BLCKDGRD

United Stated

This season's
(and next year's)

United obituary

at the new place.

Thanks to everyone who's moved their bookmarks, blogrolls, and readers. Please tag along the rest of you.

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

On Moreno's last game.

For those of you who read me for soccer only - who hate the politics, hate the other stuff - and who've bookmarked or blogrolled or readered me at the DCU category level, I've moved HERE and set up a label DCU so you can do the same there.

Long story short: typepad can't do what blogger does re: make blogging easier for me. I'm selfish this way. Thanks in advance for tagging along.

United 0, San Jose 2

The Moreno/McDonald incident that led to the red cards in the 8th minute was off-ball, so I didn't see it, and you know who else didn't see it? Alex Prus, the referee, who, after consulting with a side-line ref who was at least 40 yards from the incident, red-carded both players. Maybe the players deserved it - TV replays only show the elbow to Jaime's head - but the bigger question is why would MLS assign Alex Prus to a DCU game just two weeks after Alex Prus shit the bed at RFK?

The man in the middle was referee Alex Prus, who, just two weeks ago, tossed both coaches during the United-Houston Dynamo match at RFK Stadium. United officials were baffled as to why Prus was working another one of their games so soon. On a side note, after tonight's match, Prus hosted a previously scheduled seminar upstairs at RFK for, I believe, local fans and refs.

What a motherfucking rinkydink league.

Not that it mattered. United was never going to score, San Jose was going to score eventually  - the most interesting aspect of the TV replay is listening to the contempt The Bowtie, who usually is such a fucking homer, had for both United's offense and defense. (Maybe it was because Dave Johnson, who is a bigger homer than The Bowtie, wasn't on the call and The Bowtie felt liberated.) Listen to The Bowtie scold Graye for Wondolowski's first goal, scold the entire defense for Wondolowski's second goal, listen to Tony Linarzi and The Bowtie berate Pablo Hernandez for dancing in the box rather than take an open shot - I'm told to STFU about Hernandez until he's surrounded by better players and can be fairly accessed, and I like his motor, I like his first touch, but shoot the fucking ball.

And Troy Perkins, who had no chance on the first San Jose goal but was fully responsible for the second, thank you, you were the only United player who as much as clapped at LOUD SIDE! after the game, who actually walked over and into the crowd. United sucks - and I mean SUCKS! - and we're still there. Which makes them ingrates, which makes us rubes.

Colorado 0, United 1

United never won in Denver when they were good, go figure they win in Denver when they suck (and thank you for sucking in front of an open net, Drew Moor).

I'm ambivalent whether Saint Benny of Olsen should be given the head coaching job in full, but these half-talents bust their ass for him. Colorado's to blame that they assumed all they need to is show up to win, but United won the majority of 50-50s, acted like the team that wanted to win more, and that's to Benny's credit. Whether Benny is ready to coach a team of superior talent to championships is an open question - whether Benny is ready to develop a young team into superior talent is an open question - but this team works harder for him than they ever did for Tom Soehn or Curt Onalfo.

Najar is special, and he seems to know how to avoid taking shots; the only concern I hear about Najar is his size vis a vis standard MLS brutality. He was clearly, demonstrably, the best player on the field. Another bump-up for Quaranta, better but still so-so for Bošković, but Pablo Hernandez, oy: gacks a sitter in the 78th minute then dives and fakes an injury. Get up, chunker.

And O! Who knew Colorado was so fun to hate? I mean sure, fuck Pablo Mastroeni (I'm still angry about the stupid red card v Italy in WC06), and fuck Conor Casey, but adding fucking Jeff Larentowicz and fucking Wells Thompson? Fuck Colorado.

Three games left, two at home, next Saturday v San Jose then Chicago on the road (remember when a late season game v Chicago was big?) then finale a week later at RFK v Toronto. There's a chance United could catch Ningland or Chivas and not be the shittiest. Yay! Ambition!

Soon Your Dear Ones Will Hide in a Closet When They Hear Your Heavy Step on the Porch and Then Your House Will Slide into Disrepair

Dear Cowardly Emailer clever enough to send an email without return address (not that I'd have emailed you; I remark only on your cowardice),

Why yes, this blog does suck, thank you. I've always said so. I don't know what I want this crappy blog to be, funny or serious, happy or angry, light or heavy, conciliatory or accusatory, open-minded or parochial, honest or disingenuous, coherent or incoherent, rude or ruder, loud or louder, self-aggrandizing or self-scourging, informative or white noise, etc.... but I do know that I don't want this blog to be either funny or serious, happy or angry, light or heavy, coherent or incoherent, conciliatory or accusatory, open-minded or parochial, honest or disingenuous, rude or ruder, loud or louder, self-aggrandizing or self-scourging, informative or white noise, etc... 

These are the funniest, most serious, happiest, angriest, lightest, heaviest, most in need of conciliation, most necessarily accusatory, most open-minded, most parochial, most honest, most disingenuous, most coherent, most incoherent, the rudest, loudest, most self-aggrandizing, most self-scourging, most informative, the most static-filled white-noised days of my life. I'm canary, I'm weathervane, I'm Cassandra, I'm Fool. That you took the trouble to tell me this crappy blog sucks is a sign this crappy blog is suc(K)ceeding at some level. My thanks are not either/or either.

• Mehgahfeh. That felt good. That felt shitty.
• UPDATE! Fuck, I'm bypassed again.
• Poll!
• Hated.
• Liars, every one of them.
• It's not Left v Right, it's You v Corporations.
• Welfare.
• More thoughts on the thought police.
• Education as indoctrination.
• Obama's hit squad.
• God's left hand.
• It's official!
• UPDATE! Bye, Rahm, and fuck you too.
• Stone walls and steel bars.
• Holyfuck.
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, part two.
• See you in hell.
• UPDATE! Marketing and capitalism. 
• White America has lost its mind?
• Company men.
• It's this simple.
• My job's best perk:

• What do we tip waiters for?
• Ambulance-fee back on ballot. If anyone blegs a passionate post detailing the reasons to vote against the fee, I'll link. Alternatively, if that person wants to find his passionate comment detailing the reasons to vote against the fee downblog, I'll link to that.
• Good luck w/that, Gaithersburg.
• Marylanders want gambling.
• Weirdest weather year of my life.
• Asshole endorses asshole.
• Size-driven rivalry.
• Allsopp 2011?

• Gahfehmeh.
• What are books good for? "My best answer is that books produce knowledge by encasing it. Books take ideas and set them down, transforming them through the limitations of space into thinking usable by others. In 1959, C.P. Snow threw down the challenge of "two cultures," the scientific and the humanistic, pursuing their separate, unconnected lives within developed societies. In the new-media ecology of the 21st century, we may not have closed that gap, but the two cultures of the contemporary world are the culture of data and the culture of narrative. Narrative is rarely collective. It isn't infinitely expandable. Narrative has a shape and a temporality, and it ends, just as our lives do. Books tell stories. Scholarly books tell scholarly stories."
• Against the Day. I've found myself thinking about it more than I thought I would when I finished my second read a couple of months ago, mostly about Cyprian Latewood, his entire story but especially his epiphany in Bulgaria. The more I think about it, for all the Vibes, Traverses, Rideouts, Chums, and Highcourts, Cyprian may be the key character.
• UPDATE! Heh! Damn, now Jim's pissed at the realities of the world. Those of you guitar players who read this shitty blog, can The Situation's CD release be far away?
• Lit links.
• New Carl Dennis!
• Buggles.
  
• That'll do for lunch.
• Beyond Fitz and the Tantrums, the youngsters are listening to Frankie Rose and the Outs. Again, it's perfectly fine listening, but new rock going retro, not forward.
• Guilty pleasure.
• I would have bet Feist would be famous by now.
• UPDATE! Ear-candy!
• Guilty pleasure.
• Woke up with this in my head, my favorite REM song.
• Which has since been replaced by this guilty pleasure.
• UPDATE! Yay! Now this is in my head.

