The Grossest Thing Ever....

If you are a bride, or groom.....or a sensitive, kind, caring food person......tune out, do not read further.

Really. You have been warned: this is a Blog....not a cutesey little PR site run by John Pisto's PR chick.

Awrighty then......

It has long been known that a normal person should never break bread with a restaurant person. Chefs are bad....but waitresses are right up there in the pantheon. And...we tend to save the really grotesque stuff for the dining table.....It is kind of like cop humor: big yucks at the autopsy, because humor keeps away the truly awful stuff.

I have been long known as a defender of the waiting class. This is why, despite missing many important neuro-transmitters and any kind of basic impulse control.....I can still rally to my side the best waitresses on the planet....however briefly. I once married a waitress, just to get her to work for me. You think I am kidding, right?

Example 1) As a late night guest at Rio Grill, tired and hungry......I witness Restaurant Godess Kimberly trying to 86 a rowdy group of golf scum. One of the golf wenches takes exception and throws her drink in Kimberly's face. I am so offended that I grab the chick by the throat with one hand, slam her up against the wall and make a citizen's arrest for assault. I speed dial the sheriff with one hand, and then speed-dial Tom Nash, my lawyer. And Kimberly's lawyer in the civil assault case that brewed. Oh, yeah.....the Rio fired her.

Example 2) At Silver Jones for lunch....beseiged by the blue haired crowd: sharing a salad, sharing a glass of wine, hanging out past 2pm when everyone wants to close and go home to their children.....a table of two LOL's....seated right by the front door, feet from the waitress station. The girls are closing out, yakking waitress stuff.....hot flashes, STD's, yeast infections, suppurating lesions, awful dates with tiny-dicked musicians.....

The LOL's call me over: "Michael. We are trying to enjoy our lunch, and the language from those girls is just appalling and grotesque. The obscenities and profanity! We are shocked, and we really can never come here again....."

My response:

"Oh, Fuck! I am so fucking sorry!" The LOL's scrambled for the door.......

I also am a survivor of Telluride, Colorado in the early days. We had the Sheridan in 1974 and 1975, before Tom Cruise and the jetport. Our bar was rowdy: the Rico Freekos were a bank robbing co-op from the next town over, and the boys would support the Rico girls' softball team with Thompson submachine guns in the bar. (Concealed weapons: bad; unconcealed machine guns: not a problem in the world). Our juke box was hard to read because of the razor scratches from all the lines chopped on the glass. Three men for every woman, and the highest suicide rate in North America.

Still, the bar down the street was worse than the Sheridan. Libel laws and brain damage hide the name from memory. They had an early version of the wet t-shirt contest. The grossest public event I had seen until tonight was at this bar. One of the contestants got carried away, and actually removed all her damp clothing and was dancing naked on the bar. It was that time of the month, and the little string was dangling to the beat of Steve Miller. One of the overwhelming numbers of young mountaineers was overcome by .......something.....and lunged, grasped the item in his teeth, and yanked. Wooo-hooo! Brass ring! What a crowd pleaser!

That was my grossest restaurant moment until tonight. We did a rehearsal dinner for our wedding tomorrow at The Store. Country band, nice food, hillbilly bocce, open bar, Joe Kovacs brand new wine in jugs from the carboy. Young people and old, vegetarians and rednecks, alchies and non-drinkers. Couple of babies, couple of octogenarians. Salad, entrée, dessert.

Clearing the entrées, suddenly I noticed my girls all aflutter.....seriously pissed. I drifted over to see what was up. They were gathered around a plate by the bussing station: chicken bones, a little wild rice......AND A GOOEY, STINKY DIAPER!!! laid out on the plate for them to buss.

The self absorbed, self righteous, vegetarian, teetotalling mom changed the baby on the table in the middle of the dining room and dumped the diaper on the plate for the waitress to carry away.

Jesus wept.

This kind of obtuse, grotesque, ignorant, violent disregard for the sensibilities of your fellow man....especially your fellow working man......seems to becoming pandemic. Forget the bird flu. There is no vaccine for this kind of ignorant self-absorbtion.

You need to take a test to drive a car.....but anyone can have children. Where was Andrea Yates when she was needed.....about 25 years ago in Carmel.

There was a time, not so long ago......at least in my memory.....when someone could destroy their reputation by wearing seersucker or a straw hat after Labor Day. Changing a poopy diaper at a table in a restaurant and dropping the mess on a dinner plate for the waitress would have caused a social riot.

