It's Not Johnny's Birthday

So, no one's actually Youtubed the song without doing something not at all cute to it. So instead you get a loop of a piece of it played backward, a weird little tribute to the flat Earth and weather balloons that look like space ships.

Why? Sheeya, right. If I told you I'd have to kill me. I may have to kill me just for doing this much. Don't ask. I mean, you can ask, but I'd have to kill me.

As for the mundane, uhm, well, yeah. Still not so good. Runnin' on Jackson Browne's farts. Mine smell better.

Thank you for accompanying me to this brief and insubstantial visit to the PoMo dojo.

Bam Sez Hi and So Do I

Actually, he's just pretty much flapping his hands. What the fuck, me too.

No time, see the previous, if you think vaccines are bad then go fuck yourself, and maybe life will lighten the fuck up by next April 2 so I can say something more substantive. Bless your little hearts.

No One Has A Head

Rushed and brief, and thanks to her Daddy for reminding me to pull my self-absorbed head out of my ass long enough to not be a bad faux uncle, and see there (or any previous March 21 here or there) for the pics and vids, but:

Happy 20th birthday, Planet. Best not-actually-related younger person evar. Love always.

Also, and unrelated: Fuck Duke.

Hate Good

I am a man of peace, with exceptions. A horrible man. A spiteful man.

A not very nice man. After all, it's not this child-meme's fault that he has bad parents. Does this lessen the gladness in my heart tonight, or any night when this meme plays?

No. No, it does not.

But let's rewrite my spite, because hatred leads to bitterness, and bitterness leads to Jar Jar Binks. Let's leave that poor, possibly presumptively innocent child out of this. Let's go here instead.

Ratface, Chris Collins, and Wojo all facepalming to cover their tears. With an enraged Dookiegirl looking on. A little while ago, I raised with a fellow Terp the spectre of how joyful it might've been to bang UberTerp Bonnie Bernstein 20 years ago, when she was an actual Terp gymnast. This picture? Is even better.

Look, I've written before about my mitochondrial Terp love, my secret wish to have Juan Dixon's babies, my undying love for the Terp National Championship team of 11 years ago, my disdain for the post-Cole Terp teams, the ascendance of the Terp women, the thing that died a little in my heart when Gary Williams decided he was sick and tired of this shit.

That doesn't mean that beating Dook isn't fun. Rock on, Dez Wells.

Go Terps. Fuck Dook.

Also: J.J. Redick still drinks his own urine.

So You Think Rand Paul Is Your Friend

Uhm...okay. Have a nice life.

Who I Miss Today

Fuck your calendar tells me I'm a week early, but that pretty much explains it.



You know what I hate? I hate it when the wrong fucking Beatle dies. The optimist's view would be that we're done with that shit. My view is fuck you, optimist. Come a little closer, optimist. Closer. Closer.

SMACK!

Fuck you, optimist. I hate it when the wrong fucking Beatle dies. You'd think that by now, 32 fucking years later and 11 fucking years later, I'd have my fucking panties untwisted. But I don't. So fuck you.

This here is fucking awesome:



Spanish subtitles. Jeebus, the Internets are fucking great.

So, yeah. Fuck you. Especially if you're...you know who you are. But you're not reading, so triple secret fuck you.

Special super awesome love shoutout to Purple, who's getting his first Landru-free day in like a week. Poor fucking bastard.

Robbie Rogers

I've always liked him, because despite years on a yellow football team, he's a Terp. It's awesome that Robbie Rogers came out. It's not awesome that it's news. Or that he had to come out from anywhere. And it's a bummer that injuries are forcing him to retire.

I don't come around much any more. It's not that I don't love you. I have time for some grueling work hours, and to make some effort toward pretending I'm an actual part of my family, who are all brave and tolerant little toasters as I bust my ass and sink deeper into mire over what amounts to some seriously deep-seated personal/professional issues. Maybe that fog will lift in a couple of weeks, and maybe I'm just fucking delusional. We'll see. Be well.

Update: Holy fuck, Blogger tells me that was my 600th post. What a serendipitous blend of random and whine to mark that milestone.

Earl Weaver

You are not ambivalent about Earl Weaver, who died early this morning while on an Orioles fantasy cruise. You either have no idea who I'm talking about, or you didn't care about baseball at the time, or you loved him, or you were an American League umpire, or you're a fucking Yankees fan or a Sox hump and I have no further use for you (with two notable exceptions).

I left the church of baseball in 1996, the day Peter Angelos fired Jon Miller, and didn't go to another ball game until about two years ago, when I went to see Nationals Park. I've since found that baseball is too fucking slow for me to really enjoy, though I credit the leisure of it, the opportunity to talk for hours while the game unfolds, the relaxation and submission to the spectacle. I personally do better standing for two hours, leaning forward, yelling spasmodically at whichever outfield player is not shooting the fucking ball, and cracking wise with BFF and Ilse. But that's me, and I don't judge those who love the game and the church.

Before my apostasy, though, I spent an awful lot of time on 33rd Street, and was an Oriole fan for the last two years of Earl's reign, and his out-of-retirement year. This was also no small thing; I had been a Senators fan as they flamed out of existence, and childhood bitterness is hard. But places to go get stoned and slam brews weren't, and Memorial Stadium was a fine such place. I was there.

I can no longer sort out what happened while Earl was managing and what didn't, in terms of the big picture, or, for the most part, what happened while I was there and wasn't. I know I was there the night Tippy Martinez picked off three guys in one inning. I was there for a three-homer Floyd Rayford night, and I remember that as being on my birthday. It was on the ride home from Memorial on a bus that my brother, 32-Ounce, got his name.

And it doesn't matter that I'm pretty sure that all three of those things happened in 1983, so Earl wasn't managing; it was Earl who symbolized the era, whether or not he was the club's active manager. Earl is the manager I associate with those things (there was always a suspicion that Altobelli, who guided what was essentially Weaver's team to a World Series win, was just a puppet anyway). What, you thought this was about you? Or Earl?

Earl Weaver: King of the three-run homer, pioneer of matchup statistics, defiler of umpires' shoes (and on another shoe note, say the words "Earl" and "shoe polish" to any O's fan of the time, and you will get a broad smile), battler for the common fan, a man who recognized that by 1982, Jim Palmer dressed better than he pitched, Hall of Fame manager, and the last great thing about the Baltimore Orioles. Until Peter Fucking Angelos drops.

What Are You Doing Here?

It's Christmas, for fuck's sake. Go away. We're fine. Hope you are too, but if you're sashaying around the Intertoobz looking at blogs that haven't posted since Thanksgiving, you might want to go play with your new toys instead.

On the Suckage of Presidents

A Twitter exchange that begins here (expand the conversation) led me to contemplating the relative suckitude of U.S.presidents.

But it bored me, because I'm only thinking in terms of how much I hate each one.So let me just tell you about some presidents I really dislike a lot.

Jefferson, because he was a lying hypocritical slavefucker above all. I really mean above all.

Nixon, because Nixon.

