While I haven’t produced much writing wise, I have read quite a bit both on creative writing pedagogy as well on video games and gaming. In the past 48 hours I sent an abstract to a call for papers on digital role-playing games, and I also sent a paper proposal to a conference on new media and teaching writing. While I’m not sure either the abstract or the paper proposal are direct hits (in the former I talk about how digital RPGs can be used rather than giving a deep analysis of games themselves, and in the latter I’m speaking about creative writing not composition) I figure it’s well worth a try. Creative writing in general tends not to garner much attention outside creative writing circles, and creative writing circles tend to focus predominantly on issues of craft. I’m doing a cross-disciplinary thing focusing on using digital media and creative writing, and not much out there explicitly asks for this kind of work. Over all, that’s probably a good thing.

In brief gaming news, I’m seriously questioning whether I’ll buy FIFA 11 this holiday season. I’m not quite sure why FIFA 10 receives such rave reviews unless it’s based on online play, which I don’t do. I’m fed up with a lot of the gameplay, especially the lopsided refereeing (as you go up in difficulty the referee gives you cards for any tackle and lets the opposition maul you) and the utterly random results from simulated games. For as much as EA sports does to keep the focus firmly on the European leagues and their big teams, I don’t understand how over the course of a season a team like West Brom can finish in the top five of the Premier League while Man Ure finishes ninth—a simply impossible scenario.

Also, I’m tired of the league always playing out the same way. Whatever team I choose starts the league slowly, it looks like I’m well out of the title race after 15 or so games, yet somehow I put together a string of results at the tail end of the season as the league leaders collapse, and my team wins the league with points to spare. The narrative stays the same no matter the league, no matter what team I choose, and it has been this way for years. I also am pretty sick of EA not featuring more than a few international teams from any region but Europe. Pro Evo Soccer beats EA hands down in this category, even though they don’t have nearly the same kind of player and team licensing. As I grow older and crabbier, I find that I’d rather play with anonymous players than the over-hyped, spoiled superstars I already read about every day. Maybe Pro Evo is the way to go after all…

I officially gave up on Dragon Age: Origins and picked up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year edition for $20 on Half.com. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m really interested in playing it. I did most of my reading on gaming and role-playing after having finished Fallout 3, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how some of my developing theories about RPG character creation and world-building fare when I’m discovering a game for the first time.

Current Mood: Flat Affect from Parenting |

• Riding the gondolas up to hike above Snowmass Village and Aspen
• Watching a bluegrass band perform at over 10,000 feet
• Fly fishing the Roaring Fork river and having a nice rainbow trout on the line before it twisted away from the net
• Introducing Grey to his first goats and cows at the Snowmass Rodeo
• Helping a couple and their dog after they slid off the road at Independence Pass and totaled their car*
• Eating on the deck of our rented home in Estes Park, looking out at Rocky Mountain NP
• Hiking up to Lake Haiyaha past Bear Lake, Nymph Lake, and Dream Lake at RMNP
• Seeing a moose alongside the trail at RMNP and a pair of elk with huge racks outside our home in Estes Park

Overall it was a wonderful trip and Grey is proving to be a very patient and resilient hiker. He loves the outdoors, although he’d prefer walking on his own two feet than riding in the backpack. Soon, little buddy, soon!

* – We drove from Aspen to Estes Park via Independence Pass and the weather got worse and worse as we climbed. It began raining hard at the top of the pass and the rain turned to hail and ice. My father-in-law was driving about 15 mph, slower around curves. A car passed us going about 25 or 30 and we commented on how it was way too fast for conditions. We were still talking about it when we rounded the next corner and saw tire tracks veer across the center line and disappear into the ravine.

While certainly not a highlight of the trip, it will be something we will all remember for the rest of our lives. Although I do try to drive responsibly in inclement weather, this accident served as a sickening reminder of how little it takes to lose control of the vehicle. It’s also nothing short of an engineering miracle that the couple not only survived the crash—they had to be going at least 30 mph and plummeted about 30 feet down the ravine, undoubtedly getting airborne in the process–but they walked away. They looked to be in their mid-70′s, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that they’ll live to tell about it.

