Saturday, July 29, 2006

The X Man has a bike





And he rides it everywhere. He calls it "my bee-chee-ketta", which is sort of Italian for bicycle (bicicletta). He won't let anyone help him either - if you try to help him he'll yell at you; "No, don't help me!".

Friday, July 21, 2006

Funny things the X Man says




* I'm a big fan of the show "24" and I often exclaim how awesome Jack Bauer is. A couple weeks ago the X Man came up to me and said "Daddy...you Jack Bauer-head!"


* Last night after dinner we stopped in to the local pub for a few pints. It was hot so the wife took the X Man outside in the cool air. As they exited the pub the X Man said "Mommy, let's sit here and watch people...". After they sat down he said "Mommy, I'm great. And you're great too."


* Sometimes when the X Man and I are playing on the couch things get a bit rough and he'll stand up with a serious look on his face, place his hands over his private parts and say "Daddy, don't hit my nuts..."

Friday, July 14, 2006

World Cup Perspective

Thanks to my beer buddy Diz for sending these to me and to my Dutch buddy Mike for hosting them for me...



WHAT THE GERMANS SAW:







WHAT THE FRENCH SAW:







WHAT THE ITALIANS SAW:







WHAT THE AMERICANS SAW:







WHAT THE TABLOIDS SHOWED:





It's all about your perspective...

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

BTW...

As I watched Italy celebrating with the Jules Rimet Trophy, I started wondering what the other 31 teams in the tournament had to be thinking at that moment. I think it was probably something along these lines:

Costa Rica – “At least we scored two goals against Germany.”

Ecuador – “If only we didn’t roll over against Germany we would have won Group A and avoided England”

Poland – “If Klose and Podolski had never left, that would be us holding the third place trophy!”

England – “I can’t believe we lost on penalty kicks AGAIN - and to a team whose best player looks and acts like the lead singer of a boy band.”

Sweden – “Where the hell was Ibrahamovic?!”

Argentina – “Hey, at least Brazil didn’t win either!”

Brazil – “Hey, at least Argentina didn’t win either!”

Serbia & Montenegro – “We’ll do better now that we don’t have Montenegro bogging us down”

Australia – “@#$%^ Italians!”

United States – “Italy, Ghana and the Czech Republic, you’re the new ‘Axis of Evil’; we’ll be invading any day now…”

Switzerland – “Watch out for us in 2008”

Ukraine – “UKRAINE IS NOT WEAK!”

South Korea – “It’s too bad we can’t we play every World Cup in Korea with Hiddink as our coach”

Spain – “Whew, for a minute there I thought we were going to have to play Brazil in the Quarterfinal…”

Togo – “At least now people have heard of us!”

Saudi Arabia – “I think it’s time to raise oil prices on Europe…”

Ivory Coast – “Damn, I knew we should have brought more witch doctors”

Mexico – “At least we’re still the best team in CONCACAF”

Czech Republic – “If Koller and Baros had been healthy, that might be us holding the Jules Rimet”

Japan – “We’re fast but we need to improve our technical abilities if we’re ever going to get better. And we could use some height too.”

Paraguay – “Chilavert should have been coaching us. And probably should have played in net too”

Trinidad and Tobago – “Damn, now we have to go back to our real jobs. At least we did our country proud.”

Ghana – “Why oh why did we have to draw Brazil in the second round?”

Angola – “Sure was nice to get out of Angola for a couple weeks”

Iran – “At least the Great Satan didn’t get further than us”

Portugal – “At least we were voted ‘Most Entertaining Team’, even if it was more for our theatrics than our football…”

Croatia – “If Prso had scored, it might have been us losing to the Italians in the second round instead of the Australians!”

Tunisia – “We should have beaten Saudi Arabia”

Netherlands – “If Van Nistelroy ever gets his head on straight, we might actually have quite a team”

Germany – “Two minutes…we couldn’t hold on for two more lousy minutes…”

France – “We didn’t win it all because the Italians said some very hurtful things to us in the final. At least we made it all the way through the match without surrendering”



OK, that last one was kind of mean...

Campioni del Mondo!

Got in late last night from an exhausting 2 day trip to Italy. As you might imagine I'm dead on my feet right now after being up all night celebrating with the Italians but it was totally worth every second. I'll try to get some pictures downloaded and posted when I get home tonight.

FRATELLI D'ITALIA, L'ITALIA S'E DESTA!



.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Italia, I'm coming home!

On Saturday, I'll be getting on a cheap Ryan Air flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Bergamo, Italy. I shall then rent a car and head home to Caldogno where I will be witnessing a dream come true - watching Italy in the World Cup final with my Italian friends. On Monday I'll drive down to Bologna where I'll catch a flight back to Germany. Hopefully by the time I get on the plane in Bologna, Italy will be world champions. Otherwise it's going to be a long, depressing ride home.



FORZA ITALIA!

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Andiamo a Berlin!

Best match of the tournament last night. Italy goes into Dortmund where the Germans had never lost and wins the match literally 2 minutes before the final whistle. I went to the pub clad in my Italia jersey as I have for every match except this time I was surrounded by about 500 Germans all dressed in red, gold and black. It was a bit unnerving at times as I got plenty of dirty looks sent my way and feared for my life everytime I got up to go to the bathroom. But overall it was a great atmosphere, at times you couldn't even hear yourself think. However, when Grosso scored in 119th minute, the place got deathly quiet. I had to mute my celebration a bit but inside I was jumping up and down and screaming. After the match I got a celebratory call from Giampietro and Agnese to share in the excitement which made the moment even better. On the way home, as we got to the gate, a handful of drunk German hooligans spotted me and started cursing me and all things Italian in German. I just smiled and said "Ciao, Arrivederci!" as I went through my gate. It was fantastic.

So now it's on to Berlin for the final on Sunday against either France or Portugal. God I wish I was back in Italy...