Charm City FC has FORFEITED THEIR MATCH TO ERIE, thus handing the Admirals the division title on what could have been a really interesting final weekend when anything could have happened. BCFC should be outraged, because they were robbed, plain and simple. Charm City claims an accident or something. My guess is D@rren Larocque! crashed his Mom’s mini-van in the Maryland House rest stop parking lot while getting a Carmel Macchiata and some McNuggets. Seriously though, hope no one was hurt.

NONETHELESS, Part of the mandate of the league, as I understand it, is to AVOID FORFEITURE AT ALL COSTS, and boy, did NPSL blow it. AND on the most important weekend possible. Let’s be clear: the league is at largely at fault here, as they likely forced CCFC to play 3 matches this weekend. Regardless, the playoffs start the 18th, that leaves an entire week to work it out. I guess not.

Again, BCFC should be blowing their stacks at this point. As much as I jab at their mushy heads with a sharp stick, c’mon, they were entitled to due process. What a joke.

As for Erie: you escaped a tough weekend and didn’t have to play the key matches to legitimately win the title with BCFC breathing down your necks. I saw the “2009 Keystone Division Champions!” headline on your website. Don’t be too proud of yourselves, you didn’t win in a sporting fashion. It’s not your fault, but keep things in perspective.

…with a -19 goal differential. Just mull that headline over for a few days before I come back with my analysis of the Snow’s inaugural season.

Here’s the bottom line: the Snow MUST beat Erie tonight. Here are two reasons why (mostly because I can’t really think of three or four):

1) It will screw-up Erie’s playoff hopes, putting them neck and neck with Buffalo City

Erie are already pretty much claiming the Keystone Division title. Good thing they don’t have someone like me blogging about it, because that might be considered somewhat obnoxious;

2) Team Pride

Let’s be honest, the Snow have played miserably up until this point, especially in light of  all the super-high expectations coming into the season. Sure these guys have talent, loads of talent, but they have  not proven that they have the ability to compete with what should be considered, in many cases, equal or lesser competition.

They need to make a statement tonight and again Friday by beating the frontrunners.

Come out to Eiler-Martin tonight @ 7 and again Friday night against Buffalo City, and give the team your support!

UPDATE: The team came close but dropped it in the 88th minute or so. More on this after the season ends Friday.

I was pretty sure the dumbest thing I had ever read was that Rush Limbaugh thinks Michael J. Fox is faking his Hodgkin’s disease. Until today. That’s when I happened to glance at the Charm City FC website.

On July 11th Charm City plays the Stoners.  Nothing particularly odd about that, I suppose, until you get to the part of the webpage where it says that they play the rescheduled BCFC and Erie matches–on the same day, July 12.

Turns out the matches are approximately 6 hours apart. Add in the Stoners match and HEY! That’s 3 matches in 24 hours. All this with the Keystone Division title hanging in the balance.

And just when I was beginning to take NPSL seriously!

A British Lad: "I should have listened to me mum and practised the maths."

I was always puzzled by the British pluralization of math as a subject. You may notice this when watching BBC America.  Usually it’s some guy with ill-fitting hair gurgling on through his teeth about how poor he was at the maths. I’m guessing this is the shortened version of mathematics, like telly for television. I prefer the American way of lumping the subject into one monolithic fortress of confusion by simply referring to it as math. I was always pretty bad at it, meaning all math, no need to pluralize it or make any distinctions. It just is what it is, a horrifying situation that has in the past caused me great stress and anxiety.

However I am not so bad at math that I don’t understand that the Snow’s chances of making the playoffs are approximately 0.0%. I think this actually happened around matchweek 5, following their loss to the only team playing worse than them, the previously winless and frankly hapless FC Revolution.

So using my math skills, I figured out that out of a possible 15 points they had managed to come out with 1. However with 5 to go, there was still some hope, all they would have to do was win-out and hope everyone else split their games, roughly. They then proceeded to drop the next 2 by a combined 9-1 score, 4-0 last night at home to the FC Revolution. To be fair, their play at home has been much better than on the road, surrendering far fewer goals.

