“I love America. I hope it remains a democracy, not a socialist society. ... If you look at spreading the wealth, that’s honestly right out of Karl Marx’s mouth,” Wurzelbacher said.

“No one can debate that. That’s not my opinion. That’s fact.”

Of course..."Joe the Plumber is named Sam, isn’t actually a plumber, doesn’t have any plan to buy any business, makes nowhere near 250k a year, and would actually get a tax cut under Obama." (Balloon Juice)

Dear God, make it stop. Make it stop. Please, make it stop.

Edit: here's another ordinary Joe. Thank God.

Make sure your touch-screen voting machine is properly calibrated, y'all.

Labels: and you wonder why we're anxious, election

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone...She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else."

It's the dreaded, delightful D word! Coming out of the McCain camp!

Oh NO you di'nt!

Oh yes they did.

Tee hee.

Labels: sarah palin, the circular firing squad

What will high schoolers do now?

This is right there with the extinction of the telegraph two years ago in the "WTF? I thought that died out years ago" category.

I don't know if this vox pop (shriex pop?) clip from a McCain rally is more hilarious, alarming or saddening. Probably all three.

Oh my.

Labels: sarah palin, zone blitz

I've done little to hide my all-around enmity for Red Bull - the disgusting, unhealthy product meant for unhealthy living, the glib and obnoxious global branding done via the co-opting of sports and cultural enthusiasts, the shallow, nebulous "philosophy" which really isn't anything at all.

Of course, I despise what they did to my team - I think I've said that once or twice now. That may be a done issue, but I can't stop despising their creeping over the sports landscape as a whole, buying up third-rate teams in third-rate leagues, tagging them like subway cars in mid-80s Manhattan and piloting them into in a groove of mediocrity, while desperate, craven fans carry their water for them (because god knows, people on the inside probably know better than to drink that corrosive shit they purvey.)

It's brilliant! It's stomach-turning anti-culture. No doctrinaire anti-capitalist or anti-postmodernist am I, not by a long shot, but in this enterprise you have the worst extreme of postmodern capitalism, run amok; a company that makes billions by producing nothing, nothing but image. The drink is of no real consequence. They may as well be selling sand or peas or feathers in a can. The drink, you might say, doesn't even exist. (Get out of my head, Baudrillard.)

I think we can all agree that what's bad for RB is good for fans of sports worldwide. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I'd sooner have Halliburton owning my team. Sure, they might be responsible for the deaths of thousands, but when it comes right down to it, at least they make something. The same can't be said for our Austrian overlords.

Anyway, as much as I feel a twinge of sadness for Jeff Parke and Jon Conway (assuming, as we will right now, that their actions were unintentional) the news that they've both been banned for 10 MLS games for banned PEDs infuses me with a sense of irony that truly vitalizes my body and mind.

To use the old saw, you really can't make this stuff up.

But who comes out of this sorry spectacle looking most like total idiots?

On one level - that is, on the ethical level - the answer is easy. It's MLS. Because you really can't expect us to take the league seriously, when they say that over-the-counter performance enhancers of doubtful provenance and unknown, potentially dangerous consequences are BAD things that get you SUSPENDED!

Except when over-the-counter performance enhancers of doubtful provenance and unknown, occasionally deadly consequences are GREAT things that the league wants to work with, take money from, and promote. Then it's all good. Carry on.

One feels that there is more to this episode than meets the eye, but I've yet to put my finger on what that is.

Labels: drug scandal, Metro, MLS

“People do not put mercury in your car to improve your health.”

Yes. Quite.

Labels: quotes

I wait, not with breathless anticipation, but mild curiosity for the clock to strike five today. That will mark the supposed deadline for the supposed application process to become Major League Soccer's supposed 17th and 18th franchises (you need to be put a "supposed" before most things MLS does. A Keatsian enterprise, their rules are writ on water, and Dubuque or Waterbury could waltz in with a billionaire next week and waltz out with a team.)

With Philly and Seattle already onboard for the next couple seasons, and up to 8 cities vying for the next two spots, expansion has become the MLS geek's white-hot topic.
More Canadian teams!
No more Canadian teams!
------ is a Soccer City, which deserves a team above all others!
Etc.

It's a bit tiresome once you've heard the arguments the first thirty times, and completely, totally ineffectual on top of that. As Bill Archer notes in the Bigsoccer blogs.

As for me, over the next couple hours I'll be waiting to see if pro club soccer - in its charmingly hinky MLS form - has a shot at returning to the NYC area after a five-year absence, likely in the form of a new club run by the NY Mets.

I would like that.

