Ein volk, ein ball, ein volkerball!

[Disclaimer:  Due to an unforeseeable sports injury involving the blogging muscle, I have not updated in, to quote one reader, "a bazillion forevers."  Posts previously conceived  and/or composed, including this one, are being processed as quickly as possible and will be released when I goddamn get around to it!  Please note that the time and date of posting bear little if any relation to those of the events recounted.]

Okay, my bad with the Hitler reference in the post title there.  Fine.  Sheesh.  Get more sensitive about it, whyncha?

The Volkerball tournament!  The American squad comprises about a dozen members some of whom even show up to both the mandatory practice and the match, including, conveniently enough, The Roommate.

You might think of it as a fun, low-key way to spend a sunny weekend afternoon.  Or you might think of it as basically like the Olympics, a zero-sum struggle amongst the peoples of all the world's nations for glory, eternal fucking glory, on the field of sport, but unlike the other Olympics here it's just the one sport, because there is only one sport, and that sport is dodgeball!  (This was the attitude of at least one enthusiastic participant I shan't name.)  Or you might think, as did evidently that team in the green shirts with the tin-foiled helmet and the alien theme, that it's the one German context where it's legally permissible to participate in Scientology rituals. 

In addition, the teams are expected to bring concession goods, usually food, that are somehow representative of their homelands.  I'm happy to report that The Roommate's mac-and-cheese was a tremendous hit, and I'm informed my own humble contribution (apple pie, with shredded cheddar mixed into the crust) was popular... although there was an awful lot of it left over at the end.  Oh well.  

At the end, the Americans made the first cut, surviving qualifications, and were shortly dispatched in short sets of the main event.  But it's a moral victory.  Or that's what we keep telling ourselves.  Next year, I'm making the team, and it's going to be like the '69 Mets when Tom Seaver and Tug McGraw got out of their early-twenty jitters and finally put it together.

Currents:

... reading:  Middlesex by Eugenides.  Comes highly recommended by several dear friends with whom I evidently have seriously different taste in literature.

... listening:  "Roadkill" by Dubfire.  I know it's last summer.  It still pwns.