Current Mood: Kinda sad to be home |

This morning I finished a draft of my questions for my prelim exam. From the way I understand it, for each category (one major field, two minor fields) I give my committee three questions. The committee members then write questions of their own, and on the day of my written exam I receive a document that has three questions in each area. Some of the questions are mine, some are theirs, and some are a mix of mine and theirs.

Overall, I think I did a pretty good job crafting questions that wouldn’t be too easy or too hard. I did, however, twice rely on the stock and somewhat cheesy “you’re teaching a class, what works would you assign and why” question. It’s an easy default, yet as I was mulling over how to approach these questions I realized why so many people use it—it’s functional. I don’t have high hopes for publishing groundbreaking works of theoretical or literary analysis, but I can reasonably expect to teach a lit class or two in the coming years. In order to teach it well, I need to pick a good set of texts, both primary and critical, that speak to the burning issues of the day. While the preliminary exam’s purpose is to ensure you can write and speak authoritatively in a few areas, it’s better if the work you do can then be rolled into something more productive than exam answers. For example, it’s better to write an essay that can be massaged into a conference paper or syllabus rather than just answer an exam question.

It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out. In each category I have questions I hope I’m asked, but I’m curious to see how the committee members approach these topics too.

The bulb on our big screen DLP television blew out again a few days ago. This is annoying. We bought the TV five or so years ago when plasma and LCD were significantly more expensive. The first bulb blew out this past December, and we knew that occasional bulb replacement was the trade-off for the cheaper price tag. At over $100 per bulb you expect the bulb to last more than three months though, don’t you.

Well, some Googling revealed that the Toshiba model we purchased has gained notoriety in recent years for frequently blowing bulbs. To cut their losses, Toshiba stopped making the bulbs, leaving tons of customers out in the cold. A class action lawsuit ensued, yet we registered our television and never received any word of it and it is, allegedly, closed to new complaints. The company who makes the only replacement bulbs recognizes the problem and put a 180-day warranty on their bulbs. This is a nice commitment to quality, but we don’t want to be without television for close to two weeks (how long it takes to claim the warranty, have it shipped, inspected, and replaced) every few months.

To make a long story short, it looks like we’re in the market for a new television sometime in the next few months. And we’re not very happy about it.

On the other hand, we decided that it was time to break down and get Directv’s DVR receiver on our upstairs television. While overall I think I prefer Directv to Dish network based on the programming, Directv does try to nickle-and-dime you. They give you a lousy remote that needs a clear line of sight but sell an RF one that works from anywhere for $50; Dish allows you to connect two televisions to the same DVR unit so you can enjoy the feature in more than one room in the house, whereas Directv charges you a one-time $99 fee for the receiver upgrade.

Worse, Directv charges you another $20 for shipping gives no instructions on how to set up a second receiver beyond the line in the manual that says, “If, like most people, you had your system installed professionally you shouldn’t have a problem.” Installation is another $50.

So why is this listed under a thumbs up icon? Because yesterday the planets must have been in alignment. After a little Googling I found instructions on what you needed to complete the installation and, in a minor miracle, I found a satellite multiswitch at Menards (of all places) during an errand we were already on. Best But had the DVR in stock, and at home I went into the basement, stripped an unused coaxial cable from the current install, ran it to the upstairs unit, and mounted the switch. I hooked up the cable according to how I thought it should work and presto! everything was up and running at the first time of asking.

That never happens to this multi-thumbed moron, so I was quite pleased. So pleased in fact that I finally tackled the nest of cords behind our entertainment unit, labeling each one before plugging them into power strips properly mounted to the wall. It was a brazen display of competence and adequacy, and I felt quite satisfied, thank you very much.

Current Mood: I Should Probably Go Back to Reading, Huh? |

This past semester I worked on a project developing WordPress websites for academics and writers (funny, that) and decided to once again revamp the site. Now, trenthergenrader.com has a completely different look than this page, where I plan on keeping my blog and its six-year archive as well as links to my personal photos. That page houses my professional information (i.e. writing credits and academic work) that hopefully will come in handy when I hit the job trail in the next two or three years. It seems like a pretty good solution.

