When you go after a beloved NCAA institution in Oregon, well, batten down the hatches. I learned this lesson the hard way a fortnight back when I dared sling some internet mud at the Oregon Ducks. I've been writing this blog since 2003 and never before have so many people been angry about something that I've posted here.

Nine readers (NINE!), on the blog's feedback forum and on Twitter, wrote in to, more or less, tell me I was being an idiot. A good ol' fashioned troll-fest ensued for a few days. I'd like to think that we all came out the experience a little wiser and a little more tolerant but, eh, who am I fooling? Ok, let me rephrase this. I'd like to think that everyone had a good time bickering over what is, at the end of the day, a silly, little game.

A silly little game that people in this state take waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously. I was dubbed a douche, a dick, a hater and worse. Even the three students behind the "I Love My Ducks" campaign chimed in to run circles around me in a Twitter flame war. That was the most humiliating part of this experience: the trio that penned "Return of the Quack" schooled me on a level worthy of Wesley vs. Vizzini in The Princess Bride. Thank God the internet isn't capable of transmitting iocane powder.

Worse yet, they're probably too young to understand this reference. $%@#!@! kids.

Despite it all, I spent the following weekend in Eugene, a strange, magical place where cartoon Ducks are worshiped like the gods of olde and golden O's cover every available surface. Take a stroll through Rennie's Landing, a bar across the street from the University of Oregon campus, and you'll discover the O-logo plastered across the floors in a patterned carpet.

A friend, currently studying at U of O for a degree in Computer Science, would not shut up about my terrible, no good, inconceivable actions. And then he downed a can of Four Loko, turned into the Hulk and, well, you probably saw the footage on CNN the next day. The National Guard is still looking for survivors in the West Campus neighborhood.

Americans? Taking sports too seriously? No way! Get out!

While my nagging conscience won't allow me to be a Ducks fan any longer, at least I'm not alone. The Ducks are quickly becoming the bullies of the Pac-10- the Evil Empire of the NCAA. They've got plenty of filthy lucre at their disposal, top talent, a thuggish reputation, an indifferent school administration willing to let them run rampant and an entire city with nothing better to do between the months of September and December but worry about every nuance of the local university's football program.

Myself, I think I'll stick with the NBA. Where nothing bad ever happens. Ever.

Labels: sports

It's becoming increasingly difficult to root for the football team of my alma mater. Over the years, the NCAA press has been clogged with tales of University of Oregon players running a-duck (pffffft!) through Eugene like pillaging buccaneers. Millions of dollars were recently dumped into an "athlete's only" center clogged with expensive art and leather couches while many other campus facilities and classrooms continue to rot. Meanwhile, Nike-founder Phil Knight continues to dump his personal fortune into constructing stadiums and plush locker rooms. Rooting for the Oregon Ducks is like rooting for the Empire in Star Wars, especially now that they're (maybe? kinda?) the # 1-ranked NCAA squadron in the nation.

But the worst part of all of this? It's now more expensive to go to a flippin' college football game in Eugene than an NBA game in Portland. Tickets, which start at around $40 for nosebleed seats, routinely sell-out during the summer months, weeks before the first game of the season, and soon thereafter sell for upwards of $100 on various scalper websites.

Oh, wait, I just though of something more irritating than high ticket prices: this crap....

How much did the Athletic Department pay for that, exactly? If you can make it through all four minutes of this video and not become a life-long Portland Vikings fan, you're a better person than I. Also: take note of the Nike plug at the two minute mark. The days of rolling into Autzen Stadium with a $10 ticket or a free one from the box office at the EMU seems like a long, long time ago.

I spent a day down in Eugene last spring with my friends Sho, Chris and Chris' rather-awesome, obscenity-spewing exchange student pal who...dang, I can't remember her name. Anyway, we ate some tatter tots at Rennie's Landing and the waiter there was wearing a "I Love My Thugs" t-shirt, which we all though was rather awesome at the time. Check the Facebook page for that one.

Despite all the glitz and the pampered players and the irritating "home made" hip-hop, there's one thing that keeps bringing me back to the fold:

The Oregon Duck, AKA the "Hardest Working Mascot in the NCAA." He still does a push-up for every point the team scores during home games. I recently learned that the duck doesn't even have an official name. He usually goes by the Oregon Duck but has also been called Donald, Puddles or The Fighting Duck, according to Wikipeida.

