Tag Archives: sports

Now There’s a sport I never thought of…

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There are four players on the rather small court, two teams of two. They are on bicycles that have been specially modified for the event. Riders may not touch the floor, and they may not kick the ball. Instead, they propel the ball with quick flicks of the front wheel while all their weight is on the back. These guys can hit it hard. Like hockey, you are allowed to catch the ball, but you must immediately drop it straight down.

The game requires remarkable amounts of skill. Players move forward, backward, and they stand on either wheel. They hop the bikes, spin and twirl, and generally put on X-game performances, but without the arbitrary judging. It is an actual sport, by my stringent definition. (No judges, scoring is significant, scoring is constantly a possibility.)

Apparently, the sport has been around a long time. Right now at the Little Café Near Home a documentary is playing, honoring a team who started back in the black and white era (also known as the communist era, but for different reasons), and today, beer bellies and all, they’re still mighty damn good. They have trophies, medals, and awards out the wazoo. Shelves and shelves of them.

OK, the documentary just showed them getting the gold in Sydney. I think it did, anyway. If that’s the case, it is yet one more beef I have against American olympic coverage. There are olympic sports that look cool that I didn’t even know about? I look forward to the day when each channel bids to show a particular event, rather than the olympics as a whole. By not locking up the entire games with a single provider, obscure channels would have a chance to carve a niche for themselves showing events the big boys could never afford to show. NBC can pay a billion dollars for figure skating, while the outdoor network picks up biathalon cheap and NBC learns the hard way that figure skating is not a sport. That, my friends, is the free market, and under that system you would be able to watch the events you like. Somewhere.

Thanks!

Strč tinkerbell prst skrz

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I saw this headline on nhl.cz and I find it aesthetically pleasing:

Zopakují Mighty Ducks jízdu zp?ed t?í let?

So, there’s one advantage to giving your team a silly name.

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How To Tell If You’re Living the Good LIfe

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The day before yesterday, a bunch of us met to go bowling. We sat around upstairs too long, however, and missed our chance. We made reservations for the next day and repaired to a beer garden nearby to enjoy the springtime sun while sipping Gambrinus. Plan B was an unqualified success; we shifted from table to table as the sun went down, clinging to its rays until there were none left. After I took my leave from that group I stopped off at the Little Café Near Home to write for a bit, but I was immediately sucked into conversation with other patrons. Lucky thing, too, because I had forgotten I had agreed to meet Martín the next day to go over the English subtitles he was writing for a short film.

The next day (the “yesterday” referred to above) I woke up bright and early to get some work done before the training session at the bowling alley. Yes, that’s right — this wasn’t just a bunch of people hanging out drinking beer and bowling, this was a group of potential recruits for the Czech national ice bowling team. Sheboygan, here we come! (I don’t think people have quite realized how serious fuego is about this. He’s recruiting the documentary team already.) Training was fun, but boy did I suck. I was drinking non-alcoholic beverages; maybe that was the problem. While I did my best not to fall down, fuego burned up the lanes. After that (and the obligatory beer and pizza tactical session that followed) it was off to the little café for me.

I started in on a pesky sentence until it was time to take a break to work on the subtitles for the decidedly odd short film. For instance, toward the end the main guy wakes up and finds that forty-seven girls have moved into his apartment. They don’t speak at all, they just stare at him in silence. It’s really quite funny. That was fun, and then it was back to work on the sentence. I spent a total of about two hours working on the thing; it’s almost right, but not quite.

I wound up staying at the Little Café Near Home for seven hours, editing, editing, endlessly editing. It was quiet in there, and the new new bartender (as opposed to the now-old new bartender) is starting to figure me out. I had too much tea, then poured a beer or three on top, in what I have dubbed the “poor man’s speedball”. Toward the end of the evening I was just reading parts of Monster that I especially liked, and not really pretending to be working anymore, although I did pick up a couple of errors.

