95 years ago on this day, this drivel premiered. Around 87 years later, I got suckered into seeing it with then-wife Gamara and some friends, including William Wallace (known to you hereabouts as "Steven") and his uberfabulous spouse Ellen the Hun, on the pretense that it was "Russian ballet," which was, of course, technically true, but not in the sense that I thought (which would have involved Tchaikovsky and babes--as Gamara and the real mastermind behind this crime knew perfectly well).
Now, it was a great evening overall, and an experience I'm glad to have had; we had wonderful food and wine and rode in a limousine to the Kennedy Center and laughed our tits off. But one man knows that I haven't forgotten this ignominious act of betrayal:
Hope you're happily commemorating this crucial day in cultural history, Hamster Hamlet, you tights-loving Europoof.
Never forget!
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
On The Plight of the Neutral Observer in a War Zone
1. BPWTF? Since I'm not sure I'm at liberty to reveal the connection, I won't. Let's just say it's pretty deeply rooted.
2. Conrad. Conrad is soused and lives in Turkey. He's from the same minion gene pool as Purple and Whispers.
3. Conrad's brotherConrad Graham (the blog formerly known as I Don't Care If You Don't Like Me). Way the fuck less soused than he used to be, and lives in Philadelphia. Also from the same minion gene pool as Purple and Whispers. Cute as a fucking bug, and far less annoying.
5. Speaking of which, don't you people ever learn?
The Golden Swiss Bunnies of the Apocalypse. Surrender and get really fat thighs.
No, this bunny's going to kick your ass. Seriously. Appropos of nothing, I found this bunny at a publication called New Lesbian Times. I do not know what that means.
Clorg supporters.
Hello Dweeze.
Seriously, dogs just suck.
If Rose McGowan as an armed amputee isn't the hottest fucking bunny ever, I don't know what is.
Obama supporters.
Nothing is safe from performance art.
2. Conrad. Conrad is soused and lives in Turkey. He's from the same minion gene pool as Purple and Whispers.
3. Conrad's brother
4. Kitten Wars. Smart money's on the cracker. The intellectual doesn't have the stomach for a long war.
5. Speaking of which, don't you people ever learn?
The Golden Swiss Bunnies of the Apocalypse. Surrender and get really fat thighs.No, this bunny's going to kick your ass. Seriously. Appropos of nothing, I found this bunny at a publication called New Lesbian Times. I do not know what that means.Clorg supporters.Hello Dweeze.Seriously, dogs just suck.If Rose McGowan as an armed amputee isn't the hottest fucking bunny ever, I don't know what is.Obama supporters.Nothing is safe from performance art.Dilettantes.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Kill Your Goalkeeper
So United won tonight at RFK, after digging a hole, filling it, and re-digging it. We attended, with this guy and his women (EGbDr and Planet) and his brother. I spent a lot of time covering my eyes. All that digging and filling seemed a little unnecessary, because it was just Toronto FC, and TFC's goals were both mortal horrors. Brian Namoff uncharacteristically vomited on his shoes to give up the first goal (he chose correctly, covering the runner rather than the dribbler, but then unaccountably slacked off his coverage of the runner just in time to see the guy get the ball and slot it to another attacker for an open shot; some of those around me correctly pointed out that Namoff had to choose from a lot of bad choices, while I countered that when you make a choice about whom to cover, cover him).
The second goal was classic Wellsian bad judgment. Danny Dichio got the ball in the middle at the 18. Dichio is about 200 pounds of attitude and right foot, and not a whole lot else. He's gonna bury the sucker to his left side. Wells was sliding to his own left, and slid too far to dive back to make a save. Totally fucking wretched positioning, which is the standard for this guy.
I don't know if Wells is spooked, or if he's just not a very good keeper. He looks awkward and uncomfortable in his positioning, his decisionmaking, and his communication. It really came together for me tonight, watching him in context for the whole game, rather than the limited perspective you get from watching on TV. As plays are developing, he has no idea where to put himself. When things are happening in the defensive third, you can see smoke coming from they guy's ears as he tries to figure out where to be, what to do, how to command the area he knows he must command. He makes bad decisions, he makes late decisions, he makes timid decisions. He hugs the line when he should charge out and dissociate an attacker from the ball, or punch it clear. Then, when it's too late, he moves the wrong way to make the play. Over and over, I thought about what Troy Perkins would do; every time, the answer was that he would fucking well take charge. Sometimes the consequences of that were not optimal; more often--and, importantly, more often than happens now--the consequences were a clearance or a save. Didn't so much matter, because the point was that he fucking took charge, he did it right often enough for it to be okay, and that's what's missing and will be missing until Wells is gone daddy gone.
