Monday, March 24, 2008

Game 7: ¡FUTURISMOS! 4 — Chino F.C. 3

MIS-EN-SCENE
We lost Game 6 by a final score of 9–2. It was a pure horror show the likes of which we hadn’t experienced since our storied league Baptism by Dynamo. In reality the final score was misleading. A more accurate score would have been something like 12–1 or possibly 13–0. ¿What can I say? Sometimes facts cheat truth.

After the game we sat on the sideline in a daze when from behind us we heard a cry: “¡IT’S YOU! The ¡FUTURISMOS! Oh thank God we play you next week.”

We turned around to see Chino F.C. sitting in a dejected heap remarkably similar to our own. Chino hold the distinction of being the only team in club history we've defeated more than once. They too had just finished getting their faces kicked in to the sorrowful tune of 8–1. I was too distracted by our own evisceration to notice whether their final score was also misleading.

Steve-O, the Chino Captain, was the one giving voice to his team’s collective feeling. His declaration wasn’t meant as a taunt. It was a kind of empathetic cry of solidarity because he knew we were feeling the same way about playing them. Loosing is one thing but being overwhelmed is another.

It’s okay to lose. It’s part of the game. It isn’t okay to be overwhelmed because it means you aren’t really playing the game. In that situation you’ve forced your opponent to either take on the role of the benevolent parent taking it easy on her/his child or the cruel parent who won’t because taking your lumps is a character building experience. Neither is what you’re looking for in a futbol match.

The definition of empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” but in practical terms it means “the ability to understand and share the NEGATIVE feelings of another.” If someone says to you “I’m on cloud 9 because I totally just fell in love” you’d never say “I can empathize.” But if she said “I’m in Hades these days because I just broke up with my significant other.” You’re likely to say “I can empathize” or some version of its equivalent (“I know where you’re coming from,” “we’ve all been there,” etc).

Season 5 has been the CSC dumping your ¡FUTURISMOS! on a weekly basis and Chino could empathize. In a textbook case of an abusive codependent relationship your ¡FUTURISMOS! needed Chino both because they could relate AND because we could hurt them. The same was true for Chino. So Game 7 was going to be the World Cup Final of Mutual Mercy One-Night Stands.

First one to wake up and leave wins.

NO MERCY FOR THE MERCIFUL
I’m going to reveal a sensitive bit of information about myself: I’m no fan of the existence of human beings. No doubt some of you have already surmised this fact. There’s no one reason for the feeling: human treatment of non-human animals; human treatment of human animals; the lack of a blueprint for a properly functioning society; the deaths of Stephen Jay Gould and Arthur C. Clark; a lack of Waffle Houses north of the Mason-Dixon; to name a few.

Perhaps the reason that taunts me like no other is how difficult it is to incorporate so-called “life lessons” into my day-to-day existence. Many lessons seem specifically crafted so as to be something you can only experience rather than learn from and thus alter future behavior or circumstances in order to avoid the pain of the lesson.

For instance, “Love hurts.” Damn straight. I know it. You know it. We all know it. Despite the fact we’ve all heard countless songs about it, watched untold numbers of movies depicting it, and even read a book or two belaboring it, we all learned this lesson the same way: experience. A classic Life Lesson.

Now, ¿how does knowing love hurts help you? ¿What can you do with this knowledge? ¿Has it in any way augmented your approach to love? Of course not. Love by its very nature is devoid of reason and thereby beyond the reach of lessons. Knowing this does nothing more than allow us to empathize with each other (hence all the songs, movies and books). It can’t save you from breaking a heart or having yours broken.

I don’t know what Chino’s deal this season has been but it’s been a rough go for your ¡FUTURISMOS! We inadvertently signed up for the graveyard shift league. We lost three of our top players: one to a parasite, one to Chicago (the band and city), and one to bedtime. Our starting keeper disappeared (although I see her at work all the time) so I—near-sighted, poor hand-eye coordinated, and terrified of the ball—have held that critical position for half our games. Then on top of that we’ve been bedeviled by illnesses and dinner parties.

