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The Mysterious Igors Stepanovs...
In today's Independent (15th December), Glenn Moore evokes memories of Beveren's Belgian Cup final team of 2004 which, incredibly, included 10 players from Cote d'Ivoire. Dan Brennan decides to take a different tack, paying tribute to Beveren's 11th man – the mysterious Igors Stepanovs.
Just over a decade ago, in the summer of 2000, Igors Stepanovs arrived at Arsenal for a cool £1 million, as part of the great Skonto Riga Millennium sell-off orchestrated by former Latvia coach Gary Johnson, which saw a bucket-load of Balts - most now since forgotten – shipped off to various English clubs.
Born in the Latvian town of Ogre, Stepanovs, sadly, turned out to be something less than a giant for Arsenal. After his part in a 6-1 debacle at Old Trafford in 2001 - where he formed one half of a jerry-built East European central defensive blockade with Oleg Luzhny – he was, a tad unfairly, singled out for blame and his fate as a figure of fun was sealed. Few noticed much of a void when he was farmed out to Beveren, the Belgian club who had forged a 'technical relationship' with Arsenal.
Arsenal's Belgian tie-up had enabled them to secure first claim on Beveren's conveyor belt of raw talent coming out of Cote d'Ivoire, which was cultivated by Arsene Wenger's old colleague Jean Marc-Guillou. Guillou, the man behind the success of Ivorian club, ASEC Mimosas and its academy that produced Kolo Toure, latterly went on to become general manager of Beveren and continued overseeing the arrival of umpteen Ivorians on a yearly basis – including the likes of Emmanuel Eboue, Yaya Toure and Gervinho - until 2007 when his Ivorian experiment imploded, the club was relegated and he left to set up academies in other farflung corners such as Madagascar and Thailand.
The notion that all the Belgians should get in return was a Latvian version of Gus Caesar might seem a tad unfair. But Beveren did have other Arsenal fringe players passing through their squad, and of course, they benefited from a tidy transfer fee when Eboue moved to London.
For Stepanovs, meanwhile, being shunted off to Flanders did provide him with an unlikely stab at silverware. In 2004, lining up with 10 Ivorians – he helped Beveren surprise the Belgian pundits by reaching the country's cup final, only to suffer a narrow defeat to Club Bruges.
Stepanovs spent a year with the Belgians in all, but the locals say that they never really got to know him. "He was one of the biggest enigmas of Belgian football as he never talked to anyone," a Belgian football journalist who I encountered at Euro 2004 told me. Belgium weren't taking part, but he had valiantly traveled 800 miles overland to try and unravel the mystery of Stepanovs on behalf of a curious Belgian public.
"At training all the Ivorians would be practicing their tricks, and he would just be on his own running up and down the line," recalled the Belgian hack. "And it was the same in the club canteen. In one corner, they Ivorians would be laughing and dancing, with the music up full volume. In the other corner, Igors would be sitting on his own reading a book."
Gunners, Flems and Walloons alike might be surprised then to learn that when he pulled on his national team shirt as Latvia captain, Uncle Stepa, as they call him back home, was transformed into a sort of Latvian Tony Adams. "Hugely dependable, a real leader," according to Latvian football journalist Mikhail Korolov. Anybody who saw him marshal the defences in a heroic 0-0 against the Germans at Euro 2004 would be forced to agree.
Stepanovs had left Beveren in the summer of 2004, to be replaced, naturally enough, by an Ivorian. He had apparently held out hopes of a return to Arsenal until the last, although got decidedly grumpy when anyone asked about it. Instead, he ended up accepting a move Grasshoppers in the more sedate environs of Zurich. Sedate, at least, until Uncle Stepa hit town, and established himself as the noisiest thing to hit Switzerland since the invention of the cuckoo-clock.
Anyone who watched Igors Stepanovs at Arsenal would hardly have marked him down as a rabble rouser. A toiler, yes, but a troublemaker - never. But he proved too hot to handle for Swiss club Grasshoppers of Zurich, who terminated his contract a year early after his second red card for assaulting an opponent.
Thereafter, the nomadic and increasingly sporadic denouement to his club career began to unfold, first with a return to his native Latvia to sign for FK Jurmala on the Baltic Coast, followed by stints with Esbjerg in Denmark and FC Shinnik Yaroslavl in Russia. In the last five years he's not managed to make more than a handful of appearances, and hasn't lasted over a year in the same place.
In June last year, 2010 Beveren were dissolved, merging with KV Red Star Waasland, to become Red Star Waasland Beveren. Uncle Stepa though is still chugging away. Now 34 and back at Jurmala, he remains listed as a national team player, currently on 99 caps. Hopefully – 15 years after his international debut - he has at least one more cap in him, so that he can bring up the ton. If he does, who knows, he might even crack an enigmatic smile.
Dan is one of the UK's most well known football writers and contributes regularly to FourFourTwo, When Saturday Comes and World Soccer magazine. You can follow him on twitter @DanBrennan99