Then it was home, where I talked Soup Boy’s ear off for a few minutes (I blame the chemicals), followed by sweet slumber. A good day, indeed.

Thanks!

Happy Road Trip Day!

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I sit now at Cheap Beer Place, sipping not-so-cheap tea, pondering doing something that could be interpreted as productive before the hokej play-off game starts. (Interestingly, Czech for “play-off” is play off. You’d think they would have grown their own word for it in the centuries before the ubitiquization of English.)

It was a good Road Trip Eve celebration last night, going long past the traditional midnight toast. At one point in the festivities I found lined up on the table in front of me beer, whiskey, and slivovice, and I knew that some brain cells weren’t going to live to see another sunrise. Today, as the survivors grow accustomed to having a little extra elbow-room, thoughts are moving slowly and wandering off course, like a sloth with attention deficit disorder.

It’s the kind of day televised sports was invented for. Today the Beers play Slavia. The Beers are down in the series one game to two, so this one’s important for the team to continue their cinderella run for the championship. This is their first trip to the semifinals since 1951. Go Beers!

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Dancing ’till Dawn

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I was sitting at the Little Café Near Home, writing, when the message came. There’s some sort of Olympics Thing going on right now, so the TV was on, directly over my head, and the few other patrons were all turned in my direction but not looking at me. The two dogs in the place seemed indifferent to the sports, but were very disappointed that their owners were not allowing them to play. Such is the life of a large dog in a small café.

My phone chimed and when I got to a good stopping point in the prose, I hauled it out to find two messages from Belladonna. “Reserved Stones tickets”, one said; the other read “We’re going out tonight. Wanna come?” I slowly typed out a message to respond to both her texts, left out an important word, and sent my confusing reply, which was supposed to say that I was interested in the Rolling Stones in June but tonight I was working and would not be coming out to play.

Work was going well; I had thought of a very good nuance to the way Hunter is messed up in later chapters of The Monster Within. (Man, I’ll be glad when that book is published so I can get it out of my head.) Except for a brief stint of Internet access at the bowling alley I had been writing for 13 hours, but I wasn’t tired. When it works, you run with it. I was scruffy and wearing the same clothes as the day before. It was after 9 pm when Belladonna and Firenze finally convinced me I should come out. It was, after all, Saturday Night. I figured if they were going to stay out late enough I could scrub down and join them.

Stay out late enough? Hah. They weren’t even going to get started until midnight. The style here is to get to the club district before public transportation shuts down, and party until it starts back up again. So, at a time I would ordinarily be considering sweet slumber, I was heading back out the door. I found the designated place, was soon joined by the ladies, and after answering a few questions (“What do you mean, ‘the evening ended awkwardly and uncertainly’?”) we danced the night away.

It was fun. Toward the end my poor small-talk skills began to show — I’m good at listening but not so good at sustaining a conversation. I’m comfortable with silences; unfortunately the interesting things going on are all inside my head, where they stay.

The evening ended with a walk through silent cobbled streets, snow falling gently around us.

Thanks!

Gambler’s Alert!

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Sure they’ve won a bunch of games, and they’re playing at home and they’re big favorites — but don’t bet on the San Diego Chargers today. Why? Because I’m in North America, that’s why. It’s possible that I’m still far enough away that they will win the game, but by two touchdowns? I think not.

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Girls Night Out at the Bowling Alley

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I may have to start a new category in this here bolg: Observations in a bowling alley. There’s always something new to see here.

Tonight the writing has been especially difficult, for it is, indeed, girl’s night out. There is a large group of them, dominating four of the six lanes, and from my vantage point far above, each bowler provides her own unique distraction. For some, it is simple physical attraction. Others have a unique bowling style. One, a dark-haired cutie wearing 60’s-style striped pants, has the pendulum delivery.

There is another, her long, black hair tinted red, wearing glasses, a t-shirt and stone-washed jeans, who is quite obviously used to being good at things. She approaches bowling with the intensity of a serious athlete. It is interesting watching someone who is accustomed to excelling facing a task at which she does not excel. Her own expectation is still there.

