Forever Blowing Bubbles

I had a chance to visit old Compound resident Paul G, aka The Handsome Plumber, at his new residence yesterday to watch a couple games featuring our favorite football teams: my non-American football team, West Ham United, and then his American football team, the New England Patriots, aka the best offensive passing attack in the history of the game. West Ham played host to the dreaded Black Cats of Sunderland, coached by Irish legend, Roy Keane. Well, not dreaded really, but an at times dangerous team that could prevent us from picking up the 3 points we needed to stop our 3 game losing streak and put us back up in the top half of the table. The Hammers controlled possession in the first half, but only managed to bulge the old onion bag (to borrow a phrase from Tommy Smyth) once, on a nice acrobatic twisting header from Carlton Cole. This failure to dominate led to major change in momentum early in the second half, when Sunderland equalized and then was robbed of its own lead by a great diving parry by Hammers' keeper (and possibly England's new keeper) Robert Green. Fortunately they were able to survive the Sunderland surge and a lucky own goal by the opposing keeper put West Ham back in the lead at 2-1, where the score would stay until Craig Bellamy punctuated his return from injury with a fine side footed tap in to the near post in extra time. Not a spectacular goal, but good strikers know where to be and how to capitalize on their chances, and this was a perfect example of that. Unfortunately, youtube seems to pull down any footage of English Premier League action due to copyright infringement, so I can't show you the goals. But, I did find this quality footage of a fan singing West Ham's anthem:




Right on, Ashleigh! I love you.

As for the Pats game, they are who we thought they were! I was more than a little tempted by the 16.5 point spread to take the Dolphins at home, but then I came to my senses and remembered that the Pats are incredible and the Fins are horrendous. This was confirmed and rewarded in the first half when Tom Brady absolutely dismantled Miami's defense with 5 TD passes. One of them in particular, at about the 2:20 mark of the video below, was unbelievable. It really seemed like Randy Moss pulled in this 55 yard bomb in double coverage in the end zone with his elbow. I'm not even sure he used his hand to catch it. Wow. 42-7 at the half. Despite this total domination, the Dolphins somehow had a chance to cover the spread on the last possession. But they suck. So they didn't. After the Steeler's choke job last night against Denver, it seems clear that the only team that is even remotely in the Patriots' league is Indy. And I'll change my mind on that if they lose in Jacksonville tonight (a possibility).



In non-football sports news, I've been hearing rumors that the baseball season is not over yet. If that is in fact the case, I suppose good luck to VTK sports fan readers with their respective teams. I'd also like to welcome the 10 new readers a day, every day, I get from people googling "Jacoby Ellsbury's girlfriend". And it's almost certainly unnecessary, but I'd like to reiterate to Jacoby anyways: DUDE! Get out there. You can have your pick.

UPDATE: 25 hits from inquiries into Jacoby's status so far today (and one hit from an inquiry into his johnson).