Every now and again I need to be reminded about why I love the Pacific Northwest. This was the view from the main lounge in SeaTac on Tuesday afternoon, rather ironically as I was leaving…

If you don’t recognize it, it’s a quote from Planet of the Apes. It’s kinds relevant and the Charlton Heston original is a great movie.

I’ve mentioned that we need to be ready to face anything, and that my money was on a Zombie Apocalypse, but this week I’ve been reconsidering what the source may be when it all goes pear shaped (however, I do recommend Max Brooks  “World War Z” to help you prepare).

I think we’ve been ignoring the animal kingdom, with a little hindsight I think we’ve had plenty of notice that something is afoot (“When Animals Attack” and the entire Planet of the Apes series). We saw these as entertainment and almost totally ignored the warnings they contain. It all changed this week, I think we may have seen the animal kingdoms William Wallace make his presence known (and the real one, not the Mel Gibson version).

This week in Spain a bull jumped into the crowd during a bull fight. Considering these people went there to see a bull tormented it’s difficult to have much sympathy when the bull decided to join them in the expensive seats. The bull gored a couple of people and gave a few others a bit of a kicking before he was brought under control.

Was this the first step towards us living on “Planet of the Bulls”?

While Hemmingway famously felt that Bull Fighting was one of a handful of real sports, many people disagree today. Even Spain is split about the future of Bull Fighting, it’s a rather bloody spectacle that I don’t see the appeal of and some provinces, most notably Catalonia, have banned it. This movement seems o be gaining momentum, the traditionalists talk of history, while a majority see unnecessary suffering.

Friday night out was easy, Black Happy were playing at The Crocodile (great music venue in Bell Town formally known as The Crocodile Café). I’ve heard of Black Happy, not sure I’ve ever seen them before; they were to be the next “big thing” band out of Seattle in the mid 90’s and just never made it.

They were playing the Croc over the weekend and friends were telling me this would be good. So Friday night I went with a couple of friends and saw one of the best shows I’ve seen at a local bar in a long time. Seattle and the Northwest has a very rich music scene and a modern history that stands with any city in the country and I understand Black Happy were something of a contemporary of Sound Garden, just with a bigger sound.

Last night they showed it, the Croc was sold out and they played a great set, really fun band that looked like they were having fun. Think heavy metal with horns, a unique sound and a great concert.

Had a little poke around iTunes and brought the Black Happy album Peghead. A little rough around the edges, not as heavy the more polished band I saw last night, but worth the purchase.

Saturday brought forth a huge number of options. Hempfest had a concert going on, Lady Gaga was playing the Tacoma Dome and Ida Glass was talking at Benaroya Hall.

Hempfest is not really my scene. I got offered a Lady Gaga ticket yesterday, but I really don’t want to be around screaming pre-teens right now and I’m not sure I can stand for two hours on my rough knee. As talented as she is, and despite the potential people watching being almost as good as Vegas, I decided to pass on a big night at the T-dome.

That left Ira Glass, and it turned out to be a good choice. For those not in the know Ida Glass is the host of the long running This American Life radio show. Each week the hour-long show is broadcast on NPR and explores a particular theme. The content varies from the provocative though to the rather humourous. Current events are occasionally explored and a lot of the time a very personal first person narrative is the format.

The content is always well done, interesting and thought provoking. Over the last couple of months I’ve got into the This American Life Podcast, very entertaining and the top download on iTunes for good reason. This had the potential to be a rather interesting evening and certainly quite the change of pace from the previous night.

Benaoya hall was sold out tonight, Ida e was introduced by Dan Savage. Dan’s three proudest moments – licking doorknobs, Santorium and being a regular contributor to This American Life. If you want to know more about the first two Google them, it’s worth it.

Ira Glass spoke for eloquently for almost two hours and took time to show his skill in making balloon animals…

He talked about how the stories come to their attention; the programs are structure and how the themes come about.

The highlight for me was the stories. He shared the background behind a few of his favorite stories. The common theme was that they were personal, involved very few people and had something of a resolution at the end.

He shared the breakdown of what he feels makes a story compelling. A religious service, the bible, my racing stores along with radio stories about vending machines on an aircraft carrier or software end user agreements are all structured in the same way. Action, action, action followed by a pause for thought or reflection. Then repeat until you close with a good line.

