World Cup Ruminations

As a self-proclaimed World Cup novice (apart from this year, I've watched about .5 games a tournament since the early 90's), I hesitate to burden the interwebs with my poorly conceived Cup commentary. That said, I've never been big on restraint (I did, after all, popularize the side cup) and thus feel compelled to add my own two cents.

For those of you off at baseball games, church, and such, I'll bring you up to speed on Sunday's matches. England beat Ecuador 1-0, "whilst" Portugal survived a disgraceful display of officiating (and something like a gazillion yellow and red cards) against Holland - also 1-0. I wound up picking Portugal to win it all in one of my office pools, so I've developed a bit of a vested interest. (It became difficult to find a suitable underdog winner due to my stated distaste for local favorites England, real favorites Brazil, France (just because), the Axis of Evil teams, and any team without at least one player sporting a euromullet (that's Spain's Fernando Torres in his longer mullet days).

Anyway, as we've progressed through the nascent stages of this year's tournament, I've become more and more enthralled at how player "injuries" are handled. Does anyone else find footballers as adept at melodramatic displays of pain and anguish (often after tripping on their own feet) as their NBA counterparts? I particularly enjoy watching the replays, when the fallen Striker realizes the match has moved on and quickly returns to his feet to continue play. In those instances when the player is actually injured, I've been surprised by a few things. For one, the trainer always brings out a stretcher, which alarmed me until I realized that it carries no correlation to the severity of the injury. In fact, it's quite likely you'll see the player sub back in minutes later. As well, the trainer appears to carry with him a magic spray, which does wonders when applied to the area of injury. You know it's only a matter of time until they start selling that isht at Walmart. Which means, of course, that it's only a matter of time until suburban American teenagers try out a new household inhalant.

I'll save my other thoughts for later, in hopes of spacing out the ignorance into more manageable pieces...

I Guess You Could Say I Sort of Like the Sound of My Own Voice...

But who doesn't? After surviving a long week at a work "offsite" (i.e. take everyone to a hotel in the middle of nowhere, balance 12 hour meetings with trust falls and cocktail hours, repeat), I felt like doing this, and was in desperate need of a bump - or at least a bender.

Enter my guilty Japanese pleasure. Oh how I wish that referred to something else.

My Friday night began innocently enough at a hipster lounge serving stiff drinks and dim sum. Somewhere around midnight, however, we found ourselves in what appeared to be a neighbor's unfinished basement singing along to "Summer of '69" via lyrics displayed on a 23" television (circa 1985). After a few hours of sneaking drinks out of the family liquor cabinet, we proceeded back upstairs with the intentions of calling it a night. Low and behold, we ran smack into a band of 10-15 South Korean football hooligans! Jerseys, face paint, you name it. You know how I feel about South Korean football fans, so there was no way I was going home without infiltrating this band of brothers 형제.

The SoKo's had just witnessed their team's World Cup dream come to an abrupt end thanks to those snooty French bastards, so we decided to grab a few bottles of saki and commiserate with them on their loss. In no time, we were doing saki bomb deathmatches. It was heaven, really. There were high fives all around, lessons in Korean cursing, and a lot of Hello Kitty. Just kidding.

It was a great way to end the week, and a close rival to Champion House folklore.

CityHangover Miscellany: "Beat Down" Edition

I'm heading out of town this week for work, thus denying the masses an uptick in my posting schedule. Clearly, all work and no drinking makes CityHangover a dull blog. But fear not; I am already planning a massive bender for when I get back.

To help you occupy yourselves in my (continued) absence:

-The World Cup continues, and the U.S. team earns international respek with a hard fought draw against Italy. Yank McBride takes an elbow to the face, prompting me to call out the bloodied result as the "Rocky-esque" turning point in the match (You know, USA! USA!...). The Brazilians I'm watching the game with stare blankly back at me. (No Rocky movies in Brazil? A shame, really.) France also effs themselves against the South Koreans, increasing the likelihood that I beat the Knicks girl in our office pool. And really, you've usurped Straight Bangin' as Public Hater #1 if you don't love South Korean soccer football fans.