This may be The End of Times.

Meathead vs. Our Meat Guy

Just keeping you up to date:

Our only Red State.....or even Red County....product is Creekstone Farms beef. They are good Republicans from Kansas who think that it would be really cool to sell beef to the Japanese. They started a cooperative program with the local ag college to test every steer for BSE, as in Japan. The Bushies have been trying to shut them down. Here is the latest, from the Organic Consumers website.

MAD COWS AND CRAZED BUREAUCRATS
Despite mounting public pressure for universal testing for Mad Cow disease, USDA Secretary Mike Johanns has announced a 90% cut back on testing cattle at slaughter. Two cases of Mad Cow disease have been discovered in the U.S. in the last year, likely meaning that other undiscovered cases have entered the food supply. In Japan, 100% of cows age 24 months and older are tested for the fatal brain-wasting disease before slaughter. In contrast, the U.S. currently tests less than 1% of the 35 million cattle slaughtered annually. The USDA is now claiming that testing 1% of all cattle is "unnecessary" and "too expensive." Dr. Michael Hansen, an expert on Mad Cow disease at Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, described the latest USDA move as "playing Russian roulette with public health." Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1207.cfm

In related news, a Kansas-based meatpacking company, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, filed for summary judgment in its suit against the USDA last week. The USDA claims Creekstone does not have the right to voluntarily test all of its beef for the brain-wasting disease. In response, Creekstone filed a lawsuit against the USDA, saying the company has the right to test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease and that there are no federal laws saying you can't go above and beyond government regulations for food safety. The USDA has until Aug. 25 to respond to Creekstone's filing.Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1110.cfm

I am a Chef, too......

When you are a trained soccer referee at high levels, inevitably..... at the end of viciously competitive matches.....some prick will come up and say: "I am a certified ref, and I have to take exception to.......blah, blah, blah....."

Translation: "I have a daughter/son on the team that lost; I took the basic exam 2-10 years ago and passed/failed, and you made a mistake on the call that caused my son/daughter or my son/daughter's team to lose the game. I don't actually WORK as a referee, or hone the skills implied in the basic course, and expose them to public/instutional criticism on a daily basis.......but YOU ARE WRONG!!!!"

Yah.....Well.....

I woke up this morning after a six hour nightmare about rocket backpacks and flying over the wedding to the afterparty, and the backpack didn't fit, and I was scared to light the rockets because I figured the landing would be hard and my ankles are kinda weak........and there was no real bartender at the wedding.......and I hadda get there or else.......

When I fully awoke, and Amanda brought my coffee, and I faced my real day: Sunday Brunch at The Store: prep for Lubow's jazz party....and a bride interview.....I calmed way the fuck down. No Rocket BackBacks.....No worries.....just omelettes and eggs bennie and get over it.

First....since Vioxx has been butt-slammed, I have to take a really hot bath to loosen up the tendons, ligaments, muscles, etc and face the day. The ten minute soak is always accompanied by a read of the 100 magazines we subscribe to. This morning was The New Yorker.....a piece by Bill Buford about a dessert place in Manhattan run by Will Goldfarb.

First off.....if you don't read The New Yorker.....Fuck YOU. Check it out online....go to the library, or read it at Borders and not pay for it.....whatever. Not subscribing to The New Yorker is like being gay and trying to get by on Barbra Streisand videos.....

Anyway, Buford goes to work for Goldfarb, who is a truly insane person. Kind of like being the studio sweep up guy for Van Gogh. The most important thing for Nathan at the start of the day is folding the work towels ever so: Thomas Keller (of French Laundry, Per Se, and Bouchon fame) really admires Will Goldfarb's towel folding......No, really. Towel folding is the kind of attention to detail that brings all the rest of the greatness/insanity to home to roost.

Then we move on to substantive isssues. One of Nathan's desserts is called "St. Barts, May 2001". It is served on a beach towel, and accompanied with a spray bottle of Caribbean sea water......He was also famous for a dish that required the customer to be blindfolded and bound with leather straps.....the waiter would feed them spoonfulls of stuff.....Another dish was enjoyed through a gas mask, with the hands tied behind the chair. But he is calmer now....and the meds seem to be kicking in.