What say you? Doesn't this adorable bastard deserve a proper nom de guerre?

Labels: Ducks, sports

The whole roller derby thing seems like it's becoming a bigger deal in Portland with each passing day. During a walk from the Crystal Ballroom to Powell's last week, I saw a poster for the Rose City Rollers, three pairs of roller skates in the window of Buffalo Exchange and a copy of Down and Derby: The Insiders Guide to Roller Derby on a shelf in the Green Room (with a quote from Carrie Brownstein on the cover, no less). Then I opened up a copy of Portland Monthly and there was a spread devoted to the RCR.

Also, I'll throw this out here, the Portland club's "Hometown Throwdown" is this weekend and will continue through tomorrow at the Hanger at Oaks Park. For further info, click here.

My pal "M," who's an Oregon expat from Beaver Creek and who also pens the blog Bubbly Red Stuff, is currently involved with the Amsterdam Derby Dames, a club that's helping to bring roller derby to The Netherlands. They held a showcase demonstration last night at an Amsterdam club and screened Whip It afterwards.

En hier is een video van de demonstratie met de meisjes en hun rolschaatsen. Alsjeblieft, geniet!

Labels: sports

It could be argued that this another "inevitability" that comes with residing in Portland. If you live in this city long enough, you're bound to allow pub quizzes, coffeeshop loitering and kickball into your life, at some point. At least I've held off on adopting a pug.

Joining a kickball team is a lot like joining a fraternity. A co-ed fraternity where everyone is between the ages of 21 and 50 and gathers together on Sundays to drink cheap beer, cover themselves in mud, chase around rubber balls and gossip about one another. There's more personal drama wafting around my league than 40 years worth of Days of Our Lives episodes. At times I feel like I need a flow chart to keep up with the rivalries and track of who's sleeping with who and why one Girl X refuses to talk to Guy Y. Like a frat house, there's feuds, legends surrounding longtime members and enough inappropriate nicknames to keep former members of the Bush cabinet giggling well into Obama's second term.

Take, for example, one charismatic team captain who uses the league as his own personal "lady buffet" and finds himself continually struggling to keep his various lovers from engaging in fist fights in the middle of games. I could bring up some further anecdotes but there's always the chance that a teammate will come across this blog post. If that happened, I'd get cut from the team, or worse yet, spend the rest of the season with the nickname "That Asshole Blogger." Regardless, I'm sure that by mid-season someone who has been missing for the last five seasons will mysteriously return one afternoon to retake his position as an outfielder, proving wrong the assumption that he died in a tragic taxi bike accident in the Pearl District.

And I guess there's also the camaraderie, the friendly competition and the occasional complimentary polish dog. All in all, this old Onion article does sum up all the whole phenomenom of hipster sports leagues pretty well.

Labels: sports

On Saturday the annual Portland Urban Iditarod was....run? Staggered through? Ok, I can't come up with an appropriate verb. Nevertheless, here's some snapshots from this year's beer-fueled hipster melee:

One of the most inspired entrants this year was the Last Supper cart. A member of their team was wandering through the crowd at the race's final stop with a "magic" water-into-wine jug, offering to perform miracles for anyone with an empty cup.

Remember Spaceballs? I remember Spaceballs.

My personal favorite: the JFK assassination team. While they were definitely contenders for this year's most offensive cart, the award probably belongs in the hands of "Team Greg Oden." For photos of their efforts, click here (NSFW). The JFK team had a President Kennedy, a blood-covered Jackie O, a Fidel Castro, several secret servicemen, a Lee Harvey Oswald and, yeah, a Marylin Monroe. They also brought two carts with them: a limo and a book depository. Although, the question must be posed: too soon?

And who could forget the roaring Godzilla cart and the big lizard's, uh, "little lizard"? The Hello Kitty ornaments were definitely an inspired touch.

This was my second urban iditarod and I'm still not too clear on how the rules work. Or if there are rules. I guess this guy was the MC and determined when the teams would stop, say, breaking windows on the second floor of the Barracuda Bar and Lounge and race off to their next destination. He did have a whistle with him.

Anyway, click here for an obligatory Flickr gallery and/or over here for photos from last year's iditarod.

