Call me blue collar (yay! double entendre!), but this:

was not what i expected to see when i read the caption:

Lampard takes Dyer roughly from behind.

rich kid limp into the limousine surround the wagons and we'll burn 'em to the ground i fought for years for that pole position you were the king, now they've torn your paper crown roll over thunder, big pile i'm under i'm no lawyer you're no judge, it's my right and i won't budge i don't wanna be ridin' high i don't need that to be satisfied say you're the surgeon but i've seen you shaking you've let the orderlies order you around i'll eat the fruit when it's ripe and ready my hands are steady and i move without a sound

Spent the weekend doing the Christmas shopping with V ... oddly enough, one week before the holiday is "early" for the two of us. I also got in some work, domestic and professional, on Saturday while V headed up to the city for some professional work of her own. I raked leaves from the seemingly endless stream being dumped on our yard by our foliage, got my car's oil changed, and reviewed some overdue papers for a few journals. I also made some progress on Rainbow Six: Vegas. It hasn't wowed me yet ... the fact that it begins in a Mexican town that suspiciously resembles the Mexico City setting of another Clancy effort, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, didn't help. Perhaps now that i've made it to Vegas things will pick up. I'm still in love with Guitar Hero II, especially after rocking out with Hilary and Jeff last week. I'm about 75% through the game on hard difficulty, but am currently stuck on the fiendishly hard "Stop" by Jane's Addiction. And i only got there because i managed to fumble through Heart's "Crazy On You". I passed a few songs on expert difficulty, and was coasting through Danzig's "Mother" before the guitar solo reared its ugly head and ground me into dust. What a great game. Rock on.

Wal-Mart at Christmas-time ... one word: Thunderdome. Two men enter. One man leaves. With or without a slightly dinged Panasonic TV. During a marathon holiday shopping spree on Saturday night, which spanned Best Buy, Target, Toys R' Us, Bloomingdales, Macy's, and Nordstrom, V and i decided to make a late-night (~midnight) trip across the bay to Sam Walton's consumer mecca. Basically to see if they'd had any surprise Wii shipments and to pick up some odds and ends. Arriving at the parking lot of the Union City shopping sprawl, i pulled into a spot a bit away from the store and was dismayed at all the broken glass surrounding the space. Hrm. Let's try somewhere else. We found a spot about fifty yards closer to the store entrance, but exiting the car were perplexed by the pile of shopping carts massed next to our spot. The vacuum cleaner crowning the mountain was especially odd. Once inside Wal-Mart, i got the distinct impression that at any moment two or more people could throw down in a battle to the death. Some even seemed prepared for such an occasion, wandering around the store in shin-pads and bandanas, sporting weapons like staple guns. Employees perhaps, but i didn't see any name tags on them. V was privy to a conversation amongst a family inspecting safes, in which the mother advised her son that it didn't have to just protect money and valuables ... "you can put other stuff in there too". Way to go, mom. We decided to high-tail it out of there after just ten minutes.

Thunderdome's simple. Get to the weapons, use them any way you can. I know you won't break the rules ... there aren't any.

I took it upon myself to secure a Wii for Veronica on Sunday morning, and set my alarm for 6am so i could secure a good spot in line at Toys R' Us or Best Buy. I managed to crawl out of bed at 6:20am, but V convinced me to return until 7am. I left her slumbering with Tara at 7:20am, and headed off to Best Buy. Joining the 20 or so other Wii hunters, i learned the store had distributed vouchers at 7am and if you didn't get one, chances are you weren't getting a system. So i drove over to the Redwood City Toys R' Us to try my luck there. The same situation was in effect at that location, but i decided to stick around until the store opened at 8am, rather than cruising the peninsula with my fellow hunters. If i thought Wii-queuers were annoying while driving by them, that was nothing compared to actually waiting in line with them. At one point a kid in front of me, a fat sack who wouldn't stop fidgeting and discussing what he was going to do with his new toy, looked down the line at me and the others who'd arrived after vouchers were handed out and said "i hope all these people aren't waiting for Wiis". To which i, were i a more vocal evil genius, would have replied "i hope you don't think you're getting to the car with yours, tubby". When the doors finally opened i cruised into the electronics area, confirmed that there were only the 22 boxes for which slips had been distributed, and departed. Trips by Target and GameStop showed that similar crowds had amassed there as well. Doh ... no Wii this time. The guy immediately in front of me at Toys R' Us, one of the less annoying of the lot, told someone he'd done this three weeks in a row without success. Luckily for him, he got the last voucher this time.