(sigh) One of the benefits of getting older (turned 36 last week, thanks for the well-wishes) is that you tend to develop perspective as well. I started following Spurs during the 1990-91 season on the heels of the Italia ’90 World Cup, having fallen in love with Gary Lineker and Paul Gascoigne. Of course, Spurs won the FA Cup that year, looooooong before you could watch any kind of footie on television on these shores, and it’s been more or less a disappointment since then. Two League Cup wins in about twenty years? Yes, I feel like I’ve been long-suffering enough to be a true Spurs fans.

Tottenham missed out on fourth spot in the 2005-06 season on the last day of the season thanks to a bout of food poisoning known as lasagne gate. I knew then that they’d missed a huge opportunity. In subsequent seasons, they’ve lost Michael Carrick, Dimitar Berbatov, and Robbie Keane when those players were at their peak and I’ve never believed that they had the mettle to crack the top four again. So this season when everyone’s been saying “this is Spurs’ year” I have to say, no, no it’s not.

Even though Spurs have been loitering in spots three through six for the entire season, my hopes have never been raised because I never let myself believe they could pull it off. The home loss to Stoke, the away draw to Everton, the home draw to Hull, and today’s draw to Leeds in the FA Cup: these results reveal Spurs for what they are, and that’s a team that doesn’t have the nerve to see out tough matches. My prediction is that Spurs will have a tepid second-half to the season and will end up in sixth. I hope I’m wrong, I’d love to be wrong, but history is on my side.

I splashed some Christmas and birthday cash on some XBox 360 games: FIFA 10, Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed, and Gears of War 2 to be exact. Besides the soccer game, I got those last ones in a “buy two, get one free” deal that was too good to pass up. Gears 2 wasn’t supposed to be part of the promo but some strange wording in the ad (I misread Gears of War 2 Disc Set) worked to my advantage as the cashier at Best Buy wasn’t sure how to do handle returning an online promotional transaction, so she let me swap for Gears 2 instead of voiding the whole purchase. Yay her, yay me.

My initial reaction to FIFA 10 is disappointment. The game play is better in that you have better control with passing and dribbling, but I’m in that unenviable spot where I can beat Barcelona with Lincoln City on the professional setting, but I can lose to Lincoln City with Barcelona on the next level up. Three of my biggest problems with FIFA 09 was defending against high balls (I lose every header), defenders who either sprint past the striker with the ball or who get nutmegged thirty times a game, and keepers who flap at the most innocuous of shots and crosses. All of these still feature prominently in FIFA 10 too. Also, I lament the fact that so many games are geared towards mastering crazy, split-second controller combinations. I have a feeling that my inability to flick the left-joystick in a clockwise motion while dragging the right one back and holding both triggers down means that I can’t dribble past a single opponent. That’s pretty frustrating. I haven’t tried the manager or Be A Pro modes, but if the game still features these major annoyances, they’re going to be there too.

I took a very brief look at Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed last night and both appear to be highly entertaining. I didn’t realize Bioshock was from the same company that made the Half-Life series and I was a little disappointed at first, because I found parts of Half-Life 2 to be really annoying. Bioshock has some cool features where you can genetically enhance your character and the great weapons management system is still in place, so I’m hoping that they took the best from the Half-Life series and added some other interesting features.

Assassin’s Creed is visually stunning, to quote a cliche’, and I think it will be fun to explore the world beyond the first couple levels I got through last night. On the annoying side, the storyline makes little sense whatsoever (does the main character really need to be a genetic descendant of an assassin, traveling back through time to reenact his life because they share the same genetic code… couldn’t the game just be about a medieval assassin already?) and the basics of climbing buildings and fighting guards already seem a little predictable and repetitive. Also, the cut-scenes are painfully long, made worse by the incoherence of the plot-within-a-plot about finding a traitor to the Brotherhood of Assassin’s organization… or something like that.

