"Like A Summer With a Thousand Julys"

I touched down in the US of A on a Thursday night, July 9th, after a 15 hour flight from Shanghai with my 4 year old Dario in tow and first had to lay my mother to rest at a memorial ceremony the following Saturday. It wasn't a full-on funeral as Mom had done the body to science thing and was at that moment chilling in a university medical school locker somewhere, an image that could work on the TV series "Six Feet Under." It was mostly ethnic at the House of Finland in Balboa, Park, San Diego, with me giving a few words in that language (which is more or less a European form of Mongolian) before my full eulogy to the 40 plus mourners who came to see off a remarkably beautiful, generous yet essentially crazy woman. Thanks for the genes, Aiti. They would come in handy in the next 12 hours.

Immediately after the conclusion of the ceremony I was picked up in front of the San Diego Aerospace museum where I had waited under a static display of a full sized SR-71 reconnaisance plane by two gentlemen I had met through the miracle of the internets, Foose and Charlie, and alloted space in a rattling yet servicable automobile for the 1st leg of my journey to the Home Depot Center in Carson California for LA Galaxy at Chivas USA away. With a Foose a recent UCSD grad with plans to write a Phd thesis on football teams under fascism and Charlie recently returned from a socialist conference in San Francisco we had much to talk about.
Foose also had a link to my ticket in Section 138, the home of the LA Riot Squad, the hard-edged supporters group of the LA Galaxy. My introduction to them had been through another LARs member, one Ramses S, who had taken up my online offer to bring bootleg DVDs from China and whom I would meet shortly for the 2nd leg of the odyssey. On the final approach through the glorious/hideous traffic of Hwy 405 I was happy to offer descriptions and answer questions about my life in Japan and China, showing them my J-League Cerezo Osaka strip and telling them about our double championship meltdowns, two relegations and one Great Escape. Then it was past the Stadium, stained by the game-day banners identifying it as "The Home of Chivas USA" (It is and will always be the L.A. Galaxy's), and into the parking lot of the newly rebranded 'Off Campus Pub' for our pre-game.

We entered a big concrete strip mall bunker bar 1/3 filled with LAG and USMNT supporters watching a fiasco on several screens - the US down 2-1 to Haiti in a final CONCACAF Gold Cup group match coming live from Boston. "How the fuck did THAT happen?" The only two positive spins I could put on that Bob Bradley might stumble and get axed before the World Cup and that there would be a great party in Port au Prince that night, a place that certainly deserved one. In quick order I met fine gentlemen I knew only from online pics and LARS forum posts: Zero Cool, Topper, Haggis, Gen."Buck" Turgidson, CaasiGold and the elegant Tommy Mack, who would change into his parson's outfit over by the pool tables and kindly agknowledge my greetings from the Church of the SubGenius with a hearty "Praise 'Bob!'"

The OCP is a newly born and fascinating collision of American soccer drinking culture, such as it is, and a homeboy/vato/ghetto drinking salon, such a neighborhood Carson, California is when a game is not on. No offense, but my Mexican side can say this. It reminded me another unique bar with an edge I knew, the Dog's Bollocks in Pattaya Thailand, a football pub owned and operated by former Chelsea hoolies who had taken their loot there to retire. Here at the OCP, they served beer in pints and in STEINS. That is a large schooner which is almost equal to the German MASS, an almost 2 liter investment in hops and brain cells. The clear glass tankard lacked only a tiny diving board on the rim. And I filled mine with Samuel Adams as I chatted with my LARS people, watched Stuart Holden equalized for the USA 2-2 in injury time and piss on the party in Port au Prince, and discussed the return of Golden Balls Beckham, the coming trip to Mexico City for USMNT contra El Tri, and the score for tonight's uniquely Southern Californian 'derby' which I called at 1-1. I was able to get a takeout catfish and chips from an Asian fish fry shop down the row in the strip mall, another culinary amazement. Then it was time for the march in as away supporters, the frisk and pat down at the turnstiles, and the occupation of our outpost in sections 138/139 of the Home Depot Center.

The good Rev. Mack took up his position at the convergence of three supporters groups, ours, the basic black LA Riot Squad, the more recent but equally spirited Angel City Brigade in their white shirts and gear, and the 'don't we look silly in our yellow wigs'group of Galaxians who for the past decade have numbered no more than twelve members, and began his sermon. He actually resembled the Lutheran pastor who had just seen off my mother, but his message was not one of love. Singing and taunts began in earnest and continued through the evening, under the watchful eye of the equally color coded red Home Depot Center security.


