World Cup hero Divock Origi, a distant relative of Obama

Divock Origi, a 19-year-old distant relative of U.S. President Barack Obama, scored the finesse goal in the lucky 88th minute to defeat the Russians and send Belgium thru in World Cup play Sunday in Rio.

Divock Okoth Origi (born 18 April 1995 in Ostend) is a Belgian footballer who plays for Lille and the Belgian national team as a striker. He is the son of former professional footballer Mike Okoth Origi, who played for the Kenya national team.

His goal sent Belgium to the round of 16 for the first time since the 2002 competition. The goal made D.O.O. the can-doo striker and the youngest to score in this years fixture.

Barack Hussein Obama, as even the most casual sports fan knows, is descendent on his father’s side from the same African post-colonial nation, Kenya. D.O.O. was actually born in Warrington, UK, although I doubt his fellow countrymen, that chocolate, beer and art-loving people, are asking to scrutinize too closely his proof of birth.

In a related matter, perhaps only here in Plastic Alto, a blog named after an English-made white acrylic saxophone, played by Ornette Coleman, I checked and confirmed via the search-injuns, — if they are still reliable, I think they are — that the hero of the U.S. win, Brooks, is actually one of our three German ringers. I guess there are a lot of kids in Germany dreaming of growing up to knock one head-like for ol’ Uncle Sam. (And maybe there are young Yanks dreaming of being aced out, like Landon Donovan or Palo Alto’s own Andrew Jacobson, of World Cup dreams by a German ringer. There are more dreams of being dreamed of than even my philosophy, even in Plastic Alto. Also, this seems as good a place as any to crow about months and months ahead of the Santa Clara County Grand Jury, “something rotten” in Palo Alto: I texted some obscure message to four or five City Council members linking Stanford Theatre’s screening of Olivier in “Hamlet” at 221 University to the already funky-smelling announcement that John Arrillaga wanted to build a theatre and office tower on Stanford land that we zone at 27 University).

And if I am not the only writer in the world linking Obama to Origi, I am certainly the only one mentioning Divock Origi and John Tchicai, the Danish sax player whose mother was Congolese. I admit that although I saw Tchicai live in Philly, at a Mark Christman show, I had to look up both how to spell the name and the distinction between his and Origi’s origins. I’m also the only one who thought that in honor of Barack Hussein Obama (BHO), the Palo Alto folk-singer Bhi Bhiman could change his name to BHO BHO-man. Good thing I am only a blogger and not a main character in Mark Twain’s “Diary of Adam and Eve”. Or that Sapir and Whorf are only so correct. Words shape reality.

On to reading the Grand Jury report itself, which should take me until second half of the 2nd match today. U.S. – Portugal (which uses Zoolander as a ringer, I heard local sports tv say) starts at 3, 3-plus hours into the so-called future.

An Aries, the ram, Origi shares a birthday with Conan O’Brian, the Harvard-trained comedic tv star and San Francisco-born K-pop star Jessica Jung.

outro, for origi, tchicai: