Leaving town.

Ok, calm down. I'm going to be leaving for a few days. I'm not dying, or being kidnapped. I'm chaperoning a youth group mission trip to Montana next week. I definitely won't be posting until July 4. It's nothing to panic about. Remain calm.

Sports musings.

I hate the NBA. I'm swearing it off for three years. Bill Simmons has it right. The NBA sent itself backwards ten years. Congrats. Dwayne Wade just throws himself at the basket and gets the call every time. The refs in the Finals were deplorable. Professional basketball has once again bolstered itself as a superstar game with a sprinkling of thugs.

Soccer, on the other hand, I love. No one soccer star can have as much affect on a match as in basketball. I am coming to love the fact that the US isn't very good. It's not that I'm a self-hating American or whatever, it's that try as we might, we can't win. If we by some miracle won the World Cup, we would be the Yankees of international soccer. I hate the Yankees. Thus, I am glad at the futility of American soccer. I'm glued to the internet with this World Cup. My picks right now are Germany and Brazil. Have been since the start. We shall see. Go Ghana!

It's nice to see the Twins coming around. I'm so glad I have Joe Mauer on both my fantasy teams. The pitching staff has been unstoppable lately, which has always been the key. Except Kyle Lohse. He still sucks like nobody's business. I can't believe he gets paid to let the other team score runs EVERY TIME he takes the mound.

Only 39 days until Vikings training camp! I can't wait to be done with another summer of the sports abyss.

Jon Lovitz.

I came to a shocking realization yesterday. It seemed to defy everything I knew before, and yet I can't deny its veracity. I am a fan of Jon Lovitz.

For so long every time I saw him I cringed a little inside. But I was listening to a Subway commercial on the radio and, like the sun breaking the horizon at dawn, my fanship of Lovitz dawned and warmed my heart.

His Saturday Night Live days don't impress me too much. All that "yeah, that's the ticket" schtick seems dumb. But his other work is fantastic. The Critic was a ferociously funny show. His cameos on the Simpsons are all noteworthy. Most impressive of all, his replacement of Phil Hartman on News Radio brought some fresh laughs to the show. I am dazzled every time he says "eat fresh" on the Subway commercials because I can now never hear those words again without thinking of him.

Maybe I'm not making my case very well, but I assure you that I'm not insane.

Good news.

Marcia got a job at a school in District 49, out in Falcon. It's a 4th grade job, and that's awesome. Now she doesn't have to go back to JMCA, that hellhole. That's right. It's not often I'll refer to an elementary school as a hellhole. That denomination is typically reserved for high schools, most often Rosemount High School. But JMCA is awful. Just on the really off chance that anyone stumbles here considering it as an option for teaching or for educating their kids, DON'T DO IT. Almost everyone who works there is completely self-absorbed and won't give two shakes about your kids. I'm so glad my wife is out of there.

In your face, Togo!

Paying attention to the World Cup makes me very nostalgic for 1998. I really wish I did a better job of living it up and documenting that year. It's the kind of thing they make movies out of these days. A group of friends sitting on a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees while Tunisian soccer fans celebrate in the streets. Sounds like a show on FOX where each week someone dies. But I digress.

We have a World Cup pool here in the office. We randomly drew teams and I got South Korea, Germany, Ecaudor, and Trinidad & Tobago. Not one of these teams has lost yet. I'm pumped. It looked for a while yesterday like Togo was going to take down SK, but come on, they're TOGO. Can you find Togo on a map? I couldn't until yesterday.

One thing that really irritated me is that so many people around here jumped so quickly off the US bandwagon. Before Monday it was all "yeah we can make the finals, as long as we don't play Brazil." And I swear that within ten minutes of the start of their match against the Czech Republic people around here were making fun of the US as a bunch of chokers. That really ticked me off. If you're going to be a fan, be a fan. It got me thinking about the nature of fanship. I'm not above making fun of the teams I support. I'll rip on the Vikings after a loss. But I'll wait until AFTER the loss. Being down one goal isn't something to panic about. Sure the US lost 3-0, but wait until the match is done, boneheads. And at least hold out hope that your team is going to get better. Despairing is not something a fan should ever do. Fairweather fans (read "US, Broncos and Vikings fans") tick me off so much sometimes. That's one thing that I begrudgingly hand to the Packers. They got some die-hard fans.

Tastes like burning.

So I know it's really inconvenient to change back over to here but I put at least a good minute and a half of thought into this. As much as it's cool to post what I'm listening to and what mood I'm in with my blog, I think myspace is pretty much too much for my taste. This site is simpler, it has everything I really need in a blog. Plus myspace just kinda looks crappy. The only thing I really like about myspace is that I can post music, so I kept my music space. On Blogspot the nicest thing is that I'm not bombarded by stupid advertisements everywhere. That just got on my nerves too much.

On the news front, I'm buying a car.
The Saturn was a really good car. I put a lot of miles on it and sang very very loud for most of it. I'll never forget the nights driving home from St. Cloud, or the trip out to Colorado Springs. [sniff] But if you love something, you have to set it free.

I welcome my 2000 Ford ZX2 with open arms. I will be making a triumphant return to the realm of the stick shift. It's a sporty little number, blue, and it's got astonishingly low miles. If this doesn't turn out to be another lemon like the Pontiac, it's a very good deal. We pick it up on Friday. I can't wait.