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Just the other day, my friend Hanniel and I were talking about how, despite all of the pessimism and the undeniably rotten developments that plague our country, that it's not at all unrealistic to adopt a more positive outlook towards our native land. I suppose this is similar to the dynamic of a person in love: that despite the many difficulties that threaten to tear the relationship asunder, sometimes it takes but one passionately sincere gesture or sentiment to help a loving relationship stay the course. I've just been invited to attend and contribute to Mahal ko ang Pilipinas, a youth initiative undertaken by the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA). Briefly, ISA is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit institution founded by Dr. Jesus Estanislao to seek improvements in the practice of public governance at all levels of the government, with the further aim of gradual alignment of standards in public governance with global principles and the best possible practices.
Tomorrow's Renaissance Initiative (RI) seeks to craft a sectoral roadmap for the Philippines by specifying sectoral anchors that will form an open coalition. The aim of the RI is to institutionalize the commitment of the different anchors to produce the following results:
a) The coalition formulates, and then reviews as well as updates, its own Sectoral Roadmap in support of the National Roadmap. They report on their progress in the biennial conference organized to chronicle the journey of responsible citizens towards Philippines 2030.
b) Each sector carries out an internal outreach program, aimed at its members, to promote and spread the observance of the proper values connected with Responsible Citizenship and Good Governance.
c) Each sector shall also have an external outreach program, by which it assists other sectors in society or specific public governance units, such as cities and eventually provinces and municipalities, which are actively and seriously pursuing targets under their own governance Roadmaps.
Now this is exciting stuff! I've always wondered how people can lament the numerous shortcomings of our current governance while at the same time justify their unwillingness to participate in public service initiatives because of the supposed irreversibly entrenched corruption that permeates all levels of governance. If I haven't put everyone to sleep with this post, why not drop by ISA?
It's time to take the power back.
I had a lunch meeting yesterday with Dr. Torralba and company. Largely due to my inadvertent revelation in Teachers' Camp that the reason why I approached my marriage with my virginity intact was because I like to KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!), Dr. Torralba has invited me to reprise my buffoonery again for a symposium entitled "Loving for a Reason...Loving for a Lifetime (A Symposium on Sex, Love, and Life in Marriage)", which will be held in the University on August 5, 2006.
And yes, I did sing the chorus to Boyzone's catchy signature tune, "Love me for a Reason (Let the Reason be Love)". I was thinking that after admitting to an entire auditorium of teachers and student leaders that I love to KISS, I couldn't embarrass myself more. Of course, I could be wrong. I've noticed that, in life, just as you've figured out that you probably couldn't sink any lower, you surprise yourself by doing so. When Trixie del Rosario shared some humorous true stories about embarrassing moments in teaching, I noted that "That's why I can't bring myself to accept the concept of making something foolproof. If there's one thing I've learned, it's to never underestimate the power of fools."
Anyway, we were encouraged to design our talks to meet the needs of a crowd composed largely of 4th year highschool students, their teachers, and some parents. Ordinarily, addressing a crowd that unwieldy (it's hard to determine whether one should concentrate on the young, the young at heart, or the young once) would be an occasion for dread, but Dr. Torralba's contagious bonhomie helped us to focus our presentations on simply making our respective talks, in the words of the maestro himself, "informal, light, anecdotal, and TO THE POINT."
The meeting was also a welcome opportunity to meet up with old friends, and to take an active role in cultivating new ones. I had a fascinating conversation with MA Hum candidate Steph Sevilla, who very candidly spoke of her plans for wedded bliss, if ever. Her sister's not-so-gentle, but perhaps gently meant reminder that she could possibly go around being called Steph Balingit for the rest of her life led Steph to discover a newfound love for the hyphen: that is, that she could go through life as a happily hyphenated wife. I met the very friendly, and joyfully intense Dawn Dacanay, as well as the husband and wife team of Des and Lina Racho, who are active in EDUCHILD, a parent group that organizes family orientation programs and promotes the continuous exchange of experiences in the field of family education. And as always, the power troika of Ronie Balbieran, Jessica Gallegos, and Jill Padlan kept everyone entertained with their willful sincerity, and good cheer. I'll just leave it up to your imaginations as to who provided which.