Ba'al knows the club needed to be rid of Boswell. But Jesus H. Christ on a wobbly fucking crutch, did we get the shit end of that stick. Wells needs to go, preferably to the USL. The club needs a competent first-string keeper, because when your keeper is too paralyzed to act effectively, you're fucked. It doesn't matter whether Wells' paralysis stems from how badly he's getting pasted, or from his innate suckage. He's got to go, or a couple of points better than San Jose is all this team is going to manage this year.
I have reached the conclusion that this is one of three fundamental problems with the team. Another is simply that we have swapped out Ben Olsen and swapped in Santino Quaranta. That's a dramatically different level of effect. Olsen was a flavor of pure primal fury and energy, and he was able to channel that in an organized way, one that was a beacon for the team. Actually, the math works out the same if you call it Quaranta for Gros (less accurate, but still a viable comparison if one considers the difference between right and left to be immaterial in a discussion of width). Gros' ability to direct his aggression, to make the chip on his shoulder work for the glory of the club, was hard to match. Quaranta is a young and energetic guy, unburdened by injuries. But he's not that smart, he's not that bridled, and the chip on his shoulder has pushed him to to work for the glory of himself (in the form of making up for the sad fact that he's an asshole). Yes, he's working hard. But he hasn't got the gift of making that work consistently produce effective attacks.
But I must shock you. You see, tonight's Man of the Match, in my book, would be none other than Tino. It was Tino who, through the glory of embellishment that he could only have learned while lapping hungrily at Landon Donovan's pussy, turned a very nice run into a well-earned penalty (in truth, there were two earlier occasions when DCU could easily have been awarded penalties; in this case, there was contact, and Tino was definitely going down, he just made it look better than it was). Minutes later, his run into space with the ball, coupled with a very nice feed to someone (I forgot who), set up the one moment this season when the ball has richocheted onto The New Mister Em's foot in the six-box.
And that last? That's your third problem. Things just haven't been falling for the offense. It doesn't much matter why Emilio isn't the same guy he was last season. Part of it is that some nontrivial number of his goals last season were poached, and he's been so innately lazy about getting into the box this season that his poaching opportunities have dwindled.
So, Tino for MOTM? Sure enough. Apparently Moreno won the text message voting, because he was the guy they flashed on the board at the end of the game. And Peralta had a really fun equalizer, stretching himself out to head a ball two feet off the ground into the net (bDr correctly noted that Peralta might could have just foot-tapped it, but it was a lot more fun the way it happened). Fred moved reasonably well off-ball, and Gallardo's touch and control (as long as he's not kicking a set piece) are a marvel. But Tino ran his ass off and earned it.
No, he did not earn my forgiveness. bDr's brother asked me a pertinent question when he wondered if, should Tino break Jay Heaps in half, spit on the body, and wipe his ass on a Duke t-shirt in front of 25,000 fans, I'd get around to forgiving. Actually, he phrased the question a lot less violently and my answer wasn't terribly affirming. Only when I embellished the violence and emphasis could I get to a place where the possibility of any sort of Tino-warmth could be forthcoming.
But I digress. Zach Wells must die, at least as a professional goalkeeper for my club. For the good of the harvest, for the collective mental health of a hundred thousand supporters, to prevent asteroid strikes on population centers, for the safety and security of America, to mitigate global warming, and for the power and the glory and the legend and the tradition that is DC United, Zach Wells must be sacrificed, and the lingering death by RSL/TFC/othersuck over which he has presided renders necessary an increase in the spectacularity of the sacrifice. Carved up on a blood altar? Then served, roasted with garlic, to Cuauhtemoc Blanco, with Mister White's choice of garnishes and accompaniments? Yes. I'm getting close, very close. Vaya con Quetzlcoatl, Semen Wells.
