The Rich People's Game

 

If you've been a follower of this joint for a while you've probably noticed that I'm a bit of a soccer fan.

And you'd be right; I've supported the local soccer clubs, the men's Timbers and the women's Thorns, since before the men were up in the Show and from the day the women started playing over ten years ago.

Plus I've been a Newcastle supporter for even longer - the Toon caught me back in the Shearer years of the 90's (I've never forgiven Ferguson and the ManU mob for stealing the crown in the 1995-96 season. Bastards.) - and so for the past thirty-odd years my life has been steeped in the Beautiful Game.

I'm a founding member of the "Axe Society", the season ticket holders from the Timbers' first big-league season in 2011.

I've stood and sung in the cold rain of October and the burning sun of August. I damn near tore out the walls of the cheap hotel in Medford, locked out of the playoff run of 2015 by a work assignment, during the insane 22-round-of-penalties "Double Post" game. 

 

I've been, as the tifo says, a Rain or Shine Supporter since the beginning of the modern Timbers era in 2001.

But no more.

Last year, with retirement looming and the cost of my season pass reaching almost $1,000 I gave up the place I've had in the Shed End for over twenty years.

And this season the club has moved its televised matches to the Apple+ streaming service...meaning that even to watch the Boys I'd need eighty bucks for the service AND another eighty for the MLS "Season Pass".

And that's without the cost of any single game tickets I might hope to nick off the spendy SeatGeek app. 

Look.

I get it. This is what I and you and all of us should expect from Late Stage Capitalism. Soccer is Big Money. Everyone in the game - players, owners, broadcasters, sponsors - wants a piece of the action. Nobody wants to leave a penny on the ground if there's cash to be made.

Here's the thing, though.

We. We, the fans, are the cow that's being milked. It's our wallets that all these people are hoovering, our support that's being mulcted to make the providers of the game a fucking buck.

And that's just getting real tiring.

I love this game. I love my town. I love our teams and I want to support them.

But it's getting real fucking old that every time I put my scarf on I turn around and there's another sonofabitch expecting to be hit in the palm.

I don't expect the Boys to play for free. I get it; it costs money to run a big-league team.

But.

It seems self-defeating to monetize every fucking aspect of the sport. It seems stupid to price everyone but the wealthy out of the "people's game".

Footy rose on the shoulders of the working men and women of England, Scotland, France, Argentina and Brazil and even here in the Americas.

But now?

When my beloved Toon is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Saudi oil sheiks?

When I can no longer sit down and enjoy seeing my Timbers struggle to a dreary midweek draw with the Houston Dynamo without paying Steve Jobs' heirs?

When it seems like the entire sport is sloshing with money yanked out of the people's pockets?

I just feel like Smokey the Bear standing silent as all the forest around me burns.

The thieves of glory

One of my passions is soccer (no, really..?) and particularly the local soccer teams, the Timbers on the men's side and the Thorns on the women's.

Laid up as I am I spend a fair bit of time watching both teams - and the Timbers are, after a pretty awful start, on a bit of a tear so Howay you Timbers! - as well as thinking and writing about them over at my other gig, Riveting!

So it was with sickened horror I read this past week that the Thorns' coach during the 2014 and 2015 seasons was a loathsome rapey scumbag who was savaging his own players while we all cheered and sang for him and them and then got away clean after being fired for fucking up the 2015 season on the pitch.

It's a sad, tired, familiar old story, but carries a heavy blow because it comes so close to home.

Anyway, I'm still immersed in this mess as I go through the boring daily round of my rehabilitation, and though I don't want to go any deeper into it here (you can read my full thoughts on the mess over here), I just thought I'd mention it briefly. 

I'm sick, sad, and angry at everyone - in my club, in the league - who had a role in this desecration of the young women of my beloved Thorns and, through them, many of my own happy and cherished memories.

Sniper!

Emily Sonnett of the U.S. women's national soccer team demonstrates a perfect backflip-tuck-and-roll in the opening minutes of the second half of the Olympic qualifying tournament match against Canada.

Sonnett played centerback here in Portland for many seasons, and was a player who consistently frustrated me because she would play 89 minutes of great, technical defending and then would undergo some sort of brainfart or mental holiday and make a ridiculously massive derp. She did this as a rookie - which is fine, you're a rook - but kept doing it all the way up until she was traded in the offseason last autumn.

Obviously I hope the Thorns pick up a solid CB who won't take those little mental rest breaks to replace her. I won't miss the tooth-grinding frustration of those derps.

What I will miss is...well, Sonnett.

In the oh-so-serious world of professional sport she's a genuine goof, a real character; funny, playful, silly, endearing...I have NO idea what she's like as a person (other than possibly one of those people who you adore while driving you nuts with their antics) but as a player-character she's just fun.

And she had the best, the very best, faces.

You never have to guess what Sonnett is thinking. Whatever it is, it light up her face like a good deed in a weary world.

Dammit, Sonny...now you've made me go all sentimental over you. Good luck in Orlando.

Except when you play Portland, of course.

