15 July 10
Soccer Quandaries
I listened to my first baseball game following the World Cup, the Giants beating the New York Mets 2-0, Tim Lincecum throwing a complete game shutout. I’m not quite ready to give up soccer for another four years, and for now continue to pay attention to the sport. So far this means a) finishing Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett’s latest novel about the wizards at Unseen University being coerced into fielding a football team against the town folk of Ankh-Morpork, the ending of which bearing more than a slight resemblance to the Spain-Netherlands final b) reading Jonathan Wilson’s recent treatise Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics c) learning that Billy Beane, the much-heralded general manager for the baseball team the Oakland Athletics, has in recent years become a soccer fanatic; indeed some suspect he’s gotten bored with baseball and only cares about soccer these days d) wondering if Billy Beane’s favorite English Premier League team, Tottenham Hotspur, would be a good one for me to follow and maybe adopt (it would not do to become a fan of any of the EPL “Big Four” — that’s like defaulting to being a Yankees fan) But chances for me to watch soccer without broadband or any sort of cable TV are few and far between, so maybe I stick to baseball on the radio…
11 July 10
Gané,
Ganaste, ganó, ganamos, ganasteis, ganaron.
(I’m still in shock but we are back from Oregon where we saw Rana Rachel and Dan get married in the most gorgeous spot, had a lovely Thai lunch with Dale prior to a focused expedition to Powells, met the Knitting Rabbi as Numenius mentioned, and watched two football matches. One of which was very, very key. It involved my wearing a red shirt and I’m afraid I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in a bar at the Portland airport, but I may well get over it.)
9 July 10
Wayfarers From The Land Of Knitting
We’re in Corvallis, Oregon this weekend for a wedding. The wedding is tomorrow late afternoon; today there was a mixer for the guests. We were talking to the bride’s parents for a bit, and Pica was certain she recognized one of the guests. She got into a conversation with him, and he turned out to be the rabbi who is officiating the wedding. Pica tried about everywhere in her past where she might have run into him — nothing seemed likely. “Ravelry?” he suggested, thinking of his online social networks. We were awestruck — never in a million years would Pica have thought of a connection through that most famous of knitting social websites. His username on Ravelry is RabbiDave; Pica was pretty sure she had seen his name there. But Pica was still convinced she had run across him in person. They eventually solved the mystery. When Pica was traveling to Maine back in March, she got stuck in Portland, Oregon for a day. Having a free afternoon there, she wandered into the store The Yarn Garden on Hawthorne Blvd. and got into an animated conversation with the clerk about her trip to Maine. Behind them entered a guy who was very intent on looking at the sock yarn. That was, it turned out, our rabbi, who lives up in Portland. The bride is also on Ravelry; conversation strayed little from the Land of Knitting hence.
7 July 10
Superstition
Spain face Germany in a few hours. Like Maradona and his rosary beads, elaborate wardrobe shifts, and no doubt favorite drawers, I am filled with the irrational urge to don a red shirt, but wonder whether that will jinx the team.
Many athletes have elaborate superstitious rituals some of which border, like Maradona’s, on the theatrically absurd. Fans do as well. I’m trying to resist, trying to talk myself out of it. But what I’ve noticed for sure is that my syntax has become more British in the fast three weeks. It’s something to do with the language of football and I don’t think it’s a superstition, it’s more elemental.
So do I believe Paul the Octopus in his prognostications? do I believe they are always flawed when he is pitching Spain against Germany? Sigh. To any non-soccer types reading the blog, at least it will all be over soon, one way or the other.
29 June 10
And Then There Were Eight
We get a bit of a breather until the next World Cup matches; the quarterfinals don’t begin until Friday. I’m not quite sure how I will deal without this diet of twice or thrice-daily footie matches. In the quarterfinals I am rooting for Netherlands over Brazil, Germany over Argentina, Spain over Paraguay, and am indifferent in Ghana vs. Uruguay (it will be neat seeing either team in the semis). I’m afraid attending to what is happening in baseball is quite difficult now. The two sports are just on completely different elemental planes of action, especially when you compare the intensity of the World Cup to the middle of a baseball season.
