Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

Geez. So, I put up this picture of Carrie Gunns to illustrate a post about a VICE Squad match that they did out in Orange County. As it turns out, she tells me she wasn't there. I could have actually watched the match before posting it.



Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

What, you complaining that they didn't win by 100 points?


Also on Saturday, the Copper Queens decimated the Brawlerinas of AZRD in a scrimmage 100-37. Well, really, 100-37 after two periods...being an friendly scrimage, they mixed up teams in the third.

100 after two? Geez.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

Ack. Just the sight of Silvio Berlusconi holding up that trophy is enough to turn a man's stomach. AC Milan shouldn't have even been in the tounament, whatever happened to the "punishment" for match fixing?

Yeah, and someone needs to check Law 12 on the definition of handling the ball.

(Oh, it was "unintentional," but Filippo Inzaghi was happy to run to the crowd to take credit)

And why wasn't Peter Crouch put in earlier? What is up with that?



Ack.



So Greg Ensell wrote me and said:

Although I came to be a soccer fan somewhat late in life, I really enjoy watching the game. In particular, I enjoy Premiership mathcers and La Liga. What I can't understand is - other than wanting the game to succeed here in the US - how can you be such a big MLS fan? It seems such an inferior product on so many levels.

Is a match between Real Salt Lake and Columbus inferior to a match between FC Barcelona and CF Valencia? Yep. I'll give you that. Most MLS fans, in fact all of them, will give you that one. But MLS, if I may use a pointy ball analogy, is barely the XFL. European coaches have commented on how suprised they are at the quality of play in the MLS and MLS teams have been able to go toe-to-toe with Latin American teams in international tournaments. Heck, DC United won the Champions Cup and the Interamerican Cup (beating vaunted Brazillian side Vasco da Gama) in 1998, when the league wasn't even very good yet.

Also, take a look at how many former MLS players are playing in the EPL. Fulham FC has four ex-MLS players (including Simon Elliot, who plays for New Zealand so got few looks except for his play in the US). Sixth place Everton FC features goalkeeper Tim Howard, who played for a rather unimpressive MLS team and got no time at the World Cup.

The assumption seems to be that I watch MLS to the exclusion of other leagues. Few MLS fans do that, I myself followed Cruz Azul before they became diving hacks. My friend Prairie Rose Clayton, who is arguably one of the biggest New England Revolution fans on the planet, also is a huge Blackburn Rovers fan (which by the way, features a former MLS 'keeper in goal).

I've also seen plenty of bad games and bad teams in European leagues. La Liga plays great footy, and I think that any team in that league could beat any team in the world on any given day. I don't think that is true of the EPL, where there are plenty of poor teams near the bottom of the table that, yes, could be beaten by an MLS side. I don't think you make this assumption, but I think the proposition put forward by Eurosnob and Anglophile fans that any European game is naturally superior to an MLS game is silly. There are plenty of decent and entertaining MLS games.

As for my fandom: yes, probably silly. MLS has no franchise closer than LA, and the team I follow is in a city I've visited only once. What the heck is my problem? I became a fan before the first game was played because, yes, I wanted the league to succeed. I also want the US National team to succeed, and the best thing for us is a decent league here. Even without the direct connection of having a team in my town, there are three former Tucson Amigos who have played in MLS (Pablo Mastroeni is still very active), and Tempe boy Greg Vanney, who used to be a teammate of Greg and I's mutual friend Vince Enriquez but is unscarred by the experience, is in MLS again.

Anyway, those are my thoughts...wrote way too much.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

I caught a movie called Offside this weekend with Katie Bolger. Yeah, it's a soccer movie so Katie called me.

Anyway, the movie is about half a dozen soccer fans who try to sneak into the Iran-Bahrain game during the last World Cup qualifiers. The trouble with these fans? They are women, so aren't allowed into games in post-revolutionary Iran.

Recently, women have been allowed into other public events in Iran, but soccer matches are a glaring exception.

The women have a tremendous passion for the game, and know far more about it than their guards do. In fact, the guards aren't even that enthusiastic about enforcing this rule and are constantly talking with eachother about how much time they have left before they can go back to their other lives. It's one weakness of authoritarian regimes: oddball rules that no one understands enforced by people who aren't very motivated.

Anyway, I now know the term for corner kick in Farsi is, well, corner.

The movie is still playing at the Loft, right down the street from me.


Oddly, the director, Jafar Panahi, was allowed to film this movie at the actual game, but he has not been allowed to show this movie in Iran. You can read an interview with him here.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

I had the chance to stop by the Waila festival this weekend. For those of you who don't know what waila is, it is a form of polka music played by the Tohono O'odham. The music resembles norteño and banda, but the instrumentation is a bit different (no bajo sexto from norteño, and the large brass sections from banda are stripped down to just saxophone). Also, waila rarely has vocals. Whereas both norteño and banda are popular from Texas to San Diego, waila can be called genuinely homegrown here in in the Pimeria Alta.