The portion of the seminar I'm being asked to contribute to is entitled "Do's and Don'ts...That Make a Lot of Sense (Managing Affections)", where I will be reunited with fellow Mac user Greg Garcia. I had the pleasure of working with both Greg and his wife Lora just a few weeks ago in PASSA NYC in Baguio, and they're wonderfully spirited and engaging speakers. Greg, buddy, I can't wait!
Before exploring this post, here's a short primer on the context the following events stem from:
The Alpha Course consists of a series of talks addressing key issues relating to the Christian faith. The Alpha course is a 15-session practical introduction to the Christian faith designed primarily for non-churchgoers and new Christians. The course also serves as a refresher course for both practising Catholics and those who have lapsed in their faith.
Alpha is for everyone, especially:
• Those wanting to investigate Christianity
• New Christians
• Newcomers to the church
• Those who want to brush up on the basics
Alpha runs in every type of church, including:
• Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Salvation Army, Free Church, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God and House Churches
• All the churches provide the same material, making alterations only to suit local culture. Alpha is run in different contexts: Alpha for Prisons, Alpha for Students, Youth Alpha, Alpha for Forces and Alpha for Catholics.
We conducted our first Alpha session away from the kindly hospitality of Tita Carmen Borja at the Cipriano home on 6 Sparrow, Greenmeadows. Other than the generous portions provided by Anjo (who was a remarkably sensitive host, and a worthy successor to rich hosting legacy established by Tita Carmen), we feasted on a rather spirited discussion on both the torments of the damned and the promised blessings of those who have accepted Christ. Here are some of the highlights:
Geography's never been this much fun! Thanks to Bong, Franco, Tin, Anjo and myself, we resurrected alternative meanings to different countries, such as JAPAN (Just Always Pray at Night), and ITALY (I Trust and Love You).
Some people loom larger in the imagination when they aren't around; let's call it "presence by absence". Ralph's first no-show in Alpha prompted everyone to share their Ralph stories, from Tin's untimely revelation of the final episodes of Lost ("Are you following the series?", "Yeah, but it's okay...") to Anjo's inadvertent "blackification" of Ralph's musical tastes ("What sort of music do you listen to?", "Alternative, but I'm getting blacker by the minute...").
Hanniel's pronunciation of the word "garage" led Tin to commit, dare I say it, sin. Actually Tin more or less prefigured our resultant discussion on Romans 3:23, which reads "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God..." Well, as Tin's caustic observation of Hanniel's educated British accent shows ("Ga-rage? Isn't it garage?"), some "fall shorter" than others. Still, Tin could've let it slide. Bong was shaking his head in mock dismay at Tin's galling display of unChristian behavior.
Bong cites George Michael's song, "Faith" to underscore the fruits of being in Christ, that "you gotta have faith". Almost against my will, I sing the bridge to that song. Much like the scorpion of anecdotal lore, I couldn't help it; it's in my nature to respond to iconic 80s pop culture references.
Hanniel reminds the group not to think about "perfection" at this point. I would qualify that: it wouldn't do, at this point, to discuss "perfection" as "the condition, state, or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects", but to recall that in its original conception, from the Latin (per- ‘through, completely’ + facere ‘do.’), perfection, essentially, is a process.
We ended the night on a beautiful note though, and it wasn't my rendition of George Michael"s "Faith". We willingly accepted Hanniel's euphemism on homework, "homefun"; coming from a group of strong-willed individuals who are or were most creative in avoiding any sort of formal study, this was a fantastic development.
Due to popular demand (indeed, the clamor generated by my three loyal readers can truly be deafening, even in the annals of cyberspace), I'm posting links to some stuff that I've either seen, read, or simply enjoyed. If there's one thing my renewed experience with the power of the Web has taught me, it's that there's so much out there that we can find joy in. All we have to do is generate some pretty clever boolean expressions to create a search that is commensurate to our desire. Without further ado, here are some links that kept me company during the less eventful portions of my working day:
Here's an old classic that never fails to amuse. The clean visuals, the exceptional pacing, and the satisfying conclusion all lead to a delightful viewing experience. Revisit old childhood memories with Bambi, with the special participation of Godzilla.
This recalls the classic Kevin Kline retort from the movie The Emperor's Club: "...as the great wit Aristophanes once wrote, roughly translated, youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever. Stupid lasts forever.
Finally, here's some food for thought regarding both the wonder that is, and the peril that may be Wikipedia. Wiki it?
Enjoy!
