defend the assorted s@$#heads who run the show at Stamford Bridge these days. This disillusionment with "my" team has left me disinterested in English footie in general. However, i'll recount what thoughts i have had concerning the summer transfer market and forecasts for the future.

Chelsea gets outspent?!?! There's multiple ways to evaluate the observation that after four years of paying silly money for the world's top footballing names, Chelsea has gotten seriously outspent this summer. One would be that the club is content with their squad and its ability to compete for trophies, and wants to spend the offseason building chemistry among the existing players rather than forcing more new faces into the squad. This seems pretty unlikely considering that last year we surrendered the Premiership title and relative to the previous two years generally underperformed. Our signings of last summer can only be considered failures, particularly our high profile imports. Michael Ballack was in general freakin' awful, and if reports are true that Real Madrid are willing to buy him, we should laugh all the way to the bank. Andriy Shevchenko has undeniable skill, but i can't help but think he's not cut out for the English game and will not magically transform into a top Premiership scorer after a year in the country. Our other 2006 signings were not any better. Khalid Boulahrouz, well, we'll just forget that ever happened. Ashley Cole was probably our best buy and i can't remember anything he did last season. So why, given our lackluster previous crop of signings and failed bid for third successive title, would Roman Abramovich change his M.O.? Another possibility is that the Russian billionaire is tired of throwing money away on his London hobby. This theory is supported by the fact that our first signings of the summer were free transfers. The only person we've actually paid money for so far is Lyon and France winger Florent Malouda.

Whatever the reason for our sudden thriftiness, it is worrisome that two of our prime Premiership rivals, current champions Manchester United and pretenders-to-the-throne Liverpool, have made some impressive buys while we've been quiet. In addition to adding holding midfielder and longtime target Owen Hargreaves, United have paid top dollar for promising youngsters Nani and Anderson, and just closed the long-running Carlos Tevez saga with a two-year loan deal for the brilliant Argentinean striker. The scousers meanwhile have picked up Andriy Shevchenko's countryman, namesake, and Ukrainian strike partner Andriy Voronin and made the blockbuster move of the summer for Spanish hitman Fernando Torres. They've also added a smattering of role players, including budding Dutch forward Ryan Babel and experienced Premiership midfielder Yossi Benayoun. That leaves the London contingent of the big four, Chelsea and Arsenal, on the short end of the stick. I can take solace in the precedent that Chelsea's megaspending didn't immediately translate into titles ... i suspect this outcome may in particular afflict Liverpool ... but developments are worrying nonetheless.

The big four become three? Arsenal present perhaps the most interesting case study of the offseason. With the shock departure of David Dein from the Gunners' front office, storm clouds were forming over Arsenal, and the tempest came to a head with the sale of talisman Thierry Henry to Barcelona. For the relatively meager sum of £16m. Manager Arsene Wenger has had an undeniable knack for releasing players after their peak, with Patrick Vieira being an excellent example. But reports that Wenger might soon be on his way out as well encouraged speculation that Henry's exit wasn't motivated by football. Arsenal's squad hemorrhage continued, with long-serving support player Freddie Ljungberg departing as well as young striker Jeremie Aliadiere and Spanish malcontent Jose Antonio Reyes. The Gunners haven't made any particularly impressive buys to shore up the team, and one must wonder whether, despite the party line being touted by Wenger, Arsenal's disappointing run of form since losing the Champions League crown in 2005 will snowball.

The first Chelski defections? Arjen Robben may be the first high profile departure following the Abramovich revolution, with his unhappiness in London well documented and Real Madrid reported to be chomping at the bit to get him to Spain. It's a bit disappointing to release a player who electrified the league upon his debut in 2004-2005, but it's certainly a loss with which Chelsea could cope. Robben has had persistent injury problems, and to my knowledge has played uninterrupted first team football for perhaps two months at a stretch. His tendency to abandon the pass on try to beat 6 defenders in the final third of the pitch is maddening, and he shows no signs of undergoing the sort of maturation Cristiano Ronaldo has enjoyed at United. If Madrid are willing to pay a rumored £27m fee for Ballack and Robben, i say go for it. Abramovich can use that money to resign the essential Frank Lampard if, as it appears, he's unwilling to do so out of his own pocket.

