Game 7: ¡FUTURISMOS! 2 — Double Ataris 1

News of the Weird: The Absolute Limits of the Absolute
Game 7 concluded of the 7th regular season for your ¡FUTURISMOS! and we finished with a less than shinny 2-3-2 record. Record wise that either put us at the top of the bottom or the bottom of the middle of the league, depending how you spin it. In terms of play this was our third best season: last season being the best and Season 3 second (that was the magical summer of 2007 where we ended on that stunning tear where we went from being among the dregs to pushing the eventual champion to a crazy 5-6 heartbreaking loss thriller).

I was literally 100% certain we’d be playing 3 post-season consolation games—the un-playoffs—just like every season save the last. I wasn’t exactly disappointed in that fact, per se, except that it was appropriate considering the regression in our play this season. Record aside, we didn’t play well enough in Season 7 to make the playoffs.

The first rule of physics is even absolutes aren’t technically absolute. They’re only correct to such a towering degree that they are for all intents and purposes “absolute.” But as sure as hipsters hate Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III as though they’re one big undifferentiated movie even the rock solidest of truths can, if only for a critical instant, transmogrify into a gelatinous sieve. So tread lightly and believe nothing with 100% certainty.

Case in point—your ¡FUTURISMOS! made the playoffs. I know what you’re thinking, “¿Huh?” So am I (yes, I double checked, not all teams made the playoffs). Not only that but our first opponent is Nuts & Gum, who finished 6th in the league with a 5-1-1 record but against whom we played one of our best (and most fun) games of the season, loosing 2-3.

So sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but other times it’s a port key and once you pluck it up for a puff you find yourself spinning through an inter-dimensional tunnel and tumbling down the English countryside surrounded by witches and wizards. Welcome to the quantum mechanical jungle.

Kissing Cousins: The Double Ataris
The final regular season game of our 7th season was our first ever against our cousin club, the Double Ataris. The DA skipper is King Vidor and over the last couple seasons most of the ¡FUTURISMOS! have played on DA and vice versa. When I saw this game on the schedule 6 weeks ago I circled the date on my calendar and wrote “Best Day Ever” on it.

While it fell short of that lofty distinction it did live up to “This Game is a Good Example of Why I Play.” I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy playing against friends in the past so I won’t belabor it here, but there’s just something about it. You simultaneously want to beat them worse than strangers AND laugh about it with each other—regardless of the score—all the while. Existing in that kind of extreme divide, if only for an hour, reminds one of awesome power of the mind.

If I could sign up for a league where I play the DAs every other week I would.

Roll Call
Gents: Elliot, Heartbreaker, Me, El Duque, Big Pete, Touro. King Vidor was there but played with DA, as he should have as their founder and captain. He talked about playing a half for each team but I squashed it. Playing with his brainchild was fair play.
Ladies: Zarate, Run MC, Li’l Pete, Messi, Photonicorn (aka Divine Light). Diosa was on hand but played with DA because they were short ladies and we had a surplus. Also fair play.

Perfect turnout (in terms of the ideal number of people: 5 ladies, 5 gents, and a keeper) with the added bonus of the surprise and much appreciated reappearance of Big Pete. ¿How excited were your we? When Elliot, not known for his ebullient outbursts, saw him he honestly blurted, “¡PETE! I can’t believe you’re here. Man, it’s great to see you.”

Indeed.

KICK OFF
I went into this game fully expecting DA to kick our heads until the white meat show (RIP Bernie Mac). That was a fair prediction considering they were league champions last season of a division above ours. But The Great Blue Sky was on hand in all of its beatific glory to breathe pep into the legs and minds of your ¡FUTURISMOS! The player movement was excellent. The passing was crisp and consistent. The defense was alternately smothering and pesky forcing DA into shots that required only pedestrian saves from Elliot.

We were on things in the first half.

¡GOAL… DISALLOWED! Heartbreaker (10th min)
From 15-yards out to the left of the DA goal Heartbreaker chipped in a shot. John, the DA Keeper, backpedaled, leapt backwards, tipped the ball with his fingers, and it ended up trickling into the net.

¡GOAL!

The ref took out his book to log the goal, the ball was plucked from inside the net, players from both teams headed back toward the middle of the pitch to reset play.

But no… it was disallowed.

I looked up to see Anakin (a DA guy) shaking his head “no” and John indicating with his hands that he’d tipped the ball with his fingers. A small wave of confusion washed over the pitch for both teams. ¿What happened? For all the world it appeared the ball was tipped by John but fell under the cross bar into the goal. Ultimately the ruling was the ball went over the bar but it was definitely taken out from inside the goal so apparently there was a hole in the net or wormhole. Yet another of the admittedly petty instances where I wish The Great Blue sky was more responsive to my inquiries.