When put out there it’s remarkably simple and effective. I get this was probably understood by everyone that’s studied English in any depth. I’ve not formally studied English language since leaving school at 16 (I think my writing and certainly my limitations with language make that clear) and one of the reasons I started doing this was to improve my writing, lets see if this helps.

I got a call to let me know I missed out last night, apparently the Lady Gaga concert was rather good. I’m still happy with my decision.

Saturday morning I played tennis for the first time in many, many months. It was fun, I stopped hard and pushed off my right leg a couple of times. It hurt, but not too bad.

Sunday my right knee locked solid, could not bend it with out a lot of pain. Yesterday was a little better, I could drive (appreciated owning an automatic like never before) and hobble around at work. At the walk-in doctor they gave me some good pain killers and told me to make an appointment with my doctor.

At work this got me an inside-the-gate parking pass for a few days, so something good came out of it.

Went out last night and things were a little better. No shooting pain, but I could not put too much weight on it, getting up from a seat was painful and again driving an auto was appreciated.

Today was appointment day, they did an MRI this afternoon and found a bone fragment that’s made a small tear in my cartilage. Awesome, not a surprise as there was clearly something wrong. I’m happy we know what’s wrong, now it’s time to get it fixed.

Thirty minutes later my knee is propped up on a pile of towels and it’s been shaved in preparation for going in and getting the fragment before it does any more damage. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a hairless kneecap; it feels rather strange in the gentlest breeze.

A friend told me it needs a smiley face on my bald kneecap… Perhaps it will take my mind off the pain.

The title makes me sound like an old fart. There are times I’m a member of the order of old fartdom, but not today.

There were many albums that were influential to my musical growth. The Marillion album “Misplaced Childhood” and Floyds classic (a word not used lightly here) Dark side of the Moon are very close to the top of the list. I owned both on vinyl (and my parents got rid of them a few years ago) and both were incredibly important. I’ve owned Dark Side of the moon on Vinyl, cassette tape, CD and now the remastered digital download.

A quick aside, one of the things I miss about the passing of vinyl was the artwork, as interesting as the “digital booklets” that iTunes provides with some of their downloads, it does not touch the 12 inch Album cover of my formative music years.

Don’t get me wrong the advent of the CD and digital music was very welcome, we got to hear music as it was recorded, not through the buzzing and clicking that a needle running in a groove added to the proceedings.

But, I do miss the quality of artwork that was possible with a 12 inch by 12-inch (or 12 by 24 if it was a double or gatefold album) cover.

Lets take one of the recordings I mentioned earlier: Misplaced Childhood. The cover had themes (jigsaw pieces, jester, magpie, roses and so on) that were carried were from the previous Marillion albums. The detail and quality of the artwork were standard for the time.

Some bands were alleged to have spent more money on a high concept album cover than that recording itself, and I don’t have trouble believing that for a second. The cover was an important part of the experience. It was a marketing tool; it was an artistic statement and set the scene for what was about to be put on the record player. There was a lot of very poor music around in the early 80’s and I brought some of it purely on the quality of the cover.

There was something even cooler than great cover art – picture discs. Vinyl, typically a 12-inch (album sized) single, with the cover art being the disc that the music is stamped into. I had a copy of Aces High by Iron Maiden with a close up of Eddie (Iron Maidens rather abused, but ultimately still alive and kicking, mascot) flying a Spitfire on it. Very cool, and once again a copy in perfect condition was disposed of by my parents. I won’t mention what it’s going for on EBay today, I may start to cry.

I’ve spent enough time sidetracked by album artwork, as important a subject as that is…

I get that with the invention of individual song downloads the idea of putting the CD or album on, starting with the first track and ending with the last track seems rather strange to many. I understand that today the idea of listening to an entire album in track order is so last century, but I miss what it means.

The two albums I mentioned at the beginning, along with many others (everything by Pink Floyd for example) were concept albums and written to be played in this way. The play order was designed to flow from song to song and tell the story.

We talked about this today at work, when I buy from iTunes; I still typically buy the whole album. It’s rare that I just buy one or two tracks and call it done; the intern on the other hand can’t remember what the last full album he brought was.