Sorry. But there's love, and there's soccer; it's not life and death. It's way more important than that.

In memory of..?

...the Seattle dead of World War 2, apparently.

This past Saturday I finally did something I've wanted to do for a long time.

No! I didn't convince my wife to make love in a hammock. C'mon! That's nuts; you could hurt your back that way!

Nope. I rode the Portland Thorns fan bus up to Seattle for the women's professional soccer match between the Thorns and the home Seattle Reign.

The bus ride was...well, about what you'd expect from a bus ride between Portland and Seattle (though the delays in Tacoma were surprisingly few, and shorter than I would have expected...)...though the pickup soccer at the Scatter Creek rest stop was fun. First time I'd kicked a ball around since my new hip, and I was pleased with my agility.

But it was just a long, dull bus ride enlivened by the fact that we had a pony keg of Lompoc Brewing's fine Kick Axe ale broached in the left rear seat. I don't usually start drinking at nine a.m., but needs must. Mmmm. It is a damn fine breakfast drink.

We made excellent time - overcalculated those delays in Tacoma, no doubt - and arrived outside the Home of the Reign more than hour before gate time, so several of us wandered away to find another place to kickabout. Some admired the bizarre organic metal shell of the EMP music building, museum, whatever; it looks like an aluminum tumor. That and the ginormous steel stalks next to the parking lot. As art they're kind of shit. As toys, on the other hand, they're a lot of fun. It's pretty amazing how far you can get them to flex...

Finally we all regrouped outside the gate of Memorial Stadium, where upon entry we discovered that one of the local car dealers was sponsoring a scarf giveaway.

It's a sad comment on what a scarf whore I am that I instinctively scooped up one of these things before realizing that it was a Seattle scarf. Well, okay, a Seattle/Subaru scarf, but...still. A Portland fan wearing a Seattle scarf'd be like pinning a Nazi swastika on a yarmulke. Just. Wrong.

So I scarfed the first vendor I saw and trooped in to find our seats.

The Seattle organization had given us pretty good seats; down front, near midfield - way better than the far top corner we in Portland pen our visitors into on matchdays, sadly. The odd part was that there was no real attempt to segregate us from the Seattle fans. Most of the Portland supporters did stand together in a block, but the outside edges were pretty ragged, and there was a sort of admixture at the fringes where individuals and small groups of Portland fans mingled with supporters of the local club.

One oddity was an apparent drinking restriction to a "beer garden" at the outer wall; I didn't see any beer served anywhere else in the joint and, while I didn't test the boundaries I didn't see anyone with a brew outside the designated grownup space. Maybe this had something to do with the owner, Seattle Public Schools. Certainly the sign on the South Stand pier suggested that Adults and Students were not to mingle,let alone share the Temptations of Demon Drink

Perhaps the other reason was concern for the health of anyone who had drunk enough beer to need internal relief, because the Memorial Stadium bogs were truly appalling. I've used some pretty primitive facilities - I was a GI and posted overseas, remember - but this was perhaps the most noisome toilet I've ever seen in a major city. I'd be shocked if these things had been renovated since the old pile was built back in 1947.

The day was cool and cloudy, the crowd large and enthusiastic, and the match a solid grudge fight between two teams that seem to genuinely like to whip one another. Unfortunately for a Portland fan, we were on the wrong end of the whipping that day.

Thorns FC lost one of our best defensive midfielders to injury early in the first half, making it difficult to defend against Seattle's excellent midfield or fight forward through it. Just before the half hour the Reign scored a goal on some terrific buildup play. Much as we chanted and sang we didn't help; our team was frustrated and penned up in its own end most of the half.

Halftime we were down 1-nil, and by midway through the second half Seattle scored again, this time an an awful error by one of usually-most-reliable defenders and a member of the US women's team. The last half hour and stoppage time was desperate; Portland scored, finally, in added time but then fell apart trying for the equalizer and gave up a quietus to Seattle's Rapinoe to go down 3-1.

The Thorns had not played well and their body language showed it; after the traditional salute-song to the team the fans remained staring uncomfortably at the team's cool-down stretches before slowly trickling away up the steps and back to the bus.

The drive back to Portland was, not surprisingly, quiet, disturbed only by the brake problems on the bus I'd chosen (the "cider bus", named for the hard cider it was stocked with in place of beer, drove on without incident). Perhaps coincidentally it was just as we finished the last of the brew suddenly a chorus of shouts and shrieks broke out from the left rear;

"Ohmigod, the tire's smoking!" "We're on fire!" "Stop the bus! There's something wrong!"

The driver did, indeed, pull to the side of the anonymous stretch of I-5 bordered by empty fields several miles from the next exit. He opened the door and stumped out to see what was the matter. Inside considerable hilarity tinged with nervous laughter considered the possibilities of a tire-fire while the tire was still on the bus.

I texted my Bride: "FYI - brake problems with bus. May be late. On the other hand, may burst into flames. Will advise."

I love my Desdemona. She replied quickly: "In case of fiery death, assure send pictures."

But today the bus was not half in love with easeful Death. After a moment of backing and starting forward the brakes broke loose at least long enough to get us back on the road. We arrived in Portland as the sun was setting, and I walked through the windy cool of the evening back across the Broadway Bridge to my office lot and home.

L'Art de l'Affaire

You know my love affair with the women's soccer game and our Portland Thorns in particular, right?

This winter the Thorns are supposedly negotiating with one of France's top players, Amandine Henry. The news was announced nearly a month ago. But...no deal so far, and nobody seems to know why.

Here's my suspicion: I think the Henry, who has been playing for one of Europe's wealthiest clubs, can't believe the teensy-weensy little salary she's being offered by the salary-capped NWSL. Not sure what the maximum for a non-allocated (that is, a player whose salary isn't payed by one of the national soccer organizations) will be this year, but last season it was only about $37,000.

Even for a women professional getting paid significantly less than a man (and, while this isn't really fair, the women's game also makes far, far less than the men's, so you can see how a team would justify that) this is a pittance by European standards, where a good player can command at least twice that. Henry is said to have made about $70,000 last season playing for the big club Paris St. Germain.

So my guess is that Henry, or her agent, or both, are gobsmacked and unwilling to get over the whole "league maximum" thing and that this is making negotiations...difficult.

Here's how this is playing out in my head:

Henry: "C’est impossible! I cannot believe this, me. Les Thorns d’Portland, home of ten t’ousand seeinging fans and ze maniac Reeveters, smoke bombs bursting in ze air…and zees is EET? Ze boot-polishaire at PSG ees making more than thees!"

Merritt Paulson (owner of the Thorns): "This is it, really. I’m not kidding. This is all we can offer given the hard cap. I wish…but, no. This is really it."

Henry: "Ridicule! Zees ees America! There is always a way aroun’ ze rules, hein? Here, I tell you what; I see in le pissoir you ’ave special pieces of paper for to covair ze seat (which is imbecile, but, whatevair…). You tell ze league zat I am tres délicat and have l'grand fantods de horreur at ze nasty pissoirs ’ere in Portland, so you must stock $120,000 worth of zees papairs! Zen you don not buy ze papairs and geev ze money to me. Corrigé!

Paulson: "Ummm…I…let me see what my general manager has to say. Gavin! Little help here!

This part of the US soccer year is the equivalent of what in England is called the "silly season" (because there's no soccer and everyone gets to trot out their silly speculations). Consider this my bit to keep it as silly as possible...

Playing off

Did I mention that my beloved Timbers won the Major League Soccer title this season?

Oh, yeah. Sorry.

So I've walked around just slightly pleased this entire December because of this, and I just realized why because I watched Rog and Davo talking with the lovely and intelligent Rebecca Lowe on Men in Blazers last night.

Turns out that the Lovely Rebecca is a Crystal Palace supporter (see the little stuffed eagle on Davies' shoulder? That's "Kayla", Palace's eagle mascot). She was talking about the distress that Manchester United fans are feeling this season even though the Scum are within the top half of the Premiership table and in a position that fans of other, more mundane, (read: Palace) clubs would normally consider supremely enviable.

But that for ManU fans this is anything but. The Red Devils have been losing and drawing, not scoring, and generally looking moderately crap for much of the 2015 campaign, and this gives the over-accustomed-to-success-ManU-fans huge, huge sadz.

Lovely Rebecca's observation was that this was because these overprivileged mamzers were, in her words, "forced to face Life", that is, Life as the Rest of Us have to live it; full of disappointments, failures, heartbreak, people we love who like us "as friends", movies starring anyone ever appearing on American Idol, nonalcoholic beer.

And that hit be right between the eyes because the story of a Portland Timbers fan has been failure for nearly 40 years.

The original Timbers came oh-so-close, going to the old NASL "Soccer Bowl" championship match in 1975 but losing to Tampa Bay.

Between that year and last month the closest the Timbers ever came was...close.

We won the old USL in league play - winning the "Commissioner's Cup", the regular season record - in 2009 but proceeded to shit the bed against the damn Vancouver Whitecaps. We won the Western Conference in league play in 2013 but failed to beat Real Salt Lake for the conference playoff.

That's kind of been the "Portland Story"; win regular season games, go to the playoffs, lose.

Until, two years ago...

The Portland Thorns had a fraught season in 2013. Starting the season ripping out five wins and a draw the Thorns were top of the table in the middle of May. But by mid-June the team had slipped down to third of eight. In August the team lost two, drew one, and won one, nearly dropping out of championship contention.

Portland went to Kansas City to play the Blues - who had split the season series 1-1-1 with them including a home defeat in August - and shipped two goals in the first thirty minutes. The team looked beaten and out of ideas.

But some of the players refused to lay down and die. Tobin Heath scored just after the half hour. Christine Sinclair finished a brilliant run dishing to Tiff Weimer who scored just past the hour mark. And Allie Long drove the nail in 18 minutes into overtime.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, impossibly, for the final 210 minutes of the 2,190 minutes the Thorns played in 2013 the team played like...well, champions. They crushed Western New York in the championship match to win the first NWSL title.

The storyline of this Timbers season is freakishly similar.

At the beginning of October the Timbers stood in seventh place in the MLS Western Conference, out of playoff contention having lost a gutting 1-nil home decision to Sporting Kansas City. The team had scored only 31 goals in 31 games.

They were out of the Open Cup. They had finished behind both Vancouver and Seattle in the Cascadia Cup.

It looked like lights out.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, impossibly, the Timbers began to win.

They won their last three regular season matches to finish third in the Western Conference.

They won an insane play-in round match against Kansas City that went to twelve rounds of penalty kicks after 120 minutes.

They comfortable disposed of the Vancouver and Dallas sides that had finished above them in the West.

Then they won the championship match.

Both Portland's professional soccer teams have now won their leagues. Within two years of each other. Both teams will now wear the star above the club crest that forever shines as the sign of a championship season.

I have to confess something here.

I'm not a big fan of "playoffs", in any sport. My feeling has always been you play a sports season to decide who's the best. You win the season, you win all the matches, you win. You're the champion. That's it. No frigging "wild cards", no "play-ins", no gimmicks. Play the games, win, that's it.

But boy friggin' howdy am I glad that the outfits that run American soccer don't think like I do.

Drachma the kitten on a bathrobe

Whilst I'm trying to find the time to continue my Panama tales, I should mention that we have a new little fellow in the Little House:

This ia Drachma. Yes, like the Greek money; the Boy is a great Percy Jackson fan and a mythology buff in general, and it was his idea to get a little kitten. So we headed out to the Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood for "Kittenpalooza" and, sure enough, found an adorable kitten; this little guy.

He's very sweet and playful, so much so that he's won everyone's hearts except for Nitty Kitty, who sees him as a pest and a nuisance and hisses at him every chance she gets. Which he totally doesn't get; he thinks the Big Kitty is cool and wants to investigate her and, therefore, really is a pest and a nuisance...

So we're trying to mollify poor Nit whilst trying to conceal the existence of Nitty's cat-flap from the little guy. We just don't want him getting outside yet; he's too little and the neighborhood raccoons and stray dogs (and coyotes and who-knows-what-else...) are too dangerous. We'll see how THAT works out.

I should note in passing that this season has been a terrible one for my Portland Timbers. Right now we're sitting dead last in the MLS West and our playoff hopes are pretty much dead. So this season has become one of those sorts of seasons that try the souls of true supporters. It just doesn't feel right not to sing and chant for the team...and yet, it's hard to deny that the team is truly bad. Players that had terrific years last year have regressed to their mean, while newcomers haven't worked out. The team as a whole is just a hot mess.

On the women's side the Portland Thorns have had their troubles, as well. Not as bad as the Timbers, but with several of the game's top players the Girls in Red are scrapping for the last playoff spot rather than crusing to a defense of their 2013 title. It was lovely to enjoy a 7-1 thrashing of the visiting Kansas City Blues this past Sunday, but the win left me with a real conundrum.

I am one of those idiotic fans that have irrational superstitions about games. I have a beloved Timbers jersey from the minor-league years I wear to every home match in hopes that the tiny spark of individual mojo will spur the team on to victory. On the Thorns side this season has been a shuffle through a series of team scarves.

I started out wearing my season ticket-holder scarf from last season and the result was a cascade of losses and draws. So I retired that scarf and turned to the red-and-black striped scarf of the "Rose City Riveters" supporters' group.

No luck.

So the whole connection between that and this post is that Sunday I unfurled the comical gimmick "Too Balls Is Too Many" scarf that the Riveters doped up to help a local cat charity. The "Feral Cat Coalition" is an outfit that specializes in catching these wild moggies and snipping out their girl- and boy-bits. The scarf itself is kind of a hoot, with a lurking cat face at one end (with a rather evil expression that pretty much says without words "you bastards, you cut my balls off..!") and the Riveters logo at the other,

And the team responded with a seven-goal outburst, hammering the visiting Kansas City Blues 7-1; who would have ever thought that describing a soccer team as "...just like watching Brazil!" would be a huge insult?

So. As much fun as it was, I'm stuck in my superstitious bind with my ridiculous cat scarf until we defend the championship or the season ends.

Mee-ow!

Big soccer fun

I took my 8-year old daughter to the Portland Thorns women's professional match this past Sunday.

Here's her match report:

“Well, soccer is so much more fun when you’re there! On TV it’s really boring, but when you go there there’s so much to do. I liked the singing, and the colors were pretty (she was talking about the Pride Week tifo I've shown below that the Rose City Riveters unveiled before the match). I liked watching the people run away when the rain came. And the C'mon, Guy (Khao Man Gai) chicken wings were really super tasty, and riding the MAX train was fun. And I want to go back again, because it was really fun and nice.”

“What did you think about the game, sweetie?”

“Well, I didn’t really care much about that. It was OK, I guess.”

