Why Football Is Sometimes Still Worth It, Or A Guide to Euro 2012 : Eye Candy Edition.

[For whatever reason, Blogger decided to publish parts of this post in the most obnoxious double-spaced format imaginable. I've tried everything I could think of to fix it, to no avail, and I am pissed. Many apologies for how ugly the formatting is here on this post. Let us now look at pictures of hot football-playing persons and be happy.]

The draws have been made, the preliminary matches have been decided, the 16 teams all have their passports and tickets in hand.The Internet will be flooded with article after article of team analysis, tactical breakdowns, strategic predictions, and lists of "Ultimate Up-and-Coming Players to Watch" or some variation thereof. This, however, is not my forte. Not at all. No; I am here to provide football guidance of a very different nature. I am here to tell you all about Players to Watch, indeed. But it's the kind of watching that makes us all that much happier in our ladyparts (or manparts, if we are so inclined).

I must admit that I've sort of given up on football lately - the drama, the corruption, the same famous faces and teams have turned me bored and jaded, and sent me running after the (sometimes literally) greener pastures of rugby . But the idea of an international tournament always gets me pumped up again. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and acquaintances, football(er) lovers and comrades in soccer dude-objectification! Have faith, for here are some delicious reasons why football is sometimes seriously still worth the trouble.

*I've tried my absolute best to include players from as many national teams as possible, spread out across all four groups, but since this list is based purely and entirely on my own personal tastes, you must forgive my heavy biases towards certain countries. And also for completely leaving out the likes of Poland and Greece (you guys just aren't doing it for me, man; buck up).

Group A

Group A, sadly, yields very little in terms of glorious manflesh objectification potential, but all hope is not lost, for we do have ;

Václav Pilař [Czech Republic / Midfielder]

I know very little of Vaclav, and have actually never heard of him before the national squad announcements were made. What little I've seen on Google images seems promising, however, and I look forward to getting to know him better during the course of the competition. And if things go really well, he should start thinking about making some room for me. In his pants.


Andrei Arshavin [Russia / Forward, and also Captain because BAD ASS]

Andrei is on this list purely due to ADORABILITY FACTOR - while I don't necessarily feel the urge to reach through my TV set and dry hump him across several time zones and a continent, I do find him ridiculously sweet and personable, with a tremendously quirky sense of humour, and definitely one of the more memorable footballing personalities around. And that smile! One just feels like grabbing him by the dimpled cheeks and gurgling baby talk at him. It will serve well to counter the extreme horniness induced by other occupants of this list.


Group B

Group B contains Germany, and therefore also the motherload. Being tremendously biased, I could just tell you that the entire 23-man squad is bangable, and leave it at that. But I'll be helpful and point out some of the finer specimens that Deutschland has to offer ;


Mario Gomez [Germany/Forward]


The half-Spanish Mario strikes me as being somewhat of a bimbo sometimes, but his effusive fondness for walking around shirtless for no reason kind of made me warm up to him a great deal. He is usually the first player on the pitch to divest himself of his soccer kit the minute the final whistle blows, and I shamelessly love him for it. Plus, he has great hair! Look at that shit on his head. Dude's working some fine cranial follicular growth up in da hizza. Sometimes, he scores goals. But frankly, the propensity to be shirtless is much, much greater. He's just so good to us.

Mats Hummels [Germany/ Defender]

You may remember Mats from my gushy post in appreciation of the ridiculously dorky-yet-sexy Nutella ads featuring members of the German national team. If you remember that post, I don't need to tell you that Mats is utterly lush. He is what Orlando Bloom could have been with higher quality parts, better production standards, and an extra four to five inches (of height, I'm talking about height, dammit). I spent most of the weekend chewing on my fingernails, wishing most desperately that Mats would be included in the final team list, and joy of joys! He will be playing in the tournament this time. The guy is a fabulously talented defender in his own right, and I wish great things for him in his life. I also wish to one day get in his pants. That should be on his list of career aspirations. Someone call his agent, quick!



Mats is totally down with this plan, you guys. Also I think I finally figured out how to make animated gif images work on Blogger. YES.


Benedikt Höwedes [Germany / Defender]

You gotta love a good solid German name with an umlaut. Benedikt is also a n00b to major international tournaments, but has already more than proved his mettle as an athlete and a leader in the German national league. Also he is the most adorable thing I have ever seen with the exception of Russia's Andrei Arshavin.

But my favourite thing about him is that he comes in a bromantic package along with Hummels, and it is too sweet for words.


