* Brawls mar conclusion of SuperLiga semifinals
* Red Cards Fly as Revolution Advance to Final
* Mexican Clubs are Sore Losers
* Melee mars excellent win for Revs

So we have the SuperLiga semifinals contested between two MLS teams and two Mexican teams. The Mexican teams both lose, setting up an all-American final, and the final minutes of the two games are filled with brutal fouls, cheap shots, and red cards for blows struck in the melee after the final whistle.

To add to the body of evidence, I would remind you of Oswaldo Sanchez’s attempted trip on Eddie Johnson when he’s celebrating a goal, for Christ’s sake, and I wish I could find a YouTube video of Mexico kicking seven colors of @#$! out of Cobi Jones in the dying minutes of their 2-0 loss to the USA in 2002 World Cup.

Someone could put together a heavy dossier of Mexican poor sportsmanship when playing against the US. Yes, it probably sucks to see their northern neighbor finally get a foothold in the sport but give me a break. Shouldn’t someone from the sport’s governing body check this out and give some kind of “no nonsense” warning? I mean, of course I’m heavily biased in this particular rivalry, but the cheap shots and violence really is a one-way street.

And yes, of course I know I’m being naive. But congrats to both the New England Revs and the Houston Dynamo, teams who managed to advance to the finals of the tournament against Mexican teams who play their star players more than the MLS teams’ starting line ups.

Current Mood: Can’t We All Just Get Along? |

I finished the first round of revisions to my novel Kingdoms of Glass and Steel yesterday, bringing the overall word count up about 13K words, from 81,333 to 94,429. Honestly, I underestimated how long revisions would take and I hope round three (which yes, is totally necessary) doesn’t take as long. I think I have the plot arc pretty well nailed down now and I have asked my reading group to point out any areas where they wanted scenes extended, especially when it comes to getting in the main character’s head.

My overall feeling? I think it’s okay, actually. There are plenty of twists and turns and the plot is always moving (or perhaps rocketing) forward, so I think it would keep a body reading. My only question is whether it’s too plot-driven, but I’ll let my reading group be the judges of that. I find that it’s much easier to let the spirit take you where it will when writing a novel, but whether that translates into salability, who knows? Yet we shall see…

I’m finishing Blood Meridian today and it’s just as good, if not better, than the first time. A part of me wants to start it over and read the whole thing through again just because I like it so much, but I’m not going to do that.

I’m wondering, however, how Cormac McCarthy votes. Googling for his political affiliation results in nothing. My guess would be some strain of libertarianism, but I’m not sure—individual liberty turns pretty friggin’ ugly in Blood Meridian, for instance. In researching this question, I stumbled across some libertarian interpretations of No Country For Old Men that point out that the drug war that’s at the core of the story can only come about by governments making drugs illegal, and that the police (as representatives of the state) are unable to do anything about it. And then there’s the passage where the sheriff relates a story about sitting next to a woman at some event dinner going on about “right wing this and right wing that” and him responding that the world started to go down the tubes once young people stopped using sir or ma’am.

It’s an interesting interpretation, but ultimately makes the mistake of thinking McCarthy the author is on the same political side as the folksy sheriff who is totally out of his league against a force of nature like Chigurh. It seems to me that McCarthy is writing above politics and instead delves into the heart of human nature, which he sees as black and mean. We paper over that black heart with morals and social graces of our own invention (as opposed to necessary truths about the human condition) but ultimately, violence is at our very core. Characters who embrace this notion like Chigurh and the judge are alive at the end of their respective books, whereas those who act morally wind up dead. In my reading, this is neither right nor wrong (nor right nor left in the political arena) but rather it just is, and that to me is the ugly truth McCarthy wants to force readers to look at.

This doesn’t take into account The Border Trilogy, but again I would have to say that a strong political reading doesn’t come naturally to these books, which I would guess is part of the point. Early westerns certainly espouse what I would consider a libertarian ethic, but in The Border Trilogy McCarthy is both critiquing and criticizing this conception of the American West as an idealized space of individual freedom (an idea that of course is also at the center of Blood Meridian). And I’ve read a few interesting essays on how McCarthy’s fiction is a critique of capitalist expansion, where life is little more than a series of forced commodity exchanges that are rarely negotiated on equal footing between the two parties and hence always turns out bad for one side, an argument that I find compelling considering the strong evidence presented in both The Border Trilogy and Blood Meridian. Just because I buy the argument doesn’t mean that I think McCarthy is a Marxist though.

