He’s Not Coming Back

Yo, Johnny! I'll see you in the next life!

After a weekend that saw United lose for the first time at home in league play, the first weekend in the National Fantasy Football League, and some crazy outbursts from Kanye and Serena, Monday brought some bad news. And that had nothing to do T.O. only pulling down two catches. Oh wait, that wasn’t bad news.

Patrick Swayze passed away after battling pancreatic cancer like it was Warchild. On this blog, he’s not brought up because of his roles in Ghost or Dirty Dancing, for obvious reasons. However, he was one of the Wolverines (and not the Michigan variety) in Red Dawn, a bad ass bouncer in Roadhouse, and -- my favorite -- a surfer/bank robber in Point Break (sorry, couldn’t help on the link). Bodhi was his best role, barely topping the Chippendale he played on SNL, and the best meatball sub I’ve ever had was while watching a live action play of Point Break. Vaya con dios, Senor Swayze.

Now onto the soccer…

- D.C. lost to Seattle 2-1 for the second time in ten days at RFK. Both game-winners were scored by Fredy Montero (though this time he avoided the wrath of Wicks who might be the first soccer player to be showing signs of roid rage). And both games saw Sigi Schmid ingest roughly 5,000 calories in the post-game meal. At this point it’s clear that this United team needs to be blown up, to whatever extent that’s possible in a salary cap system, in the offseason. Which means you might as well bring in a new coach because it’s not like Tom Soehn is working miracles with this group. Sure he’s dealing with injuries, but this team is regressing defensively and can’t figure out what’s going on up front. It would just be a shame if Soehn comes back and Santino Quaranta is jettisoned for calling a spade a spade.

- As you probably know, I haven’t seen much MLS play this year. But I do know this: championship caliber teams don’t give up a 6-spot at home. It’s tough at this point to go against chalk and not predict a Houston-Columbus MLS Cup. My sneaky two, and I guess they could both wind up there depending on how the brackets play out, are Seattle and Colorado. The former would be GREAT for the league with the game at Qwest Field and the latter wouldn’t be sexy, but has a solid attack and relatively cake schedule to jump up the standings.

- Champions League proper starts this week. Quick predictions for the 8 groups (with lots of chalk here):

Group A: Juventus, Bayern, Bordeaux, Maccabi

Group B: ManU, Besiktas, Wolfsburg, CSKA Moscow

Group C: Madrid, Marseille, Milan, Zurich

Group D: Chelsea, Porto, Atlético, Apoel Nicosia (who?)

Group E: Liverpool, Lyon, Fiorentina, Debrecen (again, who?)

Group F: Barça, Inter, Dynamo Kiev, FK Rubin Kazan (for the turkey, who?)

Group G: Sevilla, Stuttgart, Unirea Urziceni, Rangers (the weakest CL group ever?)

Group H: Arsenal, Olympiakos, Standard Liege, AZ Alkmaar

Some notes: Rangers are on the bottom only because I hate them; Groups A and C are the best top to bottom; Porto given the edge over Atlético only because of Hulk; I’ve literally never heard of four of these teams -- who decided the new qualification that pitted Celtic against Arsenal in a prelim stage was a good idea? Michel Platini, I’m assuming; could Oguchi Onyewu see his old team (Standard) be playing in CL next year while his current (Milan) are knocked out?

Early (unsurprising) pick to win: Barcelona

Early (relative) surprise pick: Porto

- Eduardo had his two-game ban in Champions League overturned. At this point, why even bother issuing suspensions? It’s ridiculous to me that the same people who dole out suspensions are the same ones that hear appeals and, at this point, it just seems that initial suspensions need to be doubled so that they can be halved upon appeal and the appropriate judgment is handed out in the end. In this one, UEFA got it wrong and diving needs to be dealt with more harshly in the future, especially with all the camera angles we have these days.

Some non-soccer stuff:

- I hope Jason Campbell and Ron Zorn are renting. Or they should at least be lining up a real estate agent. They have a slightly better chance of being here this time next year than the Terps have of being in a BCS bowl this year, but only because the latter is impossible. The Skins have a relatively easy schedule coming up with five straight very winnable games. After that, though, maybe two W’s in the final ten and Denver and Oakland are looking frisky.

- So Bushman was in Chicago for the North America opener of U2’s new tour. Me? I would’ve rather been in Carnegie Hall. I’m a big fan of Bono’s Boys, but Trey Anastasio (lead singer/guitarist in Phish) played with the New York Philharmonic and absolutely crushed You Enjoy Myself. If you’re a music fan, give it a listen. That’s the second half of the song and hopefully Carnegie Hall won’t claim copyright like they’ve done on all the YouTube clips.

- One last bit. Kanye proved again he’s an asshole. It’s just a shame they didn’t have a close up of Mike Myers at the MTV Awards show when he stole the microphone away from Taylor Swift. At the U.S. Open, Serena Williams did her best Johnny Mac -- and it wasn’t jumping over an on-rushing car -- but can’t blame it on being coked out. I can’t stand the family, especially their dad, and the lack of apology following the match -- going so far as to claim she didn’t remember what happened -- followed by a full apology after winning a doubles title many people felt she should have been suspended for rang hollow to me. In a sport that allegedly relies on conduct codes so much, once again Serena was given too much of a benefit of the doubt.

Bushman should be back later this week. That is if I’ve left anything to talk about.

- Pat Walsh