My response sounds a little like this.

Granted, the US is playing on a lousy pitch, away from home. A win is a win and all that. But for me the much larger issue is the fact that the entire Cuban squad played in the Cuban league, a point that John Harkes made in order to stress that the US would push their fitness.

Let me get this straight. The United States of America’s national squad, who has made it to five consecutive World Cups, who have players based in England, Germany, France, and elsewhere, need conditioning to be a factor in order to beat a team hailing from one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean. Something is desperately wrong here folks.

Two players that usually don’t impress me, namely Brian Ching and Freddy Hejduk, were the only ones to really stand out. Dempsey has an alarming tendency to drift out of games for long periods of time, and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with DaMarcus Beasley. What I do know is that most national teams don’t give you a run of games to find your form and, even though Beas has been one of my favorites in recent years, on this performance he shouldn’t be invited back to national team duty. Shockingly bad.

Maurice Edu is young and is probably learning a lot from these games, so he can be forgiven his string of two-dozen passes to Cubans in the second half, and Heath Pearce played okay. But wouldn’t you play okay against semi-professionals too? Gooch and Bocengra and Howard all looked fine too, but again you can’t say the competition was tops. Landon Donovan was invisible for much of the game.

Plonking the ball up field at Brian Ching is not a sophisticated game plan and I’m wondering what else Bradley has up his sleeve. It seems like the philosophy is play boring and lose against good teams (England, Spain), or play boring and squeeze a draw (Argentina), or play boring and win narrowly against inferior competition. Will he ever give Sacha Klejstan a full run out? What about Freddy Adu? What about Kenny Cooper (although I am suspicious of men named Kenny)? What about Edson Buddle? What about Josie Altidore?

Simply put, these are attacking options that, for whatever reason, Bradley doesn’t want to try. I know that these guys don’t have much (if any, in some cases) experience at the national team level, and there’s something to be said for getting points in the bag before you start experimenting. Yet again, there’s something to be said about worrying that the US won’t finish at least second in a four-team group alongside Guatemala, Cuba, and Trinidad. If US Soccer is at such a state that this round gives the higher-ups true pause, then there’s something horribly wrong.

Here’s the point: the US should be expected to win these games at this point. Sure, in 1988 this win would have been a major accomplishment, and it is good to see the US win on the road in CONCACAF. But in winning in highly defensive, uninspiring ways, this squad is just meeting expectations. My contention is that the team learns nothing valuable from these games. Squeaking out 1-0 wins on the road in CONCACAF has nothing in common with winning 1-0 against, say, Poland or the Czech Republic in South Africa in 2010. They may be learning to win away in CONCACAF, but that’s not saying much in the big picture.

Current Mood: Not Impressed |
Currently Listening To - Elliott Smith - “Roman Candle”

I played in my first league game in Lord knows how long, representing Mad City United. My first impression is that a 90-minute game on a full-sized pitch is asking a lot of an over-30 league, but there are plenty of players well over that age. We were overrun in the first ten minutes and went down 1-0, but roared back with 4 unanswered goals.

It tickled me that I was handed the #19 jersey, the same from my high school playing days. Today I played central midfield and defensive midfield and did a lot of ball chasing. A lot of ball chasing. I had two or three really good touches and was rewarded with hard fouls by the guys I burned each time. So it goes. The only real highlight for me was the one-touch pass that sprung the winger who crossed the ball for the go-ahead goal at 2-1. Otherwise it was a lot of toil and not much beauty. Donkey work, I think it’s called. But harrying the opposition pays dividends too, and I like to think I helped out.

We played a somewhat disorganized 4-5-1 that often (unintentionally?) pushed into a 4-3-3 (that’s moving from a pretty defensive formation to a pretty offensive formation for those of you at home). But the team played well, and we have some powerful strikers who can put the ball in the net. It was closer to 5, 6, or 7 to 1 had we finished our opportunities. Part of the problem was that the opposition had slow defenders playing a high line, and that invites long ball. Long ball can work, but long ball also makes for hard running,

The only downside on the afternoon was a vicious, deliberate elbow thrown by one of the opposing players, who can only be described as a dickhead. He got knocked, didn’t get the call, and when our player went for the ball again he threw his elbow into the face/head/throat of the defender and made solid contact. Red card, ejected from the game, but it left our guy on the pitch for about five minutes. Not cool, and not remotely warranted. It’s this brand of stupidity that has made me steer towards pickup rather than leagues over the last decade, but whatever.

Anyway, I like the group of guys, many of them are quite good, and I’m looking forward to the season. The league looks pretty competitive and we had a bye the first week, so we’re still working out the kinks. A number of these guys have played together for 10 years, but there are a few other newbies like me on the team too.

Onward, United.

Current Mood: Beat but Victorious |

The influx of spam I’ve been suffering from (and accidentally spammed another valid comment—sorry PW!) probably had something to do with the fact that when I upgraded WordPress, it automatically deactivated all of my plugins. So I was running spam-filter free. Great.

I was also not cross-posting to LiveJournal for half of August, and that’s annoying. Things are resolved now but I’m awfully peeved about it. WordPress upgrades also kill my custom quicktag toolbar and after each upgrade I need to reinstall it. Annoying.