This season has indeed been The Test of the Devil, but Game 6 against Chino was to be our only multiple-choice test of the year. Then I awoke on the day of the test and found I’d overslept, ran to the wrong classroom, read the wrong chapters, and didn’t have a #2 pencil.

We lost two ladies to dinner parties. A third lady to a dinner where she was planning a dinner party. A fourth to picking her friend up at the airport where she’d be starving so they’d have to go out to eat. A fifth to Strep Throat. And finally a sixth lady to a bona fide mystery (I never did find out why she couldn’t make it—no doubt a sign of how terrible it was). That doesn’t even account for the reserves I called on: another illness, a Timberwolves game, and two more diner parties.

[ASIDE: Here is one of the ways in which adults are inferior to children—Dinner Parties. ¿What kid would miss her/his most important game of the season to hang out with friends? No kid would. Of course the reason is kids don’t need to make time to see their friends. ¡CHILDREN READERS BEWARE! The first dinner party invitation you receive is the sign marking childhood’s end.]

Add all that up and it left us with two ladies: Belle (Shawna Lavelle) and Melissa Clark. [In case you don’t know or have forgotten, we need 3.] I’m sure all of you are familiar with the exploits of Belle as she’s one of our most reliable and talented futbolers. I’m equally sure the name of her cohort is new to everyone that didn’t play in or attend the game (oh, yes, there was fan). Ms. Clark’s journey to the ¡FUTURISMOS! is appropriately convoluted, as issues pertaining to the future always are.

In short she of her own random volition befriended the consultant who just so happened to be working with C+M who in turn suggested we interview her. I was one of her interlocutors and found out she was futboler (ya’ll know darn well it’s one of my standard interviewing questions). But that’s only half of it. She’s also the dear friend of a ¡FUTURISMO! favorite—The Graal—who in turn came to our realm through an original ¡FUTURISMO!—The Velvet Curtain. I tapped both The Graal and VC to play in this game but neither could make it (dinner party and illness, respectively) but the later suggested I contact Ms. Clark. I did and she accepted.

¿What is the point of that seemingly pointless digression? Don’t worry, I’ll come back to that.

We were healthier on the gentlemen’s side of the lineup including an appearance by Elliot, our A-1 keeper, best all-around player, and a sunbeam of joy who chases away the darkness of our futboling fears. The Stephen Malkmus show robbed us of TB—our #2 goal scorer— and invoicing downed Braden Stadelman (Nom de Futbol TBD)—our most promising rookie.

That left us with King Vidor, Mike Caguin (I have to come up with a new Nom de Futbol because the first one didn’t take), i.Madnle, Elliot, and me. With Elliot keeping that meant one reserve. In other words we were fine.

Even the appearance of our A-1 keeper was cold comfort in the face of playing an entire game short one lady. That meant we’d have 5 players to Chino’s 6. For those of you who aren’t ardent futbol fans that’s a disaster. Imagine your favorite basketball team playing a whole game with only 4 players on the floor. Or your favorite football americano team playing a whole game with only 10 defenders. It means you enter the game thinking about minimizing the margin of defeat rather than victory.

The correlated problem is the pitch doesn’t shrink by 1/6. So the 5 people on it have to cover more ground than they normally would. So our 2 ladies would have to play even harder than usual with no hope of a breather.

I’m not going to lie to ya’ll. I was distraught. Disconsolate even. My last hour at work before I left for the game I couldn’t get anything done due to dread consuming my concentration. It’s times like this I can’t stand the ¡FUTURISMOS! or playing futbol at all because nothing is worth going through that. The idea of a fictitious emergency dinner party in honor of an ill friend passed through my mind a couple of times. Anything to miss the devastation of being slain by the only team we can consistently say we’re better than. It was too much to bear. The test of the devil always is.

When I arrived at the stadium most of your ¡FUTURISMOS! were already assembled and I opened my pre-game remarks with “be prepared to lose tonight because we’re only going to have 2 ladies playing.” I was pelted with stunned utterances of “¿what?” and “¿what happened to INSERT NAME HERE?”