IF it's the picture of best-practices among MLS organizations; avoiding the missteps of teams past and present, taking full advantage of where it is - one of the greatest soccer areas in the world.
IF it's an organization with symbolism and integrity of its own, not just a means to cross-promote a baseball team, a foreign team, or some crappy product.
IF it aims to represent the city and the area in some meaningful, inclusive way.
And IF the soda ad in NJ hasn't already run its course by then.

I've been an MLS fan, observer and critic to varying degrees over the past 13 years, a decade of that spent supporting the late, not-so-great Metros. It was a open-top bus tour of hell in a handbasket. Yet it was great fun, shared with some great people, and I cherish a lot of memories from that time.

A few years back, I was anxious to seize some of the fame and fortune that comes with academically-inclined niche sports blogging. I was also enamored with how a team so dysfunctional, forgotten and pathetically misshapen could still be funny, galvanizing and occasionally meaningful. I started The Metrologist. Impeccable sense of timing I had there. Within months the taurine takeover had occurred. With the hijacking of the name and identity, all the shaky, make-believe pretense of it being a "club" was obliterated. And then my little baby blog became the strangest of all creatures - a fan blog whose constant underlying assertion was that my team had to lose, had to fail, had to collapse for it to be saved. That was my stance.

It still is. It just isn't very much fun to write about, not for very long, anyway.

Thus the Metrologist, sadly, has gone by the wayside. The lack of posts in a year should have told you that. I've got one more superbly self-indulgent yet useful and informative M'gist effort left in me, and I'll take care of that in the coming days.

Also diminished, my appetite for dissertating on the message boards. Having said my piece too many times, having grown enough wisdom and lost the time to skirmish around and around and around with people speaking a fundamentally different language, I stay out of the mire now. Mostly. There isn't much else for me to say now besides this; RB out, or NYC2 in. Whichever comes first. That's where you'll find me. And here, of course. Where I find it hard to keep my mouth shut.

So we wait, curious but not exactly hopeful. Because what happens next, and what happens in the years to come, is going to be mostly out of our hands. Why get agitated? Either we get a couple more months of waiting, wondering and reading the tea leaves before another deadline day, or we go back to our regularly scheduled program of not caring much what the hell happens in the world of MLS. Along with most of the area and most of the country. There isn't much in between. In the meantime we hold on to what money we're lucky to have now, spend it on teams and entities that, however imperfect, take seriously the idea that as soccer clubs they mean culture, locality, membership and tradition.

In the meantime, here's just a couple of my favorite Metrologist posts, and my post here, written shortly after MLS swapped the likes of its diehards for a joking experiment.

Labels: Metro, MLS, NYC2, soccer

...on Virtua Striker 2.



Via Steven Goff, here's your goal of the weekend. I get dizzy just watching it.

Labels: goals

Desperate people are getting stupid, or stupid people are getting desperate.

Should've listened to Suze Orman before picking out that land yacht with the $800 a month payments, I guess.

Labels: burn baby burn, financial judgment or lack of

It's Ironman World Championships weekend in Kona, Hawaii, or "The Ironman," as a lot of people seem to think of it. That's not quite right, of course; the Hawaii race is only the last of the 20+ Ironman-branded long-distance races that go on around the world each year, the championship event, that you (mostly) don't buy, but qualify your way into. Nevertheless it is the most celebrated, the most arduous (or so I'm given to believe), and the most dramatic. It's the Super Bowl of our sport, except that anyone has a shot at getting on the field.

I've been doing triathlons for a little over two years now, beginning with sprints, moving into Olympic distance, and finishing off this summer with a 70.3 half-iron (more to come on that in the next couple days.)
In fact, I even started a blog about my endeavors way back when, but never really kept that up, so I'm rolling that effort into this one. Within a lot less than two years I've become a real bore about it, too, going on to any poor soul who'll listen about all the little ways triathlon has changed my life for the better. How it's a matter of consistency and discipline, not the test of pain tolerance and superhuman athleticism people think it is. And other such things that probably make others want to slap me silly.

I'll be checking in on the race from time to time tomorrow, via the live feed at the official website. That's your sign that I'm a full-blown geek now; I'm planning to spend some - even a little bit - of a beautiful autumn Saturday watching people swim. And bike...and bike...and bike..for 112 miles. And then run on for another 26. Unless you're a triathlete or are attached to someone who is, tri can be a pretty lackluster spectator sport. That's just my personal opinion, one that might not be shared by the private equity types that just bought Ironman's parent company. Still, it's very cool that you can tune into the race in real-time for free.

Alternatively, wait a month or so and you've got NBC's soft-focus, lachrymose, triumphant presentation that annually grabs a few Emmys. It's hard for me not to tear up while watching it. Even harder to fight the feeling that, against all reason, against even my desire (to do IM, I have none right now), I'll be pushing to get to Kona someday.

