Ollie and I attended our first DC United futbol game last night. A fun time (United won!) and I bet Ollie will blog about the game. But I have to make a public gripe about RFK Stadium. Prepare thyself for self-righteousness.
As an almost life-long Washingtonian, I've enjoyed many concerts and sporting events at RFK. I've never had a problem with the stadium or its staff until last night.
I arrived late to the game and was annoyed with myself for not taking metro when I found a line of cars waiting to park.
I had been sitting in line for about 15 minutes, when a parking attendant tapped on my window. I rolled down the glass and he said, "The lot is full. There's no more spots. But I can move some cones. If you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, you know." He stood there and waited for me to produce some cash.
I couldn't believe it! I had just paid $12 to get into the lot, $45 for my ticket, and now this guy wanted me to slip him money!
Hell no!
I told him to get lost and watched from my rear view mirror as he went down the row of cars to "help" them park. Occasionally cash changed hands and a vehicle would pull out of line and follow the scammer. As the sounds of the game echoed from the stadium I almost regretted my decision.
Eventually I found parking. (The lot was indeed not all full.)
Now, I am probably going to be accused of sounding like an old man, and I'm sure people "tip" parking attendants and other stadium employees, but I want to see what the reaction the DC Sports and Entertainment Commission, which operates RFK, has to my story. So I sent an e-mail to Tony Robinson, the commission's pr man.
I will post his response -- if any -- on the blog.
And yes, I will soon be doing hidden camera investigations for Channel 7's "I" Team.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Breaking Webb News
The Washington Post finally got on the Alan Webb Bandwagon, albeit a little late, with a good write-up by Jim Hage in THE EXTRA MILE column that occasionally appears. Hage, at one time the dominant force in the DC road-running scene, once dueled this blogger for about a mile in Rock Creek Park after our paths crossed. I was in great shape (for me), but Hage, without saying a word, reminded me that Giants Walk the Earth, accelarating just enough to make me toast.
The trouble with the article is that the day it was printed it was out of date -- Webb had run another race, leaving Loosen Up Sandy Baby a few steps ahead on the web, if not on the track.
The scene shifts to Belgium, suddenly the centre of the sports world, and a very cool place to move!
Alan Webb dropped down to run the 800 meters at a meet in Heusden-Zolder, one week after setting a new American record in the mile (3:46). Before this season, Webb had been a strength runner, running a 10,000 meters in the 27:30's last year. But this year he has focused on speed, bringing his 800 PR down from a decent 1:48 to a very fast1:45.
On Saturday, Webb ran the first 400 in a blistering 49, then dueled with Canada's Gary Reed before finishing in 1:43.85.
1:43 is a whole lotta fast, and a whole 'nother world from 1:45.
Webb becomes the 8th fastest American ever at the 800, which just a few months ago wouldn't have been considered a race he could run at the elite level.
Flocast video [ http://www.flocasts.com/flotrack/coverage.php?c=74&id=4544 ]here. Filmed from the stands (WCSN has a more professional video but it requires a fee).
#7 on the all-time American list is current runner Khadevis Robinson, who will also try to earn a medal at August's World Championships in Osaka, Japan.
The American record-holder is the immortal Johnny Gray, who ran 1:42.6 in 1985. Gray's style was bold and gutsy -- crush the first lap, see who would dare to come with him, then hold on for dear life during the final 400 meters.
The world record is 1:41.11 by Wilson Kipketer, a Kenyan wunderkind who was a Danish citizen.
Now the question is what does Webb do in the month before World Champs to sustain and sharpen his training without losing it?
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Hell Hath No Fury like a Spurned Fan
Ladies (ha!) and gentlemen, I have BREAKING NEWS. Michael Vick's defense attorney, has said he's NOT GUILTY. THIS IS A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT!!! AND BARRY BONDS IS GOING TO BREAK HANK AARON'S RECORD UNLESS HIS HEAD EXPLODES! AN NBA REF MODELS HIS LIFE AFTER THE SPORTING GOODS OWNER/COMPULSIVE GAMBLER/T-1000 FROM SEASON TWO OF THE SOPRANOS! AND PEOPLE CHEAT IN THE TOUR DE FRANCE! AND DID I MENTION DOG OWNERS DON'T LIKE MICHAEL VICK!
