BRIAN LIBBY

Diagnosis: World Cup Fever

Since it began a two weeks ago, Valarie and I have been watching World Cup matches virtually every day. Each night I program the VCR, and then we watch them the following evening – or at least part of them. Here is a game diary from the first week:

June 9: Germany looks dominating even without captain/star Michael Ballack, who’s headed to English Premiere League champs Chelsea this fall. Part of me wants to root for Germany because many of my ancestors came from there. But I don’t like it how the home team has already won the World Cup numerous times before—including Germany in 1974. Although to be fair, that’s how my favorite team, England, got their title in 1966.

In the other opening-night game, Ecuador surprises Poland, which turns out not to be so much of a surprise when I find out that Ecuador has previously beaten Brazil and Argentina this year. It’s also cool to see because my aunt Barbara lived in Ecuador in the Peace Corps in the early 1970s. (She actually returned there this month with my mom to visit my Barb’s daughter Christa, who was studying there for a semester.) Plus, the Central and South American teams particularly seem to play a pretty kind of soccer, with great passing and dribbling.

June 10: England beats Paraguay, but only 1-0. And the goal was actually scored by Paraguay! England has got to play better if they’re to have any chance of winning the cup. I just don’t get it. This is probably the most talented side England has had since its Cup win 40 years ago, but they just don’t ever seem to play that well. Is it the coach, or is it that there are too many chefs and not enough cooks?

Also, after sleeping late, I wake up and come into the living room where Valarie is watching Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden in the 80th minute of what would remain a scoreless draw. T&T is the smallest nation ever to play in the World Cup. This is awesome! After time runs out they’re celebrating the draw like they’d won the whole thing. But why not? Watching this team also makes me think countless times of Elaine Benis on Seinfeld saying of the marathoner from T&T staying at her place, ‘He’s Trinidadian…and Tobagan.’

The Argentina-Ivory Coast matchup was of great interest, because the former team is one of the favorites to win it all, and the latter has the excellent striker Didier Drogba, whom Valarie and I know from Chelsea, where he plays. Actually, on the Argentine side is one of Chelsea’s other best goal scorers, Hernan Crespo, who opens scoring with a first-half goal. La Cote D’Ivoire loses this one, but they look capable of beating another team on another day.

It’s also interesting seeing the different countries’ uniforms, most of which seem to be designed by Nike, Adidas or Puma. I love how Puma has outfitted lots of the African countries making their World Cup debuts. But putting the logo on each of the shoulders in addition to the chest looks crass. What is this, Nascar?

June 11: The day starts well with Holland, another country I’m rooting for (more family ancestry, plus I love their liberalism and great design), defeating Serbia & Montenegro. Incidentally, I’d like to see Serbia & Montenegro play Trinidad and Tobago in a dual-country-team showdown. Unfortunately I screw up taping this morning's 6AM Holland match. I set the VCR for 6PM!

Instead, we watch Mexico defeat Iran. It makes me think of our friend Rosie, whose family came from Mexico and whom I remember saying she was nervous about this game. Luckily Omar Bravo and company win, although they lose a key player to injury. Later, I also catch a little bit of Portugal’s defeat of Angola. Angola’s symbol is a hammer and sickle. Are they really still Communist? How cute!

June 12: I watch the US versus the Czech Republic, which the US loses pretty definitively. Pavl Nedved seems to be running circles around us even in his late 30s. Good striker? Czech! But I’m not too bummed about the US losing. I don’t wish them any ill will, but I much prefer rooting for England. I actually feel uncomfortable rooting for my own country because then it becomes an extension of patriotism. And since September 11, all the most overtly patriotic people here end up being the ones I disagree with politically. Besides, the US dominates in a lot of other sports. The world would really hate us if we became the best at soccer.

June 13: I’m excited to see France versus Switzerland because my favorite soccer player, Thierry Henry of Arsenal, is French and starts for the team. But France, despite having a ton of great players, plays too cautiously. And the team seems to suffer from its commitment to still starting the aging Zinedine Zidane, who won the World Cup for France (another home team) in 1998. But Switzerland also has an excellent defense and great organization—like a Swiss watch! How appropriate that the 0-0 score is essentially neutral.

I also watch some of Brazil and Croatia, which Brazil wins but not so impressively at 1-0. Are they really the overwhelming favorite? Maybe England’s opening victory isn’t so bad after all.

June 14: An avalanche of writing deadlines means I’m not able to watch much of the games, but in the evening on tape I watch a little of Spain’s decisive victory over Ukraine. Spain has long been a disappointing team in the World Cup given their breadth of talent, but maybe this year they’ll finally put it together to at least make it to a late round. Certainly the ability seems there in this impressive win.

