PunkKittyDiddy

What I've Learned From The World Cup So Far

1. Never prance around in a big budget, globally telecast TV commercial in which you're depicted as an invincible immortal before you've won the top prize.  (I'm talking to you, Rooney.)
2. Bragging about what you're capable of diverts energy away from proving what you're capable of.
3. There is no such thing as a sure thing.
4. No matter how confident you are that God is on your side, try to get it in writing* before you proclaim it to the world.  (* Burning bush, parted sea, or comparable token gesture may be substituted for written contract....at your peril.)
5. Watching penalty shoot-outs after having consumed four or more cups of coffee within a two hour time frame is ill advised.
6. Mutiny is only effective if you have a pirate ship, a plank, and shark-infested waters at your immediate disposal.  It's also probably more convincing if your name is "Blackbeard" or "One Eyed Jack," not "Patrice."
7. I should buy stocks in the largest global manufacturer of body paint before 2014.
8. I should buy stocks in the largest global manufacturer of silly wigs before 2014.
9. I need to invent a more obnoxious noisemaker than the vuvuzela, manufacture it, and market it globally before 2014.  We'll trademark it and call it the "Pernicious Piehole Pipe of Perturbation," because it will be amusing to force sports commentators to say that repeatedly.  Who's with me?!?!?!?!?

A 'From The Mouths of Babes' Type Deal

You might have to be English, or at least an Anglophile, to fully appreciate this.  Being the latter, and a biased onlooker to boot, I found it hilaaaaaaaaaaaarious.

So I.G. has been trying to impart to wee Z. the finer points (and uglier points, and pretty much ALL points) of football (the real kind, not the American kind) since the day she was born.  This past weekend, they were watching a game, and I.G. was quizzing her.  At one point, the goalie catches a ball, and I.G. asks Z., "Who has the ball now?"  She says, "The goalie!"  A few minutes later, some midfielder (I believe) had just maneuvered the ball around an opponent, and I.G. asks Z., "Who has the ball now?"  She says, "A wanker!"

Kids are sponges.  Hilarious sponges.  Like SpongeBob, only less yellow.

A Fuss Over Cuss

When I.G. was first introducing me to football (the real kind, that is....not the American version), he pointed out that a lot of the excitement of the game takes place off the pitch.  There is the trading of players, coaches getting sacked, the lives of referees being threatened, ancient vendettas between rival teams, powerful and mysterious billionaires taking over clubs out of the blue, and plenty of talking smack amongst all involved.  As my other half succinctly put it: "It's like a soap opera for men." 

 True, true.

Case in point:  a drama that unfolded this week involved the interim coach for Newcastle, who has temporarily stepped into the shoes of their recently sacked coach.  Newcastle is facing all sorts of other drama at the moment, like potential takeover by Saudi bazillionaires, and particularly appalling recent player performance.  So, this new interim stopgap coach is, as it turns out, ill-versed in dealing with media.  Recently at a press conference, they asked him a few pointed questions, and he got touchy.  Like, really touchy.  Tourettic, name-calling touchy..........and I don't mean names like "nincompoop." 

It's generated a whole big fuss. 

I could go into more detail, although Russell Brand has already done so, brilliantly.  Read his column here.  Yes - in addition to being a talented actor and talented comedian, he's a talented columnist and a talented footie pundit.  Some people are just annoying that way.

My spare time lately is going toward packing up all of my earthly possessions and cramming them into many, many boxes.  For such a small apartment, our place holds an alarming amount of earthly possessions.  I'm also packing up all of a certain toddler's earthly possessions.  For someone who is barely two years old, she has, like, fifty times the amount of earthly possessions that her father and I have, combined.  Anyhoo.......that's why my blog is being outsourced an awful lot lately.  (Though in my defense, I am often outsourcing to myself, and drawing upon my handiwork at other websites to attempt to shore the gaps contained herein.)

So........stay tuned, and more soon.  From myself....or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Ghostwriting For Dummies (And I Do Mean For Dummies)

I'm trying to think of additional and innovative and writerly ways to bring home more freelance bacon.  Enough with the trolling of CraigsList in the vain hope that I might stumble across a posting that reads, "Write stuff!  For money!  Lots of it!  Seriously!"  