Let the bro-lovin' commence!



Group C

You can always count on the Spanish national team to come through for you in the hotness department. Always. Though I find most of the players to be far too vain and self-absorbed for their own good, it never hurts to ogle.



Xabi Alonso [Spain/ Midfield]

Xabi Alonso is quite simply the classiest motherfucker to exist in the world of football today. He can rock your standard football jersey and shorts and make it look like a freshly tailored Armani three-piece suit. And he can pull off the real deal pretty well, in case you were wondering. The man just oozes elegance from every pore. And in a sport rife with prima donnas and petty fights and sneaky cheat attempts at every turn, here we have a man of class and principle and intelligence who will not dabble in bullshit of any kind, and also has great hair. It's a hard combination to resist.


Iker Casillas [Spain/Goalkeeper]

This guy - nay, this man, has been on my To Do list since pretty much two weeks after I hit puberty (and I was early, so you can imagine how longstanding this affair has been). This glorious hunk of manflesh has been guarding the posts of the Spanish goal in a magnificent fashion for the last 10 years, and has been getting finer and finer with the passage of time. And if Benedikt Ho(umlaut)wedes can have multiple pictures in one post, then so can Iker.



This shot of Iker bawling his eyes out after Spain clinched the 2010 World Cup is one of my favourite things in life. COME HERE AND LET ME LOVE YOU THE WAY YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED. 





Jesus Navas [Spain / Forward]

Not entirely my type, but I feel like I have to include him because those eyes. The eyes. You might have noticed them. They are RIDICULOUS and should be illegal. Those ocular receptors probably have the power to stun opposing defenders into immobility, and send goalkeepers swooning away in the wrong direction. Daaaamn, Jesus.



Group D

France has pleasantly surprised me this time, by actually - and for once - living up to their sexy reputation and  providing subjects for dry humping fantasies.


Yoann Gourcuff [France/Midfield]

Yoann Gourcuff almost suffers from being really way too pretty for his own good, but it is rare that we come across such a finely crafted physique in international football. There is an elegant, almost classic quality to his beauty, enhanced by how the coal-black shade of his hair contrasts so becomingly with the paleness of his complexion and how stunningly flattering the lighting is in this shot and what I am basically saying here is that Yoann you are very pretty and we should bone or something, oui? 



Olivier Giroud [France / Forward]

I really know next to nothing about this guy but ooooh la la, OM NOM NOM, get in the pants, and so on.




Euro 2012 kicks off in just about 10 days, and I hope everyone enjoys a month of great football and assorted exquisite specimens of masculinity. I am especially looking forward to the gems and nuggets of sexiness I may have overlooked in the process of putting this post together. BRING ON THE DUDES, EUROPE.

[all composite/collage images of the Euro '12 groups snagged from here]

"You're Never Home, So You're Never Lost"

Watching Departures on Nat Geo Adventure gives me crazy serious attacks of the travel bug itch. The locations, the scenery, the music, the utterly stunning photography - everything is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It's like a road trip movie that goes on for weeks. It's enough to make me feel the urge to pack a bag, buy a plane ticket to Wherever ("Wherever" being subject to a complicated selection process, perhaps something like doing that spin-a-globe-and-jab-at-it-with-a-finger and see what country you land on thing), kiss my degree goodbye for a year or so, and go off into the wide world to have romantic, life-changing adventures.

I'm no stranger to travel shows - those things are my weekend TV comfort food. I'm quite the accomplished armchair traveler, and hosting Globe Trekker was probably right up there on my list of dream jobs as a teenager. But what makes Departures so different is that it isn't just a catalogue of interesting places and things to do ; it's so much more personal that that. The two hosts, Scott Wilson and Justin Lukach (childhood friends turned travel buddies, who are both very hot, and equally Canadian) make us privy to their thoughts and emotions during a trip, and let us know why a particular location or experience means so much to them, and how much the world has changed them. You get the feeling that these guys aren't doing a TV show for the sake of having a TV show - they mean what they say, they love what they do, and their awe and wonder at everything they see is evident on their faces.

Scott and Justin intersperse the usual format of a travel show with their own personal reflections about the trip, and it feels like two friends just chilling out and telling you about their adventures. It's warm, and special, in a way that I've never experienced with any other travel show. The two share an undeniable connection that gets you right in the heartstrings. It's not all fun and games either - sickness, cold, hunger, getting hopelessly lost, missing a flight, bad moods ; everything is laid out there for you. They steer clear of the usual tourist attractions for the most part, and when they do visit a place that's been featured on every travel program that ever existed, it is filmed and presented in a way that is utterly breathtaking and refreshing. It's here that I give mad props to cameraman Andre Dupois and his mad mad filming skillz. Even if you take nothing away from this show, it is still utterly stunning to look at.

