Ah, the World Cup! The eyes of the world are trained on South Africa, well most of the eyes anyway. We tend to look away in the good ole USA. Soccer or futbol is easily the most popular sport in the world, inciting fans, countries and continents to impassioned action.

Here in our country I have been hearing how it is the fastest growing sport since my elementary school days. This for the most part is true if one only measures the growth in youth leagues, high schools and in colleges. I know my love grew for it when I was quite young and that love has spread from play to avid fan, but I gave up long ago on the hope it would take America by storm. Other than our Woman’s national team a decade ago it would seem soccer in this country has found its fan base and will not spread beyond that group.
Last week as everyone knows the American team received a bad call in World Cup play against Slovenia that kept them at a draw instead of a straight win. For 24 hours it was the talk on sports radio, television news and even made it to a few water cooler conferences. One foreign commentator on ESPN’s coverage suggested with the buzz the bad call had been a gift in the fact that American’s finally cared and was paying attention to their team. Today all the talk was about a marathon match at Wimbledon and America’s extra time winning goal against Algeria took a solid back seat to tennis.

Although I have accepted the downgrading of soccer’s importance in my country, the acceptance only came after questioning why it was so. The answer was simple. We are not that good at it. Americans focus on domination in sport. In soccer we are always an underdog.

We have fielded some great teams, but even in their greatness the European powers of the sport see us only as a slow curve in their road to victory. The Brazilians and Argentines of South America see us as place to play out their pro careers when they are no longer physically capable of playing in Europe and on their home continent.

Many sport fans in America do not understand the game and cite the low scores and players writhing on the field in supposed mortal pain after barely being touched as reasons not to watch. The parity of the world’s players and a game plan followed are some of the reasons for the low scores. The recent dismantling of the North Korean team by Portugal 7-0 should have fed some of those desires. The death throes of uninjured players on the field gives the players time to catch their breath reset and start again. There are no time outs and substitutions are limited to 3 players. Essentially the players are running a mini marathon while keeping in mind a game plan, individual assignment and knowing one mistake made will be aired over and over on billions (yes billions) of television sets around the world. Want to get some perspective of the expectations and pressure put on these players? Just read up on the 1994 Columbian World Cup team.

Here is the final word. America is poised for a deep run in this world cup. They are the first American team to win their first round grouping in 80 years. Keep in mind the 1930 World Cup was the first time for the event and that American team finished 3rd overall. The highest finish by any non South American or European team in world cup history. America plays Ghana at 2:30 Saturday, the teams are close in ability, but Ghana will have the support of the African continent. Winning that one will cause the remaining teams to take us more seriously. Italy and France have already gone home, Germany has struggled, and England already learned we came to play. Spain and Brazil still see us as upstarts, but remember quite well the matches with the Americans from last year, and well know we are dangerous.

Let’s support the team and put the fear in the rest of the world that we are on the doorstep of taking over their beloved game. After all when it is over you still have Nascar and some of the marathon low scoring snooze fest pro baseball has to offer.

Talent, Reality and a Lack of Judgement

I don’t watch a lot of television, my family does and I am nearby so I get the secondhand dumbing down. The observations that one gets not involving themselves directly with the broadcast are very telling of just how much of a joke we are living in.

There is a show called America’s Got Talent. I have never seen the actual show, but one thing I have caught in the promos is a panel of 3 judges watch and rate would be Gong Show rejects. It is not the repackaging of an old concept that cracks me up it is the title of the show and the current judges. AMERICA’S Got TALENT yes, but in judging? Piers Morgan, Sharon Osborne and Howie Mandel are the judges this season. Piers and Sharon were both born in England and Howie is Canadian.

Is the panel a commentary on the fact that we have talent, but couldn’t find 3 people in America that could spot it? All 3 judges may be American citizens I am not sure of their status, I just find it funny. Then I remembered in past years David Hasselhoff was a judge, so I hit Google to see if he was too busy suddenly to be our homegrown representative of judging talent. Turns out he was “released” from his judging obligations by the network for showing a pattern of making poor decisions (judgments) in his personal life.

Are we good judges? Taylor Swift is one of the hottest recording acts going. No one points out she is tone deaf. Her songs are not unique in a world of unicorn rainbow covered 15 year old girls notebooks, where the prose often bends to the modern take on Cinderella. Avatar is the biggest movie ever, yet Ferngully gave a more complete and deeper take on the same message. The Twilight series is the biggest thing in print and with each release the most anticipated serial in the theatres, yet the books really kind of suck and the movies seem to be an excuse to make soft porn for 12 year old girls and 45 year old would be cougars aching to see some barely legal flesh. The two biggest movie releases of the past weekend were The Karate Kid and the A-Team. One a bad 80’s movie that was able to grab people’s hearts and added “wax on, wax off” to our philosophical lexicon, the other a bad 80’s television show. Maybe we do need judges from other places to steer us.

