Listen to This!!!!!!

I've posted songs by Juana Molina before. I think she is making some of the most beautifully uncanny and unique music I've listened to in years. Here's an All Things Considered review of her latest CD. After you listen to the review, scroll down for a LIVE PERFORMANCE. (And live performances by Jose Gonzalez and Psapp too! Actually, the link has a bunch of good stuff.)

In the live performance, she dedicates the second song to everyone who "suffers the barking of the neighbor's dog," which means if you're reading this, that song is for you.

FRDY!FRDY!FRDY!FRDY!FRDY!


!


Marvin Gaye

Beat Happening
Start with "What's Important"

Mylo
Start with "In My Arms"

Shapes and Sizes

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter


and, just because

Accused

I realize I'm feeding not only the Pillsbury Doughboy of Trolls but a Pillsbury Doughboy of Troll whose singular credential to authority is a genetic connection to the Phyllis Diller of conservative early-trolls, but Jonah Goldberg says, on the op-ed page of the "Liberal" LA Times:

For good or ill, there are no grand "big ideas" behind the anti-Lieberman cause. It's driven by a riot of passions, chiefly against President Bush and "his" war. Any ideas are mere afterthoughts and rationalizations used to gussy up animus as principle.

Um, opposition to the worst freaking President ever, who has (fill in your own order of outrage, from presidential ineptitude to incompetence to dishonesty to attacks on the constitution to squandering most of America's soft power to making America a pariah state and banana republic to.....) is not a big idea? Reducing President Decider!s power so he can't leave the United States in even worse shape than he already has isn't a big idea?

The country you love is being crippled - morally, economically, spiritually, internationally, militarily - and you oppose the bastard at the helm, you believe nothing can be done to right the country until that bastard and his shrieking harem of pantloads are out of power, and a that's a SMALL idea?

Wait a minute. This administration has two big ideas: bitchslap the world; call me a traitor when I oppose the ruination of MY country caused by their bitchslaphappiness. I'm dismissed for my animus? Excuse me, but expletive-filled tirade.

Jeebus, the Right's strenuous Egads! against our small ideas convinces me they're afraid they're not such small ideas after all.

Come for the festival, have Ye?

He is still alive, He sees, hears.... We have destroyed ourselves! Please, no more.

Landru, who's odometer clicks up one today, says

DCU 4, Celtic 0

No green hoops. Celtic came out in all white but for a vertical green and orange stripe down the right side of the front, and instead of Carling, the sponsor was Coors Light. Coors freaking Light. Baby Jeebus in a frosted mug, that's not even beer.

Any prestige, even small prestige, is good for United, and what's good for United is good for MLS. Yes, Celtic was missing starters. Yes, Celtic's play was half-hearted at times (though tell that to Jamil Walker). Yes, DCU wanted the win more. And they won. Convincingly.

Bobby Boswell. I haven't praised him enough. There was one play, midway through the first half, and a Celtic player had been sprung down the right side on a terrific through ball, and Boswell just stoned him. Stood him up, stoned him, took the ball, never looked back. Earlier this year I speculated on which DCU player could they least afford to lose, and I said Brian Carroll. Nothing against Carroll, whose play recently probably gave Nowak good reason to give him the night off, he's been looking tired, but the one indispensible player for United is Boswell. He's that good. And he gets it, soccer-wise, fan-wise.

Shame about the weather, or the threat of weather. I had heard talk of 30, 35K, which would have required a huge walk-up, but DC was gray and thundering from 3:30 in the afternoon on, with storm-warnings issued, and on a Wednesday night, with rush hour traffic, people looked at each other at five o'clock and said, mmm? nya. I don't think they'd have got 35K under any circumstances (that's about what they got for Chelsea, after all), but I bet they lost 3000, 4000 walk-up, which is a shame. It rained until 7:20 and then stopped. The clouds broke. A breeze blew. It was nice. Announced crowd of over 15K.

But the key question of the game: at what minute would the drunken skank in the row in front of us yak on Landru's foot? Landru and I started a pool: I guessed 76th minute, he had 83rd. Not to worry: the drunken chickslapper she was with, sensing that he was in a race between her drooling willingness to put out and her drooling need to vomit, decided to take no chances and hustled her cold-sweat speckled face out at the 72nd. I'm willing to bet (but not to verify) that yak won out, literally, in his lap.

HIGHLIGHTS!
(of the game, not the...)

Assholesomeness*

How's that working out as the pillar of US foreign policy?

Israeli Forces Enter Lebanon After 2 Soldiers Are Seized

Kidnapping and Bombing Add to Baghdad Turmoil

Violence Mars Rumsfeld Visit

Investigators Seek Clues in Bombay Bombings

U.S. Officials Visit Afghanistan's Turbulent South

There is a fundamental distinction between being tough and being an asshole. The tough guy understands that toughness needs reserving for critical moments of actual import, that, used in such moments precisely and measuredly and finished with fairness, toughness is actually a negotiation tool, not a policy. The asshole makes his assholeness the policy itself.