The music is often refered to as chicken scratch, but Angelo Joaquin Jr., a long time booster of the music and the festival (and whose family played in the excellent Joaquin Brothers), prefers the term waila, which comes from baila. The traditional way to dance to the music is a large group two-step moving counter-clockwise.

The original waila bands were fiddle, drum and guitar. You still see that occasionally, but only one group that played on Saturday featured violin, Tucson Fiddlers. They played early before the party really got underway. Decades ago, bands replaced the fiddlers with accordion and saxophone, making it noisier (and I mean that in a good way), but there is something elegant about the old school fiddle bands. One of the first bits of waila I bought was a tape by the Gu Achi Fiddlers and those guys rocked.

Long time Waila Festival stalwarts Gomez Band played as well. The third band of the evening was South Image, who, did I see that right, featured a woman on accordion. This was remarkable because I've never seen a woman in a waila band before.

The highlight of the evening were the closers, T. O. Combo. They started off with a rolicking polka of "Ghost Riders in the Sky," and later featured a cover of "Ring of Fire." The mariachi horns of the latter song just beg for a polkafied-waila treatment. My understanding is that these guys are the "it" band right now and they proved it that night. I picked up their CD, 1999's T. O. Forever. Unfortunately, it doesn't feature either "Ghost Riders in the Sky" or "Ring of Fire," but there is enough there to keep me occupied for quite a while. I made sure to pick up that and a collection of waila from the early 1970's called Waila!, which featured an instructor I had at Pima College. Pretty cool, the guy that taught me how to say "Śkuk taś" playing the sax. The CD features his band, Mike Enis and Company, El Conjunto Murrieta, Elvin Kelly y Los Reyes and Los Papagos Molinas. When I am at these festivals or I am at a tiendita on the reservation, I always try to pick up some of the music because it is so hard to come by.

Canyon Records has a page promoting T. O. Forever which has audio samples.


I found a shaky You Tube video of Papago Warrior, an excellent waila band that is popular right now. The sound isn't that good, but you get a great idea of what the music sounds like.



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Prairie Rose Clayton and I often send instant messages back and forth when we are watching games. We agreed on something the other day: Calen Carr needs his ass kicked.

Normally, I try not to be a violent person, but there is something about certain people. You know what I am talking about: those certain people whose look says "look at me, but please don't think you are good enough to talk to me." These folks don't need to be good looking, far from it. They just need to have that look that crosses that line between self-confidence and grating arrogance. Crosses that line like the blitzkreig...deep into the other territory and never looking back.

Often times, such looks are associated with accessories; the oversized sweatband and "look at me, I'm wild, dammit" hair of Carr, for example. You can also put in this category any man that wears mirrored sunglasses indoors.

Yes, this is a syndrome that only effects men.

Like I said, normally, I'm not violent. Hey, I don't want these guys even to get their bones broken. I just want a few days of soreness to wipe that smug half-smile off of their faces. I think that if they were forced to spend time with these people, even Dorothy Day and Mahatma Ghandi would be trying to organize a pillowcase party.

Now, an asskicking doesn't always do any good. Jim Rome got his ass kicked by Jim Everett, on national TV even. This seemed to have no long term effect what so ever.

One nominee of mine is Chad Kroeger of Nickleback. I am lost on why these guys are popular, but then again, if the Pussycat Dolls are regarded as a serious force in pop music, why the hell not? I'm tired of how each and every song is sung by this guy as if it is the most meaningful and painful event in his life, as if all that power would make us forget about the derivative and sappy "napkin lyrics" he's singing. Yes, Bono gets away with this...but he's Bono...and Chad, you're Canadian. I talked about accessories: Kroeger always seems to wear t-shirts that are a size too small so we can tell how many reps he did at the gym.

Tony Cani went after me the other day for not being able to summon up any outrage over the suspensions of Phoenix Suns players Boris Diaw and Amare Stoudamire. Sorry.

Further, he questioned my credentials as an Arizonan because I am not rooting for the Suns. Dude, it does say Phoenix Suns, donnit? Check my address.

I actually like Steve Nash (although he was one of the long haired dudes that beat the U of A in the 1993 NCAA tournament), and I'm happy when the Suns do well. I also like the fact that the old Suns logo still says "Suns" even when it is upside down. Steve Kerr played there for a while, that's always a plus. On the minus side, one of the Suns' original owners was Don Diamond.

Anyhow, I've read a lot of the handwringing about the suspension of these two. Near as I can tell, they did break a rule. Yeah, throw something at me, but they do know the rules. I find this premise that key players shouldn't be punished because it could ruin a game is a pretty dangerous road to travel down. Anyhow, they will be back tonight, and San Antonio Spurs player Robert Horry, the guy that started the trouble, will still be out tonight.

