http://adsoftheworld.com/media/tv/czech_rugby_association_footballs_for_girls

I stumbled across the above link that you will need to copy and paste. I thought it was pretty funny, and a sad commentary of just what has happened with soccer/football in 2008.

In the past few years, I have grown more and more disgusted with the cynical nature of soccer/football with all of the whining, diving and simulation. Back in the late 1970’s when I first fell in love with soccer, if a player like Kenny Dalglish or Kevin Keegen went to ground, chances are it was a burly English, Irish or Scottish defender who laid him out. In the English game, it was a mark of pride to try to stay on your feet in spite of contact. Sadly, that is not the case anymore. It seems like everybody is trying to “earn” a penalty kick, or a yellow card for an opposing player.

That is one of the reasons I love rugby. If somebody is lying flat on the ground, there is a bloody good reason they are lying prone. You would never see somebody fall to the ground like they were shot if somebody were to shove them like the shameful bit of play acting the Brazilian Rivaldo did to get a Turkish player tossed from a World Cup game back in 2002. In the last World Cup in 2006, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo seemed more interested in diving that actually trying to play the game. A very sad thing because when he wants to play, he is the best player on the planet, and he has outrageously sublime skills.

I admit, I still do watch the occasional football/soccer match, but I have to confess, I don’t watch as much as I did a few years ago.

Give me rugby anyday.

With 6 days to go before Elections in the US on November 4th  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7693987.stm, the candidates are kicking up the amount of political radio on TV commercials into hyper-drive. I am so sick of the political adds, which are really nothing more than expensive name-calling contests that are not a whole lot better than the average Kindergarten spat between schoolkids. Both sides have spent MILLIONS of dollars on these evil-spirited assaults on our senses. Given the fragile state of the US economy, the numbers spent on radio and TV political adds is nothing short of obscene. Even my very conservative, politically-oriented wife is sick of them-and this is a woman who thrives on talk radio the way a fish craves water.

Whoever wins this election is going to have to somehow unify Americans and make a team out of one seriously pissed off electorate in the US and try to let the healing begin. The brief period of American unity, brotherhood and cohesion after 9/11 is but a distant memory in this country.

The Killer B’s, our B team with my Metropolis Rugby Club lost their playoff game this past weekend to Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin 25-10. Their season is done, but I think by any measure, it has been a very, very successful Division III season. #1, it clearly has swelled the ranks of our club, #2, numbers at practice have been way up, #3, in the first year of playing a D III schedule, they made the playoffs in our region. That is no mean feat. Congratulations to Dalton, our B-side coach, who did such a good job with the side-and managed to get a run in a few games at flanker, as well.

The A side has our last home game this weekend at Columbia Park, in Northeast Minneapolis against #1 ranked Pearl City from Iowa. I am off on Friday night, so I will be able to make to the game this Saturday. Our club is having on Saturday evening, a halloween themed party at Legends Bar and Grill in Minneapolis. The theme is 80’s TV and movie personalities. My wife already has Star Wars costumes (Return of the Jedi came out in the early 80’s), and she will come as an Imperial Officer. My son and Andrea had the excellent suggestion of having me find a woman’s swimsuit and blond pigtail wig, and then go as an East German swimmer. I almost was going to go with that idea, but it does not really fit the theme of 80’s TV or Movies…not unless you say that the East Germans were on TV during the Olympics. Even then, the true heyday of the East German artificially enhanced female swimmers was in the 1976 and 1980 Olympics. I don’t know, I might get my hair done in a flat top, get some cammo paint, and go as Arnold Schwarzenegger from Commando.

My Metropolis Club has it’s AGM, Annual General Meeting on November 15th. We will vote on awards, and whatever else comes up. Last year’s decision to have the B squad play a DIII schedule was actually the subject of a lot of debate-more than a few players were against the idea. Luckily, the people like me who wanted to give it go were able to vote for it to come to pass. And as it turned out this year, it ended up being a very good decision, indeed.

Well, it is a sunny, beautiful fall day in the Twin Cities. I think I am going to go for a bike ride and go to the gym. It’s ‘Arm Day”, and it would just seem a pity to not take in the nice weather and go for a bike ride on the way to working out.

The answer to the above question is “La Coupe de Currie”. 

In the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the poster child for the French National Team was their number 8, and sometime second row, Sebastien Chabal. With his Rasputin-like beard and long dark hair, Chabal scored a couple of tries during the World Cup that left defenders lying on the pitch like broken trees when a twister has blown through. The shots of Chabal staring down the New Zealand All Blacks performing their Haka before France’s upset win in the quarterfinals is one of the lasting images from France 2007.

