Champions without Stars

When Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor left the Wisconsin Badgers in 2007, very few observers thought much of the Badgers’ chances for 2008. But thanks to the ability of Coach Bo Ryan to elicit extraordinary team performance from players who are good rather than exceptional, the Wisconsin Badgers go into the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s annual Basketball Tournament (The Tournament) with regular season and conference tournament titles from the eleven-member Big Ten Conference, and with a ten game winning streak.

The Badgers have no stars this year, no one like Tucker who will likely make the pros. More than six players have scored more than 10 points in a game, an impressive achievement given that only five players are on the floor at any one time. But they withstood a fierce challenge from Indiana’s Purdue University in the regular season race, and from regular-season underachiever Illinois in the tournament to emerge on top.

As a die-hard Badger, I say: Thank you Bo Ryan and Let’s Win The Tournament!

Single Again

I might as well be brief and blunt—after a holiday-period interlude that finally went off the boil, I’m back to being single. If you—or someone you know—is pleasant, intelligent, and can deal with a short roundish Jewish guy who likes Barack, Belgium, and Blogging, and lives 3 hours or less from Schiphol Airport, please let me know.

If they’re curious—forward the link to this blog—I am nothing if not transparent. :)

The Sweet Taste of Sourness

Finally, it’s rare that I review regular-strength (5% and under) brews. But one that is truly remarkable is one I had in Delft’s Locus Publicus while waiting for the nearby Chinese place to open for dinner.

It had been years since I’d had a Rodenbach, the dark-red, super-sour Flemish ale. But with black-bean sauce approaching, the idea of a beer whose punch is in the acidity department appealed over the brews I normally prefer as late night tipples. And Rodenbach didn’t disappoint. The sourness overpowered for an instant but gave way to a balance between acidic and caramel flavors. I never thought of Rodenbach as an aperitif, but boy it works. And it’s one of the most available of the Belgian beers outside of the low countries.

Until April, that’s FlightKL18!

Denk Obama, Eet Obama: The Presidential Race from the NL

As part of my acculturation to this land of flatness, wetness, and slowly abating winter darkness, I loaded dozens of Dutch-language songs onto my MP3 player, including an album of songs to root on the “Oranje”, the Dutch national football side as they pressed into World Cup 2006. One such song was “Nederland is Oranje” by iconic pop star Guus Meeuwis.

I reference this because the word ‘Oranje’ sounds a little like the word ‘Obama’, the name of the candidate I am rooting on to the White House in a competition I described to my Italian boss as “a combination of the soccer World Cup, the England-Australia Ashes Test Cricket Match (which took about as long as the New Mexico Democratic Caucus), and the pre-steroids Tour de France.

“Ik praat oranje, denk oranje, eet oranje, drink oranje” goes the line from the Meeuwis tune. As my thoughts move increasingly westward on the eve of Wisconsin’s primary, the tune morphs into “praat Obama, denk Obama, eet Obama, drink Obama.”

The US presidential race has become compelling theatre—the young articulate, African-American Senator from Illinois Barack Obama building a lead over the erstwhile First Lady, Hillary Clinton, for whom the nomination race was expected to be a coronation instead of a state-by-state come-from-behind jihad.

Without going into the complexities of the Presidential selection process and the alternatives for Clinton to attempt to seize victory in the face of voter repudiation, what has been amazing is how this American expat has been able to be completely plugged into what is happening and to have outlets to participate meaningfully.

I’ve made two $100 donations to the Obama campaign. My view is that while I need the money worse than the Obama campaign does, those contributions have bought me seats in the arena. I’m no longer a disconnected supporter living in a foreign country—I’m a contributor, just as much as anyone in Des Moines, Springfield, Madison or Scarsdale is.

I’m an Obama voter—having voted in the Democrats Abroad Global Primary—and my vote is going to make a difference in the delegate count.

I’m running to be an Obama caucus delegate—reprising a role I played for the last serious insurgent to seek the Democratic nomination, Gary Hart in 1984 as a regional caucus delegate in Madison, Wisconsin.

I’m contacting my friends in the upcoming primary states and engaging them about why the positives a vote for Obama is worth setting aside the kind of concerns being raised by Hillary Clinton and her team, with some degree of success.

But mostly, I’m a fan, and as a fan who used to run political campaigns for a living, the amount of entertainment and stimulation I’m getting from this campaign is unbelievable. The Internet is certainly a source—the ability to log on and read articles suggesting alternative strategies or analyzing the complexities underneath the behavior of different demographic groups is a real plus. YouTube has been a particular revelation—letting me mainline Obama’s numerous recent victory speeches and, when the spirit strikes me, to fire up the excellent “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama” by “Obama Girl.”