The complexity of McCarthy’s work makes me not only want to reread his books, but to also read about his books and compare and contrast different interpretations and positions. The fact that his books spawn so many solid yet contradictory arguments would be one of the reasons why he can be called the best living American writer with a straight face. That may be debatable but when it comes to McCarthy, it seems like most things are.

Current Mood: Pensive |
Currently Listening To - The Hold Steady - “Stay Positive”

In response to yesterday’s post, buddy John League writes:

Granted, you don’t want someone in your side who really doesn’t want to be there, but come on. This is ridiculous. If players refuse to honor long-term contracts, why should they be offered to them? (I know why, but, as a devil’s advocate, I think that’s where this argument ultimately points.)

I wrote such a long-winded reply that I thought I would use it as a post instead:

My guess is that this is a specifically European phenomenon due to the labor agreements put in place by the EU. The big one of course is the 1995 Bosman ruling, which meant teams lost the right to the player once his contract expired, known here as free agency. This has led to greater fluidity of player movement, since clubs pay out a huge fee to sign a player can only recoup some of that money if the player leaves the club before the end of his contract. That’s why people get uptight when players stall on signing extended contracts, like Judas Sol Campbell, only to leave on a free when their contract expires.

But that doesn’t directly answer your question, now does it? The Bosman ruling tipped the power heavily in favor of the player around the same time Europe’s biggest clubs started to cash in on their global market share, launching themselves into an entirely different financial category. Notice how you never hear of a tapping up scandal involving West Ham and Blackburn, for instance.

Certain massive clubs have a knack of expressing interest in certain players. The player gets the idea in his head that “I have always wanted to play for _____ _____” and then slaps down a transfer request. Around this time, it’s totally legal for the big club to ask for permission to speak with the player, which can be denied, but then there’s the media’s role in keeping the story going and the negotiations practically happen in the papers. Like a wildfire, once it starts, it’s difficult to stop and impossible to control.

Man Ure’s open courting of Berbatov, Liverpool’s courting of Keane and Barry, and Real’s courting of Ronaldo all fall into this category. The reason why the last one has gotten so much attention is because it’s the only case where the player is not moving from a team that has no chance at the title and is not playing in the Champs League. It’s very easy for Berba, Keano, and Barry to say to their manager, “This is a chance for me to win titles and play Champions League football, which is what I need for my career,” and, truthfully, there’s not much of a comeback for the club. It puts the smaller clubs in the position of both stunting a promising player’s career and keeping someone who doesn’t want to be there, when they can sell and cash in. Note how this keeps the big clubs big and the other club the same size. Even if they spend the money wisely on more up-and-coming players, what prevents this from happening again with new players?

But the biggest stink comes when players want away from a club who is already regularly challenging for trophies. The biggest transfer sagas of recent memory were Gallas from Ars*nal to Chelski, CAshley Cole going the other way, Henry to Barca, Lamps to Inter, and maybe Becks from Man Ure to Real Madrid (although Ferguson wanted rid of him so that one probably doesn’t fit). And of course Ronaldo, currently the best player in the world wanting away from the reigning English and European Champions, tops them all. The difference in these cases is that the player’s case for wanting away is weakened (unless it’s allegedly for family reasons, or reuniting with a manager, or wanting a new challenge—or of course bags and bags of money) and the selling clubs really don’t need the cash that badly. So it quickly reaches an impasse, and it seems in most cases that the best the club can do is get the player to commit to one more year.

As far as long-term contracts go, I think they exist primarily because that inflates the player’s value. If I sign you to a £13 billion contract over five years, any club that comes sniffing around has to pay that and more. Short-term contracts land you in Bosman trouble year after year, meaning the player can walk if he doesn’t sign an extension. That’s why so many players over the age of 30 only get 1-2 year deals, because there are few players who can continue to produce regularly at that age without getting injured.

So in general, contracts are a sham for both clubs and players. Maybe it’s better to think of them as explanations of current working conditions and, if you’re more cynical, price tags.