This experience got me thinking about today's children. I recall a passage from the first Encyclopedia Brown book, in which some character development for the boy detective was established. Someone asked him for a crossword puzzle answer, a three-letter river in Switzerland starting with A. "The Aar", he replied after a few second pause. He always paused before providing information because he didn't want people to think he was smarmy or thought he was superior to them because of his inteliigence. That's a lesson i took to heart ... i generally try to allow the possibility that i'm wrong when having an argument with someone. Because it's been known to happen. And i know there's nothing more infuriating than having someone tell you something that's clearly incorrect, but they will not acknowledge the possibility that they could be erroneous. However today, especially in a place like the bay area where you've got lots of educated people who've instilled in their children the value of intellect, this point seems to have been lost. There seems to be a lot of kids that revel in telling people they're wrong. Or exerting superiority through this mechanism. Part of it may also relate to the current political climate, whose legacy may be the concept that you don't need facts to prove a point, you just need an opinion and zealousness.

My Wii failure Sunday morning colored my afternoon, as V and i continued shopping at Target, Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond, GameStop, and Toys R' Us (yet again). I generally enjoy the holiday atmosphere. However on Sunday i wanted all these annoying people dead. We completed most of our purchases by 4pm, and headed home to relax for an hour before heading over to the Doubletree for the MIPS holiday party. It was a fun evening hanging out with good Stanford friends including Frank and Jennifer, Fred, Amanda, and Ethan, Sandip, and everyone else. Capped off by some self-conscious dancing by myself to a variety of disco and pop tracks. Eek.

I can't tell you what hotel i'm staying at, but there are two trees involved. They said, let's call this hotel something tree, so they had a meeting. It was quite short. How about Tree? No. Doubletree? Hell yeah! Meeting adjourned! I had my heart set on Quadrupletree.

Just watched the highlights of Chelsea's come-from-behind 3-2 win over Everton on Sunday. Wow. I already knew the result, but just the highlights had me pumping my fist. Three fabulous Chelsea goals ... Lampard's bullet was amazing, you could see the Everton keeper was f@$#ed from the moment Lamps struck the ball. And then Drogba one-upped him with the winner at the death, another unbelievable something-from-nothing strike from the in-form forward. With United suffering a shock defeat to struggling West Ham, the Blues are now just two points off the lead. Could this be the inspirational win the Londoners need to rally to their third consecutive title? I wouldn't doubt it.

Nothing relieves stress like chasing down a car that cut you off, running it off the road, dragging the driver onto the pavement and beating him to a bloody pulp, and then absconding with his cash and vehicle. In Grand Theft Auto, that is. In real life i usually just mutter a few naughty words under my breath and drive on, hence the beauty of having a video alter-ego. I'm a firm proponent of more violence in video games. My predilection for this type of games has planted me firmly in the Sony/Microsoft console camp, as they've both built systems largely on the back of first-person shooters and other action titles. I've meanwhile mostly ignored Nintendo's offerings, as to overgeneralize they draw from a small stable of established characters (Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc) and pander to children. Nintendo has been able to become a gaming giant with this philosophy but i, like many of my gen X brethren, enjoy our video games of the more mature variety.

So when Sony and Nintendo went head-to-head with the release of the Playstation 3 and Wii, i was firmly behind Sony. Given that the five year-old PS2 has one of the best video game libraries ever (going backwards ... Guitar Hero, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Gran Turismo, the aforementioned Grand Theft Auto series, Metal Gear Solid, SSX, to name a few), the sheer computing power and video options of the PS3, and the widespread popularity of the Playstation in gaming ground zero Japan, i fully expected the Sony system to trounce its Nintendo competitor. By all reports Nintendo was basically releasing the Gamecube under a silly new label ... no significant computing upgrades, no HD support, just this gimmicky motion-sensitive controller that everyone and their mother hailed as the next wave in gaming. No contest, right?