I let her know that I thought the game was much more than OK (and it was, a solid 2-nil win for the home team...) and she conceded with the casual carelessness my kid uses when she gives in to me over something that matters to her not a whit. It didn't matter, really. In the words (between mouthfuls of cotton candy) of Stumptown’s youngest soccer reporter: “That was really fun!”

It was a very sweet day. The Girl was her usual cheerful, bubbly self and she loved everything; she loved the train, and the people, and the food, and the colorful tifo that I helped construct, and just being with her Daddy. I looked down at her glossy head and she skipped alongside me back to the truck to drive home and wondered how I had been so lucky to find this sweet and loving little person.

No disrespect to the players, but I think I have the real Pride of Portland sleeping in the little bed in the shed-roofed room at the back of my house.

Love and loss

Wintertime in the U.S. is usually a slow time for soccer players and soccer fans.

We gather in clusters like starlings around the soccer websites to argue and speculate and fantasize about our teams, while they do some workouts or hit the trainer's table to work out the bruises and tears that playing has beaten into their legs.

Not today, though. Our Portland Thorns had one hell of a busy Monday today.

Well, actually, they've had a very busy autumn and early winter; you can read about all the goings-on at the new Slide Rule Pass website, here. I have a new post up there talking about the surprising number of changes that have occurred in what is, after all, a championship team.

Typically sports teams are no different than politicians or armies; if they win they usually aren't much arsed about changing things up. Perhaps a tweak here or a nudge there, but otherwise? No.

The Portland women's soccer team, however, has seen some fairly big changes over the four-months-and-change since lifting the ugly-ass National Women's Soccer League trophy, and today was more of the same.

First, the team signed the German national team goalkeeper, Nadine Angerer.

The keeper we had, the player in goal for the 2013 Thorns, was a wonderfully energetic young woman named Karina LeBlanc who plays her international soccer for Canada. She was Portland Thorns from the top of her bright red mohawk to the tips of cleats on her boots and as such she won the hearts of many in this town, including it must be said, my own.

She just seemed to live inside a world shot full of life, and energy, and love for her sport and everything around her.

That said, as a 'keeper she was not perfect.

She was caught off her line several times during the 2013 season. She seemed to have problems with "distribution", which is a fancy way of saying that when she had the ball in her hands or at her feet she had trouble getting it to one of her teammates.

Perhaps the single biggest issue was not so much about her as about the Thorns defending as a unit; more often than not the Thorns defenders seemed disorganized, unsure of what to do, who to mark, where to go and how. That's a big part of the goalkeeper's brief. She can see the entire field from her goalmouth, and most keepers are expected to organize their backline.

Angerer is known as a very good organizer and tactician on defense.

So, given what happened last season I'm not surprised that the Thorns signed Angerer or, once that deal was done, traded LeBlanc to the Chicago Red Stars for a draft pick in 2015 - a return so small for a starting keeper as to be practically insulting and suggesting that the entire business was part of a backstairs deal that got Angerer to Portland at the price of shipping LeBlanc to Chicago.

On a sporting level this deal makes excellent sense; Chicago sent their keeper to the expansion Houston team and then, in return for not contesting Portland's signing of a new keeper, gets Portland's old keeper. Keeper for keeper for keeper and everyone's happy.

Except...that a lot of people here in Portland genuinely liked, enjoyed, or loved Karina, forgetting that she was a playing piece on a playing field.

Until today.

I know I've said this before, but if sport has any value at all it is as a distillation of human spirit. Sometimes the spirit is the exhilaration of achievement, often it is the grim disappointment of failure.

Today the sport reminds us that anytime we love someone, or something, Fortune holds it hostage against us. If we do not love we cannot lose, and yet we must either choose to love or protect ourselves by not chancing the loss and, in effect, forfeiting the gains of love. Love and loss; for in life as in sport the end of the story is always the parting of ways, the terminator of delights, and the separator of companions.

And yet, if we do not love, what value do we gain?

Friday randomness.

Just some musings on a slow Friday at work.

Yes, I know it's old and has been floating all over the Internet forever.

And, yes, that's pretty much how I feel, despite the good work the present Pontiff has been doing shaming the shit out of the plutocrats. If you want a God to hug because it makes you a happier, gentler, kinder, more humane person? Good on you. You are part of a lovely, inconsequential majority. The relatively small minority of Bible- (or Koran-, or what-the-hell-ever-Buddhists-bash) bashing, snake-handling, sectarian-hating religious nutjobs out there are doing a terrific job of making you all look like credulous tools.

What the fuck, over?

We risked our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor...for this?

And yet the fuckin' Teatards are all pissed off about the wages paid to public schoolteachers.

[Facepalm]

................

One of the many things I love about living in the Northwest is our weather. Yes, the Black Months are gruesome (try spending weeks in the gray drizzling rain with temperatures that rise from a low of 44 Fahrenheit to a high of 46 and back and see how you like it...) but the rest of the year we enjoy some moments of aching beauty.

Winter mornings are often among them.

The combination of cold ground and cool are produces dense fog. The mist enfolds the land, softening the hard surfaces of civilization and returning us to those pre-Conquest dawns when the only noises were the slow dripping of the dark fir-boughs and the calling of the wild geese rising from the morning waters.