Seriously, who the fuck cares? There's so much negativity in this world, especially in the News world; I mean, don't they realize there's more important stuff in the world than Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record...like we knew he was going to do for the past three seasons?
I, and I'm pretty sure most other Americans (and fans in general), watch sports to find some kind of semblance of a distraction from the gravitas of the real world...which is where that belongs. When someone like Barry Bonds cheats and breaks a historic record that was set by a man infinitely more classy, an individual who dealt with a great deal of adversity throughout his career in an era where being black was a much bigger deal, and to many people, a major sin. And that's about all I care about that story...Bonds is going to break the record, I wish every pitcher he's faced this year had thrown at him because he's a gigantic asshole and a cheat. That took me 30 seconds to make my mind up about that, and yet, every time I turn on ESPN I have to see some bullshit update about "Breaking Aaron" or "Chasing Aaron" or whatever the hell they call it, the soulless husk that is Skip Bayless arguing about oh so sanctimoniously, or some poor reporter who thought he'd be on NBC Nightly News by this point in his career giving a thousand yard stare into the camera and trying. so. hard. to act interested about the "story" he's (or she...Rachel Nichols) covering. All it does is make people's blood pressure go higher in a world, where, frankly there's plenty of better reasons for your blood pressure to be high. Though mine did spike after reading this non-researched, uninformed piece of crap column from a normally professional columnist(and nice guy).
The same goes for Michael Vick, who, it seems, makes Ted Nugent look like a hippie for his stance on animal cruelty (by the way, the odds are set at 1:2 that Deion Sanders is the next (ex)athlete to be uncovered as a dogfighting criminal mastermind...at least based off of this Op-Ed piece, which could only be written by someone as oblivious and annoying as...Deion Sanders).
As for Tim Donaghy, well, he's a moron, but the most damning thing about the whole situation is that he was fixing the games he was working and he probably wasn't even the worst official on a lot of them. David Stern should probably just clean house and offer a shitload of money to a bunch of college refs with clean backgrounds, since the officiating was/is so horrendous no one could actually tell when someone was intentionally making bad calls.
At least people are responding to all this stuff like they should; with the unmitigated outrage of someone who's been betrayed.
Or like this.
(I like to think Robert Byrd saw one of his great grandchildren playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots).
It's the reaction people should have. Hey, they cheated on us; we expected them to help provide that escapism that we so desperately crave, and in some cases, need to stay just a little bit saner than we would thinking about all of the life's problems constantly, and instead, they fucked up the world just a little bit more. But hey, we're big people, we can get over it. Let's move on. Life's too short to worry about Tim Donaghy. We should be focusing more on orchestrating a theoretical four team trade for Kevin Garnett using Juan Carlos Navarro as a centerpiece.
Oh, and by the way: Cycling? Everybody but Lance Armstrong cheats at cycling.
Seriously, who the fuck cares? There's so much negativity in this world, especially in the News world; I mean, don't they realize there's more important stuff in the world than Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record...like we knew he was going to do for the past three seasons?
I, and I'm pretty sure most other Americans (and fans in general), watch sports to find some kind of semblance of a distraction from the gravitas of the real world...which is where that belongs. When someone like Barry Bonds cheats and breaks a historic record that was set by a man infinitely more classy, an individual who dealt with a great deal of adversity throughout his career in an era where being black was a much bigger deal, and to many people, a major sin. And that's about all I care about that story...Bonds is going to break the record, I wish every pitcher he's faced this year had thrown at him because he's a gigantic asshole and a cheat. That took me 30 seconds to make my mind up about that, and yet, every time I turn on ESPN I have to see some bullshit update about "Breaking Aaron" or "Chasing Aaron" or whatever the hell they call it, the soulless husk that is Skip Bayless arguing about oh so sanctimoniously, or some poor reporter who thought he'd be on NBC Nightly News by this point in his career giving a thousand yard stare into the camera and trying. so. hard. to act interested about the "story" he's (or she...Rachel Nichols) covering. All it does is make people's blood pressure go higher in a world, where, frankly there's plenty of better reasons for your blood pressure to be high. Though mine did spike after reading this non-researched, uninformed piece of crap column from a normally professional columnist(and nice guy).