Labels: alcohol, bars, sports

On Sunday night I found myself in a downtown Vancouver sports bar surrounded by people covered in red maple leafs. The leaves covered their hats, their boots, their shirts and their jackets. They even had temporary maple leaf tattoos on their faces. We had all gathered together to watch a men's hockey game between the US and Canada. While there were other Americans in the room, I was apparently the only one not decked out in red, white and blue. With the US in the lead I wasn't about to announce my national heritage, especially given how fast my Canadian cohorts were tearing through the contents of their pint glasses.

Little separated them from wild animals at this point and even the staff didn't want to intervene in the melee. Instead of kicking me out after I stumbled down the stairs and slammed into him, a manager helped me up and nudged me towards the bar. Over the course of the second two periods, only one patron was kicked out and that was for puking all over himself and a table.

After a near comeback, an empty net goal by the Americans sealed their win and drained all the life out of the place. Moments prior, I was watching a woman in an aviator hat jump around on a stool while madly waving a Canadian flag. Now she was slumped over at a table staring into a half-empty pint of beer. A drunk in a jersey slung his arm around me and lamented this sad state of affairs. "It's ok, man," he slurred. "We'll get in the finals, we're gonna get the gold. This is *our* game, eh?" I nodded and shrugged, afraid to open my mouth. If I made a mistake such as inadvertently pronouncing "about" as anything but "aboot," my true identity as an American citizen would have been revealed. This guy would have no doubt started shrieking like one of the clones from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Or not. A table full of Americans began cheering when the clock went down to zero and one of them even did a little dance. The Canadians only glared in return. They paid their tab and managed to escape the bar without incident.

During our stint at the 2010 Winter Olympics, my colleagues and I stayed with a few Canadian relatives. One of our hosts wanted to know why we hadn't brought along USA paraphernalia or at least a tiny American flag. After all, European tourists and the locals had absolutely no reservations about displaying their nationalistic pride so why should we? Over the course of our six days in Canada we encountered plenty of Germans decked out in gear from their native land. Numerous Norwegians were running around town dressed in viking hats. One of them even had enough national pride and competitive spirit coursing through his veins to carry a large bone with him, merrily conking spectators from other countries gently on the head during photo opps.

So why not us? Continued guilt from the Bush-era, I guess, plus we're not the sort of people that typically want to draw a lot of attention to ourselves on unfamiliar ground. Furthermore, we witnessed a father and his young daughter get heckled by locals in a Sky Train station for wearing Uncle Sam hats. I don't know if there have been any acts of violence between Americans and Canadians at the Olympic games but perhaps our paranoia was completely unwarranted. At least we weren't alone. With the exception of the fans in the bar and a few others, they were the only Americans I encountered that were willing to reveal their identities through clothing.

Plenty of media coverage has been devoted to how the games have drawn out fevered patriotism in the typically reserved Canadians. The entire city of Vancouver is practically covered in national flags right now. Maple leaves can be found on everything from mittens to doughnuts. One building downtown has a gigantic flag draped across its entire 10-story exterior.

Several local school districts in Vancouver declared a two-week holiday during the games and, ultimately, the city seemed like it was in the middle of a gigantic Fourth of July-style celebration while we were there. The downtown streets were jammed at all hours. The Bay department store had three hour long waits for Canadian apparel. People were standing in line for up to eight hours to take a ride on a zip line that crossed over several blocks and the heads of thousands gathered in a public square near the Hotel Vancouver. Dozens of pavilions and "house" drinking halls were scattered across town offering food, booze and free music to all. The spectacle had grown so large that city authorities had considered shutting down all the city's liquor stores on Saturday for 24 hours.

In short, it was an epic scene and one on a scale I haven't seen since, well, Burning Man last summer. One of my favorite moments from the trip: watching what appeared to be a very shy, very uptight wallflower couple begin madly swing dancing after The Great Lake Swimmers went on stage at the Ontario House. I wish I could be back up there for the closing ceremonies this weekend.

Click here for a Flickr gallery filled with more photos of international fans and Canadian uber-patriots, including Chewbacca.

Labels: politics, sports

I'm heading to Vancouver tomorrow for what's quickly becoming known as "Worst. Olympics. Ever." It hit something like 50 degrees on the slopes of Mt. Whistler this afternoon. It's a chance of a lifetime that could quickly become a cluster$%! of a lifetime.

