England 2, USA 0

Here are my player ratings from the US's lackluster 2-0 loss against England on Wednesday.

Tim Howard - 5.0 - couldn't do anything about the goal he gave up, had little else to do.

Steve Cherundolo - 5.0 - also had a so-so game, he looked decent going forward at times and defends the flanks well, but he really struggles in the air.

Oguchi Onyewu - 6.0 - I actually thought he played pretty well though he did lose Gerrard on the second goal. One of our best players.

Carlos Bocanegra - 6.0 - he also did ok, made a few saving tackles, but like Oneywu he made a mistake that resulted in a goal when he failed to effectively mark John Terry on the first goal.

Heath Pearce - 5.0 - and rounding out our defense was another decent performance by Pearce. He came forward a few times and looks like he has a good shot, though his one chance got deflected out for a corner. He did make one terrible play to let Defoe turn in the box, giving him an easy chance - lucky for us, English strikers suck (though not nearly as bad as American strikers do) and Defoe hit it right at Guzan.

Clint Dempsey - 4.0 - he made a couple nice moves and runs but overall he did very very little. He hasn't been playing too well for the national team lately, hopefully he'll pick it up.

Michael Bradley, Ricardo Clark - 3.0 if I was only rating these two players' defensive performances, they'd get a 6 or 7. They were pretty energetic and for the most part, we never let the England midfield dominate the game with ball possession, which is quite a feat when you're playing against Gerrard, Lampard, Hargreaves, and Becks. But they also did next to nothing offensively, showing absolutely no creativity at all. I kept waiting for Bradley's club goal-scoring form to show up but it never did. I still like both him and Clark but this game showed that neither is ready for the big-time internationally yet.

DaMarcus Beasley - 2.0 - he also had a pretty garbage game. I'll give him a pass because it was his 2nd game back from tearing his knee up (his first was much more successful, an awesome performance with a goal and an assist in the Scottish Cup final victory for Rangers). The biggest disappointment for him though was how poor he was delivering set pieces, especially since with Donovan delivering and Oneywu and Boca as the targets, we've been really really good on these lately (see USA 3, Poland 0). And apparently, Beasley has been really good taking the set pieces for Rangers, so I expected way better from him. This was even worse since about 5 minutes into the game it was painfully obvious we weren't going to score against England from the run of play.

Eddie Johnson - 6.0 - I actually thought this was EJ's best performance in a while. Playing as a target forward, he won his fair share of long balls against Ferdinand and Terry (no small task) and did well holding the ball up and distributing it (though he still is the king of the back pass). He didn't do anything in the final third, but neither did anyone else, and it's not like we were setting him up for good chances left and right. He also was way more active than he has been in recent games, probably because he feels like he has something to prove both to Bob Bradley and to Fulham, where he didn't get any playing time towards the end of the season. If he would've finished the one half-chance he got at the very beginning of the 2nd half it would've been a perfect performance, but as it was, I was encouraged.

Josh Wolff - 0.0 - I saved the best for last, the most worthless player I have ever seen. Really, I think Bradley is just trying to torture me by continually choosing him. I was pissed when I saw he was part of the roster but thought it'd be ok if he only played as a 2nd half sub. Then Landon can't play, so instead of giving Freddy a big game to show his stuff, we choose Josh fucking Wolff and have him spearhead our attack for 70 minutes?! Hmm, relying on Josh Wolff against probably the best central defender in the world in Rio Ferdinand and another of the 2 or 3 best in the EPL in John Terry - I think my mom could've told you that wasn't going to work out too well and she hasn't watched a soccer game since I was playing in high school. And Wolff didn't disappoint, I honestly can't remember him making a single positive offensive play the entire game and I was watching him pretty closely since I was telling my roommates who I watched the game with how horribly he sucks beforehand. The fact that he is one of our top 3 or 4 options as a striker right know makes me want to kill myself.

Subs:
Brad Guzan - 5.0 - like Howard, he could do nothing about the goal he let in and he handled everything else well, though nothing too difficult. Hopefully he can get a work permit worked out and head to England/Scotland soon, since he's looking like our new #2 keeper.