Anyway, go Suns. Happy, Tony?


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I watched the penultimate episode of Heroes last night. I noticed that one of the buildings was identified as "Kirby Plaza." Awesome. This Jack Kirby fan thanks whoever put that detail in.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jack Kirby at an in-store appearance a few months before he died. The man had a joyful pride about his work, always smiling while describing his characters and stories. He felt like he knew these characters, talking about the Newsboy Legion or Mister Miracle like they were buddies of his.

There was also a bit where the character Micah Sanders was presented with a copy of Silver Surfer #1. Although Kirby created the character, he didn't do the pencils in that issue. I thought maybe this was another tribute to Kirby, albeit badly aimed. Then I saw the ad promoting the next Fantastic Four movie, Rise of the Silver Surfer. Ack...synergy.


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Yesterday, the US Women's National Team demolished the vaunted Canadian National Team by a score of 6-2.

What bugged me while I was watching it on TV was how few people were in the stands: 8,569. Bear in mind, that same park hosts FC Dallas games that can draw 20,000 (and even drew 12,000 in a midweek game this season). So, let me get this straight: Dallas area soccer fans would rather watch Carlos Ruiz flop around like a trout on the bottom of a rusty rowboat than watch our Women's National Team play? Gawd.

What the heck is up with that?


By the way, the six goals the US scored in this game is more than FC Dallas have scored at home all season.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

The strip center located at Campbell at Water has lost another tennant: the Book Stop, which has been at that location for nearly 40 years. The Book Stop was a cool old fashioned used book store: you'd never go there looking for anything in particular. The staff was cool with you browsing. In high school, I'd get so lost there. The owners were cool too. If they didn't have what you wanted, they could find it in a few days.

This is the third buisiness to be driven from the center by property manager Richard Shenkarow. Luckily, the Santa Barbara Ice Creamery has moved to another location, and the Book Stop plans a move to 4th Avenue, but Hear's Music shut down entirely. The loss of Hear's Music was particularly galling, since owner Britton Dornquast's advocacy on the part of the buisinesses on North Campbell is what probably made it possible for Shenkarow to entertain the possibility of bringing in higher paying tenants.

The Weekly has been good about covering this stupidity, although I'd never do what Jim Nintzel did and call Shenkarow a "tool." I would only note that "Dick" is short for Richard.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

The last two minutes decided it all.

I'm saying that because one person on Kevin Smith's Rock 'n' Roller Blog told him not to start his entry on the bout that way. Well, Kevin, I've relieved you of the burden.

Both teams got into a great deal of accumulated penalty trouble late in the bout. This is understandable, a game this close is going to have all sorts of errant elbows and other "minor" penalties, even if the game is relatively clean (this one, not so clean). This foul trouble caused several of the final jams to start with one team or another having no jammer.

VICE Squad was able to build a small lead before the final jam, helped out by a couple of jams with no FTW jammer due to penalites. For the final jam, it was Sloppy Flo versus Penny Tenchery. Tenchery already had 3 minor penalties. Another minor would get her thrown out, leaving Flo free to score with no answer from VICE Squad.

Sure enough, Tenchery had a false start, which the referees called as a minor penalty and earned her a spot in the penalty box. This left Flo free to wipe out VICE's lead, and VICE with no chance for a comeback before the buzzer blew.

The ending confused many fans. My section had both VICE Squad and FTW fans, and the end left all of them scratching their heads trying to figure out what had happened. Many of us didn't realize that a false start was a penalty at all, we just thought that they did a restart and that was it. This would have been a good chance for the announcers, including guest announcer Bolshe Vixen who gave detailed rules explanations throughout, to explain this rule to the fans. It might have taken the confused looks off of our faces.

The teams are informed of who has got how many penalties, which leaves me to wonder why Tenchery was put in in that crucial jam. Even without the false start, there was a risk that any minor infraction would have resulted in her being sent off. At the beginning of the jam, her team was ahead by seven points. Tenchery has shown an ability to pile on the points, did this mitigate the risk of her getting thrown out?

I don't know the calculations VICE's coaching staff made. It is possible that other jammers were also in penalty trouble. Also, whatever jammer they picked would have had to go up against Sloppy Flo. But, I wonder if Flo would have been able to pile on enough points to save FTW in a single jam if a VICE jammer was also scoring a few points, even if she wasn't lead jammer.


Needless to say, VICE Squad fans are not happy with the ending. Smith's blog already has a post by a VICE fan quoting the WFTDA rules chapter and verse, and he hasn't even written about the match yet. Fan Tanya Binford wrote:

I also hope you review the WFTDA official rules, specifically with regards to 6.2.1.6 and 6.2.2.3, which address false starts. Penny yielded the advantage after her false start, then got sent to the penalty box… basically, the refs handed the game to FTW from my perspective in the last jam.

