Planning World Cup Viewing Where

I have gotten obsessed with arranging my free time around the World Cup the five weeks it's going on.  I shouldn't, considering that this World Cup is being (mainly) hosted by a fascist country.  Also, it's become even more obvious that FIFA is a corrupt organization that continues to get away with suckering communities into giving them money in exchange for the right to host the biggest sporting event on the planet this side of the Olympics.  No wonder, then, that the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, gave Trump a made-up-on-the-spot "peace prize" just to kiss his ass, one grifter publicly proclaiming his love to another grifter.  The business side of this soccer festival should make one's stomach turn.  However, since I am plotting how I will watch as much of it as I can proves I have overlooked this evil sausage-making and, in turn, makes me complicit.

Well, my complicit ass is still going to watch, and figure out the best way to watch while balancing things such as my checkbook, the health of my car, going to my storage unit to go through my stuff (which is really chapping my ass right now the more I think about it), and just going home and relaxing.  A part of me truly relishes how to put the pieces together, but a part of me knows this can easily overwhelm me, and another part of me knows I'm capable of just saying "fuck it" and I'll completely forget all of this.

Regardless, right now I'm planning ... but only for next week.  I am trying to do the following:

• Have one day where I go work, then directly go home.  I will watch all the Games from home and eat in, and thus I will not spend any money;
• I will go out and watch at least one soccer Match at a bar or establishment boasting about televising the World Cup;
• I will go out and watch at least one soccer Match at a Mexican or Latin American restaurant that has a TV and may or may not be televising the World Cup;
• I will go from work to my storage unit, where I will spend at least the majority of one soccer Game listening to it on Sirius XM while going through my stuff.  I will not spend any money and instead go straight home after the Match is over;
• Oh, and I promised ******a that I would see her at the strip club one night.

My original guiding principle on which weekdays I'd do each of the above depended on whether I could watch the Match on FOX/Channel 9.  If it wasn't on there, I figured that wasn't a day I should just go home; either I would watch at a pub or restaurant that had Fox Sports 1, or listen to it on satellite radio at my storage unit.  But then I remembered that Telemundo is over the air and is airing every single Match on free TV, albeit in Spanish.  Soccer is universal, so watching any Game from home was back on the table.

But then I saw last/Friday night's South Korea-Czechia Match, and for some dumb reason the audio and video were out of synch.  I'm hoping it's a one-time glitch, because if it's not, I won't watch Telemundo anymore ... which might actually make planning easier because it removes the possibility that I could watch any Game at home.  Fix this, Telemundo.

Another consideration I, um, considered is the quality of the sides playing.  I want to see competitive Matches, and once the final roundelay of Games comes around, the stakes are going to influence which ones I watch and thus where.  But the field for the World Cup has expanded from 36 to 48.  That means a lot of new teams -- and a bunch of teams that are not good and should get easily dispatched in the Games they play.  Also, there is a fifth round of Knockout Stage Matches now, which means 32 teams will advance out of the Group Stage.  Allowing 2/3 of the field into the "playoffs" makes the "regular season" Group Stage Games somewhat less important, even if the final Group Stage Games will determine who comes in last in each Group and thus is automatically eliminated.

The more I think about it, the more I've decided that I want to dedicate my attention to matchups that feature good XI's or countries that appear to be evenly matched.  If there's a Game that doesn't satisfy either condition, I am beginning to think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to only tune in to it in the middle of the Match, or even, for example, bail on the Game and leave an establishment early.  It is hard to eat out at a restaurant for two hours so you can watch a whole Game.  And speaking of whole Games ... I realized that when I get out of work each day will dictate whether I go home, my unit, or out to watch.  Do I want to go out to catch the back end of a lopsided Match between two nations that have no chance of winning the World Cup?  Maybe, actually, and I'll save the days I go directly home for when I am able to watch a good Game on paper in its entirety.

You can see how I am weighing a lot of things, right?  Yeah, maybe I'm overthinking this.  But I don't want to spend money I can't afford, I want to start eating the food at home that I've bought, I don't want to tax my car, and I do want to start cleaning up my stuff.  So, considering all of that ... I still don't know.  Guess the only really important thing to me is I just want to watch some soccer.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#0: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  The Lynx are in the thick of Commissioner's Cup play, and they're kicking ass, going 3-0 this Week and remaining undefeated for this in-season tournament.  I was at the first Game of the screening Week, home last Thursday to Golden State.  They started off great, but then from the middle of the Second Quarter on, the Valkyries asserted control, and Minnesota was a click or two behind.  Finally, in the Fourth, they put shots together, they stacked stops, and was very, very lucky Cecilia Zandalasini's Three-Point shot at the gun was an airball.  (Courtney Williams could've iced it, but she missed her second Three Throw to keep the lead at three.  Tsk-tsk.)