Frankie Heyduk - 5.0 - I not so lovingly call Heyduk the Josh Wolff of the defense but even though he can't hit a cross to save his life (gotta love the Heyduk special where he has a good chance to send in a dangerous cross, but inexplicably scuffs it directly at the first defender, with the ball never going more than 2 feet in the air), having an active, obnoxious, unskilled player in the defense is exponentially better than having one playing forward.

Maurice Edu - no rating - he really didn't make an impression on me in his 10+ minutes playing. I do like having him, Bradley, and Clark as solid, young options in the center of the midfield. As they develop, we could be really good come 2010 (or from the pessimistic side, if they don't develop, and we don't find any forwards, we will be really bad come 2010).

Eddie Lewis - 7.0 - our best attacking player in the game by far. I've never been a huge fan but he's growing on me with his recent performances. Surprisingly, he was pretty much the only player who was willing to take on the English defenders 1 on 1, and he did so successfully twice, once sending a great ball into the back post that forced David James to make a sprawling save. He also is the only one of our wing players who is actually good at crossing the ball. A very poor man's David Beckham.

Nate Jaqua - no rating - he got a courtesy cap after receiving what I hope is a courtesy call-up to the national team. If this dude is really an option come WC qualifying, we need to seriously consider forcing Brian McBride to unretire. On second thought, we should force McBride to unretire either way. He is still significantly better than any of our true strikers besides Jozy and he showed he can still play by leading Fulham's successful fight against relegation (scoring I think 3 goals in their last 6 or 7 games). He's leaving Fulham even though they wanted him to stay for another year to come back to the US, so maybe he'd be more open to playing for the national team now that he'll have a less demanding club career. If the French can have Thuram, Zidane, and Makelele unretire (and 2 of the 3 likely starters in their Euro '08 squad 4 years after they originally retired), we can get McBride damnit.

Freddy Adu - 6.0 - and last but not least, my boy Freddy Adu. As always, he had some sweet touches, stuff that most of the US players couldn't dream of doing. Our attack also looked 10 times more dangerous after he replaced Wolff for the last 20 minutes (now there's a shocker). He made the English defense not quite worry but at least consider in the back of their minds, hey maybe these guys might at least get a shot on goal at some point. Not so positively, he also sent one or two head-scratching balls to no one in particular. Still a positive performance from Freddy.

Overall, I was relatively pleased with the way the defense played, we only gave away one really clear chance from the run of play and that was Barry's brilliant ball to Gerrard who never misses chances like that, and even that was very very close to offside. We did give away too many dangerous freekicks which is asking to be killed against England when Beckham is in the side. But for the most part, the defense held pretty firm.

The offense was another story. We clearly missed Donovan. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I will never criticize his play again (that is until he refuses to take on a defender 1 on 1 for the 10th time in a game, instead opting to pass it back to a player with 1/10th of his offensive skill in a less dangerous position than he is). We are horrible without him. Eventually, Freddy might be able to have the same impact, and I would've liked to see what Freddy could've done from the start against England, but Bradley went the conservative route by going with the defensive-minded (and completely horrible) Josh Wolff instead. Without any creative players, we couldn't do anything on the counter-attack, where we are normally dangerous and couldn't hold possession. So we ended up playing as a long-ball and set-piece team (sound familiar England?) but while Johnson did do an admirable job as a target forward with no support, we could never create chances from the run of play and Beasley repeatedly screwed up the potentially dangerous set pieces we did have. In all, this was one of the most disappointing offensive performances we've had in recent years.

Bottom line, this game showed we can't compete with a full England side (or any top team). We're still a young team, so as Bradley, Clark, Freddy, Jozy, Edu, et al develop, we'll hopefully be able to put up a more competitive effort two years from now in South Africa. That's the goal at least.

On to Spain, who I wouldn't at all be surprised to end up with 70% ball possession against us (especially if they let Cesc pull the strings).

Top 5 Shows of 2007-2008

I only watched 5 shows this year, so populating this list is pretty simple:

1) The Wire (Season 5) - 9.0
So, the last season of The Wire was great, but not super-amazing-great like seasons 3 and 4. I order (Rate) the seasons:
1) Season 4 - 10
2) Season 3 - 9.5
3) Season 1 - 9.5
4) Season 5 - 9.0
5) Seaosn 2 - 8.5

It really is like rating your Children or your Ferraris or something though. They are all amazing, and 5 is no exception.