Tottenham looks set to lose Dimitar Berbatov to Man Ure after having already lost striker Robbie Keane to Liverpool. There’s plenty being said about the Big Clubs in Europe “tapping up” players, basically showing interest in them in the media and therefore getting the player all excited about a transfer. It’s an ugly business because the rich clubs are playing in the big tournaments that any player in his right mind would want to compete in, but this tactic is more of the rich getting richer while everyone else stays where they’re at. Spurs cannot seriously mount a charge on the top four when Man Ure keeps buying their stand-out players—Michael Carrick a couple years ago and Berbatov now.

My second-favorite team in England is probably Liverpool, partially because of their history but mostly because of their Spanish contingent. I have to say that this transfer season has revealed the true colors of both Rafa and Sir Rednose: Rafa is paying too much for players who may well not pan out, and Man Ure is buying pure quality. I can’t believe that Gareth Barry (if the deal ever goes through) is really the midfield answer for Liverpool, and with Robbie Keane they’ve certainly bought industry and talent, but I’m not sure he’s going to be the boost up top the team requires. And did you notice that they paid £19 million for him? Erm, Fernando Torres, one of the classiest strikers on the planet, cost around £20 million. Look, Robbie Keane is a good striker but I’m not sure he’s worth paying through the nose for.

The overhauled Chelski should be interesting, regardless of whether Lampard goes or stays. Deco is a handy little player to have around and it will be fascinating to see who comes and goes in the couple weeks since you can’t believe things are done yet.

Spurs, of course, have made some signings that could either be great or awful. I’ve seen Giovanni Dos Santos play a couple times and the kid is incredible, but Mexicans and the Premier League tend not to mesh well. And Luka Modrić? Who knows, really. But as they have shown the door to Berbatov, Keane, Robinson, Chimbonda, and Tainio, you’ve got to think they’ve got a lot of buying still to do. David Bentley would be more than welcome (even if he’s an ex-Ars*) but the bigger questions are at the front and back. But Juande Ramos surely knows what he’s doing…right?

Anyone who thinks Man Ure is an average squad that was carried by Ronaldo last year needs to get their heads checked. If they get Berbatov—and I think they will—then that adds a new dimension to their attack, and if Nani and Anderson settle, then you have to think that they’re not going to drop that much should Ronaldo leave.

For Real Madrid, I’m not sure Ronaldo’s the player they need either. Yes, they’ve won back-to-back championships, but they haven’t done it with the wide-open attacking style that Calderón wants so badly. Real has seemed like a very fragile team these last couple years, and I don’t think a flashy winger is what the squad needs to settle. But only time will tell…

Current Mood: Fine |
Currently Listening To - Beck - “Modern Guilt”

Well, the backpacking trip was an abject, unmitigated failure although the weekend was salvaged. The plan was to do around 30 miles of the Ice Age Trail, the fear was that the mosquitoes would be really bad and dampen the fun. Earlier in the week, I emailed three representatives of the IAT chapters to get a scouting report on trail conditions and possible campsites and I only got one response. It was “The mosquitoes are bad but the horse flies are worse. They swarm when you enter the woods. Good luck.”

Now look, some might claim that we were just plain stupid to even try. But reliable information on the IAT is dodgy at best as it is all volunteer run, and I’ve been told on other occasions that bugs are intolerable when in reality they turned out to be an annoyance that could be easily escaped or alleviated by a breeze. So I knew we would encounter bugs, I figured they would be bad, but other than that we were pretty much flying blind and crossing our fingers. However, had I been the representative of the IAT for those particular sections, I would have stressed the below critical points:

#1 - That section of trail tends to be low, wet, and free from any breeze, making it a virtual bug heaven.

#2 - Deep Woods Off! does nothing to deter the insects and even full-body mosquito suits leave your hands exposed, and larger deer flies can bite through the mesh anyway.

So even though the forest is quite pretty, you can’t even really stop to admire the view. Then add to this that in our hurrying we got off the trail. Now this might seem like a novice mistake but you should understand that the IAT intersects with well-defined snowshoe trails, ATV trails, logging trails, and other hiking trails that are not the IAT. Our topo maps didn’t have the IAT trail on it and we were following my best-guess freehand trail (the thick red line below).

