Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

And it plays in Columbus Saturday night still boškovićless as Branko can't play until July 15, so midfielders are auditioning fighting for minutes. I hope the difference between World Cup play third round and MLS after not playing for two weeks is or isn't as stark as I think it will be?

Read this:

I wrote earlier in the week that D.C. was ranked second out of the 56 metered U.S. markets in ESPN/ABC World Cup ratings through Sunday's games. The combined ESPN/ABC ratings in this market were a 3.5, translating to about 81,000 households, not including the Spanish-language broadcasts. That was behind only Miami.

Well, the overnight numbers are in for the U.S. group-clinching win over Algeria, and it's more evidence that this is one of the nation's futboliest markets. The D.C. market was fourth among metered markets (with a 5.4 rating), while the Baltimore market was second (with a 6.4). Move United North!

Oh, they will. 

It's takes, on all parties, an immense effort of greed, stupidity and prideful assholosity to make professional soccer fail in Washington DC.

Elric and Bromark, call your mother today.

*

Three bleg notes: Yes, the link color and quotation colors have changed. I know I can't use the yellow for first links because it can't be read in readers, but I hate that orange, so I'm going to see if I hate that green less, and to my old eyes, the brighter blue is better for distinguishing quotations. Meh.

Second, I've given myself permission to not feel coerced into adhering to the sillyass format laws for posts I've imposed on myself. I'll see how long that lasts.

Last, to those who've blegrelled me recently, thanks for the Kind. I think I've reciprocated with everyone, but if you're Kinding me and I'm not you, please send me an email and, as long as you're not running a bleg that's a front for a pharmaceutical company or some weird-ass NASA bleg in India, as long as we're copacetic, I'll return the Kind.

• Special form of the general law.
• UPDATE! The future of digital capitalism.
• Case study in organization violence.
• We will have waited too long.
• Annals of self-involvement.
• Moar.
• Fuckers, one and all.
• UPDATE! Well, this was predictable: pussy blames media for reporting the pussy called Obama a pussy.
• Pastor Sanctimonious hearts Obama.
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post.
• UPDATE! What Obama should have said.
• Self-editing access sycophants.
• Termination notice.
• Yow! Good riddance.
• UPDATE! America First?
• I stand corrected: "They will face Ghana in the Round of 16 on Saturday, and should they win, they will go on to face the winner of the Uruguay-South Korea match in the quarterfinals." I had thought and said USMNT would face winner of Mexico/Argentina if they beat Ghana.
• UPDATE! Portugal v Brazil was for shit.
• UPDATE! On the Portuguese.
• UPDATE! Fuck Spain, motherfucking rdivers.
• UPDATE! Landru emails: "We actually have to board the fucking airplane at the end of the first fucking half tomorrow. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." Doh!
• UPDATE! Because nothing says take your fucking case of Turtle Wax and get the fuck of the stage like RINGTONE!

THE DOG STOLTZ

August Kleinzahler

The dog Stoltz pushed his paw pads into my neck,

the warm, beaten leather deep under my chin,

and let slip the one paw to up near my mouth

with all the filth of the many blocks we trod,

together trod, a well-moistened, adenoidal sound,

part sigh and part growl, coming out of him,

transported, he seemed, in a slow-motion delirium

as I tickled his chest and behind his ear

when he just then told me he’d tear out my throat,

looked in my eye and smiled, best as a dog can,

then turned ruminative and spoke once more:

—I simply have to knock off that essay on Sassoon.

This would have been Sassoon the war poet, understand.

Dogs cannot write. My mother told me this.

As for his talk, well, I took no special notice.

His love of the war poets was well known.

Stoltz would have been part bull and something else.

Two friends walked by just then, handily as these things go,

and inquired of us sitting down there on the stoop,

not even, a doorway merely, along a busy street,

how went the day and what pursuits was I attending;

but what interested the two of them most

were the tergiversations of the dog Stoltz,

first beast, then scholar, then abject and adored.

(Say, who among us does not care to be undressed?)

He was not really my dog, you see, and of this made note,

but were glad as well at my having a new dog in my life.

It was a busy stretch of pavement, Amsterdam maybe,

or Broadway, or farther down just south of Chelsea.

I can tell you it was the West Side, of that I’m certain,

and it was mild, spring-like, a few drops in the air.

The friends passed along and the dog Stoltz slept.

He was not my dog, you know. He simply followed me out

of what can only have been a very fine home,

such were his graces, his recondite tastes.

But he was a killer too, and rather smelled.

I cannot accommodate another animal now, please understand.

I am between places. I will yearn for Stoltz, but no.

Because: