OT: 59th Obsequious Banter Thread: (Giroux + Simmonds + Couturier + Voracek + Patrick + Sanheim) ÷ Gudas

[BernieParent]

thread title is full of win

Gudas' nickname could be The Denominator.

 

[Bruckuss]

Here is your reward.

As a former bike tech, this is extra disturbing lol

 

[FLYguy3911]

US soccer lol

 

[Jray42]

Oh my god we missed the World Cup

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

I’m glad I decided I wasn’t going to Russia for it next year. Unacceptable.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

I’m at a loss.

 

[Beef Invictus]

I just don't get how the f*** that happens

 

[Lotusflower]

Love playing soccer but I could care less about watching it for the most part.
I'll resubmit my request for reading/book suggestions. Anyone reading anything interesting?
Thanks to the Captain for his suggestion. That looks interesting.

 

[FatTugboatFlahr]

It happen when you have an 80 year old Tim Howard in net who has the reflexes of a dead cat.

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I just don't get how the **** that happens

You should see how different it is to play with Europeans - I mean just regular European guys, not professionals. When I lived in Sweden, there were three British guys, two Swedes and myself and we went out to play 3-on-3 one Saturday. The next week we had 22+ people show up. (And that group that started that day carried on and got into the Swedish third division, though I'm not sure where they are now, maybe the fourth.) The British and Irish guys especially just don't take a lot of touches on the ball - they have it etched into their psyches to let the ball do the work, so they don't dribble much, and they anticipate where the ball and other players are going to be all the time. When you watch Americans play after that, it is really, really noticeable - they look spastic, like they can't go two seconds without touching the ball. (I was a lifelong left back, so I never did that much dribbling anyway, but I would have been spastic too if called on to dribble much.) That's not a criticism necessarily, but just an observation. I'm just pointing out that the game is much different in other places, even if those differences are kind of subtle at times.

One HUGE problem is that they have never been anywhere near as good as they think they are. There is an arrogance coursing through U.S. soccer that I find so tremendously off-putting and I just can't stand anything about them. I love the sport to death, and I love America ... like, the right amount - the two happiest days of my life were February 22 and 24, 1980, and that will never change - but I have no patriotism whatsoever about that team/organization. If they ever want to get anywhere, they first need to get rid of the entitled attitude. Once they approach the game the right way mentally, their athleticism and physical training could see them really get places. It's especially bad now, because world football is really in a low place and they'd have a chance to make a splash. (Part of the problem is out of their control of course, in the fact that our country doesn't have the same tradition as European and South American nations where kids grow up dreaming of playing football professionally.)

This probably isn't going to be a very popular opinion, but that bunch really swing off my last nerve, because I know how completely I could get behind them if things were different.

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I'll resubmit my request for reading/book suggestions. Anyone reading anything interesting?

Rather than try and guess what you have and haven't read, I am just going to start typing all of them that I can think of that I can recommend unreservedly and I'll just include obvious ones.

MUST READ NO MATTER WHAT
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
Hi Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams (3 books)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

OTHERS
Carl Hiaasen - everything
Elmore Leonard - everything
James Ellroy - start with the LA Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz) and continue to American Tabloid, which is amazeballs
Raymond Chandler - everything
Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Wartime - Paul Fussell (Non-fiction)
The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
deadkidsongs - Toby Litt
Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

I'll add more to this post as I think of them - those are just off the top of my head.

 

[Danko]

Whoever posted they needed to go car shopping the other day must have somehow jinxed me. This morning i was driving and my truck started to drop rpms and went from 50 mph down to 20 like it slipped out of gear or lost power. Only happens when in drive, reverse and 2nd are okay.

I only owe a couple grand on it but wasn't prepared to go car shopping. Im gonna take it to the shop to have them look at it first but got a feeling with my luck lately im gonna end up needing a new car.

 

[YEM]

I'm irrationally mad at Don Garber and the MLS for bringing back all the US "stars" after the 2014 world cup for marketing purposes and then getting rid of Klinsmann for his anti-MLS stance whilst bringing in that dinosaur Arena. The MLS has only really helped all the other CONCACAF nations and clearly hurt us in a big way...

