Is there anything better in life than TiVo?
I mean honestly, outside of chocolate milk and my subscription to Scarlett Johansson Monthly, I would give up anything else in my life before I would give up my beloved TiVo.
Times don't get much better than walking in from a long day at the office, flipping on that baby and seeing a whole mess of UEFA Champions League games or that day's episode of The Tyra Banks Show waiting to be at your service.
But TiVo can be a good news-bad news kind of thing when it doesn't work right. You basically put your entire viewing life in its hands and expect it to return the love. And some times it doesn't. And that is what happened to me this week with the CONCACAF Champions' Cup matches.
And I am still fuming.
So, in the theme of good news-bad news, let's look at a few things going on around MLS this week.
GOOD NEWS: Houston Dynamo are in great shape to get to the CONCACAF Champions' Cup final after beating Pachuca 2-0 in Houston on Wednesday, uh, I mean, Thursday. More on that in a second.
Second half goals from Brian Ching and Chris Wondolowski (get a nickname, and fast) gave Dynamo the win at Robertson and gave MLS a good chance of having at least one team in the final.
You really have to give Dominic Kinnear and his boys credit for back-to-back great results in the tournament, which as we all have said a million times puts our clubs at a big disadvantage because the MLS schedule is still weeks away from kicking off.
That said, I can't tell you too much about the match because ...
BAD NEWS: I missed the entire (insert expletive here) match because of the power outage that pushed it back a day! See, here's what happened: I knew I had a crazy schedule Wednesday and Thursday, so I set the old TiVo to grab both the Houston and D.C. matches, with the plan to hide in a cave for two days and avoid the scores, then wake up Friday morning when my scheduled cleared and screen (Planet LA term for "watch") a doubleheader.
So imagine my joy when I found out what happened and had missed Houston's win.
OK, TiVo, you think you're so smart. It's bad enough you don't know to keep recording when a game goes to extra time, but now I want more out of you. If the program being recorded is postponed due to a power outage, I want you to recognize that, find the makeup date, set yourself to record the makeup date, and then e-mail me to tell me what happened.
And make me a sandwich while you're at it.
GOOD NEWS: I caught the first 73 minutes of the D.C.-Chivas match Thursday night.
BAD NEWS: For all I know the last 17 minutes and time added on saw Marco Etcheverry run onto the field and slap each of the United players for impersonating D.C. footballers and bring the club's rich history into disrepute.
That's because for some reason, my TiVo was off a half-hour from the actual start time and started recording the two-hour window 30 minutes too early, so I missed the end of the match.
Meaning I missed the game-tying goal and the foul leading to the game-tying dead-ball that Benny Olsen says was a lucky break for the home team.
Maybe it is bad news I saw any of the match at all, as United have dug a huge hole by failing to defend their home stadium. A return trip to Guadalajara is not much fun when you have to get a result to get through.
GOOD NEWS: Toronto had to cut off season ticket sales at a whopping 14,000 (!) so it could use the rest of the seats for groups, mini-plans, single-game tickets, etc.
BAD NEWS: OK, all together: 14,000 season tickets in Canada? Well, that's only 11,909 in U.S. season tickets!
GOOD NEWS: Speaking of Toronto FC, the club just signed former Sunderland winger Andy Welsh.
BAD NEWS: Turns out Welsh is a Scot born in England. Playing for a Canadian team in a U.S.-based league. This whole Toronto thing is confusing already.
GOOD NEWS: In case I didn't mention it last week when I talked about the new tournament in which the Galaxy is hosting Chelsea, it continues a partnership between the two clubs.
BAD NEWS: But if Galaxy fans want to start emulating the Chelsea supporters who throw celery at matches, it's probably not a good idea.
You see, for a couple decades, Chelsea fans have been known to throw celery as they sing a song that is not exactly family-friendly.
So while Chelsea probably can't catch Manchester United in the Premiership this season, they're going to try and catch those pesky vegetable hurlers. The club has set up an anonymous tipster phone line to report the vagrants and is threatening to ban any of these villains.
No word from Alexi Lalas yet if the sharing of ways to crack these malicious crime rings is part of the partnership between the clubs.
Then again, after this week, celery is about the only thing I haven't yet thrown at my TiVo.
During the season, The Clean Sheet runs each week on MLSnet. Views and opinions expressed in this column views and opinions are the author's, and not necessarily those of Major League Soccer or MLSnet.com. Send any questions and comments to tcsresponses@yahoo.com
