Thursday, April 7, 2011

United 2, Phunion 2 - United Advance 4-2 in Shootout


There are traditions to United's US Open Cup games at SoccerPlex in Germantown, the first being I post a photo of a stadium light stanchion against that night's mandatory gorgeous sunset. Also traditions: shitty referees who let the game out of hand, vicious fouls, yellow cards given that were not deserved and yellow cards not given for red card fouls, at least one red card and one coach ejected, Carlos Ruiz scoring, diving, leaving petulantly, overtime and shootouts. Last night? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! and Yes!

United's win means they'll play Ningland at SoccerPlex on Tuesday April 26, and if you've never been to a game at SoccerPlex, do yourself a good. I love RFK, I love LOUD SIDE! (I'll be there day after tomorrow for Gax), but there is nothing like the experience of a game at SoccerPlex. What a blast. Planet and Hamster and Ilse and Landru, with guest appearances by Big C and the Oklahoma Kid. What a blast.




Oh, the game? Look, I can complain about Old Man Wolff (who did score in a scramble) and No Touch Ngwenya (who botched the shot on a three-on-one breakaway in the 2nd overtime that would have locked the game up) on the front line, I can complain about Fredsux ($100 to anyone who can provide a legit photo of Fredsux giving his thumbs-up my-bad with one hand while clutching his hamstring with the other) and the holding midfielders, this team is going to win or lose on the back line, and the back line (starters and seconds) is disorganized and, far too often, incapable of simple clearances out of the box. There is simply no excuse for either of Phunion's goals, especially the second, in the second overtime, with United up a goal and a man. That United points to the return of a rookie who has played exactly one professional game from U-20 USMNT duty as the solidifying key to the defense is damning.

Quick:
  • I applaud Benny for running both Najar and Boskovic all 120 minutes and a system that put the ball on both their feet as often as possible. United won't score enough without contributions from both to compensate for the defense. Boskovic's swing-in CKs are good - Pontius had a duck on his forehead he put over.
  • Brettschneider hit post in overtime, looked dangerous.
  • Stephen King is a better holding-mid than Shut the Fuck Up, still way behind Simms.
  • Bransesco left hurt, but he sucks. Kasper Payne should have his visa revoked for South American countries, because Bransesco is another in a long line of South Americans signed that suck.
  • Hamid had yips, but he is the keeper of the future.
  • What a blast.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Get a Footnote for Being the Only Marxist to Gain Power



My favorite perq at work is first crack at new book carts. Found the above two just now. I'll read the introductions and see where it goes from there. I still think Marx an excellent diagnostician for what ails your economic system. Besides, it's not like I can read fiction now anyway - I'm 0-for-last six novels - though I solicit suggestions.

Related loosely and shamelessly, here's a cat that looks like Stalin:






ALLENDE

Philip Lopate

In 200 years they won't remember me, Salvador
And they won't remember you, so let's skip the part about
He will live with us forever.
You may get a footnote for being the only Marxist
To gain power in Latin America via parliamentary means;
And the only sucker not to throw his enemies in jail.
You knew the power of the large land-owners, ITT,
The Army, U.S. Anaconda, the small frightened businessmen
Easily manipulated, the shop-owners who could go either way
And yet you didn't lift a finger to silence them.
You continued to defend the bicameral system of government
Until they bombed your palace and you shot yourself in the mouth.
Answer me this,
Now that you are a bunch of hairs on a blood-stained sofa:
I want to know why you killed yourself.
Because this was a very un-Marxist thing to do.
Because neither was this the way of a gradualist
With short graying hair and glasses,
     and a face like a prominent surgeon's,
Who, knowing this would happen, could have easily arranged for
The secret tunnel, the private plane, the unmarked car
In which you, huddled in grandmotherly wig, might begin
To write your memoirs. Was it too horrible to think of
Speaking at New York rallies to pockets of émigrés,
Forming shadow cabinets, and lunching with Juan Bosch
Or Andreas Papandreou, swapping stories over wine about
Where you were when the shit hit the fan?
I'm being vulgar, forgive me.
I would rather believe in your doggish retreat
Than the flamboyance of today's headlines which gloat:
MARXIST REPORTED TO TAKE HIS LIFE.
Even they are a little unsure. They leave room
     for the graduate students
Of the left, working in the carrels of libraries
For 100 years to discover the link,
The way it all fits together: Lumumba, King, Kennedy,
     Allende, CIA.