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subset: commoncrawl


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This movie is very twisted. It starts off all nice and normal: two schoolgirls making friends, and slowly over the course of the film they enter this fantasy world and lose all touch with reality. You get a glimpse of what happens at the end at the very beginning, and that is more than enough to remind you that this is one of Peter Jackson's early films (gore and blood). The acting of the two leads, Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, is completely unbelievable. The voiceovers throughout the movie is part of the transcript from the actual diaries of the real girl. What's truly sickening is that this was based on a true story.
Very twisted, but so amazingly put-together, you have to see it.


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by Marie Lachat
Professor to Graterford inmates, public wearer of Revolutionary War garb, quaffer of an occasional Yuengling at Dirty Franks, Dean's List student of Philadelphia neighborhoods, this is Clark DeLeon, though this only scratches the surface of a man in a long-term love affair with the city of Philadelphia.
As winner of the national William Randolph Hearst Feature Writing Award at Temple University, DeLeon started his slice-of-Philadelphia-life daily feature called "The Scene" for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972. He was the city's youngest columnist, and his column was an open book of his own foibles and sufferings, growing pains and joys and a chronicle of city oddities, oddballs and heroes.
DeLeon, 63, wrote of and from the nooks and crannies of a historic city and of its residents, visitors and occasional troublemakers, some intentional and some stumblebums. He was an observer and recorder of the ways, means and places of a city and its people, high and low, reporting all with an amusing yet gentle eye and crafty pen.
The Chestnut Hill Book Festival and Speaker Series is inviting community residents to meet Clark and hear his "Filulfian" (Philadelphian) storytelling on Thursday, Nov. 14, 7 p.m., at the Bombay Room of the Chestnut Hill Hotel. Decide for yourself if DeLeon looks great for his age or not. Ask him anything about his hero, Thacher Longstreth, or about the travails of Joey Coyle or who his favorite Philly mobster or politician is, what he thinks about Chestnut Hill and especially what it was like to be at Graterford Prison the night that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.
DeLeon recently returned to the Inquirer as a bi-weekly columnist, but in September of 1995 he stunned readers of the Inquirer when, after 23 years with the paper, 22 of them as a columnist, he suddenly quit his job. Anyone in journalism knows that no one in his/her right mind voluntarily gives up a job as a columnist for a daily newspaper. It's as rare as a U.S. Senator quitting, but at least a Senator can then become a highly-paid lobbyist. A former columnist can just go to a bar and get smashed.
"I think what it came down to," said DeLeon at the time, "is that my editors — top management — heard enough from me. I think that what happened with me is part of a larger development. A sign that corporate culture is taking over. As long as I have been here, we prided ourselves on being an excellent newspaper with quirky tendencies and liveliness. You see less of that now."
In his farewell column, Clark wrote in part: "What happened was that I wanted to do more, more of what I thought my column should be about. I wanted to write more honestly about the dilemma of race in America, how we're all poisoned by racism because all our lives we've been drinking from the same poisoned well.
"I wanted to write about the moral paradox of black racism, especially when it was directed toward Asians and other immigrants. I wanted to point out that being a victim of racism is no excuse to engage in it, how you can feel the pain but fail to learn the lesson. I wanted to speak the unspoken. I wanted to write about issues of the heart and gut. I wanted to ask the big questions.
"My editors wanted me to write jokes; tasteful, politically correct observations with a humorous kicker. They wanted short answers to the questions they would not let me ask."
For DeLeon, the corporate culture then creeping in and taking hold, even in the news industry, sapped the individual of creativity and of freedom of expression. The job DeLeon loved was not that job anymore. It was a daring thing to do in the challenging field of journalism; however, in between Inky gigs DeLeon pieced together an interesting and diverse array of journalistic endeavors that included publishing several books, doing television and radio commentary, writing articles for periodicals and online publishing, teaching, etc.
But the troubled Inquirer recently brought back DeLeon as a bi-weekly columnist in its Sunday Commentary section. Along with a return to the paper, he was inducted into Temple University's School of Communications Alumni in the Media Hall of Fame.
DeLeon said that what kept him in journalism all these years was a love of language, a conviction that the truth matters and a belief that he can make a difference. He recently published the fourth volume of "Pennsylvania Curiosities," which he will no doubt discuss on Thursday night.
For more information about DeLeon's visit to the Chestnut Hill Hotel, call 215-247-6696.


