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Postponing the Deadwood Finale, Because I Can…

Postponing the Deadwood Finale, Because I Can…

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

It is possible, Virginia, to keep oneself in suspense. When playing 7-card stud, for example, and the dealer delivers the final card, down and dirty. It’s far more fun to hide it awhile behind the two existing down cards before slowly “squeezing” the last one into view, effectively teasing oneself with visual clues: Be round, baby. Be round!

In the age of TiVo, DVDs and DVRs, it’s perhaps even an easier and more common practice. I almost never watch a sporting event live on television these days; far better to DVR that sucker, skip the ads and condense a 3.5-hour Patriots game into a single 70-minute experience. What’s that? Dinner’s ready and Tom Brady’s driving New England toward winning 4th quarter touchdown? Simply pause it and mull the possibilities over a relaxing Sunday repast.

The television series on DVD offers the opportunity to raise this dynamic to high art, and I’m purposely poised at the precipice as I write you this evening. In September, I secured all three seasons of HBO’s acclaimed series, Deadwood. I brought them home from Asia (read: I bought a pirated version for a song). There are 36 shows in all. I have watched 35 and I’m savoring the possible denouements awhile before I break down and watch the final episode.

I don’t want it to end. So, for now, I’m withholding climax.

Deadwood came to this viewer with an extraordinary amount of fawning advanced billing, even from those I would judge to be hard cases and otherwise culturally snobbish. I don’t subscribe to HBO, never have. So it was going to require a DVD purchase to get a look. I managed to put that off for a long while, or otherwise blanked when rummaging through the bins of pirated DVD material during earlier visits to the side-street vendors of Saigon, Bangkok and Beijing.

Then there was the matter of having finally purchased Deadwood as part of September’s larger, stellar haul of video fodder. I also came home with Inception, Friends with Benefits, Winter’s Bone and the entire Game of Thrones series, another HBO-produced tour de force. My son and I have dipped into that one (which the Vietnamese pirate-packager endearingly labeled Game of Thorns).

One downside to HBO programming (and there aren’t many) is the interminable opening-credit sequences. I’ve not timed them, but the intro to each episode of Game of Thrones and Deadwood, for example, must run a full minute. Doesn’t sound like much, and the opening to Game of Thrones is actually quite well done — a sweeping, 3-D, helicopter-view tour of the mythical kingdoms over which rival factions fight in this absorbing epic. But it feels interminable after the first couple viewings, and here again we just fast-forward through it now.

[Digression: I heard a Fresh Air interview with Seth McFarlane the other day. He’s the force behind Family Guy, a show that has its moments but isn’t really my cup of tea. Too scatological for its own good, though the show’s opening is a clever take on the ditty Edith and Archie sang to start each episode of All in the Family. McFarlane noted that the trend today on commercial TV runs toward much shorter show openings, enabling network philistines to pack ever more advertising into a 30- or 60-minute slot.]

Okay, back on message. Having saved the best for last, I can report that Deadwood is really, really good. I’m dreading the idea that once I desist with the self-imposed suspense and watch the finale, it’ll all be over. One doesn’t get that same sense of dread when catching up on Mad Men or other worthy series still in production, where new material’s in the offing. The whiff of disappointment at finishing the final disc is tempered by the fact that there’s more to come. But it’s far worse contemplating the close of Deadwood, which, for reasons I mean to explore once I’m finished (so as not to ruin the ending), simply pulled the plug after Season III.

I’ll write more on the series itself when I’ve taken it all in. Until then, I’ll leave you in suspense.

 

 

Whitbread Headlines Intriguing TV Saturday for US Soccer Nuts

Whitbread Headlines Intriguing TV Saturday for US Soccer Nuts

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Keep your DVRs at the ready. The U.S. Men’s National Soccer campaign is done for 2011, but that doesn’t mean we can’t check on the progress and form of key individual squad members, as they toil for European clubs and, in some cases, strive to catch the eye of American coach Jurgen Klinsmann. Indeed, Saturday, Nov. 26 provides us three televised games on the trot, all featuring Yanks abroad worth watching.

The most interesting game, the one I’ll be watching closest, is the 10 a.m. EST tilt featuring Norwich City and Queens Park Rangers on Fox Soccer Channel. Not the most compelling or glamorous match on its face, but it’s hoped here that City’s Zak Whitbread, the central defender and Houston native, will earn a start in the Canary back four. Whitbread is not a household name. He’s bounced around England’s lower divisions for some time. He’s no spring chicken, either: 27 years old, meaning he’d be 30 by the time Brazil 2014 rolls around and, so, hardly a more youthful alternative to either Carlos Bocanegra and Clarence Goodson. Klinsmann’s current top choices at center defense have not wowed anyone with their pace nor their ability to play the ball confidently and creatively out of the back. I’ve no idea whether Whitbread is a serious alternative to either one, but how may other Americans are playing central defense for EPL teams nowadays. Who is this guy? Whitbread spent most of his life in England and Singapore (his father, Barry Whitbread, was the coach of the Singapore national football team in the late 1990s). He matriculated via Liverpool’s respected youth academy but never caught on with the senior club. He played at Millwall and now he’s at Norwich. I can’t say that I have any real familiarity with this guy’s game. I’ll be looking to change that  Saturday.

Equally enticing is the 2:30 p.m. EST Serie A match on Fox Soccer Channel pitting Chievo against AC Milan. Michael Bradley showed everyone he deserves a place in the U.S. team with a fine performance in Slovenia last week. I think the hubbub re. whether Klinsi was somehow dissing Bradley in wake of his father being ousted as U.S. coach, in August, was way overplayed. All this fall, Bradley the Younger had been fighting for a place with his new Italian club, and Klinsi would have done him no favors by pulling him out of training for a friendly v. Honduras. Again, we don’t get to see a lot of Chievo on American television, and so we’ll see for ourselves Saturday what sort of place Bradley has fashioned for himself — against top-flight competition in Milan.

I think we know all we need to know about Clint Dempsey at this stage. He’s America’s top talent, can play anywhere in any attacking formation, and does so for both the USMNT and his EPL club, Fulham. Sandwiched between the two games noted above, The Cottagers travel to Arsenal in a 12:30 p.m. EST start on FSC. The Gunners have found their form of late, while plucky Fulham have exhibited difficulty scoring home and away. Here’s hoping FFC scores first in this London Derby, on a Dempsey goal, thereby averting what I fear could be a route.

Sorta Live Chat: Bruins Victory Dissected via Text
The Spirit of '72 is once again loose in the land.

Sorta Live Chat: Bruins Victory Dissected via Text

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The Spirit of ’70 and ’72 is once again loose in the land.

 

Nothing like shooting texts back and forth during a sporting event. These comments don’t rise to the level of a phone call, of course. Not in the 21st century. And the result is an interesting stream of consciousness.

After our podcast Wednesday, hockey savant David Desmith and I continued our conversation via this medium. See an annotated transcript here, and our jumping off point was Michael Ryder’s goal that made it 2-0, at 11:11 of the second period. The Globe’s Kevin Paul Dupont, a keen observer of the game in my view, had this to say about that tally: “Ryder ripped off a wrister from the top of the left wing circle, right in front of a stick-checking Sami Salo, and the gargantuan [Canucks keeper Roberto] Luongo fanned at the shot with his big left catching glove. Nothing but net. And nothing but a sinking feel for the Western Conference champs. Cup-winning goalies have to make that stop.” I texted Desmith with this:

Hal Phillips: Big goal, soft goal

He didn’t respond until the Bruins had made it 3-0, on a goal from Brad Marchand two minutes later. This would not have happened if Marchand hadn’t clearly tripped Canucks defenseman Keith Ballard just prior — a fact that neither the Versus announcing team (nor Dupont) cared to comment on. Desmith, a Canadiens fan, was hardly so silent.

David Desmith: Two bad goals vs. Luongo. The third one was a gift from unconscious referees. No way should that slew foot behind the net have gone unpunished. Very bad refereeing again tonight in my opinion. Interference and goalie interference all over the place, mostly by Boston. As long as the refs let that kind of shit go on, Boston will have an advantage. Refs in the NHL are so much worse than they were 20 years ago — and there was only one ref on the ice then.

HP: Marchand got away with one, no doubt.

DD: And possibly a crucial one. There’s no excuse for a play like that not getting called. None.

HP: Fair enough but they’ve been given four penalties, the Bruins just two. What ratio would u call fair, 5:2, 6:2? I think 5:2, the Marchand trip shoulda been called; but it’s on Vancouver for doing nothing with four PPs.

DD: No argument there. But if the slew foot gets called and Vancouver scores on the PP, it’s a 2-1 game rather than 3-0. Refs never want to affect the outcome, but non-calls do affect things — just as penalties that are called affect things. Refs need to call everything. That’s the only way the game will get back to being the kind of game you and I admire.

HP: Assuming the Nucks score on a power play is a big “if”. They’ve caught some lame PP flu from [Bruins power play “specialist” turned anchor Thomas] Kaberle. They’ve had no jump, 5 v. 5 or 5 v. 4…

DD: Agreed. But they can’t score on a PP they don’t get. Vancouver is intimidated. The Garden will do that to you. V needs to score at least 2 in this period or the mo will definitely be on Boston’s side.

HP: They score one and Bruins sphincters will tighten right up

DD: Maybe. That’s why that third goal was such a huge gift.

 

The third period begins and Sedin is quickly called for a slash. Boston’s Rich Peverly puts the game out of reach with a goal at 3:27. Luongo is pulled in favor of Boston College product Corey Schneider.

HP: The Sedins are minus-11 in this series? Are u kiddin me?

DD: Euro-chokers… Another bad call. They really want the Bs to win don’t they? Luongo’s done. Two horrible games in a row. Very surprising.

HP: Why is that surprising? First time past the second round for him, he nearly threw up in his mouth vs. Chicago, Bruins shot everything at his chest in Vancouver…

DD: U could be right. I’ve just seen him play so many superb games. In the playoffs, too. But maybe he’s not a playoff guy when it counts.

HP: Remember the Olympics? He was awful. They won in spite of him.

DD: True.

HP: Don’t want to get triumphal but look how the B’s lost those two gamex away from home, and look at the way the Nucks have laid down here… I say that’s telling

DD: Could be. Objectively, I’d say Boston’s in the driver’s seat now. Personally, I hope V wins the next two.

HP: Well you’ve been consistent in your distaste for the black and gold. You’re entitled… But a lesser team drops two opening games like that and doesn’t come back and spank the “best” team in hockey, 12-1, in the next two. Boston has to feel pretty good about their chances to win 2 of the next 3.

DD: Indeed. Boston has been impressive all year. It’s why I knew they’d beat Mtl, why I knew they’d be in the Finals, and now they’re here fighting hard. I do give them credit — and there are even some Bruins I admire: Luke, Bergeron and Thomas. But it’s Neely’s team and he’s a total waste of oxygen.

DD: And, most Bruins fans are Neanderthals.

DD: I feel bad for Canucks fans. Their team has disappeared.

DD: Do you start Schneider next game? I would.

 

 

At this stage, the game begins to degenerate into a chaotic venomfest, similar to the third period of Game 3. Marchand starts the first fracas by taking a triple minor (!), holding, tripping and roughing Henrik Sedin in the corner at 17:33. Ballard retaliates and the Bruins Adam McQuade draws a game misconduct.

DD: Typical Boston crap. THAT is why I hate the Bruins. Mtl never resorts to such shit. It’s shameful.

HP: Pushing them to the edge. They took the bait. Now they’re pulling the goalie to score a single goal.

 

 

Another fracas at 18:09, involving Alexandre Burrows (cross-checking), Ryan Kesler (roughing) Zdeno Chara (roughing), even Bruins keeper Tim Thomas (slashing). Kesler and Chara earn game misconducts. Replay clearly shows Vancouver winger Burrows, the guy who bit Patrice Bergeron in Game 1, attempting to slash the stick out of Thomas’ hands. Thomas retaliates by slashing Burrows, seemingly unprovoked, 10 seconds later.

HP: Uh oh. More fun

DD: God I hate Boston. Animals like that should never wear Cup rings.

HP: Did u see who started it? The Biter

DD: Thomas started it with the slash. He’s gotten away with that the whole playoffs. Again, poor refereeing leads to bad hockey. And the fans love it.