The rest of the season will be for pride. They can start by beating the Stoners, who still have a slim chance at a playoff berth, at Whitehall. Then they can muddy the playoff picture for both Erie and Buffalo City. The season may be over but it’s not a total loss.

…and who exactly is D@rren Larocque!, you ask? He’s either the bass player from some ’80s hair band or the midfielder for Charm City FC, and he cares so much about his team that he left the following comment to my last post:

“Hey master shake I was wondering if you will be commenting on your blog this friday night when your sitting at home by yourself with your blow up sheep about the ass kicking your lame ass team, Pocono Snow from East no where PA, got from the Charm City FC.  For those of you who don’t know the Pocono Snow came to Gambrills MD last night and were handed a very convincing lost 5-1.”

D@rren Larocque! (bottom left): "I'm kind of a big deal"

This was surprising because because the login name for this comment was Charm City FC, but what  D@rren Larocque! failed to realized is that his email address accompanied the comment, so it wasn’t hard to figure out who it was really from. Plus it also listed where the email originated, which it turns out is probably his place of employment. Naughty! There is probably a company policy against that sort of thing.

Anyway, so glad you like the blog and care enough to leave a comment!

In answer to your question, D@rren Larocque!, no I will not be commenting tonight, per se, because I will be picking up your Mom around 7. ZING!

Besides, your Dad never returned my blow-up sheep. DOUBLE ZING!

So instead I am commenting today, since apparently you need me to write about CCFC because no one else will. It’s sad that Charm City players have to pimp their own team to an opposing supporters blog. My friends at Buffalo City Aggros would probably tell you the same thing, except it would be in grunts and involve a broken bottle of Pabst being held to your neck.

So, D@rren Larocque!, feel free to comment anytime. We enjoy our readership and encourage feedback.

This Wednesday the 17th, the team travels to the buzzing metropolis of Gambrills, MD (Pop. 8,000), a Baltimore suburb, to take on Charm City FC.  If you watch the Food Network, you would have also heard this cryptic name used by the wisecracking hipster bakers at Charm City Cakes in the series Ace of Cakes. It’s not a very good show unless you enjoy watching somewhat dirty-looking 30 year olds with retro-sailor tattoos decorate inedible cakes shaped like a half-pipe for some little jerk’s Bar Mitzvah.

Another Kind of Garbage Strike

Now you may be asking yourself why the change in name from last year’s serviceable and utilitarian Maryland United to Charm City FC? The name Charm City first came into use as a marketing scheme following Baltimore’s 1974 garbage strike and concurrent heat wave that led to widespread looting and arson, because nothing makes people more crazy than the heat (David Lee Roth sung about this extensively) and the garbage. The combination was a recipe for sweaty disaster, and the resultant stinky chaos was the perfect platform for the literary device Verbal Irony, also known as Sarcasm. In this case, irony is our friend because it points out that despite the clever nickname, Baltimore and it’s environs are a stinky hot mess – less than charming. For some reason the locals have embraced this, thus the widespread, if only regionalized, use of the term Charm City. This can also be a Dramatic Irony situation, but that’s only if no one in Baltimore remembers or knows where the name Charm City came from. Then the joke is on them, you see.

Unfortunately, there is a flip side to this coin, and that is something known as Situational Irony; in this case it would be directed at our beloved Snow. Situational Irony happens when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Here, the Snow are in last place in the division, this despite having attracted much of the roster from last year’s NPSL championship team. No need to point out our bitter enemy irony this time.

There is another, more rare type known in certain (drum) circles as Cosmic Irony. This highlights the disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world (or in this situation, the whims of the gods). I like this kind, because blaming losses on, say, the Soccer Gods, is a much healthier way of coping with a terrible season. Simply focus on unseen cosmic forces and you forget that you just gave up 4 to a team with a -11 goal differential after 5 matches.

So embrace irony. Or don’t. It’s not like you have a choice, anyway.

So this week I headed south to Charlotte, NC. The ride was about 9 hours or so via Harrisburg and Roanoke, VA.  This was a suprisingly pleasant ride, in stark contrast to the mind-numbing 8-hour sprint to Columbus, OH that I would make  7-8 times a year. Worse yet was the 13 hours to Savannah, GA, but at least there was the pay-off of Savannah being a beautiful city.