No matter what name was inserted the answer was the same. “She isn’t coming. No one is coming. There’s no cavalry. No rescue. We’re going down so we might was well go down together.”

GAME TIME
Before the game starts the captains of each club meet in the middle of the pitch with the ref and listen to the “I want a good clean match” thing and determine who will start with the ball. I informed Steve-O, Chino’s captain, that we’d only have 2 ladies tonight. He was flabbergasted.

“¿Where’s Pollpeter? [A: dinner party] ¿Where’s Natalie? [A: Chicago] ¿Where’s that short girl that thinks she’s so sweet? [A: Messi, picking up a friend at the airport then eating] ¡¿Don’t they know this is THE SEASON for both of our clubs?! ¡¿Our World Cup Final?!” I assured him I’d explained this to each of them and they were unmoved.

Steve-O was beside himself. This was a revolting turn of events for his club too. Of course they wanted to win but not like this. He felt cheated and I felt like I was cheating him. As Captain my primary duty is field a team to compete and I failed.

The only saving grace was Chino too was starting with only 2 ladies but the third was on the way.

The ref told us it was time to start and I turned around to make way for whoever would be playing center forward and trot off the pitch. Being the worst guy on the team I don’t start and I certainly don’t play the single most important position for a short-handed club—center forward. When I turned around there was nobody there. I looked at Elliot (our on-pitch coach) in confusion and he said “you’re playing center forward.” I balked and he replied, “I want you at center forward.”

Stunned, I turned around and tapped the ball over to King Vidor and we started our procession to the gallows.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE COLOSSEUM
Once upon a time all roads led to Rome. No longer. There is no monolithic center of anything on Earth anymore.

In an inverted related note the number of possible paths in this Universe has turned the corner on insanity because it now seems the Universe itself has but one gigantic path. That is to say if you got in your spaceship and took off in a straight-line you’d eventually end up back where you started. Just like if you got in your amphibious car and drove in straight line from Minneapolis you’d eventually end up back here.

So once upon a time the Universe was limitless but on Earth all paths led to one place. Now the Universe is limited but Earth’s paths lead every which way.

Keep that in mind.

SAWYER (not a typo) GOAL: ¡F! 1— Chino 0
Imagine an un-armed, malnourished, wisp of a guy has been thrown into the center of the Colosseum. The blood lusting crowd is disappointed. “He isn’t even going to put a fight,” they think. The lion is released. It too probably thinks, “Oh, man, where’s just no sport in this. Oh, well. I’m hungry.”

The lion lunges at the human toothpick but the impossible intervenes. With one great chomp the man swallows the lion whole.

Within the first couple minutes of the game King Vidor had the ball and was racing up the left side of the pitch. I was playing center and racing up the middle approximately 15-feet to his right. 20-feet from the goal a defender impeded King Vidor’s progress and I yelled “¡MY LIEGE!” as I was undefended right in front of the goal.

King Vidor’s eyes lit up when he saw me. He passed me the ball. A Chino defender raced in from behind me on my left. I tapped the ball to the right and had space to shoot. With every neural gap of concentration I have I made sure to keep my head down over the ball and to follow through on the shot. I did and then looked up in time to see the ball pass under the keeper’s hand into the net.

I have never scored a goal before. Not even in practice. I’d always envisioned throwing myself on the ground to do the worm or just convulse in histrionics. Instead I turned around, covered my face with both of my hands and silently walked back to our side of the pitch where Elliot greeted me with, “See, I put you there for a reason.”

[ASIDE: When I talked to King Vidor about this moment at halftime he said his face lit up not because I was so open and would have a good chance at scoring but rather because he had never seen me past midfield before. Sort of like running into a friend… when you’re on vacation in Singapore.]

KING VIDOR GOAL: ¡F! 2 — Chino 0
Midway through the first half Elliot, our keeper, ended up with the ball. He looked up, yelled “ANDREW” (aka King Vidor) and hurled the ball down the center of the pitch. In effect this initiated a one-person counter attack. The speed with which Elliot identified the opportunity and his ability the throw the ball that far that accurately caught Chino off guard.

