The Higgs Boson has been confirmed. Now, friends… on to my time machine (and to my enemies – say good bye to your grandfather… before you were even born! [evil laugh]).
You probably heard about this: a PPP poll that found that 15 percent of Republicans in Ohio think Romney is “more responsible” for bin Laden’s death than Obama; that 47 percent of Republicans are “not sure” whether Obama or Romney deserves more of the credit; and that 6 percent of all Ohio respondents gave Romney credit where credit is not at all due and thirty-one percent of them weren’t sure whether the President or the candidate deserves more credit.
And if you’re on my side of the ideological divide, you were most likely horrified.
But speaking from a purely partisan perspective, this is nothing but good news for Democrats. It’s why contemporary Republican leaders and consultants are so desperate and why the contemporary Republican party (which is not what the Republican was and probably little like what it or its natural successor will be). The current version of the Republican party is slipping ever more quickly away from everyone else.
GOP pollsters and strategists look at those kinds of numbers and they see a party which will soon no longer look like anything that moderates, centrists, independents, or pretty much anyone else can relate to.
Everybody sees the world and (shades of Wittgenstein, for those paying attention) the facts that make up the case that is the world differently and we all put our own slant on it. But most people still tend to accept most facts as, well, facts. By publicly and vocally not accepting basic facts as facts (like a former governor of Massachusetts who had never served in the military having had nothing to with a federal, military action that occurred while said former governor was a private citizen with no formal relationship to any state, local, or federal government agency, including the military), it makes it much for anyone but the minority of core ideological followers to accept anything they say because when so much they say is so kooky, everything they say becomes suspect.
I didn’t get anything I wanted last time. Let’s hope tonight is better, else we’re looking at potentially missing out on the 2014 World Cup and there is no excuse for either the US or Mexico to miss out because of the relative weakness of our group. Seriously. Every four years, CONCACAF needs to send us, Mexico, and then one or two other random teams (probably some combination of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, and Canada).
A lot of folks pointed out that the UMNT lacked width against a team that doubled up on width by playing a hyper-aggressive 3-4-3 (with two wide midfielders/wingbacks and two wide forwards).
But I’m going to give Klinsmann some leeway here, because we simply lacked the players. Only Brek Shea, Clint Dempsey, and Fabian Johnson were healthy and also (reasonably) natural wide players (albeit, with different interpretations of the role). But Dempsey almost certainly lacked the match fitness to run up and down the sidelines for the game (who, in one obvious failure by Klinsmann, should never have been asked to play the full match) and Johnson was needed to help with our lack of decent left fullbacks.
So Klinsmann made a justifiable choice in trying to play through the middle. If done well, the Jamaican strength on the wings could have been nullified by putting pressure on their back line and forcing the midfielders to drop back and cause the team to lose it’s attacking shape.
We played in 4-3-1-2 formation (sometimes also called a 4-4-2 diamond, in reference to the diamond shape of the midfield), but we lacked the players (or the players lacked the instruction or the will) to play in the necessary style to make the formation work.
Dempsey could work as a trequartista, but it doesn’t seem like a completely natural role and he wasn’t match fit – which means that the key to the entire offensive output was put in the hands of someone who was almost certain to run out of gas and whose touch was likely to be a little bit off.
But he shouldn’t have been the key to the offense. There were three players behind him who should have been doing something useful, but weren’t.
Kyle Beckerman has long been one of my favorite MLS players. With his smart play, leadership, and those awesome dreadlocks, what’s not to love? But he is not of sufficient quality to play for the national team. And, at his age (29 or 30, I think), he never will. On paper, he seems like a great, deep lying midfielder; primarily there to break up attacks and make those tackles and interceptions, but also with an admirable passing range. The problem is that he has not shown that he can handle the speed at which these games are played. He gave away possession and conceded too many free kicks, plain and simple.
Jermaine Jones, on paper, sounded like a great addition, too. An experienced, hard nosed midfielder with experience playing as a regular in one of the Europe’s top leagues. But all he’s done for his national team is give away stupid fouls, spend entire games looking like a red card waiting to happen, give the ball away, and generally show decision making skills so insidiously bad that you assume there is some complex, Illuminati-esque plot at work behind it all, because, seriously, no one with his pedigree could play so consistently bad for his country and continue to be picked to play, right? I mean, that would be just crazy, wouldn’t it?
Maurice Edu is a player with huge upside and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt because, while I can’t remember much he did, he couldn’t have had much time for anything else besides trying to staunch the hemorrhaging wound that was the other two thirds of the central midfield.
So, what do I want to see?
I want to see Dempsey not being forced to shoulder the entire burden for the offense and coming on as a substitute in the second half, rather than starting.