Lincoln, because he was a lying skank who actually disliked brown people and, while he was acting to preserve the Union (as he should have), he took a big old shit all over the Constitution to do it, opening the door to future constitutional asswipe by none other than W Bush and President Dronzalot (among many others, both revered and not so much). In the words of the fantabulous Duane Ellison, Lincoln was only known as Honest Abe because he told every single person he ever met in his entire lanky motherfucking life that he was Honest Abe.

Reagan, because he was a lying motherfucker who just plain hated government, got elected on a platform of taking government from the people who needed it most, and permanently crippled the government's ability to govern. His sharpening of and focusing on executive power contributed to subsequent presidents' inability to deal with the legislative branch, but so did those presidents' collective and individual weaknesses--as is ever the cycle. It'll just be a fucking shame if the president who stops the waning power of the executive is fucking Chris Christie. On the other hand, my admiration for the waxing of the executive should be limited--all of my top four were guys who enjoyed, to one extent or another, executive primacy (yes, Nixon only until he killed it by his own hand).

There are others I'm not big on, but they pale in comparison, they're the Diet Coke of evil compared to these guys. It's not even worth ranking them. I suppose Jackson rises to near the top for his faux populism and his Hamilton-hating, but it was born of ignorance, not intelligent malice or any real understanding of how government ought be. There are others who were bad, but not so systematically bad by design that I'd bother to dislike them much; Buchanon comes to mind, far more hapless than evil.They were more products of time, circumstance, culture, and convention.

Other presidents started stupid wars for no reason; McKinley, Polk, Johnson, and more. It's hard to say how evil that makes them. It's easy to tag the Bushes (and, by extension, Obama) as evil for starting/perpetuating wars in the post-Vietnam era; we're supposed to know better. They're supposed to. Of course, every war in history has been followed by a lengthy period of a supposed desire for peace, suddenly overcome by circumstances deemed compelling. Are the Bushes worse than Woodrow Wilson? Perspectivized, it's hard to make the case.

Enough. I've conclusively proved my case, which is fuck Lincoln and his movie. QED. No, Whispers, that's it, I said QED.

Update: Alsotoo, LGM. Twice, actually, plus more if you scroll down. It's Weighing in on Lincoln Day at LGM. No Lincoln-lovers there, either, though it'd be a stretch to suggest that they share my abject disdain for the man, and Noon does a good job of mocking the Red Lincoln theory, which was best, most plausibly, most entertainingly, and most inaccurately plumbed by Harry Turtledove in his Southern Victory series (in which the South is not, ultimately, victorious).

Things To Say, Part Infinity

I spent Saturday making a little day trip to New Hampshire for a memorial service. As happens with these things, the purpose was awful, but necessary; the visiting was far too short and great fun. I saw many beloveds, none of whom I'd seen for at least 9 years.

Not the point, though. The point is New Hampshire, and Yankeeland in general. What a fuckity place. I'm sorry, New England beloveds, but I just fucking hate everything between New York and Maine. I recognize this as a matter of aesthetics, an entirely me problem. Your accents pierce my eardrums, your need for a Dunkin Donuts outlet every 11 feet eludes me, and everything is so fucking quaint it makes me wish I were hurling. If not for the presence of beloveds, and your presence on the road to lobster, I would cheerfully agree not to despoil your land with my presence. Immersing in your rock-ribbedness for a day is always a culture shock, and always makes me realize how very happy I am to keep myself south of the Mason-Dixon line, but not too far south, knamean? I guess there's value in your existence right there, so exist on, and shit. Just shut the fuck up, stuff a cruller in your dunkin hole, and we'll do just fine.

Jolene: Not you. Not Whispers, either. Y'all have softened it up enough. Unlike the entire fucking state of New Hampshah.

I experienced all of this in the presence of John the Daftist, the She-Nurse, and 32-Ounce; the departed was a family friend of over 45 years, and the relationship among three families such that his passing demanded our presence as a family unit. I organized, helping the family's disparate tentacles to see that this was a thing we really needed to do. I rented the car, did the driving (yes, I threatened to Stop This Car), kept the peace, maintained the sobriety. It's fucked up, having aging parents, especially in a family that puts the diss in dysfunction. And that fucking well knows who the oldest son is, and isn't afraid to remind him of it every 6 fucking minutes.* It was the first time in something like 35 years that I'd been in the same car, or even in that confined a space, with my parents and brother. Before we had even boarded the first airplane, I texted this to Ilse: "Shoooooot meeeeee." While I was glad to see extended-family parents and sisters, my mood about the overall enterprise didn't improve. Oh, right. Not the fucking point. My bad.

I took pictures that crystalized what struck me. Please forgive the shitcam.

As Yankee as Yankee gets.

Some things just cry out to be shared.

If you don't understand this intuitively, Robert Rodriguez can explain it for you.

You probably need to blow this one up to get the point. But it's a gift to a friend.

I probably should've played it.

* Yes. You're old. You're going to die. All I wanted was a fucking Pepsi.



** If you expected futbol...tough shit. We'll just do a solid fuck you for violent felon Andre Hainault and biased shitdick Ricardo Salazar, and manfully stride forward to next weekend. (Seriously, Salazar, not even a foul? Fuck not only you, but your entire bloodline, especially the ones you hold most precious, you corrupt piece of dung, and with whatever flavor of cock you find most vile; games turn on moments like that one, you could not have got it more wrong, and your willful ineptitude took away whatever bit of starch United might've been able to summon--thanks a lot, you macho retard, for deciding that during that moment, arm-tackling a guy on a breakaway was fair fucking game. You're fucking pathetic, Ricardo Salazar, you fucking hijo de puta. Sure, come look me up, we'll watch the fucking replay together, perro.)

Put Alternatively

Look, I don't fucking care any more whether you vote. You've convinced yourself, you've made your choice. There's no need for me to link to TBogg's recycled evergreen; you're certain that the entirety of the math is Obama equals drones (no, no--if you're going to be that fucking reductionist--and you have, again and again--I get to be so, too). What the fuck ever. For my part, I'm convinced enough that you're probably not stupid enough to actually vote for Romney, and for that reason, I cannot convince myself that you truly believe that Romney's election would be a better case. But it's close, and you may be fucking stupider than I think you are.

And it probably doesn't matter. It's increasingly obvious that a Romney win would involve some unprecedented combination of weirdness and heinous fuckery. Do I think Romney's people incapable of that level of heinous fuckery? Of course not. That'd be even stupider than I think I am. But it'd be a serious shitload of heinous fuckery.

There's been a lot of what appears to me to be concern trollery as the election season has heated up. But again, I could be wrong about that characterization, and here and there, I've tried to address it calmly and without pointing too dramatically at the underlying stupid. Obviously, that's difficult for me; it's an emotionally charged thing, and I'm as self-righteous as you are. Further, I think I've just plain done a crappy job of it.

I often say that I dislike Loomis. It's true that I think he's a dirty fucking treehugging hippie, and that's where I most often find myself at odds with him. But decency demands that I concede that he is a very good writer on labor history, and he's a very sharp political scientist and political historian--the former puts me to sleep, and the latter holds my interest until someone hands me a novel about Russian tanks facing off against the Nazis at Prokhorovka, or a link to a moderately pornographic Webcomic. Which is why I respect the very sharp part.