Like Anthony Edwards, I am starting to believe I was wrong about Olivia Miles.  I remember throwing my glasses on the table on the table I was sitting at in the bar, listening to the WNBA Draft and hearing that the Lynx took Miles.  I thought she didn't have the will to defend nor the jump shot to round out her game in a way that, say, Ricky Rubio really couldn't.  Well, Miles went offensive HAM on this bitch, setting a WNBA record for most Threes made by a Rookie in a Game with eight.  Also, I wasn't quite aware at how preternatural her court vision is.  And finally, she has the poise of a veteran.  In the possession that led to Court splitting her pair, there was a Lay-Up drive that missed.  Miles eventually gathered the ball and, instead of hoisting up quickly, pulled the ball out and forced Golden State to foul.  I totally forgot the game situation, namely that there was about ten Seconds left and Minnesota was up by one.  Miles did not forget.  Fucking genius.

They finish Comissioner's Cup pool play this Week.  They host Portland Monday and visit Los Angeles on Wednesday.  But the real big test, if not THE test, comes Saturday night when they visit Las Vegas.  For my money, right now (and take that with more than a grain of salt), Saturday's matchup will be the WNBA Finals.

#-1: Twins (Last Week: -2).  A 2-4 Week.  There isn't much worth to say other than the Bullpen fuckin' sucks.  Yeah, that's all I want to say about this execrable bunch.  Well, I should say that they finish up their series in Detroit this/Thursday afternoon, then quickly host St. Louis for three over the weekend, then travel to play The Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0 for three-Game set on Monday, Tuesday and ... Thursday???

Too Many Oranges

Yesterday/Tuesday evening, helped by the fact that I got out of work early (I had to stop by the local grocery store to get a chicken breast on sale, but even with that I got home earlier than I usually do these days), I ate the final part of the last of five oranges I bought two weeks ago.  I've read on the Internet that you don't want to eat oranges that have been in the fridge for that long, but they tasted like oranges (even though the taste was a tad off) and hey, I haven't gotten sick after eating any of them, including the one yesterday/Tuesday evening.

I bought these at the discount grocery store, so I got, or felt I got, a bargain.  Also, I bought five of them because I wanted to make sure I had enough orange juice to make all the cocktails I wanted to make.  Well, I made one mimosa and one monkey gland, and still I have to eat, oh, three of the five oranges like they were, you know, oranges.  I shouldn't complain; they're a great source of vitamin C, of course.  But I way overestimated the number of oranges I needed for cocktails.  Need to cut back next time.

I Think It's Finally Time To Brush My Teeth Again

When I got one cavity filled in and one cavity redone back on Wednesday, I was told to not fuck with them -- and both sites were on the left side of my mouth -- for at least a couple hours and preferably for 24 hours.  Well, I had to eat a pork chop that evening or else it would go bad, and so then I made sure I chewed using only the right side of my mouth.  Other than that, I had been careful to not eat any crunchy or sticky foods until lunchtime on Thursday.

But I did that care plan one step better, or "better."  I took it that any agitation on either the new or the improved cavity site would imperil the fillings, and I categorized brushing my teeth as agitation.  So yeah, I've chewed food and drank hot liquids since Thursday afternoon, but I have held off on brushing my teeth.  Yes, that's lame and is more of an excuse for me not to go through the hassle of brushing my teeth.  But that was my mindset for not brushing my teeth since last Tuesday.

However, this is getting ridiculous even for me.  So I am going to go brush my teeth now.

Hottest Babe In The Hooters Calendar: May 2026

Ten women this month, I've noticed, and I think I just realized that ten is the fewest number of waitresses I've seen in a month in a Hooter calendar.  Just a thought.

Not a bad month.  But I can only point out three because half of the ten have that stupid t-shirt-over-bikini-top thing I railed against last month.  I have to admit, though, I have made one exception.

I will point out three women.

In third place is Micayla, hailing out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.  Long black hair that falls below her breasts, she's wearing a pink two-piece.  I note her because she is posing as if she is either climbing out of or into a pool.  And by grabbing the bars on the side of the ladder, she is one of the few servers in this month posing straight at the camera (well, she's a tad off to her right, but I'll count it).  She's got a great body, and in this picture, she's showing it off.