June 15: England plays another disappointing game, albeit getting another win, against Trinidad & Tobago. The score is 0-0 into the 70th minute or so when England gets one and then another goal in quick succession. But the good news is that one of their best players, Wayne Rooney, is back from a broken leg. He’s a superb scorer and passer at just 19, although not a handsome guy. A co-worker of Valarie’s was dead-on in describing him as “part mongrel”. But if England wins it all, I think the mongrel will need to be knighted.

Suffering For Art

Y esterday Valarie and I decided to make the 45-minute drive from Bethlehem to Reading, Pennsylvania to see an exhibition of works by Keith Haring, her favorite artist, at the Reading Public Museum. (Haring was born in Reading.) But it wasn’t a 45-minute drive. It was two hours - each way. There was road construction on Route 222 that backed up cars in each direction for miles. From now on that three-digit number will no longer conjure the 1970s television show, but the kind of hopelessness that only bumper-to-bumper traffic can bring. I imagined making a U-turn, getting in the shoulder, and driving the rest of the way to the museum in reverse. For the first time in my life, I yearned for an SUV, so I could give up the asphalt and just drive through the adjacent farmland.

When we finally got to Reading, the name of which I knew since childhood from the Reading Railroad on Monopoly, it still took almost another hour to find the museum. We were going by Mapquest directions that told us to go from Penn Street to 5th Avenue, but what we didn’t realize that there were two of each in this God-forsaken town. And I say ‘God-forsaken’ not just because of our infinitely long journey, but also because Reading, Pennsylvania is -- and I’m not resorting to hyperbole when I say this -- an absolute shit hole. We felt like we had been transported back in time to the worst days of urban blight in the 1970s. With memories of my biggest cinematic guilty pleasure, National Lampoon’s Vacation, I half expected if we stopped to ask for directions that someone would send us past the ‘Rib Tips’ sign to a Torino with no wheels to ask their cousin Jackie, while his friends painted ‘Honky Lips’ on the side of our car.

But once we got there, the exhibit was terrific. Despite being phenomenally popular more than fifteen years after his death, Keith Haring isn’t always taken as seriously as he should be by the more academic portion of the art world. Haring’s work was largely inspired by cartoons and graffiti, and he often worked very quickly. It was about process for Keith Haring as much as product. But this retrospective showed without any shred of a doubt what a brilliant artist he was. Seen collectively, his work not only revealed the aforementioned artistic/cultural antecedents, but also felt almost tribal, as if it were a contemporary version of cave paintings. Some works even showed a quasi-abstract quality, with Haring’s trademark radiating baby figures and barking dogs incorporated into vast patchworks that took on the power of nonrepresentational expresssionism.

The drive back was even worse. We got stuck in stop-and-go traffic again. No, wait, that’s inaccurate. It was just stop, and no go. After taking an hour to make it the last ten miles through Trexlertown, we finally emerged from the endless line of cars, the sight of the I-78 freeway appearing like a lighthouse to two fishermen tossed about in the waves of a hundred-year storm. For a couple of miles, our car sailed along in the fast lane with the speedometer finally raising from the equivalent of about 7 o’clock to more like midnight.

Then the rains came. And I don’t mean sprinkles. I don’t mean a torrential downpour. I mean like a mother-fuckin’ monsoon. Our windshield wipers were on that ridiculously high setting were it feels like you’re in a movie that’s been put into fast forward, but even then one could barely see past the hood of the car. The traffic slowed down to twenty miles an hour. When we exited off I-78 into Bethlehem after about six miles and another half hour, the flash flooding was well underway. Cars were kicking up splashes almost as high as buildings, and sometimes even seemed like they were going to float away. Looking in the rearview mirror amidst this latest slowdown, I saw that my eyes had taken on the look of cue-balls, my skin the pallor of a corpse. I felt like a jack-in-the-box that had been wound and wound but never allowed to spring.

But you know what? It was still worth it. To see Valarie’s look of wonder and glee at this awe-inspiring collection of Keith Haring works was absolutely priceless. Over the last several weeks, she’s been recovering from a bout with severe anemia, and even now she can feel faint at the drop of a hat and barely able to walk. But she clutched my arm as we took baby steps around the Reading Public Museum, and those pearly whites were showing ear to ear. Even if I may have been fantasizing about dropping napalm over Reading, Pennsylvania, I’m glad we made it to that exhibit first.

Désiré Dahie, Mike Kolesnik & Coach Grasso

The sweltering heat continues here in the Mid-Atlantic, but I wanted to mention two fellas who captured my imagination even as my clothes soaked with sweat.