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10 ways to be sure your editing won't get done (again tonight)
1. refresh your email, waiting for a messge from your blog partner/co-writer even though you know she is out for the evening
2. read a blog re-capping The Bachelor even though you spent the previous night actually watching The Bachelor (Hey, at least the re-capped version was waaaaaay funnier and more entertaining! srsly, check it out for yourself here.)
3. check twitter even though you never write anything and you have no conversations with anybody on it
4. daydream about the new novel you will write once you can finally query the novel you are not editing
5. read a blog post about how to begin a novel and start brainstorming ways to begin the novel you were daydreaming about (so amazingly helpful! you MUST read it NOW: here.)
6. click on a link to read about how to create well-rounded characters. stop to think about how these characters would want you to start out your new novel
7. decide to create a new blog post even though you really have nothing to say other than to share how you are writing it only to keep from doing what you are supposed to be doing
8. wonder how you will finish the blog post and wonder further why you chose the number ten when clearly you have not really procrastinated that much...yet
9. (see 8)
10. check the clock and wonder how long it will be before your eyes glaze over when it will be too late to open your acrobat.com acct to GET THE EDITING DONE, erm, started
(erica, really, if you're reading this, it's still relatively early and i'm going in right now. i'll get lots done. i hope you are having a fantastibulous time this evening. i can't wait to email you tomorrow to tell you how i finished our edits.)
10 Reasons This Week. . .(nvm, we don't want to swear)
We, erica and christy, are not prone to violence. However (and truthfully, this is erica speaking) if even one person on this planet wishes for this week to repeat itself, well, you'll find us (okay, erica) resorting to this:
10. Last Saturday was my husband's nephew's wedding. My youngest son was the ring bearer. He woke up on Saturday with a 102-degree fever.
9. I hopped my kid up on Tylenol and we made our merry way to the wedding. Yep, mother-of-the-year here. (hey, at least I win Aunt-of-the-Year, right?)
8. My husband's on a pretty strict diet and I called the wedding-dinner-hall-thingy and asked them for an alternate meal. My husband *apparently* didn't want anyone to know about the diet, so he was PISSED when he found out I blabbed, even to strangers. Plus, his meal was very tiny compared to the rest of ours, which did nothing to make him happier. Umm, yeah.
7. I just blogged about his diet. Please don't tell him or he may never speak to me again. (but if you do, mention that I think he's doing awesome. because he never believes me when I say it!)
6. My youngest missed both Monday and Tuesday of school because of a 100-101.8 fever and cough.
5. On Monday, the aforementioned groom said he ended up in the ER due to a high fever and cough and had to get IV antibiotics.
4. Tuesday brought a little bit of health to my family, so my husband and I left the kids with his parents and went to a poker tournament, where we both won seats to a tournament in Las Vegas in November. (don't cheer yet, trust me. . .)
3. My oldest son woke up Wedneday morning with a sore throat and 100.4 degree fever. I left him with some Dayquil and ibuprofen and went to work because the poker tournament took until 10:30, so my kids slept and their grandparents' and I didn't know about his condition until 15 minutes before school started. Yep, mother-of-the-year right here!!
2. My teaching assistant's son took her son to the doctor the first morning he spiked a fever and the kid tested positive for Influenza A. My kids are on Day 7 (in case you're counting) and I'm still going with the "It's just a virus" defense. (for the record, they didn't give the other kid anything but cough medicine for the flu. trust me, my kids are on cough medicine. So. Much. Medicine.)
So - and I don't do this for sympathy, just for laughs and commiseration - the #1 reason this week sucked (brought to you in two parts):
1.5 On Wednesday, my husband and I sat down and discussed a plan for doing 2 vacations in the next year. One for us to Las Vegas next November (the seats we won gave us both a really great deal - mostly it will just cost us airfare) AND something we can do with our kids that would be better than usual. We figured if we save $50-75 per week from now until the middle of summer for one and mid-summer until November for the other, we could pull it off without much of a problem. SCORE!
1.0 On Friday, I found out the Head Start grant I have worked under for the past 9 years won't cover expenses this year (by no fault - or knowledge - of mine). Therefore I will have a $50-75 per week cut in my wages for the remainder of the school year.
So, yeah, don't plan on asking Karma to give you a do-over on THIS week. That bi**ch hates me and I'm not afraid to slap her.
(this post softened by a nice smiley) :)
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Thursday, August 31, 2006
Sick Day..or..a Bit More About Me
