Sports Liveblog

Readers, please note that there is nothing "live" about this liveblog. In fact, everything that I'm writing about took place yesterday (except for the third item), which begs the question: what exactly is a liveblog? My answer is the same answer that I give to the questions "What is the point of AMDAL?", "Why do you still let Apple Symbol write for the blog?" and "What happened to Block and Makens?" - I don't know. If I had to come up with something, however, I'd say a liveblog is a post comprising a poorly taken digital photo of people or things that few know or care about, with little or no context whatsoever, to make the author of said post feel important about his or her life. So here I go.

Unless you were living under a rock, you probably heard about or saw one of the most epic days in sports history yesterday. Three major things happened that rocked the sports world. I'd like to chronicle them here, in descending order of importance.

Epic Sports Moment #1 - The Atlanta Dream beat the Tulsa Shock 96-90 in a WNBA game that no one watched.

According to ESPN, "[Angel] McCoughtry, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2009 WNBA draft, has scored 20 or more points in nine of Atlanta's 14 games. She had three steals and her strong play in the final minutes helped the first-place Dream recover after losing an 18-point first half lead."

Although she had 7 turnovers, McCoughtry scored 29 points with 10 rebounds and scored six straight in the final two minutes. Like much of the AMDAL community, she too was surprised that the WNBA still exists and that both Atlanta and Tulsa are home to professional female teams.

Epic Sports Moment #2 - USA beats Algeria 1-0 in the World Cup to win Group C and advance to the elimination round.

According to the Associated Press, "Now there was just 3½ minutes left in their World Cup, just that much remaining until all the doubts about American soccer would rise again.But then, in one of the most stunning turnarounds in World Cup history, [balding captain] Landon Donovan scored on a lightning fast counterattack 45 seconds into 4 minutes of injury time."

Now I could go on and on about how awesome the ending of this game was, how difficult it was to witness a ref blow yet another call and rob the US of legitimate goal in the first half, and how big this game was for US soccer and what our chances are against Ghana, a country I couldn't point to on a map, on Saturday. But I'm not going to do that. Remember, this is a liveblog and liveblogs are all about the author's delicate ego and self-esteem. Therefore, I'm going to digress and talk about myself.

I watched the USA-Slovenia game last week at an East Village pub called Central Bar. While not as ragey and psyched on soccer as the nearby Nevada Smiths, it is an excellent venue to watch the World Cup nonetheless; you should probably go there right now to catch the Italy-Slovakia game. In fact, the New York Times had a piece on Central Bar last week.

This is the photo featured in the New York Times article "Looking for Love, a Pint and a Soccer Match," which instead of talking about soccer or Central Bar, talks about a stupid website dedicated to dating British guys. Like a Frank Rich column, it's not worth your time. Anyway, see that thin white arm with clenched fist in the center-left of the picture? That belongs to my friend Kevin, who's a pretty good co-ed soccer player with a surprisingly nasty left foot.

Anyway, as I was saying, I watched the USA-Slovenia game at Central Bar and had an awesome time. By far my most memorable moment was something that happened before the game: the entire bar stood up and sang the Star Spangled Banner in unison, at the top of our (its?) lungs. And no, I'm not even joking; that actually happened, in New York City, a place where it's chic to rip on America. Who woulda thunk that soccer would bring out the patriotism in a bunch of drunk twenty-something hipsters? Not me. I'll never forget that moment. I still get goosebumps thinking about it.

A friend just sent me this video footage. It took place outside Nevada Smiths after yesterday's big win. I love it.

So where did I watch the USA-Algeria game? That's a great question and I'm glad you asked it. I watched it at home, with my family's cat. Why? Because I was way too hungover from a Scorpions concert the night before at Jones Beach to wake up and make the trek into the city. (If you haven't listened to the Scorpions for a while, download: Raised On Rock and The Best Is Yet To Come. As my friend Bobby said, "That was easily the best German rock concert I've ever been to.") Fortunately, I (lamely) took some pictures of my tv and cat during the game to make this liveblog feel more like an authentic liveblog (and make me feel important). Here they are:

This is a picture of my television screen depicting Landon Donovan diving headfirst into the corner flag after scoring the only goal of the match in the 91st minute. I actually got my dad an authentic Donovan jersey for Father's Day. Yes, that's a better present than the Brooks Brothers tie you got your dad. After the game Donovan said, "This team embodies what the American spirit is about. We had a goal disallowed the other night. We had another good goal disallowed tonight. But we just keep going. And I think that's what people admire so much about Americans. And I'm damn proud." Amen!

Here's a picture of Carl The Cat. Although he looks a little sleepy here, I assure you he was ecstatic after the Donovan goal. So ecstatic, in fact, that he busted out his little kitty vuvuzela and turned my family room into a veritable beehive. I bet you don't believe me. Would you believe this: Carl The Cat loves laying out in paper. So much so, he even has a paper fort.

Told you so.

Back to the soccer. Here's Clint Dempsey, onsides, right before he buried a goal that was called back for him being offsides. Where's the friggin' instant replay? More importantly, who does Clint Dempsey look like? This website says Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park. I don't think that's right, but I can't do any better, which is driving me crazy. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Epic Sports Moment #3 - Tennis players John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played are still playing(!) the longest match in tennis history, with action suspended due to darkness at 59-59 in the fifth set Wednesday night at Wimbledon.

They had been playing each other for 10 hours: 7 hours, 6 minutes in the fifth set alone, enough to break the full-match record of 6:33, set at the 2004 French Open. Watch it live on ESPN 3.

Update: The match is tied at 61-61. I was going to do an Onion-type joke with some ridiculous 112-112 score, but it's not going to work here. Epic stuff.