Alas, it is not and likely won’t be anytime soon. So we move on.

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL! Touro (18th min): ¡F! 1 – DA 0
Sorry, I have to belabor this point once again—I love playing with Touro (almost as much as Diosa… there, I said it). He’s like playing with a giant, athletic, good-natured, exuberant kid who wants nothing more than to contribute. He doesn’t care what position he plays, he just wants to play.

As such he’s also amendable to suggestions. For instance, late in the second half he was on the pitch and the ball went out for a ¡FUTURISMOS! throw in. Zarate grabbed the ball and was looking for someone to throw it to. She was right next to our sideline and several us told her, “throw it to Touro.” He was right in the middle of the pitch 20-feet from her. I looked up from Zarate at Touro who stood there ready for the ball. I yelled, “¡Touro, get your hands up!” and without hesitation he threw both hands straight up in the air like a grade-schooler who couldn’t wait for the teacher to call on him.

Another suggestion was “shoot more.” As a team we don’t take enough shots. I’m not sure why but it’s like we think shots should only be taken from inside the opposition’s box when in reality the go zone is more like twice that area. So we told Touro “shoot more” and he took it to heart.

At least 10 times he blasted a shot full force into a DA defender standing no more than 5-feet away. It was like his plan was to batter their defenders with a barrage of crippling volleys since he couldn’t knock them down with his body he’d do it with the ball. True to Edison’s dictum “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration” Touro’s Goal Through Attrition plan worked (by the bye to all ¡FUTURISMOS! that’s universally true, not just for Touro, don’t tell our opponents).

One of Touro’s attempts to maim a defender with the ball was launched from just outside the DA box to the right of the goal, it eluded its intended target (the defender), and found its way into the lower left side of the goal.

¡GOAL!

Ladies, Gentlemen, Gods, Goddesses, Non-Humans of all Type, and Young People, I present Touro’s first ¡FUTURISMOS! goal. It was classic Touro through and through.

HALF TIME
There were two topics of discussion at the half. The first was how well we were playing. We’d played really well. The second was how Photonicorn had twice had something just shy of an open goal situation to score and instead sent the ball on ill-fated attempts to leave Earth’s orbit. She really did balloon a couple gimmies. In her defense both instances she was on the run and had to one-touch the ball with her left (wrong) foot. But she doesn’t need defense because this isn’t an inquest. Everyone tries to send the ball to the Moon now and again. Just ask Heartbreaker and the kid he tried to kill a couple weeks ago.

SECOND HALF
As is usually the case The Great Blue Sky wants to see a different show after the half and this was no different. We still played well but DA played even better. I don’t remember them having any agonizingly near miss goal chances in the first half. I lost count of how many they had in the second. They had cross after cross perfectly sent through the box only to find no willing foot to redirect it into the waiting goal. We dodged enough bullets for it to have been a Looney Tunes cartoon.

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL! Messi (29th min): ¡F! 2 — DA 0
Running against the flow play we scored first in the second half.

I’m going to apologize to all the parties involved in this one because I’m writing this a full 3 days after the match (sorry, had to travel for work) and I scarcely understood what happened at the time anyway. So there may be amendments to this section.

To the best of my recollection John, DA Keeper, ended up with the ball at his feet in the box. I think he tried to carry (that is run with) it up the pitch a little rather than just pass or boot it away. Either he didn’t see Run MC or underestimated her defensive abilities because they tangled out of which Run MC ended up with the ball and no keeper in front of her.

Again, I’m not sure why this happened, but Run MC ended up passing the ball to Messi, who was only a few feet to her left (maybe Run MC was caught up with John and had enough balance to flick the ball away but not to take a shot). Messi did what the Messi’s do and converted and opportunity into a goal.

Messi was apologetic about the goal after the match. “I didn’t even do anything. I got the ball and all I had to do was shoot straight.” Well, take it from someone who often can’t shoot straight, it may not be bending a free kick around the wall into the corner from 30 meters, but it isn’t nothing either.

¡DA GOAL! Anakin (34th min): ¡F! 2 — DA1
I mentioned we dodged a bevy of second half bullets. This is the one we couldn’t get clear of.

I was playing right back, Big Pete was playing center back, and Zarate was left back. The person I was defending (Diosa, I think) managed to send a moderately paced cross rolling through the box roughly 10 feet from the face of the goal. I turned around to watch the ball roll toward Big Pete. It was actually rolling slowly enough that I could have chased it down. I didn’t. Mistake 1.

The ball reached Big Pete and Zarate was coming round his should from the weak side. Maybe he thought I was going to step to it. Maybe he though Zarate was going to get it. Whatever he was thinking he let it roll by. Mistake 2.

