Perversity in Sports

Heh. You thought you were gonna get pictures of WAGs.

Last night I went to RFK to see United begin its defense of the US Open Cup. I didn't stay home and watch the Caps lose to the Rangers to go down 3-1 in their playoff series. Did I make the right choice? I can't decide.

I went in expecting the Cup defense to be about 92 minutes in length, and I was pleasantly surprised when a fundamentally reserve lineup beat Dallas' fundamentally reserve lineup. That said, Dallas really, really sucked. They brought in star dickweed Kenny Cooper late in the game, and he rewarded them by banging his penalty kick off the post (and then illegally putting the ball in the net before another player touched it--a subtlety which escaped a lot of people, including, it appears, DCU's goalkeeper). They were essentially hapless. That really limits the amount of good news I'm willing to take away from a game in which Fred walked the ball into the net (and nearly didn't), and this guy (intellectual property credit to this guy):

donkeyed it in from 22 yards off of a for-once-our-way bounce. The beautiful thing about the goal is that it came well after the 52-minute mark, which was about when Soehn started to thank the 2,000 of us who showed up (each of us counting for about 2.5 bodies in the announced count) by heading for the bunker. Take that, Soehn, you bitch. You better hope every team's as bad as the Burn.

Really, I can't complain about the game. I'm not sure I watched the same game WaPo guy Goff did; his ratings sort of suck. He was overimpressed by Barklage, and by Greg Janicki, whose handball let to the failed PK. I said the handball was incidental and the PK was a judgment call; the aforementioned bDr played the "what if it happened to us?" card, for which he can bite my shorts, although I admit that I don't know what a ref could do other than award a PK or wave the thing off, since they're not really supposed to find a way to even these things up. The wanktard Mr. Soehn seems to think I'm wrong, too (he blamed Janicki's inexperience, which suggests a perception of willfullness), so I'll have to go find footage and flagellate myself with it until I agree with the rest of the universe on this one.

Anyway, Goff was also overimpressed by Quaranta, who starts off any game with a minus three rating in my book, and way underimpressed by BoyZZZ (who ran his ass off but made two bad, but inconsequential, flow-of-play decisions) and Jacovic (who did a fine job of making it look like the team wasn't bunkering, by moving forward from his right-side slot).

Also in Goffinho's quotes: Soehn hedges his bets on Milos Kocic, dismisses Santino Quaranta's hamstrings (I think Tino is a lot of bad things, but I don't think he's shirking), shuns the novel notion that attacking is good ("For [Moreno], it's always good to bring him in, hold the ball and kill off a game."--I thank you for the readiness with which that phrase springs to your lips, Tom, and I'm sure your team's captain thanks you for going to him first when you need to do nothing productive in the course of a game), and backhands both Janicki (aforementioned) and Reg Barclay. Soehn also dissed Louis Crayton in his commentary on Kocic, praising Kocic for doing the same shit Crayton does, only dumber. I guess it all rests on how Tommy's feeling about his fiber intake from day to day. As bDr said a few weeks ago, I'd sure hate to play for this guy.

I can't articulate this very well right now, but I'm getting a little sick of Goff, too. I'll have to think on that one a bit before I take it on. He's a fine writer, but he's starting to radiate more of a smug quality that's putting me off. I'll be back to you on this. Just as soon as I figure out how to blame it on Soehn.

Tom Soehn, Ralph Friedgen, What's the Difference?

Heads. Stakes. Public places.

Say what you will about Jair Maruffo, reputedly one of the best officials in the league, hating DC United (he does), or being unable to tell time (he can't), or having some deep, abiding love of Shalrie Joseph's cock that prevents him from sending off Joseph for the most egregious of fouls (I'd submit that a Maruffo threesome with that fuckface Joseph and punkass bitch John Thorrington Wells Thompson is not out of the range of plausibility). That didn't cost United a chance at three points tonight. No sirree. Seriously for reals.

What more compelling evidence do we need that Tom Soehn needs to be run out of town on a rail? The fucker* started bunkering at halftime of a 0-0 draw, subbing out Clyde Simms (who was, it appears, hurt, so no foul--and in any event, replacement Andrew Jacobsen played pretty well) and the apparently uninjured Marc Burch at halftime of a game in which Christian Gomez, Jaime Moreno, and Ben Olsen (combined actual age: 99; combined Futbol age: approaching 600) were still playing.