The same goes for Michael Vick, who, it seems, makes Ted Nugent look like a hippie for his stance on animal cruelty (by the way, the odds are set at 1:2 that Deion Sanders is the next (ex)athlete to be uncovered as a dogfighting criminal mastermind...at least based off of this Op-Ed piece, which could only be written by someone as oblivious and annoying as...Deion Sanders).
As for Tim Donaghy, well, he's a moron, but the most damning thing about the whole situation is that he was fixing the games he was working and he probably wasn't even the worst official on a lot of them. David Stern should probably just clean house and offer a shitload of money to a bunch of college refs with clean backgrounds, since the officiating was/is so horrendous no one could actually tell when someone was intentionally making bad calls.
At least people are responding to all this stuff like they should; with the unmitigated outrage of someone who's been betrayed.
Or like this.
(I like to think Robert Byrd saw one of his great grandchildren playing Rock'em Sock'em Robots).
It's the reaction people should have. Hey, they cheated on us; we expected them to help provide that escapism that we so desperately crave, and in some cases, need to stay just a little bit saner than we would thinking about all of the life's problems constantly, and instead, they fucked up the world just a little bit more. But hey, we're big people, we can get over it. Let's move on. Life's too short to worry about Tim Donaghy. We should be focusing more on orchestrating a theoretical four team trade for Kevin Garnett using Juan Carlos Navarro as a centerpiece.
Oh, and by the way: Cycling? Everybody but Lance Armstrong cheats at cycling.
State of the Nations
As Loosen Up is the only DC sports blog to offer in-depth, knowledgeable commentary on sumo, I'll pick up where Lil Bro left off.
First, while it may seem that the US season of scandalous sports has spread to Japan, let's review the facts:
America's scandals revolve around a decade or more of cheating left unchecked and ignored in the national pastime, an indictment of a deliberate pattern of brutality against one of the NFL's most exciting, if not most effective, stars, and point-shaving by an NBA ref, possibly influencing the outcomes of games. In Japan, a sumo rikishi begged off of a charity tournament to spend some quality-time back in his home country with his peeps. Hmmm, sounds like Brett Favre trying to get out of training camp. In all, I think it says more about the differences between the two countries than the similarities.
Sumo consists of six 15-day tournaments every year. Everything else is preseason-game, half-speed, no-pads, baby-kissing. So Asashoryu, the most dominant wrestler nowadays, and a Mongolian-born outsider at that, simply missed a PR event.
The accusation of bout-fixing by a seedy sensationalist newspaper citing unnamed sources, seems specious. See excellent commentary provided by the grand dame of sumo, Doreen Simmons: http://www.japanfile.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=495 and a summary by fellow blogger Ethan Zuckerman: http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog/category/sumo/
The jist of both articles are that these accusations are just another sign that some Japanese jingoists don't like having a Mongolian at the highest rank of sumo. Sumo is old school. Baseball is old school American style, just over 100 years old. Old school Japan-style is 1500 years of tradition, tradition now threatened by an unfortunate decline in interest by young Japanese, drawn to the more modern sports of basketball and soccer. The dearth of homegrown talent has been filled by bringing in foreigners, the huge Americans Konishiki, Akebono, and Musashimaru in the late 80's and 90's, and now an influx of Mongolians, along with a smattering of Eastern Europeans, like Bulgarian Kotooshu, pictured above. Currently, the only two yokuzuna are Mongolian, Asashoryu and rival Hakuho. The traditionalists can't like that, just as many of them chafed at Akebono's (6'8 Hawaiian Chad Rowan) promotion to the highest rank in the 1993.
But the Americans of the early 90's had tremendous competition from Japanese wrestlers, the brother tandem of Wakanohana and Takanohana. Today's Mongol invaders, with their eye of the tiger and tricky, skilled techniques derived from their native "boke" wrestling, face no such opposition. Unless one counts unsubstantiated newspaper reports. Till facts surface, that's where this one lies. No need to get our mawashis in a bunch.
Here's some video.
Each rikishi fights one match per day, for 15 days. Best record at the end wins the tournament.