I want to see Maurice Edu played as the deepest midfielder, with Danny Williams and Jose Torres playing just in front – Williams being tasked with shuttling up and down the field, staying in motion and helping the defense and Torres spreading the ball around from a midfield position and also taking positions to allow him to be outlet to receive a pass and keep possession with other players are under pressure. I also want to see what Joe Corona can do by putting him on in the second half (probably for Torres, if we’re leading; instead of Williams or Edu if we’re not).
I want to see our three attackers bring some width and give our main strike, Jozy Altidore, some service by some combination of playing Hercules Gomez (and asking him to play wide, but knowing he’ll cut in and use his movement to create space for Altidore) and/or Graham Zusi (who will drift centrally and act more like a playmaker, but without the burden of being asked to play as a trequartista) and/or Brek Shea (to be a more traditional wide player, using speed, acceleration, and crossing ability to torment defenses).
Speaking of Graham Zusi, he’s been amazing for Kansas City in MLS and Klinsmann needs to give him a solid run out and see what he can do. He did a decent job for us in a friendly; some nerves, but that’s to be expected.
Of course, I’d rather not be having to do any of this in what is very nearly a must-win match, but the team is low on options. We could do a 4-4-2 with Shea on the left and a either a half fit and probably tired Dempsey on the right, but the options for substitutions are limited and would probably require changing formations half way through the game. Not ideal.
Oh, and finally, I want to see a g-d damn win!
Can I just admit it? Melmoth is a slog. I bought this book for my Nook at least two years ago and I’m just now finishing it.
A late period gothic novel (which is the say, the 1820s – well after the gothic novel’s Radcliffe fueled heyday of the 1790s), has the anti-clerical bias of the form, but without the intricacy of Radcliffe’s best novels or the over the top salaciousness of Lewis’ Monk.
I think The Monk is the best comparison, or rather it is what Charles Maturin is attempting to re-create in Melmoth the Wanderer. But The Monk kind of killed off the form by taking it nearly as far as it go (a priest rapes his sister at the suggestion of the Devil; Lewis didn’t hold back much).
This has the supernatural elements of Lewis (which Radcliffe famously eschewed), but lacks his lushly, filthily erotic sense of elan.
To give a quick overview: there is a sort of Wandering Jew character, except he’s not Jewish and he’s an instrument of diabolic temptation. His name is Melmoth. There’s also the Melmoth family in Ireland and it’s sole heir who sees a painting of this other Melmoth and maybe sees that other Meltmoth in person. And then there’s the Spanish dude who shipwrecks on the Irish shore after escaping from a monastery and the Inquisition (all of which occurred because of some incredibly evil yet also incredibly over complicated and poorly thought out plan by the confessor of this Spanish dude’s parents). And then there’s the story within the story found by said Spanish dude about how Melmoth finds a beautiful shipwrecked girl who is innocent and pure, who then gets found by her real parents and discovers that the Catholic Church is bad (unlike the pure spirituality in her heart) – oh, and they fall in love, too, and run off to get married.
Anyway…
I don’t mind the complications and permutations – I love Almodovar films, after all – but it just lacks… I don’t know. Something. If you’re going to write something nearly six hundred pages and not put any sex in it, you need to do something to make it pop. Maturin doesn’t make it pop. But you should read The Monk. That s–t is freaky!
I know that there is a movie out there by the same name, but I’m actually talking about the A.S. Byatt novel.
Despite it’s good reviews, I resisted the novel on account of having been young (sixteen or seventeen) when it came out and it also seeming like too much of a ‘chick novel’ (I was more into The Three Musketeers and manly womanizers like Albert Camus).
I can’t even remember where I finally picked up Possession. It was somewhere ’round here and it was used. I think maybe I grabbed it from a box of free books on the sidewalk outside someone’s house. I started it, put it down, and was inspired by an NPR story to pick it back up again, though enough time had passed that I had to start over again.
The ending was necessarily anti-climatic (and the little grave digging bit seemed like a irritating action sequence that was mostly there to sloppily tie up some loose threads) after the breathless archival discoveries and literary sleuthing of the first half, but it was still marvelously put together. The distance from which the characters is interesting, with only Roland Mitchell (who is a sort of hapless hero) getting much interior description of his thoughts.
