FIFA Screwed Us! Already! Again!
Topic: soccer

***Note: I am writing this immediately BEFORE the World Cup draw***

 

FIFA is a patently corrupt organization. What other organization would make a habit of announcing the rules for a competition DURING that competition, which is exactly what FIFA does by determining the rules for the World Cup draw AFTER the qualified teams have been determined.

 

The draw happens in about an hour, and US fans are patiently awaiting our quadrennial screwing. But US fans should know: the screwing has already begun! And I can prove it with statistics! Here’s my logic…

 

It not only matters which names get drawn out of the pot – it matters into which pot you are placed. A quick primer for the uninitiated:

 

-         There are eight groups in the World Cup, each with four teams. Those four teams are determined by drawing one ball each from four “pots”. Long story short: you will play one team from each of the other three pots, and you will play none of the teams from your own pot.

 

The first pot contains what FIFA determines (after the fact…sorry, France!) to be the best eight teams in the tournament. The US isn’t in that pot, and we don’t deserve to be. The fourth pot is the rest of the European teams. That leaves two pots for North America, South America (minus Brazil and Argentina), Africa (minus South Africa), Asia, and New Zealand.

 

Let’s use FIFA’s October rankings (which are notoriously weird, but are frankly as good as any other ranking system out there) to determine the relative strength of each federation. Please note: these are the same rankings that FIFA used to determine the seeded teams. It turns out that North America, South America, and Africa are virtually equally good:

 

North American teams’ average ranking: 22.3

South American teams’ average ranking (minus Brazil and Argentina, who are seeded): 22.0

African teams’ average ranking (minus South Africa, who are seeded): 22.8

 

The weak sister in the group is clearly Asia: the average ranking of the Asian teams is 50. New Zealand is ranked #77, and after watching the Confederations Cup and the playoff with Bahrain, I can’t believe that they’re ranked that high.

 

So, whichever team gets thrown in the same pot with the weaker Asian teams is at a huge disadvantage. It could have been any of the three equally strong federations, but it was us. Why is this a screw job? Because it was us last time, too.

 

Yes, CONCACAF (minus Mexico, who were seeded even though the US had a higher FIFA ranking) was also in the Asian pot in 2006. I’d say that it’s somebody else’s turn.

 

But wait! The screwing’s not quite over! FIFA also made out pot Pot 2. Why is this a screw job? Because it means that we will play the seeded team in our group first. You always want to play the seeded team in your group third: there is a good chance that the seeded team will have already qualified by the third game, at which point they will be playing second-stringers, and those second-stringers will be playing half-assed (mathematically, that’s one-fourth of the strength of the original squad). Being in Pot 2, we won’t have that opportunity. Shennanigans, I say!

 

Enough whining – I’m off to watch the draw. For the record, here’s how I rank each Pot:

 

Pot 1:

1 – Brazil

2 – Spain

3 – Germany

4 – England

5 – Netherlands

6 – Italy

7 – Argentina

8 – South Africa

 

Pot 2:

1 – US

2 – Mexico

3 – Australia

4 – South Korea

5 – Japan

6 – Honduras

7 – North Korea

8 – New Zealand

 

Pot 3:

1 – Ivory Coast

2 – Paraguay

3 – Chile

4 – Ghana

5 – Cameroon

6 – Nigeria

7 – Uruguay

8 – Nigeria

 

Pot 4:

1 – France

2 – Portugal

3 – Serbia

4 – Denmark

5 – Greece

6 – Switzerland

7 – Slovakia

8 – Slovenia

 

After the draw, I’m going to add up the rankings of each team. An average draw for the US would be a total of 13.5 (impossible, but you get the idea). Anything higher than that is a good draw; anything lower than that is a bad draw. Frankly, as long as we avoid France, Portugal, and Ivory Coast, I’ll be pretty happy.

Jeff Dunham (and I'm going to start blogging again)
Topic: comedy

  When I started this blog, I had the idea that I would add at least one comedy, one politics, and one soccer entry every week. Turns out, that's a bit like deciding to start exercising by planning to work out 2 hours a day, six days a week: it's so hard to stick to the schedule that it becomes very easy to just ditch the whole thing. So I'm starting again with more realistic goals: I'll try to write about once a week, and I'll see if I can avoid those 8 month breaks to which I've become accustomed.

 anyway...

   This is where comedy is right now: Onion AV Club post about Jeff Dunham's huge ratings (and another one from December).