I think Loomis gets it right here, in a piece summarizing his disappointment over some elements' behavior during this election cycle. If you're serious about wanting to understand, you should read the whole post. But he summarizes better than I ever could:

To summarize:

1. Change happens outside the election cycles–elections are for institutionalizing the changes you have attempted to make in the past 4 years.

2. Every single U.S. president has blood on his hands. Voting in a presidential election is always a choice between two evils.

3. We need to think less about our own personal moral position in voting. It’s not about you. It’s about the community where you live. Even if you vote for Jill Stein, the blood of Pakistani babies killed in drone strikes is on your hands. You cannot wash off that blood without changing the system–something that 3rd parties have never done. You want clean hands–organize the American public around the issues you care about. It will take the rest of your life. That is the timeline of real change.

4. There actually are lessons from the past on these issues. There are lessons in how to organize. And there are lessons about what third parties do and do not do. When someone can tell me what value a third party has had to pushing the agenda to the left in the last 80 years, I’ll be real interested in hearing it.

5. We need a tougher and smarter left. The self-described left punditry and journalists in 2012 has been individualistic, holier than thou, disorganized, and narcissistic. The real story of the left this year is smart and tough–the Chicago Teachers Union. That’s how you demand and make change. Writing editorials obscuring the differences between Obama and Romney and encouraging well-meaning people to protest vote is worse than worthless–it’s mendacious and serves as a tool for conservatives to continue pushing this nation back to the Gilded Age.

If you read the Loomis, and the most important thing is still that Obama hurt your fee-fees...well, I guess there's not a lot more to say. Do what you will, and do your best to enjoy the spectacle.

Oh, and if you think you are one person, or a particular person, don't. Seriously. Deadeye totally fucking seriously.

But to echo the one guy who probably most thinks it's about him, if you're a Marylander: yes on 4 and 6, please. Especially 6. Maryland needs to lead the way on this simple and fundamental matter of human fucking decency.

Not to echo that same guy, because I'm not, but also yes on 5, please, because I'm a partisan political hack; no on 3, because it derives from some asshole pissed off because some PG County Council member didn't get slushed out of office fast enough; and yes on 7, because it's a war between competing casino interests, which isn't compelling, but yes keeps the money in Maryland rather than shipping it to Delaware and West Virginia. 

And in MoCo, please, please, please, vote no on B. Both parties and the fucking County Council, and the fucking County Executive want you to validate their clear and sordid violation of a negotiated union contract. Fuck them.

DCU 1-1 NYRB

Let's be very clear here: Is Jair Marrufo an incompetent piece of shit? Yes, he sure is. Did it affect the outcome of tonight's match, already clouded by DCU having to give up its series home advantage because of the hurricane? Mmm, prolly not so much. And if it did, it seems to me to be as likely that Marrufo's haplessness helped DCU as that it hurt them.

But I speed to the punch line and ignore the point. United has had some fundamental problems that I've complained about all my life season. The team is agonizingly slow in transition; I think it's because of problems with the formation that Saint Benny imposes on them. Even when they play 4-4-2, they're playing 4-5-1, and really more often 4-4-1-1, or maybe some inept retardate bastard offspring of a 4-2-3-1. It looks to me like Benny has regressed to a notion that the only way to play defense is to park the bus, to get as many men between the ball and the goal as possible. The real problem with this is that it leaves no one free to counterattack, except for the guy up top. Everyone else, and I mean everyone, is involved deep in the defense.

There are teams that can get away with this. They're teams that have a quick, strong guy up top, a guy skilled at sitting right at midfield, so as not to get caught offsides when he breaks on a long clear, a guy with the pace to outrun the last defender, with the strength to hold up the ball as his teammates closer to the top of the defense catch up, if he can't outmaneuver that last guy or two.

That man is not Lionardo Pajoy. With 19 teams in the league, and most of them playing two men up top, at least nominally, I'd count 38 regular first-team strikers in MLS. Pajoy is about the 34th one I'd want in that lone position in a 4-5-1. In fact, he's far worse than the 34th one I'd want there, because there are at least three United players I'd rather see in that space. Pajoy is slow, he's overimpressed with his own South American-ness, he goes down too easily, he fouls too much, he's too easily frustrated by physical defenders, he's not physically strong, and two-thirds of his shots look like a 60-year-old prostate-less man's urine stream.

To compound the problem, the five midfielders who usually comprise DCU's 4-5-1 midfield are:

-Chris Pontius, who is the captain when the elderly, self-absorbed, abusive, and extremely injured Dwayne DeRosario is extremely injured, as he is now. Pontius is the captain because he is very responsible on defense when he's in an outside mid position. He's so responsible that he's buried back deep in the defense. He has the speed and smarts to get forward in transition, but he's most often doing it from way too far back. Pontius is, by the way, one of the three guys I'd rather have up top in a 4-5-1, but that creates problems at other positions that Saint Benny is either too stubborn, too stolid, too conservative, too loyal, or too unimaginative to solve.

-Branko Boskovic, who is beloved, and who is capable, but is slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. That Boskovic is so far back is a little galling, because he's fucking terrible on defense, and he's not particularly interested in rough challenges. That he contributed to an incisive and decisive breakaway against Columbus two weeks ago is the sort of miracle that would routinely be used to prove sainthood (except for that whole part about Columbus sucking donkey balls).

-Perry Kitchen and Marcelo Saragosa, neither of whom has any fucking business going forward, except in a slow buildup (as opposed to the kind of quick transition that you should aim for when you're parking the fucking bus).

-Nick DeLeon, who is a fucking stud, but is such an awesomely good kid, such an awesome motor (reminiscent of the beloved Josh Gros), such a plugger, that he's too stuck in to get forward in a quick transition from deep defense.

And these five guys, too slow, too deeply involved in defending the last citadel, too slow on the uptake to get forward quickly, lag behind at an alarmingly slow tempo while Pajoy turns over the ball, or dribbles it weakly into the goalkeeper's arms, or blasts it 20 feet wide of the frame.

Who are the other two guys? Maicon Santos, who is strong, but stupid, and Hamdi Salihi, The Albanian Shithammer, who is, for reasons we don't understand, way out of favor.

This slow transition shit (which also leads to the fucking eternal backpassing of which you've heard me complain incessantly) has made me completely fucking insane all season, and never more so than tonight.

The transition problems, coupled with a missed penalty (that Pontius should've considered letting Boskovic take, though it was certainly Pontius' right to take it), did United in tonight.

Let's review some notes for my fellow United fans:

-Yes, Najar's foul on the absolutely repugnant Joel Lindpere was a deserved yellow card (push from behind with both hands), and his conduct afterward deserved straight red. This isn't close. I wouldn't argue if Najar got suspended an additional game, or heavily fined. His behavior was that loathsome, irresponsible, and selfish. The kid needs to calm the fuck down a whole lot. It is a rare game when I don't look at Andy Najar, along about the 55th minute, and say, "Damn, that boy's getting a yellow card before this is over." I'm right about 75 percent of the time. Unfuckingacceptable.

-Yes, the illegal backpass from (I think) Holgersson to Robles should've been called; it would've resulted in an indirect kick from inside the box. Who the fuck knows?