Never underestimate the power of marketing. That buzz about the Wii's controller only accelerated in the days leading up to launch. Meanwhile Sony was busy addressing a million concerns about the PS3, ranging from industry acceptance of its new Blu-Ray standard to just how many of these things were going to be available come November 17. And when launch day arrived, the consumers voted not on computing power or game libraries, but on marketing and availability. The Wii roundly trounced the PS3 out of the gates, both because stores actually had a few of them (the Toys 'R Us had about 50 Wiis on launch day, compared to 4 (4?!?!) PS3s). Whether they intended to or not, Sony duplicated and expanded upon the PS2 launch, where chronic shortages plagued stores and consumers. For the PS2, that (coupled with a good launch lineup) created a buzz about the system. In the case of the PS3, it seems to have annoyed people more than anything, causing their attentions to veer over to the more available and much less expensive Wii.

This really pissed me off. Sony seems to be trying to sell systems on future promises than the current situation. I want to see the Playstation once again muscle out Nintendo and their camp of plumbers and teddy bears. I don't want to see the PS3 die and be forced to play my watered-down shooters by pointing a remote control at the screen. For all i know the Wii might be lots of fun, but i simply don't WANT it to replace the tried-and-true two-stick controller. But i can't refute the majority of reviewers who've decided that the Wii was the clearcut winner of the pre-holiday release. I can't see myself hunting down a PS3 anytime before spring. To be honest, i can't see stores having regular stock of the system much before June 2007. Dagnabit. Hopefully Microsoft will lose a little less money with this incarnation of the Xbox, possibly ensuring its survival as the über-gamer alternative to the Wii for the masses.

I don't think you realize how serious this operation is! It's very serious! You will not have a brain when it is complete!

You know what one of those things can do? Suck the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro!

While i was cavorting around Chicago, V tivoed and watched Brokeback Mountain. She enjoyed it, and finally got me to sit down and watch it last Saturday. Veronica had warned me that she spent the first half hour or so trying to decipher what Heath Ledger was mumbling, and i did too. Despite my difficulties in translating the first act, i quite liked the film. It's one however i wish i had seen before experiencing the pop culture it spawned. I found it difficult in parts to appreciate the well-portrayed hardships of the characters without having three Brokeback jokes pop into my head. It was a very moving story, although i thought Ang Lee didn't go into quite enough depth regarding the nature of Jack and Ennis's attraction, especially how it came about and how they rationalize it. But these are minor quibbles, it was truly a thought-provoking film.

While lounging around the house on Sunday, i stumbled across Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven on HBO. Having an interest in medieval history, i settled in to watch it while folding laundry. The Orlando Bloom crusades epic had a problem similar to that of Brokeback Mountain, although in this case it wasn't that the characters mumbled, it was that the audio level varied from muted whispers in conversation to the screeching noise of battle. So in an effort to avoid awakening the slumbering Veronica, i had to strain to pick up all the nuances of the dialog. I thought the story was reasonable, although it did bend over backwards to paint the Muslims as the valiant protagonists of the crusades. Now before you go accusing me of being brainwashed by Debbie Schlussel, i would tend to think that Saladin's recapture of the Holy Land and Jerusalem was warranted by the horrible religious near-genocide perpetrated by the Europeans in the First Crusade. However, the film certainly omits some of Saladin's nastier acts and paints some of the European characters in broad good/bad strokes to drive home its message. But these historical triffles aside, its final message as delivered by Bloom's Balian character is a good one: holy wars should not trump human life, and holy warriors should remember that they are fighting for their brethren and not a piece of wood or a hill.

As evidenced by my movie consumption, i mostly hung around the house this weekend. V and i did drive up to Bacar in SF on Sunday night for her office holiday party. She'd organized it, so there was some added stress for her in ensuring enough people showed up and the restaurant had seats for all of them. The food was quite good, although i didn't much care for the creamy sauce they doled onto the savory mesquite-grilled Mahi Mahi. We returned home to find our naughty dog had gone through the garbage and eaten a pound of old cheese. She'll be refunding that, if not last night during her bathroom trip outside then today sometime. We then played the finale of the Amazing Race from the tivo. Both V and i were pulling for the Alabama team, although we conceded that if it came down to any kind of footrace then they were screwed. Turns out they missed the early flight from Paris to NYC and were basically out of it at that point. I was thrilled that the constantly bickering Rob and Kim team didn't win, although the smarmy male model/former heroin addict team that prevailed wasn't all that better.