Buford the writer jumps into the breach at Goldfarb's new dessert bar as bartender. Trying to please: six secretaries come in and don't know what to order. He advises chocolate and champagne. Will remonstrates: Dessert is different....they must deal with it on their own. Don't help them." The guests need to tell US what they want. Give us a color, for instance.....and we will give them a dish. Red. Black. White. Dessert is not a necessity....it is a social construct of the last couple hundred years......Dessert is just a stall before you have to go home to the wife......so drag it out.

Will worked for 20 months at El Bulli in Spain. The place is only open during the warm months, but the crew works like dogs the year round. They were bored with peeling and seeding tomatoes for normal food dishes, so they made a dessert from the peels and seeds that captured the entire essence of the tomato in an ice. They made mango gnocchi by dropping mango purée in calcium chloride baths to make crunchy mango/caviar balls to go with.......Whatever. In the 20 months Will worked there, he averaged 6-7 hours a WEEK sleep. They lived in dorms in tiny rooms....and breathed the true fire. (And inhaled massive amounts of cocaine.....but don't quote me.....inside information, not part of the New Yorker article......but really, who gets by on 6-7 hours a week beside Paris Hilton?).

My Brendan worked in this same environment (sans cocaine for the little people) at Mugaritz........Rare herbs, grown by the staff....take standard dishes, deconstruct them, put them back together in challenging ways......30 chefs for 30 diners......intense competition. Actual bloodshed competing for spots on the line.....which was called the snakepit.

Cachagua and our crackheads.....and Pebble Beach are NOTHING by comparison.

Did I mention all our stuff we either grow.....have people grow for us.....or is completely sustainable and organic in every way/shape/form? Brendan has even got the tiny specialty herbs and greens thing going outside.

Anyway, this morning, we dealt with it..... I did brunch......Brendan prepped and packed Lubow's party and took off. I dealt with the bride and her family....Temperatures hit 102 at The Store......not totally conducive to romantic food talk, but whatever......

I dragged my lame ass to Lubow's by 3pm... Brendan was doing his high tech appetizers: jicama and blood oranges, goofy crab balls, ceviche spoons, etc. Funky grilled cheese things with five wacky basil clones: purple, lemon, cinnamon, chocolate......like that.

An hour into it some chick shows up with a flexible portable cooler. Half a pineapple....skewers with shrimp from Costco swrapped with prosciutto and pineapple parts......and randomly chopped pineapple pieces. Think "Fargo" pineapple......

"Hi.....I am a chef, too....you won't mind serving this for me, will you." Not a question, a command.

We had store bought prosciutto, in a Costco prawn with the tail on, and store bought pineapple cut badly in random pieces.......sitting out at room temperature (102 degrees in Cachagua)......and we have to sit by watch this certainly toxic, possibly carcinogenic shit being displayed by an illegal, unlicensed pretend caterer.

On my watch!

We wondered: "Which is better: throw her shit in the creek and have a conflict with the host (she was a guest, after all); or let people eat this funk and shit and barf for hours and think it is ours?"

The conceit of: "I am a chef, too......" is what really ground. No serious kitchen in the known universe would ever think of using frozen, farm raised Bangladeshi tiger prawns with the horny tails still attached. This chick had clearly learned her shit from Alton James, or half a failed California Culinary Institute course.

She was introduced to us as a great caterer: "She does all the parties in Pebble Beach....."

We are really dumb. We have cooks who have spent months and years working for free with genius maniacs like Nathan Goldfarb, Feran Adria and Andoni Aduriz. We have a licensed kitchen inspected by Monterey County Environmental Health, and insured by C.I.G for two million dollars. We pay actual rent every month on our kitchen, and have full time guys who clean it in detail, and aggressively maintain all the shit that constantly tries to break down......

And there are still quantities of people with money that think that rotting frozen unpeeled farm-raised Bangladeshi tiger prawns stuck on a stick with store bought Canadian prosciutto and canned pineappe is comparable to real food?

I am relishing in the realization that the stupid motherfuckers that ate that shit.....are now trying to figure out which is worse: projectile vomiting or projectile shitting. I just feel sorry for the El Salvadoreans that have to clean up the results of their indecision. And apparently this group is "all the people in Pebble Beach....."

If I wasn't smarter........I might be led to believe that these same people would have voted an ignorant, draft dodging corrupt thief to be our President and lead a charge to systematically destroy all of the values that 200 years of hard work by ingenious, hardworking working-class people.......and had finally led us to the brink of the abyss of world respect.

Nah.....that couldn't happen. Rich people are blessed by God, for their essential goodness. If they weren't Good, they wouldn't be Rich. People who work hard at a craft are inherently flawed.....or God would have made it easy for them, you see.........

Nah.....I am a dumb fuck. Anyone that works sixteen hours a day in kitchen can't know anything about real civilization........

My advice for the chef's patrons is: the bathtub: Barf towards the drain, splatter towards the back. Try to get the hair products out of the way first. And the loofa. It is really helpful to hang onto the knobs while you are shitting/barfing....but don't bang your head, and don't turn on the knobs.......

The burns and cuts are really unfortunate, and hard to explain at tomorrow's cocktail party.....

It happened in Old Monterey.......

Back in the day, The Blog was like Dear Diary: no one would read it, so anything went…..No audience, so no “auteur” syndrome.

I can remember trying to write the Great American Novel and getting completely stuck on the whole issue of “Who is The Reader?”

The engineer in me, probably: the Heisinger Uncertainty Principle, just turned inside out: the act of observation changes that which is being observed.

So, now I want to write about a bride, and I know she will read it……

We love her, but how will she see her own wedding laid out here? Jeez, we don’t even have a deposit……

Oh, well, here goes. It is important to relate because it shows that true love conquers all…..and that there really is a God, and She has a sense of humor.

Let’s call my bride Debra.

First of all, she came out to The Store on a Sunday to do A Tasting. This was a day when I lost track of the brides who might or might not come out….and had three show up, plus the crackheads and the normal grease-stained bachelors nursing awesome hangovers that we see every Sunday.

She liked us anyway!

And she hired us!

Debra also had the best wedding favors in the last five years of weddings: handmade lemongrass soap bars in beautiful handmade wrappers……showing skill, thoughtfulness, individual attention to her guests…….I swiped one, and we have it in our Debra Shrine…..

Anyway…….

Two weeks ago Sunday was Debra’s wedding: at the Memory Gardens in downtown Monterey. A “Renewal” Jewish ceremony. If you are not keeping track, there are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Renewal traditions of Jewish worship….going from right to left. My Irish Catholic brother is on the board of a Reconstruction Temple in Philadelphia......Steve is a Teachers Union organizer and crypto-Trotskyite. Bar Mitzvahs at his temple can feature kippahs with names like Rachel O’Donnelly/Osanjeh, where both parents are female social workers.

Renewal Jews are further to the left than even Reconstructionists. Tribal almost…..my friend Rabbi Leah is Renewal. When we work for her she pulls out 10,000 year old traditions that involve each guest getting rosemary sprigs, or organic grapes in piles, or quail eggs, or speical aromatherapy candles....and always organic, kosher wines: and that is during the ceremony, not the food!

When I convert, I am going Renewal, for sure.

The Memory Gardens are a hidden, beautiful and historic spot....just behind the Custom House in Old Monterey, a hundred feet from Wharf One. It is public space, maintained by the Parks Department. On this particular day, there was a blues festival going on just 50 yards away. The sweet little cantor chick, and the rabbi herself were fighting a battle just to be heard explaining things to me. “Can you get them to stop playing for a few minutes?” “Uh……sorry, babe. No one has more right to sing the blues than the Jews…..You just have to deal with it.”

All was good otherwise. The setup went well. Debra gave us no instructions as to menu (beyond the obvious), so we could do our best with the best stuff we could find. The ceremony was right there, so we set up the chairs and the aisle, and the tables around the fountain in the plaza. The aisle runner had been stolen in the 30 minutes between the rental company drop-off and our arrival…..but, hey!

The only other glitch was the cake. The less than robustly heterosexual flower guy kept bugging me during the setup: “Where ith the cake? I need to DECORATE! When ith it COMING?”

Finally, at 4 o’clock….as Debra was standing at the back, bouquet in hand, ready to march down the runnerless aisle (we laid out Missing Linen tablecloths)……I sidled up to her: “Deb, who is the baker? The florist is going to stroke out…when is the cake coming? Who can we call?”

Debra: “You don’t do cakes?”

Oh, shit.

Cell phone: 333-1600………Beep…..Beep. “ Whole Foods Market….”

“Bakery Department, please”

“Bakery, how may I help you?”

“How many cakes do you have for sale?”

“Uh……maybe twenty?”

“Box ‘em all up, baby…..I’ll be right over”

I sidled over to Mom Judy: “Uh….our cake service will be a little less traditional. We are going with a dessert buffet!”