Zarate was probably looking at me and Big Pete thinking, “¿why aren’t either one of those guys doing something about this ball rolling in front of our goal?” And being lost in thought she too let the ball pass. Mistake 3.

The ball then found it’s way to the foot of Anakin who absolutely rifled it into the lower right corner just past a diving Elliot. It was a killer shot that shouldn’t have happened because all three defenders had a chance to clear the ball and didn’t. It was weird but fitting that they scored this way because in exchange for this one strange chance they converted they had countless other un-weird ones they didn’t. A good trade on our part. ¿I wonder how we did that?

Play of the Game: Elliot’s Bullet Time Ninja Reflexive Kick Save
Anakin’s goal was the bullet we couldn’t dodge. This was the heavy artillery barrage that The Great Blue Sky sent ¡SOLUSTRON! to cast a magic force field to save us from.

The play begins to the right of our goal. A DA took a shot that Elliot saved but couldn’t control. The ball dribbled out to the right of the goal and our defenders went after it. A DA got to it first and passed it to another DA guy who was all alone standing 6 feet from the center of our goal. He teed up like he was going to shoot to the right of Elliot, who flinched to the right. Instead of shooting the DA guy tapped the ball to his left where another DA guy was waiting and he blasted the shot toward the lower left.

Keep in mind Elliot is falling away from this shot because it’s the opposite direction of the faked shot. Like something out of heavy special effects martial arts movie Elliot kicked his legs out from underneath himself and shot them out in the opposite direction of the way he was falling and deflected the shot. It bounced high in the air away from the goal and when it landed a ¡FUTURISMO! (I think it was Zarate, but I might be wrong) was waiting and booted it safely away ending the threat.

I’m telling you no amount description can do this justice. So when you get a chance, try it, probably on your bed or one of those tumbling mats from elementary school. Dive one direction then midway down kick your legs out and extend them as far as they’ll go the opposite way. I can’t even do it in my mind. Elliot can do it in reality and it saved the game.

FULL TIME

My Own Personal Faustian Moment: BFF Fast Break Pluto Exploration
I don’t know that Dr. Faust would have traded his soul for this because it might be too much of an insider story but I would and I’m writing this so in it goes.

Run MC stole the ball at midfield, bursting between two DA’s, and found herself a clear path to the goal. She took of with both DA defenders in her wake flanking her on either side. It looked like she had a protective escort to the goal. Of course the DA defenders had the opposite intent and it was going to be a tough shot for Run MC because she was on the dead fly with defenders jostling her on both sides.

As ¡SOLUSTRON! would have it Run MC’s hand’s down best friend in the world was playing left forward. Photonicorn and Run MC have been friends for literally 20 years. She’s going to be the Maid of Honor in Run MC’s wedding in a couple weeks and was selected for that distinction over Run MC’s sister who’s only a year her junior and they’re very close to boot. So when I say they’re “best friends” I’m not using that term lightly. They’re the best best friends I’ve ever known.

So there they are, Best Friends Forever, conducting a 2-on-none fast break. It was like a scene in a movie. This goal would seal the game and it was against what would have to be considered the ¡FUTURISMOS! best friend club. It was all too perfect.

Too perfect indeed.

Run MC carried the ball all the way to the DA box forcing John to commit to stopping her. She then laid a perfect ball off to Photonicorn and all she had to do was tap the ball home. ¿Have I already mentioned Photonicorn is right-footed and she was playing left forward? That means the shot was most likely going to have to be with her left foot… and it was with her left foot that she attempted to send the ball on the first human powered flight to Pluto to determine once and for all whether it should be classified as a planet or moon.

Unfortunately the mission failed and the ball fell short of its roughly 3-ish billion mile journey to Pluto after traveling roughly 50 feet and landing the parking lot. Had Lucifer been standing nearby I would have yelled “¡STOP!” and traded my soul for that sequence on the spot.

No worries, Photonicorn. Take a page from Touro’s book and keep firing away at the stars because the law of averages dictates one of those blasts will land in the goal.

Zarate’s Divine Compliment
Zarate’s complement starts with Diosa burning me as badly as I’ve ever been. I was defending Diosa on the right side. Her primary move is a combination change of pace with a faked shot that she turns into a pivot to head in the opposite direction. I’ve played Diosa and bit on this fake enough to know better and I haven’t let her burn me with it for quite some time.

So Diosa was moving toward our end line and she slowed down and made like she was going to pass the ball toward the goal. Here ‘s what my brain said to me, “My ¡SOLUSTRON! she’s crossing the ball… ¡JUMP!” So I did and, of course, she calmly tapped the ball back in the opposite direction and started dribbling away from me.

