Curse you wretched Saturday

The L.A Galaxy's loss to the Vancouver Whitecaps on Saturday forces me to declare, nothing good happens on Saturdays. Some people may not recognize this sullen truth, but if you are like me, then Saturdays are your only day off from work (yes going to church on Sundays is work, the Lord's work) yet you are besieged with disagreeable tasks, such as mowing the lawn or visiting a termagant aunt in lockup.

I chipped my tooth on a Saturday, watched my dog run down the street and away for good on a Saturday, and I proposed to my fiance on a Saturday. The latter should be cause for celebration, but my proffering was forced upon me by my neighbor who caught me peering into his daughter's bedroom window -my cable was out- and suffered a heart attack. On Saturdays, he summons me to his deathbed to remind me of our pact. I must marry his peg-legged daughter or his son the sheriff's deputy will get wind of my antics.

When the combination of Nicolas Mezquida and Pedro Morales early on negotiated the Galaxy's defense, I was relieved to see custodian Jaime Penedo behind the ball for a comfortable save. The uneasy apprehension that saw Kekuta Manneh running to the sidelines in goal celebration crept in to my mind time after time long before he was able to find the net. Those imaginings are usually reserved for Robbie Keane, but he was kept busy trying to evade his shadow, which on Saturday, took the form and spitting image of Russell Teibert.

The spritely Swede, Stefan Ishizaki can bring a smile to my dour and morose heart. Quite often, like a mechanical hare on a greyhound track, he can get around the opposition just before releasing the ball into the path of a striker. Absent on Saturday, were his keen eye and curling balls into the box. This dearth rendered Zardes and Keane, wagging and edentated, with nothing to chew on.

As I watched whitecaps goalkeeper, David Ousted walking to and fro inside his empty 18 yard box, he appeared to be more concerned with the cumulative snowfall at Whistler Blackcomb than a threat from the Galaxy. At times, I truly wished we could have traded places, me inside the Whitecaps goal instead of pretending to compare prices of flat screen televisions in electronics at the mall. At least then the Galaxy might have had a real chance of scoring.

" We have no excuses" I heard Bruce Arena say in a post game interview-- which is really just a lazy way of concealing an even lazier excuse.

The orthopedist at the mall couldn't convince my fiance to upgrade from her archaic wooden leg to a more modern refined prosthetic.

"It would certainly make walking down the aisle a bit more fluid and synchronous with Bridal Chorus," the doctor uselessly prognosticated. And with that, I was summoned from the electronics department at the end of her check up, just before half time, to continue on in what would soon be another wretched Saturday.

We got to the seamstress five minutes into the second half. It took six more minutes for the realization that,  my sabbatical woes were more than coincidence. Pedro Morales, deft to the touch, found the trickster Kekuta Manneh who bellowed the ball past Jaime Penedo.

"Good Lord do not forsake the Galaxy," I cried. The heavens either blocked out my supplication or Vancouver have an even stronger more formidable God who trumps Angeleno God. Less than ten minutes later, what I feared most settled upon me. My bride to be came forward in a rehearsal of the dress that would forever bring to memory the importance of paying one's cable bill. And Octavio Rivero scored to make it 2-nil.

The wedding dress required an altering of the low hanging neckline because my fiance refused to shave and the seamstress thought that emanating black curls would only blemish and distract from what could be a beautiful dress--if someone else was wearing it of course.

The ball was centered on the spot again for the Galaxy's third kickoff, and it was here I noticed on back of Gyasi's blue away shirt that he had changed his name to Zardez. Like my Saturdays, that too seemed wrong.

One last note, if my neighbor doesn't die soon -and I am being honest when I say, I hope that he does, I will be married off in a few weeks. I pray it's not a Saturday.

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