2) Lost (Season 4) - 8.5
Lost continued it's renaissance with what was by far it's best season ever. I actually contemplated putting it at number 1 on the list, but then I compared how I reacted when people died in Lost ("Oh. Jin is dead. Maybe Desmond can get some screen time now.") and when people died in The Wire ("@#$#^$#^!!! They killed Omar!") and I realized how ridiculous that would be. That said, structurally, this season of Lost was absolutely brilliant. The flash forwards breathed life in to the stale template the show had been using and they also mercifully avoided throw-away episodes and plot lines.

Maybe the most important aspect of the season was the added emphasis on the Penny/Desmond relationship. It gave the show an emotional resonance that the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet Love Trapezoid could never attain, and as a result, "The Constant" was one of the show's best single episodes ever.

So, Lost isn't The Wire, but it is damn good, and I'm fine with it being the reigning best show on Television.


3) 30 Rock (Season 2)
4) The Office (Season 4)
5) How I Met Your Mother (Season 3)

The order of the 3 sitcoms is pretty clear in my mind. 30 Rock maintained form, but fizzled a bit after the strike. The pre-strike episodes were brilliant though. The Office slipped a tad from the previous superb season. HIMYM seems improved to me, but I can't put my finger on why. Maybe it's just easy, grin-but-not-laugh TV that I can watch while doing other things.

Best Episodes of the Year (in rough order):
The Wire - Penultimate episode and finale.
Lost - The Constant
30 Rock - Green week episode
Office - Finale

Oh, I'm also trying to work my way trough tivoed Battlestar Gallactica but am finding this season to be boring as all hell ... Will finish eventually though.

Anything I missed that is worth watching?

Jumper - 1.5

Comically bad.

National Treasure (The second one I think) - 2.5

For a movie that could've been at least mildly entertaining, it was really really bad. I can say with absolutely no reservations that, Nick Cage is a really bad actor.

27 Dresses - 4.0

For a movie that should've been absolutely atrocious, it was surprisingly not that horrible. I'm sure I will regret this statement, but Katherine Heigl can kind of act.

It should go without saying that I watched this on a plane.

A Devil in The White City - 8.0

Read it in less that 24 hours ... although most of it was on a 14 hour plane ride so that isn't that much of an accomplishment. Still it was very entertaining, highly stylized non-fiction. It starts very strong and then stagnates a bit in the middle, but I still enjoyed it a whole lot more than I thought I would.

Note: My New Years resolution to read more is shot, but maybe I can rally some once we move to Chile ... I doubt it, but anything is possible.

Home

We're home from China! The flight was long, but the trip was well worth it. Now, time for a little sleep, so I can get back to work in the morning. I'm planning 2 more sets of pictures sometime in the coming week.

Beijing - Day 3

Beijing - Day 3

Pictures of our last day in Beijing.

Trust me, You Don't Want It This Way

I've been working on captions, but I really just don't have time to get them done. I'm about half way done with the Great Wall day, but probably won't get them online for another day or 2. So instead, I thought I'd give you a more concentrated form of humiliation.

First, a warning. I haven't watched all of this --- won't --- can't watch it with sound on; I started, made it through about 4 seconds and stopped. While muted, I think I got half way through and stopped. It literally hurts me to post this, but I figure it will bring you guys as much pleasure as it brings me pain so without further ado. Jeremy, Ryan, Chad and Hu singing I Want It That Way, by some boy band.



Just don't say I never did anything nice for you ...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - 7.0

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fortunately is an Indiana Jones movie (and the best part, it has freaking Indiana Jones in it!). While a bit campy at times, it has that fun and playful quality that makes the entire series (for the most part) so entertaining. Like its predecessors, it is pretty much non-stop action, no transitions needed, and don't forget to suspend your disbelief.