All the women below me suck at bowling. I imagine it might be the first time for some of them. I’m pretty sure it’s the first time for athlete girl.

Here’s why I think so. In their first game, she was horrible. She dropped the ball so it rolled behind her. Gutter, gutter, gutter. She’s on her third game now, and she’s laying the ball down gracefully, almost silently, and she is following through with her hand high in the air. No one taught her this. Much of the time, the ball rolls straight and true, and she’s working on a score I would be satisfied with.

I hate people like that.

Thanks!

The Night of the Big Game

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It was early when I got to the little café near home. My batteries were already somewhat depleted and I didn’t have my power cord with me, so I didn’t figure on it being a long night.

The place was almost empty when I got there; the only two tables that were taken were the ones I normally gravitate toward. One is directly beneath the TV and close to the outlet, and the one next to it also has good access to electricity. They are both by the window, which can be chilly, but when things get smoky it’s a blessing. They also happen to be the tables that are most out of the way when things start to get crowded. (There are only six tables in all.) That didn’t seem like it was going to be an issue, however.

Soon, though, people started to arrive. One regular took over one of the two tables that can accommodate more than two people, and rounded up extra chairs. The other larger table was usurped soon after. There was talk of turning on the television. At first I thought people were gathering to watch Velký Bratr, the absurdly popular Czech version of Big Brother. Absurdly popular doesn’t even begin to describe it. Then I realized the gathering crowd was all male, except for a small knot of three girlfriends huddling up at the far end of the bar. Sports, then.

I put my head down into my story and raced the batteries. Just as the laptop gave it up, the game was starting. Fotbol. Soccer to the Americans in the audience. It was a big game, I knew, because the Czech Republic, an early favorite to qualify for the World Cup, had lost a couple of important games and was now fighting for one of the last spots.

The graphic came up on the screen: Norway vs. Czech Republic. Wait a minute, they just played Norway the other day. Is this a rerun? Luckily I did not know how to ask anyone and therefore display my ignorance. It was a two-game playoff, the winner going to the big dance.

It was crowded in there by then, but I decided to hang out and watch a bit of the game and see what words I could pick out of the conversations around me. People kept arriving, and when the game got boring there was plenty of activity around me to provide entertainment. By halftime I was sharing the table with a pair of drunk kids in their early twenties.

At the half, an older guy, a fixture at one of the barstools, saw I wasn’t working and came over and asked in czech, “Why aren’t you working? Where’s your computer?” I started to answer, but he had already assumed I couldn’t understand him and had turned to other regulars to translate. It took some time for me to get the six people all translating differently at once to understand that I understood in the first place, so they would stop explaining and let me answer. “batteries are kaput,” I said in Czech, (although the ‘Kaput’ may have been German).

“You need batteries? Batteries? I’ll get us some batteries!”

“He’s buying you a shot,” one of the kids said in English.

I knew that already. I don’t know if “Batteries” is common slang for shots or if it’s just one of those cases where anything would have been taken as a euphamism for booze. No matter, moments later I was holding a shot of Becherovka.

The night did not descend into a long and painful trail of trading shots. The game started, the game ended, the Czechs won, I talked to the drunk kids some more, I managed a few sentences in Czech, and fun was had by all. The bar closed at eleven on the dot, and we all went home.

In the two days since, I have studied my Czech harder than ever. I felt it while I was there. I was close. Afterwards I thought of many things I could have said had I had the presence of mind to dig the words up. A few more words, maybe throw in the past tense (which I hear is pretty easy), and I can have conversations in czech. Slow, painful, conversations, but that’s OK. Once I cross that threshold, I think things will speed up as I get more meaningful practice.

Today as I was walking I was greeted warmly by one of the Little Café regulars as I passed him on the street. It was early yet, and the Little Café was not yet open, so he was heading for the Budvar Pub on the next corner.