I'd forgotten to mention in my previous post a highlight of my New York trip with Ned. We were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which pound for pound is my favorite art museum in the world. We'd checked out some 19th Century European masters from Cézanne and Manet to Picasso and Gauguin, and next headed for the 20th Century collection. I'd just been charmed by a massive Chuck Close portrait called simply "Mark" and was about to breeze past Georgia O'Keeffe symbolic flower bulbs when a security guard approached me. Clutching my camera, I was about to tell him, "I didn't use my flash!" But he wasn't interested in that.

"Ah you really from OH-ree-GONN?" he asked, eying my Ducks t-shirt. When I answered in the affirmative, he asked, "Do you know a town called Coos Bay?" He had a fairly strong African accent, and I was surprised to hear him speak the name of this little coastal burg where my dad was born. It turned out that the guard had been moved by a past exhibition of photographs of John F. Kennedy at the museum. He told me his favorite had been a shot of JFK visiting with a small group of fishermen there while campaigning for president in 1960.

Ned and I wound up talking to the guard for at least a quarter-hour. I've been in numerous museums over the years, and I've never had a security guard enthusiastically pull me into a conversation. But I loved his enthusiasm, and not just for the little Oregon town he'd never seen but in a photo. His name was Désiré Dahie, and he was from the Ivory Coast - or, more accurately, La Cote D'Ivoire as he called it. (Why does everything always sound better in French?) His eyes lit up when I said, "Isn't that the home of Didier Drogba?" (That's his country's most famous soccer player, whom I knew well because he plays striker for Chelsea Football Club in the English Premiere League that Valarie and I now watch religiously.) Poor Ned waited patiently as Désiré and I delved into World Cup talk for the next little while. Even though I'd only met him a few moments earlier, I suddenly wanted to invite Désiré to Oregon for a drive to Coos Bay.

Beyond his being an endearingly loquacious security guard with a shared soccer love and a curiosity about my home, Désiré also gave me a much-needed reminder about what I still love about New York. Even though I lived in New York for years, I never really took to the city. It's so unerringly harsh and grimy, and you can't see the horizon. But New York is also the prism through which those "huddled masses" of immigrants pass, and often stay. They're a special breed, those who travel from so far away to strive endlessly. Sure, it's a romantic view I have of people like Désiré, but it balances out the harsh unforgiving realities of this city in a way that makes me smile. I know this random little exchange with a security guard will remain burned into my memory banks. And unlike the sun's burn, this one feels refreshing.

Today in the little town of New Tripoli, Pennsylvania emerged the second star of this post, Valarie's nephew Mike. The occasion was his Bethlehem Catholic high school baseball team's playoff game with Schuylkill Haven. I can't stress enough how hot it was. When we arrived 45 minutes early for the game, Valarie and I wondered if we'd still be conscious for the first pitch. I mean, I was contemplating a quick jaunt to Bolivia or maybe Death Valley just to cool off. At least Death Valley's a dry heat! The game was on a neutral site at Northwestern Lehigh High School, and we actually got in trouble with school officials for sneaking into their building during classes just to siphon some of the air conditioning. When the game started, I must have looked like a major girlie-man huddled under an umbrella, but it was either that or turn my Nordic complexion into a sun magnet.

Luckily baseball theatrics eventually took our minds off God's convection oven. In the first few innings Mike's team fought a close battle with Schuylkill (which, no joke, is actually pronounced "school kill"). In the middle innings, however, Bethlehem Catholic (or Beca for short) jumped to a commanding 9-2 lead. But in the last couple innings, the other team cut the lead to 9-6, and in the final inning they actually put the tying run at the plate.

It seemed like a moment from an over-written Hollywood movie. As Schuylkill seemed poised to overcome what had appeared to be an insurmountable deficit, an ominously black cloud moved over the horizon. Thunder began to clap in the distance. But Beca held on, and the tying run struck out at the plate. I kid you not: No sooner had the last out been called than lighting bolts flashed and a summer storm began raining down over New Tripoli.

Mike was 3 for 4 in the game, and as usual seemed to have ice in his veins even as the pressure mounted. (If it really had been ice I'd have turned into a vampire on the spot.) He's got a scholarship to play Division 1 baseball next fall at West Virginia, and it was such a treat to see his team win the district championship -- they're on to the state championship playoffs come Monday. Mike's mom, Chris (Valarie's sister) was in tears as family and players met on the field afterward. But she wasn't the only one. I saw her heretofore collected son break down too as his coach put the district championship medal around his neck.