Then it dawned on me, for many people the entire idea of an album no longer exists; let alone the even higher notion of a “concept album”.

The only actually real live CD’s I’ve brought in a long time are those not available on iTunes for whatever licensing or financial reason. AC/DC, Kid Rock and most importantly The Beatles are about the only bands I’ve brought on CD rather than downloading recently.

Just to prove a point I played Pink Floyds “The Wall” in the office this afternoon. It’s 30 years old, but it resonates as strongly as ever. The albums protagonist (Mr. Floyd) has an increasingly strained relationship with the father and this carries on until his father death. He is tormented by his dependence upon his mother, moves to a new town, moves back and is treated badly by his teachers. Each one of these events causes him to erect a wall between himself and the rest of the world (yeah, I get there may be some inexact parallels, but it hit home), hence the title.

It’s the same with Marillions “Misplaced Childhood”. The story arc concerns the lead singers failings as a partner and his subsequent fall into alcohol and drugs. The arc of the album is not positive, but like The Wall, when listened to in its entirety it is more than the sum of its parts.

The concept album is not dead, but iTunes and file sharing has done it considerable damage. The obvious artist that has released a couple of concept albums is Green Day, both “American Idiot” and “21^st Century Breakdown” are keeping the idea alive.

I did a little Googling, and not only is the very of purchasing the whole album so 20^th century, but the idea of buying something physical is not too far behind it.  Over the last few years CD sales have dropped from a high of about 660 million in 2005 to about half of that in 2009 and probably less than 300 million in 2010. Since 2002 the sales of individual tracks went from essentially zero to almost 1.2 billion in 2009, and this format is still showing double-digit growth. Apple and iTunes had it right.

Growing up birthdays were never a particularly big deal in the Kean household, it’s just how it was. Anniversaries of pretty much any kind tended to be discrete affairs. A card, a couple of small presents and that was typically it. There would be a small birthday party as I was growing up, but I think my parents discretely stopped kids birthday parties altogether as early as was reasonable. Certainly before I hit my teens the idea of a birthday party after that was just never put out there, it’s just how it was.

I remember a birthday party at my uncles for Granddads 65th, but even that was sold as a retirement party rather than a birthday celebration.

The biggest get together and celebrations were always about family. The biggie was always Christmas, we’d all gather at Granddads, eat our fill, drink, open presents, make pass-the-parcel into a full-contact sport and give up watching the Bond film because there was too much going on.

Other big get togethers were New Year and every summer there would be a Sunday or two where we’d all get together, barbeque, mum and at least one of her sisters would get falling over drunk and dad would have to help her into the back of the car.

As I think about these times the one constant in them is that I picture my parents being about the same age I am now, in their 40’s. Dad was in his early 30’s when he became a father, older than many in his generation and almost 10 years older them mum when I was born.

A friend of mine thinks my father was rather dashing as a younger man, broad shouldered, fit and dark haired. She also said he sounds “like Sean Connery, only sexier”; his Scottish accent has been tempered by living south of the border for the last 50 years.

There were a few years when I was first living in the US where I could not afford to travel back to London and see my parents as often as I’d have liked. While I’d talk to them a couple of times a week on the phone, it was always startling to see them suddenly age a year or 18 months when they would come to meet me at Heathrow.

Dad’s hair would be a little thinner with more grey. Mum would be slightly shorter than I remember, less stable on her feet and get tired a little sooner. Why it was always a surprise I’m not sure, but it was.

As I said in my mind dad is about the same age I am now and I’d be met at Heathrow by this man who looked about 20 years older with grey hair and now a bit of a stoop. Even now I visit 3 or 4 times a year it takes me by surprise every time.

If he tried to lift me up onto his shoulders as he used to when I was 6 it would probably kill him now. Heck even at his fittest, joints would have been put out at the very least had he tried to shift today’s bulk.

It’s the same with mum, I always imagine her as she was 20 years ago. Which considering how she was last time I saw her is for the better.

Even though we are both middle aged one of the last conversations I had with mum was how I was the sensible one and gave them little worry as a teenager (I saved that for my 20’s and onwards), while Stephen was the younger one and always doing something that they were worried about (and he calmed down somewhat about the same time I started to push my personal envelope).