As soon as I landed I hustled back toward her. As I approached she slowed down and made like she was going to pass the ball toward the goal. Here's what my brain said to me, “My ¡SOLUSTRON! she’s really crossing the ball this time… ¡JUMP!” So I did and, of course, she calmly tapped the ball back toward the end line, took a couple steps and had all the time in the world to calmly deliver one of the crosses we were lucky did no damage.

¿Where was I while Diosa was leisurely setting up the potential game tying goal? Apparently I felt bad that Photonicorn’s futbol mission to Pluto had failed so I tried it again with my body. I’m not even sure my feet were on the ground yet when she passed the ball.

Diosa and I talked about this sequence after the game and she punctuated it with this. “I like playing against you because I can get around you. I don’t like playing against Zarate because I just can’t get around her. She just keeps moving her feet with her eye on the ball. She never falls for any of that junk you’ll jump out of your shoes for.”

There you go, Zarate, high praise from someone with a divine Nom de Futbol. That’s as close to wink and nudge from ¡SOLUSTRON! as you’re going to get. ¡Enjoy!

Game 6: ¡FUTURISMOS! 1 — Transformers 4

The problem with sport as a metaphor is there are times when it’s just that: a metaphor. Sports can’t fix your non-sports life. They can help you think about it in new or insightful ways but they can’t change a thing. This week my non-metaphorical existence—the one that makes up the 167 hours in a week that aren’t the 1 hour of futbol match—took precedence and I haven’t had time for the write-up.

I’d say “sorry,” but it would be disingenuous. I’m not sorry. Sometimes real life blows up in your face and you have to run around looking for the pieces and putting out fires. That’s life and so is your club getting steamrolled for absolutely no discernable reason whatsoever.

I have no idea why Transformers thumped us so good. Their level of talent didn’t appear to exceed our own to any great degree. But make no mistake about it, they kicked our butts. Our lone goal came when Elliot—our keeper— got the ball and ran it all the way down the pitch and scored on a shot he took from inside the Transformers’ box. I think that says it all.

Next week’s game is against our sister club, King Vidor’s Double Ataris. Most of your ¡FUTURISMOS! have played for the Double Ataris at some point and vice versa It will be a kind of Super Homecoming Family Reunion. All goals will be celebrated World Cup style. The pitch will be alive with chatter. Everyone will laugh. Most people will dance. And for one hour our un-non-metaphorical lives won’t exist.

Behold, the power of sport makes 1 more valuable than 167.

Game 5: ¡FUTURISMOS! 1 — FC Vagabundoz 0

“Everyone’s got something to hide except me and my monkey” (or “Seriously, God, please stop flicking the back of my ear. I’m trying to find religion here and I need to concentrate.”)
One of my great laments is I don’t have so much as a pinch of a deeply held religious belief. They all fall apart for me in the same way. Every religion (that I’m familiar with) starts out great with a core of ideas about how humans should conduct themselves and treat others but then quickly moves on to some seriously crazy goo that I just can’t swallow. A few examples:

“We should be judged based on how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us…”

Awesome. I like that.

“…Because God stuck his kid in an unsuspecting lady’s womb so he could grow up and be punished to atone for human sin.”

¡Bah!, ¿what? That’s just weird.

“You should treat others as you’d like to be treated…”

I’m totally down with that.

“…Because this Dude led his oppressed people to a new land of freedom that God helped him find but then told him he couldn’t hang out in there once they found it so Dude sat on a mountain until he was, like, 120 and then God buried him in a secret grave.”

¿Huh?

“You should treat everyone with compassion…”

Yes, yes, now you’re talking my language.

“…Because a long time ago this rich kid freaked out, ran away from home, and sat under a tree until he faced down a kind of demon lord and in so doing gained the secrets of life and the universe.”

¿You mean like George Bush Jr.? No thanks.

“You should hold high the flame of peace, justice, and equality…”

That sounds great. I’ll do that.

“…Because ¡SOLUSTRON! created us all from a magic rainbow that ends in a pot of comprehensive sex education that overflows with coffee and stimulating but non-offensive conversation.”

Whatever.

Like you I’ve seen Batman Begins and The Dark Knight so I, like you, understand the significance of reinforcing core “thou shalt” lessons with grand illusions to set them in a realm beyond human fallibility but I have my limits. So absolutely I believe humans have become overly reliant on pharmacological solutions to their sorrows, but come on, ¿how am I supposed to get behind the idea of extraterrestrial dictators using neural implants from our previous lives to make us fell depressed? I’m sorry, but that’s just ridiculous, and the fact that a significant number of people believe it is nearly enough to drive me to Paxil.

Then, just as I’m about to write the whole religion thing off for good and stock up on my antidepressants something like game 5 happens. Regular ¡FUTURISMOS! blog readers may have detected a note of melancholy in my reports this season. It wasn’t that we’re off to bad start (two draws and two losses) or hadn’t played in any good games (they’ve all been good, even game 4 where we got our butts kicked). There was just something missing for me.

I hadn’t had a single moment where I thought I’d turn around in a game to see the apparition of Genghis Khan winking at me so I’d definitively know the game/my life/the world/the Universe/the Lionel Messi was a gift from The Eternal Blue Sky. ¿So what happened in game 5 that made me sure I was going to catch the great Kahn in the stands out of the corner of my eye?

Truly astute ¡FUTURISMOS! fans already know the answer.

Twin Faustian Moments
Just when I’d all but given up on Faustian Moments we were blessed with two gems in the same game that restored my faith in being alive.

¿If Touro falls flat on his face on the pitch in spectacular fashion and we’re all there to see it does the sound of our collective laughter give a legion of angels their wings?
In the first half Touro found himself with the ball at the edge of the FCV box and literally nothing between himself and the goal. All he had to do was kick the ball forward and we’d have doubled our lead.

But Touro being Touro is inclined to do things in his own confoundingly crazy fashion. I don’t know how he did it but instead of kicking the ball he ended up getting both of his feet caught in the turf (¿or each other?) and ended up falling tree style, that’s without breaking his fall, on his face.

So there was Touro facing a gilded, heaven sent opportunity to score his first ¡FUTURISMOS! goal. It was a wide-open chance with everyone watching and… he fell literally and spectacularly flat on his face. It was such an exposed, unassisted tumble that there was only one possible response—unfettered laughter. It… was… awesome.

It also illuminates part of what’s so brilliant about Touro. There was no way he was going to take this badly. He (like I have in the past) took a moment on the ground to fully absorb the totality of his moment and then bounced up and got back in the game with a smile on his face, shaking his head in disbelief at how astounding his own gaff had been. That’s… what… made… it… so… awesome.

Heartbreaker’s No Child Left Alive Policy
Late in the game Heartbreaker teed up a crazy shot from just inside midfield and blasted it toward the FCV goal. Beyond the goal were the bleachers in which a 5-year-old boy was three-quarters of the way up in his trek to climb to the top. Oh, yes, these two events are soon to be related.

Everyone on the pitch watched as Heartbreaker’s shot sailed high and wide over the goal and our collective thought was, “wow, that shot is nowhere near the goal.” Then as the ball sailed over the goal we all saw out of the corners of our eyes where the ball was headed. It was amazing, you could feel the collective mood shift instantaneously from completely relaxed to totally freaked out because that ball was going to hit that kid. To make matters worse it was going to hit the kid in the back so he couldn’t prepare himself for it making the potential outcomes we were all envisioning that much worse.

Someone bellowed “¡LOOK OUT KID!” and he turned around just in time to see the ball bang off the seat he was climbing over and safely bounce away.

Once the kid was clearly safe I turned to Heartbreaker and started yelling at him. “Good lord, Heartbreaker, ¿what’s wrong with you? I’m glad you’ve finally embraced my belief the human race should stop reproducing but for crying out loud ¡that doesn’t mean we pick them off one at a time after they’re born! I’m talking about a societal shift in which people choose to stop having babies.”

An FCV lady, number 17, was already laughing at this whole scene but at that point her laughter shifted into something that was equal parts mesmerizing and frightening. ¿You know the classic nerd laugh? It’s the laugh where the sound comes from the intake of air at the back of the throat. [If you're not familiar just ask me to reenact it.] So 17’s laughter shifted from “normal” sounding laughter into this super nerd laugh. But that’s not the transcendent part.

She couldn’t stop. Her laughter went on so long that the collective reaction to it oscillated between amusement and fear. It went on so long that I became afraid she was going to choke on her laughter. ¿How do you save someone from choking to death on laughter? ¿Tell her something terribly unfunny like “truth be told, as amazing as it seems, John McCain could win the Presidential election”?

Watching 17 try to run up the pitch while fighting back a nearly catastrophic nerd laugh attack or Touro fall spectacularly on his face and then trot back down the pitch smiling to himself I have no doubt Dr. Faust would have yelled “¡STOP!” (after he stopped laughing) to the nearby Lucifer and traded his soul for the experience right then and there.

And I would have been right there with the good Doctor looking high and low for The Eternal Blue Sky to say, “I yield, life is worth living because this is too good to miss. If that means I have believe some messed up fairytale about dreadlocked aliens and make fun of Brooke Shields then so be it. It’s totally worth it.”

Roll Call
Ladies: Zarate, Li’l Pete, Diosa, Run MC, and Juju.
Gents: Elliot, TB, Touro, Heartbreaker, El Duque, and Me.