Annoying, annoying.

Current Mood: Annoyed |

Day three of the new semester has ended, as well as my second day of teaching. Things go very well, but things go very tired. Up at 5:00 and in bed by 10:00. You know the routine.

The program assistant job also goes. Well? I’m not so sure. It’s a lot of scheduling meetings, checking schedules, scheduling meetings about scheduling, and meeting about schedules. I should be paid in beer.

Also, two things I would like to address right now. One, even though professors only teach a few classes per semester, there is an inordinate amount of bureaucratic and administrative work to be done, much of it necessary to simply not lose ground. Just because these people aren’t teaching classes or meeting with students doesn’t mean they’re not working. Hard.

Two, the department is so strapped for cash it’s not even funny. Communal three-hole punches. Communal staplers. Two copiers (one of which is always broken) for around 50 faculty members and 70+ teaching assistants, plus administrative staff. Junior woodchuck administrative assistants in the corporate world are far better equipped than the university faculty.

Mind, these aren’t surprises. Just grim reminders. And all of this school and work is cutting into time I could be doing important things, like blogging or watching soccer.

Current Mood: Hanging in Ther…zzzzzzzzz |

Good Lord, there’s far too much to mention here and I have far too little time to blather about it. Robinho to Man City of all places? And everybody and their brother saying it was the wrong move? And Keegan fired from, I mean quit from, I mean maybe neither from Newcastle? And now Alan Curbishley leaving West Ham despite a good start? And Man City being taken over by the newest billionaire on the block? Fraizer Campbell to Spurs on loan?

I don’t have any idea how to begin to process all that, much less formulate coherent thoughts. Makes the league a bit more interesting, for awhile at least.

You probably didn’t notice, but the New England Revolution got pounded 4-0 by Joe Public of Jamaica in the qualifiers for the CONCACAF Champions League. That brought the aggregate score to a healthy 6-1 in favor of the islanders.

Look, the Revs have been playing in the league, played in (and won) the SuperLiga, and now played in the CONCACAF Champions League. That’s a lot of games and a lot of travel for an MLS squad with a strict salary cap and small roster size. MLS really needs to decide whether they want to grow up and compete in these regional and global competitions or whether teams still need to be conservative with their cash regarding salaries and roster size. Obviously, you can’t have it both ways.

Right, so I taught my first section of English 101 yesterday. It went well I think, and I also happened to notice that 8:00 am is early in the morning. Tuesday at 8:00 am marked the first class of the 2008-09 academic year at UWM, and I was pleased that for the vast majority of students, this class was their first exposure to college learnin’.

Things were complicated by me not having the class roster in my mailbox as I was expecting, and then not being able to print it from my online UWM account, and then having the admin’s computer freeze as it was downloading an enormous PDF in order to find my class ID# so she could print a roster for me. I arrived to class about a minute late, sweaty and out of breath having run about two blocks to get there, and still without a roster. Probably not the ideal way to kick off the teaching semester, but it could have been worse.

We do it all over again tomorrow at 8:00. I’m looking forward to it.

Current Mood: Fine |
Currently Listening To - The Hold Steady - “Boys and Girls in America”

I mentioned awhile ago that the spam has been getting out of hand lately. Earlier today I inadvertently whacked about a month’s worth of comments and there’s no way to fish them out of the spam bowl, or at least no way I know how. And that bums me out since comments are fun.

Current Mood: To Hell With Spam |

Today’s the last day until January that players can swap teams. Unlike US sports, teams very rarely “trade” players but rather buy and sell them outright. F365 is providing by-the-minute updates here, if you’re interested.

Gawd, was Liverpool vs. Aston Villa awful yesterday. Both teams played cautiously to a fault and there was very, very little action. Draws killed Liverpool in the league last year. The champs Man Ure actually lost more games (five compared to Liverpool’s four) but drew only six whereas Liverpool drew thirteen. The lesson? Sometimes you have to gamble and go for the winner. Even without Gerrard and Torres, I thought Liverpool looked more likely in the final quarter of an hour but Benitez played it safe. That works in the Champions League where draws can be good results but it’ll kill you in the league. Looks like Rafa still hasn’t figured that out.

Current Mood: Fine |

I have to say, DVR makes watching a full football game a joy. Critics can say what they want about soccer, but for me a major knock on American football is that the time between plays is about four times longer than the plays themselves.

Anyway, what can be learned from Wisconsin’s demolition of Akron? Not much. They moved the ball at will on the ground (PJ Hill had 100 yards with five minutes to go in the first quarter) and only a couple of botched plays on the 1 yard line from the Badgers kept the Zips (yes, Zips) in the game. I don’t know what this says about the season to come, but it’s better than struggling, that’s for sure.

Well, unless Spurs absolutely tonk Chelski tomorrow (which is highly unlikely), the Ars* will win the week three award for most improved team. They ran poor Newcastle ragged today but (surprise surprise) I am not among those who think they’re right back in the title chase. At best, this squad will do what they did last year and leap out to a quick lead but fade in the end. Still, they looked pretty damn smooth.