Drogba		Shevchenko
Lampard
Malouda		J. Cole
Makelele
A. Cole	Terry	Carvalho	Ferreira
Cech

A stab at the lineup. Using current players, i envision a starting 11 along the lines of that shown at left. The good news is that we have depth at most (but not all) positions, with our typical glut of midfielders providing plenty of cover in the center of the pitch. Michael Essien, Jon Obi Mikel, Shaun Wright-Phillips, and Arjen Robben all could play valuable roles in support, with Essien in particular having a strong case for a starting spot given his excellent performance last season. In defense however, we're dangerously thin with Haim the only expressed central defender available on the bench. Poor Essien may again be called on to fill in along the back line, which to be frank is such a waste of his talents. Moreover, with Didier Drogba currently out injured and Andriy Shevchenko not providing any convincing evidence that he can reclaim his AC Milan form, i worry over who will produce up front. Salomon Kalou has shown some promise but is clearly not at a point where he'll routinely get on the score sheet. And i really don't want to hang our hopes on whether free transfer Claudio Pizarro performs beyond his purchase price.

The Blue's ho-hum £115m squad. It's difficult to assess Chelsea's footballing merits without devolving into a series of gripes, but i'll make an attempt. Much lip service has been paid this summer towards the evolution of Chelsea into a stylish attacking team, moving away from the workmanlike, mechanical approach José Mourinho has used to win five trophies in the last three years. Can we organize a penetrating and flowing attack with ball control-style strikers like Didier Drogba and Andriy Shevchenko? Can Robben be reintegrated into our offensive philosophy? Can we ease our reliance on Frank Lampard's scoring? Can Ballack do something useful? I have my doubts. Our most high-profile summer signing Florent Malouda has impressed on the wing in preseason, but Mateja Kezman dazzled in the U.S. summer tour three years ago, so who knows how he'll pan out once the games mean something. Bayern Munich import Claudio Pizarro is a big question mark ... he could stake a claim for a starting striker spot or replicate the aforementioned Kezman experience. My principal hope for the Blues' attack is that Joe Cole can stay healthy and demonstrate to the league how much he has grown in the last three years. However, to be honest i can't produce an attacking lineup from Shevchenko, Drogba, Kalou, Pizarro, Lampard, Cole, Malouda, Ballack, Essien, and Mikel that would make me feel like we could outscore Rooney, Tevez, Giggs, Ronaldo, and Scholes. We'll win plenty of games with our depth, to be sure, but in absolute terms i can't make a decent argument that we are the strongest team in England, unlike in years past.

In defense, our problem last year was primarily injuries. This season isn't off to a particularly bright start in that department with news that skipper John Terry is out for a month with a knee injury, and midfield stonewall Claude Makelele is out awhile as well. Ricardo Carvalho is a worthy deputy, but the biggest defensive upgrade we've made this summer has been the signing of Tal Ben Haim from Bolton. I have no idea who he impressed at Stamford Bridge. We may yet capture Brazilian wing backs Alex and Daniel Alves, but in their absence our defense will be rounded out by some combination of Wayne Bridge, Paulo Ferreira, Ashley Cole, and Glen Johnson. None make me feel we have a Roberto Carlos-like attacking option coming forward from the defense, and none reassure me that we can shut down marauding wingers. If we can convince Sevilla to let him go, Alves would be an excellent attacking upgrade. I however am still regretting the loss of rock-solid center back William Gallas before last season.

Soothsaying. United win the league comfortably. Liverpool snatch the second automatic Champions League spot from Chelsea. And to go out on a limb and make a real outlandish prediction, Newcastle pips Arsenal for the fourth Champions League place. New favorites Barcelona win a Liga Primera/Champions League double, defeating United in Moscow in the European final. And by October i'm more excited for Sunday NFL than Saturday Premiership.

Veronica and i celebrated our third wedding anniversary with a trip to Watercourse Way in Palo Alto on Saturday night. We used a bounty of gift certificates given to us by my family to enjoy a 90 minute couples sauna and massage session. Thoughts that filtered through my head while relaxing ...

• This sauna could malfunction and slow roast V and i, like the Pierce Brosnan-voiced automated house gone haywire in that Simpsons Treehouse of Horror skit.
• Getting a masseuse named Ingrid is not a good sign for a fragile wimp like myself.
• Is my butt showing?
• The next natural progression in this massage would be for Ingrid to do an elbow drop on me, WWF style.
• The playlists on these spa iPods have got to be a hoot.

V and i watched the Frodo-as-a-thug vehicle Green Street Hooligans on Sunday night courtesy of Netflix, and to be honest that's two hours of my life i want back. I should've had some inkling when during the opening credits i noticed that Barmy Army author and apparent hooligan profiteer Dougie Brimson figured prominently in the writing of the film. Apparently i knew this back when the film was released, but this tidbit had long ago been forgotten. After watching about 1/3 of the movie, Veronica was ready to quit, but i was resolved to see this schlock-fest through to the end. As today's post seems to be list-happy, i'll condense my gripes into such a representation. If you don't want Green Street Hooligans spoiled for you (although to be honest, the film does a fine job of that on its own), then stop reading now.