Earlier this week, the WSJ profiled A.C. Morgan a plane crash survivor who'll be competing in Kona for the first time, some years after his body was burnt and broken in a plane crash. There's a zillion stories like this every year, and they seldom fail to impress. You know what else impresses, almost as much as it disturbs me? That amateurs find ways to squeeze 20-30 hours of training in on top of a full time job (and I doubt very much that co-managing U.S. equity sales trading is a 9-5, 40 hour per week job).

Trigeeks (and I use the term affectionately) like the folks at Slowtwitch will bristle because he was handed a sponsor spot, rather than having to qualify (the primary route to Kona) or even winning a lottery spot. And I'm a little put off by the fact that a i-bank executive scored a free Trek - I don't think he would have missed the three grand, personally. Then you remember the guy survived getting mangled in a freakin' plane crash, and I suppose a free bike for Kona is fair enough.

So who to cheer for?
Just about anyone, I say. Most of these pro guys and girls seem to be remarkably cool and decent, if intense people. Unlike the real hardcore, who back an athlete based on home country or bike brand or that they know someone who knows someone who trains with him, I haven't got a favorite here.

That said, like just about any weekend warrior who caught last year's NBC show, I've got nothing but love - and a cheer - for Belgian pro Rutger Beke in tomorrow's race. Hobbled by an injury partway through the 2007 race, Beke gamely walked the marathon and finished around 900th place rather than taking the incomplete (which many a pro would have done.) The cameras caught him shuffling slowly alongside the age-groupers, and he explained that none of the people who paid their own way were thinking of giving up, that it was only in the spirit of the race that he finish.

Total class there. You go Rutger.





For my money, the mass (1800-strong) swim starts at Ironman races, just as the sun rises over the water are among the most stirring, beautiful, wild images in all of sports.

Labels: Ironman, Kona, triathlon

And ridiculous.
Both words fit Zlatan.

Labels: goals, Youtube, Zlatan

Just a few of the things The Economist doesn't foresee coming during our next spin around the sun. At its new blog, The World In 2009.

Labels: the economist, the future

While dinner simmers and talking heads blabber in anticipation of tonight's show, behold! How the McCain/Palin campaign has steamed headlong towards moral bankruptcy, in 4 minutes and 21 seconds. It ain't a pretty sight, but it's got a beat and you can dance to it.

Labels: lies, politics, video

I knew Wall Street was collapsing and all, but that was quick. Well, might as well do something with all that land, right?

Labels: amber waves of south street seaport, NYC

"Literature has to be peace research." - Christa Wolf

I've been reading quite a bit of Christa Wolf lately.

Labels: Christa Wolf, literature, quotes

"I want to thank you for the lovely things you wrote about me and for reminding me of what happened at Miami airport. I’m happy I could help back then, and I’m delighted to hear that your daughter is happy in Norway. Please send her my best wishes. Sincerely, Barack Obama, United States senator".

Labels: karma, obama

I got a call this afternoon from a friendly Obama volunteer back in Ohio (I spent a couple damp, drizzly hours leafletting for Barack during the Democratic primary there.) Wanted to know if I was up for doing a little more groundwork in the upcoming weeks. And I am. I've been meaning to make that call. But then, there are a lot of things I mean to do and never get around to doing, only to kick myself over the next year. Or eight.

I'm not a terribly political person, I used to think. Not the sort to volunteer, to to put the bumper stickers and lawn signs out, to buttonhole people or lean on them to vote this way or that, to proselytize in any way. It's just not me, being my parents' kid.

My parents, after all, are pretty solid middle-of-the-road suburban folks, without too many political pretensions. No more news junkies or ideological activists than they are ignorant dupes, they follow the news a bit, and turn up at the local middle school on Nov. 5 to pull their levers, and that's about it. It's them I think of when I imagine the center in this country, not this moronic Joe Sixpack caricature.

Yet I can't tell you much about who they've voted for in my lifetime. Here and there, I've heard a little bit about those they can't or couldn't stand, for god knows what reason; like Hillary (Mom), Nixon (Dad.) For them, for my father especially, much politics seem to be about antipathy as advocacy, as much about the gut feeling you get from a candidate as what they say or do. After all, Dad is not a wonk. He is a white, northeastern Catholic centrist, of a generation that preceded the baby boom by a couple years and shares so little with it, culturally. A veteran, who served abroad in the early 60s - he'd have been among the first vaporized if the Russians shot their load and roared through the Fulda Gap - who found a good, comfortable middle-class life, along with so many others like him, in the latter half of 20th century America. Now he's a small businessman whose main concern is trying to keep things going for him and his. I can't vouch for him caring much about Bush II, but I know that Kerry, like Gore before him, turned him off.

