I don’t know about you, but I was more than a little stressed out for 70-80 minutes of this match. Timbers vs Dynamo on 6-26-16.
No More Portland Boys
The Timbers Army board announced today that the Portland Boys chant will not be featured or initiated by the Timbers Army, effective immediately. It’s no hard to understand why the chant was eliminated even if you disagree. The specific line I will miss from this chant is not the controversial one, but the one that gave me juvenile glee in hearing on national TV. Can you hear the TA sing (“Portland Boys?”) I DON’T HEAR A FUCKING THING!
If I have a home game still on the DVR, I’ll see if I can find and capture that part of the chant for the sake of (rude) history.
The Timbers Army march in the Pride Parade
I just barely managed to catch a picture of the Timbers Army marching in the 2016 Pride parade. As usual, the TA made us proud. Catch a little video after the jump. UPDATE: Timbers Army posted a link to some photos by Ray Terrill.
Continue reading “The Timbers Army march in the Pride Parade”
No Pity, No Shame
Some might call it opportunism, but most members of the Timbers Army probably have a lot more colorful words to describe an individual who buys items from the No Pity Van and then resells them on Ebay with an exorbitant markup. Everything shown here from Scotishstriker’s Ebay listing is still or recently available direct form the source. Those patches retail for $5, while scarves are only $10 from the van. I’ve heard of people listing TA items at retail just to combat the Ebay profiteers.
DV8 Donates
The most gracious man in the MLS has donated the ball he used to score the MLS Cup record setting 27 second goal to the Timbers Army. The images above are from the video and picture in the Timbers Army post that broke the news. Is it possible to retire a jersey number while the player is still playing? Let’s do it! Have you seen the fan-created patch that commemorated the event? Catch the patch and a replay of the goal after the jump.
Set Piece Tetris
Go Ahead, get some Tetris action, courtesy of the Portland Timbers, complete with TA chants. Excellent. Play Set Piece. Apparently the first (only) MLS team to have their own video game, the FO is stepping up their viral marketing game.
Aack Aack!
I couldn’t figure out what the tinfoil hats were for. I was sitting in 205 and they didn’t quite make it up to our row. Now it makes sense. I heard a rumor there might be some No Pity march based on this Tifo. For all you youngsters out there, it’s from Mars Attacks.
Catching up on three matches
Timbers vs. NYCFC
Just watching the recap of this match makes me so frustrated. A game I felt we should have won. The handball (handballs?) that didn’t get called, and of course Luca getting dragged down in the 18.
An up-close view of the Melano incident. Got the ball first, but plenty of hands, too. #RCTID #pdx @TimbersFC – pic.twitter.com/LirlDHTlZY
— Jonathan Simmons (@JSimmonsPDX) May 16, 2016
I thought almost through the whole match we were going to pull it off. We played pretty cohesively and had some hustle… but no finishing. It’s been a while and I’ve tried to wash away most of the stain of this loss, but watching some gifs and replays of this match did remind me of one thing. I thought Jermaine Taylor had a decent run at LB. Nice to see some defensive depth development. I’m still not sold on Valentin, much less Klute.
Vancouver vs. Timbers
Just when they needed a win, to get some fire going… and I miss the match. Ugh, I was in Washington… north of Seattle, yich.
Don’t worry though I watched all the youtubes and gifs I could. Looked fun and dynamic. Great to see Nabge on point and JackMac with some hustle. I wish I could’ve seen this one as it really illustrates what we’re capable of.
Timbers vs. Chicago Fire
Ugh.
Nagbe was gone on international duty, BenZ is a CDM, and our outside backs are not playing to their potential, so Chara couldn’t really join the attack. It seemed we played a lot of the match in our half, and this is why. I guess I should be happy with 1 point on the road, but I was really hoping for some more momentum here.
So to add my own momentum, here is a little gift I received this morning from one of my kiddos!
PTFC Indeed!
Portland Boys
Jaimie Goldberg’s piece in the Oregonian on the controversial phrase in the Portland Boys chant certainly has people talking. It’s one of my favorite chants, because I love the part where 10,000 people yell “I don’t hear a fucking thing!” and it’s always clearly audible over the TV. That’s just me. I’m immature about certain things. I don’t mind the line “shag your women, drink you beer.” In context it’s obviously a silly boastful line about also winning a competition for the opposing team’s dates. We don’t really advocate burning, destroying, wrecking, and killing either. Human life is the most sacred thing, right? If anything, I’m more uncomfortable with that line. However, and this is a big but, (Said Pee Wee: Let’s talk about your big “but” Simone. ) I can 100% understand how people are offended by the line. I’ve often wondered about it’s place in the repertoire of official chants for an organization that prides itself on inclusiveness and tolerance.
Simply changing the official words is unlikely to work. Disseminating that information to several thousand loosely aligned people is impossible, and the crowd will simply chant whatever it prefers. I suppose over enough time, with repeated reminders and enough examples, it might possibly work. Fact: It’s not going to happen in one season. So I’m on the record for keeping the chant and abstaining from saying it if you don’t like it, or changing the words if you prefer. If we get rid of it, someone please come up with another way for us to get thousands of people yelling “fucking” on national television, and I’ll get behind that one too. This is my opinion only, and not necessarily the same as the other (2) contributors to this site. You’ll have to ask them. BTW, I’m Polish, so feel free to send me your favorite Polish jokes if you want to see if I have a double standard about this. I don’t. I can appreciate a good Polish joke too.
Meanwhile, speaking of humor, the Nutmeg News tackled the subject of the offending chant by suggesting an official TA rewording carried out to the most excruciatingly politically correct extreme. It’s the low hanging fruit version for sure. I love the Nutmeg News, but some pieces fall flat. The winner by a long shot is the sometimes hilarious but way-to-infrequently-updated MLS Satire Facebook page.