I just got a beautiful laptop bag for my MacBook from Mobile1 at the Podium, so they graciously lent me the password to their WiFi. Many thanks! Anyway, I'm enjoying merienda at the Terry Selection at the lower ground floor of the Podium with Hanniel and Riva. The food here is amazing! Hanniel and Riva are sharing the Marquesa de Chocolate VALOR, which is a lovely amalgamation of rich VALOR chocolate strewn liberally with almond praline. Perhaps as an homage to the resilient peasant stock I am descended from, I simply ordered the VALOR chocolate, which was almost too rich for my tastes, but proved to be a welcome afternoon treat.
I'll post something again later, maybe when I'm done with the gym. Oh my gosh, is this my shortest entry ever? It's oddly liberating...
I'm busy trying to sort out some photos, so I've decided to post, in lieu of the kilometric musings that my loyal readers (all three of them, probably) have come to expect, some choice YouTube features that deserve increased airplay, as well as some old classic funnies. Enjoy!
Sports broadcasting has a rich legacy of compelling, insightful commentary. This rich legacy of sports reporting excellence doesn't stand a chance against this guy. Boom goes the dynamite!
In a gesture of good faith more substantial than any recent initiatives to foster good relations between the Philippines and Thailand, here's a veritable classic from our Asian neighbors. Lovely tuna ad.
Lastly, here's a classic joke that academicians and pastors normally dredge up whenever they want to poke gentle fun at both the academe and dogmatism. Reprinted from Whosoever.
The Thermodynamics of Hell
A retiring physical chemistry professor was setting his last exam, for a graduate course in statistical thermodynamics. Being a bit bored with it all, and with a well kept and wry sense of humour, he set a single question on the sheet:
Is Hell endothermic or exothermic? Support you answer with a proof.
He had little idea what to expect, or how to grade the results, but decided to reward any student who was able to come up with a reasonable and consistent reply to his query. One A was awarded.
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. The top student however wrote the following answer:
First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, lets look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. There are two possible conditions. One, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate t which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase exponentially until all hell breaks loose. Conversely, if hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, than the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over, condition two.
We can solve this with the 1990 postulation of Theresa LeClair, the girl who lived across the hall from me in first year residence. Since I have still not been successful in obtaining sexual relations with her, condition two above has not been met, and thus it can be concluded that condition one is true, and hell is exothermic.
endothermic: characterized by or formed with absorption of heat
exothermic: characterized by or formed with evolution of heat
I just recently installed MacSword on my MacBook, and I was delighted to find an old Christian favorite available for inclusion in the modules that you can use to customize MacSword, Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Following my brief bout of depression regarding the mix-up at St. John, I consider myself blessed to have stumbled onto Chesterton once again. Not only is he one of the most wonderfully charming and inventive writers of the 20th century, he is also perhaps the most intellectually satisfying of that marvelously gifted group of English Christian writers. This is no mean feat considering that he counted amongst his contemporaries such names as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
The following essay features Chesterton at his best: disarmingly intelligent, passionate, and filled with the joy of his Christianity. This made my weekend so much more blessed. It might prove to be a daunting read, but it remains so only if you insist on approaching Chesterton with an unbecoming seriousness. Dour, solemn, and overly serious readers might be put off by his breezy, elegantly whimsical intellectual spirituality. Chesterton is like fine wine with a delightful bouquet and a full-bodied robustness that sneaks past your initial encounter. In other words, sip: do not gulp.
A final word to my family: I really enjoyed the weekend. This essay underscores the wealth of our joy, which we find in God and one another. Enjoy!
From Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, Authority and the Adventurer
The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one comer of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
My architect, Pablo Antonio, just informed me that some sort of snafu happened at the school yesterday. We ordered around eighty-one new switches from Ortigas Home Depot, which were delivered the other and received by the guards on duty at St. John. Unfortunately, when one of the guards, Ferdinand, re-counted the switches because the workers were getting ready to install them already, he found out that we lack ten switches. When Pablo started investigating, he found out that the guards, Ferdinand and Espinosa admittedly did not properly check out the delivery. Thus, they signed for a delivery that may or may not have been complete. Sigh.
It’s amazing how these little difficulties, if they happen often enough, or are unveiled at critical moments, can just suck all the energy out of a person. I remember telling Manny Sator that doing the grocery nowadays is often an occasion to dread. I never thought that I would be unmanned by a simple grocery list, but it happens sometimes, if my bank account is empty enough. Switches! Damn!