Elsewhere, the league is entirely unpredictable. West Ham’s 4-1 win over Blackburn do the visitors a disservice since it could have easily ended 1-1, and Everton’s season is already in shambles after getting bombed 3-0 by Pompey, their second home loss. And Hull’s confidence must be cracked—nay, shattered—after suffering a 5-0 pounding at home to Wigan of all teams. This is not that unusual for this time of year where teams are still settling in and finding their feet, and there’s also the small matter of the transfer window closing tomorrow night at midnight. Still, I wouldn’t want to be betting large sums of money on any of these games right now.

Speaking of transfers, I’ll tell you what Tottenham need sharpish—two strikers and a holding midfielder. I’m not all that excited about Pavlyuchenko (nor am I that excited about Arshavin) because I thought these guys ran far too hot and cold. If the Berbatov transfer doesn’t go through—although I’m betting it will—then I hope he can man-up and give it his all.

I haven’t heard anyone saying this (although I haven’t been listening too hard) but I think Tottenham’s next biggest void is in the center of the park. For my money, the defensive midfielder role is probably the hardest to fill since so few players really excel at this position. Didier Zokora was supposed to be this box-to-box enforcer but it really hasn’t worked out that way. He’s useful but not dominant, and Spurs need a big-time heavy to put some steel in their speedy but lightweight midfield.

And of course a striker who could hit an elephant’s ass with a banjo would help too.

There’s still a good chance that we’re switching to DirecTV in order to get GolTV so I can watch the Spanish league, but I’m still going to follow it the best I can in the meantime.

I’ve decided that I’m really pulling for Valencia this year. Although Tottenham is my team in England, I also root for Liverpool and Newcastle whenever they’re not playing Spurs. In La Liga, I have always been a Real Madrid fan mostly because I love Madrid (and Spurs currently occupy the room in my heart for a perennially underachieving team in my heart, Atlético) but after that it’s always been Valencia and whoever is playing Barcelona. (Interesting fact: I have noticed that fans of Ars*nal in England also tend to be fans of Barca in Spain.)

Anyway, my feeling for Valencia became clear last year when they were within touching distance of relegation, yet rebounded to win the Copa del Rey. I was fearful and ecstatic for them, and I find myself relieved that striker extraordinaire David Villa has re-upped his contract. They’ve got Morientes, Joaquín, Silva, Albiol, Marchena, Albelda, Helguera, del Horno…the list of players I admire goes on and on. Not all of these guys are firing on all cylinders anymore, but still. This is a good club that’s given me many happy footie-watching memories, so I’m pulling for them big time this term—even though I’ve never been to Valencia.

Current Mood: Bushed |

It’s that time again to post the classes I’m taking and what I’ll be reading and working on in the coming months. Classes don’t officially start until September 2nd but in reality they’ve already begun, as we had a mini-class for the teaching composition course and I have to have a book read for my other class that meets on Tuesday.

For readers not in the know, I am a second-year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at UW-Milwaukee. This year I lucked out by landing a 25% Creative Writing Program Assistant job and a 25% Teaching Assistant position, which means I teach one composition class instead of two (that other 50% goes to finishing coursework) and I’m locked into the PA/TA position for the year. I’m also guaranteed an additional four years of TA funding.

The classes with brief descriptions and reading lists after the break:

ENG 701 - Teaching College Composition
ENG 813 - Fiction Workshop: Obstructions and Restrictions

Overall, this semester is somewhat daunting but doable.
(more…)

One of the features of the new series of iPods that I don’t need (and don’t really want to pay for but have little choice) is the bit that displays cover art. I concede, it’s pretty cool although entirely unnecessary. What’s most annoying about it? The fact that iTunes doesn’t do close matches. Erm, shouldn’t it somehow be able to suss out that Greatest Hits in the Bob Dylan artist file is the same album as Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, or that At Budokan is Bob Dylan at Budokan, or that MTV Unplugged in my library is the same as MTV Unplugged (Live) in iTunes?

I realize that this request is harder than it seems, but a lot of this is just silly. For instance, there are seven albums in the bootleg series. Why is one The Bootleg Series, Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 - The Rolling Thunder Revue (2 of 2) (quite a mouthful that won’t fit on the iPod screen by the way) and another Live 1966 “The Royal Albert Hall Concert” - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4, and yet another No Direction Home, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 7 (Movie Soundtrack)? That means this series of albums winds up being alphabetized under ‘B’ and ‘L’ and ‘N.’ Stupid.

On another note of aggro, I tend to like Adobe’s programs. I’ve used Photoshop for years as well as ImageReady and ImageStyler, and have always been a fan of Acrobat. Except for the software updates. For some reason, Adobe hasn’t figured out how to do unobtrusive software updates, and they have taken a page out of Microsoft’s book as far as backwards compatibility goes when it comes to PDFs. And if you have an older version of Acrobat installed in order to create PDFs, but need a new version of Acrobat Reader to open newer PDFs, the computer gets confused and melts down. The only answer? To always buy the most recent version of Acrobat of course. Annoying? Not hardly.

Current Mood: Annoyed |
Currently Listening To - Bob Dylan - “Self Portrait”