The next observation gave me a good take on the American automotive industry. An Acura commercial addressing the personal investment and statement one makes when entering the world of luxury cars. It reminded me of the birth of Acura, Lexus and Infiniti a couple of decades ago. It is like Honda, Toyota and Nissan collectively got together and said we make great cars and we offer affordability and dependability, but the upper class in America only buy European cars so they will never see us as a luxury product. What we must do is change our grills and taillights change the names of the cars, charge thousands of dollars more and we will be in the luxury market as well. All three companies are chugging right along. Mitsubishi did not go that route and the Mitsubishi dealerships are on decline. Isuzu did not do this and they have disappeared. Ford on the other hand knew through Mercury and Lincoln that they could not reproduce the dependability the luxury car market demands, so they bought Volvo, Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin and set about dismantling what was right about those companies. In an apparent bid to not make a better product, just make everyone else’s worse. GM on the other hand had written the playbook that the triplets from the land of the rising sun were using and had been producing the same 4 of 5 vehicles under multiple brand names at different price points for years. Except without quality and dependability as an issue. To answer Ford’s acquisition frenzy GM bought Saab and reintroduced its European subsidiary Opel to our market. While Saab only had a niche market in America, GM managed to widen that market with a poorer quality product than Saab previously produced. GM used Opel to build the bigger and more reliable than before Saturns. Opel also designed the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice two of the better looking things GM produced just before it shit canned both Pontiac and Saturn. A lack of critical thinking seems to be the cornerstone of our capitalism.

Reality television has owned television for the past decade, yet it seems one of the only shows that even gets close to reality is Parenthood. Actors in this show play characters faced with real life ups and downs you know…realistic stuff written by writers. I wonder if the writers are American?

Maybe there is no true social commentary here at all; maybe we are all just practicing God’s advice of judge not lest ye be judged.

A Capitalist and a Mirror

So I found myself in a 3 day string about the oil spill. It has been educational and telling once again where divisions seem to exist. I have found some wonderful facts about BP along the way as well. Like they have a protocol in place in how to herd and maintain media placement during environmental crisis. Nice. They have a plan for dealing with media on the books, but no working plan to stop leaks. I found out BP has been the recipient of 97% of the OSHA violations issued to the energy industry in the last 3 years. That a few years ago they bought up enough heating and cooking propane to corner the America market and then withheld supply to artificially raise the price by 50%. Their Alaskan pipeline has had numerous reported leaks due to corrosion. They pled guilty to criminal charges in the Texas City refinery explosion that killed fifteen. The platform explosion was at first a mishap, then something they were working minutes before to try to avoid, then the story changed to hours before, and now it would seem they knew of gas leaks into the well almost a week before and it was the direct action they took that caused the explosion and the spill. Great company!

The truth is I thought so. My wife and I both noticed better gas mileage when we used BP gas. Since I was happy with those results I almost bought in fully to their “green campaign” a few years ago with the Hello Kitty like children and green backgrounds, talking about cleaner burning fuels, but never going so far as to say “hey we are GREEN!” Ah, the power of suggestion such an evil and empty mistress you are.
In the thread an editorial link was thrown in that compared the many large corporations and the poor practices they engage in to the BP mess. I was shocked to see that develop into another finger pointing, political bashing, fault finder without a sober discussion going on. The accountability of bad business when it is big business falls to the consumer. Our government (regardless of party affiliation) is funded by these corporations. Our government has and will again use the resources supplied by taxpayers to help solve the quagmires created by these companies. We will bitch about it, we will get hung up in threads, and then we will stop at the nearest BP and fill up.

I am not advocating the revolution. I am just saying in the most sober terms. Do not buy the products of the companies that piss you off. Try a little influence in your circle of living. Find the local alternative, the little guy or gal in your neighborhood who charges more for whatever service so she/he can stay in business among the faceless out there. While it is a little harder with oil, maybe we just pretend gas is $5 a gallon and react accordingly. Walk when we can. Save up for the hybrid. Ride the bike.
Another thing that strikes me in all this is the surprise when the giants stumble and the shock when the truth comes out. I started thinking about the companies I have supported over the years. I decided to check them out through news filters around the world.

I started with Coca Cola. Something I have long loved and yes I am admitting that in public. A quick search brought up the SINALTRAINAL union in Colombia. Paramilitaries trained in the School of America facility in Georgia and hired by Coca Cola, have kidnapped, detained, tortured, and murder SINALTRAINAL Union organizers in their plants located in Colombia. Similar claims are arising out of Guatemala. In India Coke has deep drilled into the water table causing a water shortage, and the company dumps waste water into the Ganges and local water sources as well. I will check out more as I go, but for now no Coke no BP. Now I can bitch all I want.