I love to emerge from the house to see my little street dim and cool with whorls of miniscule gray beads of vapor, hot coffee steaming in my hand and all the sounds of the city around me dampened and far away.

Makes for some lovely sunrises, too.

(To give credit where it's due, both the above images are from a wonderful little photoessay by Thomas Boyd from the World's Worst Newspaper. Even the deepest dungheap produces the occasional gem.)

I am so fucking totally going to name my next garage band "Chinese Donkey Meat".

(And I should add that the whole question of "Who put the fox in the can of delicious donkey meat?" does sort of highlight how foolish the notion that usually goes under the general heading of "small government".

China - and the U.S., and Brazil, and Australia, and about every other goddamn polity outside Andorra - is an immense, complex, insanely complex and interconnected industrial state. This isn't the fucking colonies circa 1789. We are, daily, constantly, confronted with things we don't control, made by people we cannot see and cannot influence, in places we do not know or understand, that can, if they are badly made, or poorly designed, or simply capable of being shipped, or stored, or used, in certain ways that will injure, maim, or kill us.

And, frankly, those that make them may not understand the actual dangers. Or, worse, may know and not care, counting on the distance from source to destination, the weakness of the intervening polity, or their own desperation and/or greed to shield them from the punishment appropriate for their negligence.

There is no other organization other than ourselves acting in concert (that is, as some sort of public corporation - which is more-or-less the same thing as an arm of government) that has the power to prevent this malfeasance or the power to punish it if it occurs.

It's really just that simple.)

The silly season for soccer here has been more-than-usually-silly. Especially with our women's soccer club, Thorns FC. After winning the league in 2013...

First we parted ways with our manager, Cindy Parlow Cone, who guided the team to championship in it's very first year of existence.

Then we added another U.S. Women's National Team player, Amber Brooks.

Now we're looking down the barrel of the first expansion draft gun next Friday; the new team in Houston gets to pluck a yet-unknown number of players from our team. And right now we, the supporters, have no idea how many players we can protect.

And speaking of footy, did I tell you I scored the awesome Cat Scarf?

Nitty Kitty seems unimpressed, having never had any balls to begin with. But I love this, perhaps the silliest soccer scarf I've ever come across.

And with that I really have to go clean out the equipment storage room. Back with some Friday jukebox in a bit.

Let no man put asunder

Although you probably don't know this (and, I'm afraid, could probably care less; of all the posts here my soccer stuff draws fewer views than almost anything else outside of, well, anything. Hell, even my cat stories get more action) a lot has been happening to our Portland Thorns FC professional soccer club, current NWSL title-holders and defending first-season champions.

First, one of our defenders, Nikki Marshall, was waived back in September, right after the Girls in Red brought home the ugly-ass NWSL trophy (that's it over on the left and, yeah, it's pretty fuckin' ugly...except it looks a hell of a lot better sitting in our trophy case here in Portland. Heh).

Nikki is supposedly playing for our rival Seattle Reign but has more or less flat-out dismissed playing in the league next year.

Then Marian Dougherty, her backline partner, retired to take a real job.

The little-spoken fact of the National Women's Soccer League is that there are two types of players; those "allocated" from their national teams and those who can't make an honest living from their sport. Rumor - since the league is extraordinarily close-mouthed about its pay scale - says that the non-allocated players make as little as six or seven thousand a year from their playing gig. That's chump change for a good player but pretty typical of most sports, and in particular the NWSL has chosen to try and avoid paying out anything in order to avoid the solvency issues that crushed the three earlier attempts at forming a women's pro league here.

And today the first head coach - the manager, as they'd call her in Britain - of Thorns FC, Cindy Parlow Cone, has resigned.

And for the worst possible reason; her job was tearing her marriage apart. Her husband, John, resigned as the head of the Timbers' fitness staff today as well. Parlow Cone said: “Coaching the Thorns has been one of the highlights of my career. However, due to the scheduling conflicts created by the job, I realized that despite being a great move for my career, it was less than ideal for the health of my marriage - which is the most important thing in my life."

That's a damn hard road to find yourself on, to make you quit your job.

I've been there; not so much quitting my job to try and save my marriage but in the midst of a failing marriage finding myself in that cold iron place where it feels like the joy, the purpose, and the very reasons for living, have been leached out of your life.

You get up and go through the day but find no hope there. The world, and your place in it, seem very fallow, empty of the prospect of a gentler days to come.

This just reminds me of something I've said, and said here, before; that every day we live is a gift we're given.

Not that we will always want that gift. Sometimes that gift is a poisoned one.

Sometimes it is a horror so frightful that we cannot dare look upon it.

Sometimes it is pure joy. Sometimes it is a-tremble with happiness. Sometimes it is top-gallant delight, a delight so sweet and dear that it pierces our breast, a joy akin to weeping.

And...sometimes it is just...another day.

Another and another in the tripping string between our first breath and our last.

Some days are just a day, no better and no worse.