-Watching UK Big Brother makes you stupid. But you can't tell me there isn't something *a little* compelling about watching these people interact. I'm just sayin'. Check out this clip.

-Coffee makes excessive drinking ok. Sort of.

May you light up the comments section while I'm being used by The Man...

CityHangover Guestblog, Vol IV

Here you have it. The first (and maybe last) ever family-style CityHangover guestblog. You know the drill. You visit; you blog. I cede editorial authority. At least unless you write something I really don't like. This time around, we take the guestblog to a generation far, far away...

Hey look kids, there's Big Ben...



Ever since CJB had mentioned an upcoming guestblog from the parents, we've hoped we wouldn't disappoint. All in all, we found our visit to Europe brought many firsts for us.

To start, this was our first trip abroad. And let us mention more than likely our last. It's great to say we have been, and we enjoyed all that we saw, but without our tour guide we would have been lost. And almost were. This was actually also the first time we ventured off in a big city without our guide, so he gave us explicit directions where to go and how to get there on the London tube. However, when we went to board the train according to these explicit directions, we noticed our target stop was actually in the opposite direction. I now understand why other guestbloggers have mentioned getting lost under his direction. Thank goodness for the phone number (and cell phone) accompanying our directions.

In London we had our first visit to Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guard. While waiting for the switch, we also witnessed our first fainting tourist (who was kindly helped by a woman introducing herself as "a nurse from the U.S."). While in Paris we visited the Louvre for the first time. We caught the Venus de Milo, but unfortunately couldn't find the guys who had broken off her arms to get at those bottles of Bud Light. From there, we moved on to our first glimpse of the Mona Lisa. Dad commented that she was better looking than she seemed on TV, and I thought she looked about my size.

That evening, we saw the Eiffel Tower, and on the second day started at the Arc de Triomphe and strolled down the Champs Elysees. With that, we were back on our way to London. As our trip came to an end, I came to a realization. After 3 trips to New York, 1 to England, and on that day in Paris, we had finally figured out mass transportation. Which makes me wonder, why did we walk 15-20 miles during this trip?

Summer, Summer, Summertiiiiime

You know the rest. And where the hell have I been? We're nearly two weeks removed from the Trip of a Century, and I've also now had a full week of recovery time from National Lampoons European Vacation: Meet the Parents Edition.

While it may seem that my absence is the result of a general sense of bereavement due to the departure of friends and family, it's actually something else altogether. (No offense, guys). It's warm and sunny in London, people. Let me pause for a moment so you can consider the full gravitas of that statement. A point for global warming, perhaps?

I'm heading out for a run, but will share some recent highlights in the unlikely event that you still read this thing.

-The World Cup has commenced, meaning that everyone in this country has become a raving fanatic for England football. (Which, despite the tendency for fisticuffs, is actually a pretty good time). Lest you think I've turned my back on the good ol' USA, note that I've picked our boys to emerge from their group (commonly referred to as "the group of death" by, uh, people who refer to the World Cup) in both of my office pools. Although I do expect them to be pummeled by Brazil shortly thereafter.

-I've recently doubled my Fresh Prince of Bel-Air London sightings tally (to 2) after catching Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Globe Theatre. I thought there was something familiar about Coriolanus's friend Cominius, and, well, there was. He played Banks household butler (and Will's comic foil) Geoffrey. Awesome. You aren't allowed to take pictures during the show, but I snuck a (poor) camera phone pic here.

-Oh, and my parents came to visit. Despite the inevitable "fish out of water" feeling one gets from going abroad for the first time, they enjoyed their trip. Or at least said they did. And how could they not? Within a day of arriving to London my dad was calling my mom a "bird", and they were both proactively spotting muffin tops by day 2. The rents wrote a stellar guestblog post with their thoughts on the trip, which I intend to post tonight. Stay tuned.