Earthquakes Ask Question You Never Want to Hear While Swimming

I like this. It's irreverent, physical comedy with a soccer-specific ending. It also features a pretty lady and snack foods. I give it a 7.8 on the patented TOR Scale of Comedic Footie Adverts™.

NSR: The Return of Tecmo Bowl

I know the photo above may be shocking to some but I assure you that your man SF has not made a move to the more profitable world of pointyball blogging. So before you rub your eyes raw with disbelief please understand that this post is about one of the most monumental things to happen to video gaming (for those of us who can remember when controllers only had 2 buttons anyway) since the Contra code.

Tecmo Bowl is coming back people. I know a lot of you Madden junkies could care less but if you lament the death of old-school, simplified, scrolling-screen football games this news is as good as a "you tested negative" call from the free clinic. According to Uncrate, it will be available as a download this spring on Xbox Live Arcade & the PlayStation Network and feature customizable teams and rosters along with the ability to switch between 2D or 3Dviews.

I'm so stoked. If my brother is reading this, you better get ready fool; I'm about to run Walter Payton all over your ass like it was 1989.

You Really Should Talk Your Fiance Out of a June Wedding

June weddings are all the rage, I know. Brides love them almost as much as a walk-in closet full of free* Manolo Blahniks. But I think there should be an embargo during World Cup years on compassionate grounds. If a French bootleg of Adrian Brody can't control himself at the alter, how can you be expected to?

*Free = your credit card paid for them.

The Injured Internationals Dining Club & Football Society

Isn't there a saying about your reputation only being as good as the company you keep? I don't know who said it but if that is society's true gauge of stature then Charlie Davies is doing more than alright.

After spending some time in Delaware working alongside Gooch, the Sochaux kid is currently rehabbing in Cap Breton, France and taking lunch with fellow on-the-mends Ashley Cole and Micheal Essien. Not at all bad company to keep. Hell, maybe they can put in a word for him at Stanford Bridge; as Lando has been proving recently, Americans look surprisingly good in blue.

Video: A Final Bit of Pre-Opening RBA Stadium Porn

Brothers and sisters rejoice for this will be the last time I show you a video of Red Bull Arena as a pre-operational facility.If you are a Red Bull fan that means the next time the House that Taurine Built™ graces this page it will at long last have the scent of spilled beer and stadium dogs about it. And if you are a fan of any other MLS team you can now sleep easy knowing that you will no longer have to hear New York fans use the phrase "when the new stadium opens..." with the same combination of bitterness & hope that a neglected kid uses when waiting for his deadbeat Daddy to come pick him up ("you'll see, just wait 'til my Daddy gets here"). Good times all around for American soccer fans of all stripes.

Photo of the Day: Snooki Joins the Crewers

From the TOR NewsWire

(Columbus, OH) The professional athletic dancer community was rocked earlier today when photos of diminutive reality TV hussie Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi posing with The Crewzers set off a flurry of transfer speculation. The Crewzers, the official dance team of Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew, are rumored to be making an 11th hour push to acquire the Jersey Shore star before the March 25 transfer deadline.

Should the offer currently on the table --reported to include such perks as discounts on tanning, manicures & match day tickets, a salary reported to be as high as the low four figures and endorsement tie-ins with Ed Hardy and Smirnoff Ice-- turn out to be real*, the secretly Chilean "guidette" affectionately known as "Snookers" to her most ardent supporters would be hard-pressed to say no.

The Crewzers have not commented on the rumor but it is assumed they have the inside track on procuring Polizzi despite numerous attempts by her agent to sign her up with local side Red Bull New York. The New Jersey-based club currently do not have a dance team but Polizzi's penchant for the parent company's sugary drink mixed with vodka seems to be the motivating factor for her desired move to Harrison.

In related news, reports that MLS hopeful Mike Pezza will join the cast of the MTV reality hit Jersey Shore are also unconfirmed.

*It's not.