Wow...Roller Derby is all grown up. We have rules geeks now!

The two sections she quoted deal with the definitions of minor and major penalties. 6.2.1.6 defines a false start as a major penalty (which would send the offending skater to the penalty box), and 6.2.2.3 defines false start where advantage is yielded as an illegal procedure that "can be rectified without calling the jam or having little impact on the game," but still defines it in the section on minor penalties (the accumulation of four of which would send a skater to the penalty box). So, a false start is still regarded as a "minor penalty," even though any advantage gained can be obviated without ending the jam. Many of us fans, and possibly skaters too, did not realize that this has been counted as a minor in the past because skaters aren't necessarily sent to the penalty box immediately.


One VICE Squad fan I spoke to, Tom Greeley, a guy I've known forever, thought that it was a bit harsh to count a false start as a penalty at all. Maybe, but I wonder if it wasn't counted as a penalty if that would lead to momentum killing gamesmanship on the part of some teams, expecially in a match as contested as this one.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

Okay...tonight's matchup is the VICE Squad versus the Furious Truckstop Waitresses at Bladeworld. Doors open at 6:30.

VICE Squad:
Previous Match: VS 101 - Copper Queens 28 (16 Apr)
Season Record: 1 - 0
Leading Scorer: Penny Tenchery (J/B) - 55 points in 16 jams
Leading Defender: Whiskey Mick (P/J) - 26 strategic blocks, 11 penalties (3 major)
Probable Absences: Aja Consent (J/B)

Furious Truckstop Waitresses:
Previous Match: FTW 99 - Iron Curtain 42 (17 Mar)
Season Record: 1 - 0
Leading Scorer: Peaches Rodriguez (J) - 44 points in 12 jams
Leading Defender: Jezebelle (B) - 18 strategic blocks, 1 penalty, Deadlock Doe (P) - 18 strategic blocks, 10 penalties (3 major)
Probable Absences: Peaches Rodriguez (J)

Previous Meetings (Winner in bold):
FTW 81 - VS 73 (2006 Championship, 18 Sep 2006)
FTW 112 - VS 83 (18 Apr 2006)
FTW 56 - VS 64 (2005 Championship, 19 Sep 2005)
FTW 70 - VS 34 (16 Apr 2005)
FTW 115 - VS 84 (Exhibition, 20 Feb 2005)

Ted's Expert Analysis (unless otherwise noted, stats for jammers from last bout played):

Both teams have lost star jammers since their last meeting in September: Fisti Cuffs (202 points in 38 jams last season) moving to New York and Dirty Teri (75 points in 28 jams last season) forming her own team. It will be interesting to see which team actually suffers more from the loss. I expected Peaches Rodriguez (44 points in 12 jams) would be the one to step up to take on Fisti Cuff's place, but she will not be playing tonight, so the team will once again be depending on stalwart Sloppy Flo (37 points in 10 jams), but one of their newbies could step up.

You may remember that Penny Tenchery (55 points in 16 jams) of VICE Squad did all the jams in one period last bout, but I doubt that that is a stunt that will be repeated this time, especially with the team missing Aja Consent (9 points in two jams). Look for VICE to depend more on their rookies who impressed in the last bout, Aristhrottle (12 points in 4 jams) and Anita Donut (3 points in 2 jams).

Will Whiskey Mick spend as much time in the penalty box as last time? Unlike her, really, but she actually was sent off more than Barbicide.

League history dictates that the smart money will be on FTW, but one has to remember that the only team to defeat them in league play has been VICE Squad. Look for this to be close, but with both teams losing a little speed in the jammer position and both having well organized, experienced blockers, look for a lower scoring bout than in the past.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

The only man to fly on the Apollo, Mercury and Gemini missions has died. Wally Schirra, according to Wikipedia, was known as "Jolly Wally" after delivering a five gallon jar of urine when asked for a sample. He also, according to the always reliable Wiki folks, was the first astronaut to use foul language on a microphone and to play music in space.

Most folks of my generation probably only remember him as the Actifed pitchman who held up an old style NASA helmet and asked, "Have you ever sneezed in one of these?" (YouTube has a later ad featuring Schirra and Alan Bean, Richard Gordon, and one featuring Schirra and Donn Eisele)

Schirra was the fifth American in space, but was also an accomplished pilot here on Earth. He first flew at the age of 15, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross in Korea and logged 267 carrier landings.

Schirra was played by B-List actor Lance Henriksen in The Right Stuff, but Hollywood did him better in From Earth to the Moon when Mark Harmon played him.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.

He was married to Suzanne Pleshette? Who knew? At least he died happy.

They keep saying he was married to his Bob Newhart Show co-star. Poston appeared on a few episodes of that show, but the show he actually starred on was Newhart. Pleshette only appeared on one episode of that program, albeit in the best season finale ever.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.