-Yes, Marrufo's failure to call a foul, followed by giving us a throw-in after we clearly touched the ball last, was a huge error in our favor.

-Yes, Pontius should've been booked for his egregious dive while carrying against the despicable midget Connor Lade, or in the alternative, should've been booked for bitching derisively at Marrufo in the dive's aftermath. Dood, Marrufo was 10 feet away looking right at it, and even *I* could tell from the stands that it was a fucking dive. Another error, but not a huge one, in our favor.

-No, Holgersson didn't foul Hamid on the NYRB goal, which was definitely, clearly, no shit, no question, well over the fucking line. 

-Yeah, Heath Pearce probably fouled Pajoy on the play where Robles got hurt, and it probably should've been a penalty. C'est la guerre.

-Seriously, this was a filthy game, and while the Red Bulls are filthy (I'm looking at you, Ginger Midget, and you, Sebastian Fucking LeToux, and you, Rafa Marquez, and you, Connor Lade, you despicable midget half the size of Dax Fucking McCarty)...I'm sorry, kids, so are we. Jakovic? Knife artist. Saragosa? Angry Brazilian. Kitchen? Cardassian warlord. Korb? Well, he's just a run-of-the-mill short guy and jersey-tugger, but he's pretty goddam filthy.

-Stop booing Thierry Henry, you fucking idiots. Yeah, he's an asshole. Yeah, he's a Frog. Yeah, he's the captain of the motherfucking Red Bulls. Yeah, you're fucking shanty Irish and came over in the potato famine in the year Henry's handball goal kept Ireland out of the fucking World Cup. What the fuck ever. He's Thierry Fucking Henry, people. If you don't fear and especially respect him, you're too fucking stupid to be watching this game. I was keeping a close eye on him tonight. He really is a class act out on the pitch. Unlike the other most highly paid European DP in the league, who is a fucking crackerass punk-thug from Manchester.

Good stuff: McDonald had a good game, though I'm not sure I agree that he was MotM (for my money, DeLeon).  Saragosa was good in defense, and was good a couple of times when he went upfield, but he's consistently the last guy on the team to get the memo about lazy passing. With the exception of putting a PK in exactly the place that a numpty like Luis Robles would expect a right-footed guy to place it (and low enough so that a standard diving keeper could get to it), Pontius was feeling it. So was Najar, right up until the moment he imploded. Hamid was outstanding, though his reflexive tendency to try to punch is a bit alarming.

The last is, as always, uncomfortable for me, because he's a fucking saint. Benny Olsen is a terrible fucking man manager, just absolutely fuckawful. The team fielded 10 men for almost 25 minutes. Benny had two subs left. He didn't use them. Kitchen was clearly gassed; Pajoy made it clear in the first half that he was ineffective; after subbing in Neal for Branko a few minutes before the red card, Benny felt compelled to move Neal to left back and switch Korb right, leaving two holders, one gassed, in his 4-4-1 (I don't object to the part about moving Neal back; I do object to failing to sub for either Kitchen or Saragosa, though I suspect that by that point, Ben was in an immovably defensive mindset and was likely concerned about breaking the defensive chemistry). It's real clear that using the subs would've been beneficial, could've been so in varying permutations (Russell for Kitchen, leaving Neal, who can attack while being responsible defensively, free to go back to the middle; Salihi for Pajoy; Dudar for someone, pushing Kitchen or McDonald or Jakovic out wide; this Agusto kid, WTF is up with him?).

There's some thought to be had about the voices in Benny's head: Bruce Arena (can't be, not really; Bruce wouldn't leave two subs on the bench after being booked down to ten men); Tommy Soehn (backpass!); Piotr Nowak (who the fuck knows, the screaming would be unintelligible even if it weren't in Polish). What the fuck are these guys telling Saint Benny Olsen inside his unusually large head? It beats the fucking fuck out of me. But I'm despairing of a result on Wednesday, with no Najar, with New York playing in front of its own (saints preserve us) storm-ravaged fans, with NBC hyping the tragedy of New York, and with, I dunno, Alex Fucking Prus as the fucking whistleman? Not feeling it, but as always, Vamos United.

Addendum: Holy shit, I just read my post about the last home game. Backpassing? Check. Failure in transition? Check. Benny's man management sucks? Check. Pajoy worst human being ever? Check. Talk about stolid and unimaginative. Sorry.

Burn This Motherfucker Down

I wish she was my grandma, except for the part about my grandmas being dead and all:



From MoveOn, h/t to friend Zombie.

Special cockpunch to anyone who sees this and thinks, "Oh, both sides try to steal the election."

I'm getting real tired of the season, but there have been some gems, to be sure.

Oh. I was probably supposed to tell you earlier in the post that it's NSFW, huh? Well, whatever. If you're looking at this blog at work, you're a fucking dumbass anyway.

Zomney

It's almost impossible that you haven't seen this, but just in case:



Hat tips to Zombie Rotten McDonald, Susan of Texas, and Tbogg, the three places I saw it, but this is going to become a bigger virus than Sandy.

DCU 3-2 FC Yellow

Hey! Did you know the land grant university of the state of Maryland has a football team? It's true! And because their coach is a third-rate bully and a rinky-dink moron who isn't qualified to coach in Pop Warner, it lost its homecoming game today to the same school that never beat us when Phil Rivers was its 4-year starting quarterback!

Hey! Did you know the land grant university of the state of Maryland has a futbol team? It's true! And they've won a whole shitload of games, including one against the land grant university of two states south, last night! In fact, they're ranked number one, and they're undefeated so far!

Hey! Did you know I'm a fucking moron? That's because I deleted two hours of sequential texts to BFF, sent during the course of the game, in effect live blogging the agony and the ecstasy, and I can't recover them!

Which is a shame, because there would be a lot to say if I could remember any of it, but I can't. Here's what I remember:

Edwin Jurisevic is a referee for MLS. He is a dope. One might not infer this from the card count; I think Columbus (FC Yellow) had four, and we had none. All of FCY's cards, and at least two more, were deserved, as would have been two DCU penalty kicks (one when Pontius was tripped at the 18 while carrying the ball, early--the first act of a game-long theme of Pontius getting mugged, unavenged; another when Neal was thugged down near the bottom left side of the box while carrying the ball, sometime in the range of the 80th minute). The fuckface Jairo Arrieta should've gotten a second yellow for mugging Pontius sometime between the 75th and 85th minutes. On the other side, and not to the dope's credit, he missed two clear opportunities to book DCU players, and one of them could, in some universes, have been a red to Andy Najar, who is a compact little sack of sporadically directed aggression and teen angst.

But enough about that, because what almost caused the stoppage-time loss that I documentably predicted in the 85th or 86th minute was DCU's persistent failure to make anything of possession. The box score says Columbus won possession 52.9%-47.1%. I find that really, really hard to believe. I said to Ilse on the drive home that I swore it was close to 60-40 in DCU's favor. It seemed like we were in possession a lot, with the usual concomitant missed shots, easy giveaways, and resulting stupid fouls. And the backpassing remains insane.

