Football: The Song

God, I cannot get this out of my head. Damn you, Matt Lucas (Arsenal fan, btw). Apparently, I have an endless hunger for literal songs about sports. "Another time, a player got fouled, and everybody booed very loud."



A few more Matt Lucas turns as George Dawes, the drumming baby.

A New Season

Denilson, keep on livin' the dream, baby. . .

Arsenal with a 6-1 demolition of Everton at Goodison Park. Wow.

Before today's kick-off, I'd decided to carry a new attitude into this season's football spectating. Influenced by many hours of off-season "research" (bottom-feeding web surfing after 1:00 a.m.), and this magnificent interview with "The Professor," I propose the following spectating manifesto:

1. Dare to dream and let the agony fall where it may. The fun in watching is in not knowing what's going to happen on any given day and giving in to that excitement. Turn the t.v. on early, get some snacks, put on the over-priced team gear, and yell at flickering images of people far, far away from you.

2. Denilson. I'm into you, now. My main issues with him last season were a) his lack of defensive aggression (craziness, intensity, desperation, bite), b) his non-imposing physical stature on a team that could use a bit of it here and there, and c) he didn't seem to offer too much going forward to make up for his lack of defensive splendor. In other words, he felt like a space-waster. Not necessarily negative, but not anything positive either. This excellent post from Untold Arsenal helped me get a clue, filling in some holes in my tactical understanding, and answering the "Why on earth, would Wenger play this guy?" question, that I knew had to have a clear answer. Of course, Denilson ends up scoring a beautiful goal to open the scoring today. Luckily, I had made a public declaration of my revised attitude to my family before kickoff. Sam will vouch for this. Julie didn't really care what I was on about at that moment (rightfully so, of course), so she may or may not.

3. Last year, I had a romantic belief in what Arsenal could do. I was fired-up by the youth movement, and thought, "Yeah, screw all those cranks. Prove them wrong. Win with kids." My optimism was remorselessly torn down by the reality of the season, but this summer, I found that optimism creeping back up again, with the added "ahh, but they're also a year-better!" Several have also pointed out that the season just wasn't even close to being "bad" as far as bad seasons go. This wasn't Newcastle or Tottenham. . . This ties into 4.

4. Arsenal has fucking good-ass, miraculous soccer players playing for the best manager in the world. A nice quote from a column in the Guardian via Arseblog,
". . . you want me to tear my hair out now, when I've got Fábregas and Arshavin in front of me; and Wilshere and Vela sitting in the wings?"
I've been having a blast playing parents vs kids soccer on Sundays with Sam and his buddies from the Ashland Soccer Club. The experience of actually playing the game again is always humbling (even against 9 year olds). When I came back from the game last week, I saw checked out the Emirates Cup Arsenal vs. Rangers highlights and had to pick my jaw off the floor. Those guys are unbelievable.

5. Arsene Wenger is the man. From the Daily News interview:

What is difficult for me is not that clubs have more money. We try to go a different way that, for me, is respectable. Briefly, these are the basics. I thought: ‘We are building a stadium, so I will get young players in early so I do not find myself exposed on the transfer market without the money to compete with the others. I build a team, and we compensate by creating a style of play, by creating a culture at the club because the boy comes in at 16 or 17 and when they go out they have a supplement of soul, of love for the club, because they have been educated together.

The people you meet at college from 16 to 20, often those are the relationships in life that keep going. That, I think, will give us strength that other clubs will not have.’ And, so far, we have flirted with success. Not last year because we were never in the race for the championship, but before and certainly in 2006 when we were in the Champions League final. The team looks to me to be growing and gelling and being close to it, but at the moment they do not get credit for what they produce and like every team who has not won they still doubt whether they can win.

Lay it down, Professor

If I were a football manager, I'd like to be able to say this kind of thing:

The sums can appear shocking, but they are the result of a calculation carried out by the investor. It is necessary to disregard moral judgment and to question the profitability of the operation.

This was Wenger's take on the recent spate of Real Madrid signings. Hell yeah.

