Happy Tuesday! It's June already. May went by pretty quickly, it seems to me. We're getting into the swing of Summer now. Road trips! Vacations! Conferences! What do you need for all of these things? Music to help you on the way to and fro.
Weeks ago I watched the (horrendous disaster that was the) Billboard Awards ceremony on tv. I realized it had been a long time since I'd seen a music awards show all the way through and I heard early on that they were going to give Prince a big award and I really like to see Prince perform on these shows. He's always pretty awesome. Well, of course he was awesome, but he was also dead last on the broadcast so I had to sit through a lot of horrible things to get to it. I mean really horrible things like artists kicking fans, terrible performances, even more terrible introductions and uber-pretentious acceptance speeches, and the boos-heard-'round-the-world of Justin Bieber (who is apparently only 19 years old??? Really? I thought the dude was at least in his early 20s by now...seems like he's been around a long time). Anyway, it was basically a broadcast of the worst music has to offer until: the one (really, the only...) highlight of the entire night other than Prince was this performance by Ed Sheeran. I really didn't have a feeling one way or the other about Sheeran's music, but this performance completely made me into a fan. It was beautifully done and so simple. I'd heard the song on the radio but never really listened to it. It's a beautiful song! He's quite talented, I think. So, the evening wasn't an entire waste thanks to Mr. Sheeran and Prince. They saved it. Well done, you! I haven't bought his entire cd, but I did at least buy this song and it's becoming a staple on my playlists:
Summer also brings us soccer! Yay!! A friend of mine went to a Sporting KC match over the weekend and got me a poster of the team. I've never been able to make it up to KC to see them play, but I know they're really really good. I've seen them play on tv a few times. Several of the Sporting KC players play for the national team. Speaking of the national team, they beat Germany over the weekend in Washington D.C.! Germany wasn't at its full strength, but still, it's a top-ranked team in the world and to beat them is a pretty awesome thing. Admittedly, the German goalie did help us out by scoring a goal for our side by accidentally hitting it into his own net, but hey: every little bit helps, you know? I hope it helped the US men's team in their confidence level since they got their butts handed to them by Belgium earlier last week. Neither of those games were World Cup Qualifiers, they were just friendlies for experience. US play a WC qualifier on Friday, so hopefully that goes well. There's still a long way to go to make it into the World Cup, but the US is tied with two other countries for third place at the moment and our region only allows three berths into the World Cup before you have to 'play-in' against a team in the Pacific region for the last spot. I think we can claim one of the top three spots out-right, our team has some really outstanding talent. But, for some reason, we seem to fall flat on our face when we really can't afford to fall flat on our face. The Gold Cup begins next month, too. That's a big deal for other reasons. I had thought that the winner of that competition got an automatic berth into the World Cup, but I'm not so sure now. It might be an automatic berth into the Confederations Cup, which will actually be the year after the World Cup. But, anyway, I hope the US does well. We need experience in international games and the more we have, the better we'll be, I suppose. I'm also hoping for a good showing in the Gold Cup because one of my summer plans includes a trip to the Finals of the Gold Cup this year. My first ever real soccer match! And an international final of a tournament, at that! The last two Gold Cup finals have been Mexico vs. USA, so I'm sorta hoping for something like that again. That would be pretty exciting, I hope. Although, Mexico isn't as good as they used to be and USA is sort of unpredictable. Plus, countries sometimes send their B-squads to the Gold Cup instead of their A-teams who are trying to play for the World Cup qualifiers. Still, CONCACAF's World Cup qualifying matches end in the middle of June and don't pick up again til September so that teams can send their best players to take part in the Gold Cup. We'll see what happens, eh? I've got my fingers crossed that the US will do well and maybe I'll get to cheer on the USA from my really fantastic seats. Regardless, I hope to see a good game no matter who I see play. And, the best part of seeing a final is that you know it won't be a draw! And penalty kicks are super exciting, if it comes to that! They just released the preliminary roster for the Gold Cup for the USA men's team and there are some really fantastic players on the roster including Landon Donovan, who retired and then decided earlier this year that he wanted to play again and he's been fighting to get back into shape and onto the team. I wasn't sure if the coach would allow him back on or not, but he's on the preliminary roster and I'd love to see him play in person. He's not on the final cut for the team yet, but at least he's made it onto the prelim roster, yeah? Other guys that I was really excited to see on the roster is Gooch Onyewu, Carlos Bocanegra (yayay! I thought he might be too old to be on the team, but he's on the prelim list!), Herculez Gomez (I really just want to cheer for Herculez...), Graham Zusi (who had an assist for a goal against Germany over the weekend and normally plays for KC), DaMarcus Beasley, and Bill Hamid and Sean Johnson (who I think are both pretty awesome goalies, and we need somebody who can back up for Tim Howard on the national team...and hopefully either of these guys can become that dependable back-up.). Seeing the preliminary roster made me happy about the chances of the guys making it to the final. The preliminary roster has to be cut down by about 12 guys within a couple of weeks before the final roster is ready, but this is a pretty good team already, I think. Here's hoping!
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