I bought the acclaimed Rainbow Six: Vegas for the 360 last Thursday, but haven't had a chance yet to give it a whirl. I'm curious about the feature whereby you can use the Xbox Live Vision camera to take front and side photos of yourself and map them onto the head of your RSV character. Might be a reason to buy the $40 Vision. We also picked up the three Burger King Xbox games for $4 apiece last Saturday. V played the pocket racer one on Sunday afternoon and said it was pretty hard. However, it's probably worth $4 just to see a digitized Brooke Burke wearing a red jumpsuit and squatting on a pocket bike. If only she could bust out with some Rock Star dialog too, like "We've seen twelve amazing performances by twelve outstanding rockers, but none of them can beat me on my pocket bike!" And oh man, if Dave Navarro popped up every now and then to say "you know, i didn't know if you could pull off this race, and then you started, and ... you were AWESOME!" Maybe BK can incorporate that into the $8 deluxe edition. V has ramped up her efforts to land a Wii, and we spent some of Saturday night calling the array of Targets and Toys 'R Uses in our area. No dice. However, it seems the next shipment is arriving at all these stores on December 17, meaning i may be spending next Saturday night camping outside our local Target. As much as i would like a PS3, given the absolutely ridiculous state of distribution of those systems i've given up hope until the spring.

I picked up Perfumed Lands by the Isles, thinking that comparisons to the Smiths are usually a good thing. I think the New Yorkers have gone overboard here though ... the Johnny Marr flourishes and Morrissey-esque lyrical content and delivery diverge from "inspired by" and move into "stolen from".

I made another discovery yesterday. Once you take the time to work out the mechanics of Guitar Hero on the harder difficulties, it becomes the greatest game ever made. The learning curve is made easier (although not much) if you've got some guitar experience and know the meaning of terms like "hammer on" and "pull off". I was with the masses after i first started playing GH2, agreeing that the difficulty had increased sharply since the original and made it a challenge to complete songs even on the medium setting. However last night i sat down and worked my way through the first four song groups on hard, and by the end was strutting around the living room doing my assorted rock star poses. My high point came after belting out the kickass "Monkey Wrench", rocking my way through the epic "War Pigs" while showing off some Eddie Van Halen-esque fretwork.

generals gathered in their masses
just like witches at black masses

(devil signs in effect)

I missed an anniversary the other day ... December 5, 2006 makes it a full year that i have been accumulating listening statistics. Happy birthday to fac13 stats.

And the final tallies for the year, culled from 653 hours, 45 minutes, and 58 seconds of musical enjoyment, spread over 10,370 tracks:

Top artists 1. Jim Gaffigan 9:45:20 2. Yo La Tengo 7:30:23 3. Revolver 6:21:57	Top albums 1. Tom Vek, We Have Sound 4:50:31 2. Editors, The Back Room 4:42:12 3. Revolver, Cold Water Flat 4:41:45
Top songs 1. Abandoned Pools, "Armed To The Teeth" 27 plays 2. Revolver, "Red All Over" 17 plays 3. Revolver, "Shakedown" 14 plays	Top genres 1. Indie Rock 210:10:52 2. Modern Rock 100:44:36 3. Indie Pop 73:12:49

The most frequent question i field about my ever-expanding mp3 collection is how i manage to listen to it all. The simple answer is, i don't. I have many, many things tucked away in there that i have never heard. Some of these unheard pleasures (or pains) are there because i'm a perfectionist ... for example, i have the entire David Bowie backcatalog because i appreciate his influential role in the evolution of modern music, not because i care to listen to it. I'm actually not a big Bowie fan to begin with. Ditto Bob Dylan. Others are there because Allmusic uttered the proper code words to get me interested ... angular is a good one, shoegazing will also pique my curiosity.