And it may turn out that my government actually murdered you
But what's the good of knowing that?
We know too many connections already, and they only satisfy
The pedantic urge that makes the world a crossword puzzle.
Salvador, I'm sorry, I don't know what to say any more.
Take back the bullet, it was a mistake, it redeems nothing.

Today I look at the faces of passers-by and I think:
It figures. The banks have the money to buy counter-
revolution,
This wino has no money. He's nice enough, so is
That girl in the flamingo summer dress on wobbly heels.
It's September 12, possibly the prettiest day of the year.
The blue has never been so pure around the chimneys—
"Almost like—a cartoon!" says the dental hygienist,
Grasping for a metaphor. I never said it even to myself,
Before today, but just between you and me,
And I don't want anyone else to hear: Senor.
It looks as if they have got us by the balls.
These faces in the street, how can they take power?
How can they rule?


Theme Song April 2011



I found cassettes a friend I haven't thought about in twenty years gave me while looking for something else I didn't find. Isn't it always? Even if I still owned a cassette player the tapes would break. Song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song and song. Holyfuck.


I also found my stash of Bill Nelson cassettes:





Tuesday, April 5, 2011

If You Love Me, Worship the Objects I Have Caused to Represent Me in My Absence

Tell me, did you ever think Obama would deliberately schedule the official announcement of his reelection campaign on the very same day his administration publicly concedes there will always be Guantanamo?







  • I bought this Elkin biography and couldn't believe how badly written it is.
  • Sophie's Choice. It has to be at least 25 years since I read it. I remember Stingo.
  • I'm not sure why Kramerbooks is being reviewed on a poetry blog because Kramerbooks' poetry stock sucks.
  • New Kate Bush? Yes but no. There is this sentence: Kate is currently working on new material although no release date has been set for this
  • Here's the reworked Deeper Understanding. Um. Suck.
  • Obscure Sound's Best of March w/sound. I confess I don't get the fuss over of Montreal, which is OK. It feels like I should.
  • I love Velocity Girl. Listen to this. Holyfuck.





EXACT

Rae Armantrout

Quick, before you die,
describe

the exact shade
of this hotel carpet.

What is the meaning
of the irregular, yellow

spheres, some
hollow,

gathered in patches
on this bedspread?

If you love me,
worship

the objects
I have caused

to represent me
in my absence.


*

Over and over
tiers

of houses spill
pleasantly

down that hillside.
It

might be possible
to count occurrences.





UPDATE! By request:


Monday, April 4, 2011

Harry Graham Crackers

Just to be clear - when I said I hate motherfucking christers I wasn't saying that motherfucking christers don't have the right to burn the Koran, nor was I saying that motherfucking christers shouldn't have the right to burn the Koran.




I am large in my smallness. I can hate motherfucking christers and hate Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham too (who are exceedingly grateful for the motherfucking christer burning the Koran, so grateful they want to write laws preventing motherfucking christers from burning Korans - and other people exercising their free speech rights - in the future). More later. Or not.

Colorado 4, United 1




United never wins in Colorado, never wins at altitude, so what sting there is in the last twenty minutes of collapse has passed. I didn't expect a draw, much less a win, with a decimated backline, so disappointment is minimal. As will be this post.

Five things:

  • You can put a ten on a shirt and put the shirt on Dax McCarty but that doesn't make him a ten. It's only three games, but he's shown me shit.
  • Onstad retired for a good reason.
  • Brettscheider reminds me of - bwaha! - Taylor Twellman. Give him minutes. Hope he starts Wednesday so I can see him live and up close.
  • What the fuck has happened to Najar?
  • Either Branko can't or won't fit Olsen's system.