Chivas USA, runaway leaders for the first third of the season, had stumbled, with only one win in their last seven, while the Beckhamless (and temporarily Landon Donovanless) LA Galaxy, after a never ending series of draws (at one point they were 1-1 and 7!) they had pulled together their first winning streak, a pair of 1-0 fingernail biters over hardnut New England and Houston. Becks himself was in attendance in a luxury suite with his buddy Zinadine Zidane, bracing for a return to the team following an overextended loan to AC Milan and the blowback from a new upcoming book detailing the clusterfuck of his joining and playing for the Galaxy. A public hissy fit between Becks and American star Landon Donovan had made world press (again a first for US Soccer), with both men exchanging charges of "unprofessionalism." LARS has already planned a number of welcome back events for the strayed billionaire Beckham, including a mass shower of returned Beckham uniforms and T-shirts onto the pitch when he steps out next week.

Back to tonight's "derby," which is that special Brit term for local soccer deathmatch. The Galaxy hatred for Chivas runs deep and while it does not have the years of a Celtic-Rangers or AC Milan-Inter Milan match-up, it certainly has the bile. The red and white striped Goats team arrived in US Major League Soccer as a spin-off of Guadalajara Mexico's Club Deportivo Chivas in a misguided attempt to rally Mexican LA resident supporters of that team, an idea that might have been fine if their owner had chosen their own neighborhood for a stadium instead of shoehorning them into the LA Galaxy's own home field at the Home Depot Center, where they have been fiercely resented ever since.

Their hard core supporter group, La Legion, are quite simply thugs, both real and wannabes, who start rucks with their own supporters as well as fans of the Galaxy. The Chivas USA team now even resembles a standard MLS team ethnically with only one Mexican veteran, Mariano Trujilo, on the squad. While some LAG supporters, such as myself, enjoy and relish the rivalry there are most who wish the crosshall rivals would fuck off and die. Or move to St. Louis.

Some of the best taunting was reserved for Chivas USA's pneumatic cheerleaders, who were called out as secretely being off-duty strippers from the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's club.

A copy of Chuck Culpepper's Bloody Confused, a marvelous story of an American sport's writers year supporting EPL's Plymouth home and away was in my bag and in it he writes about the joy of the pregame, all the hopes and magical possiblities this moment entails, and of the absolute necessity of facing the actual match with several pints of strong drink in your bloodstream. Without drink, football, Culpepper now quoting a Chelsea supporter who tried it once or twice sober, "the match looked all wrong, all wretchedly misshapen."

So it was with our game, which technically provided very, very few highlights, other than Edson Buddle's delightful long range header in the 30th minute off of a lovely service from rookie A.J. DeLaGarza, Edson rising up in a split second in a crowd of three Chivas USA defenders to beat the goalkeeper and carom the ball of the left post into the goal. If you are watching from the far end there is that wonderful moment when you see the ball lined up inside the rectangle of the goalmouth, like a target in the cross hairs, you realize it has passed the last of the defense, and in another split second it will ripple the net. Joy unrestrained. I lept up along with Ramses and we did the Latin American thing (Argentinian?) where everyone in your row throws their arms around their neighbor's shoulders and dances back and forth.

Landon Donovan, fresh from glory in South Africa where his beautiful goal in the first half against Brazil in the Confed Cup final was almost enough for victory, produced a few good moments and then, for the rest of the match "the ball grew whiskers." Lord Beckham up in his box must have thought he was watching Hull vs. Sunderland. In the rain. But 1-0 it remained and the replay (which I was later able to watch in its entireity on the miracle that is the Fox Soccer Channel) shows an impeccably suited LAG coach Bruce Arena walking over to shake the hand of Chivas USA manager Preki in his track suit in one final fashion trump. One fucking nil. Away. Our section rejoiced appropriately. Priceless bragging rights and I, against all odds and possiblities, got to see it. The last time I had seen an MLS game in person was in the summer of 1997, an LA Galaxy victory in an empty Rose Bowl in 40C heat, so it had been a 12 year wait.

The rest of the evening was an out of body experience, a Perfect Storm where jet lag, my mother's memorial, the fine service of the Off Campus Pub, and the 1-0 result all combined to transport me, thanks to my new friends' guardianship, in an instant to brother's house in San Diego at 200 a.m. I am told I collected some glorious shuteye out in the back on the flat white concrete and only one item, a battered Japan hat from France WC 98 was left as an offering to the soccer gods, an always necessary sacrifice I make every time I enjoy a fabulous victory. I certainly plan to be much, much, much more careful in Mexico City on August 12, where if should not make it back to my hotel, then I could be the human sacrifice. "Dios permir mi regresan." But if it resulted in a 2-0 USA victory over Mexico, would it be worth it?