I also find it troubling that everyone in the game is Middle Eastern except for the protagonist, who has lily-white skin. Everyone speaks with heavy accents except for the protag, who speaks an “unadulterated” English. Also, the protagonist is by nature violent, rash, and stubborn, and who bristles at being brought to heel by white-bearded elder who tells him he needs to listen and follow directions. Let’s just say I won’t be surprised when said elder turns out to be the traitor in their midst, blah, blah, blah…

Of course, this game will predominantly be played by teens and the above paragraph reaffirms a lot of bad messages. In the next couple weeks I’ll be reading James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and Good Video Games + Good Learning and I’ll be interested to see how/if he tackles these kinds of issues. It’s early days, but I can’t help but feeling that’s there’s a definite hierarchy of “right and wrong” in Assassin’s Creed that isn’t reinforced by, say, the Grand Theft Auto series, which seem to be amoral. Or maybe it’s that in those games, both the developers and gamers know that what the characters are doing is wrong, wrong, wrong and that’s what makes it fun. Maybe.

More on this as I read more. And hopefully have time to play more too.

Reading and reading and reading and reading, and not loving much of it. I read a dozen books over break and the only one I loved was Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, although I enjoyed Ben Okri’s The Famished Road quite a bit. For most of the others, there’s a gap between “intellectually interesting” and “enjoyable to read” that’s wider or narrower from title to title. For instance, The Woman Warrior, House of the Spirits, Kingdoms of the World and The Light People were mostly enjoyable reads, while Bearheart and Love in Two Languages were not.

I’m well on my way to blowing last year’s book total out of the water. That number was a mere 43; by this May I should be around 30 or so as I continue to plow through my preliminary exam reading list.

Classes begin Monday. I am more or less prepared and looking forward to it. More or less.

Current Mood: Numb |
Currently Listening To – Uncle Tupelo – “Uncle Tupelo 89/93: An Anthology”

What makes things worse is that I’ve been pushed from my defensive midfield role out to be an attacking winger. While theoretically I have no problem with this, it involves far more running and far less of the ball. I haven’t scored any goals this fall after averaging almost a goal a game over spring and summer. (sigh)

Unsurprisingly, school is largely to blame for the workload. Teaching two new courses in a single semester isn’t great to say the least. After teaching a class once I get a sense of how it will all roll out and making adjustments becomes much easier. As it stands, I feel like I’ve been lurching through this semester, where I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself by having large(ish) assignments due in both classes on the same week. This kind of stuff isn’t apparent until you teach a class once. The good news? I’m fairly sure that students are learning, which is good. I take my teaching very seriously and I feel I focus too much on what I’m not doing well rather than what’s getting through.

To compound problems, the two classes I’m taking allow for a great deal of self-direction. (This shouldn’t surprise me since one is an independent study.) This is great but, as all self-directed learners soon realize, it’s a lot more work to 1) figure out what you’re interested in, 2) figure out how to pursue these interests, and 3) keep to schedule than to just have someone thrust a syllabus in front of you, effectively saying, “Do X, Y, and Z by these dates.” Still, I’m learning a lot of good stuff so I can’t complain. But I do.

Ho hum, the US qualified for the World Cup again and (yawn) won the group. I should probably be excited but I’m not. Has this team significantly improved from 2006? God, from 2002? I don’t think so. There’s some weird alchemy that allows the US attack to play extremely well at times but fall flat most of the time, but I can’t figure it out. Sadly, neither can Bob Bradley.

What makes this World Cup 2010 effectively a non-starter is the defense. Yes, I realize this same team made it to the Confederations Cup final having beaten Spain, but in the context of the World Cup their progress would be equal to a quarterfinal exit—the same point they got bounced in 2002. I would also hasten to point out that the US needed to ride a serious wave of luck in both 2002 and the Confed Cup before being eliminated. Yes, a team needs a certain amount of luck in these major tournaments, but the key point here is that the US loses when they don’t get lucky, and they tend to lose even if they’re a bit off their game. That’s not the hallmark of a competitive team.

The draw won’t be done for another couple months but, regardless, I have a hard time seeing this be a very cheery World Cup. Onyewu and Bocanegra are a clumsy central pairing and the left back spot is problematic at best. The US had a hard time keeping CONCACAF opponents off the board; African, European, and South American opposition will be far more clinical and the US attack is neither potent nor consistent enough to keep top-notch opposition on their heels.

