Pre-game: Interesting fashions in Occidental Park. The marching band plays. Nate Jaqua—who's not playing tonight, owing to the red card he got last week—makes an appearance, says a few words, takes photos, signs autographs, and walks from Occidental Park to the stadium with all the fans. (And Jhon Hurtado, who's in a pastel sweater and slacks.) Along the way, Jaqua and I chat:

ME: How do you feel about not getting to play tonight?
JAQUA: Not very good.
ME: Who's going to play Nate Jaqua tonight?
JAQUA: Seba. [As in, Sebastian Le Toux.]
ME: Is he going to wear his bright orange cleats?
JAQUA: Probably.

Inside Qwest Field, players are warming up. That's Kasey Keller on the far right. The Earthquakes' warm-up (you can't see them in that pic) looks especially A Chorus Line tonight.

1 min: LeToux is not wearing orange cleats tonight. He's gone for understated black cleats. The same cannot be said for Fredy Montero (bright orange), Steve Zakuani (electric blue), or James Riley (summery yellow). Meanwhile, goalkeeper Kasey Keller is clothed in a radioactive fluorescent orange.

6 min: Oooh! Awww. Near miss by Zakuani.

18 min: A San Jose player completely side-slams Zakuani, sending Zakuani (and his electric blue feet) flying. "Probably should have been a yellow card," says someone in the press booth, a writer for The Offside. Doesn't appear that a yellow card is being issued. "That was pretty vicious. They probably didn't see it."

24 min: In a nice piece of ballet, Kasey Keller dives onto a ball and San Jose's Chris Wondolowski tumbles over him and through the air.

34 min: San Jose's Ramiro Corrales gets a yellow card for a bad sliding tackle.

36 min: Didn't see what happened, but one of the San Jose players is rolling around on the ground, crying about his problems. Ref appears to be buying it.

37 min: Brilliant couple of passes between Ljungberg and Zakuani—with Montero hanging around right nearby—seemed to be adding up to a goal, but there's an anti-Sounders magnetic forcefield around the goal. They've had a couple near misses so far this game, but how that one didn't go in I don't know.

41 min: Ljungberg SCORES! The crowd goes wild. I had just been saying to someone, "Man, Zakuani's great as always, but Ljungberg is nowhere in this game and Montero's only paying attention every five minutes." Three seconds later, Ljungberg stole the ball from someone, knocked it to Montero, and then to Le Toux, who knocked it back to Ljungberg, and Ljungberg drove down the field with it like he was the only man on the field. Seeing him kamakze straight at the goalkeeper was very satisfying; you could almost hear the San Jose goalkeeper crapping his pants. Score is 1-0.

56 min: Kasey Keller is on the ground. He looks dead. And now he is risen, Lazarus-like.

58 min: Corner kick from Ljungberg to Ianni to Montero, who's hanging out in front of the goal. Montero's just been sorta hanging out most of the game. (Seriously, every time there's a lull and you think What's Montero up to?, Montero is either standing perfectly still somewhere or walking—while everyone else is running.) Montero's got skillz, though, and he knocks the ball in easily. GOAL! Score is 2-0.

59 min: (Note to joykiller: Yes, I realize I've misspelled "skills.")

61 min: This game is about to get boring. We're killing them. One of the Seattle bloggers next to me is checking his Facebook page.

64 min: In the press box, a voice comes over the speaker to say: "Tonight's attendance: 28,999."

67 min: San Jose scores. Fuck. Kasey Keller is really mad. He's all shouting and gestures, and he's wearing those big white goalkeeper gloves, waving around through the air. They make him look not unlike Mickey Mouse. A very, very mad Mickey Mouse. A KIRO announcer: "San Jose back in the game." Score is 2-1.

74 min: Montero (who just got a yellow card) is out. Osvaldo Alonso is replacing him.

76 min: Zakuani (most captivating player out there: the rules of physics seems to apply differently to him) is out. Roger Levesque is replacing him.

79 min: Ljungberg is on the ground in the fetal position, his face pressed into the fake grass. Now he's on all fours. Now he's just sitting there on his butt. Everyone else just keeps playing around him.

86 min: Tyrone Marshall is on the ground, on his stomach, pulling himself around like something's broken. Now four men are carrying him off the field on the stretcher.

89 min: OK, the acrobatics are getting ridiculous. Three flying-through-the-air tumbles in a row. They must all just be bored: We're officially a minute from the end. Might as well fly around a little.

Add-on time: Ljungberg, who looks like he's about to kill and eat the ref, gets a yellow card. ("Another stupid yellow to end the game for Seattle as the final whistle blows," The Offside writes.) Seconds later, Ljungberg wins Man of the Match. He looks up at his mug on the big screen and smiles.

The Sounders are in town playing the San Jose Earthquakes. Game starts at 7:30 pm; broadcast is on King 5. Seattle hasn't won a match since April 25, though that match was against the San Jose Earthquakes. In a first for The Stranger, I will be blogging from the stadium, along with the real sports writers. If you care about the Sounders, you will probably be there in person and not at home reading about it on your computer, and if you aren't at the game you'll probably be out enjoying the fantastic weather, but if you've been injured in some horrible accident and you're bedridden and your TV is stuck on King 5 and you want to follow along, I'll be here. Put your thoughts in comments and I'll embed the good comments in the post as we go.

Here's the Sounders-produced preview of tonight's game:

(That wall at the top of this post is across the street from The Stranger's offices—covered in Sounders posters. Sounders must have a marketing street-team. The posters keep getting covered up/fucked with by other posters and crap, and then the marketing street-team puts up new posters, and then they get covered up/fucked with again. Since the faces keep getting covered over, I've come to think of this wall as an art piece about how Sounders players keep getting suspended/ejected from games. Jaqua, Keller, and Montero—three of the five names you can see, and three of the team's stars—have gotten red cards this season, along with two other teammates.)