The Tony Stanza Flashdance Extravaganza

I'm happy to see you too, ladies.

Between shifting radio friendly units and FIFA®-sponsored® avoidance® of® ambush® marketing®, I bypassed last week's indecent exposure. Not this time, dammit, though given the quality of the instant oatmeal below, perhaps I should have made it two for two -- oh, put down your two by fours, you can't reach me from over there.

exult! exult!

subatomic death cult
count & paste & rearrange
with our consent.

exult? exult?

cut tongue sculpture.
result, consult:
check.

exult! exult!

mystery meat culture.
consume, consult:
check.

exult! exult!

occult pocket insults:
so cohesive we.
they?

exult. exult.

I would blog 500 miles

His job is more fun than my job.

And you would blog 500 more. 502, to be exact. Despite the monumental task lain before me upon this island gig, utter detachment from everything save footie was, and is, completely worth it. Blogging, even in the low-heat, haphazard slapdash style performed by yours truly, is hard work. I might even rather shift boxes of books. Fuck, that was tiring, almost as exhausting as blogging.

Anyway, a few of the things I've learned this past week away from you dapper flappers: I picked Mexico and Uruguay to emerge from Group A, the who-cares-not-us frogs crashing and burning and so far, so good. I am so S-M-R-T.

Greece was to be my drunken, off-the-wall "sleeper," a term used quite loosely as they would be fodder for either of the above teams, and so far, almost good. I remain so S-M-R-T, at least until the Greeks get bombed in the last match.

The Yanks have courage and pluck and truckload of first-half Clerks slack while the Limeys have permanently codified their position as the poster boys of the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. The next time Frank Lampard passes, he'll likely break out in a nasty rash. Awful, fucking awful eye burn, though not as fucking awful a disgrace as ♪ we all live in a yellow card machine ♫ or worse, Stevie Wonder. Since FIFA prizes nothing more than transparency, I'm sure we'll get an answer.

The second of the seven apocalyptic signs is here:

Germany missed a penalty shot.

No one had more touches in the opponent's box in their first group game than Spain's whopping 49, promptly losing 1-0 to the fucking Swiss. A shot of civil servant-priced booze to the internets soccer Nostradamus.

Know who didn't lose to an inferior opponent? Crazy Diego and His Merry Band of Dribblers. Fuck off, Spaniards, I'm rooting for a team that can finish. Manos, Hand of God!

Now, cut back on the posting this upcoming week or you're getting one of these.

Bend It Like Bender

Thanks to my love, nay, calling, of helping to shape the hearts and minds of today's young people into aerodynamic objects worthy of being dropped off a cliff, I've got oodles of congés payés that I never use.

Lo, verily HR speaketh & demandeth I must useth it or loseth it.

Thus, after today's swanky footsie, internets invisibility for the majority of the next couple of weeks as I plop my posterior on my semi-comfortable couch in order to watch the beautiful game while participating in the ugly one, i.e., boxing up our crap for the Great Migration of 2010.

Be well, all. Except you, Brazil.

Halftime P.S. I miss the first 20 or so minutes on the way to work, and of course the Koreans don't want no freaks, up 1-0, making my Greek "sleeper" more of eleven shambling somnambulists.

Fulltime P.S. Defensive breakdown, it's always the same. I'm havin' a nervous breakdown, drive Athens insane.

Halftime P.P.S. What we learned: Argentina ain't too shabby (should be up 2-0, 3-0), Nigeria is game (nice dive before half, dude) and Maradona owns/is renting a suit that makes him look like a shaggy Paulie from the Rocky flicks.

















Fulltime P.P.S. Hey ESPN, if I wanted impressionism, I'd head to Giverny, dig up Monet's bones and reanimate them. Speaking of reanimation, Diego might want to try the local muti on his team's feet. Finish!

Halftime P.P.P.S. We can't pass (sometimes), we can't defend (sometimes), but it's 1-1. Go on, blame the ball, you fucks! HAHAHAHAHA!

Fulltime P.P.P.S. Concerning Mr. Tim Fucking Howard, Robbie, you are no doubt Green with envy. Groan all you want, we'll take the point. We'd also like a creative midfield type, send your CV to the USMNT c/o the U.S. Soccer Federation, Chicago, Illinois 60616.

