There's no pity in the Rose City

I was fortunate enough to win a Portland Timbers twitter contest (it took me all of two seconds to retweet) that granted me access to the field during the last game of the inaugural season.

And this is why I love Stumptown footy:



This is the Timbers Army rallying around a team that pretty much eliminated any chance of reaching the playoffs in a demoralizing 2-0 loss at home, but you would never know it given the chants and revelry. I challenge you to find a comparative atmosphere in any sport outside of college athletics.

I'll be honest: I was expecting maybe two or three wins at home all season so me ruefully typing up this post has to be considered a victory for the expansion franchise.

There is still a sliver of hope: if New York loses at home to Philadelphia (maybe) and Portland beats Salt Lake at Rio Tinto (highly unlikely), the Timbers would sneak into the last wildcard spot. But the fact that we are still in playoff contention with a team that has a single player (Henry) that makes twice as much as our entire squad is an accomplishment.

[In fact, if you want a little food for thought during the NBA lockout, you may want to glance at the MLS salary list. A knee-less Brandon Roy made as much in the last season as did the bottom 5 teams in the MLS combined.]

Theme from Retro

3D Dot Game Heroes
3D Dot Game Heroes is about on par with Shadow Complex in that Atlus straight up jacked Legend of Zelda's gameplay, albeit with a wink and a nod. Thus the game provides a nice dash of 8-bit humor (the outrageously lengthy Freudian sword never failed to bring a smile to my face), but brings little else to the table. Eventually the tedious dungeons (particularly the last one which makes you relive every dungeon over again -- at once) and irritating time-sensitive questing evaporated any nostalgic goodwill I once had and left me itching to play the urtext as opposed to some cheeky facsimile.

Grade: B-