Charlotte is not necessarily a bad place. It has some very nice neighborhoods and seems generally clean with a shiny new downtown to support the banking industry.  The mountains aren’t that far away.  But generally it’s a very boring place, and it seems like they tore down most of what made Charlotte interesting to build those shiny new office towers.

Plus there is no real BBQ to be had, local food culture having seemingly given way to corporate cuisine in support of all the suburbanites who occupy those nice neighborhoods and work in those glittering skyscrapers.  It’s the WASPiest place I’ve been to so far.

So too the Snow were traveling, and rolled into Reading on June 6th to take on the lowly FC Revolution. Or is it FC Reading Revolution? The choice to start off with “FC” seems to be a bit Europhile, or bad Español, and the name Revolution is not exactly original. Somewhere in there they sometimes stick “Reading”.  The whole thing is weird and doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Not like “Pocono Snow” at all. And look, this is America, so there’s no use pretending that somehow substituting “football” for soccer is any more appropriate than calling a taxi a “lorrie” or an elevator a “lift”.

Unfortunately, the Snow were unable to beat the previously winless FCRR, who came into the match with a miserable -11 goal differential. Luckily the Snow managed to get some offense going and scored 3, but the porous defense surrendered 4, 3 in the first 16 minutes.

F. Murray Abraham sez: "in soccer, only goalies use their hands."

The first homestand of the season started somewhat dubiously. Recovering from the flu (non-swine), I was forced to hitch a ride to the match, and my physical condition seemed to follow the fortune of the team–starting out shaky, doing a little better, before falling apart. The ride home was horrific; after being forced to endure a grease-athon at the Nazareth Sonic by my sadistic chauffeur, I eventually vaulted to a 102 temperature and was passed out by 10PM.  Incidentally, the Snow lost the match to the somewhat crappy Charm City FC, 2-1. Horrendous.

Saturday was uneventful.  I had enough energy to prime a window sash. Then I retired for the rest of the afternoon on the couch and watched F. Murrary Abraham match wits with cannabilistic apes in the SciFi Channel original movie Blood Monkey. Don’t watch this if you are even remotely feverish.  Trust me, it’s nightmare fuel of the hominoid kind.

Sunday I was feeling much better, so this time I drove up to E. Stroudsburg. This was a somewhat bitterly-toned match agaisnt the dirty, dirty Stoners. Neither team looked particularly sharp, but the Snow struck first for their (so far only) lead of the season. The dirty, dirty Stoners later countered on a somewhat questionable PK, the Snow’s 23rd handball of the year. The officiating was atrocious, and the play was equally weak at both ends. It ended in a 1-1 draw, although without some absolutely stellar goalkeeping it would have been more lopsided, in the dirty, dirty Stoners favor.

Afterward, we went to Dansbury Depot  - you know, you used to catch the train here, but now you get a great meal - for a meet and greet with the players and to eat some wings. We were informed that was a one-time-only deal (following Game 1, when I was on death’s door). Like the match, I saw a few players trickle in and quickly retreat, but really only one or two guys showed up and stayed ’til the end. That was a poorly veiled dig, by the way.

We had some decent wings, saw some local color in the parking lot afterward, and headed home, this time avoiding the Sonic. I then watched a Seinfeld rerun and konked out.

Our (mis)Quote of the week comes from our simian friends at Aggros of Buffalo.  Can YOU spot the logical incompability? (HINT: I’ve highlighted it in red):

“May 18th

Buffalo City FC 3-0 FC Revolution

650 miles of driving and some Geno’s and Pat’s Philly Cheese steaks made last weekend an unforgettable start to the BCFC season. Weekend starting early Saturday morning to start the long ass 6 hour trek to Reading, PA. After pre-gaming in the stadiums parking lot for an hour prior to kickoff, we made our way into the stadium to stake out our spot among the crowd of 13 year old pre-teen middle schoolers.“

Not sure how 13 years old qualifies as pre-teen, but hey, Buffalo is the equivalent of the rust belt Twilight Zone, so anything goes!  As world famous chain smoker Rod Serling would say:

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. “