Either way, it should be interesting. I'll be posting photos and updates on Twitter through the weekend. Feel free to follow the whole melee over here.

If things get really bad I guess I can always spend the entire time chugging "screech" while reciting slam poetry. I'll fit right in!

Labels: sports

I was waiting to cross the street down on SW 5th last week when I looked over and spotted Greg Oden standing next to me. He was on crutches and looked embarrassed to be there. Not sure what else to do, I nodded and he nodded back. A few seconds later, two PSU undergrads strolled up to wish him well. As we crossed the street at least five different people said, "Hey, Greg" or "good luck, man."

I have no idea why he was down there or why he was navigating the streets by himself on foot, clearly miserable. A guy with his bucks could probably afford a driver or a few handlers to get him wherever he needs to go. When I mentioned this on Twitter someone snidely replied that he was probably on his way to campus to enroll for spring term, given the plague of injuries that have sidelined his basketball career for the time being.

My guess was that he was on his way to a restaurant or to speak at a campus event. Still, it was an odd sight- an NBA player, a potential superstar, glumly walking through downtown on a January afternoon.

Labels: sports

I caught the tail end of the 2009 Portland Adult Soapbox Derby last Saturday. I didn't make it in time to witness the final fate of the Flinstones racer. Did listening to the organizers scream "GET OFF THE TRACK" over and over again make up for it? Uh, not really.

Rough estimate of the number of belligerent requests it takes for the crowd to actually clear the way for the racers: 10.

A few photos from the last hour or so of this year's race:

Labels: sports

The answer to this questions is: but of course.

Glowing Greens opened in a large subterranean spot downtown back in 2007. A stairwell surrounded by black-lit paintings of pirates and foreign shores leads visitors down into the depths of 18-holes of undead buccaneer-themed sports-type and putt putt-related entertainment.

It's all fairly surreal, especially if you shell out an extra $2.00 for 3D glasses that make the decor pop out at you at every turn. I tried a pair and, I'll be honest, having a painting of a howling, bright green skeleton clawing at the corner of my field of vision didn't improve my game. Not one iota.

The holes are all inspired. There's one with a shark, another lined with tiki gods and a hole with a "monster in a box" that jumps around as you walk past. The atmosphere is great but none of it really impacts the game. A few more elaborate hazards would have been nice. On a course like this shouldn't players be able to hit a golf ball into a zombie whale's mouth or have it pop out of a cannon?

I think Holoscene's annual Minigolf Art Invitational has turned me into some kinda putt-putt snob. Glowing Greens is easily the best and most elaborate year-round mini-golf course in the state.

Labels: drugs, golf, sports

A few weeks ago, I admitted that this sign at the corner of 4th and Burnside had convinced me that someone somewhere was brewing a Blazer-themed beer. It turns out that I wasn't wrong after all. Even better, the brewer isn't a domestic powerhouse, it's the Hopworks Urban Brewery over on Powell Boulevard. Here's a description of their new Terry Porter porter:

In celebration of the Trailblazers making the playoffs (after 6 long years) we've dedicated our seasonal robust porter to one of their all-time great players, Terry Porter.

Terry Porter features a roasted, caramel malt aroma assisted by floral and citrus hops. The flavor is all business, medium bodied with roast and chocolate flavors, followed by a distinctive smooth style.

During his decade-long tenure in Portland, Porter went to the NBA Finals twice and continues to hold the NBA Finals single-game record for the most free throws made, none missed - 15. In 1,274 career games, Porter averaged 12.2 points, 5.6 assists and 1.24 steals during a career that included two All-Star berths (1991, 1993), two trips to the NBA Finals (1990, 1992) and 15,586 career points. He is 11th on the NBA's all-time assist list (7,160).

6.0% ABV 14.2 Degees Plato 45 IBU

Ok, I'm sold. The Blazers are heading to the playoffs for the first time in six years and I need to celebrate. I could use a gallon or five but I'm assuming it's only currently available in pints at the brewery.

Labels: beer, Blazers, sports

For a month after I first laid eyes on these two signs downtown I was convinced that someone here locally was brewing a Blazers-themed beer. Then it dawned on me: these weren't two ads, it was just one.

