Dan Mooney

Past Augusts might just have been times for baseball pennant races to arrange themselves and for networks to air preseason football games as if starters played more than a quarter. This year, August is different because of the World Cup having just been played. With all the free time I had this summer and all the afternoon bar visits that filled a thimblefull of that time, I got to watch more World Cup than I ever had and even as I may have insulted it with one side of my mouth, I lauded it twice over with the other:

It’s as good as soccer gets! Every match counts!

…The worst of hockey is better than the best of soccer. Stuff happens in hockey.

Games are usually morning and afternoon, EST! They’re brisk and don’t last three to four hours or even past midnight sometimes!

…Why spend even two hours watching something that two times out of three ends in a tie?

It’s virtually uninterrupted athleticism! It draws your undivided attention!

…Yeah, it’s only interrupted by fake injuries, which are more abhorrent than commercials.

You’ve heard all these before.

Well, don’t look now, kids, because the English Premier League is well underway! And it’s brought to you by Barclay’s!

I thought of giving the league and the sport a chance two years ago when I came back from Ireland half-drunk and entirely pretentious. This year I’ve been putting to use what’s left of my World Cup enthusiasm and have been following Arsenal through its first couple of matches/games/competitions.

Now, I first chose Arsenal as my team the very first time I heard their name, over ten years ago, while playing FIFA 99 on PlayStation my freshman year of college. I loved the name of the team, how it was all full of threatening potential (I’d name a minor league baseball team the Powderkegs for the same reason). Fans have chosen teams for lesser, uniform-related reasons, I’m sure, and so my mostly arbitrary choice was made. I did recently go so far as to look up Arsenal’s history – you know, to know the team I supposedly “cheered” – and confirmed that while they’ve had success, they aren’t the superior team in the history of the league. And that’s perfect by me, because while I accept New York-area fans of the Yankees, I roll my Met fan eyes at, say, Estonians who visit the U.S. and bring Yankee fandom back home because they’re recently and historically dominant. Then again, I’m not sure how rooting for the Cubs would play in countries that (aren’t necessarily Estonia and) don’t exactly hum with optimism. Maybe thousands of miles is a little too close to home for those folks.

Last week I tuned in for Arsenal’s first regular-season matchup, against Liverpool. I looked forward it for days and considered going to the bar at 10am on the Sunday, before declining. But I watched it at home with breakfast (another perk) and things picked up right where the World Cup left off: Liverpool scored the first goal seconds after I left for the bathroom, and when I did get back, I fell asleep for most of the second half. Then, keeping things rolling, I misread the schedule and missed the first part of Arsenal’s second game, of which I watched five minutes until they went ahead 3-0 and which they eventually won 6-0.

Soccer: It’s Fun-tastic!

An old screencap from February of 2009. The point here is not to show Michael Phelps toweling off while two servants pray in the background. The point is the three “Michaels,” two “Mikes” and two images of a Michael on one television screen. Even if it’s not a record, it’s further proof of the ESPN family being unfamiliar with subtlety.

Love is shown in many ways–
In holding hands, in greeting cards,
In making long-term memories,
And sharing family holidays.

Love is seen at many times–
In goodbye hugs, in pecking cheeks,
In chocolate and in flowers, too,
And crafting lovely, heartfelt rhymes.

But love, romantic love, is more than those,
And often less romantic than it seems:
The one with whom you choose to spend your life,
Becomes the person of your dreams.

When youth is gone, and wisdom takes its place,
And what is said and done has all been done,
It’s being there, through everything, that shows
The love of two becoming one.

—

What’s the meaning of this?

Well, for a few years there I worked at a TV show called As the World Turns. One day I got a call from upstairs: Production needed a poem for a character called Luke to recite at the wedding of two characters called Alison and Aaron. A quick Googling showed the same popular love poems I’d seen in many previous searches, so with little prodding, I took it upon myself to tailormake this bit of verse, knowing at the time something of love. The poem made it to the final script, so crossing that off the bucket list, I tuned in for it but alas, it had been cut from the air show (Alison and Aaron’s marriage didn’t work out, probably because of this). CUT TO: Two years later. Another wedding, another phone call, another chance for poetry. So I pushed this along, and later today Abigail might read some of it, and it’ll be our last goodbye.

Found this little guy in a tide pool at Point Dume State Beach in Malibu on 11/15/08.

It can only have been the last time I ordered Chinese food that I had the following brainstorm.

I was having a no-good, very bad day when I knew the only temporary solution would be a comforting dinner that evening. Beer wouldn’t do, because I was doing well not to keep beer in the house and because I had no plans to go out that night and didn’t want any. I wanted to crawl right into bed, but first, however improbably given my size, into a plateful of chicken and broccoli with an egg roll and the aggressive brown sauce that truly separates Chinese food from ordinary, healthy food.

Ever mindful of the pain of others, and of how much free time I’d soon have, I immediately thought how this idea could be brought to the public. It would have to be more than just comfort food to give this idea its wings, because there are plenty of restaurants that offer satisfactory options along those lines.

No, complaining would be in on this idea’s ground floor. The confession would have to precede the absolution. The day’s problems would have to (again) be given voice just before the food being served, the cure-all thus having maximum effect.

In this restaurant – the Whine & Diner – the customer enters sideways through the door, of course, so the world on his shoulders can fit through. He has a seat – on a regular bar stool, or on a couch if that’s not putting too fine a point on it. Finally, he orders. While the food is being prepared/reheated/cooked, which shouldn’t be long given its presumed rusticity, the customer has the perfect opportunity to run through what’s on his mind. The server has the obligation to listen.

Details are still to be shaken out – the qualifications of the servers, their particular training for this forum, how to cook the preferred meals without hiring the mothers of all these customers ahead of time – but the gist is already a good step forward.

It was right after I brainstormed this that I thought they already have places somewhat like these, and they’re called “bars,” or elsewhere, “pubs.” To address this similarity in function, the W&D’s tagline should be something like, “Why feel no pain when you can feel fat and happy?”