Great moments in World Cup history #8

World Cup 2006: Maxi Rodriguez scores for Argentina against Mexico in extra time.

Abandoned Books and/or Movies #5

Finn McCool's Football Club: The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of a Pub Soccer Team in the City of the Dead by Stephen Rea

Stephen Rea is from Northern Ireland. His wife is from North Carolina. In 2004 they moved to New Orleans. In New Orleans, Stephen Rea found a pub called Finn McCool's where he liked to hang out, drink, and watch European football matches on cable television. He and his friends there formed a soccer team of their own. Soon after that, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. After the hurricane was over, some of the members of the team moved back to New Orleans, began rebuilding, and reformed the team. Later, Stephen Rea wrote a book about the whole thing.

The book covers three areas:

• Watching, talking about, and occasionally playing soccer; these parts of the book were boring.
• Stephen Rea's views on U.S. life and culture; these parts were uninformed and often insulting.
• Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath; these parts were interesting-- I tried to find and read most of them.

The Monkees: The Zany Adventures of Davy, Peter, Micky, and Mike -- Those Lovable and Wonderful Monkees by Gene Fawcette and Howard Liss

This book was published in 1966 for an original price of 50 cents. It is a comic book about the Monkees having adventures on a dude ranch, at a beauty contest, and battling corrupt Mexican inventors. For obvious reasons, I was unable to finish this book.

World Cup qualifying match: Mexico vs. El Salvador

Seven more teams (Italy, Mexico, Serbia, Chile, Ivory Coast, Germany, and Denmark) qualified today for the World Cup Finals in South Africa next year. This brings the number of teams who have made it to eighteen. Only one team, however, had to battle a massive swarm of bees in order to earn a spot.

After the bees were finally dispersed, Mexico beat El Salvador 4-1.