Two defensive halftime subs, one unnecessary, in a 0-0 draw. Defensive subs. On a night when Chris Pontius, on the right, could do nothing but lay back and shoot at the sky (money quote from this guy: "I don't like Pontius anymore."), and when Emilio, up front, could do little but yell at teammates, and the entire motive power of the attack to that point was provided by a 600-year-old hydra.

Go on, poofy technicality person, argue with me that inserting Quaranta and dropping back Wallace is an attacking move. Bullshit. Dropping Rodney Wallace back to replace Burch--who sucked no worse than usual--is in no way anything but bunkering the fuck up.

Chickens started returning to roosts a little while in to the second, when Gomez, frustrated by two consecutive Pontius skyballs, suddenly turned up lame. Looked suspiciously like a high vagina sprain to me. Soehn inserted Fred, and moved the still unforgiven** Quaranta to the middle. Minutes later, Moreno turns up lame (he appeared to take a knock, unlike Gomez, who had most recently, before his exit, been seen screaming at Pontius). Gesticulating wildly at the sideline with the "sub me" motion, Moreno showed that he was so unaware of his surroundings that he didn't realize that he was on the field with three guys who weren't there when he started. Niiiice.

There's a talent shortfall on this team, and I'm beginning to doubt the heart of an awful lot of players not named Benny. And I'm damn sure doubting the testes of any coaches named Tom. Even if I'm not thrilled with the effort of...oh, crap--a whole lot of United players from South America--the heart that's there deserves better management than a guy who thinks bunkering is acceptable any time before the 75th minute. And really: how many different ways can Soehn find to retreat?***

I'm done. Head. Stake. West Front of the Capitol. Now.

*Substitute palliative phrasing in case this guy honors me with an attendance certificate for showing up here so soon after a game: "simpering sissy bitch."

**But no longer discommodated. This can, of course, turn on a dime.

***With apologies to, again, this guy, the word I'm looking for is "pussy."

World Autism Awareness Day 2009

Woot. It's time to celebrate, again. Oh, wait a minute...

We first visited WAAD last year, and what a post that was. What's changed? Not a lot, except that Bam-Bam's food choices are a little narrower these days than they were a year ago.

Idiots still abound. The science blogs to your right have done their usual fine job of covering the idiocy. CNN continues to let Larry King invite Queen Idiot Jenny McCarthy onto his show to allow her to spread misinformation that furthers her goal of killing people. Minions commemorates Jenny's this with a new sidebar link to the Jenny McCarthy Body Count, which tracks the number of U.S. deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses. Way to go, Jenny. Every single one of them is on your head. Time chose today to help CNN out with its Jennyrobics, in an appalling interview in which Jenny tells us that children with disabilities are called "shadows" and that she'd cheerfully sign her kid up for the measles, a potentially fatal disease. All of this is in aid of her latest premeditated and willful attempt to kill people with preventable diseases.

By the way, Jenny hates "toxins" in vaccines but is an avid supporter of Botox.

Meh. Enough of that. I'll look forward to CNN's and Time's coverage of holocaust denial, Flat Earthism, and the Easter Bunny (hippitus hoppitus!)

Bam-Bam remains who he is. There's been no breakthrough in his development since the last time we discussed this, and maybe there will be one someday, or maybe there won't. We do what we can. He does what he can, giggling most of the way. This morning, Bam-Bam and I will get up, and he'll snuggle into my lap for 5 minutes (possibly grabbing my hands and placing them on his butt, indicate that he wants me to drum lightly there for a few beats, or maybe we're past that now), and eat his Wild Berry Poptarts and his Krispix, and ask me for a video (it will be a Sesame Workshop production, his current video obsession) before he gets on the bus to go to school, and turn around and throw his head back so he can look at me upside down, and bounce on his trampoline after he throws me out of his playroom so that he can have some time to be Bam-Bam before the world starts making demands of him.

I'm okay with all of that, because there's no other rational choice.

Give a thought to Bam-Bam and the rest of the spectrum, and vaccinate your fucking kids. That is all.