Gooners

Following a sports team is meant to be a fun diversion.  It's just a game, after all, isn't it?  But caring how your team did last night, really caring, is not rational.

Somehow that doesn't stop me.

I enjoy Nick Hornby's writing -- a couple of his books (High Fidelity, About A Boy) were made into pretty good movies, too.  His first book, Fever Pitch, was an autobiographical look at his lifelong obsession with the English soccer team Arsenal.   He made the same point: it doesn't make sense to be in a foul mood for a few days after your favorite team has lost, or joyous after they've won.  And yet, this self-awareness doesn't change anything for him.

Reading this book about 7 or 8 years ago got me interested in European soccer, especially the English league, and Arsenal in particular.  Through the magic of the Internet I found I could follow how the team was doing, who was playing well, what the competition was up to, etc.  At that time Arsenal had developed the reputation of playing "beautiful" soccer -- sharp passing and ball movement, with lots of scoring, led by Arsenal legends Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Viera  and Thierry Henry.

You can see where this is going: a book warning me about the seductive irrationality of being an Arsenal fan...made me an Arsenal fan.  As if the Cubs, Bears, and Bulls weren't enough to follow.

I rarely get to watch a live game, but I do on occasion.  A few years ago Arsenal was duking it out with Chelsea for the league lead, so I went to one of the "soccer pubs" in Chicago to watch the crucial late-season Arsenal-Chelsea match.  There I was at Ginger's Ale House on Ashland, at 8am on a Sunday morning, and it was packed with supporters of both teams -- about 50:50, and everyone cheering like mad.  It wound up an exciting 2-2 tie, as I recall.

One oddity to European soccer, at least odd to an American sports fan, is the overlapping competitions.  Here in, say, baseball, you play the regular season, then the playoffs, then the World Series, and you have a champion.  There each country has a "regular season", but concurrently one or more tournaments with lots of overlapping teams.  It's as if the Cubs played the Cardinals on Tuesday in the Major Leagues, then played the Kane County Cougars on Wednesday in the "Illinois Cup" competition, then the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday in the "Lake Michigan Hoo-Hah".  So you might be disappointed that your team got knocked out of the FA Cup by Manchester United, but you'll get to play them again shortly in the Champions League...

Another is that they don't "trade" players -- they just buy them from another team.  I'm sure there are rules, but it seems much simpler than the convoluted "salary-cap-mid-level-exemption-luxury-tax-free-agent" stuff that happens here.  In 2003 the Spanish team Real Madrid gave the English team Manchester United $40 million, and got David Beckham.  Simple.

A final oddity (my favorite) is "relegation".  Each year the worst 3 teams in the top league are "relegated" to a lower league for the next year, while the best 3 in the lower league move up.  It's (sort of) as if the Yankees had a really bad year, and had to play the next year in triple-A, while the Toledo Mud Hens moved up to play in the majors.  Strange, huh?  And yet it's logical, and it does create some suspense at the "bottom of the table" at year-end, as teams try to avoid getting sent down.

So that's my confession for this week: I'm a fan of the Arsenal Gunners -- a "Gooner".  Looking ahead at the schedule there may be a chance for me to get to Ginger's on a Saturday or Sunday morning before the season ends; if I do I'll be wearing red and white, and cheering like mad, for no sensible reason.

Pat

Elvis the Cat

There's nothing especially feline about our dog Elvis, except that he seems to have nine lives.  These incidents are all from ages 1-1/2 to 8 -- count along with me:

1.  Shortly after finishing his show career (at not quite 2 years old) he had a seizure -- a full-blown, flopping on the ground, incontinent, eyes-rolled-up seizure, for about a minute.  It freaked us out, as you'd imagine.  The emergency vet diagnosed it as epilepsy.

He got into a pattern of having clusters of these every 4-6 weeks, for a couple of years.  The specialist vet we were referred to ultimately got him onto the right doses of a couple of meds he gets with every meal, and now he's been seizure-free for over 3 years.  But early on it could have killed him.

2.  I still haven't broken him of his habit of stealing food off of the kitchen counters.  One time he got a bag of chocolate chips and ate over a pound -- he got sick as, well, a dog.  Our vet kept him hydrated with an IV, and in a couple of days he rallied and was able to come home.

3.  While running through the woods up in Wisconsin he managed to run right into a barbed wire fence, cutting his foreleg badly.  Despite all the bleeding we were able to get him out of the woods and to a vet up there, where he was stitched up.

4.  He got into some kitchen garbage and managed to chew up and swallow some chicken bones, leading to surgery #1.  We took him in right away, which was a good thing, as the x-ray showed some menacing jagged pieces working their way through him.

5.  Surgery #2 came after he'd gotten out of the yard and into the garbage across the street at the senior citizens' home (we later learned).  It took a couple of days before we noticed he was under the weather; when it was clear he was really sick we took him in, and the x-ray showed a digestive obstruction.  He had eaten a plastic glove, the kind you see cafeteria workers wear, and it had balled up inside his intestines and blocked everything.  We talked to our vet about installing a zipper instead of sewing him back up, but it wasn't feasible.