So even with the GPS on tracking our steps (the blue dots) we were following a trail suspiciously similar to the IAT, but we knew it wasn’t it because we were too far south, too near the small lake. Compare this with the non-topo map from the IAT atlas and that becomes clear:

The freehand route is really only supposed to give an idea of where the trail goes but as you can see, the shape of our trail is pretty damn close to what the actual trail should have looked like. The other major problem is that when you’re in a densely wooded area, there are no major topographic features from which you can get a bearing.

Instead of doubling back to find the trail, we busted down a logging trail to a road and then took the county highway north (bottom left corner in the above topo) to pick up the trail where it intersected the road. See on the topo, that white area? That means it should be relatively open and those broad white spaces between the red lines indicate that it would be fairly flat—or at least flatter than the hilly sections. Only then do we discover critical point #3:

#3 - Not only are there few dry or level place that might have a breeze for good camping, the IAT guide fails to mention mention that these viable places are private and closed to camping.

Consider the lighting of the picture as well. We reconnected with the trail at dusk only to find that the first open field we find is off limits. Normally, we would flout the rules and throw down except that we would be in clear sight of the farmer who owns the land, and a headlamp can be seen for miles when you’re in the middle of nowhere at night. He also had about a dozen baying hounds making a racket and we did not want to meet them any closer. The other option was to plunge deeper into the forest, or try to bail.

In the end, we thumbed down a driver who took pity on us and agreed to drive us back to our car at the starting point, some 10 miles away. He came back after dropping off his kids, and when they asked him why he was going back to help us, he told them that he’d lived in Alaska for 13 years and knew all too well what it meant to be tired, hungry, and not having a place to sleep. God bless that guy.

So we found a hotel with vacancies and took showers to wash off the deet and sweat. Troy found about ten ticks on him, Todd found six of his own. I only had two on me that night, but two more got on me handling our gear the next day. We can’t imagine how bad it would have been if we had stayed for three days instead of about five hours. Embedded ticks are no joke either, so that could have been really bad news.

The weekend wasn’t a total waste. We went back to Troy’s place and Todd and I got some good time in playing with our adorable nieces. Then we went to a campground that night to at least get some kind of outdoors experience, playing the marvelous Risk 2210 A.D. and drinking too much Jameson. Troy ruled the world that night, but a well-placed nuclear strike to the moon gave me the victory the following day, even though Todd maintains that he could have taken Asia and stolen the win in the last round but forgot to play his tactical retreat card. He’ll have a long flight home to Switzerland to mull over that critical mistake.

So yeah, it sucked but it was quality time with the brothers and therefore still time very well spent.

Current Mood: Still Zonked |

Right, so the brothers and I are heading off into the woods this weekend to rip off another 30 miles of Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail and before we go, I would like to say:

The last time we attempted a section of the trail, we actually ended up doing 14 miles in a single day rather than stopping at the half-way point because the mosquitoes were so bad. This time, we’re more prepared and will be armed to the teeth with Deep Woods Off! and also those stylish mosquito-net suits you’ve seen people wearing in Paris.

Here’s to hoping that the bugs are tolerable and that my right peg holds up under added weight and mileage. I am bringing War of the Ring just in case disaster strikes and we spend the weekend holed up at my brother’s pad. It’s a great game but it takes about two hours just to set up the board…

Current Mood: Wrapping Up Loose Ends |

I plan on taking my preliminary exam for the PhD next fall, but because of the work it requires I’m trying to get it straightened out this fall. I need to run the below past my committee chair and probably the other two members of my committee, but I’m thinking this is going to be pretty close to the final article.

My major area is going to be 20th Century/Modern Fiction with an emphasis on surrealism, magic realism, and fabulism (40-45 books). My first minor area is going to be Native American Lit and my second minor will be New Wave Fabulism/Slipstream/New Weird (20-25 books each). I also need around 20 other critical texts, and that’s the part I’m struggling most with. I’m trying to work border theory in here, expanding it from its traditional meaning of cultural and political borders to borders of realities.

Without further ado, here’s my first swipe at these lists, suppressed below the cut as to not destroy my LJ friends’ pages:

(more…)

I finally got around to watching the Anderson Silva vs. James Irvin from this past Saturday, and my oh my. Silva is the current middleweight champion and jumped up 20 lbs. to light heavyweight in this fight, but I thought he would still handle James Irvin. It all came down to a single punch, really. FF the below video to the start of the fight and wait, oh, about a minute.