All for now. Hopefully this space won’t be as barren in coming weeks, but I’m making no promises…

Current Mood: Feh |
Currently Listening To – Bob Dylan – “The Bootleg Series, Volume 8: Tell Tale Signs”

Unfortunately it looks like I’ll be working over the long weekend too. I have to read the essay I’ve assigned to my research class so I can come up with some decent questions for them to answer, and I’ve got to read the section of the poetry chapter we’re reading for my creative writing class for basically the same reason. This is why teaching two new classes is a little like taking two new classes. It’s too early to tell how these classes will be (students tend to be uptight for the first couple weeks) but no red flags yet. Some of the CW students seem really enthused, which is awesome, and it turns out that 6 of the 24 students in my research class had me for 101, so I already know a quarter of the class. Which means I can pick on them to get conversations started.

The classes I’m taking are still a little up in the air too. One is entitled Rhetoric, Writing, & Info Technology and the professor (who I had last semester) is still building the syllabus and assignments, largely around the interests of the group. While there’s a theory component to this course, a good deal of it is also “building stuff” to use the professor’s own language. I hope to learn more about CSS and PHP (there are still things with this site that I’m not thrilled about so I may do another overhaul in the future) but we’ll have to see what direction the course takes us.

For my independent study, it’s largely up to me. The course is about information design so I’m reading a book this week on design principles, and I plan to find some crummy ads and redesign them. I’ve got the whole semester’s reading planned out, but not what I’m going to produce for “assignments.”

So the motto for this semester overall: make it up as you go along.

Current Mood: Good |

We had a mini-boot camp for Intro to Creative Writing instructors today and it was time well spent. My syllabus and plan of attack was complimented, although I do need to work things around more to work in more workshopping. I designed the course figuring that you can’t really workshop competently until you’ve learned some of the lingo and tried—and failed—to blow away the world with your own deathless prose. While I’m not entirely unconvinced of this, I now understand that critiquing is a skill that needs to be cultivated along with the other skills these novice writers will be picking up, and that this course is the place to get exposure. I’m totally on board with this idea, and I got some good ideas about other areas of the course that need massaging, so it’s like I said: time well spent.

Tomorrow I have another brief boot camp, this time for the course on the research paper. I feel way more out to sea on this topic and I’m quite eager to get some ideas on how to teach this sucker. For Creative Writing I am far more comfortable, even with poetry, about playing things by ear and adjusting the course for maximal benefit for each and all. With a research paper, I have a pretty fixed way I do research, and I didn’t really develop this until I started doing the Ph.D. portion of my graduate work. I approach teaching as a “Things I Wish I Had Known As an Undergrad” and I suppose this class will be more of the same, yet I felt better browsing through the quite attractive DK Handbook, the book written by the awesome directors of comp at UWM and the text I’m planning on adopting for the course.

All in all, I’m looking forward to the semester and meeting the new crop of students. We have access to our rosters now and I was pleasantly surprised to see five or six students signed up for my section for the research paper—not a bad return considering that constitutes about 20% of my class enrollment and I’ve only taught two classes at UWM thus far, so I guess I gotta be doing something right! Seriously though, I take that as a huge compliment and I hope to give this next batch of undergrads more good learning experiences. College ain’t cheap and it’s sad that a lot of folks who don’t have a knack for teaching don’t get much guidance because it’s the paying student who ultimately suffers, so I make a legit effort to make the work as engaging as possible. So far, so good.

‘Tis a lot of work though.

For some unknown reason, I’ve had access to Setanta Sport for about ten days now and the DVR is picking up all the English football not on FSC or ESPN. I FF’d to the goals in Spurs’ 5-1 demolition of Hull, and all I have to say is that I’d like two servings of whatever the hell Jermaine Defoe is eating, because the man is quite simply frightening at the moment. The first goal was a decent enough shot (the keeper could have done more) but goals two and three actually made me feel bad for the ball. The only adjective to describe it is “violent.” The keeper doesn’t have a chance to react to either shot, but I wouldn’t blame him for diving out of the way.