Backpassing makes sense under two circumstances, one of them involving immediate danger of a turnover. The other is when, as you advance the ball, the defense is too packed in for you to sensibly continue the advance. You backpass and hold enough to draw the defense out to apply pressure. Then, you break, and attack--quickly. It's that last bit that has eluded DCU teams, dozens of times a game, for the last 5 seasons. It makes no sense to backpass and then restart the advance at a pace that lets the other team catch up and repack the defense (and let's not even discuss the countless episodes of inept backpassing followed by stupid turnovers and goooooollllls). None. I screamed at Tommy Soehn about it, I screamed at Curt Onalfo about it, and it's only fair that I say this: Goddammit, Saint Benny, you stupid motherfucker, stop fucking coaching them to backpass and then build slow. What the fucking fuck is wrong with you, other than that you learned this fucking repulsive horseshit from Soehn and Onalfo? Didn't Saint Piotr learn you better? Can't you fucking stand there, far closer to this abomination in the sight of the futbol gods than I am, and fucking learn from this? Wake the fucking fuck up, dood. I really, really want to believe that you're not still, after two fucking seasons, in way the fuck over your incredibly short head. I really do. Do please provide countering evidence. Soon.

While I'm ranting at Saint Benny: learn to fucking man manage, you fucking twerp. It was sheer bloody luck that two of your three subs were involved in the spectacular and surprising winning goal and reversed my aforementioned prediction. And why you're stuck on the chickenhearted and immobile Lionardo Pajoy utterly eludes me. But fairness demands a respectful concession, too. While you started bringing subs way later than you should have, and the only reason I can think that you would've subbed out Chris Pontius is that he was getting mugged and the whistle guy wasn't doing anything about it, placing Branko up top turned out real well. I'm not gonna say it was genius, because there's no way in hell you anticipated that a late breakaway would be composed of Louis Fucking Neal and Branko Fucking Boskovic. No. Way. In. Hell. But it turned out real well, so thanks. As it happens, it's the only reason why I'm keeping my religion and referring to you in the proper form, your sainthood, Sir.

But Jeebus, Pajoy is shite. He far more often than not shies away from challenges, he has no idea how to move off-ball, and his footwork isn't as dazzling as he and his mom think it is. Santos has returned from whatever pre-injury vacation he took to the land of relatively smart soccer players, and Saint Benny's fucking fixation on two holding midfielders is beyond comprehension. As he lets two designated players sit on the fucking bench. Jesus H Wobbly Crutched Titty Fucking Christ, that's fucking stupid.

The win puts DC in a playoff spot for the first time in 5 years. Thanks, boys. I can't say well done; it wasn't. It was sloppy, and you were very, very lucky that Warzycha and FC Yellow got cocky and took a chance they shouldn't have taken. Your possession is shite, your finishing is fuckawful, and you let Will Hesmer Andy Gruenebaum look like Tim Fucking Howard. But thank you very kindly, and it's about fucking time. Tradition!

Update/correction:  I'd have sworn they announced Hesmer as the starting keeper for FCY, but Ilse points out that the MLS site says that Andy Gruenebaum. So thanks Ilse, and fuck both FCY keepers anyway.

Another update:  16 minutes of texts rescued by Himself, here. It should go without saying that my favorite is:

91:00 HOLYSHIT BRANKO BREAKAWAY LOB TO NEAL GOOOOOOOLLLLLLL 3-2.

The aforementioned prediction of doom ("reeks of losing in stoppage") was, in fact, in the 86th minute. I started bitching about Saint Benny in the 77th. I was clearly pretty despondent from the time DCU equalized, up to the winning goal.

Yeah. Fuck Blogging for Reals.

Or for Real, the Franco-loving fucks.


Damn, that's terrible audio, innit? I like being nostalgic about shit that happened while Brezhnev was still alive, don't you?

Here's some more bad audio. I'm stuck on this song this week:



Liverpudlians are funny. Take cur, beewur of darkness. And yeah, I know whose birthday was this week. No, it's not a holiday here either, never has been. I get weepy in December, because that's just a weepy fucking time on top of the unpleasant anniversary, but the birthday, not so much.

Here, here's another John Lennon tribute:




Okay. I lied. It's not a John Lennon tribute at all. Did you catch Neal Innes there, in the red plaid jacket, red bow tie, and years-ahead-of-its-time pornstache? Fucking awesome. Rutles forever, bitchez. Most awesome sketch ever, at least tonight, and I'm not even drunk.

Heh. Like apples, Sasha?

Fuck It, I'm Through Saying Shit For Myself

I succumb. Fuck words, just look at my fucking videos and intuit my meaning. Or not.
Hint: Not.

Also: if you're a gamer, check out Geek and Sundry, Felicia Day's relatively new site (with accompanying YouTube channel). Y'know, if you haven't.

Hint: Felicia Day is the person fronting the band.

Different Things To Different People

All I really want is for the noise to stop.

For the record: it won't.

Not A Blog Holiday, To My Shame

Some of you will not know that this is my third marriage, and it is in fact charmed.

I am a lucky man in that I robbed the cradle. Ilse was not yet legal when this song--which is, as it happens, our song--was released. I hasten to add that she was legal, in every known jurisdiction, by the time I nailed her. She remains, so far as I know, legal.

So anyway, happy birthday and shit, honey.

It's Really Pretty Simple

It's been an ugly couple of days on the Twitter machine and in the blogs. In general, I'm with Loomis, TBogg (who does an awesome job of calling out the aimless millennial dumbfuck Cali hippie vibe that the Occupy for Romney movement stenches of), Rebecca Solnit, and others (for instance). Here's why: the Occupy for Romney movement will tell you that this makes me a mouthpiece for the Democratic National Corporation, that I'm an Obamabot, that my vote for Obama will be a vote for killing civilians with drones. Uhm...yeah, sure. Fuck you, you tendentious and ignorant pricks, and maybe go back and retake whatever course you learned government in, because--and I know this will surprise you--the government does, in fact, extend beyond the military.

Like most people who want to oversimplify (misogynists), start shrill namecalling (Republicans and middle schoolers) and whimper when it's turned back on them, argue ad reductam and deny the importance of anything that doesn't fit their worldview (Greenwald), and pretend that they're victims (Christians), the Occupy for Romney movement is just a pack of propagandists. Why, exactly, they've so deliberately (in each sense) blinded themselves to principles they claim to hold dear, and why they've decided that whichever issue is most important to them obviates all others, and why they've actually reached the stunning (and remarkably ignorant) conclusion that a Romney presidency would be less bad than an Obama one is beyond me. But they have. And anyone who disagrees is a bully, is telling them to shut up, is a corporate tool. The line of reasoning very quickly devolves into black helicopter madness.

I have no patience for this. I am appalled that people I believe to be of good conscience could reach such stunningly illogical and paranoid conclusions. Speaking of paranoia, I begin to wonder whether the Occupy for Romney movement is every bit as astroturfed, and by the same people, as the Tea Partiers. See? I can do paranoid too. Dipshits.