Good turnout. Two subs each for both the ladies and the gents. The perfect number of players.

Fan Roll Call
Collette and Spectra kept up their Super Fan Feud. I think Spectra’s still ahead but I’d be the first one to admit I might be biased in this assessment.

Weather
Oh… my… goodness gracious me. It was amazing outside. 70-ish degrees. Low humidity. The Eternal Blue Sky was on hand with a smattering of wispy clouds to accent its resplendent glory. Sweat dripping into my eyes and pouring into my mouth has never felt so good.

KICK OFF

¡GOAL FUTURISMOS! Heartbreaker (12th min): ¡F! 1 — FCV 0
The game’s sole goal was courtesy a coolly tapped ball by Heartbreaker at pointblank range into a gapping net. As is typically the case in such instances, it was a team effort.

Apparently my memory of this goal is a little off. After I posted the blog I got this response from El Duque:

Hey...Am I invisible? Ha ha

Your goal recap is wayyyyyyyyy incorrect.

A defender sent the ball up field, I trapped it with the chest and passed it to a streaking Diosa who then went to the corner. We did a give and go and she passed it back to me and then I passed it to Heartbreaker for the goal.

The goal was a flawless quadruple bang play that started with nice defense and a quick set up.

I’m not saying, I’m just saying... :)

I stand corrected and this goal was still a throwback to last season when we routinely traced perfect, complicated geometric shapes with our player movement and crisp passing. It was a thing of beauty and I was proud to cheer it on from the sideline.

HALF TIME
We were a happy lot. The score was only 1-0 but the first half had been a pure joy. Elliot and Touro swapped keeping duties for the second straight game. It should be pointed out that Elliot handing the gloves over to Touro with a mere 1-goal cushion is a declaration of faith on par with a Christian Scientist turning down stitches after loosing a leg to an over-active revolving door.

SECOND HALF
The second half was essentially just like the first with the only difference being there were zero goals scored.

Not that anyone had forgotten, but Elliot repeatedly reminded us of his prodigious dead ball abilities. The best of which occurred after a foul at midfield on the sideline. We were awarded a free kick that Elliot used to force the FCV into a diving save that nudged the ball just high enough so it hit the crossbar. The ball bounced back into play and we nearly scored in the ensuing melee but once again an FCV lady standing in the goal cleared the ball. Elliot also forced the FCV keeper into legitimate saves on another long free kick and on a corner kick.

FULL TIME

Our Hyper-Dynamic Duo: Touro and Diosa
Ladies and Gentlemen of the ¡FUTURISMOS! Fiefdom. I realize I’ve implored you all to make the effort to see a game at some point for reasons ranging from mitigating your own shame to chanting down a rival agency. But I’m telling you no number of words will convey what a joy is to watch Touro and Diosa play. [I would know, I’ve tried a lot of words.]

Touro plays like a giant futbol version of Animal from The Muppet Show. Much like Animal makes no pretenses about playing a specific song, Touro seems oblivious to the idea that we have positions on the pitch. Again, like Animal, somehow this works out for the best because rather than crossing us up it means we play with an unpredictable and irrepressible wildcard.

I’ve belabored the majesty of Diosa on many an occasion so I won’t go on and on and on and on about it here but she was in particularly fine form in game 5. Just as there a different forms of dance there are different ways of dancing with the ball. Bobby—our Swedish import last summer—danced with the ball in a Hip Hop fashion. It was garish and big. Diosa’s dancing is more along the lines of Tango. The beauty is in it’s pauses and small flourishes of tightly controlled footwork.

Don’t get me wrong, all of your ¡FUTURISMOS! are fun to watch in the sense that we all play in fashions that are manifestations of our personalities (I’m a loudmouth with macabre undertones). But one need not know those two, Touro and Diosa, in order to appreciate the show they put on. Both are well worth the price of admission.

[Yes, the games are “free” in the sense that you don’t have to buy a ticket to watch them. But they aren’t “free” in the sense that you have carve out a little part of your day in order to watch them. I’m telling you, if you’re reading this I know for a fact that it worth carving a couple hours out of your week to catch them sometime.]

Game 4: ¡FUTURISMOS! 1 — Los Cadillacos Fantasticos 5

[NOTE: To combine two of Run MC’s favorite expressions, “I’m not going to lie” this write-up will have very little to do with the match because “in my O-pinion” there isn’t that much to say about it from a futbol standpoint. Los Cadillacos Fantasticos kicked our butts, proper-style. That’s just about all there is to say about the futbol in this match.]

“All Life Is Suffering... ¡HUZZAH!"
It surprises me that it surprises people that I’m less than convinced that life is worth living. I’m phrasing that politely because I think my aunt reads these things to my grandma. Oh, fine, I’ll just say it—I’m sorry, but there is no way life is worth living. There just isn’t and I think the briefest of glances around the humanscape bares this out.