The Chino keeper broke for the ball thinking he could get to it before King Vidor did. Two Chino defenders broke trying to close down on King Vidor before he could control the ball. All of them turned out to be wrong.

King Vidor beat the two defenders to the ball and tapped it clear of them. The Chino Keeper was caught hung out to dry: too far from the ball to make a play and too far from the goal to protect it. King Vidor tapped the ball past the keeper into the left corner and your ¡FUTURISMOS! had a healthy lead.

THE TIDE TURNS
Shortly after our second goal Chino’s third lady arrived. From this point forward your ¡FUTURISMOS! played 5 against Chino’s 6. But a two goal lead is nothing to sneeze at. The question was could we hold it.

CHINO GOAL: ¡F! 2 — Chino 1
With under a minute left in the first half Chino got in the book. In a bit of a scrum before our goal a Chino guy ended up with the ball roughly 20-feet from and off to the right of our goal. Belle was marking a Chino standing at the right corner of the goal. I was the center defender and rather than doing what I knew had to be done—run out at that guy with the ball—I thought “Belle should leave her guy and close out and I’ll slide over to pick up her guy.” By the time I realized I should just run at the guy he was shooting.

It was a doozy. Without much of an angle he put it in the far upper corner. Elliot was hung out to dry because I was likely obscuring his field of vision. He still made a valiant dive for it and narrowly missed deflecting it.

HALFTIME: ¡F! 2 — Chino 1
We were too collectively exhausted to revel in the improbability of our halftime lead. The only newsworthy bit was the shocking decision to switch keepers. Elliot typically likes to keep for a half and play in the field for a half so that part was par. The stunner is that Elliot chose me to keep.

Elliot has never let me keep before. In fact on two previous occasions he choose someone he’d never met before to keep instead of me. On at least one other occasion he wanted to play in the field but rather than let me keep he just kept keeping. For me this was a greater coup than my first ever goal.

CAGUIN GOAL: ¡F! 3 — Chino 1
Probably a quarter of the way into the second half Caguin scored. He got the ball near the end touchline and he fired with only the most acute of angles available to him. As a matter of fact the angle was so extreme it wasn’t entirely obvious he’d scored. Most people thought he’d launched the ball into the side of the net rather than into the goal. Most people where wrong.

How the ball got to Caguin is lost to antiquity but he did and your ¡FUTURISMOS! had a commanding—even though short-handed—2 goal lead.

CHINO GOAL (free kick): ¡F! 3 — Chino 2
Chino didn’t have many good chances in the second half so it was fitting their first goal was the result of a free kick. A weird free kick at that. There was a scrum in front of our net and Elliot ended up on his hands and knees with the ball at his feet. He, naturally, just poked the ball away with this foot.

This is a violation of CSC rules because you can’t play the ball if you’re on the ground. The ref whistled him for the infraction. A chippy one for sure, but fair enough. The infraction occurred within the penalty box. By my estimation that should have meant a penalty kick. Instead the ref awarded a free kick.

A penalty kick is something everyone has seen or can imagine. The rep puts the ball on a spot and a player gets free shot on goal without any defenders in the way save the keeper. A free kick is like an inbounds play. The defenders still get to defend but the most notable rule is no defender can be within 7-yards of the ball.

So in this instance the ref marked off 7-yards which was only about a yard from the goal line. So we built our wall to defend the left side of goal (three guys standing shoulder to shoulder) and then put another person to the right of them leaving one little window into the goal for me to defend.

The Chino guy wound up and banged the ball at the window he had available. The ball ricocheted off Belle’s leg into the goal faster than I could see it move off the spot in first place. Bang, bang, Chino scored.

CHINO GOAL: ¡F! 3 — Chino 3
With under 3-mintues to play a Chino lady had the ball roughly 15-feet from the goal and only about a yard from the end touchline. A Chino guy was standing right in front of me so I couldn’t really see her. She teed off a shot that made it’s through a space that was literally no more than two feet wide between the goal post and me.