The part that catches in my throat, though, is how carelessly we assume that there will be another, and that that next day will be alike the last, and the last.

But it won't; there's nothing to say that today won't be the end of our marriage, or our love, or our hopes, or our life.

Well.

I could talk more about Coach Parlow Cone, and the Thorns, and what this may mean for the club, and Portland soccer, in 2014. But if you wanted to read about that you'd be following my work over at Slide Rule Pass, and this site isn't that site. I will have more to say about the soccer business side of this over there.

Today, here, I just wanted to remember again that every day we live we are a gift of love; that it's not such a bad thing to hold to that happy day and to work for the next as hard as we can.

Because oftimes it is only when the day draws to a close and the sky grows dark, and the cold wind closes around us, that we look back and remember that happy time and look forward with hesitation or fear, knowing that we cannot go back and that going forward gives us no assurance that we will emerge from the cold and the night.

Hey! Get those nuts off that cat!

I have a thing for soccer scarves. And I SO have a thing for this one:

"The Rose City Riveters have teamed up with the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon and we’re selling a scarf to benefit them."

Hell, I'll wield the little kitty-gelding pliers myself...

...to get my hands on one of these sweet mufflers.

The link here, by the way, is that our big-league soccer field has a bunch of feral kitties living down in the bowels of the stands. I blogged about that back in the spring of last year; if nothing else it made for a great two-stick.

And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that our own Nitty Kitty has lost her organs of generation, just in case you were thinking that I was one of those "no foolin' around for you but it's OK for me..." sorts of people.

Right, Nitty?

Sky Blue, Blue Skies

(This is a repost of my contribution to the Portland soccer website Slide Rule Pass. I liked it enough to put it up it here, but it is about soccer, and women's soccer, so if you dislike soccer, or women, please feel free to stop reading. Or you might skip to the end, where I do have some observations about the social divide between Portland's soccer cultures I got a little taste of last night.)

Portland woke up gray and drizzly, probably looking very similar to the way Jim Gabarra and the gals from Sky Blue FC are feeling after dropping to third in the NWSL.

Wednesday night Portland Thorns FC did the business they couldn’t last Sunday and hung a 3-1 whipping on the Jersey Girls.

Mind you, in the larger sense all that did for PTFC was set up a huge match this coming Sunday with the league leaders, FC Kansas City. But sufficient to the day is the soccer thereof. Let’s just take a quick look at last night and see what might have made the difference between giving up two points to Chicago last Sunday and hammering three out of SBFC last night.

Portland’s attack continues to be ferocious. That was the biggest similarity between the two matches, the intensity of the revitalized Thorns strikers. PTFC outshot SBFC 25-12, including 13-4 on goal but the numbers alone don’t really give a good sense of how different the two clubs looked last night. Thorns FC threatened from the opening whistle – Shim was desperately unlucky not to score in the first minute – to the final one. Sky Blue did what they could, given the depletion of their strike force, but relied largely on a counterattack that was generally well handled by PTFC.

While I’m here, let me shout out both Meleana Shim and Allie Long. Shim was perfectly positioned to clean up the mess Alex Morgan made firing twice at SBFC’s keeper Loyden at pointblank range.

And Long got some karmic payback for Mautz’s golazo Sunday, crafting what amounted to the identical play with the identical result for Portland’s third goal. Allie has been working her tail off on defense for the past month and it was nice to see her enjoy her beautiful strike.

And Alex Morgan. Let’s just say that the Thorns’ marquee player had a fire and a ferocity I wish she’d display every match. Her first half equalizing strike was beautifully taken, and Wednesday night she was in every way what Rose City supporters dreamed of and opposing fans feared; a game-changer and a force of nature.

Well played, Alex.

Portland’s midfield has been Tobinized. I was skeptical, I admit it; I didn’t see how the addition of a single player, no matter the quality, would fix the problems Thorns FC had been displaying in midfield. Well, for the record, I’m eating my words. Heath has made a vast difference, and Thorns midfield is finally showing the cohesion and composure we’d hoped to see from the opening match.

From what I can see Heath does this both with her own skills and the way she plays off the others. Her dribbling is far and away the most accomplished in the midfield and was really on display Wednesday night. I lost count of how many times she danced between or within a brace or trio of Sky Blue defenders, but the effect was to repeatedly draw pressure, like a black hole in a red jersey, and repeatedly free up space around her.

Then she would deploy her other talent, a gift for accurate passing. Especially to her forwards, Heath is capable of providing the sort of deadly service that makes her every possession a threat to the opposing goal and forces the defenders to concentrate on her as SBFC had to and as a result opening up opportunities for the Thorns around her. But she also makes her midfielders more effective, threading passes to them that would have been picked off three weeks ago. Wednesday night the Thorns midfield was no longer a place where the Thorns’ attack went to die, and I give Heath a huge portion of the credit for that.

I’ve seen other players do this, raise their teammates to a higher level, but it’s been delightful to see it here. Heath makes her midfield partners play better, gives her defenders a reliable outlet when pressed, and provides the service to make her forwards more deadly. That’s pretty damn impressive for one player.