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

 

[Captain Dave Poulin]

I'm irrationally mad at Don Garber and the MLS for bringing back all the US "stars" after the 2014 world cup for marketing purposes and then getting rid of Klinsmann for his anti-MLS stance whilst bringing in that dinosaur Arena. The MLS has only really helped all the other CONCACAF nations and clearly hurt us in a big way...

I didn't pay any attention to Klinsmann as the US coach, but the knock on him has always been that he benefited from Low's tactics while the latter was his assistant with the German team. That stint with Germany pretty much made his reputation as a coach. I have no idea if he would be better than Arena, but I would guess you're right about that. At least he brings a broader perspective on the game.

 

[YEM]

I didn't pay any attention to Klinsmann as the US coach, but the knock on him has always been that he benefited from Low's tactics while the latter was his assistant with the German team. That stint with Germany pretty much made his reputation as a coach. I have no idea if he would be better than Arena, but I would guess you're right about that. At least he brings a broader perspective on the game.

Klinsmann had his faults and one could easily argue that he deserved to be fired [he was at the helm for a lot of this horrid qualifying run] but I don't think it can be argued that he was wrong in saying that our top players should not be playing in the MLS, etc. The stance that US Soccer must be inextricably linked with the MLS is faulty and profit driven, and it's led directly to this disaster...

 

[Hurricane28]

There's a huge problem with development in US Soccer. The pay to play academies are really screwing up everything, with having the "best players" come out from having the best opportunity and not the best skill level

 

[Lotusflower]

Rather than try and guess what you have and haven't read, I am just going to start typing all of them that I can think of that I can recommend unreservedly and I'll just include obvious ones.

MUST READ NO MATTER WHAT
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
Hi Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams (3 books)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

OTHERS
Carl Hiaasen - everything
Elmore Leonard - everything
James Ellroy - start with the LA Quartet (The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz) and continue to American Tabloid, which is amazeballs
Raymond Chandler - everything
Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Wartime - Paul Fussell (Non-fiction)
The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
The Butcher Boy - Patrick McCabe
deadkidsongs - Toby Litt
Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

I'll add more to this post as I think of them - those are just off the top of my head.

-Fate must be calling me. I've had a dozen people tell me to read Vonnegut in the last month or so. I have a stolen copy of Slaughterhouse 5 in my house for the last year and half and havent gotten around to it yet.
-Fear and Loathing is overrated especially in the context of his other stuff. I personally like F+L on the Campaign Trail '72 much better.
-Battle Royale is top 5 favorites for me. I bought it out of the manga section at the old Borders in center city Philly back in 2002 and Ive never kept it far from me since. I've loaned it out to dozens of people over the years and have just as many stories about trying to pry it back from people who wanted to steal it permanently
-Thanks for the rest I havent read and/or heard of. I'll try to get to them

 

[Juicy Pop]

Has anyone else found the site to be ridiculously slow since the switch to this new host?

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

It's on and off in terms of speed. Sometimes it works fine and other times it takes forever. I'm even a sponsor with no use for adblock on the site (it's turned off) and it's still super inconsistent.

 

[Striiker]

Has anyone else found the site to be ridiculously slow since the switch to this new host?

On PC, yes. On mobile, no.

 

[Young Sandwich]

Anyone else have firewall issues at work with the new host? I had no issues with the old site, but now it gets blocked for content filtering, saying the site is characterized in "Adult Themes, Blogs, Lingerie/Bikini" haha. I know shit can get a little wild around here every now and then but that doesn't sound right to me...

 

[Striiker]

Just saw on Twitter that the Boy Scouts are now going to allow girls to join...

How? Why? What?

I mean... the Girl Scouts exist...

 

[FatTugboatFlahr]

Lmao. People are dumb as f***.

 

[Striiker]

Lmao. People are dumb as ****.

Apparently it was a unanimous vote by the board.

Companies are so scared of becoming the target of idiot SJWs and the dip**** media that they do insane and irrational things to appease them.

"Common" sense is becoming so rare.