Okay. I'll start putting up some actual stuff instead of more Arsene Wenger pictures. He just fits a certain angle of my Super Ego so well. That could be a key to watching sports, actually. It's a chance for that judgmental, Nobodaddy in your head to run wild. "That was a horrible play." "How did you let that guy get past you?" etc. etc. And managers are fantastic manifestations of people you try to impress in your mind. Jose Mourinho showed up in my brother's dreams. I imagine Sir Alex, Tom Landry, and Joe Torre are out maurading the dreamscape as well.

Stay away from Soccer fandom. Thoughts on 2nd half of Newcastle v Arsenal

A memorable fancy. Thomas Hobbes and I watched the Newcastle v Arsenal match today. Our thoughts:
Players I'd rather not see in an Arsenal shirt any more:
Diaby
Denilson
Djourou (didn't play today, but that's for last week)

Horrible, horrible games:
Gallas
Toure

Well, there's your core--your center. Balls.

Oh, but of course, Diaby just scored for 2-1 Arsenal. Of course. He still sucks, though. Poor first touch, donkey-like build up play. Often seems suprised to be receiving the ball. Nothing defensively. But that was a quality goal.

Nasri! 3-1 to the Arse. I do dig this dude. And I feel bad for the Newcastle faithful. The missed penalty (albeit a crap call). The pointless giving away of two goals after an unlikely equalizer. Mike Ashley. A nightmare season. The team is just not that bad. They're not as good as Tottenham, but their talent is not relegation-worthy.
Clichy finally getting in on the action makes a nice run hitting Van Persie who forces a fine Harper save.

Digging Arshavin. And Bendtner's looked good today. They definitely need a bigg'un up front and Bendtner's been filling that role well in the absence of Adebayor.

Sagna is a freaky dude. Fast. Spirited. A bit wacky sometimes. Decent crosser. Pretty solid defensively. A key factor in Arsenal's "rent boys across the world" approach to building a team.

Song. Hmm, the best of a bad lot of holding-esque midfielders? Seems to have some fight in him.

Almunia is a cult figure for me. Has gotten pretty dang solid this season.

Arsenal is SO indifferent in defensive midfield. No pressure. No 50-50 balls won. Very few headers won. That's striking in the Premier League. But, hey, looks like they're pretty solidly back in 4th place and the Champion's League. Hooray.

Maybe They Got Arshavin After All

Yes, this is some interactive shiznay. What does it all mean? The code and .fla file for this wonderfulness are over at the Comics and Picture Books/Interactive site.

Feelin' Better, Thank You

Got to bed at a reasonable hour last night, so I'm feeling better. Hoorah. Going to go to bed early again, I believe. Tomorrow it's Arsenal vs. Liverpool, so gots to get up for the 8:00 kick off. Okay, that was my best blog post ever.

Here's a page from the brilliant mind of Evan "Big Evan" Carroll. A concept drawing from our Happiness Hole project.

I'm Not Waiting on a Lady

I'm just waiting on Le Cintiq. Now, perhaps, I will bee able to draw en zee French Style like zee Arsene Wenger, non? Cintiq. For the love of god, what is going on with that name? Wacom, y'all are a Japanese company; let's see you represent! How about the Obake 6000 or something? And damn, if that Arsene Wenger isn't one stylish cat. Wow, the Cintiq just arrived as I'm typing this. Okay, if I can find the digital camera, maybe I'll do one of those goofy step by step reviews. Probably not though, I'm way to busy/lazy. Busazy? Yeah, busazy. Arsenal held off Wigan too. The booing Eboue thing was really weird though.

Friday down in flames

Sometimes you expect big things from a day and it doesn't deliver. I thought this would be a big day to get some Arms and Ether goin.' No such luck. Meetings. Yay. Grumble. I did eat a lot of pizza though. Ugh. For the love of . . . Here's some of what I'm cookin' up.
1) I want to sell shirts and books on the site. I'm looking at cafepress.com, but I think I'll also get the fine young men (Alex Falkenstein and Jess Gleasman) at basement-ink to do a run of higher quality screen print shirts as well.
2) Fontlab with Scanfont is looking good so far. I just need more TIME.
3) Arsenal's playing Wigan at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Don't think I'll be up for that one. Darn.