This response begs a second question, which is if i don't listen to a lot of things in my library, why do i keep them? A fair question, and one for which i should have a good answer since keeping my library intact has required the purchases of larger and larger hard drives. One potential answer is so that i can boast about all the music i have, and to be honest, i can't completely deny that interpretation. However, i like to think the driving reason is that by having a lot of unlistened music hanging about, i provide myself the opportunity to make fantastic musical discoveries while listening to iTunes on random. Today's case in point was Envelopes. A Swedish/French collective categorized as indie pop/rock (reason enough for me to pick it up), i downloaded their album Demon (which Allmusic tells me is Swedish for "demos", and does not denote an evil spirit). As with many other things, it got tagged, labeled with cover artwork, filed in my iTunes library, and promptly forgotten. But the miracle of iTunes shuffling put me onto its opening track "It Is the Law" today, and the revelational experience i so hunger for ensued. A plucked folk riff is followed by a crash of drums, a thumping bassline, and sustained Cure-esque synths. It's like everything the Legends tried to do on Public Radio, only it works. The album fluctuates between the pop and rock ends of the indie spectrum, but with consistent results.

When someone begins the occasional suggestion with the phrase "How about ...", am i the only one who consistently feels compelled to complete their sentence (either mentally or verbally) with "a nice, greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray"?

Maybe watching Weird Science once a day for two years did have an effect on my adolescent psyche.

Scoring and cards are way down from last year ... it seems we weren't practicing our striking (or tackling) adequately in the year since the 2005 tourney. Interestingly, there are very few holdovers in the scoring table from last year, with Gaizka Mendieta shooting from a tie for 9th place to 2nd place. Lampard dropped off the map, while Shevchenko picked up some of the slack in his debut for the Blues. Obviously Middlesbrough dominated the nets, with six players in the top thirteen. We're all playing nicer this year too (Gary ...), with eight yellow cards comprising the only run-ins with the refs.

Scoring table   Player (Team)   H A   T 1 Aiyegbeni (Middlesbrough)   2 5   7 2 Mendieta (Middlesbrough)   4 2   6 3 Shevchenko (Chelsea)   1 4   5 4 Viduka (Middlesbrough)   3 1   4 5 Saha (Manchester United)   2 1   3 6 Drogba (Chelsea)   2 0   2 Robben (Chelsea)   1 1   2 8 Downing (Middlesbrough)   1 0   1 Barton (Manchester City)   0 1   1 Beasley (Manchester City)   0 1   1 Christie (Middlesbrough)   0 1   1 Corradi (Manchester City)   0 1   1 Morrison (Middlesbrough)   0 1   1

Fair play table   Team   Y R   T 1 Chelsea   0 0   0 2 Manchester United   1 0   1 Middlesbrough   1 0   1 4 Manchester City   6 0   6

November was a sparse time for posting. Probably due to the fact that trips to Philadelphia and Chicago bookended the month, and that my research is continually expanding and taking up more and more of my time. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Quite a good thing, actually. Anyway ...

My time in Chicago at the RSNA was pleasant. Not for academic reasons ... the meeting is a huge spectacle of business and networking, with some science sprinkled on here and there. But it did give me a chance to meet some new people and socialize with ones i already knew. On Sunday night my old friend Bill W braved the traffic and the labrynthine layout of McCormick Place to fetch me and bring me to his house in Aurora. His wife Elizabeth made us a nice ravioli dinner, and we reminisced while watching the Chelsea/Manchester United match from earlier that day. A 1-1 draw for the Blues, and a great evening with two good friends. And their very friendly dog Harry, a giant Airedale.

As usual, i watched a lot of Law and Order and the History Channel during my time on the road. I've also found that perusing Wikipedia is a fantastic way to kill an hour or four. It goes particularly well with the aforementioned History Channel. I watched a documentary on Hannibal, and pulled out my laptop to check Wiki for further info, and wound up reading about the Roman emperors, Caligula, and bizarre 70's shock films.