Would there be peace upon the lands, would centuries of ethnic and religious acrimony cease, would the ambitions of other assholes lessen if our President wasn't a bullying asshole? Of course not. But toughness gives pause where assholeness emboldens. There is nobody as asshole fears less than another asshole. Nobody creates more assholes than another asshole. Nothing drives an asshole to greater assholeness more than another asshole (see Putin Rips Cheney's Verbal 'Hunting Shot').

I guarantee, it'd be a lot less bloody - and the United States would be stronger - if our President (and a significant percentage of American citizens) didn't believe that being an asshole is the same thing as being tough.

AND - I also guarantee that the bloodier, more violent and generally cataclysmic things get b/c of assholeness, the more the asshole, his supporters and enablers, will claim the right, nay, the obligation for the asshole to be a bigger asshole. That's the way assholes reason. Watch.

* Pardon the use of the bad work. I could search for a euphemism, but outside of politeness, why? The word fits

TONIGHT!

The highlight of last season for me, the one great unforgettable moment, was Boswell's header to give United a lead on Chelsea at FedEx. Celtic isn't Chelsea. Celtic isn't Columbus, either.

In the scheme of small things, this Saturday's Columbus game is the more important game. I want to win both, but in the bigger scheme of things, if only one is to be won, I'd rather tonight than Saturday.


RUMORSWIRL UPDATE: Klinsmann has quit Deutschland for Los Angeles, minutes away from a certain national team's Carson California home base. Hmmm......

I am of an age and a once-partying bent that made unavoidable the ubiquity of Pink Floyd on any and all occasions more than just me was partying. Syd Barrett, who died a couple of days ago at 60, had long left the band he co-founded for the wonders of his frontal lobes before Floyd's *Dark Side of the Moon* was released, and that album (along with *Pepper* and *Ziggy* and *American Beauty*) was mandatory listening any time two heads congregated and a record player was available.

I'd literally have to leave the room when Floyd came on. Badtriptriggering, Floyd was, except for *The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,* perhaps the most Barrett-centric Floyd album. I've always found it ironic that it wasn't until after Barrett zoomed into his acidworld and left Floyd that Floyd's music grew too acidic for me to take when I was, erm, susceptible. And more ironic too that now, far removed from windowpanes of opportunity, I hear things in Floyd, Barrett and post-Barrett, that I totally missed then.

UPDATE: Surely, it cannot be a coincidence that this is in the paper the same day that Barrett's death is announced. Triptacular!

This calls for

The Best Argument
for the Separation
of Church and State!

Made by Jack, a cracker, a good but cheating pool player, who constantly expresses opinions of deeply held moronity:

English should be the official language of America
like Arab (sic) is the official language of Islam.

The best team throughout the tournament won the tournament, though they weren't the better team for much of this game. The Italians suprised me this WC. They were willing to press forward (by traditional Italian standards) throughout the WC while maintaining their defensive excellence: if you think about it, they were scored against twice, once on an own goal, a second on a PK that shouldn't have been awarded and that Zidane clanked awkwardly down and in off the crossbar (and listening to the ABOMINABLE O'Brien, ABCs shit of an announcer, try to sell that crossbar hit as proof of the genius of Zidane, as if he meant to hit the crossbar, well, STFU you pantload). And yes, Zidane had a decent chance on a header in the first overtime, but Italy had scored but been wrongly called offside late in regulation.

The only team to get a result against Italy this WC?

Do you want anyone in the world taking a set piece or corner for you other than Andrea Pirlo?

How good is it to be Fabio Grosso this morning?

And Zidane. WC champ, 17 year vet. Maybe we'll learn what, if anything inflammatory Marco Materazzi said to Zidane, but whatever Materazzi said, image is everything, and Zizou, this is your permanent, non-erasable legacy:

18

Columbus 0, DCU 1

Surprising score, yes? Not as close as some of the other 1-0 games - I thought United was crisper than recently, perhaps a result of Nowak swapping the line-up for the first time in four, five games, starting Olsen instead of Gomez and Eskandarian instead of McTavish.

Eskandarian. A month or so ago the Post had an article on Esky, saying in part that his temper is both a strength and an exploitable weakness. I don't know exactly how much latitude a referee has to interpret intent on fouls, and it could certainly be argued that Esky didn't land his elbow into the kidney of Columbus' Gonzalez and actually rupture said kidney, and it could certainly be argued that Gonzalez' display of utter physical agony was, say, dramatic, but when I saw it I thought red, if for nothing else than for being a punkass stupid thing to do. Your team is tired, you're back from injury, you've scored a brilliant free kick, you're up 0-1 on the road in the last third of the game, and you recklessly, petulantly, impulsively, idiotically throw that elbow right in front of the ref?