I don't get home to see them much anymore, so we tend to make a vacation of it when I do. These trips involve driving. Driving involves talking, and this involves trouble. Because I am now a political person, and it has been a long time since we've talked politics - my father and I, especially - without it ending uneasily, or flat-out badly. So we try to avoid the subject.

We speak different languages. We see different things. In that sense we come from very different places. I know exactly when whatever latent political interest I had was activated, along with much of this generation - in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. It was incomprehensible to him that I would go protest in Manhattan. Not incomprehensible that the war might be wrong, or that we might be lied to. But that I would go. "My country, right or wrong" and all that, as a conditioned response.

I talked to my father just before Thursday evening's spectacular, and I was amazed. Amazed because he was openly, vocally repelled by the underqualified, overweening Sarah Palin. Moreover, he put that directly on John McCain and his judgment. He offered how he once liked McCain, but that's all gone now. He concurred with my feeling that Palin represents the worst mix of unlikeability, smugness and lack of fitness for the job. Of course, the folksy bullshit, the "back in Alaska"/"out there on the elite East Coast" false-dichotomizing and that grating accent cut no ice at all with either one of them. East coast elites that they are.

More to point of the issues, my mother, a human resources pro, is absolutely appalled - both personally and professionally - at the proposed McCain health care package, which she naturally understands much better than I do. A $5000 tax credit for families? she asks, as if they're really serious about that. She knows that won't cover six months worth of coverage for her and my father. And they are healthy! She imagines that those who are healthy enough to do so might just pocket the five grand, bringing on an eventual systemic collapse. It won't just not work, it'll be a raging disaster.

It's a strange time, when my parents are bending my ear about politics, and it ends with a happy, almost giddy accord between all of us. How we see only one way out of this now. It's not like their turning dark blue will make much difference - not in Connecticut. But I'd like to think, and I do think, that this conversation (and conversion) is going on throughout the country lately.

Labels: family, obama, politics

The sub-sub genre of sports-related Downfall parodies on Youtube. (The subtitles, if nothing else, probably aren't safe for work. And none of it's safe for your sensibilities if you can't stomach the thought of laughing at Hitler)

Brett Favre: "I feel I've been t-bagged by this son of a bitch backstabber."
Mike Ashley sells Newcastle: "But oh no, those jobless twats had to show up at St. James with the misspelled banners, didn't they?"
Celtics beat Lakers: "And to make things worse...it was Pierce."
Texas Rangers brass review their 2008 pitching staff: "He even wrote on our message boards."

Labels: downfall, funny, Youtube

Bluegrass legend Dr. Ralph Stanley for Barack Obama. @ TPM.

Labels: appalachia, obama

Craigslist delivers again.

Labels: sarah palin porn

I haven't forgotten about you.
Though it has been a long time.

I just hadn't really planned on having my computer stolen, my arm broken, my arm-bone bolted back together, my time as a student brought to a close, my stuff moved, my new job started, my life re-started as-it-were over the past ten months.

Or else I was really, really lazy. Embarrassingly so. What kind of slacker can't even finish a year-end top ten songs list? By the time February started, I didn't want to show myself here for that reason alone. (I've been sitting on the last song all that time. Maybe next post.)

Yet here I am again.
A year ago tomorrow (or today, by the time I post this) it was my birthday. I woke up to a flurry of facebook messages from friends around the world and felt immensely grateful for all of them. I promised myself to work harder at taking care of those connections, the wealth of my life. I also told myself I'd post here everyday. Obviously, the second thing didn't exactly work out.

I try again.

I've got enough to say, especially about things I'm not qualified to talk about. And my ego's rampant enough to make me believe that someone cares if I speak up anyway, so I've had trying again in mind for a while. Thought of starting fresh and letting this effort fade into the bone-littered miasma of abandoned blogs. I can find another arch, bookish reference to make a title out of, you know. But then I was a little amazed when I realized I've been writing in this thing for four years. A lot of it's been ordinary, and some of it just cringeworthy. On the odd day, I'm actually gladdened and moved by what I wrote. (I'll let you go back and decide what's what.) So here we go again. Here.

Expect more of the same of whatever it is I've done in the past - some music, some culture, some politics, some observation, some photos, some silliness. Expect some things leaching over from other sites I'd started with varying degrees of success, and am winding up as of now - on soccer, and on triathlon. Two of my many interests. I'm going to try them all together here. The only concept holding it all together is that I don't have a concept.

For your immediate enjoyment - environmentally-sustainable amusement, Indian-style. The human-powered Ferris wheel.

Labels: Youtube