The second goal was classic Wellsian bad judgment. Danny Dichio got the ball in the middle at the 18. Dichio is about 200 pounds of attitude and right foot, and not a whole lot else. He's gonna bury the sucker to his left side. Wells was sliding to his own left, and slid too far to dive back to make a save. Totally fucking wretched positioning, which is the standard for this guy.
I don't know if Wells is spooked, or if he's just not a very good keeper. He looks awkward and uncomfortable in his positioning, his decisionmaking, and his communication. It really came together for me tonight, watching him in context for the whole game, rather than the limited perspective you get from watching on TV. As plays are developing, he has no idea where to put himself. When things are happening in the defensive third, you can see smoke coming from they guy's ears as he tries to figure out where to be, what to do, how to command the area he knows he must command. He makes bad decisions, he makes late decisions, he makes timid decisions. He hugs the line when he should charge out and dissociate an attacker from the ball, or punch it clear. Then, when it's too late, he moves the wrong way to make the play. Over and over, I thought about what Troy Perkins would do; every time, the answer was that he would fucking well take charge. Sometimes the consequences of that were not optimal; more often--and, importantly, more often than happens now--the consequences were a clearance or a save. Didn't so much matter, because the point was that he fucking took charge, he did it right often enough for it to be okay, and that's what's missing and will be missing until Wells is gone daddy gone.
Ba'al knows the club needed to be rid of Boswell. But Jesus H. Christ on a wobbly fucking crutch, did we get the shit end of that stick. Wells needs to go, preferably to the USL. The club needs a competent first-string keeper, because when your keeper is too paralyzed to act effectively, you're fucked. It doesn't matter whether Wells' paralysis stems from how badly he's getting pasted, or from his innate suckage. He's got to go, or a couple of points better than San Jose is all this team is going to manage this year.
I have reached the conclusion that this is one of three fundamental problems with the team. Another is simply that we have swapped out Ben Olsen and swapped in Santino Quaranta. That's a dramatically different level of effect. Olsen was a flavor of pure primal fury and energy, and he was able to channel that in an organized way, one that was a beacon for the team. Actually, the math works out the same if you call it Quaranta for Gros (less accurate, but still a viable comparison if one considers the difference between right and left to be immaterial in a discussion of width). Gros' ability to direct his aggression, to make the chip on his shoulder work for the glory of the club, was hard to match. Quaranta is a young and energetic guy, unburdened by injuries. But he's not that smart, he's not that bridled, and the chip on his shoulder has pushed him to to work for the glory of himself (in the form of making up for the sad fact that he's an asshole). Yes, he's working hard. But he hasn't got the gift of making that work consistently produce effective attacks.
But I must shock you. You see, tonight's Man of the Match, in my book, would be none other than Tino. It was Tino who, through the glory of embellishment that he could only have learned while lapping hungrily at Landon Donovan's pussy, turned a very nice run into a well-earned penalty (in truth, there were two earlier occasions when DCU could easily have been awarded penalties; in this case, there was contact, and Tino was definitely going down, he just made it look better than it was). Minutes later, his run into space with the ball, coupled with a very nice feed to someone (I forgot who), set up the one moment this season when the ball has richocheted onto The New Mister Em's foot in the six-box.
And that last? That's your third problem. Things just haven't been falling for the offense. It doesn't much matter why Emilio isn't the same guy he was last season. Part of it is that some nontrivial number of his goals last season were poached, and he's been so innately lazy about getting into the box this season that his poaching opportunities have dwindled.
So, Tino for MOTM? Sure enough. Apparently Moreno won the text message voting, because he was the guy they flashed on the board at the end of the game. And Peralta had a really fun equalizer, stretching himself out to head a ball two feet off the ground into the net (bDr correctly noted that Peralta might could have just foot-tapped it, but it was a lot more fun the way it happened). Fred moved reasonably well off-ball, and Gallardo's touch and control (as long as he's not kicking a set piece) are a marvel. But Tino ran his ass off and earned it.