In second place is Atlanta's Gwyn.  She is wearing a t-shirt over a bikini top.  I am making an exception for her for three reasons: 1) She's standing straight at us; 2) she's wearing a straw cowboy hat, and I'm a sucker for a hot chick acting like she's a cowgirl; and 3) she's also wearing jean shorts with a bikini bottom which, like her bikini top, is orange (and BTW, the crop top she's wearing is Hooters-themed.)  I know she's wearing an orange bikini bottom because she's got her jean shorts unzipped and open all the way, revealing said bikini bottom underneath.  That makes it look as if she's undressing, which is only emphasized by my realization that bikini bottoms are really small these days, and that if she weren't grooming down there, we'd be seeing her pussy hair sprout right out of her bottoms.  Yowza!

Finally, in first place is The Main Girl, Jada, from Destin, Fla.  Wavy blonde hair that cascades down to her waist, she is sporting a light pink two-piece bikini.  She is posing to her side toward us -- she's posing inbetween what looks to be curtains -- and it's also not great her right arm is obscuring her stomach.  But she is a stunner -- porcelain skin and light green eyes.  Also, even though we can't see it, I'd bet that she's wearing a bikini bottom that's showing her ass.

So congratulations to Jada and the other two Hooters girls for May 2026.  I will be touching myself to all of you in due time.

So the thing about going out most evenings is that you don't have time to rest, and at some point the sleep debt comes due.  I paid this week: I think last night was my second night over the past week where I fell asleep before midnight and woke up in the morning.  But I was, and am, glad to.  Sure, I am off schedule in Zynga Poker and there are alumni things I should have done but didn't.  But I'm refreshed and feel healthy, and I think that's a bit more important.

And more important than that, I have energy to do the things I need to do, such as finally clean the dishes that really need cleaning.  I should do that now.  Of course, I'll use up all my energy doing that and then I'll need to nap.  But, since I woke up so early in the morning, I'll have time for a nap before I need to go downtown this afternoon.  I think my timing is down!

I went through my plans of going to this new Middle Eastern place that came recommended after I left last/Friday night's Prince tribute concert.  Interesting food, but I didn't think it'd be so much.  Moreover, I ordered this through drive-thru at around 1:30.  I got done eating it all around 4.  And I'm having donuts with someone I haven't seen since high school this/Saturday morning at 10.  Eating this was a mistake.  And I regret doing so.

My Thoughts On Who To Root For In The Stanley Cup And NBA Finals

I have no interest in seeing the Stanley Cup Finals.  Out of principle, I don't watch a postseason once my team, in this case the Wild, are eliminated.  It hurts too much.  (This may be paradoxical, but if my team doesn't make a playoffs, I am more than happy to watch the whole thing ... with exceptions, of course.  If my team can't even make the postseason, that means my team didn't even have a chance of winning that Year's title, so I cannot have any bitterness over what could have been.  Does that make sense?)

Beyond that, though, I don't care how intriguing this matchup has become after Games 1 and 2 have both featured stunning comebacks and late Goals.  The Vegas Golden Knights are in their third Stanley Cup Finals and they're only nine years old.  They were given the most generous and bountiful birth of any expansion team in North American sports, immediately seeding their roster with stars and upside role players and parlaying them into a Stanley Cup Finals birth in their first Year.  And they have continued to cash in on the excessively valuable assets they were given, trading those away for a bumper crop of promising youngsters and aging role players, thus giving them a higher ceiling that few other teams in the NHL have, let alone were given.  And that's why I refer to them as Team Privilege, or Team Third Base.

On top of that, their starting, starring Goaltender, Carter Hart, was one of four people accused of gang raping a drugged-out women several years ago.  The Canadian judge let him off the hook, and he hooked up with the Golden Knights, and he's playing very well, thus proving that there is no God.  Oh, and he is a supporter of this separatist movement in the Canadian province of Alberta.  And on top of all that, the owner of the Vegas Golden Knights demands that his franchise is not named the Las Vegas Golden Knights, purportedly because "Las" sounds too close to "loss."  Putz.

Meanwhile, The Carolina Hurricanes have a boss, Tom Dundon, who may be riding high on the success of his hockey team, but is curiously thinning the workforce of the NBA team he owns, The Portland Trail Blazers.  He sounds creepily close to all these tech bros who think their achievement and moxie in their industry means they know everything and must be allowed to do anything, even if it means taking the livelihoods of people who just want to put food on the table.  Sounds like an asshole.  Oh ... also, The Carolina Hurricanes were stolen from the good people of Hartford, and The Hartford Whalers' famous fight song, "Brass Bonanza," has been adopted for North Carolina.  As hoary a form of cultural appropriation you can get without lasting consequences for civilization and society.

So, Team Third Base vs. The Bastard Hartford Whalers?  I choose death.

Meanwhile, my feelings for which team is winning the NBA Finals are so mixed up that I can't accurate describe them.  I know that I should hate The San Antonio Spurs because they beat my Minnesota Timberwolves, and loyalty demands that I wish evil upon those who've wronged me.  On the other side, Karl-Anthony Towns, who was loyal to the T-Wolves until the point the organization stopped being loyal to him and traded him, has a chance to win a championship with the team he was traded to, The New York Knicks.  I think he's a good guy, and I want to see him happy and successful.  And I saw what Jalen Brunson did at the end of Game 1's Win; that dude has big balls, and I really respect that, too.

So why do I catch myself rooting for the Spurs and rooting against the Knicks?  Those are two different questions that demand two different answers.  I don't know him, but it feels as though Victor Wenbanyama is a good dude who's still learning how to play in the NBA.  I like the really tall kid.  And on the other side, when the Knicks made big shot after big shot to pull out a Game 1 upset at San Antonio, I saw Knicks fans in the San Antone crowd cheer, this well of hate rises up within me.  Dammit, man, New York City sports fans are insufferable.

Such a jumble of preferences may drive a man mad.  But I'll try and tease this out.  I'm not specifically hoping that the Spurs will win, but I do hope that Wemby wins.  Meanwhile, I want to see KAT win one championship ... but I don't care about the Knicks franchise or Knicks fans winning a championship.  Hey, I need to compartmentalize if I am supposed to analyze Game 2's broadcast with any sort of objectivity.

With all that said, I plan on going to that Prince celebration concert tonight/Friday night, so I will likely miss Game 2.  Shucks.

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  I really can't complain about the Lynx right now.  They had an easy screening Week, and they blistered through both opponents, the Sky in Chicago by 21 on Friday (avenging the team giving them their other Loss so far this Year [Atlanta being the other]), then the Mercury in Phoenix by, whoa, 34 in Monday that began Commissioner's Cup play (avenging, sorta, their upset Semifinal Loss in last season's playoffs).  They're 7-2, tops in the league, and I think they're leading virtually every statistic, normal and advanced.  I'm just remembering that they had similar gaudy numbers last season and not only did they not win the title, they didn't even reach the WNBA Finals.  So no, sorry, can't put them above negative numbers.  Maybe next Week if they continue their winning streak, which could reach eight because the Lynx are at home versus Golden State (tonight/Thursday night, and I've got tickets to the Game), Seattle and Paige Bueckers and The Bastard Detroit Shock.

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -2).  The Pittsburgh Pirates are above .500 this Year, and they were playing in Pittsburgh, but goddammit, don't get swept by them, ever.  At least the Twinks were able to snap their losing streak at home Monday vs. the White Sox, the club that began the Twinks' losing streak last Wednesday.  They won the series by winning Tuesday, but they got shut out yesterday/Wednesday afternoon, 8-0, as Taj Bradley, who is having a very good season so far, got shaken down for seven Hits and four Runs in 4 2/3 Innings.

And yet they're third in the Central.  Last is Kansas City, and they come to Target Field for three starting tomorrow/Friday night.  Next to last is Detroit, and after a day off Monday, Minnesota travels to them to play three starting on Tuesday.

#-Infinity: Gopher gymnastics (I think I've blog posted about these athletes before ...).  Yeah, I know that the championships were all the way back on April 18.  I wanted to talk about this fantastic team, but I just didn't have the energy or the time.  Now that we are on the really fallow portion of the sports Year, I do have time to honor and, in a contradiction to my normally pessimistic self, signal that this is a good sign of things to come.