 

  I haven't seen Jeff Dunham's new special (I saw the old one - how many Jeff Dunham specials am I expected to watch?), so I can't give my opinion about whether or not any of his puppets are offensive (although using the word "towelhead" is offensive in all but about 2% of contexts), but I can say that I don't find Jeff Dunham (or his puppets) funny. Which brings the list of huge comics that I don't find funny to four: Dunham, Carlo Mencia, Dane Cook, and Larry the Cable Guy.

  Thankfully, that list doesn't have five names because Andrew Dice Clay is no longer huge (at least in terms of fame - he is quite girthful, physically speaking). In fact, he was recently elimated on the first episode of the Celebrity Apprentice (Hulu it - it's worth seeing). As usual, the misfortune of others has brought me joy.

  The thing is, Dice wasn't just fired because he lacks the business acumen of Khloe Kardashian and one of those ladies what holds up them suitcases on the TV; he was fired because everyone (accurately) perceived him to be an unfunny douchebag. His attempts to crack jokes are downright David Brent-ian. And the fact that the world no longer finds Andrew Dice Clay funny gives me hope that Comedy Central won't be producing Carlos Mencia specials into my 40s.

  Dice was essentially a character comic. He had an act: the tough, New York guy. His fans were generally people who identified with his persona, which is why he was so big in New York. The thing is, his jokes were never that great, and I'll bet that's the biggest reason why his popularity didn't last very long; once you've seen one Dice show, you've seen them all. Comics like Cosby, Steve Martin, and Seinfeld constantly generate new material, which keeps them fresh. Each special (or movie, or whatever) is different than the last one. Frankly, I'd pay money to watch new Jerry Seinfeld jokes performed by a local open-micer; the material stands on its own and doesn't need Jerry Seinfeld's personality to prop it up. Dice didn't have much to offer beyond his persona, and his persona gets old pretty quickly.

Of the four comics I listed above, two - Mencia and Larry the Cable Guy - are essentially character comics. And I'll bet that of the four, those two have the least saying power (especially because I suspect that Dane Cook and Jeff Dunham are secretly better joke writers than their acts suggest). I just don't see how basically the same joke (i.e. "Mexicans do this!"/"I'm a redneck!") can stay funny forever. Of course, I hope that neither Mencia nor Larry are forced to endure the Kenny Powers-esque downward spiral that Dice seems to have undergone; I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But maybe one or both of them could undergo a decline in fame public enough to convince the NEXT Dane Cook - that is, the next comic with some talent but also an unquenchable thirst for fame - to spend more time writing jokes and less time cultivating his or her image.

Conservatism and Liberalism
Topic: politics

  Slow day at the office today, so I'll go ahead and write about something that I've talked about with people but never written down.

  What follows is how I think of the political spectrum.  Political scientists often make grids, or Vin diagrams, or various other axes to describe the spectrum of political ideologies.  Here's a common one that you might have seen:

  In this diagram, desired level of government involvement is the explanatory variable.  I have also seen similar diagrams that use concern for the individual (as opposed to concern for the collective) or concern for the working class as explanatory variables.  These analyses, though accurate and descriptive (except for the one that examines concern for the working class, which has nothing to say about social issues or foreign policy whatsoever), fail to describe why people hold the views that they do on the vast spectrum of political issues. 

  The government involvement explanation and the concern for the individual explanation (which, it seems to me, uses "concern for the collective" as an exact proxy for "government involvement") fail to explain a number of anomalies that result from their analyses.  Why, for example, are the two cognitively inconsistent political viewpoints (liberalism and conservatism) also by far the most common?  Why is it true that certain policy preferences tend to correlate in spite of the fact that the arguments in favor of those policies are often diametrically opposed (for example, people who are pro-choice tend to also favor regulation of businesses, even though the first resists government intervention while the second encourages it.  Similarly, people who favor low taxes also tend to support anti-sodomy laws)?  In addition, political ideologies sometimes defy these compartments; on the issue of gun control (a social issue), liberals encourage government involvement while conservatives want the government to stay away.  Likewise, conservatives are more likely to favor government support for failing businesses (sometimes called corporate welfare) than are liberals.  Furthermore, what can explain views on foreign policy, which also tend to correlate with political ideologies but in a way not addressed by the chart above?  Current theories fail to describe the logic that underlies the most common political viewpoints.

  In my opinion, the factor that determines whether a person is a conservative or a liberal is their view of what I call the "traditional status quo".  The more a person desires change from the traditional status quo, the more liberal that person is.