I know that “this too shall pass”, but I feel like the punchline of a Simpsons episode: the one where Lisa notes sagely that the Chinese word for “crisis” is the same word they use for “opportunity”, and Homer blurts out “Yes, crisistunity!” Oh well. At least it’s something to blog.
While I’m trying to sort out my Baguio pics, here’s something to whet the appetite of Filipino cineastes. My good friend, Joey Fernandez, has re-launched what I call “the seminal clearinghouse for Filipino independent cinema and assorted film-related fun”, Brash Young Cinema. Check him out.
Also, for you football fanatics, ESPN2’s Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, has written an entertaining feature on how he chose an English Premiere League team to root for. Read how he belatedly, unabashedly, jumps on the football bandwagon.
And finally, just picked this up on that amazing site, YouTube. It’s Sprint’s delightful “crime deterrent” commercial. Check it out.
I know that I sort of implied that I would be blogging my PASSA adventures, but there’s been so much happening, and internet access has been so difficult to find in places other than Microtel that I haven’t had time to update my blog till now. I would like to extend my sincere apologies to all my regular readers (who, if we discount the members of my immediate family, barely merit the plural form of the word “reader”).
At any rate, I’m scheduled to deliver a teaching demonstration on the art of reading today at around 10:30. Hopefully, after Lora and Greg Garcia are done with their talk, we’ll be able to leave Baguio by 5 pm. See you guys in Manila! I’ll upload my pics and give a more detailed report of PASSA 2006 when I get back to my polluted haven of unimpeded internet access.
Oh yeah. Joden Alcoreza proposed to Jill Padlan yesterday, and much to delight of the many romantics who happen to be passionately in love with the vocation of teaching, she accepted Joden’s proposal with almost unbridled joy. More on this later. Till then, hopefully a picture of the happy couple to be would suffice.
After a long, warmly nostalgic trip, I’ve finally arrived in Baguio! After dropping off Maren (from FEU) at the facilitators cottage in Teachers Camp, we’ve finally checked in at the Microtel. Our accommodations are excellent, as you might surmise given the picture I snapped of the hotel, and the company is even better. In addition to UA&P stalwarts such as Joyce de Leon, Cathy Limsoc and Ronnie Balbieran, I was reunited with Mr. Pagsi. Amazingly enough, he still remembers me! Mr. Pagsi is a veritable legend in the teaching profession: fifty-five years of continuous, passionate service in the Ateneo de Manila High School. He taught my dad way back in 1960, and myself in 1988. He’s one of the reasons why I found myself drawn, almost irresistibly, to the teaching profession despite my self-professed aim to follow the dictates of the motivation for profit.
In retrospect, I don’t think that I was really cut out to make millions, or to live my life with the casual affluence evinced only by the very rich. As my dad oftentimes reminded me while growing up, I should count my lucky stars that I wasn’t born “old rich” but that I was born “old smart”. My family has always had a strong intellectual legacy, especially intellectual work that leads to public service. Teaching, I found to my chagrin a long time ago, was in my blood. It’s only recently that I’ve learned to embrace this legacy of intellectual public service. For this I thank my loving family, who have always supported me, and Mr. Pagsi. My parents made me who I am. Mr. Pagsi helped me see who I can be. For that, my most heartfelt thanks.
At any rate, I’m on my way to mass at the Cathedral. Already Lora (formerly Tan) Garcia is itching to drop by an ukay-ukay. Sounds like an adventure in the works! See you soon!
Despite the inclement weather, I’m hurriedly making preparations to join the UA&P contingent to the PASSA National Youth Congress in Baguio. Now before my friends and loved ones start accusing me of everything from sadomasochism to aberrantly low intellectual behavior (stupidity), let me assure everyone that I have been monitoring the weather reports and have been continually confirming and re-confirming travel plans with the proper people. Still, I must confess that I’m approaching this trip to Baguio with a healthy dose of fear, and oddly, warm sentiment.
But briefly, let me describe what PASSA is, so I can explain at length why I harbor such warm feelings towards it. The Philippine Association of Secondary School Administrators (PASSA) holds an annual youth congress in Baguio City where teachers and students from both public and private secondary schools gather for three or four days of substantive seminars, workshops, and fellowship activities.
