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Weekend Trifles

So what's a weekend music hunter supposed to do when the tunes don't sing? Write about something else. I'd pay good money to see Dave Alvin & the Guilty Men Saturday, World Cafe Live, but I'd much rather watch 90 minutes of scoreless soccer than catch most of the other acts coming to town.

We'll do a grab-bag post instead, starting with The Beautiful Game. It's down to two teams, unless you count the Germany-Portugal consolation match Saturday. The fogey French versus the operatic Italians. (If I had any skills, I'd set highlights of Italy's falls and flops to Puccini.)  Throwing Things wonders which is better, France or Italy, at cooking?

Deadspin's got David Hirshey, executive editor of Harper Collins, on the beat, and his post after France beat Portugal got right to the point:

Not since the Rolling Stones' Iron Lung tour has the world marveled at a bunch of geezers getting it up one last time for a happy ending. Just when you thought that Zidane and the rest of "Les Vieux" (trust me, it's funny if you speak French) had exhausted all their AARP-approved elixirs, they found another keg of Ponce de Leon prune juice to save the day.

Is it just me, or were you not misting up when Zizou and Figo, the two proud old men of soccer and former teammates at Real Madrid, embraced at the end of France's valiant 1-0 semifinal victory, stripped off their sweaty jerseys and showed off the best waxed six packs since the volleyball scene in Top Gun?

Speaking of brainiacs writing about soccer, New Republic staffers have been blogging the World Cup. It's not nearly as fun as Deadspin, and I haven't found even one kick at The Daily Kos.

Finally, is it too late to visit a site that shows what your name would be if you played for Brazil?

* NBC10 wants your videos. Bloggers around the region got emails this week announcing a new videosharing service in partnership with Motionbox. Howard at Philly Future has the details. Citizen Mom has the name:

She's calling it YoTube.

*

Have been following the flap over the Taliban Yalie, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, who will not be graduating from New Haven, it turns out. He was the subject of a New York Times Sunday Magazine article that generated lots of blogheat, especially from the right. AP delivers the news.The Hot Air blog gets off the best line, calling him the Boola Boola Mullah. *

Adfreak has picked up on the new Pa. bumperstickers, "I break for shoofly pie." Wasn't too wowed. A commenter had a better one:

"This is PENNSYLVANIA, Speak English When You Order!"

*

This is too good to be true, right? Overheard In Philly picked up this nugget from a campus tour guide at Penn:

"And the Simpson's Watching Club gets money for pizza while you're watching."

So that modest tuition goes toward filling the tummies of slackers who formed a student organization to watch cartoons?

enrico
Posted 07/06/2006 01:10:52 PM
Looks like you've been hooked on Deadspin.  Can't blame you.  It sure is more fun than ESPN.
Sherri W.
Posted 07/06/2006 01:14:20 PM
I can't confirm the existence of that *actual* club, but I know barely enough about student organizations at Penn to say it's an entirely plausible scenario.  IIRC, a required tuition add-on is your student activities fee.  All those aggregate fees go into the kitty to then be apportioned out to all the clubs that have filed the appropriate paperwork.

Looking back, I'll never know why I didn't just found the "getting fat with SAC" club.
Shaun
Posted 07/06/2006 01:37:39 PM
Hey, Dan:

As great as Dave Alvin is, you're right that 90 minutes of scoreless soccer is even better.

My biggest complaint with the World Cup has been the ESPN-ABC chucklehead announcers who are more interested in covering the back story than what's going on down on the pitch and too frequently do a pretty fair imitation of not knowing what they're talking about.

So in a brilliant move at halftime of the Germany-Italy game, my girlfriend and I switched to Univision, the Spanish-language station, and stayed there to the very end of the thrilling 2-0 victory by Italy.

While the girlfriend is more or less fluent, my Spanish is shaky, but I caught enough of the commentary to have a much better idea of what was going on in the match, while the knowledge of the announcers was obvious and their enthusiasm contagious.

At one point we switched back to ESPN (which was on a 30-second or so time delay) after an especially brilliant play. The announcers there were rambling on in monotones and seemed barely aware that a soccer match was being played.
enrico
Posted 07/06/2006 01:43:00 PM
Shaun: The WSJ did a piece about you.  I'm serious.

(You may need a subscription to read it though)

Here is part:
Fans Say ESPN's World Cup
Coverage Deserves Penalty
By STEFAN FATSIS
July 5, 2006; Page A15

The World Cup is generating record television audiences for soccer in the U.S. But some die-hard fans think the coverage deserves a red card.

Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN and ABC have been hit with complaints from soccer devotees that their telecasts are unsophisticated and mistake-ridden. The popular Web site Big Soccer has a thread titled "Pick your favorite insane thing said by the announcers so far."


AND

Industry executives credit ESPN for providing the most extensive promotion and coverage of soccer ever in the U.S. Mr. Drake says the ratings back up ESPN's choices. Before the quarterfinals began last Thursday, ABC averaged 3.7 million viewers for 10 games. On cable, ESPN and ESPN2 averaged 1.8 million and 1.1 million viewers, respectively, for the other 46 matches. Through Saturday, Univision Communications Inc. averaged 2.2 million viewers for its Spanish-language telecasts in the U.S.
daniel rubin
Posted 07/06/2006 01:45:29 PM
to add to the fire: my sons have totally given up on the english-language broadcast for the spanish. i, myself, was hooked when someone - i forget - scored against the spanish-speaking team, and we still got that great, doppler effect G-O-O-O-A-A-A-A-A-A-L sound.