6.  That's too bad, as surgery #3 came last summer.  He got out of the yard, and apparently into some garbage -- yes, a recurring patern.  After a couple of days he showed the telltale signs, and we took him in, and an x-ray showed an intestinal blockage, and we grudgingly agreed to surgery, which removed a corncob, and saved his life yet again.

7.  Sort of the same story this past fall, except he managed to pass whatever it was making him sick, and didn't need surgery -- just a couple of nights at the emergency vet.

So I guess he's got two lives left.  During the last couple of these incidents I really waffled on taking him in, vs. "letting things run their course".  But he's a member of the family, especially as far as the kids are concerned, so that would have seemed really harsh.  My other rationalization is how much better this is than having a sick kid; that works for me, although if I ever added up the bills  I'm not sure it would...

Pat

Writing Funny Stuff

There's a certain egotism in writing -- even when I tell a story where the joke's on me, the subtext is "I have something worthwhile to say, so listen up!"  I have a healthy ego, but it's still nice to get compliments on my writing, especially the funny stuff.  I've done my job if every now and then a reader laughs out loud and spits his or her drink all over the keyboard.  That's the goal.

How does this writing process work?  I'm not sure I can explain, but I can offer an example.

The Harrigan siblings (my two brothers, sister, and I) email humorous items to each other on occasion.  Sometimes it's a link to an article on The Onion (theonion.com), or a goofy picture of our kids with a clever caption.  Almost any straight note or request among us calls for a funny response.

I got an email from my brother a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to respond with something around the word "crazy".  A Google search for "crazy" didn't do the trick -- too much variety.  I tried "crazy sayings" -- still no good.  Then a search for "crazy as a" led me to the expression "Crazy as a monkey house shit-fight."  There it is!

Let's analyze this saying, ignoring E. B. White's warning ("Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."):

• It's nice and short -- "monkey house shit-fight" is only four words and five syllables.
  
• It's a vivid image, to say the least, although "monkey house" is an outdated term.
• A little vulgar, which is OK on occasion.
• Lots of hard consonants, the k and the t's, and a good rythym.
• Plus: Monkeys!  Monkeys are funny!

Short, vivid, vulgar, good rythym, monkeys.  Pure gold!  So I used it in the note I sent back to Ed, knowing it would make him laugh, and it did.

In our email exchanges it was Rob who started with the haikus, I think.  Ed's recent cable service interruption at home (due to his dog's digging in the backyard) elicited these:

Original:

Bad dog eats cable

Owner contemplates dog pound

Cable safe for now

Response:

Better times ahead

Comcast guy comes out today
PetSmart sells restraints

Dog's Point of View:

Comcast must be stopped

Not enough doggie channels

Get DirectTV!

Finally, Closure:

Happy days are here

Comcast guy came yesterday

We are back on line

There's something about the stilted 5-7-5 syllable haiku form that, when used with mundane topics, makes us laugh.  Among us I think I'll be getting these (and sending) for a long time.

Well, there it is.  Re-reading this entry I'm not sure how instructional it was about writing humor, but it says something about how I think -- and what odd brothers/sister I have.  I suppose I could share this with a psychiatrist, but I'm afraid he'd just say I'm as crazy as a...well, you know.

Pat

Team Rachel

A brief post this week...

Back in September a number of ideas were brought forward as ovarian cancer fundraisers in Rachel's honor.  I deferred these, wanting to channel everyone's efforts into a single, high-impact event.  That time has come, as the Illinois chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition is having its annual fundraising walk on May 2nd in Chicago.  It's called the "Walk to Break the Silence" -- some of the background info:

The National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC) “Break the Silence” campaign is a national education program created to increase awareness and encourage public dialogue about the symptoms and risk factors of ovarian cancer among women and their physicians.

“Break the Silence” is enlisting nearly 80 local NOCC chapters committed to providing support for women and their families to launch ovarian cancer educational initiatives throughout the year. By arming women with the tools they need to begin a dialogue with their physicians, NOCC is striving to facilitate earlier diagnosis and to ultimately improve survival rates of this disease.

The kids and I will do this walk, and we welcome anyone who wants to join us on "Team Rachel" -- you can help in any one of several ways:

• Join us for the walk on May 2nd
• Collect sponsors who will pledge support
• Make a donation online or by mail
• Spread the word by passing this message on

To register for the walk, follow this link: http://www.active.com/page/Event_Details.htm?event_id=1696258

To make an online donation now: http://www.active.com/donate/noccil2009/Rachie

Note that the "Rachie Report" is still up online, if that is of any help in soliciting: http://rachiereport.blogspot.com/

Thanks, in advance, for what I'm sure will be yet another outpouring of support.

Pat