Take me to the ballgame

© Joselito Briones

From Mountainhouse, we dropped by Kev K's apartment to bring him some pizza, then to back to San Lorenzo to pick up Kebbs and Noel. Today's itenerary: a baseball game.

© Joselito Briones

The match was between Oakland A's and Minnesota Twins, in Oakland Coliseum. Not much seemed to have happened. The more interesting aspect, of course, was the audience. Three kids sitting next to me made running commentaries on every player, every play, every past play that reminded them of the current play, cheered and booed both teams at the same time, sang with every song played, and called every food vendor that went past. And yes, at the end of the game, I found out that very few people go there to actually watch the game. It's more like an excuse to pig out on junk food. People didn't seem to mind bingeing on junk food, because unlike vegeing out at home and consuming the same huge amount of junk food and beer, their excuse here is that they're actually participating in active sport. Never mind that the participation is limited to cheering and jeering. And sitting on their collective asses, not too different from watching the game on TV at home. Even the parking lot was a big venue for barbecue parties. We had our own share of food: popcorns, hotdogs, nachos, etc.

The highlight of the game had to be the fireworks afterwards. We had to wait more than an hour after the very brief game to watch the fireworks, because the game ended way before it got dark.

Seeing the news on TV when we got back to San Lorenzo confirmed my feeling after the game, judging from the cheers of the crowd, that the local team won.


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Boxers and Glass Boxes

© Joselito Briones

Everybody here in Mannheim is talking about a new store - the flagship store of Peek & Cloppenburg (photo above and below), designed by "starchitect" Richard Meier (known for his glass boxes), opened today.


© Joselito Briones

Meanwhile all the buzz today isn't just about the new shop. A big sporting event was held here in Mannheim - big in that just about any German sports celebrity was there - the boxing match between Germany's adopted son Wladimir Klitschko (watch out, Borat!) and Ray Austin for the world heavyweight title. Klitschko won.


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Mystery solved.

This is a promotional photo from Nike

Sometime in June, I mentioned the gesture made by Spanish forward Fernando Torres, after scoring a goal in a World Cup match, and provided a link to a photo showing this gesture. 5 months on and I keep on getting visits here, by bulks, looking for that photo, which has since been removed by its original poster. Maybe they're just curious as to why he was not invited to join the national team this time. Or maybe they're just wondering if he's recovered from his current injury. The image shown here is a publicity shot by Nike, his current sponsor.

Come to think about it though, it was quite obvious that he was gonna be huge, and a lot of people would be looking for anything at all about him. So maybe it's not such a surprise after all.

One visitor who eventually found the entry, I guess after some digging through my archives, left this comment:
"The gesture done by Torres is known as "the archer". He did it imitating his Atletico Madrid idol Kiko"


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Mozart's 8 1/2

© Joselito Briones

I guess it's not uncommon for any country to be dubious of visiting foreigners' ability to assimilate with local vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

In London, it makes sense that they have "Look Left" and "Look Right" signs on pedestrian crossings, as most foreigners visiting the city would probably come from a country with reversed vehicular traffic directions. The problem is, they put the directional sign on the street pavement, on the side of the street where a pedestrian would be crossing from, inches away from where one would be standing just before he crosses the street. Whoever looks in that direction before crossing? To look there would mean to bend your head so much as to disregard the actual direction and situation of the traffic (not what your instinct would tell you to do). The traffic direction written on the other side of the street is much more visible, that's what one sees before crossing the street. Only, that signage points to the opposite direction. And the letters are upside down from the viewpoint of the pedestrians who could see them, adding to the confusion. Obviously, it's a lot more expensive to put the directional signage where they should be, on a pole, where it would be clearly visible, and visible only from one side, from the other side of the street.

© Joselito Briones

In Germany, they went one step further. They've got a bigger problem in that there is a big probability that not many visiting foreigners understand the German language. So instead of words, they made graphic representations (photo, left). This one says: "This is a street where you can see an average German family. The man, distinguished as so by the fact that he doesn't have long hair and he's not wearing a dress nor a skirt, is playing football with the son, same gender indication as before, only this one's smaller. The wife, invisible from this illustration, is home, in that two-story house, cooking. This family has a car, and it's not one of those enormous gas-guzzling american cars, either. It's parked right on the street because they use their garage for something else. The hockey stick is for the mother's use, to whack some sense into the father and the son if they become too crazy about football."

When I took this photo, there were several tourists standing in front of the sign, looking at it, while someone, presumably the tour guide, was speaking loudly to everyone in a language I didn't recognize. I could imagine her explaining the signage to the group, "This is the place where a man and his son, bonding and playing football, got run over by a car. At first, the authorities thought it was an accident, but after investigation, they found out that the driver of the car is also the resident of the house they were playing in front of. He got annoyed because of all the noise they're making and decided to run them over. The driver's wife watched the carnage from the window of the house."


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P.S.
The German team lost their bid for the World Championship last night, when they lost the match to Italy. I thought they really did a good job though, and I for one will probably be watching more football from now on.


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Where's Freddie?

Playing repeatedly on TV these days is this really cute world cup ad for Adidas. In it, two Spanish-speaking kids in a neighborhood playground get to pick members of their dreamteam. They of course pick all the biggest names and football superstars. Michael Ballack, David Beckham, Zinédine Zidane, Kaká, Frank Lampard, Arjen Robben, Juan Román Riquelme, Raúl, Alessandro Nesta and Oliver Kahn (the very definition of FIERCE bowed out gracefully when replaced recently as number one goalie for the German team by Jens Lehmann). The first version of the ad was funny enough when the two kids just picked whomever came to their mind. It was a surprise that after a few days, a new version of the ad came out where the players they picked actually appeared in their playground. And then one of the boys picked a football hero from the past (Franz Beckenbauer) which earned chuckle from the other boy, whose jaw dropped when the player also appeared in the playground. With the help of one of his teamplayers, he then picked Michel Platini to be on his side.

The official Adidas website for the ad, titled "Impossible Team", also posted high-res screen shots and behind-the-scene photos of the ad. The only complaint I have about the ad is that Freddie's nowhere to be found.

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