I returned from Chicago last Wednesday, a day after i attended the Stanford Radiology reception at the amphitheater at Millenium Park. I was worried about arriving at the reception along and being a wallflower for the evening, but luckily i ran into Radiation Oncology colleague Kate immediately upon entering the venue, and soon was chatting happily with a bunch of MIPS and Radiology chums. At the close of the reception, my Atlanta partner-in-crime Sandip and i walked up to the Hyatt Regency to pick up a couple of suitcases from a friend of our MIPS colleague Jianghong, for delivery back to the Farm. A bit shady ... absolutely. As Sandip put it, an opportunity to finally give an interesting answer to the airport security question, "Did you pack these bags yourself and have they been in your possession since then?" Too bad they don't ask that anymore. Sandip returned to his hotel to finish off his talk for the next morning, but i was tabbed by our friend and Nuclear Medicine resident Andrei to meet him at a blues bar, for the expressed purpose of keeping him company in the midst of his other companions, all married women. I got to Buddy Guy's Legends at 11:30pm, and had a few drinks with the Stanford crowd while watching a decent group jam. I'm not a huge fan of the blues, but somehow when you're in Chicago, it's after midnight, and you're on your god-knows-what drink, it sounds perfect.

My return flight was a much better experience than the way out, thanks to a plane that was only a third full. I was worried when thunderstorms woke me up Wednesday morning, but luckily the weather didn't delay my flight. I got out of the windy city just in time, as Thursday temperatures dropped 30 degrees. Egad. I wandered through the airport bookstore to find some reading material, and was intrigued by Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City, a chronicle of the pop culture guru's time growing up in rural North Dakota, idolizing Mötley Crüe and Poison. It's an interesting read, although Klosterman has a few habits that are particularly annoying. One is equating commercial success with importance, or in other words claiming that band X is better than Y because they sold more records. Certainly that's true in terms of society, but i'm more interested in personal importance. If someone loves a band and their music, they don't care whether they're the only one that bought the record or if everyone in the country has a copy. Well, that might not be entirely true (and one could argue preferences towards either situation), but it remains insulting for one to hear that their passion is somehow inferior or less valid. I got through about half of it before i turned towards writing a paper on my laptop.

I had a scant two days to enjoy Redwood City, home, and the Tara dog before V and i hopped in the Jetta to drive down to LA. We made it out of the house on Friday at 3:30pm, and took the poor doggie over to her weekend home at the Mission San Jose Animal Hospital. We then took off down the 880 to the 101, naturally running smack into rush hour San Jose traffic. It didn't slow us more than a half hour thankfully, and we made it to Kevin's apartment in Santa Monica around 10pm. Fetching him and subsequently his girlfriend Amy, we met up with the Matthew/Dionne/Michelle/Sean crowd at the 10th anniversary of longstanding britpop club Cafe Blue. On our drive down, V had expressed dismay that i never really cut loose with her, citing as examples my doing shots with Rudha in Boston but never with her. After a few beers at the club, i made the command decision to right this wrong and bought kamikaze shots for V, Kevin, Amy, and myself. We downed those, although V couldn't make it through hers so i wound up with another half a shot. Suddenly i was the life of the party, lighting up the dance floor. I wasn't taken with Cafe Blue, as i recall repeatedly mentioning how suddenly Popscene was totally genius to me. We stuck around to the end of the evening, suffering through the club's abysmal audio system. I mean, what self-respecting britpop club cuts off Pulp's "Common People"? We then drunkenly decided that late-night food was in order, and headed over to Benito's for burritos. I got some carnitas, but arriving back at Kevin's found i was fighting nausea and didn't wind up consuming it. Everyone else told me it was fabulous, however. Before we all passed out, we got in an hour or so of Guitar Hero II as well as Kevin's new acquisition Sing Star, a microphone-wielding karaoke game for the PS2 featuring an impressive collection of indie hits including Bloc Party, the Killers, and (eek) Scissor Sisters. The highlight of the wee morning was that none of us knew the actual melody to Elton John's "Rocket Man", and wound up performing various renditions of the William Shatner/Stewie Griffin version.