Thanks!

De Brug

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I would have left some time ago, but the music is too good. The beers here cost damn near a buck fifty, and the gulash I had, which was excellent, was also on the spendy side. But the tunes are good. Johnny Cash, Lou Reed. The woman next to me here at the bar, who is probably from Jamaica or environs, requested Beatles, and right now “Something” is playing.

There’s a good vibe here. The language in this bar is English, which means I can talk to people, and they can distract me while I write. Jamaica woman is a terrible singer, but that’s not what matters. She’s singing. I’m singing along as well. Other patrons are singing. It’s the vibe.

Danielle just arrived. The bartender asked, “do you want a coffee or a beer?”

“Beer.”

“So you’re having a good day.”

“You bet.” Danielle is American. She rolls her own. Squeeze is playing now, at the request of the Brit sitting next to me. Lots of people are following along. and that’s all right.

So there’s this World cup thing going on. It’s only football (soccer to those where football means Sunday), but people still get pretty worked up about it. The Czechs lost a game they really should have won a few days ago, and now they’re pretty much out. I had a discussion with the dutch bartender that went –

J: The czechs look good on paper but they lost the critical games.

DBT: They’re still the best team in the world.

J: If you can’t win the games that matter, you’re not the best team.

DBT: That’s not the way to think about it.

There were a couple more rounds of that. Apparently I’m awfully damn American to think that the measure of a team is whether it wins the big games, but I’ve met a couple of Atlanta Braves fans who think the “European way”.

But that’s not important. What is important is that the woman who was next to me is not Jamaican. Even that’s not important. What is really is important is that I know she’s not Jamaican. I know this because I talked to her. Yes, you read that right. I talked to a woman in a bar. I didn’t mention this before, but she has long, straight hair that hangs to her waist, enormous walnut eyes, and rich, full lips. The process that led to conversation was a gradual one, stretched over an hour, and was based mostly on both of us knowing the lyrics to certain songs.

She’s not from Jamaica. Man, was I off with that guess. There’s a musicality to her speech that I attributed to the islands, but I was plain and completely wrong. She’s your typical Korean-French-American-Swiss-andsoforth kind of girl. If she is the physical representation of globalization then all I can say is bring it on. I didn’t mention it before, but she is beautiful.

I told her I was a writer. Her vision of me instantly became misty and irrational. There’s something she wants to write. She asked me to read the first paragraph, but I stopped at the second sentence. The first was golden, Five words. A question. A damn good question. The second sentence was a train wreck. I skimmed the rest of the brief text and found muddled ramblings punctuated with really good questions. She looked at me hopefully. “You have a story to tell,” I said, “You have the questions. You don’t have to have the answers, but when you speak of cruelty, you have to be specific. You have to show the cruelty. If it’s your life, you have to show your life.”

More conversation ensued, and I promised to edit her work. That will be a major undertaking, certainly frustrating, possibly embarrassing, if she follows through. But she has a story, and I will do what I must to see a good story told. So we talked for a bit, and just before Skippy arrived she said, “If you read this I will never be able to talk to you again. We can only talk through email.”

And then, as foreshadowed, Skippy showed up. In fact, Skippy is sitting next to me now. Cleopatra is long gone, but Skippy is pounding away on her laptop.

His name is not really Skippy, but it should be. As I post this, he is wondering why I’m smiling at him.

Thanks!

Team Bowling

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Tonight I was recalling speed bowling. When you rent a lane by the hour and the hour is running out, the nature of bowling changes. The ideal is to have the ball on the way down the lane before the sweeper lifts. Speed bowling requires timing and finesse. You must know your alley. Every once in a while, not often, mind, the sweeper would not lift as quickly as it should have. Then you have to throw extra balls down the alley to knock the rejected ball down into the return mechanism, hoping all the while that the management is not watching.