Most of all, I just get really fucking tired. The left has spent the last four years watching the right tear itself apart. It's the break we've been waiting for as the dialog and the Democratic Party have been reactively drawn to the right. Well, guess what? The not-really-left and not-really-right are the fucking majority. You gotta throw them a few bones. Giant Clinton/Obama bones? Maybe one or two, sure. Not as a way of life.  But if you do it more or less right, you can keep it to that, to what's necessary, and keep the trend in the right direction.Now, instead of building something, instead of figuring out commonalities among those leaning left, the Occupy for Romney movement wants to push anyone less left than them all the way to the right.

Well, that's just monstrously stupid--much like the Republicans of the last four years have been. I sincerely doubt that it'll cause Obama to lose the upcoming election, though I doubted that a self-serving dimwit like Ralph Nader could've cost Al Gore the 2000 election. What I am sure of is that it will guarantee that there's nothing to build if Obama is re-elected, because people who should be on board for the building will be off kicking dirt because they didn't get their personal fucking special pony. Whatever the fuck pony their special one is.

Fucking madness. Fucking Jeffersonianism run fucking wild. Jeebus.

Paul Ryan: Actually Dumb Enough To Drown Himself By Looking Skyward With His Mouth Open When It's Not Raining

Thanks to TBogg and others for this bit of idiot fuckery from union-hating Paul Ryan:

"Did you guys watch that Packer game last night? I mean, give me a break. It is time to get the real refs."

Why, yes, Representative Ryan, it is time to stop locking out the real refs in an effort to bust their union and save the NFL a few pennies. Can we expect you to take a similar position on far more significant union employees, like, say, teachers?

Ryan followed that bite with some incredibly retarded and baldly meretricious analogy to President Obama's handling of the economy. Ryan is an embarrassment to fascism, unable even to do that right. 

The motherfucking scab referees have been awful, it's true. And Roger Goodell shoulders enough of the blame to condemn him to a hell he's already going to. But let's not ignore the cocksucking scab motherfuckers their own selves. No one's making them go out there and do the NFL's union-busting bidding.

As awful as the refs are, and as deeply loathsome, as despicably reprehensible as their scabbiness is, there's one bit of heinous referee fuckery thus far this season that didn't bother me a bit, and that's those scab shitmuffins outright robbing the motherfucking Green Bay Packers last night.

So fuck you, scabs, you amoral sacks of striped toolage. But thanks for buttfucking the Packers. And thanks to you, Paul Ryan, for letting me stretch a meme for one more day.

Mitt Romney: Actually Dumb Enough To Drown Himself By Looking Skyward With His Mouth Open When It's Not Raining

Thanks to Sasha for a tip to this, from The Hill and the LA Times. As you may have heard, Ann Romney's plane had to make an emergency landing last week, because of some electrical issue that may or may not have been a fire. Willard was concerned:

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

That's right. Mitt Romney thinks that: airplane windows should open, and that oxygen puts out fires.

Rock on, Republicans.

Not Too Busy To Say What Must Be Said

Loomis tells you all about Chicago so I don't have to. It's hard to tell, because so many in the media, including a lot of people who know better, are up their own asses about this, but it sounds like there may be a deal soon.

Support CTU. Solidarity forever.

Solidarity Forever

Support the Chicago Teachers Union as they strike for better conditions for Chicago's students. This isn't about salaries, it's about ridiculous class sizes, primitive physical conditions in the city's schools, improving associated social services, and ending the relentless privatization of schools--a goal supported, incredibly, by Democratic Party leadership.

Bonus: your support for CTU will piss off Rahm Emanuel. It doesn't get any better than that, does it?

Seriously, Rahm Emanuel has gone over to the Dark Side on this, assuming he wasn't already there. Which is, I know, quite the assumption. But Democrats trying to bust unions? What a load of fucking horseshit.

Fuck Rahm Emanuel. Support CTU.

I'll Simper About Shared Values On Time This Year, Thanks

Last year? A day late. The year before? Overslept. Pretty fucking shabby treatment for a fucking blog holiday, possibly the premiere blog holiday of the year hereabouts, since I certainly am fond of D-Day, now that I consistently remember it as Kiltboy's birthday too (h/t Hamster--the nick is his doing, and better than mine). So it's a day early as I write this, because we willna be foo'd agin (Crivens!). We'll just give this here bloggity scheduler thing a twirl.

Of course, I'm a dick, and I snarked at BFF mightily on the Twitter machine this morning about something pointless, which got me to thinking/realizing about what I had to get done before tomorrow, which precluded the longform snark, which would've really been classless. So here we are.

I actually started thinking about this months ago, for a change, and so you're getting something that's not David Bowie, though you'll get that at the above two links, so good enough on that. No, I wanted something summative. Something like:



I know, right? Totally different time of imperium, totally different time of life, but all the exact fucking same thing, right? Except American bands came back and shit. But, y'know, that's just a diversion in the river of conscience.

So there's that, because, well, we mustn't, y'know. That's one founding principle for this year. Here's another.




That's right. Suck on Martha Hull, bitchez. Here, that was so fucking awesome you should suck on her again:





That's where we come from, X-gen/millennial whelps. Low tech, beer-fueled, Cold War-powered angst while wearing our shitkicker hiking boots and slamming into each other at top speed, at least top speed for drunken not-really-grups on dope. I think I mighta gotten to touch someone's breast at one of those once, too. Woot.

We didn't even know we were going to elect Reagan yet, the Iranian hostage crisis hadn't happened, the World Trade Center was barely built, let alone twice bombed, and Richard Fucking Nixon was still an excellent moral compass. Try growing up with that shit and tell me how hard your life is when you didn't get a fucking cell phone until you were 14 and Obama didn't buy you a fucking pony. Right. Off my lawn, & c.

Happy Birthday, BFF, you geriatric fuck, and props to our boomer brethren. Because generational war beats the fucking shit out of class war.

DCU 1-1 Phunions

I tweeted in response to Goff's question ("On a scale of 1 to 10, Geiger deserves a...") that Geiger deserved a bullet and an invoice, the reputed sentence for condemned Chinese under the current regime.

Geiger being Mark Geiger, MLS (and, it appears, at least according to Kevin Payne and various YFWP commenters, FIFA and Olympic) referee. Let's not mince words. He was fucking inept. He lost control of the game early and often, and he did not fairly assess punishments--that is, he consistently called DCU for milder fouls than he did the Phunions, and in the end, he wrongly deprived DCU of at least one goal.

But let's back the fuck up, because while Mark Geiger should never referee another game for money, DCU cost itself plenty tonight, before Geiger even had a chance to fuck it up.

Yes, let's back it up to the first fucking half, when DCU gave up an 8th-minute goal to Brian Carroll off of a free kick by some Phunion shithead (turns out, on review, that it was Freddy Adu, and the play was inexcusably chaotic), and spent the rest of the half alternating between not attacking and having to rely on Bill Hamid to make remarkable plays because it wasn't defending.

Oh. Do I need to remind that I hate the motherfucking Phunions? Here, I'll say something nice about them, for balance: they got rid of Sebastien Fucking LeToux.