Passing out on Kev's couch at 4:30am, i managed three hours sleep before nausea forced me to the bathroom. I managed to quell my hangover and get a few more zzz's, after which our crew walked over to Hurry Curry for what Kevin billed as a fairly effective hangover remedy. It worked admirably, but unfortunately by this time my sinuses were well on their way to full obstruction. We bid farewell to K&A so we could rendez-vous at Matthew and Dionne's, and take long-overdue showers. In celebration of Matt's birthday, we then drove back to Santa Monica for dinner at Bubba Gump's. By this time my nose was mostly for show, and i suffered through dinner with a reduced appetite. It seems they don't serve my previous Gump favorite of lemon pasta and shrimp anymore, and the scampi wasn't a good substitute. Our party returned to M&D's place for some post-dinner revelry, including ... dum da dum dum ... the 2006 incarnation of the SMFA Cup.

it's raining outside, i haven't seen it rain so much
i can't ride my bike, wish the sun would shine a while
let's play for a while, can i play your record player?
let's call ourselves by indian names
let's build a tree fort in the den

Truth be told, Matthew is clearly my superior in this department now. He whooped my ass twice during our regular season (and rightfully did some serious celebrating in the process), and stomped his way into the playoffs, drawing only once to surprise defensive stalwart Gary. At the close of the season, the results were:

		OVERALL							HOME						AWAY
		P	W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		W	L	D	F	A		Pts		GD
Middlesbrough		6	5	0	1	14	3		2	0	1	5	0		3	0	0	9	3		16		11
Chelsea		6	2	2	2	7	8		1	1	1	3	5		1	1	1	4	3		8		-1
Manchester United		6	1	3	2	1	5		0	2	1	0	3		1	1	1	1	2		5		-4
Manchester City		6	0	3	3	0	6		0	3	0	0	6		0	0	3	0	0		3		-6

That got us into the knockout portion of the competition, which unfolded as follows ...

Middlesbrough (1)	6						1	Chelsea (2)
Aiyegbeni (2) Mendieta Downing Viduka (2)		Middlesbrough (1)	0		1	Chelsea (2)	Robben
Manchester City (4)	2				Shevchenko		0	Manchester United (3)
Barton Corradi

Despite surrending five goals in our first encounter and another two in the second, i somehow managed to thwart Matthew's attack in the 4:30am final and emerged with the trophy after a 1-nil win. It should be noted that the goal i scored was due to a keeper miscue by Matthew, passing straight back to a lingering Shevchenko and allowing him the easy strike, as opposed to any offensive cleverness on my part. We played our customary north-vs-south 2-on-2 at 4:45am, with each team using the US squad. And thanks to the notable dearth of talent in these squads, we went to penalties before Gary and i fell to Sean and Matthew. I climbed into the guest bed with Veronica around 5am ... my bedtime clearly not reflecting my advancing cold.

I had ordered custom t-shirts a week before the tourney, designing the logo at left in Photoshop (borrowing liberally from the Premiership logo) and making garments for each competitor with their team logo and record in each competition on the back. While originally scheduled for delivery on the Friday we left, inclement weather in the midwest delayed them until after the weekend, and the event. I received them last night and they look pretty nice, so now i'll have to send them on.

Memories of the Cup are peppered by the Guitar Hero and Sing Star forays being conducted on the TV next to the wall where Matthew projected the Xbox 360 and Winning Eleven. Veronica, Michelle, Danny, and even SMFA competitor Gary sang away, while Veronica spent some time unlocking a bunch of the GH2 songs. While the third place match between Sean and Gary was going on i played a bit of GH2 on the hard difficulty, tackling the fiendish "Who Was In My Room Last Night?" by the Butthole Surfers as well as Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name", which started off quite manageable then got insane during the solo. Perhaps the finger exercise got me warmed up for the SMFA final. I also must note that because of my deteriorating health and my experiences the previous night, i stuck to tea rather than beer that evening, a factor that may have also given me an advantage. I'll post the scoring and card statistics shortly.

I slept until almost 1pm on Sunday, catching up on my rest after two consecutive late late nights and trying to quell the advance of my illness. It worked somewhat, and i stayed coherent enough to enjoy a late afternoon visit to Veronica's aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother, followed by the customary six hour drive back north. Portions of the drive were spent futilely trying to remember the name of that Madonna album, the one with "Cherish", "Express Yourself", and "Like a Prayer". Turns out it's Like a Prayer. Go figure.

Somehow i managed to get a full day of work in on Monday, including the 5pm MIPS seminar and the following dinner at Left Bank. Veronica had retrieved the overjoyed Tara dog from the kennel that morning, and she was doing her usual exhausted but content routine on her bed when i came home. She seems excited and worn out all at once when she sees us again after an absence. Like she can finally relax once more. Perhaps i'm like that a bit.