Screw you, Budweiser. How dare you toy with my emotions.

Anyway, the question at hand remains: if there were a Blazers Beer what type of beer would a Blazers Beer be? A lager? A stout? A full-bodied amber ale with a light yet robust head? Regardless, it would no doubt taste like victory.

Bring on the playoffs.

Also: for what it's worth, there is at least one Blazers Beer Pong Table somewhere out there.

Labels: sports

I showed up late to this year's Urban Iditarod. The details were vague and the official website didn't offer up much in the way of the whens and wheres. I figured I'd found the place when I was driving down a side street off SE Grand and spotted a few hundred costumed "dogs" running towards my car.

The annual event takes place every March and, according to an oft-quoted KATU soundbite, "there are no winners, there are no losers, there are only belligerent people." If you've never been, the Urban Iditarod is a drunken spectacle that replaces the hard-working huskies of more traditional iditarods with drunks and the sleds with shopping carts. My colleagues and I spent a few hours among the teams, learning their ways and studying their habits, but we never did figure out if there any actual rules involved in this race. At one point I found myself asking the same question that perplexed Hunter. S. Thompson during a long-ago trip to the Honolulu Marathon: "why do these mad buggers run?"

One theory: beer. Another theory: more beer. A third theory: boredom, spandex and still more beer.

That's not to say that this year's iditarod lacked any displays of genuine competitive spirit. As the dogs took off from the race's first break area in a parking lot next to Dutch Brothers, a team comprised of Rockys attempted to distract the leader of a Ghostbuster-themed team. Have you ever tried to navigate a group of inebriates attached to a shopping cart while dressed in a green spandex Slimer suit? It isn't easy, especially when you've got three Sylvester Stallone imitators slapping you upside the head.

There were many awesome teams and costumes on display during Saturday's race. No less than two teams dressed up as the Ghostbusters. There was a team of perverted Boy Scout troop leaders, a team comprised of butchers that kept screaming at spectators in broken Italian and, my personal favorite, the team that decided to drag around a functional Port-A-Potty instead of a shopping cart.

The Urban Iditarod isn't your traditional spectator sport. The race comes to a screeching halt every few blocks, allowing the dogs and their leaders time to pump themselves full of more alcohol. We followed the teams as far as the Green Dragon before a broken iPhone forced us to bag the race and make an emergency trip to the Pioneer Place Apple Store. So we didn't get to see any combination of drunken crashes, puking, public nudity, police intervention, or anything like that. But, hey, that's not to say that the afternoon was entirely free of highlights. I got sprayed in the face by one dog who was packing a dildo/squirt gun. Fun!

So if you go next year? You might want to leave the kids at home. You should have seen the expressions on the faces of random motorists that had to wait in traffic while the teams bombed down Belmont. As we followed them one spectator stopped to chat with a befuddled auto mechanic. Since carrying around an open container is still a serious no-no in this town, she offered him her beer, which he gladly accepted.

I figure there's at least one team still rolling through the streets of Portland in a drunken haze, madly searching for a finish line that's no longer there or maybe never existed in the first place. If I'm right about this, I figure it's the guys with the shark-cart made partially out of Pabst cans.

More photos? In a Flickr gallery? But of course. Just click here.

Labels: sports

The current municipal controversy du jour in Portland is a proposal to drop a whole bunch of dough on another revamp of PGE Park to pave the way for an MLS franchise. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea...provided I don't have to think too much about where the money is going to come from. Jack Bogdanski has devoted a lot of space on his blog in recent weeks to decrying the cronyism and supposed backroom dealings that will fuel this already "done deal." Tomorrow morning, City Council will vote on whether or not to get the ball rolling on this one.

There's an argument to made on both sides but, let's be honest, are urban renewal funds ever going to go to a neighborhood that needs them? Will they go to repair Portland's roads or to patch the crumbling state of many of the city's public schools? Given City Hall's track record, of course not. Rather than a Convention Center hotel or a couplet on Burnside or another streetcar to a condo graveyard, I'd rather have a soccer stadium where I can pass a summer evening during the Great Depression Part Duex all tipsy on the delusion that I'm living in America's most European city.

Plus, having an MLS franchise in town will only further the chances of hooliganism. I'd pay good money to see a soccer riot in the downtown Nordstorms.

