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So I’m suffering the head cold of a decade, but I should be back tomorrow with normal posts, book reviews, etc., etc. In the meantime, I thought I’d leave you with a post about Stjarnan, my favorite Icelandic soccer club.
To be honest, although I love me some football (especially Barcelona, especially the Champions League), I don’t know shit about Úrvalsdeild, Iceland’s top soccer division. But last year, Deadspin posted a couple videos of Stjarnan’s goal celebrations, which, as you’ll see, are nothing short of Edda Epic.
Despite playing on a middle school field in front of 50 people, this is actually from the Úrvalsdeild, Iceland’s premier division. The players of Stjarnan have made it their mission to celebrate every goal with a pre-planned routine.
There’s the now-famous “Going Fishing.”
But don’t forget “And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.” [aka “Rambo”]
The traditional Icelandic Waltw. [aka “Dancing and Marching”]
And of course, a uniquely North Sea version of Walking It Out.
And as a special bonus, here’s the most recent one that I’ve come across—“The Human Toilet,” which further illustrates just what the NFL is missing amid all its “no planned celebration” rules.
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“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
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When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
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French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
