Z/Web

Wow, what a fantastic and what a fantastic atmosphere at Spartan Stadium in San Jose. The place was packed, and I mean packed. The main parking lot was full and we had to park in a lot much further away and the delay meant I missed the first ten minutes of the game. But that was okay, since the Quakes didn’t score until the sixteenth minute, just after I’d found my seat and gotten settled. The chance looked like nothing at all: a loose clearance in Miami box went to Manny Lagos who fed it to superstar Landon Donovan in the box. He was surrounded by four players, so it didn’t look dangerous at all. But he took the ball to the left toward a group of three defenders, then rolled the ball backward with his left foot, did a 180 to retrieve the ball with his right. That gave him space on the right since the defenders were on his left. The fourth Miami guy was on the right but behind Donovan. He spun back around another 180 to face the goal, taking the ball with him, and slid it toward the right post. It went right into the back of the net! Fantastic goal. Then, ten minutes later, a bizarre event. I didn’t see what happened as I was following the ball, but two players collided on the far side of the field. Suddenly the ref was showing the red card… to a San Jose player! The place exploded with boos. Then there was another red card: to Diego Serna of the Fusion. Now the stadium rocked with cheers! When I saw this on the TV replay, it was clear that Zak Ibsen did kick Serna when they collided. I couldn’t quite tell what Serna did, though it was a bit of a tussle. But Ibsen’s “kick” was weak and hardly connected yet Serna rolled over in agony like he’d been shot, so perhaps the card came for being overdramatic. Either way, the cards shouldn’t have been red: yellows would have been more appropriate, though it’s understandable that you don’t want players retaliating. Also, after the first game was so physical, the league wanted the refs to crack down. The bottom line is that both teams were still even, at ten players each, and the game continued. In the second half, Landon was given a yellow for diving in the Miami penalty area. Another bad call: a closeup of the replay clearly shows the defenders elbow catching Landon in the jaw, knocking him down — he wasn’t pretending at all! It didn’t matter, though. Just minutes later, Landon feeds Ian Russell on the left side. He was completely alone and ignored, so he swivels to the right to get some space on his marker and curls perfectly into the top right corner of the goal. Beautiful! San Jose hasn’t lost all year when scoring first, and their confidence showed. After that it was all Quakes. A right scoop pass by Mulrooney (reminiscent of Donovan’s play of the week earlier in the year) and Lagos first-timed it into the net. With 18 minutes left, Donovan was back defending a bit, when McKinley did a ridiculously reckless tackle over the back of Donovan, and he was promptly red-carded. Miami was now down to 9 men and they pretty much gave up. It was like a practice game for San Jose. They passed the ball around and Miami didn’t even try to get it. Finally, San Jose would push the goal and bit and Miami would defend, but they rarely made any kind of a run toward goal themselves. After the McKinley ejection, Coach Yallop intelligently took Landon off (no sense risking him getting a second yellow or getting injured when the Quakes are up by three), and put in DeRosario. I told my cousin that DeRosario would score, and sure enough, with just a few minutes left, he did just that. He darted onto a weak backpass by a Miami defender and took the ball toward goal. The keeper came and dove, DeRosario dribbled around him and calmly put the ball away. The Quakes win it four to nothing! Now the series is tied one win each: San Jose has to go to Miami and win, and then they qualify for the Championship. Wow. What a season. From worst to first. Amazing. Go Quakes! Final: 4-0 San Jose.

Fascinating documentary following a new dot-com business from founding to floundering. The filmmakers had remarkable access and produced something that is truly profound, dramatic, in depth, and real. However, the editing is astonishingly shoddy. The story jumps around and there’s little explanation for how or why anything happens: no subtitles, definitions, or setups, just raw camera-work that on occasion leaves you scratching your head wondering what happened. For instance, in two cases in the story, the company must terminate founding partners and the lead members go through the agony of having to battle with former friends. But there are no explanations for exactly what instigated the conflict, making our role as the observer an awkward and uncomfortable one (since we don’t know who to root for). Timing is also often strange. For instance, dates are titled on the screen occasionally, such as “March” but there is no year. At one point there was a sequence about the big dot-com crash of Sept. 2000, and the next sequence was dated April, leaving me wondering if it was April 2001 or if we’d gone back in time to April 2000! (It turned out to be the latter.) Bizarre and elementary errors, but I guess the filmmakers can be forgiven as they only had to film 18 hours a day for over a year and ended up with over 400 hours of footage to edit to 90 minutes (yikes!). Despite the obvious and confusing flaws, the story is remarkable, and it is this story that will be remembered generations from now when historians want to understand the whole dot-com phenomena. Fascinating.