Yes, they didn't win the NCAA title.  But they sure as hell weren't given any chance, up to and including the NCAA Championship Semifinals (the penultimate stage of the postseason), to reach the NCAA Championship Finals, aka The Four On The Floor.  They were good, seeded 13th once postseason play began, but this is a sport (and please tell me if I'm wrong) where teams normally play up to seed, so the Gophers' season was supposed to end in the NCAA Regional Finals (aka the second of four stages of the preseason).  But they followed up besting Iowa and Washington in the NCAA Regional Semifinals (the first stage) by upsetting 5-Seed Alabama and 12-Seed Utah in the NCAA Regional Finals.  (Side note: Utah, whose women's gymnastics team is called The Red Rocks, had never failed to reach the NCAA Championship Semifinals ever -- and that's half a century.  I figured that the Head Coach, Carly Dockendorf, would be told to resign because of this first-in-a-lifetime disappointment, but apparently, she's still HC.)

That was good.  What they did in the NCAA Championship Semifinals was even more spectacular.  UCLA, the 4-Seed, competed in the same meet as the Golden Gophers since the NCAAs began, so they advanced together.  The Bruins were so generous in rooting for Minnesota as they began their Cinderella run.  So, um ... it got awkward when the U. outpointed UCLA (as well as 9-Seed Arkansas) to become one of The Four On The Floor for the first time in program history.  I feel kind of bad for the Bruins, even if I'm supposed to hate them.  Anyway, they finished last in the NCAA Championship Finals, behind 1-Seed Oklahoma, 2-Seed LSU, and 3-Seed Florida, who finished, respectively, first, second and third.  (Another side note: I glanced at the TV once when the Finals were winding down, and I swear that Minnesota was third in scoring.  Either LSU or Florida was way behind; was that a screw-up by ESPN?)

See what I mean when I say this sport's titles usually go to seed?  That's why I wanted to note this squad here.  What they did was unprecedented; Minnesota is the lowest Seed to ever reach the Finals.  And considering that they have had some recent success, and that (I think) the state is really involved in women's gymnastics, I think this could, and should, be the start of something great.  I don't allow myself to feel optimistic about pro sports in this way.  For one, they haven't won shit since 2017.  But also, with the possible exception of baseball, the financial rules of pro sports leagues are such that bad teams are given the means (meaning very good young players) to become good teams.  Not so much with college teams.  Coaching matters, and with the NIL Era upon us, spending money to pay players may cause a shake-up in the hierarchy.  But there is a hierarchy, and not to get too detailed with what I mean, the bottom line is that in a college sport, there are traditional blue bloods that win everything and then there are schools that never win.  And you see, Minnesota in 2026 broke that rule in women's gymnastics.  For that reason, there is an opportunity here to be seized upon.  Money, attention, recruits ... I want to think that all of that is beginning to be funneled toward this program because of this level of achievement.  And maybe, just maybe, this could be parlayed into the rise of a new power in women's gymnastics.  Yes, this sounds pie in the sky.  But after what these gymnasts pulled off, I want to believe.

Exercise Or My Stuff?

Today/Wednesday I have the day off.  Well, I need to go to the dentist in the morning, but I don't have anything I have to do after that.  I could finally delve into clearing out my stuff ... but, because the community center is now closed on Sundays for several weeks, tonight/Wednesday night would be a good time to work out.  It's not like I'll get home too late and be too tired to exercise, which is the excuse I always use to not work out after a workday.

Last/Tuesday night I actually got out of work early.  (I think it had to do with mechanical problems down south.  The work that was supposed to come yesterday/Tuesday will come today/Wednesday ... when I'm not there.  Heh-heh.)  I could have gone home and gone through my stuff.  But no, I wanted to celebrate instead by eating Mexican because it's Taco Tuesday.  Then I saw a movie -- The Sheep Detectives, which is a neat movie, but I was going to see Mortal Kombat II.  When I got to the theater, however, they said the movie had already started.  The cashier gave me a showtime a half-hour earlier than the one I saw.  He said I may have been looking at the wrong theater, but I checked my phone -- it said the MKII was starting at 5.  (No matter; I wanted to see it because I thought it was the sequel to the Mortal Kombat film I saw back in 1995.  Tonight I learned that there was not one but two movies between that and this film.  If I missed a flick in a series, I don't feel the need to see the later ones.)

And Monday I got home, but I was, um ... worked over by my ATF.  I wanted to just sit in bed and mentally bask in what she just did to me, so I felt no need to give myself angst by going through my stuff.  Right decision, too.

All's that to say that, once again, I have had ample opportunities to go through the stuff I say I need and want to go through, and yet I don't.  I think the excuses I give are credible.  Still, they're excuses.  And still, my stuff piles up.

I'll go work out anyway.  Got to stay in some sort of shape.