HP: No, no. They showed it on replay. The Biter slashed Thomas’ stick out of his hand; that came first

DD: How could Thomas slash him if he didn’t have his stick?

HP: He slashed it out of his hands. Thomas picked it up. Where’s the mystery… Don’t you get the impression that the Nucks just don’t do this sort of thing well? The goading and intimidation? They’re out of their depth

DD: I’ll have to watch that highlight. It’s about time someone did to Thomas what’s he been doing to everyone else… They’ve gotten sucked into playing Boston’s game. The way these games are being called isn’t helping them. It’s almost like they have no choice

HP: Agreed. It’s not entirely honorable nor is it the Bruins fault the game is being called the way it is… But if Van scores a couple PP goals, isn’t Boston chastened and tone it down, out of necessity?

DD: Sure. But that doesn’t mean that refs shouldn’t call everything that’s a penalty. Why are there rules if the refs can just call only what they want? V could’ve had 10 PPs tonight.

HP: So I’m watching the highlights and NO ONE said Marchand tripped Ballard before the third goal. Why not?

DD: I’m watching the CBC feed. Knowledgeable hockey people saw it and commented on it. Still V sucked tonight and the Sedins in particular. Bad calls or no, they didn’t deserve to win.

 

That is indeed the bottom line: The Canucks are halfway to pissing away this series, and their once-vaunted power play is the reason why — that, or the Bruins’ now-vaunted penalty kill wins Game 5 Friday night in Vancouver. Should be a Dusey.

 

World Cup Nostalgia: Ultimately, it was televised

World Cup Nostalgia: Ultimately, it was televised

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The inimitable Archie Gemmel, on the rampage against Holland in 1978.

Like the Olympic Games, the World Cup comes round but once every four years. Unlike the modern Olympiad, the World Cup has only recently attracted the exhaustive attention of television programmers, a fact driven home to me by my friend and colleague, Dieter Schmidt, in his debut column at halphillips.net. There was indeed no international soccer on U.S. television in the early 1970s (before Dee got a bit too stoned and spent the next 32 years frozen in a northern Manitoba trash heap). Indeed, the World Cup final — the most watched sporting event the world over — was not televised live in America until 1982, and each game of the tournament was not available on TV until ESPN undertook the task for the 1994 games, staged here in the U.S.

The United States’ thrilling last-minute victory over Algeria on Wednesday was testament to the overwhelming power of the shared televised sports experience. My fellow podcaster Tom Wadlington and I watched at DiMillo’s Bayside, a nice little sports bar in Portland, Maine. It’s not every day that two strangers leap into my arms while screaming with unbridled joy, as happened when Donovan buried the winner. It’s the latest in a series of World Cup TV Memories that I will take with me always.

I have fairly visual, broadcast-enabled memories of each World Cup starting with 1974, some more vivid and complete than others. Catching a World Cup match pre-1994, even a final, took some real doing, some planning. Here’s the first in a two-part rundown of how I managed it.

1974: West Germany

I don’t know who the chick is, but that’s Hubie, at right, just as he looked in the 1970s.

I grew up playing for the Wellesley United Soccer Club in suburban Boston, and club wide for many years our uniforms were, for reasons unknown to me, a fairly exact copy of the German national kit at that time: white socks, black shorts, white shirt with black piping. So, we had a kinship with the Franz Beckenbauer, Paul Breitner, Gerd Muller teams of that period. One of my very first coaches, in fact, Mr. Krause, was a German national whose son, Dirk, would fling himself about the goalmouth during practice making saves and yelling “Sepp!”, in honor of the Mannschaft’s imperious, talented keeper, Sepp Maier. Even so, while I knew the Germans had won the 1974 World Cup, I didn’t see the final until 1977, when I attended the Puma All-Star Soccer Camp — run by another Teutonic type, one Hubert Vogelsinger, an Austrian national who, rumor had it, had been banned from his native soccer community (and emigrated to San Diego) after head-butting a referee during a match in Vienna. In any case, Hubie showed films every night after running us ragged all day long. He was understandably Germanophilic and it was there, in the Taft School cafeteria, in Watertown, Conn., seated beside my Wellesley roommate Mike Mooradian, that I finally saw the 1974 final, in its entirety: Holland with its kick-ass Orange uniforms; both teams with their amazingly long hair and mustaches; Holland’s 15 consecutive passes to start the game, culminating in a penalty and converted spot kick by Johann Cruyff to put the Dutch ahead 1-0 — before the Germans had even touched the ball (!); Breitner’s PK to tie the game; Bertie Vogts dogging a sub-par Cruyff the rest of the game; and the Germans’ ultimate 2-1 triumph, with Franz raising the trophy overhead two-handed. There was a great deal of slow-motion included in the game film, an effective motif for the game action but also for visceral reaction shots of these impossibly hirsute Germans, who very much looked the part of marauding Visigoths. Even three years late, it was impossibly exotic and heroic.