But all that’s old hat. Tonight I was pondering how to make bowling a team game, and I harkened back to the speed-bowling days, and the accompanying hijinks, and I remembered other sweeper-damaging games. One of them is the foundation for team bowling.

As we all know, there are already bowling teams, but they don’t work as a team. It’s just a bunch of individual bowlers combining their stores. Not in my game. In my game team members must work together, and all that putting-a-spin-on-the-ball-so-it-hits-the-pocket-at-the-best-angle crap is out the window. The concept is simple. The team bowls. At the same time.

You could get pretty fancy with this. You could have one person lead with a lighter ball on one side of the pocket, so the ball deflects and reliably takes out one side of the rack, while another, hotter ball comes in on the other side, to bring kinetic energy and the resulting mayhem. Sweeper balls down the right and left to pick up the rabbit ears and you’re golden.

Of course, once one ball goes through, the sweeper drops. Here we bring in the artistry, the ballet that is team bowling. All the balls have to arrive down there within two seconds or so. Any ball hitting the sweeper is a scratch. So you have four bowlers, all trying to bowl on the same lane at the same time. This is where the teamwork comes in. Left-handed bowlers will be tremendously valuable – every team will want one, and would prefer to have two.

I picture the four gathered at the top of the alley. the first releases a slow but dead-on granny shot which slowly trundles down the lane. The rest of the team sets up, and when the ball reaches a certain point the crasher releases his ball, to be followed moments later by the cleanup team, who are just sending in some extra kinetic energy to make sure that anything that might fall down, will fall down.

The way I see it, a strike is one point. Knocking down all but the head pin is two points. Knocking down all but the five pin, buried in the center of the mayhem, is five points.

May the best team win.

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Something I’ve done that you haven’t

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Many years ago, while bowling, I knocked pins down in the next lane over.

Oh, yeah. You got nothin’ on me.

Thanks!

Steelers, Eagles, and Rose

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Public transportation here is expensive and inefficient; it took two hours and three busses to get from Ocean Beach to Mira Mesa. I had plenty to read, however, so the trip was pleasant enough. I spent part of the time trying to remember czech words. Ty vole! That didn’t go well.

No matter. After an hour at the library checking up on the media empire I headed over to my former home away from home. Larry, the manager, had the nerve to have his laptop opened up at my table (the one near a plug), so I bellied up to the bar for a while. Rose was working, so it was an easy choice anyway.

It wasn’t long before we were back in the same old easy rhythm. We all chatted about sports, Pittsburgh sports in particular, and by great fortune the Steelers were playing last night. Fortunate because it meant Rose stayed after her shift to watch the game. Jocelyn told me it was time for a haircut. Travis came on duty and the bar continued to ebb and flow the way it always had.

One thing that was odd, though – Rose didn’t break a single glass.

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One thing I do miss…

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It’s mid-summer in San Diego. The air is balmy and the sea breeze is blowing gently through Petco park. There is a special section out in the bleachers for people to bring their dogs, and people to watch over your best friend while you go for a beer. The fish tacos are even better at the park, and the beer is allegedly less overpriced there than at other Major League venues. (The last I find hard to believe.)

The Padres are in first place in their division, because they are almost unbeatable at home. The first year in the new park there was a lot of whining from Padre’s hitters, but this year I don’t think you’ll be hearing any complaints.

Yesterday, a lovely Monday, the park was filled to 98% capacity for the first game of a series against the evil Los Angeles Dodgers. Jake Peavy was on the mound for the good guys – he had been held back a day in the rotation so he could pitch against the division rivals. I suspect very few teams (St. Louis doesn’t count – they’re just nuts there) are getting that kind of turnout at this point in the season.

And pitch Jake did. He allowed two hits and no runs over eight innings. He was crafty, using change-ups more than usual, and had the Dodgers drilling themselves into the ground, cartoon-style. The crowd, I read, was going nuts for the entire game.