The dynamic between the characters – specifically the modern day (romantic?) leads and the Victorian (definitely) romantic leads – is interesting. The romance between the Victorian poets is certainly more fiery and more passionate than the tentative one between the contemporary literary scholars, but in each case, the female is the dominant figure in the relationship. In the Victorian case, it is because she is a simply a more powerful figure (the male poet, modeled, I gather, on Robert Browning, writes narrative poetry that deliberately sublimates his own personality into characters and historical figures). In the modern world, it is because the woman is more financially secure and, more importantly, a more prominent and (it is bluntly implied) all around better scholar. I even got the impression that she (I should give her name – the modern scholar is Maud Bailey) likes that he (Roland Mitchell) is passive and her professional inferior.
Good book. Worth reading. Worth reading again. And skip the movie. It’s okay, but only okay. And Roland Mitchell is transformed from hapless (and English) academic hack into a blonde, muscular American who manages to find at least one excuse to take his shirt off (no disrespect intended to Aaron Eckhart, an actor I have liked since the nastily mean-spirited Your Friends and Neighbors).
So, we saw The King and I at Wolf Trap on Sunday.
As you may know, I am not a huge fan of musicals (there are a few I like; none of them are Phantom or Les Mis) but live theater is always something worthwhile.
The King had a fine voice and did well with a character that will always risk tipping over into a racist caricature. Unfortunately, Anna did tip for me, with her faux (I assume) British accent being a little grating.
The story was better than I would have suspected. Or rather, the story was more difficult (in a good way) than I would have suspected. The story of the doomed lovers remains, well… doomed. Pat, happy endings are avoided in favor of something triggering more ambivalent emotions. I like that.
Tomorrow night is an important World Cup qualifier against Jamaica, to be played in Kingston, Jamaica. It’s an important game because a win or at least a draw puts us in good shape to not exactly cruise through the rest of this part of qualifying, but at least to have the freedom to try out young players and new strategies in hard fought games and not just meaningless friendlies.
So, I hope for a win.
I also hope to find a good place to watch the damn game in DC because it’s not going to be readily available on television. Any recommendations for which bar to go to? And not the Lucky Bar. That place is too crowded for me.
Mostly, I hope to see Jose Torres justify the coach’s faith in him.
The US Men’s National Team (USMNT) is fast and physical, but sometimes, it’s nice to actually keep possession of the ball for stretches of time. Michael Bradley can do that, sort of, but he’s more of a driving force than someone who can tweak the tempo of a game.
Torres is supposed to be that guy. The problem is, his role isn’t immediately obvious. He’s not a defensive midfielder – he’s not particularly strong in the tackle and doesn’t have that sixth sense for putting himself into opposition passing lanes. He also isn’t a trequartista, that final, killer pass or ghosting into the box to score the odd goal or providing a shooting threat from medium distance.
But even Klinsmann, who is more forward thinking that either of his two USMNT coaching predecessors, keeps trying to shoehorn him into the wrong role.
He’s been played on the wing, where he lacks the speed to be effective or the eye for the cross. Most recently, he was played at the top of a 4-4-2 diamond (or as the ‘1’ in a 4-3-1-2, whichever nomenclature you prefer), which isn’t his spot either because he likes to drop deeper, which leaves the forwards isolated.
The closest thing to Torres is Luka Modric (or at least the Luka Modric of the last several seasons at Spurs) and Xavi (the Xavi of Barcelona; the role he plays on the Spanish national team is a little higher up the field, closer to the forward) – which is not to say he’s remotely close to their quality. They don’t score many goals (not usually anyway; Xavi actually racked up some good scoring numbers last year) and they don’t even get many direct assists. What they do it keep possession and keep things carefully ticking.
Modric’s play especially is illuminating, playing next to a more purely defensive central midfielder, giving him freedom to sit near the center circle and play smart balls out to the wingers. Torres can do that.
On another note, I’d also like to see Freddy Adu given more chances. He is actually better for the roles that Klinsmann keeps shoehorning Torres into. He can keep possession (though he doesn’t set the tempo so well) in either a trequartista or winger role – playing the winger as more of a playmaking winger (think Sebastian Larsson or David Beckham a dozen years ago) who doesn’t burn you with speed, but with calmness and vision and a sense of when to play the ball into the strikers and when to keep it for an extra two seconds.
That title, by the way, is entirely too facile.
Nonetheless.
In this interview, the poet Reginald Dwayne Betts speaks about being in prison and screaming for someone to toss him a book and another inmate slipped him a copy of the Dudley Randall edited anthology, Black Poets. Which is the same book that I found at Biblion in Lewes, Delaware and that introduced me to the excellent poet, Frank Horne.
Of course, I encountered this book during a time in a my life I had a decent job and was walking around a wealthy, beach front enclave and was in the company of loved ones. So any comparison breaks down pretty quickly, ’cause I’ve had it pretty good, all in all.
But I’m pleased to see that book having such effects on people.
the coffee philosopher 