A MAXIM

Carl Dennis

To live each day as if it might be the last
Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius
Inscribes in his journal to remind himself
That he, too, however privileged, is mortal,
That whatever bounty is destined to reach him
Has reached him already, many times.
But if you take his maxim too literally
And devote your mornings to tinkering with your will,
Your afternoons and evenings to saying farewell
To friends and family, you’ll come to regret it.
Soon your lawyer won’t fit you into his schedule.
Soon your dear ones will hide in a closet
When they hear your heavy step on the porch.
And then your house will slide into disrepair.
If this is my last day, you’ll say to yourself,
Why waste time sealing drafts in the window frames
Or cleaning gutters or patching the driveway?
If you don’t want your heirs to curse the day
You first opened Marcus’s journals,
Take him simply to mean you should find an hour
Each day to pay a debt or forgive one,
Or write a letter of thanks or apology.
No shame in leaving behind some evidence
You were hoping to live beyond the moment.
No shame in a ticket to a concert seven months off,
Or, better yet, two tickets, as if you were hoping
To meet by then someone who’d love to join you,
Two seats near the front so you catch each note.
 

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

I suspect United's regretful, naive, and blinkered owner Will Chang sees himself in a box: things won't get any better if he fires Kevin Payne and might get worse if he does. He's wrong, and the following implies directly that Kevin Payne, after a sixth consecutive season worse than the previous, has been rewarded with another year of unaccountability:

While United President Kevin Payne has stated that Olsen is likely to lead United someday, he has also suggested that Olsen lacks the experience to guide the club through these turbulent times. To Olsen's credit, the players have responded to his impassioned pleas to play for the badge and salvage something from this miserable year; unfortunately, their energy and commitment have failed to compensate for voids at several positions and terrible mistakes.

Heh, voids at several positions. LIKE EIGHT OF THEM!

Look, I'm not qualified to say whether Benny Olsen is ready to be a head coach, but you know who else isn't qualified to say?

It's a good thing the economy is as if not more fucked in every city United could move to than DC's. And that, fellow motherfuckers, is root and rube of our moral dice game....

United 1, Houston 3

Why was Branko Bošković signed? This isn't snark: was he bought thinking he'd help this team this year or was he bought with an eye to the team that will be rebuilt out of the ruins of this one? I have no faith it's the latter: I think Kasper Payne, in a sad effort to rescue a deeply shitty team, panicked and splashed money and a designated player tag on a player who may be perfectly useful on the left-wing but who isn't a ten no matter how much United wants him to be.

Najar is wonderful. He will be in Europe when United is good again. Maybe the next coach's system takes advantage of Bošković's skills. The Quaranta-meter is clocking upward; he's responded positively to wearing the Captain's band. Everyone else on the field last night will be elsewhere or on the bench or out of the league when United is good again. There's a new category that will be used until his shut-the-fuck-upness is off this team. And how's that Jaime Moreno farewell tour going?

And lost in the shuffle of MLS expansion and its consequent importation of ever more mediocre soccer players is the concurrently consequent importation of ever more mediocre referees. Alex Prus is one of the top three or four MLS referees and is a ridiculous assclown. He doesn't cost teams victories, he costs teams injuries. 

Update, links, edits, later. Or not.

It's Not the World Which Is Good or Bad and So We Run Our Noses Over Everything

I've got two potential invites to meet for pints by blegfriends coming to DC for the Stewart/Colbert production on the mall, and if I'm in town (we may be away for one last Planet college trip), I'd love to meet up for pints. I should know in couple of weeks if I'll be in town; if yes, I'll work out some logistics. Anyone else potentially coming to town who'd like to potentially meet up for drinks and yap, email.

I've not given a second's thought to attending the rally. I've not given a second's thought until now about the rally. I've no idea what the rally is, what it's meant to achieve, if it's real and a stunt, if it's fake and a stunt. What is it? Not that I'll go.