Some of the biggest positives and negatives come from interesting casting. Shia LeBeouf actually holds his own as Indy's new sidekick (and opens up the possibility of some more Indy sequels post-Harrison Ford, though as picky as George Lucas was about choosing the script for this movie, I'm not sure if I could really see this happening until after he dies) and Harrison was able to pull off the 65 year old action hero about as well as you could have hoped. My biggest problem was the lack of a menacing villain. As my dawg Randy Jackson might say, Cate Blanchett could act the phonebook, but unfortunately, this performance wasn't quite molten hot. The dominatrix outfit was strange, and her character, and the Soviets in general, never quite clicked as the evil foil to Indiana Jones' badass-ness like the Nazis did in episodes 1-3. The other problem was Karen Allen, reprising her role from Raiders as Indy's love interest, had absolutely no on-screen chemistry with Harrison Ford. I suppose it was refreshing that Lucas and Spielberg, et al chose to make Indy's romantic counterpart someone closer to his own age, but while Karen Allen wasn't nearly as annoying as Willie from The Temple of Doom, her performance didn't work like her original one did in Raiders or like the hot Nazi in The Last Crusade.

I watched the entire original Indiana Jones trilogy this week to get ready for the new one and I can comfortably rank #4 ahead of Temple of Doom (by far the worst of the series, ripping people's hearts out, child slaves, what the fuck was that?) and behind Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. It is far from a great movie, and I'm not sure what to think about the last 20 minutes, but 19 years later, Spielberg and Lucas more or less remembered how to make a successful Indiana Jones movie.

Beijing Pictures - Day 2

Beijing - Day 2

Pictures from our 2nd full day in China are at the link above and at facebook as well if you prefer. Hope you like em!

Crazy duck brain/karaoke/Great Wall day coming up just as soon as I have another few hours free ...

China - Beijing - Day 3

No time for pictures just now (but trust me, there are plenty), but here's a list of 5 things I did yesterday:

1) Climbed/Photographed/Ran up, Rocky-style/generally made a fool of myself on the aptly-named Great Wall of China.
2) Sang Karaoke for the first time. A striking quartet of men singing "I Want it That Way" by the Backstreet Boys to a roomful of women. Yes, there is video. Yes, I am going to make every effort to destroy it before you see it.
3) Ate an incredible Peking Duck dinner at a fancy Chinese restaurant (Roomie, Dr. Zarzar - Yes, I stood up and pulled my napkin off the table, loudly dropping my plate of Duck on to the tile floor and silencing the room). The ducks were prepared at the table and all parts were used, so I ate duck brain. It tasted like mushy duck.
4) Saw one of the most impressive athletic performances of my life at a Chinese Acrobatics show.
5) Spent the night curled up in a crib at a Chinese Medical Clinic.

In short it was a very busy, very memorable day.

Peru

So I am now back from Peru and settling back into a relaxing existence before law school starts in August. Peru was great - one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The highlight of the trip for me was a 1 day hike on the Inca Trail (at some point in my life, I'd like to do the full hike, but I might be too much of a country whore to go back to the same place twice) and of course Machu Pichu, which was truly spectacular.

Anyways, I may have some movie reviews up sometime soon. I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly yesterday, which I would highly recommend and plan to watch I'm Not There and possibly Iron Man this weekend.

Also a heads up for anyone who cares, the Champions League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea is Wednesday afternoon and should be a great game - I'll grudgingly be rooting for Chelski, fuck Man U. In other soccer news, the US has friendlies in the next few weeks against England, Spain, and Argentina (whoa) and Euro 2008 starts in early June (I'll be rooting for France and Spain).

Beijing Pictures - Day 1

China - Beijing - Day 1

Gents and Ladies, The first batch of China pictures with captions is (mostly) online over at Picasa. The internet here is mediocre, so they are taking a long while to upload and there is a tendency for it to crash. I'll leave it running while I sleep, but the tail end of the day may or may not get cut-off. Regardless, more pictures than you care to see are already up and I'll mess with it more tomorrow and make sure everything is there after we get back from the Great Wall - My 3rd wonder of the world, Whooo! Ok, Hope you like the pictures. I'm off to bed. Adios.

Life for Death

The new Death Cab album isn't wonderful (well, maybe it is, but I've only listened to it once, so I'm not sure), but it is a whole lot better than their last few albums.