An avid traveler I am not - I've never actually had the opportunity to leave the country in my 21-and-a-bit years of life. To add to that, I tend to cling quite a bit to home, and to the familiar, to the comfortable, to the known, and the easy.  I would love the opportunity, at some point before I hit thirty, to be plonked right in the middle of an entirely foreign city and left to my own devices, without the safety net of being able to run back to my couch whenever things get too hard, or the option of pulling out a cell phone and simply calling someone I know. Essentially, to go so far away that I stop worrying about coming home. And when I do come home, I hope to return wiser, stronger, with more stories to tell when I'm older (most likely to other people's grandchildren) and substantially more awesome in every way.

I realize how fortunate I am to even be in this position - to be privileged enough that taking a year off to backpack around the planet could actually be a viable life option (given the time, and resources, and perhaps the balls. Indeed. Much balls.). And maybe it is just as simple as it sounds ; pick a country, pack a bag, leave. And then other things hold me back - the money to even leave the country in the first place. That I'm expected to complete this many credit hours within this many semesters, and that I should have a proper resume by now, because the Real World is frighteningly near, and it beckons, and once there I am expected to get out and find A Real Job, be a Real Adult, and do all the things that come with that territory - pay Real Bills, own A Real House, and make Real Responsible Decisions.

And this is also why an understanding of what exactly "Putting Your Life On Pause" entails is so important. Scott and Justin (the hosts of Departures, will you keep up with me, dammit) each lost a girlfriend and job, respectively, over their decision to abandon Real Adult Life, as it were, to fulfill a dream. The longer I put off the Great Backpacking Dream, I'll be gradually saddled with more responsibilities, more accountability, and it will be that much harder to simply go away, because there will be more to lose.

My parents have always been tremendous advocates of travel, thought they've never really had the opportunity to do it themselves for a long, long time now. "Go everywhere" is something my father has been saying since I was old enough to comprehend language, I believe. "Go everywhere, see everything, come home, and then go again". I truly hope I'll be able to take him up on this sometime. To get over whatever obstacles and fears (real and imaginary) or excuses (the valid and the bullshit) I harbour in my chicken heart,  and when that golden opportunity comes knocking, to simply pick a country, pack a bag, and leave.Maybe for a year, maybe a month, but the important thing is that I go.


Until then, I'll keep making travel mixtapes to soundtrack my fantasies about walking down cobbled streets in Prague in the autumn or whatever. This song tends to feature on those playlists quite a bit (I also snagged the post title from these lyrics). For me this track somehow manages, oddly enough, to simultaneously cure homesickness and also elicit some pretty strong travel-yearning urges.





P.S I will now accept applications for the post of my future Travel Buddy ; the Scott to my Justin, the Justin to my Scott. Awesomeness is the only qualification I seek. But it would be pretty sweet if you could also swim, and read maps, and maybe drive. Because I can't do any of that shit, okay.

P.P.S  Dudes. Watch Departures. If you're in Malaysia, sign up for Unifi, snag the National Geographic Adventure channel, and GET ON THAT SHIT. I guarantee you that it will become your favourite thing in life by the end of one episode.

P.P.S So this is kind of a buzzkill : Complete List Of Things I Hate About Backpacking. Still, good to be well-informed from all perspectives.

"When They Love Me And They Will, I'll Tell Them All They're Loving Your Shadow"

Every now and then, you stumble across a song that knocks you flat on your ass and leaves you winded for a few moments. The new Japandroids track is one such song. It's so awesome, I had to devote an actual blog post to it. Check out this sweet, sweet jam, you guys. 





So. Good.
After the last few months of musically imbibing nothing but melancholy banjo-inflected folk music, this type of loud, fuzzed-up, relentless, Springsteenesque anthemic rock is exactly what I didn't know I needed. It makes me feel like going out and running a marathon, or climbing a mountain, or finally getting those double ear piercings, or finish reading War & Peace in one setting, or taking a hammer to a watermelon until it's nothing but delicious red pulp, or something. Anything that will fiercely and boldly affirm the reality of my existence (and yes, reading Tolstoy is fierce). Plus I am a complete and total sucker for lyrics about cities and skylines and flesh and blood and life and death.
Hey Japandroids? Nice to meet you, dudebros. Consider me a worshipper.