Much like the free kick goal I never even saw the ball until it was in the net. That’s not an excuse, mind you, because I really need to wear contacts or glasses in the game but don’t. So maybe had I been able to see I could have done something. Either way they scored and time was short.

A MINUTE TO PLAY WITH THE SCORE KNOTED AT 3
Steve-O was yelling at his Chino charges “¡PLAY FOR THE TIE!” I was yelling at mine “¡REALLY, A TIE IS THE MOST APPROPRIATE OUTCOME… ALL THINGS CONSIDERED!”

No one was listening.

KING VIDOR GOAL: ¡F! 4 — Chino 3
Elliot got the ball at midfield and raced up the right sideline. The Chino keeper was frantically yelling “¡WATCH 43! ¡SOMEBODY WATCH 43!” 43 was King Vidor lurking on the weak side. The Chino keeper had learned his lesson. But as we’ve already established learning a life lesson and being able to apply it are worlds apart.

Elliot gunned a low cross into the box. As best as anyone can recollect the keeper got down to collect it but couldn’t control the ball. It skittered through to the weak side where—as the Chino Keeper had presaged—43 was waiting. King Vidor broke through two Chino defenders marking him and tapped home the winning goal.

10-second later the game was over.

FAUSTIAN MOMENT: RUN (D)MC
I believe this is my first adult Faustian Moment. Hitherto all Faustian Moments have pertained to childish moments. This one is the opposite.

Midway through the second half a ¡FUTURISMO! was running with the ball up the right side after a Chino turnover. I was keeping so I had a good view of the whole pitch and thought “¡AH! If only we had someone to fill in from on the weak side because it’s wide open.” I mean there was no Chino defender on the whole quarter of the pitch. The only option was Ms. Clark but she was at midfield and the ball was already near the end touchline so it was going to have to be a mad sprint for her to get in position. There was no way she was going to make that run. ¿How could she? She would have been exhausted at that point with a quarter of the game to go and no relief in site. Then something magic happened.

Ms. Clark saw what I’d seen and broke into a full-bore sprint to make herself available for the cross. I was mesmerized by watching her streak from midfield to the goal. I imagined that’s what Pheidippides looked like as he entered Athens after the 26-mile run from Marathon to announce the Greek victory over the invading Persians.

Just as it was with Pheidippides the effort in and of itself was bittersweet for Ms. Clark. She received the cross to reward her for her effort but ballooned it well over the bar. Still, a fate preferable to Pheidippides who collapsed and died at the end of his run.

The Stoic willpower it took for Ms. Clark to make that run was breathtaking. I’ve been there. You look up and see the sprint that under ideal circumstances you know you should make. But an internal self-preservation calculus activates and in an instant you see the odds of the effort paying off are low enough to circumvent the whole endeavor.

It’s another Life Lesson: Discretion is the better part of valor. Except, of course, it isn’t because valor is about being where you need to be when you need to be there no matter what. If that means you throw up or faint or both, so be it.

Ms. Clark saw the improbability of the potentially vomit inducing run before her and she didn’t flinch. She was off on a mad quest for a chance to kick a ball.

I have no doubt that had The Good Doctor Faust been on hand he would have staggered, grabbed Lucifer’s arm, bellowed “¡STOP!” in disbelief and gratefully traded his soul right then and there on the spot.

THE BELLE/RUN MC AWARD (the temporarily renamed Li’l Pete Award): SHAWNA LAVELLE AND MELISSA CLARK
Shawna and Melissa were simply phenomenal in this game. Without even the hope of a breather neither went easy. They both played flat out the whole game. Not once did I look up at one of them and think “she’s totally not running that down to conserver energy” which would have been their right.

For Shawna and Melissa the whole game was effectively a prolonged stage-1 rocket booster blast to the face from a mutant Russian futbol project gone mad. [No doubt a find “how do you do” for Ms. Clark who was playing with us for the first time.] Both of them put forth an effort Li’l Pete herself would say deserves the renaming of her own award.

On behalf of the ¡FUTURISMOS! , thank you Shawna and Melissa. We owe you a drink or something of equivalent value.