Anyway, United pissed this away before 45 minutes were gone. I believe that 10 minutes of possession consisted of a triangle of Perry Kitchen passing the ball back to Emiliano Dudar and the appallingly incompetent Brandon McDonald, playing catch until high pressure forced some measure of creativity. Sadlly, this creativity usually resulted in a long ball upfield to a Phunion. I was grateful each time it didn't result in a backpass past Hamid and into the goal. Two Phunion breakaways were thwarted by Hamid, and United were lucky not to be down 0-3 at the half.

Which brings us to the second half. In the 64th minute, some lovely play between Boskovic and the geriatric and exhausted Dwayne Derosario led to a chance. Phunion goalie The Traitor Zac MacMath* couldn't get the handle on the ball; Gabriel Farfan cleared it away to Nick DeLeon, who buried it. Unfortunately, in a bit of byplay not related to the goal, Hamdi Salihi tripped over the prone traitor MacMath (who was out of the play whether Salihi went flying over him or not). Mark Geiger's Philly eye for the game spotted that as a foul. On Salihi. No goal. This was stone robbery.

United equalized minutes later. Then, near the end of regulation Pontius won a penalty kick on what I initially thought was a dive, but what was actually a legit call. DeRosario banged home the spot kick, but McDonald encroached (into the arc--a technically correct, but bush league call by a ref determined to call stuff). DeRosario skied the retake (in stoppage time).

But there was a scuffle in between the kick and the retake. One of the fucking Farfans jumped on Boskovic's back as he tried to retrieve the ball; Boskovic took a swing at him. The fucking Farfan, who instigated the fight, got a yellow card; Boskovic, who missed, got a red. Jeebus.

On the next possession, Dudar fouled some Phunion, getting mostly ball and making little contact, though the tackle was from behind; Geiger wasted no time red-carding him, after having allowed violent criminal Phunion Michael LaHoud no fewer than four yellow-card fouls through the course of the game, two of them arguably red cardable (including his first, and second-most-deliberate foul, a raised foot to Chris Pontius' chest while Pontius was in possession of the ball, and a lengthy, 4-second jersey tug against...I forget, but there were like two feet of jersey stretched out behind the fouled United player). In the closing minutes of stoppage, Geiger completed his rampage by red-carding Phunion Sheanon Williams for a book-definition yellow-card foul against Pontius (professional foul, neither last man nor DOGSO). Sure, it felt good. But this, too, was Geiger's fault.

The game, though? Blame DeRosario. Blame Kitchen. Blame McDonald. Blame Olsen, who didn't replace a totally gassed Nick DeLeon after the Salihi goal, and whose last sub, in fucking stoppage time after the red cards, was the situationally useless Marcelo Saragosa, and who coached these stupid fuckers into being afraid to fucking attack.

What a stupid, fucked-up loss of two points against a key divisional opponent. The team should be fucking ashamed of themselves, and Olsen should start the fucking reserves against Chicago on Wednesday.

Oh, right. We don't have any fucking reserves.


*Discommendated Terp.

United 1-2 KC: This Ain't Hard

Shatzer and others correctly tag the critical meme here: high pressure (and secondarily, inability to suss out a 4-3-3). DCU can't cope, and never has. Shatzer and others completely fuck up the impact of missing players; no, Korb and Chabala is not a dropoff from Russell and Woolard, except to the extent that Chabala had joined the team only three days before. Look, if you can't understand that the team has managed to tactically correct for Woolard's incredible slowness, and incredible fucking stupidity, to the point where you believe that Daniel Woolard is a credible starting left back for any team that doesn't have some bar's name blazoned across its shirts, I can't fucking help you.

I'm not convinced that the blame should lie entirely with Olsen, who has coached the team to shorter passing, single touches, good ball movement. There was none of that in evidence last night, and I'm hard-pressed to believe that Olsen came out before the game and told the team, "Hey, let's languidly drop long balls back into KC's laps, and stand around on defense, and apply no pressure at all, except for you, PartyBoy and LongTanJohnson."

Not that I don't have questions for Saint Benny. For instance, why is PartyBoy marking fucking Teal Bunbury on corners? And even bigger philosophically (though not in practice--Bunbury's goal was on Pontius, he knew it, and he thumped his own chest in acceptance in the afterglow), why the fucking fuck is a goddam moron like Brandon McDonald marking that giant Aurelien Collin, instead of the taller, smarter Dudar? Why, when Branko came up with a kneebummy, did you fucking put in another D-mid instead of, say, Stephen King, who once in a while shines in center attack (unlike Saragosa, who was not in any way cut out for the job he was asked to do last night)?

On to my critique of BFF's analysis, which is what prompted this post in the first place:

Worrisome if not distressing.

Take a Valium. It's one game. The outcome and the methodology were predictable--as, I concede, you're about to admit in a few sentences.

Minus DeRossario, minus Woolard (replaced by some journeyman with two workouts with the club) 

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Last night showed what DeRosario brings: bullying the rest of the team into running. Now, that's nontrivial, I'll admit. But we also left behind DeRosario blaming the rest of the team for him being 34 years old. As to Woolard, no. Just no.

And beloved, I'm not sure how you so easily spouted the most myopic, ill-informed, and goopingly unironic description of Mike Chabala that you possibly could, but...wow.

I wonder how much of it is United's lack of athleticism versus Kansas City's. Man for man, Kansas City was bigger, stronger, faster.

I long for the day when Japanese movie monsters run wild in the streets of Kensington, just so I can watch you flap your arms for a few seconds before I myself am consumed.

It's easy to look bigger, stronger, and faster than someone who's not moving. Athleticism...I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.

They swarmed because they could. United panicked on the ball because they had too.

They swarmed because United didn't move, and didn't move the ball. United panicked on the ball because no one moved off-ball. That's part of the tactical deficiency Shatzer's talking about. Again, being too fucking lazy to do your job isn't a failure of athleticism, it's a failure of getting your deadwood road-gaming ass to move for some portion of 90 minutes.

Someone is going to take out Kitchen. He's dirty...

 Woot! I get to throw a bone!

Yes. Yes, he is.

He's also United's best player, but he's dirty.

Holy crap. Can you make just one point and move on before you completely fuck it up, beloved? No, he's not. Pontius is a better player. Hamid may be a better player. Boskovic may be a better player, but we'll never know because he's such a terrible fit for the club. Salihi may be a better player, but we'll never know because...

Long Tan sucks. Sucks. 

Well...only sort of, so far. Unlike anyone between Hamid and the front line (with the exception of Andy Najar, for 20-second stretches, and Danny Cruz, who came in far too late to have an impact), he worked for a living last night. He has the same problem everyone else on the team has--he can't volley, and I really wish that Saint Benny, who could volley, would fucking do some fucking drills on hitting balls on the half-volley, because the need to settle the fucking ball and make love to it before directing it goalward has gotten pretty fucking stale.

By which I do not mean to exclude the very real possibility that LongTanJohnson sucks.

Saragosa sucks. Sucks unto suck.

I disagree. Saragosa was--stunningly, I know--misused. Last night was, and I admit that there were challenges but still, a frightfully instructive example of how not to manage a formation with the players available. He was a terrible choice to plug in when Branko went down, without some adjustment of roles and relationships and positions.

