Tag: Brazil

A Hands-on Project With No Hands

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Brazil 2014
(from left: Kaka, Dunga, Ronaldinho, Lucio)

Starbury’s a chump. That’s what I was thinking. To hell with him, Richard Jefferson, Lamar Odom, and all the other fakers and never-weres masquerading as a national basketball team. 10 of the real stars on the USA team that was supposed to restore dominance in hoops had opted out, and these jokers shifted up one step from bridesmaid. It was like putting six red shirted officers on an all-time Star Trek crew, or giving Franklin Pierce and William Henry Harrison control of the Former Presidents’ Council. In Athens our American sport took a beating on the grandest stage; an Olympic humiliation supposedly unthinkable since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and USA Basketball assembled the greatest team ever.

But even during those awful losses to Puerto Rico and Argentina, no one on the team came back Stateside to death threats or sport-induced recession.

Yes, all respect to the pituitary struggles and randomly lined court of international basketball, but Earthlings still only live and die with soccer. Read More

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Is this what it’s like in Brazil?

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Wednesday, September 11th Brazil and Mexico were having a friendly soccer match in Foxboro, MA. I had a friend who had a ticket with my name on it. This should be a great event even if I’m in the very highest back row, I can still hope to see Kaka or Ronaldinho. Well Foxboro is 16 miles from my house. There will be traffic, so I figure 7:00 is a good time to leave to get to an 8:30 game. Added to this is that the people with tickets are leaving at 6:30 from slightly further away.

Look at all the TrafficOf course, nothing goes to plan. ???? ????? My ride shows up a little later than expected, we don’t leave until 7:30. At 8:15 we’ve gone 3 miles (that’s an average speed of 4 MPH… about 1/15 of the speed limit) and give the ticket holders a call. “We’re running late. You can just put our tickets at the Will Call window. Oh, your still in traffic on route 1? Well, call me back when you park, we’ll tell you how close we are.” Yes, for an extra hour of driving, they were only 10 miles ahead of us, but at our speed that was an hour and a half away.

Using the powers of GPS navigation, we decided to forgo the interstate and travel lesser known back roads to our destination. With a little luck and a little magic, we were at foxboro at 9:30. One hour after the game was supposed to start. We call the holders of the tickets. “How the fuck did you get there before us! ??? ???? ????? ?? ???????? ? We’ve only gone about a mile or two in the hour and 15 since we last spoke. I see that stadium, and should be parking in about 15 minutes or so. I’ll meet you at the gates.” Read More

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