THE MOST FULLFILLING AND POINTLESS OF LIFE LESSONS
Your ¡FUTURISMOS! won their first game of Season 5 in stunningly improbable fashion. Short a lady. I scored. We scored the winning goal in the final seconds. It was incredible.

I was giddy on the sideline after the game as we decompressed and got ready to go home. I was perhaps even more excited than when we won our first ever game. All of that grief I’d experienced before the game was for not, which I knew it would be one way or the other. But this way, the winning way, there was this payoff. That misery was a down payment on a joy that paid out in a way I couldn’t have dreamt. ¿Not only winning short handed but scoring in a match decided by a goal? That’s ridiculous.

So ¿what’s the life lesson in this? ¿Some sort of Zen Buddhist “you never know” thing? ¿Perhaps a Judeo-Christen one about a grand plan beyond your comprehension? I know, ¿how about an existentialist one about making your meaning of life?

As you all know the answer is “all the above.” The kicker of which is it means the same thing as “none of the above” because ¿what good is answer that works for every problem you can conceive? This notion was sublimely ridiculed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the number 42. It’s THE ANSWER TO THE ULITMATE QUESTION OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING. Turns out we don’t understand the question. So it is with Life Lessons where the answer is illuminating but impractical.

So ¿why should you keep in mind that life is hopelessly convoluted? ¿Or that the life on Earth was simple and the Universe vast and that has effectively been reversed? Each contains the same valuable lesson which boils down to something like “the fool doth think he is wise while the wise one knows herself to be a fool."

I don’t know. Try keeping it in mind and see what it gets you. It’s a “lesson” I learned long ago but I’m up a stump when it comes to pointing out a single instance in which it’s “helped” me.

This is what I hate about the ¡FUTURISMOS!... and being a human being… and being alive. As is the case with all mysteries, life is a lesson that once learned is extinguished. That’s why we make the same damn mistakes over and over until death both as individuals and as a people because once we stop making mistakes we stop being human.

Despite the fact I can’t wait to stop being human both as an individual and a species, because I believe both my personal and our collective existence is a net detriment to the planet, I just can’t give it up. Just like no matter how many times I’ve had my heart broken in every and any sense (relationships, sports team, supporting artists in decline) I just keep coming back for more.

¿How many times have I personally or humans collectively thought? “I’ll never fall in love ass-over-teakettle too fast again.” The answer is effectively infinite which means the lesson is rubbish. Just like my vow to never see Star Wars Episode III was after watching the disaster that was Episode II. ¿Who was I kidding? Only myself.

You better believe I saw Episode III at midnight on opening day along with millions of other people who had thought the exact same thing. And you better believe after every instance my heart has been shredded and fed to ravenous Koy the first time I met a lady (or a new season started, or band X came out with the new album) who reminded me that was metaphor rather than reality I promptly started living my life upside-down and fiercely defending the Theory of Inverted Relativity no matter how many times I dropped an apple and found it on the floor rather than in the clouds.

We humans are gluttons for punishment. It’s undeniable. Look how we handle the planet. Witness our treatment of the animal kingdom. Behold our behavior toward our fellow humans. Observe how we treat our very selves. This is who we are. ¿And how do I feel about that?

Consider…

In Game 7 I nearly literally had my heart broken courtesy a knee to the back and a ball to the chest. The corresponding injuries made it difficult to take more than half a breath. Coughing and laughing felt like I was being shot or run through with a pointy stick.

On Saturday night it got so bad I couldn’t go to a friend’s birthday party and I worried I’d have to go to the hospital. I sat in a chair with my spine as straight as possible and concentrated on taking shallow breaths to avoid aggravating my ribs. In the back of my mind I knew, “This pain I’m enduring is because of a meaningless intramural soccer team that absolutely no one cares about outside the team itself… and not even everyone on the team cares.”

I’m not fearless like Elliot is in the goal. He’s thrown himself head first into the feet of guys bearing down on him and even taken a boot to the nose for it. Nor am I brave like Li’l Pete. Her first instinct is to get in front of things moving at terminal velocity. Mine is to duck. That’s never changing for me. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember. It’s my nature. But with each tortured, controlled half breath Saturday night I had the same utterly senseless thought:

“Victory.”