OK.............maybe I'll continue to keep an eye out for that ad, but in the interim, it's time to get proactive and make my own opportunities!  I'm a smart broad....surely I can identify some unique niches that I might be able to caulk with my verbosity in exchange for a paycheck. 

So I was mulling over potential revenue streams while Fox Soccer Channel's nightly news was on in the background.  In fact, I think Wayne Rooney might have been attempting to speak at a press conference at the time.  Then a flash of inspiration walloped me with more brute force than an illiterate Cockney striker...... 

I should hire myself out to professional athletes who are looking to pen their autobiographies!!!!!  This is cake work!  I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner!  It totally removes the pressure to be brilliant.  All I really need to bring to the table is an elementary-school-level grasp of spelling and grammar, and maybe a taser gun to ward off any amorous Kobe-like advances.  Let's not overlook the drudgery of wading through and extracting the hundreds of thousands of superfluous "ya know?"s and "um"s and "like"s and "man"s and "hell yeah!"s, either.  But from there, it's just a matter of applying a really large font to whatever's left.  Easy peasey! 

To safeguard against the possibility of having to actually exert myself, I should come up with some sort of criteria by which I determine whether or not to take on a client.  Maybe I could enforce some sort of neck circumference standard (whereby the thicker the neck, the more desirable the client).  Unfortunately, Wayne Rooney already cranked out his tome, so there goes that particular walk in the park.  Still, kudos to whichever of my fellow ghostwriting colleagues managed to convince Rooney to fork over some major coin for this opening paragraph (and the remaining five paragraphs that constitute this 23 year old brainiac's life story):

I was nearly called Adrian.  That was what my father wanted.  A bit posh, I suppose, and doesn't quite sound like me.  I wonder if I would have had a different personality if I'd gone through life with a different name?

Join the club, Wayne.  I'm pretty sure if I'd been named Stanley or Eugene, I would be a highly successful accountant by now and would have avoided my current predicament of having to come up with all these fly-by-night, get-rich-quick schemes.........

Oh well.

Euro 2008 - The Final

Eh.  I should be more jazzed about tomorrow's Germany versus Spain final than I actually am.  

It will provide a good opportunity to dust off my Inigo-Montoya-from-Princess-Bride accent during commentary, at least.

"My name is Fernando Torres.  You scored in my goal.  Prepare to die."

Hmm.  Still not feeling it.  

Euro 2008: Turkey 2 - Germany 3

Damn, I'm glad I was merely an objective (though highly interested) observer here, versus a devout fan of either team......otherwise, I think something important might have ruptured up in my general cranial region.  The drama of this highly anticipated match-up exceeded all expectations, and not in the usual sense, when the satellite feed relaying the game worldwide conked out not once, but twice.......the second time being right after the Germans had scored their third goal with two minutes left in the game.

I'm not claiming to be clairvoyant or anything, but Ugur Boral and Schweinsteiger did score the first goals for their respective teams.  It was clearly written in the stars (using all available hard consonants).

The Guardian's online coverage remains reliably amusing.  Amidst the reports of the global television outages, one reader pondered, "Is this a Shyamalan movie?"

I have to agree with those who are saddened to see underdog Turkey fall by the wayside.  I will now be forced to dig up really flimsy and far-reaching reasons to bring up Ugur Boral's name in future posts.  But don't think I won't give it my best shot.

Stupid German uber-efficiency.

Euro 2008: Germany 3 - Portugual 2

  Portugal got spanked.  I'm glad, because Ronaldo is such a sissy boy.  I don't care how many goals he's scored.

Incidentally, it wasn't my intention to provide consistent coverage of Euro 2008, but damn it, the players have such awesome-sounding names.  Like the first goal by Germany today came courtesy of Schweinsteiger!

Rock me, Amadeus!

Hey - what if Turkey and Germany wind up playing each other?  My tongue will explode in an ecstatic splatter of guttural consonant splendor!  Ugur Boral going toe to toe with Herr Schweinsteiger?!?!?!?  Good NIGHT, nurse! 