China - Day 1 - The Flight

Well, we made it to China, but damn that was a long flight. It was pretty much a 24 hour door-to-door affair, and over 75% of that was on a plane. The flight, as scheduled was actually pretty ideal: Quick hop to DC, an hour there, and then straight on to a 14 hour flight to Beijing. Things went swimmingly until we sat down on the plane in DC. We got situated and someone flirty french guy offered to buy Alexa's sandwich for either $10,000 or his liver. Women have it all - no one ever offers to give me internal organs for buy my sandwich. hmpha. Anyway, I strangled the Frenchman with my iPod cord and sat back down for take off. And sat ... and sat ... and sat ... we sat on the damn plane for 4 hours *before* our 14-freaking-hour flight. We got all of the random excuses you might expect.

Hour 0.5 - "Maintnance is checking the plane, but we should take off soon"
Hour 1 - "It's not mechanical."
Hour 1.5 - "It has something to do with the air conditioning."
Hour 2 - "Can't fix the air conditioning, but it's ok, because now we're going to fly over siberia instead of the North pole"
Hour 2.5 - "Well it's 800 miles further, so we need more fuel"
Hour 3 - "OK, we're getting the fuel, leaving shortly."
Hour 3.5 - "Opps, we need to *re-arrange* the fuel to balance the load."
Hour 4 - "Ok there appears to be a 3 headed dragon having sex with Linsay Lohan on the run-way. Oh my god, look at what it is doing with it's second head! The Horror!! ..."

OK, that last one was fake, but the rest were real. I wonder about "Re-arranging" fuel (did they switch to unleaded?), and why we needed new freon in the A/C to fly over the north pole, I will never know - and we discussed it for at least 5 hours yesterday. At any rate, we eventually took off, and had a relatively pleasant, if really freaking long flight. They gave us a "Friendship Package" to make up for the wait - basically a form that you mail in and, maybe, get some kind of voucher. I slept for maybe an hour or 2, translated the first 3 pages of Harry Potter 3 in to Spanish (brujo = wizard), read 150 pages of Peace Like a River and watched parts of "Charlie Wilson's War", "27 Dresses" and "Jumper".

China is good so far, but I haven't seen enough to say much. We arrived, checked in (the bellhop liked - and maybe tried to buy - my jacket), ate dinner with the group (the food was cold, but we were 5 hours late), wandered Beijing for 15 minutes and slept. The new airport is awesome. Beijing isn't as dense as I imagined (I was thinking "Lost in Translation" for some stupid reason), and the people in my group seem nice even in their jet lagged state.

We're off to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City today. This morning is gray and smoggy, but Alexa and I both slept for 7 or 8 hours and it looks like the internet works, so I'm happy. It looks like wildfiring itself is unavailable in China (no wonder my readership is holding steady at 7), but I can still post and I'll start messing with pictures soon enough (Probably moving to flickr, btw).

Anyway, we're happy to be here, and I'll post something more substantial (as in with more substance, maybe not longer) tonight.

One More Graph

FM radio is younger than John McCain

This site is great.

4.5 is ...

The Over/Under for the number of pages I'll finish in "Harry Potter y el prisionero
de Azkaban" on my trip to China. Place your wagers in comments.

Packing

I heard about this website on NPR (God, I'm old) and have been using their packing list to get ready for China. It's really pretty helpful, so I thought I'd share. The diagram below, showing how to bundle wrap your clothes, is especially nice, although I haven't tried it just yet.

Pre-China Camera Clearinghouse

I was just cleaning off the camera in advance of our trip to China. Here are a few of the highlights from the past few months.

Pre-China Camera Clearinghouse

Tipped

Aesop Goats

Mountain Goats Remix by Aesop Rock. Pretty sweet.

Travels

I'm kind of burned out on blogging these days, but wanted to say hi before Alexa and I head to China next week. So, uh, hi. Hopefully, I can post pictures while I'm there, but I'm not 100% sure about that. Either way, I'm sure we'll take tons of pictures and they'll make it online soon enough. Ok, off to bed, more later. Thanks for reading.