Well played, Tobin.

Portland’s defense did a vastly better job of avoiding the derps that cost them Sunday. Not entirely; the lone Sky Blue tally was a 17th minute own-goal that combined poor positioning by Karina LeBlanc with a head-scratching flick-on from Nikki Marshall jumping above the PTFC wall that looped Freel’s free kick neatly into Marshall's own net.

In the second half Karina made up for her gaffe by stoning SBFC’s Ocampo’s 54th minute breakaway but with the entire PTFC backline puffing along behind thoroughly beaten by the well-placed long ball. Karina still had to make some other big saves, notably in the 13th minute when she dove to her right to palm a Brittany Bock shot around the post.

I have to give credit to Coach Parlow Cone on this, too. She started the match with Allie Long nearly sitting back amongst the defenders; technically the formation might have been a 4-4-2 diamond but in practice it looked like a 4-1-3-2 with Long acting as a sort of midfield sweeper, chasing down the ball and harrassing Sky Blue’s Rangel into insignificance. And that brings up another huge difference…

Coach Parlow Cone’s substitutions looked timely and sensible. Opposed to Sunday, where her choices seemed ineffective at best and actively harmful at worst, Wednesday night Parlow Cone did what she failed to do in the earlier game. Sitting on a 3-1 lead with about a quarter hour to go she pulled Meleana Shim for Courtney Wetzel and shifted to a 4-2-2-2 (or a 4-4-2 with Long and Wetzel deep in the bucket). This allowed the PTFC centerbacks the freedom to stifle Ocampo and a hobbled Lisa DeVanna while the fullbacks and DMs cut off their wing service, played keep-away with Heath and Foxhoven, and generally made nuisances of themselves. The result was a calm and controlled fifteen minutes that saw the game out and secured the victory.

There’s a saying to the effect that the reward for work well done is more work. Wednesday night’s work was well done by the Girls in Red; their reward is a meeting with a surging Kansas City Sunday. Last Sunday I looked ahead with a great deal of trepidation. Today I am a lot more confident. The Chicago clouds that loured upon our house are in the deep bosom of Sky Blue buried, and the hopes for sunny skies Sunday are suddenly once again on the rise.

Briefly Noted – The Sections of the Rich and Famous: For the first time since the renovation I watched part of the match from the East Stand, the “club” section of Jeld-Wen Field. I have to admit; several of those of us who normally haunt the North End call this stand the “Prawn-sandwich Patio” for the supposedly snooty and exclusive crowd it supposedly attracts. So I was curious to see how reality conformed to prejudice.

I tried to pick up a single General Admission ticket for the game but the on-line ticket service wouldn’t let me; the only seat it offered was over on the club side. As noted, these are expensive seats and I’ve never really had the urge to splurge. I wanted to see the match and didn’t have time to run down to the box office and try my luck, so I took the seat I was offered in Section C4, Row C.

And having been there, I have to tell you; it’s probably a very good thing that us unwashed proles standing behind the north goal don’t know how the Jeld-Wen 1% live. We’d be insanely jealous, rooting in squalor as we do.

First, club section seats are HUGE; my ass sighed in air-conditioned comfort as I wallowed about in the enormous bucket waiting for kickoff. Second, there’s a special little cup-holder on the back of the seat in front for your beer.

A cup-holder. For you. Yourself. For your very own beer.

The width of the rows is vast, with leg-room enough between your seat and the seatback in front for an NBA center. You can’t help it; you loll about like a Wall Street CEO surveying your minions with a sort of enormous well of contempt and self-satisfaction.

And the pitch!

So close, if you weren’t lolling about in your ginormous seat swigging your $9 beer from your very own cup-holder you'd feel like you could play a 1-2 with Tobin Heath.

It’s hard to describe the immense gulf between this luxury and the crowded terrace several hundred feet away, but lolling about in my club seat I suddenly understood how one could sweep past some grubby commoners in one’s Jaguar with not even so much as a sneer.

But.

Before the match I kidded a Section 109 (our usual spot under the Shed) friend about practicing my “tennis clap” to fit in with the club stand crowd. That turned out not to be much of a joke. When you’re used to standing and singing, shouting and jeering at the enemy and crying out love for your team it just seems wrong to respond to great play with a polite spatter of applause.

But based on the other night, that’s what you do sitting in the club stand section.

Let’s just say the intensity there wasn’t…intense.

With the game and possibly the season on the line the girls behind me spent most of the first half talking about the cute boys on their rec league soccer team. The young guy two seats over did nothing but catcall the referee. Other than a burst of cheering for the Morgan goal the stand was so quiet you could hear the players shouting on the pitch. When the two teams ran off at halftime 1-1 the entire section erupted in a burst of frenzied…clapping.

So I got up to get a beer, snuck around and into the North End, and spent the second half standing in front of a tiny seat in a narrow row, my warming beer in my hands, singing amid the thunder of drums and feeling thoroughly, vastly, immensely, contentedly privileged.