Materazzi has been a bastard for a long time

I'm getting really obsessed about this. If, like me, you're interested in evidence to corroborate your suspicion that Materazzi is a filthy player, check out these "highlight" reels.

He's evil! Yes Ryan, evil. I've never seen anything like this. I am so furious at Materazzi right now. Words fail me.

Zidane is still the man

The World Cup final was totally exciting!

But while the game was one of the best in the tournament, French superstar Zinedine Zidane's decision to headbutt Italy's Marco Materazzi in overtime has turned out to be the story.

Video. You know what I'm talking about but here's a quick recap. France had a free kick. Materazzi was covering Zidane. Materazzi tries to manhandle Zidane. Zidane complains as he walks away. Materazzi responds. Zidane turns and puts his burnished dome in Materazzi's sternum. Materazzi writhes on the ground in "pain." Zidane regards him with disgust. Red card.

Here's Zidane in attack mode.

















Post-heabutt talk with Buffon.



















What made this so interesting is that it came, it seems, out of the blue from one of the sport's most composed, classiest players. He never dives or otherwise engages in ignoble theatrics. Never. His celebrations are subdued. You don't see him tugging shirts or talking shit or grabbing balls.

Shit, before, during and after the headbutt he seemed totally collected. Post-headbutt he talked with Italian players and his own. He spoke briefly and calmly with the ref. This was not Mike Tyson. This was Bruce Lee.

If Materazzi used some ethnic slur--I don't even know what slurs exist for Algerians but I'm sure they exist--and Zidane decided headbutting a racist was more important than winning a soccer game, well, I'd listen to that argument.

Anyway, he probably just snapped and it is a shame his career ended like that.

But the Italians at the trophy presentation? All making out with the trophy before it was even presented? Materazzi pretending to hide it in his jersey? It was never even really presented because they were all grabbing at it and licking it before the last of their own players were on the stage. That one guy took off his goddamn pants.

In summary: Overall Zidane's a class act and I hate to see his career end like that but more than one Italian player deserved a headbutt.

Wordology #2

I saw a sign for Zia's Delicatessen. (Hey, by the way, was that an old place in Davis? A current place in Davis?) I never thought about it before, but that word might be German in origin, 'cause "essen" means "to eat" in German and I don't know for sure but there's probably a word "delikate" that means, you know, delicate or perishable or something.

Let's check.

Alright, so it is German, but apparently I'm wrong about it having anything to do with the word "essen."

Boom! A little more searching and a little validation. Wikipedia mentions my theory.

I promise more snakes soon and less etymology.

Thesis Ideas: Psychology

I was watching the Daily Show the other day. The interview part. And this description is going to be really vague so bear with me. But at the beginning of the interview the guest mentions something that Jon finds noteworthy or funny. Let's say its Llamas. Let's say the guest rears llamas. And Jon reacts: "llamas?" Laughter from the audience.

And then at the end of the interview Jon looks for a punchline (it was one of those more lighthearted interviews) and what Jon did for a punchline was just mention llamas in a new context. This is not at all how it went but you'll get the idea.
Jon: So what are you doing next?
Guest: I'm filming a movie in Chile.
Jon: Maybe you can uh...pick up some Llamas while you're there.

My version isn't very funny but you get the point. All he did, basically, was put this somewhat unusual detail from earlier in the discussion into this new context and boom! Kinda funny.

And that got me thinking, the first thing you gotta be able to do if you're going to be funny in that way is remember what was said earlier. Jon Stewart must just be in the habit of remembering details like this all the time so he has them at his disposal when he's casting around for a joke.

And then that got me thinking that a lot of my funniest friends are funny because they remember stuff well, and remember details well, that are then later funny almost on their own just because they're details.

So here's the thesis topic. Correlate funniness and memory (short-term especially, maybe long-term too). My prediction: funny people have better memories.

Think about the funny person in your group of friends. It's the raconteur, right? And stand-up comedy is just embellished storytelling.

It's kinda complicated though. I mean, the relationships between memory and general smarts, and humor and general smarts could make things pretty murky. But you could conceivably do really well on like a mensa-style pattern prediction IQ test and still have a crappy memory. So you'd want to try to control for "smarts" somehow. Like take funny and non-funny people with similar GPAs or similar IQ scores or something.