Part of it is that when I’d visit my parents (OK, it was Mum) treated both of us like we were still in our early teens, a little nagging about rather unimportant stuff, worried about where we were going that evening, not to go out with wet hair as we’d catch a cold and so on. I think in some respect this reverting back to type gave my brother and I permission and freedom to act the age we were being treated. Which would have been about 10 and 12.

Quite a few years ago mum gave me an album of photos of me growing up, my parents growing up, family outings, weddings and so on, with my grandparents featuring rather strongly in it. As cool as an X-box, bike or remote controlled dalek is, its’ the best present I’ve ever been given.

In this picture dad is about the same age as I am now. I’ll leave you to work out who the rather handsome young man sitting on his knee is.

I grew up playing rugby, it’s a great sport and unfortunately is largely responsible for my damaged broken down body. I’ll admit it was ably assisted by a few race cars into tree moments, but I’m primarily blaming rugby.

In the decade or so that I played with the odd shaped ball I’ve never see anyone do what Australian Kava Lumanuvao did. He pulled a knife out during an ill tempered game.

Everyone who’s played the game has taken part in a game or two that was not played in strict accordance to the rules. The occasional punch is thrown in the scrum, maybe a high tackle or two and even a surreptitious stamp of boot on thigh during a maul.

They are a not big deal and afterwards in the bar everyone has a pint and it’s all forgotten untill we play again. All forgiven, but it does get filed away should the opportunity to get even present itself in the future.

It was during a big game, the league semifinal where Lumanuvao’s team, The Chaffey Titans, were taking on Mildura Tigers for a place in the Sunraysia Rugby League final in Victoria, Australia. It seems a Tigers player laid a late hit on a Lumanuvao and in finest Australian/rugby tradition a brawl broke out involving all thirty players on the field.

Unusual, but ultimately nothing that AP is interested in yet.

Then Lumanuvao walked to his car, grabbed a knife and returned to the brawl with it in his hands. With all the testosterone and adrenalin flying about the urge is understandable, actually walking to your car to pull the knife out shows very questionable judgment.

Before he got back to the brawl with the knife he was stopped and disarmed by his coach and team mates. I imagine everyone was very, very focused on stopping the fight when the knife showed up. No one was injured with the weapon, but the game was abandoned and the Tigers awarded the win and a place in the final.

Lumanuvao quite rightly received a lifetime ban, the player that started it with the late hit was banned four weeks and a third player than ran onto the field to take part in the fight (and played for neither team on the field) was banned for 17 months.

Victoria Rugby League chairman Greg Brentnall said violent behaviour will not be tolerated in its leagues. “Whilst it is disappointing that an incident such as this occurred in the first place, we are fully supportive of the strong, decisive and timely action taken,” he said in a statement.

A player pulled a knife in response to an on-the-field incident and the league chairman is “disappointed”, I love Australian understatement.

The momentum is building and with 10 points out of the last 12 available in the league this looks a lot like the team we expected to see at the beginning of the year.

First there was Sundays great performance at San Jose, and it really was a great performance from Seattle. Unquestionably the better side throughout the game, the first 20 minutes were some of the best end-to-end team football they’ve played this year. The effort shown in the second half when San Jose threw caution to the wind in the effort to get a point at home was very solid.

I think the biggest difference between today and a couple of months ago is the workrate and effort from the entire team. Having Osvaldo Alonso back made a huge difference to Seattle’s second effort, he played a very physical game and really controlled the midfield.

The passing was crisp, possession was controlled, and when the ball was lost a lot of effort was put into getting it back. In the past it’s not been quite as hard fought in the middle of the field.

Montero looks so good right now, the more I see him play the more I’m convinced hes going to be a very, very good player. He’s maturing and with players like Sanna Nyassi and Fernandez feeding him he’s got a chance to keep the scoring streak going.

Tonight was the second leg of the CONCACAF Champions League preliminary round game. Seattle led 1-0 from the first leg in El Salvador was all they needed to go through to the group stage. The pitch looked marginal and the rain never let up for the entire game, but once again we saw a solid team performance that got the result they needed.

This turned out to be a very entertaining game, both teams played decent football. Metaplan went ahead before half time with a well-taken goal that gave Keller no chance.