Monday, March 3, 2008

Fare-Thee-Well Skywalker

Skywalker (aka Natalie Lucas) played her last game as a ¡FUTURISMO! Wednesday, February 27th in the two thousand eighth year of someone’s lord (but certainly not mine). But before I get to that I have to start with a confession.

CONFESSION: I’ve been incorrectly using the phrase “fare-thee-well” for as long as I’ve been using it. I believed it meant “good luck” or more literally “I hope you fare well.” It seems so straightforward. Fare “get on, get along, cope, manage, do.” Thee “an archaic or dialect form of you.” And Well “in a good or satisfactory way.” It’s all right there. But ¡NAY!

Fare-thee-well actually means “to perfection; thoroughly.” For instance, “the jackass New England Patriots’ historic Super Bowl loss was a sweet fare-thee-well.”

You might be inclined to think with that knowledge in hand I’d rename this missive in the spirit of wishing Skywalker well as she passes on from the ¡FUTURISMOS! Of course I won’t because I know you know that it’s in our mistakes that we uncover our shiniest finds. Rather than change the name I’m going to flip the order of the words.

Skywalker Fare-Thee-Well
That is to say:

Skywalker to Perfection
I’m a Westerner (whether I want to be or not… and I don’t). That means I’m an intellectual descendant of the philo-trinity of Socrates/Plato/Aristotle (what I wouldn’t give to be a disciple of their Eastern counterparts Buddha/Lao-tzu/K'ung Fu-tzu). As a Westerner I’m obsessed with notion of perfection.

I’m sure you all remember Platonic Forms. It’s the idea that we live in a world that’s a rough approximation of a perfect world in some ethereal realm. For instance, you’ve never seen a perfect circle. You’ve only seen approximations of circles but you’re able to entertain the idea of a circle even though you’ve never seen one because somewhere there’s a Platonic Form of a circle.

This is a depressing intellectual legacy. Perfection is by definition unobtainable. It’s built right into the fabric of the universe courtesy Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The subatomic world is inherently unstable. Therefore everything in this universe is unstable. Therefore nothing is perfect… for long.

There’s a particularly cruel truth hidden in Heisenberg’s Uncertainly Principle. One our Greek forefathers somehow knew a couple thousand years before Herr Heisenberg. Perfection cannot be grasped but it can be glimpsed. The fact that subatomia is in perpetual flux means that once in every great while they arrange themselves into perfect forms… but only for an instant.

In futbol (as in life) there are two basic elements of perfection: ability and spirit. While these two aren’t mutually exclusive they’re rarely found together in high degree in one person. Just think of all the professional athletes you’ve seen over the course of your life. For every KG or Shaq–supremely talented and irrepressibly ebullient spirits–there are literally countless multitudes of others who are varying degrees of talented or spirited but rarely both.

The ¡FUTURISMO! who had the highest combination of ability and spirit was Skywalker. She is a true futboler in a way that her more exuberant teammates aren’t. She could flat out play and would have been a welcome addition to any team we’ve faced (yep, even Dynamo). As for spirit she was as likely as any of us to laugh and cutup on the pitch. That may not sound like much to those of you who haven’t been to a game (and that’s just about every single one of you, by the way) but that’s rare. And I don’t mean on our team, I mean on any team. We have on a few occasions played teams devoid of even a single person who was clearly having fun.

To make all of that plain: Skywalker was the incarnation of the Platonic Form of a ¡FUTURISMO! Our pinnacle of ability and spirit whom the rest of us fell to either one side or the other of.

As you already know the problem with perfection is it’s short lived. Luckily time is relative and we ¡FUTURISMOS! were able to play with our own little emanation of perfection for four and a half seasons.

Now the instant of perfection has passed and we are worse for it.

Skywalker fare-thee-well.


By the bye, we lost Skywalker’s final match 3-1. We would have won 1-0 if we’d had a proper keeper. Instead we had me and I’m one of the afore mentioned exuberant but unskilled teammates of Skywalker’s.