I'm a bit under the weather today, so I will not be baking. I feel I should post something, and my Mom has suggested I tell you a bit more about my background. I suppose I wasn't that thorough in the introduction that you can find at the bottom of this page...so I will try to give a short but sweet background of the eccentric baking chick and probably post a few pictures of stuff that I just really like.
What brought me to love baking? I suppose it's in my genes. No professional Bakers in my family except for me, but I think that just growing up with people who loved to cook and bake and did both well influenced me greatly. It also didn't hurt when I was given an Easy-Bake Oven at the age of, I think, 5 or 6. It didn't hurt at all, in fact. I'm not sure how many of the little packets of mix I went through but I'm sure it was a great many. From the Easy-Bake Oven I moved on to kitchen experiments. One crazy friend I had in grade school would help me with making candies. We made lollipops and pulled taffy. This was a great start. I moved on to popcorn balls. I would make lemon meringue pie with one of my friends. She would make the meringue, and I would make the filling, and we both would make the crust in turns. I think I may have had sleep issues...because when the rest of the house was sleeping, I was tinkering in the kitchen with different things. I also recall making white bread, having it turn out beautifully, only to have one sister (or was it both? fess up one of you!) eat the inside of the bread leaving a hollow crust. This horrified me as the crust was beautiful and I was so proud of my bread! I have gotten over that now :).
I went from the little baking projects to bigger ones. Making and decorating cakes for my friends in junior high and high school. I taught myself using Wilton cake tins and tips. I took a break from all this and went to college in pursuit of a degree in Art (which was another passion of mine). Things happened..as they sometimes do..and I ended up back home..without a degree and not much direction. Not sure what to do with myself I went back to work at the nursing home I had worked at as a teenager. A cook got fired, they offered me the job and offered to pay for culinary schooling. I jumped at the offer. Two years of culinary school later, I was cooking in a five diamond resort. Baking was still something I dreamed of doing, but I needed more experience if I was to work in the pastry department at the resort. In 1999,after another 2 years of working at the resort, I packed myself up and went from very small town Wisconsin to huge city San Francisco to attend the California Culinary Academy in hopes of a Baking and Pastry Certificate. It was awesome, I loved it. I felt in my element. About 6 months later I graduated, a Dean's list student, and was ready to go bake. And now for the really short summary...I baked for 2 years in the pastry department at the resort in Wisconsin. I moved on to a country club and multitasked there cooking and baking. Then I went on to just cook at a golf course in Wisconsin as it seemed there weren't many opportunities for bakers in the small town..at least nothing for a baker who wanted to advance. During all of this I fell in love, over a period of time, with a wonderful Englishman. Yes, it was an online courtship, but we had many visits to each other before G decided to move to Wisconsin and find himself a job. A few months later, G accepted a job here..in Silicon Valley, proposed marriage, I said yes, and then we loaded up the U-haul with our two kitties, and drove out here. I set up the apartment, G worked, and now I am seeking employment and have taken up writing here for my enjoyment and to showcase the food I bake and the photographs that I love taking of it. Now, I must apologize for the length here. It was definitely summarized..Much shorter with many dull things omitted! I hope you didn't fall asleep on me. Now it is time for me to go make some tea and curl up under a blanket and nurse myself back to some form of health. Have a wonderful day and thanks for reading!
P.S. I'm so happy that my Easy-Bake Oven still appears to work!
3 comments:
- cinara said...
Hi, Jen! I found your blog through a picture I saw in Flickr, and I guess we have some things in common... I also love to bake and to take pictures of my "creations", I love cats (now we have a Siamese) and I also had one of these little ovens! I had one, blue like yours, when I was 6 or 7, and I had a great time with it, although it didn't have that much of an impact on me careerwise. I am a 37 year-old Brazilian journalist and translator, who has just started her own blog, even without knowing where to find time to keep it updated!Anyway, I really enjoyed your blog and hope you visit mine. The problem is that my blog is in portuguese... But if you see a picture that looks yummy to you, write and I will give you the recipe in english, if there's not a link to it on the page, OK?
Good luck with your baking and blogging!
- cinara said...
I don't know if I added to the note, but my blog page is www.cinarasplace.blogspot.com
- Jen the bread freak said...
Hi Cinara! I'm very happy you enjoyed my blog! I'm going to have a look at your blog. I will definately write you if I see anything I want to bake! Thank you!