No, he did not earn my forgiveness. bDr's brother asked me a pertinent question when he wondered if, should Tino break Jay Heaps in half, spit on the body, and wipe his ass on a Duke t-shirt in front of 25,000 fans, I'd get around to forgiving. Actually, he phrased the question a lot less violently and my answer wasn't terribly affirming. Only when I embellished the violence and emphasis could I get to a place where the possibility of any sort of Tino-warmth could be forthcoming.
But I digress. Zach Wells must die, at least as a professional goalkeeper for my club. For the good of the harvest, for the collective mental health of a hundred thousand supporters, to prevent asteroid strikes on population centers, for the safety and security of America, to mitigate global warming, and for the power and the glory and the legend and the tradition that is DC United, Zach Wells must be sacrificed, and the lingering death by RSL/TFC/othersuck over which he has presided renders necessary an increase in the spectacularity of the sacrifice. Carved up on a blood altar? Then served, roasted with garlic, to Cuauhtemoc Blanco, with Mister White's choice of garnishes and accompaniments? Yes. I'm getting close, very close. Vaya con Quetzlcoatl, Semen Wells.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
On Playing Acceptably Wells for Sixty Five Minutes, Then Vomiting On Your Boots
Emiliano Heskey.
See down there, on the right? Underneath (presently) the link to ODB's bloog?
All rightie, then. Bitch.
I tend to leave the DCU writing to bDr. He's more cogent, less simplistically analytical, and, oddly enough, less angry, at least in his writing (he's more the depressive type). Furthermore, I'm just plain superficial. And while bDr's simpering for a post* deserves no more than the two lines above (despite his uberstature in the Very Small Hierarchy of People Who Are Allowed To Give Me Shit And Keep Their Limbs), DCU have deterioriated to the point where I must record my thoughts. My preliminary conclusions are these:
-Gonzalo Peralta is, indeed, important.
-People really need to stop bitching about Gallardo. He's fine, except for the age of his bones, which is not nearly as significant a problem as the age of Jaime Moreno's bones.
-One piece of fair Gallardo-bitching is that Marcello needs to stop bitching. Yes, DPs get the shit knocked out of them. Take your money and your beating.
-But that was his second pretty goal in as many goals. Too bad the team only scores when he's on the godsdamned pitch.
-Yes, Quaranta is fighting. Perhaps D is a better person than I am, since he's all about the cheek-turning and I'm all about the discommodation. But doing the job Quaranta should have done in his first stint here does not equal forgiveness. And putting in the effort he needs to do to get forgiven by about 2010 does not offset the gravity of his punkass disrespect for the best house in the league, which put up with his ineffectual shit for years before he skied off to lick Landycakes' pussy. This is not to say that Quaranta isn't fighting, and that he's not putting out more energy for the hallowed crest than most others on the team. He is and he is. But three months of effort doesn't offset seven years of punkery, topped by one galling day when he gave his home the finger.
-I am pre-empting D's copyrighted prerogative and demoting Zach Wells to semen. D can't do that, because he keeps it clean over there. But trust me, it's what he's driving at.
There were crucial defensive breakdowns in front of Wells' sorry second-string ass, to be sure. The last goal, the one that caused me to slam down the remote, go to bed, and miss D's TV appearance, probably wasn't attributable to Wells, except to the extent that the first goal, caused by Wells' fumble, and the second goal, caused by Wells' shitty positioning and abject failure to communicate with his defense in any meaningful way, had so deflated and panicked his team that the defense collapsed on a pretty routine counter.
Semen Wells. Except, y'see, he'd be blanks. It's time to give Carvallo a real shot at this.
It's also, not at all coincidentally, time to note the major role that awesome goalkeeping has played in DCU's success lo these many years. Great DCU teams had memorable keepers--Scott Garlick, Tom Presthus, Nick Rimando, and it appears all-too-briefly, Troy Perkins. Semen Wells is on a track to be the wrong kind of memorable. Except a keeper doesn't stay on that track long enough to become truly memorable.