• First off, the plot is totally freakin' ridiculous. Characters are wafer-thin (to quote John Cleese's enormous restaurant goer in The Meaning of Life). Claire Forlani's role is essentially to cry and look helpless ... the right hand man in the West Ham firm decides to betray his gang to their Millwall nemeses on little more than a whim and with absolutely no consideration of what might happen to his friends because of this ... the brother of the head hooligan, who in a development that should surprise no one is revealed as the former head of the firm, regrets his time in the Green Street Elite but has no problem sending his naïve brother-in-law off to hang out with them knowing full well where this will go.
• Dougie Brimson perplexes me. He spends half of Barmy Army complaining about what he calls the sensationalistic and unbelievable account of hooliganism by American writer Bill Buford in Among the Thugs. Now he's produced a movie that seems almost drawn from that text. In Barmy Army, he complains that no American journalist would be welcomed into a firm. In Green Street Hooligans, he's got Elijah Wood as an American journalist (although to be fair, he conceals his journalistic leanings from his new friends) becoming quickly integrated into such a gang. Hrm?
• In his writings Brimson rails on about the evils of hooliganism, but as i commented with Barmy Army, he seems to be more than a little nostalgic about his days in a gang. This sentiment comes across loud and clear in GSH, with the fight scenes more or less glamorizing the rush of fighting alongside your mates. There's no horror in any of the fights, i wasn't shocked. Compare that to A Clockwork Orange, where i was god damn traumatized by the violence. Here it's designed almost as if to get people thinking, "that looks like fun!" Does Brimson want to combat hooliganism or extol the virtues of a real-life Fight Club? Or make a buck off public concern over the issue (most likely)? As one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer accurately points out, the film's message seems to be "violence is bad, except when it feels good, or helps solve our problems." Director Lexi Alexander tries to depict the final gang fight in a more realistic, bloody manner so as to expose her audience to the evils of this lifestyle, but as Veronica put it, it's downright retarded for all the characters to suddenly think, "wait a minute! This is wrong!", not to mention the audience sharing that brainstorm.
• Who the hell gives a Chelsea grin with a f@$#ing credit card? Have the filmmakers never seen The Krays? Or was the thought of someone's mouth getting slit ear-to-ear with a knife just a little too depressing?
• To get really nitpicky, the timeline of the movie doesn't make sense. Wood gets expelled from Harvard with "only a couple of months until graduation", which assuming he's following the standard academic calendar (and judging by the weather) would put his departure around April. Wood then immediately travels to England, and is taken into the hooligan culture on his first day there. West Ham's season however would be ending in roughly a month (mid-May). So does Wood's thug life take place in a scant four weeks, or is it spread over the next year with a big break for the summer? The fact that the penultimate West Ham-Millwall encounter occurs in the FA Cup quarterfinals basically proves the latter, but calls into question how Wood bonded with his new buddies when the summer would've interrupted his budding friendships shortly after they were so rudely introduced.
• To ruin the movie's ending ... so Frodo's personal journey led him to the realization that he could tape his drug addict roommate to get him to admit that it was he and not Wood who was responsible for the cocaine that got Wood expelled? Really? It took all those beatings to give you that brilliant idea, huh Einstein?
• Lastly, the movie closes with Wood strolling down a Boston street singing a West Ham fight song. So for all his troubles, his time with the hooligans was a good thing? Is that the message Brimson is trying to convey? What's a few cracked skulls and broken noses when getting loaded with your mates and supporting your club?

Apparently Veronica and i can't get enough of the thug life however, as after watching this travesty Veronica added the 1988 British TV movie The Firm starring Gary Oldman to our Netflix queue.

Okay, the most enthralling part of Bloc Party anthem "Banquet" is captured in a two second portion of the chorus between "to feel her" and "underneath", in a seemingly simple seven note Russell guitar flourish. The complexity and emotion of that minor riff is beyond any of the refrains or guitar duels on the rest of the track.

Rock! Robot rock!

New posts to fac13 have been few and far between due to my work schedule of late. When i go to meetings, i often find myself taking a sort of punctuated vacation, watching lots of Law & Order and doting on my website between sessions. Not this time ... i spent my time in Minneapolis hob nobbing and surveying the state of medical physics. I actually did watch a fair bit of L&O, but instead of doing web things on my laptop while guessing Jack McCoy's next move, i was adding features to my über-image analysis tool RT_Image. My new Indie Elevator site has languished unattended since i registered the domain, although i have made a couple of sketches of how i'd like it to be laid out that are awaiting transformation into cyber-reality.

