In a weekend where the Chiefs' revamped offense could must only a field goal in a 14-10 preseason loss to Seattle* and the Wizards continued their "Summer without Scoring" in a 1-0 to Real Salt Lake's "b" team.

*UPDATE this morning: Chan Gailey is out as the offensive coordinator. The Star has it.

Zack's 1-hit shutout will likely keep the city from having to pump liquid Prozac into the metro's water supply -- at least for a few weeks.

It's gonna be a long Fall.

***

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better. -- Author, Herman Hesse

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice. -- Black Panther, George Jackson

A writer uses quotations for two reasons: a) someone else said the thing they are trying to say -- only better and b) they are pretentious and trying to show off how smart they are -- or that they can google well.

Let's just say this blog, the first installment of My Life in the Cauldron wherein I was not in the Cauldron and instead at Arrowhead Stadium watching the Chiefs even though I probably knew better* will be a little of the former and a little of the later.

*The Chiefs, in their infinite wisdom, made everyone who wanted to buy group tickets to the regular season game against either Dallas or Pittsburgh BUY tickets for a preseason game against Houston or Seattle. Geniuses, these people. Because I -- and 19 friends and family -- wanted to see the World Champion Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov. 22, I was forced to spend a lovely evening watching Matt Gutierrez throw a fade route 13 yards too short.

I should've listened to my Facebook friend (and Wizards fan) who said I should've shredded all the tickets into confetti to throw at a Wizards game. Though, since you only throw confetti when the Wizards score a goal, it's highly likely that I wouldn't use that confetti until sometime in 2011.

As a side note, at least I get to feel good about my forfeit of the Wizards tickets. A poster on Big Soccer came up with the idea to give unused season tickets to a charity so kids who don't have the chance to go to games can come out and watch. It's a great idea, read more about it here. Though, now that I think about it, that may in fact be torturing the poor kids.

Yeah, I'm not going to eat that

Say your really good friend promises to bake you a really awesome cake. They worked really hard slaving in the kitchen. Everything was going great. You were happy; cake was coming. They were happy; baking a cake is great fun.

An hour and a half later, when they finished and pulled the cake out of the oven, something became painfully obvious.

Your friend is a horrible freaking cook.

"Don't worry," they said, "it'll taste better than it looks."

But you've seen a cake before and maybe you've even made one yourself: Your friend forgot to add the eggs and the vegetable oil to the Betty Crocker instant chocolate cake mix. Just a 1/4 cup of water with the mix.

You'd eat it. Sadness in a 9x9 pan. But you know what cake is supposed to taste like. That ain't it.

As the weeks went by, this friend promises to get it right. They don't. Fail.

Some days they set the temperature all wrong. Some days they stuck it in the oven and forgot to check it, then pulled out a black cake-like brick. Some days, they got lazy and didn't add water, eggs or oil, just dumped the mix into a baking pan and put it in the oven.

During this entire stretch, not once did you get to eat a piece of the delicious and satisfying cake that you had been promised. Perhaps worse, now you don't trust anything that your friend promises you anymore.

This is exactly what the last three months of being a Wizards fan has been like. You, the fan, are waiting for the cake. The Wizards are "your friend." And getting a positive result in the game is getting to eat a "piece of cake."*

*If you want to stretch this analogy to its fullest, the 6-0 defeat Aug. 1 in Dallas was the time that "your friend" inexplicably added a pound of raw meat, three cloves of garlic, two rotten potatoes, a dash of ground cumin and an orange peel to the chocolate cake mix.

The moral of the story: Friends don't let friends who don't know how to bake make cakes.

Ahhh, but you must be patient

Fans must try to exert patience, you know the old saw: "You can't win all the time."

Well, once a month would probably not be asking too much, right?

If the collective patience of the fans is running out though (and judging by the sparse attendance Saturday night, it just might be) you have to notice that the team itself isn't really setting a good example when it comes to being patient on the pitch.

Every player seems to be in a such a hurry to freaking do something that nobody takes the time to actually do ANYTHING.

I counted at least 10 times when Herculez Gomez, Davy Arnaud, Jack Jewsbury or Claudio Lopez (greatest midfield in the world my ass!) took a shot that failed when all they had to do was either collect themselves and set up for the shot or play the ball into space for someone else. Don't be clever, be patient. Take the best shot, not the first shot.

Patience is a virtue, anger is a gift

Kansas City can only take so much and wait for so long. We aren't a big enough metro area to stomach THREE losing teams.

The Chiefs managed to only snag a single field goal on offense, a meager 14 first downs and converted 1 of 10 third downs. To make matters worse, $28 million* man Matt Cassel went down with a twisted just about everything in his left leg.

*GUARANTEED!

Despite the brilliance of Greinke (15 strikeouts last Tuesday and a 1-hit shutout yesterday), the Royals suck. Greinke can't pitch every day, and most days the Royals are so bad they finally broke Joe Posnanski last week. They are 9-21 in their last 30 games. They are one of only two teams (Washington Nationals being the other) that haven't made it to 50 wins on the year yet.

The Wizards haven't scored a goal in 420 minutes, are currently the second-worst team in Major League Soccer and fired their coach after a 6-0 MLS-record-tying display of futility to start the month.

When do the Missouri Mavericks start playing?

Warm up the leftovers

-- I have just about nothing to add to the game except to say this: The Wizards are 0-10-2 when giving up the first goal. Yeah.

-- From Mike at Downthebyline.com:

The Wizards are 3 minutes away from tying their team record for futility in goal scoring in one season. In the 2000 season, the Wizards went 427 minutes without scoring a goal. They still have a ways to go to catch their all time futility record, which is 639 minutes without a goal, beginning with an 80th minute goal against San Jose in the 4th to last game of the 1998 season. The team didn't score again until the 89th minute of the team's 4th game of the 1999 season against San Jose.

-- If you want to see something good and entertaining at Arrowhead this year, you're probably going to have to show up on Sept. 16 for the Chivas vs. Club America game. These are two of the biggest clubs in Mexico AND North America playing an exhibition in Kansas City. And they are playing on Mexican Independence Day. Ole ole ole ole! Ole! Ole!

-- There are no favors for the Wizards from here on out: The next three games are on the road (Saturday at New England, Sept. 9 at DC United and Sept. 12 at New York Red Bulls) and October is hellacious (Houston, DC United and Seattle plus a trip to Los Angeles to play Chivas). Ugh.