Oh, shit.

DC United won a road game (via a hat trick, no less).

If we throttle the limeys tomorrow, I'm stocking up on canned goods, duct tape and Triscuits and heading to the Lake Erie islands to ride out the apocalypse.

Halftime P.S. Hey Mexico, how about finishing? Hey ESPN, how about making the game feed as crystal clear as the fucking commercials?

Fulltime P.S. Hey South Africa, good job making a game of it. Hey ESPN, how about making the game feed as crystal clear as the fucking commercials?

Don't make me do work instead.

Halftime P.P.S. Don't look askance, France had more than once chance. HEY ESPN, HOW ABOUT MAKING THE GAME FEED AS CRYSTAL CLEAR AS THE FUCKING COMMERCIALS?

Fulltime P.P.S. Gauls wasted a late man-advantage in this grinder. Hope you kept an eye on the surprisingly sprightly frogs, Holland, a little teammate hate ain't so bad. HEY ESPN, GO CHENEY YOURSELF.

All roads lead to our lost songs.

The cancellation of "all operations and tours" for 2010 is unwelcome news -- not that they'd ever tour the states, cheap bastards -- but with Nos Chants Perdus, their fifth full-length in five years, Rome has certainly earned a cache of goodwill from at least one listener. Setting aside such dour news, let's perk up our spirits with a hop, skip and jump through this dour, thus comforting, rewarding, album.

A whistle caught in a panoply of sound, tumbling water, trembling thunder, the splash of rain upon the old stone road, L'Homme Révolté walks. Les Deracines bring a horizon of apocalyptic folk closer, lush with sadness and that whistle, yet the vocal at 1:40 pitches up, a fleeting glimpse at contentment. A repeating trope, aided by parallel measures, the internal tug-of-war with which we all must deal, and find lying out of range of our fingernails.

Le Chatiment du Traitre, listen.

Next, the slow, sparse sound of passing people and pediments, the sacred and the profane of which we all are complicit, enunciated in the violin hiding behind the curtain. Each of us is L'Assassin. Let's go find a balm, however temporary. The circular chords of Le Vertige du Vide indeed dizzy, dazzle until the respite of Les Exigences de la Foi's keyboard & spoken word intermezzo.

The sound of La Commune reflects the word's rich, historical meaning through dark French chanson à la Jacques Brel, a street song strong with a bass backbone, tendons & sinews, and we all swing around, and we all sing about/my detachment, my banishment, my vagrancy, while Sous la Dague melds the last album's transcendent We Who Fell In Love With the Sea with Vittorio Vandelli-esque fretwork, topped with a wisp of Zeppelin's No Quarter.

Percussion slaps swell around Les Iles Noires waltzy, hypnotic shamble that, in time, turns down an alley of electric echoes crawling through the spaces between black and white keys, Un Adieu à la Folie. In gathering the previous four tracks, for example, one hears the overarching theme tying all twelve together, yet always through natural changes in posture, in timbre, in overt and implied hooks, a brittle dignity. The tack moves again with La Rose et La Hache, the voice declaring I never wanted you that much in a verse flush with weeping and thefts and jail, quickly becoming I never wanted you so much then back again and once more, carried away on a sweeping accordion flourish.

The quiet contentment of album closer Chansons de Geste is striking. Consider the source of the song's title: tales of dashing knights the calibre of Roland and, later in the Crusade Cycle, First Crusade hero Godfrey de Bouillon. Establishment icons, as it were. Weighty stuff, but is not each of us on our own road, however small -- certainly vast to us -- sans horse, bridle and sword, bien sûr: hide yourself in mourning, in countries far/among the snake-mouthed mothers of snow/hide yourself in mourning, on oceans wide/14 blades, 400 blows. In our own individual way, we all try to raise hell, whistling as we (pretend to) rebel, whistling while we work at locating that contentment amidst the omnipresent spectacle. Most of us fail.

Shifting further and further away from their martial roots, Jerome Reuter and Patrick Damiani have presented their darkest, most acoustic work to date, a work beyond forced strokes of matte black. The spirit of a strangely welcoming existentialism, alongside the shared sonic aesthetic of a Tom Waits, a Nick Cave, a Sonne Hagal, a Léo Ferré, runs through this Luxembourgeois duo who gift another wonderfully lugubrious album.