(Side note: Buying 20 retail organic cakes from Whole Foods at the last minute was still HALF the cost of a crappy traditional wedding cake……Our bakers are great and their cakes are gorgeous and delicious….but Debra’s guests got to choose between fruit, and chocolate and cheesy, and lemon, and death by chocolate, and………..it was half price!)

Meanwhile, just as we started setting up the buffet, with the blues concert blasting away in the background, we put out the plates and the big green salad first. A couple raced over, grabbed plates and started serving themselves. Nothing else on the line…..nothing.

Gilda hit them like Lawrence Taylor hit Joe Thiesmann: “EXCUSE me……dinner is not yet served, back off!” We looked at the couple a little closer, and there was a stir as I stopped Gilda from ripping their lungs out. Nice clothes, but not quite nice enough. The best man came over: “Who are you people?”

Crashers.

We booted them. Minutes later, one of the bridesmaids came up missing her purse. We called in the Five-Oh and forgot about it.

The buffet went fine. All was good.

Come cake-cutting time everyone fot up to the mike and made toasts as the guests prepared to dive into my Dessert Buffet. Just as we were about to start serving, the Dad of the Groom got the mike. Turns out he is a serious Christian kind of a fellow, and was feeling perhaps a little neglected in all the cantor singing, hoopa wielding, glass crushing, Hebrew singing and clapping, etc.

I was distracted a bit, but I thought I heard: “I just wanted to say that I prayed to My Lord and Personal Saviour Jesus Christ, and He came into my heart……and He reassured me that it was fine that my beautiful blonde haired, blue-eyed baby Christian boy was marrying this Jew……..”

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!!!! No!!!! No!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaah! No!!!!!” Screams came from behind the wall of the Memory Gardens.

Fuck! I ran out the gate to investigate, and right there in front of the Indian Summer Restaurant were the Wedding Crashers….getting hooked up by the Monterey Bike Patrol, two chicks in blue. They had caught the lady crasher with the missing purse and were struggling with her while she screamed and thrashed.

I ran up…..Irish peacemaker, me: “Please! Please! There is a wedding going on right here. Please keep it down!”

“Wedding? Wedding? WHAT ABOUT MY FUCKING WEDDING, YOU BASTARD? WHAT ABOUT MY FUCKING WEDDING, YOU PRICK BASTARD? FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!“

The cops: “Please, sir. You are not helping……”

No, duh........

Nothing like a Garden Wedding in Old Monterey, huh?

Debra....we love you.

World Cup Fever.....

Somehow people still think of me as Soccer Guy. Despite the fact that I haven’t coached in three years, or refereed in two. Maybe the fact that I am still enough of a nut to invite all the Mexicans in Cachagua for a free breakfast to watch Mexico v Portugal at 6am on my day off…..or the fact that we turned down Ridge Watson’s surprise birthday party at Joullian cuz it was on the day of The Final.

My Main Wine Man Alex Lallos quit his job at Heller Vineyards so he could watch the World Cup. This is True Soccer Madness. Alex has a job for life….and the enduring respect of a grateful nation.

Anyhow, I got a million phone calls about The Final, and about The Cup as a whole.

First off, rent The Cup. It is a great, sweet movie about Buddhist monks in Tibet trying to watch the World Cup….you gotta love it. Drop by, and you can borrow my copy. The true World Cup Spirit.

I loved the Africans…..I loved the Spanish…….I loved the South Americans. They all got fucked. Tant pis. The Argentine coach refused to play Messi because…….he wouldn’t suck his dick in the shower? Who knows…..a kid who dominates the field of play, totally disrupts the opponents careful strategies.....give him twenty minutes a game, max. This is from the same country that booted Batistuta from the team at the top of his career because he wouldn’t get a haircut…..so go figure.

The great thing about soccer is that any team can beat any other team on any given day. LA Galaxy can beat ManU. Really. Unfortunately, the flip side is also true: Diving dumbass Portugese beat anyone; Poland loses to Germany in the final seconds; Australia loses to Italy in the last SECOND; the Africans lose to Brazil, despite being better Brazilians than the actual Brazilians. No worries…..the next World Cup is in Africa!

And fuck the Middle Eastern dudes. They may have the oil, and the money…..but they suck. Even with Dutch coaches. Australia, Korea and Japan should just seed through and get over it.

Anyway….on to The Final.

We worked for Stupid Germans till 3am Saturday night. I use the term advisedly. These were stupid, untrustful, disorganized Germans….who kept us out late and their Harvard Alumni credit cards were no damn good.