From then on Seattle clearly had a majority of the possession and were playing well enough that they were going to score sooner or later. There were a couple of close off side calls, one of which had Levesque through on goal, but Seattle looked comfortable and patient looking for the opening.

The chance fell to substitute Alvaro Fernandez. He scored his first goal in a Seattle shirt with about 15 minutes left to play. With away goals counting double Metapan needed to score twice to go through. It was not happening tonight, Seattle looked to competent to allow that to happen again this year.

So another six games this year, including with games in Mexico, Honduras and Panama over the next three months. That sounds like a fun way to spend a few days vacation this fall.

Sounders are now 7 games undefeated in all competitions (league, Open cup and Champions League), the team have moved into play off contention and seem to be hitting form at the right time.

Sunday is Houston at Quest, a team we are building a very nice rivalry and the first meeting since Seattle were bumped out of the play offs by Houston last year. Another win and three points would go a long way to securing that play off place. Going to be a fun night under the lights.

Sunday we saw one more of the signs of the impending apocalypse (Zombie apocalypse is my guess, read Max Brooks to be prepared), or perhaps Michael Schumacher is mellowing in his old age.

“You know Michael – you talk to him and he will always feel that he is right. He stopped [for] three years [but] he hasn’t changed at all. He is still the same guy.” No prizes for guessing that’s Barichello speaking.

While it’s not actually listed as one of the seven signs of this apocalypse thing, it makes way more sense than Michael admitting he may have been in the wrong on his own. I’ve done a little research this evening, and no where does it actually give the names of the four horseman, its very possible one is called Michael.

He actually admitted that perhaps he was a little over aggressive when he all but ran Rubens Barrichello off the track in Hungary Yesterday. I was watching the race and no question was the move over the top, no one has an issue with the driver defending the corner, but what Michael did was over the top.

The pass is all over Youtube if you’ve not seen it.

Schumacher said that after looking at the incident, the stewards were right, it was too much. OK, Michael has history of this, and there is certainly no love lost between those two drivers, but this was a far too aggressive move for the lead, let alone 10^th place and 1 point in the standings.

“Right after the race I was still in the heat of the action,” said Michael, “But after watching the moment again, I must say the stewards were right in their assessment: the manoeuvre against Rubens was too dangerous. I wanted to make it hard for him to pass me but I didn’t want to endanger him with my manoeuvre. If he has this feeling I am sorry, this was not my intention.”

Yep, get your Zombie fighting gear together, Michael Schumacher said sorry.

Ross Brawn (Mercedes Team principal) came to Michaels defence immediately after the face with “I don’t think for a moment Michael was trying to put Rubens in the wall, he was trying to discourage him from coming down the inside as he thought that was where he would be vulnerable. At the end of the day he gave him enough space. You can argue it was marginal, but it was tough racing.”

The stewards disagree about it being “marginal” and Michael got slapped with a 10 place qualifying penalty on the grid in Belgium, and a lot of people thought he got off easy.

As for the rest of the race, the Red Bulls were once again totally dominating in qualifying. Weber drove a great race, Vettel lost his early lead ended up third behind Massa after screwing up with the safety car out which cost him a stop-and-go penalty. It’s a long time since I’ve seen someone that unhappy to be on the podium. Vettel was not happy and this is just another weekend where Red Bull has failed to turn a great qualifying performance into an easy 1-2.

McLaren were nowhere to be seen after a disastrous weekend. Lewis Hamilton lost the world championship lead with a costly DNF when his gearbox broke. Jenson Button finished a very distant eighth in what was a rather processional race, which is typical for Hungary. It’s clear that Red Bull and to a slightly lesser extent Ferrari have a distinct equipment advantage.

There has been a lot of talk of these two teams running flexible front wings that run much closer to the ground when the car is at speed on the track giving more down force and better performance, especially on the high speed circuits. Hungary is not a high speed circuit (nor was Hockenheim last weekend) and Red Bull are clearly the best team out there. McLaren and Ferrari have a lot of work to get the initive back in what’s turned into a very close fought championship.

With 25 points for a win, there are 5 drivers heading into the final 9 races just a good weekend away from leading the championship. This is fun.