Silva is amazing. I recently watched a rerun of his second fight against Rich Franklin and all I can say is that the man packs a wallop with that thin frame. Franklin was doing okay, and then in a flash he really wasn’t. A couple blows to the body wiped him out and then Silva went on autopilot with those knees and strikes. He throws so hard and so accurately. Watch the above video again and note how he measures that one punch perfectly. As Mike Goldberg so eloquently puts it, “His precision is so…precise.”

Current Mood: Ouch |

My friend Will emailed this today. I think it’s brilliant.

I’m unveiling my new piece called “Talk to the Hand”. It’s a collection of pictures of McCain shielding himself from tough questions with his abnormally large, gnarled, liver-spotted hands.

Let me know what you think.

I’m hoping to collect enough of these to make a photomosaic of a middle finger flipping off America.

If you haven’t already seen this, check out this video of John McCain squirming as a reporter asks him if he thinks it’s fair that Viagra is often covered by insurance while female contraception is not.

This is disturbing on a number of levels. One, because it’s a relatively straightforward question that seems to utterly paralyze the man. Two, because it’s not that he doesn’t have an answer, it’s that he doesn’t know the right answer that won’t get him in trouble with his constituents and therefore hems and haws and generally looks foolish. Three, considering the obvious distress this causes him, imagine if he was being confronted with a tricky question that had to do with national or global security.

Look, this should not be that hard. A Republican candidate should be free to speak his mind without having to fear a mass exodus of votes based on this one comment. I mean seriously, if you’re hardcore NRA, pro-life, and pro-war (forget that contradiction for the time being), are you really going to withhold your vote over this particular issue? Yes, the underlying question tests McCain’s resolve regarding pro-life and abstinence-only sex ed program, but c’mon. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Backing the status quo must be an untenable position. If it wasn’t, McCain would have made a case for why the current situation exists. I’m sure there’s an answer that the religious right would want to hear as well as one pharmaceutical companies would want to hear. The question is how many other voters such an answer would potentially alienate.

If this relatively innocuous question riles him, can you imagine what the debates are going to be like?

Current Mood: Oh, Politics |

After a some sleepy weeks after coming home from our trip, life has really started to pick up speed.

As I mentioned earlier, my advisors scrounged up an additional 25% teaching position for me this fall, which means I teach one class along with a 25% program support position. This shifts my entire schedule, as I will now be taking Teaching College Composition along with a fiction workshop intriguingly entitled “Eletronica” by the same professor who taught our “Visual Narratives” lit class last semester, a course I totally loved. I’ll be taking two classes, teaching one, and doing 10+ hours of program support. I should be busy.

Oh, did I mention I’m teaching at 8:00 am on Mondays and Wednesdays? That makes the commute a bit hairy but beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, a friend told me that she requests 8:00 classes because they tend to be returning and/or adult students who tend to be more serious students than the typical freshman forced into taking Comp 101.

I got a rejection today from one of the Big Four on along with the handwritten note “I love this story and only wish I could bring myself to believe it’s fantasy.”

(sigh) I’m considering shopping this to lit markets that may be interested in genre-esque fiction. This year I’ve had a rewrite request in addition to this oh-so-close rejection from the Big Four, so I have to feel pretty good about what I’m writing. Although, an actual sale to said markets would be welcome too.

I should be done with my novel rewrites by August 1, and I’m excited to get it in front of my reading group. That should also free up a little time to work on some short fiction I have in my pending folder before the madness of school kicks off.

Right, it looks done and dusted that Berbatov and Keane are going to be sold to Man Ure and Liverpool respectively, and the rumor is that every player currently available in the free world are potential transfer targets for Spurs. I have very little faith, although Juande Ramos tends to shop well.

Everyone and their brother has been drooling over Andrei Arshavin—except Jose and me, apparently. I’m with Moaninho on this one, that just because the fella was the architect of Sweden and Holland’s destruction in the Euros does not necessarily mean that he’s going to be a midfield spark plug in the big leagues. It would be just about par for the course for Spurs to pay too much for an overrated Eastern European star only for him to stutter badly in the Premier League. Where have I heard that before…?

Current Mood: Busy Busy |