28 June 10
Back from Pennsylvania
Spending a week just outside Gettysburg, studying 9th-century European lettering: bliss. Bliss was the long table with papers and ink and writing easels. Bliss was the conversation with other letterform devotees, sharing table and morning coffee (well, tea in my case) outside in the warm humid dawn. Bliss was rising on the solstice before the sun and greeting it accompanied by a gold flute echoing back the mourning dove’s soft song. Bliss was the delight of learning how to grind stick ink.
I sketched at Little Round Top and from Cemetery Ridge, looking down on the field with fences faced by Pickett’s division, marching double time up into Union canister. Ghosts.
18 June 10
One Week Behind The Jabulani
We’re deep in the trenches of following the World Cup, and will be in that mode for the next three weeks. Mexico’s win today 2-0 over France has brought the most satisfaction of any match to date; with 44 matches remaining in the tournament more delights and disappointments are surely to come. Not having a television I am quite happy that ESPN Radio has stepped up to broadcasting all the matches on radio. The flip side of this intense focus on the sport one month out of every four years is I don’t really have much access to following top-flight soccer the other forty-seven months. It’s a tad of a predicament.
10 June 10
Bafana Bafana!
Well, it all starts tomorrow. I can’t decide whether to come in to work early (7 am here) and listen to the opening match, South Africa-Mexico, on the radio in Spanish, or go in to House of Prague for an egg breakfast, or go to International House for coffee and donuts. Which match where? Ooof.
As Steven Rubio says, ESPN has gone all out to televise the World Cup this year. And it may be worth watching some of it instead of sticking with my usual favorite, Univisión. I will be paying attention to several blogs including Steven’s and Not A Safari. And somewhere in this murk I’m going to be traveling to Pennsylvania for a week — for a calligraphy workshop. I may have to participate in some furtive football fanishness. Watch this space.
The first World Cup I remember much of is 1970. The anticipation, the cheers, the rib-splitting tension in those smoky rooms just north of Madrid then, sucked into the over-urbanized sprawl heading for default now. Pelé. I remember Pelé, what a phenomenon, he was pure flowing magic on the field, we watched in black and white but it seemed like color, gold even, he had a sort of holy aura: the football was so beautiful. It was a fantastic World Cup and it hooked me forever.
I’d love to see South Africa do well, they are so excited to be hosting and throwing a damn good party already. I will be very torn between England and the US but hope the US does well this time. I will enjoy watching Brazil and will hope, as always, that Argentina gets thrashed. I have a huge soft spot for any underdog and hope to see an unlikely winner here and there. But my heart, as always, belongs to Spain, to La Roja, and is in my mouth as they make their final preparations for the tournament. Maybe this year… Quizás. Vamos, muchachines, que ya es hora.
ETA: See also the excellent Zonal Marking.
6 June 10
Drawing Day At The Zoo
Today is the worldwide Drawing Day 2010: we participated by going sketching at the Sacramento Zoo. Pica drew mostly birds; I drew a mix of birds and ungulates. At left is a sketch I made of an Amazon parrot, at right are a couple of giraffes. 
I need to submit my giraffe drawings to the one million giraffes project — the creator of this project has as of today collected 839,661 drawings of giraffes and has only 208 days left to reach his goal of one million giraffe drawings!
23 May 10
Maker Faire
This year we split up to cover the areas we wanted to see independently. Numenius spent time at a couple of panel discussions — including open source hardware — and looking at electronics. I spent time with the fiber folks and paper people. We both liked the robotic gamelan. I wanted to buy a geeky sketching canvas kilt you could ride a bike with. I learned how to knit a klein bottle (3 dimensions only, not 4). We bought this amazing stuff called Sugru (a silicone-based substance you can use to repair or enhance things, like ergonomically sculpting handles — it dries overnight with exposure to air).
A long day. Now we find a bee swarm in one of the guava bushes, which are flowering copiously…