Several years ago I played with and coached a very competitive and talented soccer team, loaded with ex-college players and an occasional ex-professional. I was able to convince then-professional David Kelly, easily the best player I've ever coached (with the notable exception of my brother), to join our team. However, since he was already signed on another professional contract, we had to execute a USSF sanctioned loan agreement.

The agreement required that we fill in some blanks, including payment terms. Dave and I just kind of looked at each other and filled in the word "BEER" in the payment box. Since that day, the deal between Dave and myself (representing team management) is that whenever the two of us are at the home club where the team trains and plays, I have to buy his beer.

Point being I woke up with a little bit of a headache the other morning...

The Black Keys - 10 A.M. Automatic

Has to be seen, but you won't understand...more than anything it illustrates just how crappy and unimaginative music videos have become.

A new babe on the page, to start to move away from the haunting image below.
The good news: She's cute and she's got a nifty looking firearm.
The bad news: she's from the future.

Richard Branson: A new hero for our troubled times...

I don't know how he does it, but every year Winds of Change puts together the most comprehensive 9/11 round-up on the web. Be sure to check it out.

And don't miss this classic from the Onion, from back when they were still pretty good.

Every year on 9/11 I intend to write a lengthy reflective post, and every year it escapes me. Even now, I am reduced to teeth-grinding anger...

Anyway, head over to Pajamas Media and scroll down; they have dozens of links to things to check out, all better than anything I could provide.

If there's a better military analyst than Austin Bay working today, I wouldn't know who it is. Bay, writing for Strategy Page, has some thoughts and analysis, five years on, about the asymmetrical metrics of asymmetrical warfare.

I had quite a flashback today. Five years ago today, on a perfect pre-autumnul day exactly like today, my brother and I were having a couple of beers after playing soccer. There were lots of friends and teammates around, and lots of laughter and sunshine as we sat by the soccer field having our drinks. Two days later, a Tuesday, I was driving to NYC for work when the reports of the attacks on the World Trade Center came over the radio. I turned around, went home, and pretty much sat in a daze for the next 48 hours.

So today my brother and I were together again, at a soccer field, enjoying some cold beers with several friends. We had coached our kids today, not played ourselves, but in every other respect it was a "deja-vu all over again" kind of day: the sky, the atmosphere, the soccer, the friends, the drinks...all of it. When I told my brother what I was thinking he said "Oh yeah, I remember". He paused for a moment and then said, "shit". Then I said, "shit".

And that about sums it up, doesn't it?

What the 50th anniversary is likely to look like...

When crisis arrives -- and I mean real crisis, like big, in your face, you're-in-deep-soup crisis -- what words will fall out of your mouth? Who will you reach out to? When your focus is so narrowed that it's just you staring down all your lost tomorrows, what will you say?

Winners Only Nick points us to a news item about a whacky Dutch priest who evidently has had enough. He's kind of inept, and that's probably a good thing.

Tim Blair points us to a story about a deranged dolphin tormenting French fishermen. The local leader of the fishermen's association wants the vicious mammal-wannabe "locked up", and predicts it could all end badly. He doesn't say for which group of mammals, alas.