Soehn? Yeah, well, I've said I think he's lost the team. I'm not as sure about that now. I think it may have lost itself. When a team is burdened with challenges unrelated to coaching, like Zach Wells, Marc Burch's right foot, injuries to oh, say, half the righteous starting midfield, and the sudden disappearance of the league MVP in a country not widely known for death squads, it may not be the coach's fault. I am most unhappy with some of Soehn's coaching decisions over time, and this dates back to his first season. I agree with others (D, I think, who's getting an awful lot of linkage in this post) that Soehn appears to have an odd notion of the distinction between formation and form, on top of an odd notion about formation itself, and about fighting the last war.
I do think there is an interesting alternative to Soehn, but I'm not sure that alternative is ready to be a coach yet--evidence indicates that he still thinks he's a player, and may or may not have some reason to think that. In the interim? Meh. Soehn will have to preside over this shipwreck, I think. But we're not going to remember his tenure any more fondly than we remember Crazy Ray Hudson's--and Ba'al knows we remember that every time we flip to GolTV.
*I reached an unrelated conclusion on this. One could write this simpering off to simple faux-macho posturing between two bestus pals who wrote off macho and posturing before many of you were out of pull-ups (because we're old, see, not because you're incontinent).
But I think there's a coded cry for help here. bDr often gets longish emails from me, because we're both so bogged in taking seriously our responsibility to our life choices that that's the only way we communicate except on those rare and joyous occasions when we get some time to sit together and giggle over some shared real-life focus. I think he gauges the state of my mental health by the length of my emails. For instance, after the Fire debacle, he got about five grafs from me on what I thought about the team's troubles. After a five-day silence this week and a light prod, he got**, in one day, "Fuck you," "Fuck that," "Splat," "You're boring me," and "Uhm, yeah, sorry I'm a dick."
Hence, bDr simply yearns for a time when commitments were simple, my brain was fried, and he was not the sole focus of 16 column inches of private ranting about my demons. It falls to me to be kind. The rest of you? Fuck you, fuck that, splat, and I'm more-or-less sometimes existentially sorry that I'm a dick.
**Loosely translated.
***Seriously, thanks to D for the fabulous and entirely unfair theme/modus for Wells-bashing, even though he's just doing a slow build on firing that cannon. But really, Wells just fucking sucks.
See down there, on the right? Underneath (presently) the link to ODB's bloog?
All rightie, then. Bitch.
I tend to leave the DCU writing to bDr. He's more cogent, less simplistically analytical, and, oddly enough, less angry, at least in his writing (he's more the depressive type). Furthermore, I'm just plain superficial. And while bDr's simpering for a post* deserves no more than the two lines above (despite his uberstature in the Very Small Hierarchy of People Who Are Allowed To Give Me Shit And Keep Their Limbs), DCU have deterioriated to the point where I must record my thoughts. My preliminary conclusions are these:
-Gonzalo Peralta is, indeed, important.
-People really need to stop bitching about Gallardo. He's fine, except for the age of his bones, which is not nearly as significant a problem as the age of Jaime Moreno's bones.
-One piece of fair Gallardo-bitching is that Marcello needs to stop bitching. Yes, DPs get the shit knocked out of them. Take your money and your beating.
-But that was his second pretty goal in as many goals. Too bad the team only scores when he's on the godsdamned pitch.
-Yes, Quaranta is fighting. Perhaps D is a better person than I am, since he's all about the cheek-turning and I'm all about the discommodation. But doing the job Quaranta should have done in his first stint here does not equal forgiveness. And putting in the effort he needs to do to get forgiven by about 2010 does not offset the gravity of his punkass disrespect for the best house in the league, which put up with his ineffectual shit for years before he skied off to lick Landycakes' pussy. This is not to say that Quaranta isn't fighting, and that he's not putting out more energy for the hallowed crest than most others on the team. He is and he is. But three months of effort doesn't offset seven years of punkery, topped by one galling day when he gave his home the finger.
-I am pre-empting D's copyrighted prerogative and demoting Zach Wells to semen. D can't do that, because he keeps it clean over there. But trust me, it's what he's driving at.
There were crucial defensive breakdowns in front of Wells' sorry second-string ass, to be sure. The last goal, the one that caused me to slam down the remote, go to bed, and miss D's TV appearance, probably wasn't attributable to Wells, except to the extent that the first goal, caused by Wells' fumble, and the second goal, caused by Wells' shitty positioning and abject failure to communicate with his defense in any meaningful way, had so deflated and panicked his team that the defense collapsed on a pretty routine counter.