When I first came to teach in UA&P in 1997, I was selected to accompany a group of students and faculty members who were going to serve as facilitators for the proceedings. I must confess, at this point, that I have always had fond memories of Baguio, since my parents would take my sisters and I up to The City of Flowers regularly when we were younger. My sisters and I would have great fun in Baguio: horseback riding, playing mini-golf at the old Camp John Hay, then gorging on ice cream at the ice cream shop right beside the mini-golf course, roller skating, hiking, making our annual pilgrimage for strawberry jam at the Good Shepherd Compound, generally knitting body, mind, and spirit together. Since then, I’ve always associated Baguio with a sense of crisp freshness, and renewal. Baguio was where people went to be people again.
The PASSA facilitators are generally a great bunch of people; how couldn’t they be, since my sisters normally served as facilitators? Still, it was great working with people who tried hard to render infectiously enthusiastic service during the day, and labored mightily to exhaust themselves in raucous recreation later at night. These late-night escapades, I remember, served to validate our day. Partly due to our relative youth, and partly because of the cold, we never seemed to run out of energy, either at night or during the day. I remember patronizing a homey, folksy bar/sing-along joint on top of Shakey’s with Chiqui Reyes, Jun Peñaverde, Monique Escueta and company, where the aforementioned balladeers regaled the assembled crowd with terrific renditions of local, folk, and jazz hits. I remember Javi de Ubago, before throwing in his contribution to the impromptu bonfire at Teachers Camp, pronounce with all the solemnity of a church service “For world peace, pare”. I remember my sister Joey never letting Javi forget about the inappropriateness of wishing for world peace when everyone else was happily toasting to less serious things. I remember Joey never letting Javi forget that she knows that he wears the same pair of jeans everyday.
I also remember sitting down in awe as my former teacher, Mr. Pagsi, delivered a magnificent, truly magisterial talk to thousands. Mr. Pagsi was so powerful, so moving, and so effortlessly eloquent that not a single participant went to the bathroom in the two hours in which he delivered his talk. I remember Dean Antonio Torralba, despite his great fatigue, and the numerous minor difficulties which popped up every once in a while, normally at the most inconvenient times, go about with more than his usual display of grace and good cheer. I remember looking forward to coming back, year after year, because this was the closest a teacher in the Philippines could get to an actual Teachers’ Mecca.
Just earlier as I was excitedly panicking over the weather and the road conditions, Dean Torralba gently reminded me that “Baguio is in a state of calamity, not ruinous chaos”. The same can be said of me now. With all the preparations for the opening of our pre-school, the preparations for Juan’s 2nd birthday, the fact that Tina’s delivering this September (and all the attendant little complications that come with it), and all, I consider it a blessing to be called to serve at PASSA. Baguio, here I come!
Well, it’s official. As of this day, the 13th of July, 2006, our second child will be, to borrow the tortured, albeit heartfelt formulation of Luca Brasi (from The Godfather), “a masculine child”. While knowing our baby’s gender may be considered a cause for celebration, it is also something which fills Tina with dread. Here are some possible names for our child, with their corresponding nicknames:
1. Manuel Jose Zamora Borra (Man Jo). To borrow from the immortal Rob Schneider, “I’m a he-bitch! A man-ho!”
2. Manuel Teodoro Camilo Zamora Borra (Manteka). Ang tegas naman ng dela naten!
3. Manuel Julio Zamora Borra (Man Jul). Ingat lang, baka mahulog sa Man Jul! (Which calls to mind my dad’s classic joke: “Sabi nila, bisaya ako…wala naman silang ebedensiya!”)
Please feel free either to add to the list or report me to Bantay Bata. At any rate, Tina and I have agreed that Manuel is a lovely name, which is probably why I’m doing my best to sabotage Manuel’s chances of ever living a normal, conflict-free childhood by burdening him with a ridiculous nickname.
Kidding aside, we feel that we are blessed to just even be anticipating a second child. Thank you for your prayers. God is good!
I just finished the Bill Simmons (Sports Guy) article on the players with the highest trade values in the NBA. For those of you who’ve never read Simmons, this would be a great introduction to the phenomenon that is ESPN Page 2’s Sports Guy.