Ljungberg has moved to Chicago, with what’s happened over the last few weeks it is clearly a move that makes sense for Seattle. I don’t know if what went wrong will ever fully come out, rumours are there was a significant rift within the club. Schmidt, Hanauer and most vocally team captain Keller all questioning Freddie Ljungbergs commitment to the team. I’m sure over the next month or two we’ll learn more and more about what actually happened.

Ljungberg was the second player signed by the team, Sebastian Le Toux was the first, and this signing did a lot for the franchise. It gave the entire organization an instant level of credibility months before the first ball was kicked and that they were willing to spend the money to attract top level talent. In short it made the football world take a little notice of this new club in the MLS.

In return Ljungberg has been a great ambassador for the league and club. He’s been very generous to the fans and has been clear that overall he’s enjoyed his time both at the club and living in the Pacific Northwest.

On the flip side he has occasionally held himself to a slightly different standard than the rest of the side with occasional weekends off and reporting late to training camp with no consequences because of a “misunderstanding”. To be fair to Freddie, the management has allowed it to happen.

Being late to the pre-season camp in Seattle earlier this year does seem to have particularly upset some of his teammates, most vocal was Casey Keller. But it started an undercurrent of discontent that may have led to his leaving the club with only a couple of months left on his contract. Additionally he’s had a somewhat public falling out with Sigi Schmidt over his discipline and attitude towards referees during games.

There is no question the Freddie has been on the receiving end of some vicious tackles, it seems to be a tactic that a number of teams employ against the more skillful players. It’s one of the things the MLS needs to take care of if they want to see the game played the way it can be.

Once he was dropped from games and was training alone it was just a matter of where he would go, rather than if he would go. His agent said a number of English and Italian clubs were interested in signing Ljungberg. The fact he ended up at Chicago rather than an ambitious European club looking for leadership shows that the interest never went much beyond a quick phone call to his agent.

From section 130 watching Freddie on the ball over the last 18 months was a treat. Clearly he was one of the most creative players in the league. The league never really suited his style fully, but when ever he was on the ball there was a chance that something interesting was going to happen. He did occasionally let his frustration that his team mates were not always at his level show, but generally he played his role as a leader well on the pitch.

I’m looking forward to welcoming Freddie back to Seattle on August 28^th when the Fire comes to RBP.

The move of Ljungberg to Chicago coincides with the arrival of Uruguayan international Alvaro Fernandez from Nacional.

This is the sort of player the league needs to attract. Signing big names like Beckham, Blanco, Henry and Ljungberg make a big splash in the sports pages and get people looking in the leagues direction. However it does not do much for the credibility of the league as a whole. Football in America and MLS (rightly or wrongly) has a reputation as a bit of a retirement home for big names.

Some of this is the legacy of the NASL where huge names like Pele, Beckenbauer, Alberto, Cruff, Moore and so on came to the league for a last big pay cheque before easing into retirement. This gave the league huge interest around the world and in some markets put bums on seats, but did nothing to add credibility that the NASL was a good or stable league.

If you have any interest in what led to the excesses of the NASL it’s worth looking for “Once in a Lifetime: The Incredible Story of the New York Cosmos” written by Gavin Newsham. It goes into this in some detail and is a good read. In short the lunatics were running the asylum, and in the case of the NY Cosmos running it with other people’s money with little accountability.

Back to Seattle’s new signing Alvaro Fernandez and why I think this could be more important the New York signing Thierry Henry.

Today Fernandez is not going to sell as many Seattle shirts as Henry will in New York, but I hope that’s not how the league defines success.

He’s clearly a very skillful player. He was part of a Uruguay side that played some attractive football and made the semifinals of the World Cup. He is only 24 and has shown the ability to be successful at the top level, his signing has a massive upside, is only going to develop and get better over the next couple of years.

To be realistic the MLS is not a league that talented players around the world aspire too. The complex contract structure, single entity ownership, salary cap and relative popularity in a packed sports market place ensure that the MLS is never going to be“destination league” for the world’s best players.

However there are still a couple of roles it could take going forward, namely either a place to send promising players for a few seasons and see what they have, or a retirement home for big names. Given the choice I’d far rather the MLS be seen as a top level development league and finishing school for players like Montero (who is a potential superstar) and Fernandez.