Semen Wells. Except, y'see, he'd be blanks. It's time to give Carvallo a real shot at this.
It's also, not at all coincidentally, time to note the major role that awesome goalkeeping has played in DCU's success lo these many years. Great DCU teams had memorable keepers--Scott Garlick, Tom Presthus, Nick Rimando, and it appears all-too-briefly, Troy Perkins. Semen Wells is on a track to be the wrong kind of memorable. Except a keeper doesn't stay on that track long enough to become truly memorable.
Soehn? Yeah, well, I've said I think he's lost the team. I'm not as sure about that now. I think it may have lost itself. When a team is burdened with challenges unrelated to coaching, like Zach Wells, Marc Burch's right foot, injuries to oh, say, half the righteous starting midfield, and the sudden disappearance of the league MVP in a country not widely known for death squads, it may not be the coach's fault. I am most unhappy with some of Soehn's coaching decisions over time, and this dates back to his first season. I agree with others (D, I think, who's getting an awful lot of linkage in this post) that Soehn appears to have an odd notion of the distinction between formation and form, on top of an odd notion about formation itself, and about fighting the last war.
I do think there is an interesting alternative to Soehn, but I'm not sure that alternative is ready to be a coach yet--evidence indicates that he still thinks he's a player, and may or may not have some reason to think that. In the interim? Meh. Soehn will have to preside over this shipwreck, I think. But we're not going to remember his tenure any more fondly than we remember Crazy Ray Hudson's--and Ba'al knows we remember that every time we flip to GolTV.
*I reached an unrelated conclusion on this. One could write this simpering off to simple faux-macho posturing between two bestus pals who wrote off macho and posturing before many of you were out of pull-ups (because we're old, see, not because you're incontinent).
But I think there's a coded cry for help here. bDr often gets longish emails from me, because we're both so bogged in taking seriously our responsibility to our life choices that that's the only way we communicate except on those rare and joyous occasions when we get some time to sit together and giggle over some shared real-life focus. I think he gauges the state of my mental health by the length of my emails. For instance, after the Fire debacle, he got about five grafs from me on what I thought about the team's troubles. After a five-day silence this week and a light prod, he got**, in one day, "Fuck you," "Fuck that," "Splat," "You're boring me," and "Uhm, yeah, sorry I'm a dick."
Hence, bDr simply yearns for a time when commitments were simple, my brain was fried, and he was not the sole focus of 16 column inches of private ranting about my demons. It falls to me to be kind. The rest of you? Fuck you, fuck that, splat, and I'm more-or-less sometimes existentially sorry that I'm a dick.
**Loosely translated.
***Seriously, thanks to D for the fabulous and entirely unfair theme/modus for Wells-bashing, even though he's just doing a slow build on firing that cannon. But really, Wells just fucking sucks.
Monday, May 12, 2008
I Really Thought
That I had a post in me about this. And this. And this. And this. Or maybe even on something completely different.
But I don't.
So let's just say this: Vaccines don't cause autism. There is no autism epidemic. The drought is killing me. And United is really not a very good futbol team right now.
Because I am so tired and soulsucked (Ilse had a very good Mother's Day, and while making Special Days for Ilse is what I'm all about, I'm quite extraordinarily drained), and because when I blog of late, it seems a tad single-tracked, I have concluded that I must do something spectacular to repay y'all for the kindness of peeking back to see if I've gotten around to posting.
So, coming when I have the energy: Fake Biographies of Loyal Minionses. Yeah, hold your breath. And no begging.
But I don't.
So let's just say this: Vaccines don't cause autism. There is no autism epidemic. The drought is killing me. And United is really not a very good futbol team right now.
Because I am so tired and soulsucked (Ilse had a very good Mother's Day, and while making Special Days for Ilse is what I'm all about, I'm quite extraordinarily drained), and because when I blog of late, it seems a tad single-tracked, I have concluded that I must do something spectacular to repay y'all for the kindness of peeking back to see if I've gotten around to posting.
So, coming when I have the energy: Fake Biographies of Loyal Minionses. Yeah, hold your breath. And no begging.
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