Sunday Brunch at the Cachagua Store brought out a nice proliferation of new locals: sweet lesbian moms, their uptight Catholic school neighbors, hardcore local kids and my soccer mafia crew. I was felled by a migraine triggered by clouds of nicotine by the crackheads…..and perhaps the dehydration of working for three days in 90 degree heat and drinking only Diet Coke and champagne……Hey, it worked for Oscar Wilde!

I missed most of the actual game in my Imitrex fog…..but I was wide awake for the famous head butt.

All my French friends immediately freaked out and started calling, emailing and IM-ing me.

Is it legal to use the stadium replay for a referee call?

Probably not.......but they have the ficton that the referee consulted with his linesman. The linesman (now called an assistant, actually) may actually have seen the massive head strike. He certainly saw the replay, and can advise the referee before the call is made.

FIFA reviews tapes anyway and would have levelled the boom on Zidane after the match.

No matter, the French weren't going to score anyway.....everyone was exhausted, Italian and French. Trezuguet is one of the best penalty takers in the world, and was put in just for that job. He missed....tant pis. Shit happens……Frank Lampard missed his for England….along with two of his buddies. Shit happens.

MORE IMPORTANT: The London Times hired an Italian lip reader to see what Materazzi said: "Your mother is a terrorist whore!"

This World Cup was dedicated to eliminating this kind of racism......ads by Thierry Henri and other black players,etc..........I think Materazzi will be in more trouble than Zidane in the end.

Italy has had a racism problem for years: fans throwing bananas at black goalkeepers, Nazi flags, banners and salutes at Lazio matches (their goalkeeper even responded with a Sieg Heil one time!). Materazzi’s taunt is right in line with the dark end of Italian soccer.

And I was so pleased with the Italian play. Normally, the Italians fall victim to SuperStar Syndrome, like the Brazilians this year: each guy is a legend in his own mind. Groupies, fawning agents, adoring fans, etc. When it comes to team play the house of cards falls down. “Why should I pass to that prick for an easy goal. Fuck him….he is trying to get on with Real and maybe I can blast it through the middle of the goalkeeper…..and what a great highlight film!” No one cooperates…..no goals are scored, and MAYBE they win 1-0. Not this year….they were really entertaining. Even though:

The Italians faced a double whammy. The game fixing scandal meant that Juve, Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio and a couple other clubs were all going to be sentenced to play in Serie B or Serie C next year. Even though the players themselves were not involved. This is like the Yankees being sent down to Double A ball, and having to work their way back up to the Majors. (Salaries are tied to play level, and drop from 100,000 euro a week to 10, 00). Or they have to go free agent and jump to other clubs.

AND……. one of their recent teammates, Gianluca Pesotto…..who had been named team manager of Juventus, and was a sweet, hardworking guy……was so depressed by the debacle that he grabbed some rosary beads and jumped out the window of his office in a failed suicide attempt.

Under the cloud of these double disasters, and under the leadership of Fabio Cannavaro……a hardworking, humble defender…..the Azzuri dropped the superstar ego bullshit and played brilliant soccer.

Until Materazzi’s cheapshit, racist taunt.

Zidane is very proud of his Algerian heritage, and his religion. The family emigrated to Australia when he was a kid, and he took plenty enough grief along these lines back then. His stature in the soccer world is such that one would think that fellow players would be above these kinds of slurs. So much for Fair Play.

The President of France made a beautiful welcoming speech to the team and to Zidane personally at the Eysée Palace. He acknowledged the embarrassment, but thanked Zidane for his long service to the team and the country, his beautiful and inspiring play for decades, etc. Not a dry eye in the house. Not even MY house.

Zindane is still a class act in my book. Good for him......great fucking head butt, well deserved. Sticking up for Mom, and Allah! There really is a point where you don’t have to take it anymore....even in the World Cup....even in your last game as a player. Bullshit racism is a problem in soccer…..especially in Italy. Fuck you, Materazzi. Shut your mouth and play the fucking game.

Materazzi is a punk.....just watching him clown around with the trophy, sticking it in his pants, tickling it like it was balls.......made me embarrassed to be an Azzuri fan.

The fact that Zidane one the Golden Ball over Cannavaro is all you need to know.

Oh, and the Italian team coach Lippi……who was promised a long term contract by grace of his victory….just resigned in embarrassment.

And still, what a great three plus weeks of sport. Eat your heart out NASCAR…..