• Let's do another one just like the other one.
• GOP unveils new powerpoint presentation.
• Reprogrammable killbots.
• Daily obamapostasy.
• Bageant interview (and more).
• UPDATE! Notes on pwogs.
• Howard Kurtz, fuckturd.
• Customer service.
• School work.
• Thoughts on internet identity.
• Maryland no cell-phone while driving law starts this coming Friday. Just an alert - cops will be looking for it.
• No ambulance-fee referendum on ballot.
• Branko! profile. Home game tonight. !wOOt!
• Fear of metaphor, part two.
• Another Freedom review, interesting to me for it's take on obligatory reading.
• Why the Right hates Freedom.
• UPDATE! Merrill. Funny, I was talking with a friend about Merrill just this past week, how my friend gets him and I don't (or I do but not much), how I need try again.
• Kafka's last trial.
• Dominos was one of my favorite songs from 2009.

AFTER A FEW WHIFFS OF ANOTHER WORLD

THOMAS LUX

After a few whiffs of another world
he decided to stay with the stench
or the present: dumpster lids everywhere
rising like cakes, garbage scows
moving in long orderly lines
across the harbor... The olfactory - he loves it
even when it wafts, wracking all points
of the compass. It's always invisible
and takes its directions according to the whimsy
of wind, and fans, or the waves
of a hand. Cave dwellers knew it,
and dogs. The bare smell
of dirt on cabbage, the snow-
on-your-arm smell. Even
in the abstract: fear-smell, like
spit on a knife blade. And
what the worms inhale, and then
the smell of dew on barbed wire, the sweet
think smell of sex, slick,
our lungs giddy and pink with it...
It's not the world which is good or bad
and so we run our noses over everything.
Even the dumb have this sense.

GAX 2, United 1

Half a million dollars and a designated player assignation for Branko Bošković who doesn't start, who can't finish.

This result would have hurt more if the game had meant more, but I'm pleased those last ten minutes still pissed me off. United plays hard, they haven't quit, their lack of talent catches up to them over 90 minutes, they lose, and it still hurts. What new is there to write? Good thing United just signed Juniorsux and a 33-year-old washed-up never-was Swiss midfielder?

Highlights here, including video of why Andy Najar isn't long for MLS, Simms and Jakovic gifting Donovan his first goal, Bošković''s clubbed-foot gack of an 85th minute breakaway, and Troy Perkins' kick of the post and scream at Jordon Graye after Donovan's brilliant header for the win.

More later, though probably not, but links if and when I see them.

The Lack of Any Bed but One’s Music to Sleep In

I'm aarghful, and when I'm aarghful I want to write about Kind and unKind and I've promised myself to not write about Kind and unKind when aarghful, so here, a wrap-up of yesterday's MOCO primary results for those who've been playing along, plus a word of advice to DC United's Kevin Payne: make a congratulatory phone call to Vincent Gray today. I've no idea if Vincent Gray is any more interested in finding a site and a way to build a new stadium for United than Adrian Fenty was, but he certainly can't be less interested than Adrian Fenty.

UPDATE!

Well, Payne should call Gray, but probably a wasted gesture:

Challenger Vincent Gray isn’t offering any promises, either. The D.C. Council chairman was asked during a recent “social media” Q&A session what he was doing to keep D.C. United. Gray started out by claiming a “strong desire” to hold on to the team, but literally four seconds into his YouTubed answer, Fenty’s opponent in the upcoming primary appears to realize that he needn’t bother pandering to this bunch.

“Constructing a new stadium... is a very expensive proposition,” Gray said. “We’ve been in a recession. We just haven’t had the ability to pay for a stadium or contribute to a stadium because we’ve been investing our money in trying to keep the basic services in the city going.”

Rockville United? No. And Redgate would be impossible to get 20K people in and out of. You know what would work? That empty field across 355 from MoCollege; build a new (and needed) Metro stop that would serve MoCollege primarily and the stadium secondarily. Know what else? Fuck-Me Jig.

Meanwhile, self-remedying:

ORFEO

Jack Spicer

Sharp as an arrow Orpheus
Points his music downward.
Hell is there
At the bottom of the seacliff.
Heal
Nothing by this music.
Eurydice
Is a frigate bird or a rock or some seaweed.
Hail nothing
The infernal
Is a slippering wetness out at the horizon.
Hell is this:
The lack of anything but the eternal to look at
The expansiveness of salt
The lack of any bed but one’s
Music to sleep in.