Part of the stimulation though comes from being a rare person with an actual vote in a sea of highly interested, and often perplexed bystanders. Several months ago, I had a conversation with a particularly formidable client who was questioning Obama’s electability, particularly relative to Hillary Clinton. My reply—focusing on the new spirit of insurgency in a Democratic electorate tired of losing—wasn’t particularly convincing. With more open minded Europeans, the conversations have ranged from the elementary (this is how a caucus works) to the wide-rangingly geopolitical.

Interestingly, with discount telephone services and telephone numbers supplied by the candidate, I could conceivably phone bank into Ohio or Texas this weekend if I feel like it, just as I’d be doing if I was back in the States. Even though I’m physically the furthest I’ve been from a competitive race for the Presidency, the race is at my fingertips, twenty four hours a day.

Wemberley: Tottenham v. Chelsea

Today’s edition of FlightKL18 finds me six days away from the realization of a dream—to see my beloved Tottenham Hotspur English football/soccer team capture a bit of Cup Glory at Sunday’s final of the League Cup against favored Chelsea at London’s reconstructed Wembley Stadium.

A Chelsea-Tottenham matchup is mouthwatering on a number of levels. First, there’s a form of dyslexic Semitism permeating the contest. Tottenham’s supporters call ourselves The Yid Army, and Chelsea’s support has long had an element of anti-Jewishness to it, which hasn’t completely abated despite the club’s acquisition of a Jewish Russian billionaire oligarch named Roman Abramovich who has turned the club into a full-time job. Abramovich’s replacement of popular Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho with former Israeli National Team Coach Avraham Grant did him no favors with the neo-Nazi element of his club’s support.

Despite Chelsea’s considerable on-field success in the Abramovich era, where the club stockpiled the world’s most expensive players to rot on the bench while winning titles and performing competitively in the prestigious European Champion League, Spurs supporters consider Chelsea an upstart and parvenu unworthy of proper scorn. A recent chant by 3000 visiting Chelsea supporters of “We Hate Tottenham!” provoked an instinctive reply by the 33,000 Tottenham faithful at the club’s White Hart Lane ground. The reply: “We hate ARSENAL! We hate ARSENAL!” showing that the club’s true rival, the Hated Arsenal Scum, held that position without challenge or threat from the Chelsea posers.

On the base of sheer surplus talent, Chelsea enters the match heavy favorites even if fielding an all-substitute team. But Tottenham has some wind at its back, most notably the previous-round demolition of the Hated Arsenal Scum 5-1, and the adrenaline of a cup final makes outcomes unpredictable. I’ll be at an English or Irish pub in The Hague with my 1999 Spurs Away jersey—from the year we last hoisted this particular cup.

PS: The motto of Tottenham Hotspur is “Audere est Facere”—To dare is to do. Kind of fits me, eh?

Mechelen--Quest for the Emperor

Needing a lift and a change of scenery after being dumped by text-message in mid week a few weeks back, I hop on a southbound train to Belgium, opting to spend a half day and an evening in the historic city of Mechelen, midway between Antwerp and Brussels.

A city of 80,000, Mechelen's charm is that it is historic and attractive, possessing a full range of architectural styles (the big aesthetic difference between Belgium and the far more uniform cities of Holland), in a compact package unjustifiably if welcomely bereft of tourists.

Mechelen has my single favorite intersection in all of Europe: Onze Lieve Vrouwe (Dutch for "our dear lady") and Graaf van Egmont. An art nouveau pharmacy presides over a junction containing a plaza, traditional Flemish buildings and a view down an ever-so-typically. European pedestrian street leading to the city's towering cathedral, seat of Belgium's Catholic Church.

Below my favorite intersection in all of Europe lies the Kleine Keizer, a comfortable "taverne" (bar-restaurant in Belgian parlance), serving Primus, my favorite of Belgium's basic lagers. (Half pint, Eur 1.60)

So fortified, an hour long quest for one of my top five Belgian beers-the corked 750ml bottle of the locally brewed Grand Cru of the Emperor which I found at 't Ankertje, a shop/bar offering the products of Mechelen's legendary Anker Brewery (Vismarkt 20)..

For the uninitiated, Grand Cru of the Emperor is best compared in flavor to the 'caramel' in a good creme caramel-not obscenely sweet but ethereally so with an ever-so-slight tinge of burntness to the flavor. At 10 % on the open-ended richter scale it is not for children, but a small glass conveys the flavor and power of this regal brew. I purchase three, but opt for the Gouden Carolus Tripel in a half-pint chalice for a mid afternoon pull. It is more vanilla than caramel in tone and taste, with a slight savoriness from the yeast.

Following the docking at 't Ankertje, one of the true joys of Mechelen ensued-an aimless walk through the residential streets that spin away from the Cathedral. In these streets, one can be forgiven for thinking one is back in the 17th century. These precincts are very similar to comparable streets in Brugge, except for the dearth of tourists and the abundance of locals going about their business. There are also few pubs and shops, so after an hour or so, the centre beckons with its combination of authentic and not so authhentic dining and watering venues.

One venue that I visited that was strange was the Celtic Pub off the main square, which bore more resemblance to an English Tea Room than a proper pseudo-Irish boozer. But they had Corsendonk Bruin on tap, which was enough to lure me in when the main neighbor bars were stocking Inbev's insipid and ubiquitous Leffe, Jupiler and Stella Artois.

The Corsendonk was worth the decor. Kahlua like in color, with a kind of caramel-coffee roundness and slightly ciderlike acidity, it was a perfect brew to watch twilght take hold of the Grote Markt, Mechelen's main square and one of the finest such public places in the Benelux.

As it was still before 6, I felt compelled to get one more beer before dinner-this one on the Grote Markt itself at a venue called the Oase. I have a policy in the Benelux of opting first for beers I'd never had or heard of, and the Oase delivered in style with Sint Gummarus Dubbel, a strong dark beer with a flawless burnt-caramel color and flavor.

Dinner, unusually for Belgium, failed to match the beers that preceded it, as the markt-side venue I'd long patronised has run out of its fish and fowl specials (and, no, I don't eat pork or rabbit, thank you very much). I thus found myself questing for a sole that would prove to disappoint. A bit more forethought would have yielded a tastier repast in this city of generally fine eateries, but I achieved what I'd sought in this classic city-a reunion with The Emperor.

One Day Has Come: Spurs Are On Our Way To Wembley

As I sit at my keyboard listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy", I slowly come to grips with the magnitude and magnificence of Tottenham Hotspur's soul-stirring 5-1 triumph over the Hated Arsenal Scum in tonight's League Cup semifinal at Tottenham's White Hart Lane stadium.

While The Scum fielded an understrength team (whether as a sign of contempt or out of a desire to see their younger players perform against fully-motivated competition), the fact that Tottenham had failed to beat The Scum in 21 straight attempts, and that a berth in a cup final to be played at the renovated 90,000 seat Wembley Stadium was on the line produced an electric atmosphere that penetrated even the remotest outposts of Spursdom.

For years, I wondered what I would do if and when Tottenham finally beat the Scum. Would it be champagne? Public singing of the song whose punch line is "Shoot the Arsenal Scum, Shoot the Arsenal Scum", or merely quiet reflection.

But tonight, thanks to four magnificent Tottenham blasts by Jermaine Jenas, Aaron Lennon, Robbie Keane and a clinical last second strike by the elegantly named Steed Malbranque, which along with a comical self-inflicted goal by the inept Scummer Nicklas Bendtner produced the final 5 goal tally, I have my answer--capturing the magnificence of the occasion here on the blog.

The gamewatching experience was relatively sedate here in Delft--I went to my usual local pub and encountered another wayward Tottenham soul, a fellow returned from Thailand who was complaining about the cold. I was wearing a Tottenham scarf and my 1999 vintage Tottenham Away jersey--from the season when Tottenham last won the League Cup...and last beat the Scum.

I was half watching through the first half, where the two goal margin left me 'cautiously optimistic', as the handlers at the White House are wont to say. But after the third goal, a sense of belief set in. I started waving my scarf around intermittently as if I was one of the fervent throng at The Lane. Another goal goes in, and my body temperature rises and anticipation sets in. We've been taking it from these sons (and daughters) of Vishnu-knows-what for the better part of a flipping decade, and Justice was finally on the horizon.

The fourth goal leads almost to complacency, until a strike by Arsenal's talented first-string striker Emmanuel Adebayor brings the total to 4-1 with a fair amount of time on the clock. Presumed joy gives way to the kind of expectant angst that typefies most of a Spurs supporter's continued existence until the waning moments of gave a sense of relief among the rabid, scarf waving legions preparing to sing lustily over the corpse of their vanquished foe. Finally, the last-second cannon by Malbranque sealed the deal--and a scene of joy unlike any experienced recently at the Lane ensued, with Keane doing a dance at midfield, players piling onto each other, and 36000 singing as one to the tunes of Glory Glory Tottenham Hotspur and the ever-topical Spurs Are On Our Way To Wembley (the original version is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCXdlxZ5RiM).

A key ingredient to Spurs' revival has been new manager Juande Ramos. While I was outraged by his selection and his replacement of previous manager and fellow Hague-area resident Martin Jol, Ramos has brought sharp tactics and restored the confidence of Spurs' leaky defense--and has not had a team of his lose a match in an elimination cup in over a year, a record continued with today's electric win.

Merry, an Arsenal fan I work with sneered when I suggested we had a chance tonight. She said "yeah, you Tottenham fans think 'one day, we'll beat the Arsenal'. Hell, you even have a manager named 'One Day'!"

Merry: Today, we have beaten the Scum. Today, we have claimed our place at Wembley. Merry, One Day Has Come!