 

Euro 2008: France 0 - Italy 2

 I'm sorry, but both the Italian and French teams are overflowing with players who display a capacity for near-menstrual levels of hysteria and melodrama.  I haven't seen this much gratuitous writhing in the supine position since we subscribed to the premium cable package that included those after-hours nudie movies on Cinemax.

I do miss Zidane, though.  At least he gave those noodle-noshers something to actually cry about.

Euro 2008: Turkey 3 - Czech Republic 2

Of course Turkey was a shoe-in.  They have players named Volkan, Gokhan and, best of all - Ugur Boral.  Their manager is nicknamed, "The Emperor."  I'm guessing these guys had ancestors who waged decades-long campaigns to plunder, pillage and annex their way across entire continents without blinking (or bathing, by most accounts). 

What's 90 minutes of kicking a ball around a piddly little patch of grass?!

Aussie Rules Football: It's A Bit Like The American Kind (If The NFL Was More Open-Minded About Disembowelment)

I'm not a chick who is wholly ignorant about sports.  Nope.  Daddy didn't raise no debutante.  I've spent many, many years now following the Phoenix Suns (although intermittently since their defeat to the Chicago Bulls in the last second of the last game of the finals in '93, which irretrievably crushed both my soul and my ability to give my whole heart to any one team from that point forward).  And of course thanks to I.G. I'm now all too familiar with the Beautiful Game, i.e. football.  (Forgive me for my standard rant here....I'm talking about real football.  What we Yanks have for whatever reason tagged with the misnomer of, "soccer."  Which reminds me of a t-shirt that a pundit on Fox Soccer Channel was recently wearing, on which a picture of an American football was affixed with the far more ingenious label of, "throwball."  Brilliant, eh?  But I digress........)

Anyway, all that has been well and good, but the sport that has had me properly fascinated and flummoxed for the past several years is Aussie Rules football.  I freakin' love it.  I just can't claim to fully understand it.

Aussie Rules is rather hard to describe, but Wikipedia does a pretty good job of trying.  And YouTube has assembled some fine footage.   It's part American throwball, part American Gladiator, with maybe a smattering of ultimate cage fighting, volleyball and rugby thrown in for good measure. 

For starters, they don't throw the ball.  They punch it, damn it.  This is a man's game. 

And all that protective girlie padding worn in American football?  Please.  Aussie players laugh at the very thought of protective padding - and then they break it over their knees and leave it in a ditch to die.  These burly gents wear little shorts and form-fitting tank tops, the better to show off those sculpted, sweaty, chiseled tree trunks and guns.........sigh.... uh, where was I going with this......?  Oh....right!  Despite the notable lack of armor, this is no vanity sport, my friends.  Au contraire.  They still tackle.  Hard.

Mama likes!

I can very clearly and most fondly recall one of the first tackles I ever witnessed when we'd stumbled upon a game by accident while channel surfing. One guy was running full-force with the ball, and an opponent thwarted him by running just as fast from the opposite direction and attempting to remove the guy's head with a swift elbow to the jaw.  Now, in most American sports, at this juncture the commentator would inevitably say something like, "Oooooh - that foul is gonna cost him!"  Feh!  The Aussie commentator, upon watching the geyser of gore erupt from the victim's general mouth region, simply bellowed, "Nice one!" And then they replayed the carnage about ten times more in slow-mo.  After about eight or nine viewings, you realize that those small white bits flying in all directions aren't foamy gobs of spittle - they're teeth.

What's not to love?

In real football/soccer, a mild breeze generated by, say, a gnat's fart will often send a player diving to the pitch and writhing in agony in an attempt to have a nearby opponent carded.  Hey, I still love that game too, but Aussie Rules separates the men from the boys - whilst also separating the men from their spleens.  In a world in which most professional sports have been overrun by preening, overpaid dandies, it's just refreshing to watch athletes who aren't afraid to take it on the chin (and everywhere else) without worrying about risking their off-season gigs modeling whitening toothpaste and Calvin Klein undies.

Somewhere along the way, real football/soccer was adoringly nicknamed, "The Beautiful Game," but Aussie Rules could easily hijack this title. 

Not that it's all that pretty a game, but........ who's gonna stop 'em?