Labels: politics, sports

Two weeks from today the Portland Urban Iditarod will tear through the streets of downtown. I would have participated in this year's race if I could have found four drunks to drag me around the course in a shopping cart. Some friends and I talked about forming a team last week but plans quickly fell apart after everybody got into an argument over who would get to be the musher.

So I guess I'll just have to settle for playing spectator. Photos to come? You betcha.

Labels: sports

An excerpt from a fictional letter published by Reason magazine yesterday regarding the recent revelation that the Olympic champion enjoys a little marijuana every now and then....

Yet you all get bent out of shape when Ricky Williams, or I, or Josh Howard smoke a little dope to relax. Why? Because the idiots you’ve elected to make your laws have, without a shred of evidence, beat it into your head that smoking marijuana is something akin to drinking antifreeze, and done only by dirty hippies and sex offenders.

You’ll have to pardon my cynicism. But I call bullshit. You don’t give a damn about my health. You just get a voyeuristic thrill from watching an elite athlete fall from grace–all the better if you get to exercise a little moral righteousness in the process. And it’s hypocritical righteousness at that, given that 40 percent of you have tried pot at least once in your lives.

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

More here.

And another thing pot doesn't make people do? This.

(a quick thanks goes out to Sho for passing this one along)

Labels: sports, Vices

I was at the Rose Garden for last night's Blazers match-up against the Sacramento Kings. The home team held on for a one-point victory but you can read about all of that here. Instead, here's a slew of photos covering the sort of stuff that takes place center court when the cameras have cut away to commercial.

As with just about every professional indoor sport these days, halftime, gaps between periods and timeouts are filled with games and stunt-shows to keep the crowd from...presumably heading out to the concessions to buy stuff and support their local arena (?). With Civil War weekend fast approaching, the Rose Garden invited a few college students to serve as human bowling balls between the first and second period. Instead of one undergrad representing the University of Oregon and another for OSU, which would have made sense, they went with a "frat boy," a "sorority girl" and a "college dropout."

The frat boy managed to knock down the most pins and the dropout fell off his board at half court, evidently further proof that a lack of a college education won't help you if you ever find yourself participating in a goofy contest at an NBA game. The whole thing was obnoxiously staged and, yeah, pretty mean-spirited. Myself, I hold these sorts of things to a higher standard. Shame on you, Rose Garden. You should have just brought out the cheerleaders with the t-shirt cannons.

Another contest involved three people, a five-month pregnant woman included, running around with pizza boxes. The pregnant gal came in second.

And, of course, there was Blaze the Trail Cat who came out during the fourth quarter for a round of trampoline-fueled dunks. Blaze is far from being the NBA's most popular mascot and, with the Sonics now residing in Oklahoma City, the following question must be asked: does Sasquatch need a job and how quickly can he get to the Rose Garden from Seattle? Another job skill that might make him the perfect candidate to take over for Blaze? He's quite the drummer.

Labels: sports

Last Saturday's Oregon vs. Arizona game at Autzen Stadium was an emotional roller coaster. Or at least an emotional Tilt-a-Whirl. After leading by four touchdowns, the Ducks nearly blew their lead and the entire game in the second half. The team's near collapse probably had the most profound effect on the Oregon Duck himself. At several points during the fourth quarter, it seemed as if his Disney-branded heart was going to burst out of his chest and run laps around the field before collapsing into a pool of self pity on a bar stool at the Cooler Tavern across the street.

I was at the game along with my Canon camera and its not-so-awesome zoom lens. Have a look:

Here's the Duck in the student section during the first half, er, living it up with two shirtless fratboys. Going into halftime the Ducks were leading 45 - 17.

Then....tragedy. With six minutes left in the game, the Ducks lead had dropped to a measly three points. See how sad the Duck looks? Even those shirtless fratboys could do little to console him.

Arizona's mascots weren't about to offer him any sympathy, let alone an explanation for what they were doing at Autzen in the first place. Isn't there an NCAA rule that prevents team mascots from attending road games?

With five minutes left in the fourth quarter, many of the fans sitting in my section had begun booing the Ducks. I don't think I've ever witnessed a crowd jeer their own offensive line but the same thing happened last week too. Despite their decent record, the Ducks just can't seem to catch a break with their fans this year.