1978: Argentina

Just a year later, I returned to Hubie’s camp and, if I’m not mistaken, we saw the ’74 final again one night. But we also saw a highlight reel of the just-completed World Cup in Argentina. This made less of a lasting impression, maybe because we only saw snippets from the tournament. I remember Mario Kempes on a mazy run and scoring a goal in extra time. Was it the second goal in the 3-1 Argentina victory, or the third? Who knows? … I recall a hail of goals from Argentina in a 6-0 drubbing of Peru. Only much later did I learn that this was a match Peru and its Argentina-born keeper were accused of throwing, to put the host country in the final at Brazil’s expense (back then, teams qualified for the final directly from group play; confounding)… And then there is Archie Gemmel, the Scot who scored one of the great goals in British football history vs. the Dutch in some group game. Scotland won the game but didn’t advance out of the group, while Holland went to the final. Still, Gemmel’s goal was so sublime, it’s the highlight from 1978 I remember best — maybe because it remains so talked about and, thanks to the Internet, ubiquitous. Check it out on youtube. You won’t be sorry.

1982: Spain

This was a big deal, seeing the game live. I watched it with my high school girlfriend, Renée, at her parents’ house. There were breaks for advertisements, but I don’t recall that being controversial at the time. Not to me. I was American. I couldn’t yet conceive of a sporting event that didn’t accommodate such interruptions.

1986: Mexico

I watched this game at my house in Wellesley, and I have to admit that I don’t recall anything about the game or the event that was particularly memorable. Just graduated from college and spending the requisite jobless downtime at my parent’s place, no doubt I was stoned at the time.

1990: Italy

A few years ago, my friend Dave called and asked me a cryptic question.

“Remember that time I came over to your house in Watertown and we watched that World Cup game?”

Um, yeah…

“Well, what day was that?”

What do you mean, ‘what day’? It was June 1990; I don’t know the exact day…

“Oh. Okay…”

Dave, why do you want to know this?

“Well, we ordered cheeseburger subs from that place, and I’ve just realized that was the last time I ate meat.”

Well, thanks to the Internet, now it can be told. Dave last ate meat on June 25, 1990, the same day Romania eliminated Ireland on penalty kicks in the Round of 16. I remember quite a bit from that day, and that tournament. Not every group game was televised, on ESPN, but every knockout game was. For a soccer nut who was getting only the semi-finals and finals up to that point, this was Nirvana. At the time, I was 26 and working as city editor at a daily newspaper, which meant I didn’t go to work until 5 p.m. As Italy was 6 hours ahead I could get up and watch World Cup matches all day long before heading to the newsroom. Fabulous.

One more delicious note from 1990: “That place” was The International, a fabulous pizza and sub shop that delivered — and delivered to my address with great frequency. That same day that Dave at his parting cheeseburger sub, I was in the shower and he was in the kitchen doing something when the delivery guy, Ahmed, walked in without ringing the doorbell, as was his custom. I was a regular customer; we had an understanding. With Dave looking on, Ahmed proceeds to set the food on coffee table, sit himself down in front of the television set and take a hit off the bong that was a fixture on said coffee table in that apartment. Dave, who knew nothing of our understanding, was understandably taken aback and hid in the kitchen until I emerged from the bathroom. I’ve always loved that memory, and was only too happy to add the cheeseburger sub aspect.