Now Playing: Hector Berlioz--Roman Carnival Overture
The World Cup is here, and I've decided to keep up with it this year as best I can. ABC televised several of the games this year (the commentary was interesting--I'm not sure whether Brent Musberger's always followed soccer or had to bone up once they decided to start carrying it) and I watched three of them: US vs. Italy, Brazil vs. Australia, and France vs. South Korea (so understandably remote is the possibility of Pyongyang's ever fielding a side that the latter was billed simply as "Korea"). Watching soccer (and as long as the NCAA exists, that's what I'll keep calling it) is a lot different for me than, say, watching football, as I used to play soccer when a child. Not for long and not very well, but I do have a basic understanding of what the players are going through out on the field, so it becomes more interesting to watch, despite (or maybe because of) the relative paucity of goals scored. So I spent pretty much all Saturday and Sunday watching soccer and reading The 9/11 Commission Report.
I read the last mentioned as part of a general brushing up on recent history, along with James Patterson's Restless Giant, Haynes Johnson's Sleepwalking Through History and The Best of Times, Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, and E.J. Dionne's Why Americans Hate Politics. It's interesting to go back and take stock of one's place in the larger picture. In retrospect, the 90s were kind of a golden age (relatively speaking), and I find it instructive to piece together the accounts and form a whole. Dionne's book is particularly good--a concise yet thorough analysis of right- and left-wing thought since the 50s and how both have affected American politics and widespread popular cynicism.
Ann Arbor garage gods the Avatars played the Blind Pig Saturday night in honor of their newly-released CD, Never A Good Time, for which I've been waiting for around two years. I felt rather listless during the actual show, even though the band was great (and their openers, the Defectors, were a lot of fun, further upholding the great Danish musical tradition of Carl Nielsen and Victor Borge--only other Danish musicians I know). The album was good, songs like "Honey Do," "Wait," and the title track (as well as all of "Wonderin' Why") in particular. I'm not sure the energy of the live shows can be recaptured on CD. It's a situation similar to Canada, another group whose superb live shows don't seem to translate well to recording, at least on the EP I own. Still, that just means that they're definitely bands to catch live.
Speaking of Canada, I also watched the Stanley Cup finals. Events here conspired from the first to interest me, at least marginally, in hockey. My first roommate in Ann Arbor was a Red Wings obsessive, and with so much Canadian media available in southeast Michigan, it was, perhaps, inevitable. I caught Saturday night's steamrolling of the Carolina Hurricanes, and then watched part of the latter's vengeance Monday, before I realized a win was inevitable and went to bed. I think I've watched more sports in the past three days (outside of the Olympics) than at any time outside of college football season. This really has to stop, man.