Then with 3:38 on the clock, LeGarrette Blount pulled off a 40-yard touchdown run. The boos turned into woos as disaster was thwarted. The Duck danced, the two Wildcats cringed and....

...according to the dictates of tradition, the Duck had to pull off 55 victory push-ups.

Labels: sports

Golf probably isn't the best pursuit for someone like me, given my limited career prospects, inability to understand handicaps, a natural tendency to get a little reckless whenever I have the opportunity to drive a golf cart (I'm actually sad to say I've never rolled one but I did have to jump out of one yesterday when I didn't set the emergency brake properly) and my current mailing address somewhere a few blocks south of bulls-eye for the brewing capitalism apocalypse. Golf is a game of kings, possibly lords or at least knights and, in the land of tired feudal metaphors I am but a lowly serf living in a hut made out of pig poop.

I'm also incredibly bad at it.

I blame too much mini-golf as a child for all of this. Don't let anyone tell you that the Family Fun Center in Wilsonville doesn't offer at least one kind of gateway drug. While a life-long unrequited love affair with the game is probably better than an addiction to some combination of meth and roofies, I moved on to full-fledged golf sometime in college and, despite hitting the links at least three whole times a year, I don't seem to be getting any better. While I've become fairly apt at keeping the ball on the right fairway I have a real problem with getting it to fly further than thirty yards. And clearing water hazards? Yeah, I have yet to actually do that. Even once.

Fortunately, the Portland area has several solid public courses that don't cost much more than a price of a movie to play on. $14 - $20 buys at least two hours of entertainment and access to an infinite amount of sports bloopers. Earlier this summer I watched a guy somehow tee off from the hole next to mine and send his ball flying across two fairways and into the driving range. A few years ago someone I know, who will remain nameless, managed to clear a difficult water hazard at RedTail....by hitting a duck. The ball bounced off one of its wings and it landed about five yards from the green.

I've played both the front and the back nine holes at Eastmoreland in the last month and that second half is killer for a sub-sub par player like me. Part of the course runs alongside train tracks. If passing locomotives don't prove daunting, the numerous amounts of waterways will. There's also ducks and geese that hang around the nearby rodendrum garden, not that they've gotten in the path of any projectiles. They just seem to enjoy quacking and squawking at the most inopportune of times. Like when I'm about to tee off, am teeing off and immediately after I botch teeing off.

With winter rapidly approaching (seriously, it's friggin' freezing outside right now), my clubs will probably sit in a corner until next spring, allowing me to forget everything, if anything, I learned on the links this summer. I'll probably never play Pebble Beach, mostly because I'll never be able to afford the $500+ greens fee, but I'll be satisfied if I can one day conquer the fourth hole at Eastmoreland.

Labels: sports

Tonight the Portland Timbers lost a match against Hollywood United of the U.S. Adult Soccer Association (USASA) in the first round of the 2008 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

I wish I could tell you what that means but there's a lot I don't know about soccer in this country. Despite having attended several Timbers games over the past few years, I still don't understand the rules, why the clock stops after forty-five minutes at the end of each half but the players keep playing for another five to ten minutes afterwards or what getting a "yellow card" means. At one point, I'm pretty there was a band called Yellow Card that recorded a song that may or may not have appeared on a Volkswagen commercial but I can't quite remember the details because I'm 92% sure that the band, the commercial and the song all sucked horribly.

I must confess that I don't know jack squat about soccer and that I only attend the occasional Timbers game to watch their mascot run around with a chainsaw and the Timbers Army throw around scarves, obscenities and smoke bombs (see above). I cheer when they cheer, swear when they swear and seem to always have a good time despite a complete ignorance of what's going on down on the field.

This much I do know: the Timbers are currently searching for a successor for Timber Jim, their now retired former mascot. The hour is growing late, I have to get up for work early and I can't seem to find anything beyond a Tribune article from a few weeks back regarding the application process. Please overlook my half-assed research and have a look at one would-be new guy's attempt to fill Jim's boots. Feel free to rate his log-cutting skills in the comments area below.

I went to tonight's game with two people who know even less about soccer than I do. They spent the whole time starring in a combination of both wonder and horror at the army, the smoke bombs, the chainsaws, etc. I'd like to think that they liked it.

Labels: sports