And speaking of the coach, Mike Grasso, I've got to say something about this guy. It's a coach's job to be a motivator, to keep encouraging his players when the pressure and adversity mount. But this guy was about the most relentlessly passionate, positive guy I've ever seen. What really sealed his heroism in my book, though, was how he showed that same passion in the post-game handshakes with the opposing team. While everybody else on both teams emptily went through the motions of this mandatory act of sportsmanship, the Beca coach looked every player in the opposing team right in the eye and said, "Hey, you guys had a great, great year." The coach also broke into tears himself. Valarie's mom told me last year, when his team also won district, he stayed long after the game was over, explaining later that he "just wanted to savor the moment." No matter what the endeavor, I really love anyone who brings such boundless passion to what he does.

I bring that same passion every time the air conditioner switches on.

Lower Saucon Township Calling

As I write this, Valarie and I are in the midst of a ten-day trip to her parents' house in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (or, more accurately, the adjacent Lower Saucon Township) and New York City, with Nasty Ned accompanying us for the first half. Here are a few highlights:

Bethlehem Steel is the gargantuan mill that towers over the city here, but eerily so. It's been empty for more than fifteen years after closing in the late 1980s. Because it's surrounded by cyclone fencing, it's always been difficult to get a close view of this massive complex, although its smokestacks are visible from several miles away. But this time we found a new road had been built here, to make way for a casino. (A mixed blessing to say the least.) Ned, Valarie and I spent much of Sunday afternoon on Memorial Day weekend (appropriately enough) standing before the rust and weeds of this ghost-like old vestige of America's industrial past. As I said on my architecture blog, it felt like visiting ancient Pompeii.

A day later, Ned and I took the bus into New York, where Valarie and I went to college. Ned's been all around the world, but actually had never visited NYC before. So it was fun to play tour guide.

As we came into the Port Authority bus terminal on 42nd Street, our first site was of a homeless man splayed face-down on the sidewalk. He looked dead, although no one seemed to be paying any attention. Later, making our way past Times Square, I couldn't help but notice the irony of seeing another homeless man dressed head to toe in an improvised outfit of garbage bags, huddled in a corner -- while a few feet away sat a yellow Ferrari convertible. But don't get me wrong: It's still amazing how much New York has cleaned itself up since the early 1990s when I first arrived.

Ned and I also made the proverbial pilgrimage to the Empire State Building. While I've always appreciated the architecture of the Empire State and its status as perhaps the most well-known and iconic skyscraper in America, the experience of going to the 86th floor observation deck was as disheartening as Bethlehem Steel was moving.

I've been to the Empire State several times before, so I was prepared to stand in line. But this was ridiculous. First we stood in line for a security checkpoint. Next we stood in line for tickets, then for the elevator to the 80th floor. All the while, employees were constantly yelling pitches to the audience to spend $40 going on an IMAX ride before visiting the observation deck. Next we were herded into a mandatory line to have our pictures taken - which they of course wanted to sell to us for $20. (As Ned said on his blog, it's an American architectural icon peddling itself like a cheap whore.) The photo wasn't even with NYC's skyline in the background; it was a fake version of the Empire State Building. Imagine - we're actually there, and they use a fake background! Then there was a line for the elevator from the 80th floor to the observation deck on the 86th. When we finally got to the top, it often took minutes to get a turn at the edge after the other tourists waddled out of the way.

Back here in Bethlehem, it's one great feast after another, mostly courtesy of Valarie's mom, Pat. The first night we had her signature meal of roast chicken, egg noodles, mashed potatoes (they like their starch here) and corn -- washed down with Yeungling lager from her dad's garage fridge, right next to their chicken coop. The next night we had my favorite Pat Smith culinary concoction: meat pie, with chunks of pork, vegetables and potatoes and gravy surrounded by flaky pie crust. As soon as we awaken, Valarie's dad, Hank, fills our tummies with his waffles, made from scratch of course. There's also a cupboard of snacks, particularly the East Cost convenience store delicacy known as Tastycakes. Valarie's also partial to the big bag of cheese puffs always on hand, while I prefer a local brand of kettle-cooked potato chips called Martin's.

This afternoon we're off to see Valarie's nephew/godson Mike, who's high school graduation was the main purpose of our trip, compete in his baseball team's playoff game. Even the sweltering 90-degree sun and high humidity won't keep us away -- although I'll be caked in sunscreen, guzzling ice water, and sweating like Robert Hays in Airplane.

Our other mission this trip has been to help Valarie's parents set up their first computer. It's great fun introducing Pat and Hank to the mouse, keyboard and -- most of all -- the Internet.

But this report will have to do for now: My waffle is almost ready.