So could you. Look we are in the mess we are in, because we see freedom as being able to get a hold of small pleasantries anytime we want. Too much of a good thing is too much. Avoid life's little pleasures and regain some freedom.

CheeseBurgers, Out With the Old, and Hysterical Preservation: Welcome to the Ville

My house is old. Not quite a century, but pretty near it. My kitchen has seen a few updates over the last 90 years, but update no longer fits the description. It is the classic galley design. The original was a porcelin sink perched atop 48 inches of wood. Two overhead cabinets, a small fridge to the left and cornered right was where the stove sat. Somewhere in the fifties a few more overhead cabinets were added and two base cabinets were saddlebagged around the sink base. It was around this time the heavy formica tiles were placed over the original hand embossed linoleum, along with a quarter of inch of adhesive material. In the seventies the stove moved to where the fridge sat and the fridge was moved to the far wall. This did create the classic triangle, but alleviated the operable "eat in" description. A bad goldenrod sheet linoleum covered the bad formica tiles. The 90's found a tri-tone blue laminate counter top, a poorly constructed pantry by the stove and a two by four framed alcove for a dishwasher. Oddly enough the sheet linoleum was left and the walls were painted the same goldenrod hue.

My wife and I purchased the home six years ago and have been rehabbing it at a snail's pace every since. The kitchen was operable and clean, so our only touch at the beginning was to paint the walls a margarita hue (which proved to be little improvement). As we have explored and researched possible changes along the way other area eateries have been faced with changes as well.

Kaelin's only a few blocks from where I live was a Louisville landmark, and claimed to be the birthplace of the cheeseburger. Numerous other cafes and grills make the same claim. A couple which would trump Kaelin's by nearly a decade except with a technicality. The cheeseburgers listed before Kaelin's were listed in the menus as a hamburger with melted cheese on the West coast and a hamburger on cheese buns in the East. Kaelin's seemed to be the first to call it a cheeseburger. The establishment was bought a little over a decade ago from the original family and the name and cheesburgers remained until it abruptly closed last year, and was re-opened as some kind of sports bar.

The Douglas Loop (so called because it was the trolley turn around for the downtown to highlands trolley) is anchored on one corner by the Twig and Leaf. In the twenties cafes of chrome, steel, glass brick started springing up in the Northeast of the country. These were made common by the long bar that surrounded a semi open kitchen where one could perch upon vinyl covered swivel stools or slouch in the fixed booths that ran along the outer wall. The Twig is an example of that type of structure. It isn't five star, but for decades has provided Louisville a place to hang on while avoiding the hangover, and shines at breakfast. CVS drugstores has expressed interest in buying the property and tearing it down to drop one of their big box unimaginative turd stores in the area. While capitalism is good and the Douglas Loop is a mixed service economic area, The Twig is a somewhat irreplacable piece of history that services many happy families and hipsters alike. The effort to "save" the Twig seems to be a grassroots facebook page. To my knowledge no civic leaders have picked up the greasy spoon banner as of yet. I know the food can be found at almost any truckstop, or Waffle House, but the Twig & Leaf does offer an original dish to Louisville's cheeseburger history. "The Womb from the Tomb" is an open faced two beef patty, melted cheese covered in chili salute to a stroke waiting to go.

On the other hand the most infamous cheeseburger in Louisville would be found at Genny's Diner known as the "Sweet Daddy Burger". One and a quarter pounds of triple layered cheeseburger about the size of a football. The owner of this diner has been all over our news because a decade ago he bought the Queen Anne Victorian that sat at the edge of his parking lot with the intention of tearing it down for more parking. Unfortunately for him he held on to the property for a couple of years and the area was deemed a historical preservation district. Instead of being able to tear it down he was slapped with heavy code violations a couple of hefty fines and a home incarceration for not bringing the property up to code. Most recently he was told he must either sell or give the property away. The estimate for making the once beautiful house habitable again is $500,000. Now while it was a formerly grand example of Victorian architecture it is a huge shack, whose only claim to historical is its age. Nevermind the block it sits in is a nod to pre-restrictive building and once restored the house will look like a beauty queen sitting in a pig sty.

The point a local business is punished at every angle to preserve the already lost, and the city seemingly looks away while another local business is in danger of being lost to big out of town business.

My own kitchen. It is old enough to fall under the crazy preservationist, but its history is a private one that offers little to the current community. I did hand wash the original linouleum and say a farewell as I buried it under the 2010 additions. My kitchen is now up to a more modern standard and is a fitting place for my addition to Louisville's cheeseburger legacy "The Arrogant Bastard". Ground free range organic beef and organic hot italian sausage, topped with melted gruyere cheese, sauteed baby bellas, onions and shallots carmelized in balsamic, with German hot senf. Created for consuming with stout beers and conversations about why everyone else is just dead wrong.