Was London in the seventies really cooler than Paris in the twenties?
Secret money makes the (Republican’s) world go ’round.
I’m Building My Time Machine (For Real This Time)
Researchers have found a new particle consistent with what they think to be a Higgs boson at a sensitivity level of sigma 5.
Apparently, sigma 5 is very good.
So, I’m moving proactively on this and will be advertising on Craigslist for graduates of Phoenix, Strayer, Devry, and ITT Tech to build a time machine in my garage. Wages will comply with DC living wage laws.
‘Why Read The Classics?’ Part I
First, read this essay by Italo Calvino entitled, Why Read the Classics?
I’ll give you time to do that and we’ll pick this up tomorrow.
Thursday Morning Staff Meeting – Gothic Panopticons
Ron Silliman muses about the various California poetry ‘scenes.’DC United 3, Montreal Impact 0 (Saturday, June 30)
I confess, I haven’t been to many DC United games this year, but on Saturday night, I took the neighbor’s daughter (a goalie with her youth team) to meet with some friends from work and watch the game.
For much of the game, at least the first half, the scoreline flattered to deceive.
Montreal was significantly better in the midfield and had significantly more possession. For the entire first half and part of the second half, the only DC players who say much of the ball were our two centerbacks. They played high and with the Montreal midfield pressing, the ball kept coming back to them. Dwayne DeRosario made some creative moves – flicks and back heels – but no one picked up on them, so the ball was just lost. He should have seen earlier that the forwards weren’t on his wavelength and gone for simpler moves focused on keeping the ball.
The first goal was against the run of play and was not generated by DC getting its act together, but rather by a brilliant jinking run by Chris Pontius (see the video above). Pontius played at forward in college and was converted to an outside midfielder in his first few seasons with DC but now he’s back up top and playing fantastic.
In the second half, we still weren’t keeping possession very well, but with both of Montreal’s star strikers, former Italian internationals Bernardo Corradi and Marco Di Vaio (I was disappointed that Di Vaio didn’t get any minutes) out, they lacked the power and skill to take advantage of the midfield dominance.
DC got two late goals. The first was by reliable fullback Robbie Russell, but the real story was the brilliant free kick from Branco Boskovic to get the assist. The ball was at just the right height and fast, perfect for Russell to slightly redirect into goal. The comparison to Montreal’s corner kicks was illuminating: whereas this one stayed too low for the goalie to risk coming out for it, Montreal’s service into the box was consistently too high, just lumping high arced balls in and hoping DC goalie Bill Hamid couldn’t handle it.
The other story from that was this: that’s all that Boskovic did. He was invisible and you have to think that this contributed to Montreal’s ability to dominate the midfield. If they’d had a predatory striker on the field, this game could have been a lot different.
The final goal game off of late sub, Hamdi Salihi. He might not be worth the money he’s paid, but he can knock in the goals. After some ugly movement around the Impact 18 yard box, he started a nice move and then slipped in front of goal to receive the final pass of the move he started and bury it.
Oh, a special shout out to Nick DeLeon: my neighbor’s little girl thinks you are an awesome player (I and I agree after watching you help create Salihi’s goal).
Midweek Staff Meeting – New Sci Fi
Happy Birthday, Franz Kafka
Kafka was born on this day in 1883.
On a semi-related note, do you know that when Grandpa Coffee Philosopher was young, MTV used to show music videos? It’s true. They also used to do these little PSA type things that promoted reading literature. And not just Dickens, but also Delta of Venus by erotic novelist Anaïs Nin. These PSAs were called ‘Feed Your Head.’
Here’s one of Aidan Quinn reading from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
Tuesday Morning Staff Meeting – The Wit & Wisdom Of Woolf
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was as dark as his famous Scream is what this article seems to be saying.
Beyond the ridiculous overuse of The Scream (I dated a girl who, in addition to suffering from a chronic tendency towards infidelity, also owned and displayed a three foot inflatable copy of the titular screamer, which should have been some sort of signal, but to be frank, I was in college and she was a delightfully proportioned c-cup), I do have a certain affection for him.
Firstly, I am unduly proud of some praise I received from the professor of my one art history course in college. The midterm consisted simply of a series of slides of art works we hadn’t studied and we were to write a paragraph explaining who we thought was the responsible artists and why. I was writing my answer for one of the slides and had written a goodly length bit, when, with time running out, I suddenly wrote something like, ‘Scratch that – I have a gut feeling this a Munch.’ I was correct and the professor read my answer aloud in a later class as an example of the need to rely on instinct and ‘gut’ as well as research when studying art. For some reason, I’m still inordinately proud of that, some twenty years later.
Finally, when I lived in Atlanta, I was just a few blocks away from the High Museum of Art and was also a member. They had a beautiful exhibit of the later works of Munch, titled ‘Munch: After The Scream.’ Munch would sometimes leave his painting outside deliberately, so that the damage and changes wrought on it from the elements, particularly the snow, would become part of the work. That struck me – it reminded me of the opening of Lawrence Durrell’s Balthazar when the narrator praises a baby for its destruction of pages from the narrator’s book as being an honest form of editing.
the coffee philosopher 