Sacha Kljestan Just Wants to Be Me (or is it the Other Way Around)

A lot of you may not know this but Sacha Kljestan bites my style all the time. Dude is like a mini-me. Except that he's tall, white, handsome, athletic, drives a nice sports car, is on the cover of a video game and sleeps with a model. Other than that we are exactly alike.

Dude even bites my celebrity photos. Not only did I get snapped with Aziz Ansari years ago (and in Vegas damnit) but I had the whole cast of Human Giant in my picture, fam! This was way before he was on Parks & Rec and he hadn't even been shot by Justin Beiber yet! I'm telling you the kid is all up on me like sweat in the summer.

Or not. I'm a deeply paranoid person and he more than likely has no idea I exist so I could be wrong about all of this. I'll tell you one thing though...if you see him rocking a fierce set of moobs while strapped with a hideously colored, automatic Nerf rifle you know who did it first. Just saying.

Steven Lenhart is My Guy

Steven Lenhart is my guy. He likes 80's clubs. He scores goals. He has hair like Dee Snider out of Twisted Sister. Basically he is unimpeachable in my book and it's not because he dropped a deuce on Toluca last night. It's because he will get on the phone and talk to me like I'm just some dude, which I am, and not a journalist trying to mine the deep recesses of a sportsman's mind.

I talked to him for MLS Insider the other day and posted the convo this morning. Dude's really funny. Keep an eye out for him next off-season; if you happen to be at in certain SoCal bar in with a Tuesday night retro party and see a guy in a tank top "being free" on the dancefloor, that's him.

You May Have Heard Something About New MLS Websites in 2010

By now you have probably heard a few things here and there about the new MLS website that is dropping soon. You should probably know that there will also be new sites for the clubs as well. To help you work through your feelings, New England's Kevin Alston, Darius Barnes and Chris Tierney have put together this informative video detailing how you, the fan, can move on and come to accept the changes when they come. Fans of the film Office Space should find this particularly engaging.

Barflying: Brazil 46

Last week the barfly in me took me to midtown Manahattan for the Brazil-Ireland match. Admittedly, midtown is not the most interesting place in New York. But on a one block stretch of 46th St. is an area known as Little Brazil you can find a small respite from the blandness of the surrounding area. While not as large (it's seems to have gotten even littler in recent years) or well-known as the city's Chinatown or Little Italy there are a few restaurants and bars worth checking out if you are on the hunt for something in the area.

One of the better choices is Brazil 46. Run by a lively owner named Tanya, it's a small, understated space with it's most-memorable physical feature being a massive, knitted Brazilian flag that is framed against an exposed brick wall. That and the prerequisite out-sized projector TV screen in the back; what better way to watch all those live Série A matches in Portuguese that come in via satellite?

Whatever ground Tanya's place may lose in indistinct decor is gained 10x in outstanding food & drink. She may not know interior design but she is quite knowledgeable about two things which are far more important: soccer and how to make ridiculously good drinks. She proudly proclaims to be one of her native country's 160 million coaches. And as for her prowess with lime, sugar, mortar and pestal goes you'll be hard pressed to find a caipirinha as lethal & delicious as her's without first paying a visit to Orbitz.

On match days she grinds out an endless stream of Brazil's signature drink, an Amazon River of liquor. From my perch at the bar it seemed that the mix of college kids from Curitiba and grey-haired Irishmen had an almost insatiable appetite for the sweet cocktail. As for me I limited my intake to a single sampling; I could not say the same for the golden-fried goodness of the salgadinhos I was served. Half of the time I was a clueless as a forward in goal as to what was inside the stuffed pastries but once I had one there was no way I was going to let a little mystery filling stand between me and a full stomach.



As I said in the opening midtown is no place to go by choice unless you have a train or a Broadway show to catch. But if you're in the area and looking for something close, comfortable and footie-friendly with no pretension and even less chance of leaving hungry or sober, Brazil 46 is good choice.