And as they said on the last WSD (damn it again!), the person most mourning Defoe’s form is one Michael Owen. If Fabio Capello is looking for a starting striker for England, he might just want to go with the little fella banging them in like nobody’s business for club and country rather than a half-fit has-been who has only been newsworthy for missing a couple chances he should have converted.

Current Mood: A Bit Beat |

Anyway, I am a little annoyed with Spurs and their cracking start. I have been doing my best to keep my expectations firmly in check and not get my hopes up, yet they play Liverpool off the park in their home opener and drill Hull in the first away game. Lovely lovely, just don’t break my heart again boys…

I also may need to revise my opinion of the Big Four. While I think Ars*nal’s performance against Everton was helped a great deal by the home side, going up to Parkhead and winning 2-0 (albeit on flukey goals) is nothing to sniff at. I still think this side’s major problem is that it needs to bulk up the midfield, but they could be quite a bit handier than I suspected. Injuries could (and probably will) decimate the squad over the long haul as they’re still too thin for me. The same goes for Liverpool—the first team is quite good but I think they’re too thin.

Man Ure fans don’t need to panic—yet—as they usually start slowly, but they’re lacking any ‘pop’ thus far this season. As many a pundit has said, Ronaldo made everyone around him better and without him, Man Ure don’t have the same creative spark. But this all more or less plays into Chelski’s hands, as I think they are the most well-equipped to rotate a large squad of quality players over the course of multiple competitions. I’ll stick with my prediction that they’ll win the league (for now!) but I’m coming around to the idea that it might be Chelski, Ars*nal, Man Ure, and…who knows? I can easily see Liverpool falling off the pace early, despite their big win.

Of course, things are still way too up in the air to make sense of what we’ve seen, but it’s damn interesting, innit?

/
I had an iSimple installed in the Vibe yesterday. This device is installed behind the dash and overrides the FM receiver, allowing you to plug in other devices for audio. It works on the same premise as the an iPod FM transmitter, only this one’s fueled by the car’s battery rather than the iPod’s battery, and is thus far more powerful. No more driving off the highway trying to reposition the iPod to get a clearer signal, no more searching stations trying to find enough static for the iPod to come through clearly. The iPod adapter both charges and plays simultaneously too, meaning I’m not killing my iPod battery on the commute to school.

As you might guess, I’m quite excited about it.

Current Mood: Fine |

The first few years were a Golden Age of blogging for me (both reading and writing) as I both composed posts and trolled the Internet at my desk job. Posting declined with my entry to grad school in the fall of 2006 (reading others’ blogs ceased almost entirely due to time constraints) and has dropped sharply with the birth of my boy in May of this year. Plenty of other things have changed a lot in these five years and this website has more or less kept up, sometimes sluggishly so.

When I created this site, I was still transitioning from working in soccer administration to my new lives, first as a struggling writer and then as a struggling writer and graduate student (my current predicament). My interests have changed dramatically since entering my Ph.D. program in Creative Writing, and along the way I’ve accumulated a number of fiction publications I’m quite proud of. As a result, I figure it’s high time I professionalize this space, updating my interests to reflect my academic pursuits and giving the site a consistent theme.

I’ve been plugging away at customizing a WordPress template and I hope to upload a new theme soon. The game plan is to let WordPress handle the more-or-less static site content and two, count ‘em, two blogs running simultaneously: one will be more academically-minded, tracking my thoughts on the things I’m reading, my writing, projects I’m working, thoughts about pedagogy, etc., and will be little more formal; the other (which I’m planning on keeping at the trenthergenrader.com/wordpress address) is this one, where I’ll spout off about footie, UFC, and other more recreational pursuits with the same grammatical errors, comma splices, and nonsensical sentences you’ve come to know and love.

Why do this? Because I’m rapidly approaching a time in which prospective employers rather than curious readers and old high school friends may be perusing this site. Since I’m working towards a special emphasis in professional writing focusing on technology, I would do well to tidy up the house.