text: Wow. Tiphanie Brooke is a design student at the Art Center College of Design and we are super stoked about her student project "Sweet Highs". We love everything about this, the color palette, the graphic design and the thought and research that went into this project. You can see more here at her site


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With only four music practice rooms in the Healey Family Student Center and two in LXR Hall, there are barely enough available spaces on campus to serve all of Georgetown's 7,595 undergraduate students. On April 19, the Georgetown University Student Association dedicated its final Hoya Roundtable of the spring semester to these issues concerning the arts at Georgetown, specifically relating to individual student artists and smaller groups.
During the roundtable, students and faculty raised concerns regarding the university's current commitments to promoting artists and groups on campus. Some asked if there were plans for future performance spaces, while others questioned if existing spaces will be re-evaluated and renovated to accommodate increased use.
These questions emerging from the open forum last Tuesday are hardly new or unique, yet they serve as a key reminder of how the university is still not providing the resources necessary for students' artistic passions to truly thrive, especially individuals and groups unaffiliated with Georgetown's performance groups such as the Mask and Bauble Dramatic Society and Superfood.
The limited number of music practice rooms will be particularly concerning if the number of students living on campus increases in the near future. In addition, the practice rooms in the HFSC are especially cramped, lack soundproofing and are not climate controlled, causing instruments to be damaged if left overnight. An example of this can be seen with pianos in HFSC, which students complain are often out-of-tune and receive little overall maintenance.
Larger and higher-quality practice rooms are available in Reynolds Hall, but they are given priority to those taking performing arts courses or student performance groups recognized by the Performing Arts Advisory Committee. PAAC is a body that delegates practice spaces and funding for groups affiliated with PAAC such as the Saxatones, the World Percussion Ensemble and others.
The quality and quantity of spaces are two areas where the university can commit itself to enhancing the artistic pursuits of not only student groups, but also individual artists. In the upcoming 20-year campus plan, the university should commit to infrastructure and spaces dedicated to the performing arts. Perhaps existing spaces in both LXR, Reiss, New North Building and other underutilized buildings can be refurbished to become more accommodating, with soundproof walls and temperature control. Such changes would mean that practicing would no longer cause disturbances to nearby students, and instruments would be kept in appropriate spaces where they would not become damaged.
Community members will have another opportunity to comment on the future of the performing arts at Georgetown at a forum to be held April 27 in White Gravenor Hall. We urge students to voice their opinions at the forum and continue lobbying for their demands, and we encourage the administration to make concrete commitments to new spaces in an effort to nurture students' artistic passions, whether they are in recognized groups or not, at all levels.


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Episode 21 - David Hood
steve dawson
David Hood, the legendary bassist and member of the Swampers, the Muscle Shoals-based band that backed up countless classic soul records, is my guest this week. Guys like David are the reason I was inspired to do this show in the first place. I first heard him through the Duane Allman anthology, an album I picked up as a kid that contained all this amazing soul music that Duane had been a part of in the late 60's. Upon further investigation, I was led to the world of Muscle Shoals, and FAME Studios, the home of classic soul music for artists like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Boz Scaggs, John Hammond, Clarence Carter, and so many more. David also went on to play on albums for Paul Simon, Traffic, and the list goes on and on. The Muscle Shoals documentary from a few years back is a must-see, and David was kind enough to spend some time with me talking about the studios, life during that time in Muscle Shoals, and to detail some of the sessions that so many of us know and love. Enjoy my conversation with David Hood!
Click here to view the other podcast episodes!
Please take take a few minutes to complete our Audience Listener Survey.


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So, the iPhone 5 has been announced. I have a handful of folks that always ask about this sort of thing because they know that I'm a big nerd about Apple stuff.
My thoughts in short: This one is pretty awesome. I'll be preordering it on Friday.
The specifics:
The screen is just a little longer, which makes room for another row of apps on the home screen and allows for full 16x9 widescreen when turned on its side. The touch sensor is integrated directly into the display which allows for a thinner screen.
It has LTE, which is faster than a lot of home broadband connections.
It has a faster processor which means that it will do everything faster.
Better camera with a built in panorama feature. Also, there is a Sapphire crystal over the lens which will keep it from getting scratched.
The back is one piece of Aluminum. Apple calls it Unibody construction. Small pieces of glass on each end of the back for the Wifi and Bluetooth antennas
Thinner, lighter, Faster.
Did anyone expect anything less?
Preorder this Friday the 14th, ships on Friday the 21st.


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"The as yet unknown masterpiece" by Edwin Smet
Edwin Smet has been working as an independent (typo)graphic designer since 1997. He published two books of poems and images, Pessoa loopt door de straten van New York / Pessoa walks the streets of New York (2005) en Een Landschap / A Landscape (2008). Over the last six years he focuses more and more on painting and the designing of books in The Netherlands and Great Britain. www.meervandatmoois.nl
Lies Van Gasse decided.