For every bit of transcendent glory and magic there are megatons of outrageous cruelty, destruction, and duplicity. If you have a child or are still young enough not to know this, sorry. I just killed Santa and nuked the North Pole for you. Yet even though I know this to be a fact beyond dispute I have a pesky little secret that I hide in plain sight. People, hold on to something: I’m still alive.

¿Why?

This drives me crazy, ¿why am I still alive? ¿What is ¡SOLUSTRON! waiting for? I haven’t “all but” sent a notarized letter to The Great Blue Sky formally renouncing my desire to live; I actually sent a notarized letter to The Great Blue Sky formally renouncing my desire to live. But here I am, yammering away at you all week after week. For the love of Maradona, ¿what is the point?

Enter Game 4 and Los Cadillacos Fantasticos.

Again, I’m not going to sugarcoat this, LCF whooped us bad. I can’t remember the last time we played a game where the other team just kicked our butts like that. The situation was exacerbated in the first half because we were short a lady but even at full strength we’d have to play our very best to keep up with them.

They didn’t just stomp us, they stomped us. I have no idea how many reserves they had but it seemed like 3-teams worth and they’d rotate their whole team in and out. It was crazy. Part of their strategy was clearly to wear us down (we had 2 guy reserves) because whenever the ball went out of bounds they hustled to get it back in as quickly as possible. Every… single… time.

As a matter of fact they were so dedicated to grinding our bones into the shinny green plastic turf that at one point in the first half when they were already up 2 or 3 to nil their keeper put a goal kick in play when they had 12 players on the pitch—exactly twice the legal limit. So their keeper looked up, saw two teams worth of his players on the pitch, and thought something along the lines of “¡YEAH! ¡GO, GO, GO, GO!” rather than “Hmmm, maybe I should wait a couple seconds for my teammates heading off to at least be close the sideline before I put the ball in play.”

The ref’s reaction was emblematic of the game as a whole. He blew the whistle and gazed at the keeper with a look of disbelief as if to say, “¿Really? ¿You looked up and saw 12 of your players on the pitch instead of the permissible 6 and you STILL put the ball in play? ¿Seriously? ¿You couldn’t wait, like, 2-seconds?” But neither the ref nor your ¡FUTURISMOS! took any offense. It was actually charming in it’s own deranged kind of way. The keeper didn’t mean anything hostile by it, he just really wanted to get the ball back in play to continue the process of mechanically separating the meat of your ¡FUTURSIMOS! from our inedible parts.

LCF played fast and hard. The kind of hard where a lady pulled me down from behind (when they were up 2-0 and clearly killing us) after she lost the ball to me. They were crashing into people, flying around, and celebrating every goal like it was the first.

Here’s the confounding part of all that, they were—with only one possible exception— good natured and fun loving about the whole thing. I joked around with just about every member of their team at least once and they laughed every time. They’d laugh and then throw me down to the get the ball and that wasn’t a contradiction for them. King Vidor scored on a crazy sweet shot with roughly 5-mintues left to play to make the game 4-1 (still completely out of reach) and you should have seen the reaction of their keeper. You would have thought he’d just committed a gaff that lost his club the World Cup and therefore his life.

During our first couple of seasons we played a teams who seemed offended by beating us, like, “oh, you’re so bad I can’t believe I even have to go to the trouble of playing this match. You should have just quit to save me some time.” LCF were nothing like that. They whipped us fierce and then followed it up with one of the best natured “good game” lineups I’ve ever experienced.

Here’s the moment I’ll never forget from this match.

One of the LCF guys went through the post-match “good game” line giving everyone the customary waist level “high five” then he circled back to give a few of us proper arm-extended-over-head “high fives.” I was last in our line and he slapped my hand, then held it for an instant, looked me in the eye, and said “great game.” He wasn’t mocking me or us. He meant it. LCF kicked our faces in and were grateful for it.

And there, in that moment, I had a revelation.

The first of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths is, “All life is suffering.” That sounds bleak but nobody thinks of Buddhist Monks or Nuns as frowning or pensive. We think of them as smiling. The reason they’re smiling isn’t because they’re masochists. It’s because they know at the end of the match of life, after grinding you into oblivion, the essence of existence is going to be there to give you an arm-extended-over-head “high five," look you in eye, say “great game," and mean it.

¿So why am I—despite all known forms of reason—still alive even though I know life isn’t worth living? Because for reasons beyond my comprehension the game isn’t over yet.