My good friend, Kimberly Chong, introduced him to me way back at the turn of the century when Simmons was still writing under the name “Boston Sports Guy”. While he writes under the name Sports Guy, it can be justifiably said that, more accurately, he would be better off calling himself the Mainstream Sports Guy. Generally, he only covers traditional competitive sports and sporting leagues, with the odd exception such as the National Spelling Bee popping up with regularity for some reason or the other. He’s at his best when he writes about the NBA, and since basketball aficionados everywhere had just finished watching a spirited playoff season replete with genuinely awe-inspiring, gut-check level competitive play, Sports Guy has been on an euphoric high for the past two months. He’s a pretty good read, and the past two weeks have been vintage Sports Guy. If you like your sports pundits to provide intelligent, albeit at times juvenile wit, the occasional belly laugh, and random pop culture references with disturbing regularity along with insightful commentary, you’ll love Sports Guy. Check him out.
Slate.com contributor Dave Eggers once wrote that “The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. There is no other sport that can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match.” As such, once could consider football as the most democratic of sports, the relative level of mediocrity of the self-styled guardians of democracy (the United States) notwithstanding. It’s rather like the organized sports version of hide-and-seek: it's fun, and practically anyone can play.
But at the very highest level of competition, even just watching this seemingly simple sport can induce a deeply felt sense of wonder. During the quarterfinal match against Brazil, a French wingman fired a speculative cross from the right wing to a running Zinedine Zidane. With almost preternatural skill, Zidane, despite running towards the right, receives the ball with his right foot, kills the ball ruthlessly, and chips the ball towards the Brazilian goal to a waiting Henry, all in one seamless sequence. The sheer fluidity of the movement, coupled with the ingenuity of the chip, and a belated attempt to ask the question “How the heck did he do that”, all in the space of a heartbeat, took my breath away. Literally, I had to remind myself, “Breathe”, which I did, eventually.
Yesterday’s finals match between France and Italy featured an almost relentless sequence of similar moments: “Breathe, damn you! Breathe!” There’s nothing quite like the experience of watching an elegant, brutal battle between two highly skilled, sublimely competitive sides, and getting caught in the realization, play after astounding play, that heroics like you just witnessed seconds ago, are threatening to become commonplace throughout the course of the match. It was almost like the classic Germany-Italy fixture a couple of days earlier.
And then came the head butt. I consider myself very privileged for having seen Zinedine Zidane play in this World Cup. Up till that moment, he was the quintessential footballer: wondrously inventive, sublimely skilled, unerringly patient in execution, and always, a class act.
And then came the head butt. Oh, Zidane!
After coaching the Houston Rockets to their 2nd straight NBA championship in 1995, Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich admonished all the so-called basketball experts who didn’t think that the Rockets couldn’t successfully defend their championship with a firm reminder: “Never underestimate the heart of a champion”. If there’s anything that recent sporting events have made clear, it’s that Tomjanovich’s assertion has its own, equally dramatic corollary: “Never underestimate the heart of a loser.” Prior to this year’s NBA season, that’s exactly what Gary Payton and Alonzo Mourning were: losers. Prior to last week’s shocking upset of Brazil, that’s what Zinedine Zidane and the entire French side looked like: losers.
However, to lump such luminary non-winners such as Payton and Mourning together with Vince Carter and his ilk is to do Payton and Mourning a great disservice. Vince Carter, the undisputed king of the hyphenated monicker (“Half Man, Half Amazing”, prior to this season, “Half Man, Always Injured”, and particularly for his sterling non-contact sport performance for this year’s playoffs “Half Man, Half Woman”) is a loser by choice. Payton and Mourning were losers by fate. Even a cursory check of Payton and Mourning’s storied careers would affirm that they never intended to lose; in fact, they often went down fighting. Vince Carter’s another story. His talent is all-NBA, his potential is absolutely staggering. His heart? Let’s just say that in the medical profession, Carter’s heart would fetch quite a considerable sum if it were available for transplant; it’s never been used.
France began its World Cup campaign slowly, gingerly, almost as if it were anticipating that the ghost of their horrendous 2002 Cup showing was just right around the corner, waiting to embarrass Les Blues into turning yellow. But footballer Zinedine Zidane had other plans. Knowing that, at the ripe old age of 34, this would be his last World Cup, Zidane was determined to serve up a sumptuous feast of beautiful football, showing that while he is French, there is just enough Viking in his blood to want to go out in a blaze of glory. Playing against the finest, most consistently skilled, and inventive football players in the world, Zidane decided to show the Brazilians a thing or two about how the game should be played. The result? A shocking 1-0 win over the 2002 World Cup holders.
Never underestimate the heart of a loser. Sometimes, just sometimes, if you scratch the surface, a champion emerges.