I'll withhold greater judgment until this coming Sunday morning. Day after tomorrow, USOC game versus Phunion in Germantown (with Planet and Seat Six and Landru and Ilse and Hamster, yay!), this Saturday night versus Gax at RFK. An 0-2 road trip is disappointing but not yet cause for anguish. An 0-2 homestand? Uh-oh.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Which Was Perhaps Immodest of Whoever I Am

CWCF I am, it may be my imagination but it feels like the burners under the rube soup have been turned down from a rolling boil to a ready simmer in the past week. Everything's quieter. Look at the sleeping blogrolls. Maybe it's exhaustion only, a catching of breath, resting the rubes before the also resting keepers begin boiling the rubes again in reaction to what the keepers can't control, boiling the rubes to try and control the rube-response best they can.

Yes, the weekly (not) paradigm-shifting OMFG! skipped this week, but is it me or has Corporate (in its own loosely coordinated and incompetently executed way) tamped the brakes on 24-7 rube-boiling, if only to catch its own breath and reorient before deciding (in its own loosely coordinated and incompetently executed way) how best next to raid grandma's kitchen pantry for ingredients for rube soup?

The simmering weirds me out. How strange to live in a world where a reduction in my boiling causes anxiety by an ominous calming of my happily agitated molecules.













FAME

Les Murray

We were at dinner in Soho
and the couple at the next table
rose to go. The woman paused to say
to me, I just wanted you to know
I have got all your cookbooks
and I swear by them!

I managed to answer her, Ma’am
they’ve done you nothing but good!
Which was perhaps immodest
of whoever I am.


Friday, April 1, 2011

Stop Repeating Yourself. You Old Motherfucker. Your Skies Are Bad Enough. [He looks to the ground.] A Parody Is Better Than a Pun.

Please welcome today's guest DJ, blood brother Hamster, who sends this NSFW playlist! which I insist you listen to at work at full volume, motherfuckers.





I agree. Weirdest fucking days of our lives. Hope to see you Wednesday.

Hamster belongs to the exclusive group of three people who were both at my wedding almost twenty-two years ago and who read this shitty blog. The other two have to submit their playlists for this shitty blog's administrative thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Hamster can request any motherfucking song at any motherfucking time and I will motherfucking post it if I can motherfucking find it.

O! I agree with this too:




Peace, this is my favorite post ever Since The Last Until The Nest, a new word, STLUTN, pronounced as you please, may you be stlutned often in grace and with faith.

I think that sums things up except for the necessary poem (I was told I post poetry to bolster my bleggal authority, to which I say, Yeah, sure, that too) (and Hamster you're getting the Spicer for your birthday), PLUS our guest DJ has one more song.




FIVE POEMS FROM "HELEN: A REVISION"

Jack Spicer


Nothing is known about Helen but her voice
Strange glittering sparks
Lighting no fires but what is reechoed
Rechorded, set on the icy sea.

All history is one, as all the North Pole is one
Magnetic, music to play with, ice
That has had to do with vision
And each one of us, naked.
Partners. Naked.

*       *       *

Helen: A Revision
ZEUS: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

THERSITES: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

ZEUS: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.

THERSITES: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

ZEUS: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

THERSITES: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

ZEUS: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]


*       *       *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost
And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost
Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge
Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge
Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat
Where they say all passages to pay the debt
The lighted yet.


*       *       *

The focus sing
Is not their business. Their backs lay
By not altogether being there.
Here and there in swamps and villages.
How doth the silly crocodile
Amuse the Muse

*       *       *

And in the skyey march of flesh
That boundary line where no body is
Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms
And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there
And mud and fire
Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud
and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs
The battlefield has harms. The trees have half
Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord
From hair and mud and flesh.