Well, a few upsets later, our brackets got a serious shakeup but “tnpsc1″ stays in first for now. Argentina and Brazil’s losses bombed most of us, and all the Holland fans I made fun of when this started are looking good now. I’m no math wizard, and the scoring of this contest frankly makes little sense to me, but I *think* as it stands now, if Spain wins the tournament, “tnpsc” (whom we suspect is Patrick from P-Town) wins it. If the Netherlands beats Spain in the final, Kevin “Brazil Sucks” Slater wins. If the Netherlands beat Germany in the final, Matt “m5matty1″ DeVries wins, and if Germany wins, it’ll be “Mythdraug,” who’s been posting comments for years on 2SB and lives in Chicago, so it’s about time that I admit I’m not really sure who “Mythdraug” is. But don’t quote me on any of that (the winners or the players). Note that I haven’t bothered to say what happens if Uruguay wins. If they actually beat Holland in a couple hours here, I’ll try to figure it out. Note that I fell to “second to last.” so I’m way out of the running. The only World Cup match I’ve ever seen in person was Germany/Spain in Chicago 1994 (a 1-1 draw), so there’s that. I guess I’d pick Germany over Spain, they’re on a roll and I like the team better. On the other side, I’d love to see L’orange win a Cup finally, but it’s also be neat to see underdogs Uruguay pull it off. In any case, I’m cheering for the NED-URU side of the bracket in the final.

Again, while no street-legal scooters were listed, the list of affected vehicles shows how hard it is to tell different models apart (Try Googling a few random model names and see what you come up with), and illustrates how importers use a single certification to import a wide variety of different products.

Thanks for the tip, Mr. Maddox.

Bonus: in other EPA news, Here’s a PDF of the Pep Boys settlement. Goodtimes.

UPDATE: From Jordan:

Every 2nd friday of each month till November will be scooter night with us, SSSC & MDSC together with friends. Officially the scooter night starts next friday (7/9) and hopefully we can pull all the local scooterist to join the fun. The plan is to meet somewhere for dinner, ride etc. and head to LateBar for night of dancing :-)

ANOTHER UPDATE: From Jordan, on this weeks’ events with new flyer:
RIDE TO EVENT AT 9:45 PM START AT NEW WAVE COFFEE (CORNER OF MILWAUKEE AND LOGAN).

Casey S. (Secret Society SC) will spearhead the ride starts from New Wave Coffee: http://www.newwavecoffee.com/

Balloon Artist Jeremy Telford makes a balloon Vespa. Yes, you just spent two minutes and 36 seconds watching a balloon artist, and you liked it. Do you feel dirty?

Here’s the backstory from Glen G. on Modern Buddy. Thanks for sharing, Glen!

Update: here’s Jeremy’s site. Wow.

France and Italy’s early exits really hurt just about everyone. In fact, with all the upsets so far, not one of the million-or-so entrants in ESPN’s Bracket Predictor has full points. We had a lot of Serbia fans that are dissapointed, too. Right now, first place is a three-way-tie with Jason Rossi, Matt Langenberg, and my 8-month-old son Pudge in a three-way tie for first. Of those three, only Langenberg has all four predicted Semifinalists left in the tournament, so he’s looking very good right now.

But even in the lower ranks, there’s hope. Three of the bottom six have all four semifinalist choices still active. Tomorrow is the last day of group play, and Brazil and Portugal are virtually locked in unless Ivory Coast beats Dear Leader by 8, but Spain could tank and pull an Italy tomorrow, and shake everything up again. We’ll see.

In any case, we’re certainly proud of the U.S.A.’s performance so far, and can’t wait for the Ghana match on Saturday. Ghana beat us 2-1 in group play in 2006, and has cooler jerseys than us, can we pull it off this time? What do our bracket-makers think?

• 17/18 picked the U.S. to succeed in the group stage (boooo, Becky!)
• 11/18 thought the U.S. would win their second-round match (most of the naysayers expected to meet Germany there)
• 5/18 were optimistic to see the Yanks through to the Semifinals
• 1/18 (Matt Langenberg) had the U.S. in the Final, losing to Holland.

I hope they prove us all wrong!

Via Jason Davis on Modern Buddy

To tell you the truth, I’ve become a bit disillusioned with rallies. I’ve only been hitting a couple a year, and they’re always pretty great, but modern-scooter city rallies just aren’t the same as the drunken rural camping rallies that got me hooked on scootering. I’d been finding excuses to skip Pittsburgh Vintage Scooter Club’s Band Camp rally in eastern Ohio for ten years, but after a great trip to Niagara last month, I finally decided it was time to see what I was missing.

Vina, Milena, and I dropped off Pudge at the grandparents’ and headed east, totally behind schedule and totally underprepared, just like the old days. We didn’t even get there until Saturday afternoon, and damn if it wasn’t more than totally worth several hours’ drive (each way). As fun as Niagara was, PVSC topped it in every way, the perfect campground (a run-down but functional high school marching band camp in the middle of nowhere), the food was great (pierogies) and there was never a dull moment, with games, food, dancing, music, riding, and all the debauchery my life’s been missing all these years.

The best part was, like Niagara, it was mostly familiar faces, a few years older, but still great to see. There were so many old friends I didn’t even catch up with a lot of them, sorry! Even Milena had a great time, it was like being with family. A family that drinks a lot and doesn’t hassle you about politics. Who knew the phrase “Unkie Phil” could be stripped of creepy subtext when uttered unironically by a six year old?

I’ve just got one story (of many) to share, but first, let me shout out to Alex Tasi, who spent the whole weekend cheerfully chauffeuring rallygoers around the field on the downright magical “El Coucho.” Vina and Milena will never forget their ride. At one point Saturday night, the sun came back out for a few seconds, followed by a loud “FOOOOMP.” That was Alex, rather aggressively lighting the bonfire. He spent most of the night in a cold shower, and is still wrapped up like a mummy, but he assures us he’s doing OK.

And the story: Late, late, late Saturday night, Sean Stevens and I were sitting on the tailgate of the POC truck, We’d been catching up for an hour, and the booze was kicking in. “OK, man, I gotta go to bed,” he said, but first, I gotta tell you one more thing, something important.” Expecting a deep thought, or hard-earned wisdom, I solemnly listened. “Dude, you gotta go on YouTube and check out some Mike Vallely videos!” Apropos to nothing, Sean fugued on the 80/90s skateboarding legend for another ten minutes, while I tried not to laugh too hard. I was distracted for a moment, (possibly by boobies), and when I looked back, seconds later, he was gone. I looked around, thinking it was odd he hadn’t said goodnight, but he’d vanished into thin air. I shrugged and went to talk to Phil Waters and the POC gang. A couple minutes later, Sean was discovered under the truck. It didn’t occur to me to look down.

Phil packed Sean away in a nearby tent. I went to bed a few minutes later, but Sean wasn’t done yet. He woke up, realized he wasn’t in his own tent, and headed back into the crowd. While Sean was talking to Chim-Chim from St. Louis, Phil came up and told Chim-Chim that he’d put Sean into a tent. “Oh my God!” Sean thought. “He doesn’t see me! I’m dead! I’m a ghost!”

That’s the magical kind of drunk that you just don’t see at city rallies. Hooray for safely-confined irresponsibility, hooray for PVSC.

The photos below just give you a hint of what went down, I missed photos of the X-Wing, TIE fighter, Care Bears in the 80s scooter parade, the live version of Space Invaders, the Pants-Off-Dance-Off, swimming in the creek, Spliff and I winning the potato game on the strength of Spliff’s homicidal need to possess raw potatoes, and surely much more.

[Show as slideshow]

Why not just rent out an elementary school gym and sell recalled toys with lead paint? “OK, kids, whatever you do, DON’T PLAY WITH THESE!” Bastards.

Thanks for the link, POCphil, who’s currently rebooting the American Motor Scooter Association, to try to prevent stuff like this.

Honda PCX video. It’s sort of the “Vespa Gringo” of Russian-Thai-scooter videos, so you know it was Rye that found it for us.

Admit it, you watched *way* longer than you should have, didn’t you. I wanna hang out with those guys.