The excitement just never ends here in New Hope. I found out today that my wife was let go from her job. It was totally out of the blue-very frequently that seems to be the case in the US.

We’re in your corner, honey. Go get ‘em.

It’s not often that I come home from work after a night shift and run smack into a developing news story.

When I was driving home, I Noticed police cars with lights flashing on opposite ends of 49th Avenue, between Winnetka and Boone Avenues. I had to go a block up to 50th, and then go around to Zealand to get home. When I got home, I took Buddha and Basil for a walk-well, I tried to, we did not get very far. We got about a block east on 49th, when we met an M-16 toting Minnesota State Highway Patrolman, who gave the terse signal that we should do an about face and go back to whence we came. I noticed a KSTP news car parked on the area of Zealand at the end of the cul de sac, and looked up to see a KARE-11 helicopter overhead.

I got on my cell phone and called my wife, and told her to put the news on to see if they were showing any snippets of what exactly was going on here in my neighborhood this chilly (32degrees F, 0 degrees Celsius) Tuesday morning.

By the time I got back to my house and looked at the morning news, they showed a whole bunch of police cars, an ambulance and other emergency vechiles, right by my friend Jacque’s house on the corner of 49th and Winnetka. Apparently, somebody at around 50th and Winnetka started firing shots at around 6 AM.  The police set up a perimeter around the house and the neighborhood-remember, my area borders onto Cooper High School, so the police have the added responsibility of not just keeping the neighborhood safe, they have a school of over 2,000 students that they need to be aware of, as well.

As I sit writing this, I still hear the choppers overhead. I look at my front door and still see police cars with lights flashing. This thing is not resolved yet. As much as I would like to follow this, I need to get some sleep-I will just have to look at the news later today when I wake up to find out just like everybody else.

Still…a pretty unsettling way to come home from work.

UPDATE ADDENDUM:
I just woke up and checked the news. Here is what went down:  http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=527432&catid=14

Three people apparently were taken into custody, and nobody got hurt. It will be interesting to find out more as police question these suspects.

Today I celebrate 48 years on this planet in Waverly, Iowa-home of the Wartburg College Knights, and where I met and fell in love with my lovely red-head.

If Helen Keller fell alone in the woods, would she make any noise?

Unlike the previous couple of years, not too many cool trips in this rapidly vanishing year of our Lord, 2008. The trip Ian and I made to Texas does not count, because that was not a pleasure trip-my youngest sister Amy was in the ICU down in Plano, and for a little while, I was not sure If I was going to lose my sister or not. In the spring, my wife went down to Chicago with Rodrigo and Rachel, but let’s face it, any trip that involves spending any time with my mother in law is NO vacation.

Circumstance and depleted finances have both conspired against any fun trips so far this year. Certainly, we have had a lot on our mind with Andrea and Duncan joining our busy household, and Rachel finishinig up school and getting ready for her turn at that life-changing statge in life that occurs to people when they go away to univeristy. That’s why I am looking forward to this weekend’s trip to northeast Iowa more keenly than most people would be doing.

2008 marks our 25th anniversary of me and my wife graduating from Wartburg College, where we met and fell in love.  I think given where my wife and I are at with our jobs, and in kind of a transition year in our lives, what with us becoming grandparents this summer, I think going back to where it all began will do us some good. I could not find a reservation at a hotel in Waverly, so I booked a couple of nights at a bed and breakfast in Charles City. I think in the end, that will be more romantic, and a lot calmer than the din that will be in taking place in the hotels in Waverly.

I know getting away from responsiblities around the house will do us both some good. Any change in scenary will do. I am kind of restless and bored with work-I interviewed for a nursing job with the VA Medical Center yesterday for their new Spinal Cord Injury unit. My poor wife really drives herself hard, both physically and mentally with her job as a funeral director. I joke sometimes about her day beginning when somebody else’s day ends, but in all seriousness, she really needs a break from trying to help people out in their time in need.

It will be great to see the changes in Waverly, and on the campus at Wartburg College. They have a new, state of the art fitness center and pool, which I am sure will make me green with envy when I think about the sorry excuse for a weight room we had in the early 80’s when I went to school there. More improtantly, I think every time I go back to the little campus on the banks of the Cedar River, I get back in touch with the young man who hoped to travel the world with my love at my side. I think at this point in my life, getting in touch with the part of me that had unbridled optimism and hope will do me a world of good.

I think people from time to time need to get re-calibrated…I am at that point right now. I really am looking forward to this trip-and that is not an Iowa joke.