Hopefully the update will not result in a catastrophe (I’m not trying anything too tricky, like pulling out specific school posts to populate the new blog) but don’t say you haven’t been warned. Wish me luck.

Oh, the US vs. Mexico is being shown tonight at 5:30 CT on Mun2 (mundos, as in “worlds,” get it?) on Directv and Dish, and also on Telefutura, I believe. I just saw the half-time score and I’m a bit pissed because I didn’t know it was on tape delay. Grrrr….

Go US!

Current Mood: Sure |

* Real Madrid still look pretty disjointed overall and the back line is quite suspect, but when the passes start connecting, look out. I haven’t seen Kaka in the mix yet, but Benzema is the one who has impressed me the most. The guy can shoot a ball at 1000 MPH from any angle, more or less on target. Remarkable. The big question for me this season will be consistency: will Barcelona or Madrid play at top gear for the longest stretches?

I think Barca will pick up where they left off, and it might take a good half dozen games for Real to find their groove. For my money, that lag might be enough when all is said and done but I expect Real to push them most of the way. They could actually be dangerous Champions League this year, as they should have had plenty of time to mesh before the knock-out stages.

* Has the ship been righted at Valencia? None of the big stars have left save Albiol, and I hope that Silva and Villa stay put. I am so excited to watch La Liga. The chasing pack should be fascinating.

* The World Football Challenge didn’t show us the teams firing on all cylinders, but you’d have to say that Inter looks okay but not remarkable but my God, how dire is AC Milan? They’re in serious trouble you’d have to think. They look old and slow—historically a bad combination for professional sports teams. Chelski look pretty damn tidy though. It will be very interesting to see them kick it up a gear, to continue the tired automotive metaphor. (no pun intended with “tired” though)

* I have no idea what this Man City squad will do. They could be quite good or they could be just above average. On paper they’re a better side than any team who finished fifth or lower, but will they click? Can’t wait to find out. I also have to say that Ars*nal had better splash some cash intelligently in the next month or they’re flirting with disaster. For my money, the squad is thin and injury riddled. Yes, guys like Eduardo (who is overrated anyway) and Rosicky and Walcott will be returning from injury, but mended players don’t tend to pick up a pace after being out for extended periods. And I would also point out, along with anyone who has any sense, that Ars*nal has had injury crises several years in a row that always manage to cripple their title bid. And this year will be different why?

* Tottenham actually bore me now. I’m not sure Crouchy is the right buy, I’m glad they’re letting Bent go, and I wish they’d nab Huntelaar. The team was so cut-up last year it’s hard to tell which direction they’ll go in. They could be quite explosive if a regular first-team settles in, but that’s a mighty big if. I’m betting their league placement will have a lot to do with how Everton, Man City, Aston Villa, and Fulham (maybe) wind up. Someone from this group is going to bomb, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if Sunderland or West Ham start threatening those positions either.

* Hull looks like early contenders for relegation, don’t they? Who knows what Phil Brown is saying to potential players but he needs different mouthwash—player after player keep passing on going to Hull. You’d also have to think that Stoke’s strategy can’t work for another season, can it? Then again, it’s worked for Bolton for how many years? But the relegation battle will be interesting from the word ‘go’ since I can’t see Burnley or Wolves doing anything but struggling. Think about that though: you’ve got Birmingham City, Burnley, Hull, Stoke, and Wolverhampton all in the Premier League at the same time, along with a host of traditionally crappy teams like Bolton, Sunderland, and Wigan. And then there’s Pompey and Blackburn, who were only saved last year because there were so many awful teams below them.

* I am one of the few US Soccer fans who doesn’t care about the Gold Cup final loss to Mexico. Not to make excuses but this was Mexico’s B+ (Dos Santos? Vela?) versus the US B-/C+ (Heaps? Pause?). So yes, the Mexican reserves can whup up on the US reserves, but who cares? Of this group of US players, how many even go to the World Cup, much less play? Two? Three? This has almost as much relevance as the World Cup of Beach Soccer. The game August 12th at the Azteca? Now that’s a different story…

Current Mood: Bleh |