Part of the thing here, and it's a part we're loathe to admit, is that Benny is a really, really fuckawful in-game coach, and a poor tactical manager. Can this improve? Maybe. Given time, he'll improve more in a year or two than Tommy Soehn or Curt Onalfo will for the rest of their lives.Will he get time? Will he deserve it? Beats the fuck out of me.

This is why this team is at least a year away - they would have lost this game with starters. Their second-stringers suck, and in MLS, you need good second-stringers. United doesn't have any.

That's where you're totally steering the boat onto the reef, beloved. You just said the second-stringers were all hurt. The bench was the third-stringers. Some of the regular starters are second-stringers, and the team has managed to correct for that enough of the time.

I disagree that they would've lost the game with starters--the only one not in was DeRosario. Might his arrogance and sheer dislikability have made the difference? I actually think it might've been the difference between a loss and a draw, but who the fuck knows? Would his presence have kept Benny from making the defensive adjustments that cost the game--or caused him to make different ones that worked? Not putting Dudar on Collin after the very first corner kick was a huge tactical error. Chabala's unfamiliarity with the system, which drew him so far into the middle that he lost his mark on the back post as the Traitor Graham Zusi charged in, certainly didn't help. Pontius in a crucial role in defense on another set piece (but wait! it worked with Tino Quaranta!) was sub-optimal, too.

I do seriously doubt that physical differences were the key here, given the stunning errors in judgment (didn't you hear me, half a county away, screaming about putting Dudar on Collin?) that both Saint Benny and the team laid out there last night. The really disturbing thing to me is that I knew we'd lose when we turned on the game. If, thousands of miles away, I knew that (and so, clearly, did BFF), what the fuck is going on with the team that they can project it so unerringly?

Harkes sucks.

Wynalda's wife doesn't think so. Boo-ya!

I miss The Bow-Tie, and The Bow-Tie sucked.

No, he didn't. He was the glue that kept us all together. He was goooood.

Fine Canadian Wine

So yesterday the US Womens National Team beat the Canadians in an Olympic semifinal game, 4-3, in extra time, to advance to the gold medal game. It was wacky in a number of ways, and the Canadians are feeling unjustifiably aggrieved about the whole thing. Let's discuss this, and let's not bother to do it kindly, because the Canadians are collectively way the fuck off their stereotypically polite nut about this whole thing.

It started with the Canadian coach, a Kiwi asshole named John Herdman, trying to work the referees in the presser the day before the game. I foolishly misread Herdman's performance (I mean other than the part about him being an asshole); I thought it portended a lot of Canadian diving. I was wrong, as Canadian forward Melissa Tancredi showed immediately by committing two brutal, bookable fouls within the first minute of the game. By our count, Tancredi was responsible for 9 of the 19 fouls called on the Canadians (USWNT was called for 20, all legit in reality and many of them questionable in light of what the Canadians were getting away with), which alone should've gotten her red-carded for persistence; she committed another dozen or so that went uncalled.

So the despicable fuckface John Herdman's strategy, then, was to try to neutralize the officials when he planned to turn the game into a rugby match. I don't have a problem with this, in and of itself. The Canadians have spent 11 years showing that they can't beat the US team at soccer. It's perfectly understandable that they'd want to try something else.

And it was working. The Canadian's persistent chippy fouls and outright brutality got their star player, Christine Sinclair, into prime attacking position three times--and she closed the deal on each, fueled by the Canadians' dislike of the US team coupled with her own personal rivalry with Abby Wambach, USWNT's (and, until yesterday, the world's) leading scorer. Good on her. In addition to three very well-played goals, I'll credit Sinclair (who I've never liked, but I have to acknowledge that she can score) with not personally participating in the brutality.

With the US down 3-2, Erin McLeod decided to deliberately delay the game by holding the ball; apparently, she'd been warned about that (she admitted as much, though it was a whiny, so-what sort of admission). The referee called her on it and awarded an indirect free kick inside the box--which bounced off of the arms of two Canadians. One arm was tucked. The other wasn't. Wambach converted the ensuing penalty to equalize, and the game was settled in the closing moments of extra time by an Alex Morgan header as USWNT fans collapsed in exhaustion and confusion.

This has unleashed a torrent of whining from Canadians who apparently didn't understand their team's strategy of fouling early, often, and hard, which had to that point been quite successful. They're wrong. The McLeod call was legitimate; no, it's not called often. Teams also don't often pursue a strategy of deliberately cheating, and get away with that even less often. To be offended at being called on it at a critical moment--with an admittedly dire result--is pretty poor. The handball wasn't deliberate, but Eve-Marie Nault's arm was well away from her body. She was making no effort to tuck it. The call is discretionary, but completely legit.

In short? Shut the fuck up, Canada. You rolled. You lost. I'll freely admit that your hypocritical whining in the aftermath makes me all the more happy to taste your bitter tears, but really? That's your doing.

Updated:

FIFA is investigating comments that Herdman and the Canadian players made in the wake of their failure.

In the same story, Abby Wambach admits that she lobbied for the McLeod call by counting out loud while McLeod was holding the ball and pretending to look for a play.

Video: NBC captures the utterly innocent and blameless Melissa Tancredi deliberately stomping on Carli Lloyd's head.

YFWP: Christine Sinclair whines.

AP (from YFWP): The delay call, discussed.

I repeat: shut the fuck up, Canada. And anything nice I said about Christine Sinclair? Fuck that. What a classless piece of shit. I hope FIFA disciplines her and her coach for explicitly accusing the referee of fixing the match.

Also updated:

Bronze medal game, 8 AM Eastern time on Thursday. Go France, not that the Canadians' utterly reprehensible behavior has altered that--the only time I'm not pulling for the French women is when they're playing the US.

More updating:

From the FIFA Laws of the Game (Law 12):

An indirect free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a goalkeeper, inside his own penalty area, commits any of the following four offences:

• controls the ball with his hands for more than six seconds before releasing it from his possession

In short: seriously, Canada. Shut the fuck up.

Excess

Ilse and I are on a vacation swing, having started on Sunday with dinner with her parents, Joseph and Jesusina, at an ostentatious meat palace in the capital of the Confederacy. We stayed at a modest (in American terms) hotel, and continued the next day, driving our gas-guzzling vehicle (at a high rate of speed, guzzling extra gas) on to North Carolina, where we spent two days visiting my mother, the She-Nurse of the SS, and her boyfriend. We ate modestly, but we ate, and we stayed in a slightly less nice hotel at my mother's expense (she and her gigolo just moved to a smaller place that doesn't have really room for overnight guests, not American ones anyway). We drove on, again at a pretty high rate of speed, to Asheville, North Carolina, a beautiful place, where last night we ate a seriously fat-ass meal and stayed in a hotel of the same chain we stayed at in Richmond.

So why am I so pissed off at what I visited today? A ginormous emblem of excess and rapacious capitalism, Biltmore House is a serious candidate for the capitol of capitalism. Rife with pillaged treasures and the produce of years of exploitation of Americans who couldn't afford it, the mansion is a vomitorious display. BFF characterized it as "amazing and appalling;" he's right, but I'm having trouble getting past the appalling part.

I'd like to think I'm not just pissed off because I just don't have the balls to be that fucking evil. And I wish I were sure that would be intellectually honest.