I got an email from the Chelsea megastore a few weeks back relating that i can now purchase their horrifically ugly neon yellow away kit. However, buried in that email was an intriguing reference to a new Adidas Chelsea Samba. I checked it out and was very impressed with the "Chelsea Samba Millenium", and ordered two pairs. I brought one with me to L.A. and subsequently Minneapolis, and it is now my favorite shoe. Hee.

One of the non-academic reasons for my lackadaisical reporting of late has been the laundry list of tasks waiting to be performed at home. This list includes, but is by no means limited to:

• Finish painting the trim in our newly refloored and repainted bedroom,
• Install a new electrical and cable outlet in the bedroom to accomodate the new TV location,
• Move our bedroom furniture from its temporary residence in the living room and garage back to its proper location,
• Install a network outlet in the back of the house to create an out-of-the-way place to house our assorted network hardware and desktop PC,
• Plan and implementing an Airtunes network using the Airport Express given to my for my birthday by Arlene, Alan, and Ana,
• And refinish the rest of the hardwood floors, put in a new bathroom tub, floors, and sink, build a second bedroom and bathroom, dig a pool, etc etc ...

The rest of my time in Minneapolis wasn't especially thrilling. I attempted to hook up with A³, but i didn't have time to drive the three hours down to Iowa and due to Ana's summer camp they were unable to take a day to drive up. Oh well. On my last night there i went to a Brazilian steakhouse with some of my colleagues. They advertise those things all over the inflight magazines, but i had never been to one before. It's all-you-can-eat, and gauchos wander through the dining room with pieces of meat on spits, carving some off for you if you've set your tabletop card to the green face. When you're full, you turn the card to its red side. Which you find you have to do fairly quickly as otherwise your plate becomes a hulking pile of meat. I returned home on Thursday evening, just beating the thunderstorms in Minneapolis and spending my flight coding a dicom tag editor in IDL and listening to Iron Maiden on my iPod.

No rest for the wicked as after a brief reintroduction to my office at Stanford on Friday, i met up with Kevin and Shyoko (up for the weekend from L.A.) as well as Veronica to go see Daft Punk in Berkeley. I successfully lobbied for a pre-show Top Dog, which of course meant we missed the first 10 minutes of openers the Rapture, further emphasizing V's dislike of the anarchist Berkeley sausage establishment. After the show the four of us got a late dinner at Sparky's in the city before heading home to collapse. While V had to work on Saturday, i took the SoCal folks for breakfast at Bob's Courthouse Restaurant in RC. We then collected Veronica and did some shopping. Kevin and Shyoko drove off to the city for a few hours while V and i recharged our batteries, grabbing another late night dinner at Tarboosh upon reconnoitering. On Sunday we tagged along with K+S to search for egg custard cups in Chinatown. Turns out we picked a lousy day to go to SF, as traffic was jammed because of Barry Bonds's continuing quest for the home run record as well as the Folsom Street Fair. We managed to get to Chinatown in a reasonable amount of time, but found our bakery of choice was closed. We settled for decent dim sum at a hole-in-the-wall joint. That evening i brought my Xbox over to Stanford chum Sandip's house for a long-overdue gaming session, in which i performed well at NBA 2K7 but got my clock cleaned by Fred in Madden 2007. My Patriots offense couldn't handle the blitz, and my defense could not break up the Manning-to-Harrison connection.

Unfortunately my breakneck pace finally caught up with me on Sunday night, as i succumbed to the first stages of a head cold. However, in what must be yet another sign of my maturity, i forced myself to go to work on Monday and Tuesday because of prior commitments. On Wednesday i could've afforded to take a day off, but my illness had abated by then. Being responsible blows.

This new trend of sing-along game shows is awful. Both variants (Don't Forget the Lyrics and the Singing Bee) are endlessly repetitive exercises in nitpicking. "Oh, i'm sorry. You sang "She's got a ticket to ride, and she don't care." The actual lyric is "She's got a ticket to ride, but she don't care." Too bad." A few weeks back, favorite pop-culture review show The Soup skewered host Joey Fatone and the ridiculous last round intro consisting of a cheesy rendition of Europe's "The Final Countdown". The next week, Fatone exuded a "this is so silly" vibe during the same segment. Way to rise above public criticism, dude.