Peavey needed every bit of that craft as well. The other pitcher was also in fine form, and when the dust cleared the Padres were the winners, 1-0. The Padres are winning the close games so far this year. I love those games. One little slip is the difference between victory and defeat. One hanging curve ball, one bad throw to first, and that’s it. The fans feel it, too, and celebrate every strikeout and good defensive play. Those are great days to be at the park.

Thanks!

Advertising reaches a new low

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They have the Monaco Grand Prix playing here in the bar, and I’m mostly able to ignore it, but something just caught my eye I had to mention. One of the cars had a flat tire, so they switched to a camera on the car facing directly backwards so we could watch the smoke trailing behind as the car sped around the track toward the pits.

“Star Wars” the rear wing of the car proclaimed. (You may not have heard – there’s a new Star Wars movie out.) I thought to myself “those guys lucked out. They’re getting bonus exposure for their advertisement and their car’s still in the race.” The car pulled into the pits where the crew was waiting. They put on a new tire, topped off the gas, and the car was back out on the road. A textbook pit stop.

The crew members were all dressed as Imperial Storm Troopers.

Thanks!

Hockey Night in the Czech Republic

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The Czech Republic played Canada for the World Championship last night. This was a big, big game, more so than most years because usually the best players are all still playing in the NHL playoffs at this time of year. This year there was no NHL, and this tournament boasted national teams packed with incredible lines. It was like having several hockey dream teams at once. Kazakhstan, not so much. Their goalkeeper’s pads were falling apart, but they stepped up, playing for pride and the joy of the game.

I had a connection to tickets through my brother but uncertainty about how many tickets we could get and the arrival of some guests made me yield my seat. Instead, Houvi, Jason, and I decided to find a bar and cheer along with the locals. I knew it would not be easy to find a place, but I didn’t appreciate how difficult it would be. For a while I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to put this episode in the bars of the world tour category. Every bar in the city with a TV was completely reserved. Fortunately the little cafe near my house is not by any stretch a sports bar. All the tables were reserved, but no one had thought to reserve the bar stools yet. I got there early and did some writing before things started to get crazy.

My guests, only in town for two nights, got a big dose of hockey while they were here, the two semi-final games the night before and then the championship, and of course they got a fairly large dose of czech beer as well. While we were sitting at the bar before the final game started, I realized their whirlwind trip would not be complete until they experienced Slivovice (rhymes with sleaze o’ Bitsy) and Becherovka (rhymes with medicine), the two national boozes. Slivovice is a type of plum vodka; it is generally agreed that the best stuff is homemade. Looking, I didn’t see any bottles of the stuff on the bar shelves, so I asked the bartender “Máte Slivovice?” “No,” she said nodding (rhymes with yes). Then she added, “something something hezký česky something something something.” I think she was complimenting me on my czech. I stared at her blankly, wondering if there was any point asking her to repeat what she had said. There was no time for that, though.

The game started, the Good Guys scored first but the Canadians were putting the pressure on. The Canadian team was very, very strong, but there were a couple of the best players in the world that chose not to represent the great white north. I wonder how they felt watching their team come close time and again yet fail to score, knowing that it wouldn’t have taken much to tip the balance. Serves them right. Sitting on their asses all winter and then choosing not to represent their country. I only wish the kazakhstan team had beaten them. On the Czech side my main man Prospal (rhymes with Magic) was doing his usual job making everyone on the ice with him better.

The Canadians were playing a (relatively) physical game. The Czechs were up for it though, and were finishing their checks as well. The Slivovice came, Jason liked it, then the Becherovka came, which Huovi preferred. “The next team to score will win the game,” I said while it was still 1-0. They played on. Suddenly, the way it happens in hockey, without warning, the Czechs scored again. Even that little bar, filled with a less-avid form of hockey fan, even that place went nuts.

The Czechs scored once more, and empty-netter (I think) to win 3-0, and claim the championship of the world. A more meaningful championship than usual, and there was much rejoicing (rhymes with beer).

Thanks!