Another day, on a quiet road, on a safer shore
Serve no one, blame no one, awaiting the fall
This sign means you, this sign means all

Sounds nice. Good luck.

If you want blood, you've got it

Sort of.

Inside, Gardner will be strapped into a winged, black metal chair with a mesh seat that was built for Taylor's execution. A metal tray beneath the chair is designed to collect any blood that runs from the executed prisoner's body.

That's not how you fucking do it.













We want slumping corpses and spattered walls, you pansies.

Solar flash

Forgive the brevity of this flareup, but it's hot in here.

"So much for plan B."

"What about C?"

beep

"There's always D."

beeep

"Thinking about cup sizes again, Jack?"

beeeep

"Thinking about menopause again, Jill?"

beep beep beep

"Funny. How they made you mission commander, I'll never know."

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

"Being a man, I always pay atten --"

Congressional beancounters were relieved that the coronal mass ejection disintegrated the entire ship. Why waste money on a lengthy investigation in lieu of installing gold-plated faucets in Capitol Hill lavatories?

The Galaxy's Most Mediocre World Cup Preview

Yes, I wrote it, and like poor Rob's shot, the prose hits the post. Relax, I included a scantily-clad lady to distract you from the overflowing flaws.

Speed kings

"I wasn't speeding, officer."

"Don't sass me, boy. I visually guesstimated."










Speaking of speed, let's hastily shove Jim Joyce off via a Gaza-bound tramp freighter. Quickly, someone call the Israelis collect, an activist is --

BREAKING: TERROR ALERT

"Technology is not everything," the American goalkeeper said Thursday. "Scientists came up with the atom bomb, doesn't mean we should have invented it." Good job, Benedict Arnold, now the jihadists won't stick to suitcases.


















Don't come crying to me when your World Cup chances go up in a mushroom cloud, Quisling.

A post that doesn't suck (no, really)

Told you.

Like, cosmic, man

Empty as a really empty thing

I'm tired of looking for places that are invariably run by pet-hating mutants who I can only pray to Cthulhu meet their end via cat scratch fevers & plagues, I'm tired of the fucking humidity, I'm tired of my loudmouth un/under/whoknowsemployed cracker neighbor and his whiny un/under/whoknowsemployed skank, I'm tired of goopers, I'm tired of dums, I'm tired of you, I'm struck with ziptacularness, but at least it's only two lousy weeks until I can plop me arse on the couch for a solid fucking month, save standing up to get a better throwing angle at the teevee when we allow yet another uncontested run on goal, poor little Timmy Howard sniff, but at least that won't last more than three games then my rooting interest is up for purchase are you listening football associations of the world?

And remember when I let that escaped lunatic in the house 'cause he was dressed like Santa Claus? Well you have a gambling problem!

I'm all for the chance of losing your baby's milk money to the icy professionals of Pokerstars.net, but aren't the odds long against fortune smiling upon a downtown transportation solution?

Gilbert has called the negotiations with Forest City complicated but said the discussions are positive. Ratner agreed. He added one major holdup is parking.

"The problem is how do we figure out the parking," Ratner asked. "They have so many cars, we have so many cars."

Duh! Get off the bus, Gus,
let the full house, Mouse,
take all your money, honey.
'bout time we're movers, groovers
throwin' dice -- nice landin' on big time.
Oh, organized crime is fine,
(anything to keep the King in gold n' wine)
but a Joe Pesci accent ain't sublime.


















Artist's conception: Forest City Enterprises co-chairman Albert Ratner standing next to Cavs owner and entrepreneur Dan Gilbert.

Top Kill

Ha ha, fooled you. The rest of the internets is full of floating crap killing everything it comes in contact with. Get out right now.

The Enemy

No, no, certainly not because of systemic codification of various aspects of Chimpyism such as continuously blowing the fuck out of overseas brown folks nor his faux BP outrage on one hand while the other is held out in the shadows, ready to receive fat corporate cash. Heads of empires do these things, the sun rises in the East, sets in the West, I like onion rings.

But this outrageous tampering?

That's going too far!