Here is a spirited Dejima pulling off an upset of our boy Asashoryu: http://banzuke.com/~makuuchi/3-Y1e_Asashoryu(2-0)_M1w_Dejima(1-1).mov
Rikishi are often classified as either ones who specialize in lifting and throwing and those who mostly push -- while striking with a closed fist is illegal, open-palmed slaps are GAME ON! I always rooted for the slappers myself.
Here's spunky little Ama getting into a slapfest with Toyonoshima: http://banzuke.com/~makuuchi/14-M4e_Ama(8-5)_M9w_Toyonoshima(11-2).mov Nice leg throw by Ama!
Here Tochiazuma is too much for our pal Ama: http://banzuke.com/~makuuchi/haru07/day3/O3w_Tochiazuma-K1e_Ama.mov
Asashoryu pulls out a trick against Chiyotaikai. Tee hee! http://banzuke.com/~makuuchi/haru07/day15/Y1e.mov
Asashoryu clobbering some poor sap: http://banzuke.com/~makuuchi/natsu/day8/Y1eAsashoryuK1wKotoshogiku.mov
From the archives --
It would be fun to see these new guys try to handle 6'8, 550 lb. Akebono. Here Japanese golden boy Takanohana and his brother Wakanohana try. And fail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FXVzaNX2PA&mode=related&search=
Sumo sadness
First Michael Vick, now this: sumo champion Asashoryu has been accused of faking an injury to skip out on a trip to lift the spirits of earthquake victims.
The brothers and I have been fans of sumo for many years, and while to most people it seems like big fat men in diapers slamming into each other, it does have grace, power and, yes, beauty.
Perhaps as interesting, the sport has its dark side. There are often signs of matches being fixed. The book Freakonomics showed this and more recently on the authors' blog they describe how the Japanese media seems happy to cover match-rigging when it applies to foreign-born sumo wrestlers, but ignores the topic when it comes to natives.
Which brings me back to Asashoryu.
While faking a hurt back is lame, the subtext of the article is that the sumo player did not feel like doing the goodwill tour because as a Mongolian he doesn't feel much goodwill from the fans.
A sad comment on a great sport.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Vegas, Baby, VEGAS!
So I was at work and thought I'd just sort of surf around, since I didn't have much to do. I went onto Facebook, because that's the hip college thing to blow off work with, and I think I saw some poker on one of several televisions around me, so I decided to see how a friend who I used to play a semi-regular game with was doing.
Yes, this is *technically* stalking, but Facebook tends to bring that out in everyone, so I'm not particularly ashamed.
Anyway, turns out he has a blog now, as it seems, does just about everyone with an imagination and some time to kill. And, as it turns out, that poker thing, it, uh, kind of stuck. He made it into the top 750 (out of 6300) at the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. And he has a pretty ridiculous story to go with it.
"After about the seventh level, an interesting character by the name of Montel Williams (yes, the Montel Williams) showed up at my table. He had a decent chip stack and was soon the tournament chip leader by catching pocket kings or pocket aces three times verses other large stack players. The ESPN cameras were all around my table filming the events and they caught me saying, "My grandma watches your show religiously, and I can now tell her that I am absolutely petrified of you at the poker table." Nice... hope some of the coverage gets on there."
And more good stuff like that.
Yes, this is *technically* stalking, but Facebook tends to bring that out in everyone, so I'm not particularly ashamed.
Anyway, turns out he has a blog now, as it seems, does just about everyone with an imagination and some time to kill. And, as it turns out, that poker thing, it, uh, kind of stuck. He made it into the top 750 (out of 6300) at the Main Event of the World Series of Poker. And he has a pretty ridiculous story to go with it.
"After about the seventh level, an interesting character by the name of Montel Williams (yes, the Montel Williams) showed up at my table. He had a decent chip stack and was soon the tournament chip leader by catching pocket kings or pocket aces three times verses other large stack players. The ESPN cameras were all around my table filming the events and they caught me saying, "My grandma watches your show religiously, and I can now tell her that I am absolutely petrified of you at the poker table." Nice... hope some of the coverage gets on there."
And more good stuff like that.
Kung-Fu Fightin'....
Lil Bro was attacked by several ninjas this past weekend....and someone was there to take some pictures.
BAD. ASS.
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