Roll Call
Ladies: Li’l Pete & Juju. Only two. Ouch. In the second half we picked up a friend of Li’l Pete’s whose name I can’t remember. I think it was a normal name but one you don’t hear often, like Diane.
Gents: Elliot, TB, King Vidor, Heartbreaker, O Touro, and Me.

Fan Roll Call
That’s right, people, we had a couple of fans for this one. Mrs. Melissa “Slüfacé” Pongpitoon and Mr. Melissa “Slüfacé” Pongpitoon (aka Jeff, whose non-Pongpitoon last name I either don’t know or can’t remember) were in attendance. The next day I asked Slüfacé, who has never played futbol, how bad we looked and she said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was sitting there thinking ‘I could do that. I could run around like that.’ It looked fun.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your ¡FUTURISMOS! are opening futboling horizons.

Game Conditions
Kickoff was set for 8:30pm. In other words, perfect. That means the Sun is setting when the game commences and the floodlights are on at its conclusion. It’s just beautiful. The only bummer was the clouds didn’t cooperate. Instead of a nice dispersion of puffy clouds to play off the light of the setting Sun and accent the darkening blue sky beyond we had a solid grey ceiling threatening rain. Oh well. It was warm and humid. Not entirely uncomfortable but not a breeze either.

KICKOFF

First Half
We played the first half short a lady they ran us ragged. I don’t recall us generating a meaningful chance on goal and they manufactured bushels of their own, converting three, all at virtually pointblank range.

They kicked our butts and reveled in it. Not in a way that was demeaning or mocking. They were just having a grand ol’ time running us into the ground.

HALFTIME: ¡F! 0 — LCF 3
For the first time in team history I gave an augmented version of Bill Murray’s classic “It just doesn’t matter” speech from Meatballs. For those not familiar here’s its rousing conclusion:

“And even if we win, if we win, ¡HAH! ¡Even if we win! ¡Even if we play so far above our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days; even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field; even if every man, woman, and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. ¡IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!”

I read that out loud to Spectra (who’s never seen the movie, it should be pointed out) and she had a one-word response: “depressing.”

Of course, I beg to differ.

“It just doesn’t matter” is the westernized version of “all life is suffering.” It’s the cry of joyous liberation in the wake of the enlightened revelation that sometimes (and ultimately every time) your fate just isn’t in your hands (actually, it never is or was). Anyone who disagrees is free to debate me in eternity after he or she has found a way to live forever. ¿How will I meet you there for the debate? That’s for me and ¡SOLUSTRON! to know and you to curse at your moment of death.

SECOND HALF
With Li’l Pete’s friend joining us at halftime we at least had a full compliment of players for the second half. It made a difference too. LCF still outplayed us and outscored us in the second half 2 goals to 1 but it was a considerably less lopsided affaire.

¡WAIT! Before you get any crazy ideas, don’t get me wrong, they kicked our butts in the second half too, just not nearly as bad as the first. King Vidor’s goal was a thing of beauty but to belabor it would be like Kobe Bryant talking crazy smack about how awesome he was in Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Inappropriate.

FULL TIME

O Touro, Just Crazy Enough
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I hadn’t appreciated the true meaning of the expression “a bull in a china shop” until I’d seen O Touro play. After Game 4 I can say my insight into his character has been confirmed and expanded.

Anyone can be a little crazy when she or he is playing in the field. You just run a little too hard after everything and before you know it you’re be crashing into people left and right. It’s easy. Even I did it one game. But to be a little crazy while playing keeper is another thing altogether.

O Touro claimed to have kept a little in high school and Elliot wanted to see if he would be a proper substitute so they switched in the second half. Before I continue I have to remind everyone I’ve spent several games playing keeper myself and I can tell you from firsthand experience keeping is nothing like playing in the field.

In the field you’re playing with a net, so to speak. You can run hard for a ball or try for a steal and know there are other people protecting the goal. If you’re the keeper the only net you have is the one that stops the ball after it’s already crossed the goal line. It’s nerve wracking. Or rather it’s nerve wracking for normal humans but apparently not for those whose life essence is infused with Bull.

O Touro played keeper like he played in the field. That means well, but it also means crazy. He charged off the line wildly waving his arms at LCF people bearing down on him with ball (“It confuses them”). He was diving, sliding, and generally throwing his body all over the place.

His signature play was an LCF guy got the ball in the box with his back to the goal and O Touro sneaked around him from behind and scooped the ball up from the ground at his feet. ¿Did it occur to O Touro that had the LCF guy simply turned around he could have gently nudged the ball into the goal because O Touro—the keeper—would have been standing on the wrong side of the ball vis-à-vis the goal? It’s both impossible to say and completely irrelevant. This is always the case in dealing with something crazy.

Not insane, mind you, O Touro is crazy. The kind of crazy that spawned the idea: “That’s crazy… just crazy enough to work.”