  Essential to understanding this definition is understanding what I mean by "traditional status quo".  The tradition status quo DOES NOT refer to the way things CURRNETLY are; it refers to things AS THEY WERE BELIEVED TO BE at an unspecified point in time.  It is not a year, nor is it a set of factors that can be objectively measured; it is a thing that existed at some point in the past.  For example, in this country, I generally consider the traditional status quo to be "America".  Plug "America" into my original sentence: in the U.S. what determines whether a person is conservative or liberal is their view of America.   All of the traditions and things generally associated with America make up the traditional status quo.  The things associated with the traditional status quo change over time, and the traditional status quo can be different things in different places (it depends what are the traditions and valued institutions), but most people in a political culture are generally oriented relative to the same status quo.  And, ultimately, a person's feelings about that traditional status quo will determine whether they are conservative or liberal.

  As I mentioned, I generally consider the traditional status quo in this country to be America.  I use the term "America" instead of "United States" because "America" evokes a more generalized visceral reaction, and the traditional status quo is a difficult to define, difficult to nail down thing.  It is more of a feeling than anything else.  It is meant to be what people view as traditional and accepted.  It involves specific practices and values, but precisely what those practices and values are is impossible to determine.  Similarly, precisely where we currently are in relation to the traditional status quo is impossible to determine; that traditional status quo existed at some time in the past, and our current point in time represents some unspecified level of change from that original point.

  The more a person desires change from the traditional status quo, the more liberal that person is.  Therefore, the ultimate conservative wants a complete return to the traditional status quo; they want to turn back the clock all the way to year zero (remember, the present represents a change from the traditional status quo).  Conversely, the ultimate liberal dislikes everything about the traditional status quo and wants total change; they want to turn the clock forward to what they believe to be the future.  The ultimate moderate supports all changes that have been made to the traditional status quo up to the current point in time but will support no others; they want to freeze the clock.

  To put this theory into a relevant context, let's once again use America as the traditional status quo.  Though, as I mentioned, it is impossible to determine precisely what traditions and values "America" represents, a generally agreed upon list might include: military strength, the Christian religion (and the restrained sexual practices associated with it), low taxes, small government, capitalism/free markets/private industry, the rugged individualist/self-reliance, family, racial purity/Anglicanism.

  How does that list sound?  Does it sound like music to the ears of an ultra-conservative?  Is it also a list of everything every ultra-liberal hates?  If there's anything to my theory, it should.  Please note: this is not meant to be a description of present-day conservativism (I'm sure that "racial purity" pissed off most conservatives reading this).  This is America as it used to be.  If you have negative associations with some of the things on the list, you are not an ultra-conservative.  Anyway, things break down like this:

 

   One strange feature of this axis continuum is that conservatives are on the left, while liberals are on the right.  I understand that that is confusing.  But I've arranged it like I have in order to demonstrate the temporal relation of the viewpoints; liberals, for better or for worse, seek change, whereas conservatives, for better or for worse, think we not only should resist change, but that we should go back to the way things used to be.  I believe that this theory explains the following phenomenon:

1.  Conservatives are more demonstrably patriotic than liberals.  Al Franken once said that conservatives "love America like a four-year-old loves their Mommy.  Everything Mommy says and does is good, and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad."  This, I feel, is an accurate depiction of many conservatives' attitude, and seems to stem from a general reverence for America.  They root for America like a sports team; they identify with it, and they wave their colors proudly.  Ultra-liberals, on the other hand, are often described (sometimes accurately) as the "blame America first crowd". 

2.  Younger people tend to be more liberal than older people.  Younger people feel a need to rebel against authority.  The concept of America represents authority, causing young people to rebel against it, resulting in views that are generally liberal.   Older people, however, who came of age in a time when current values more closely resembled the traditional status quo, tend to be more conservative in their beliefs.

3.  Conservatives are very nostalgic for the past.  Conservatives often have a glorified, even idealized view of the past - much more so than liberals.  They speak of eroding values, crumbling families, and moral decline.  These sentiments reflect a sense of social decline that is only possible if one assumes that times past were preferable.

4.  Conservatives embrace the term "conservative", while liberals prefer the term "progressive".  In a rare case of accuracy in political labeling, conservatives do, in fact seek to conserve: specifically, they seek to conserve the values of the past and resist change.  Liberals, on the other hand, usually prefer the term "progressive", indicating their belief that the policies they promote constitute progress.

5.  Liberals generally believe in a much more active government.  Democrats like to refer to themselves as the "party of ideas."  Conservative activist Grover Norquist, on the other hand, expresses the sentiment of many conservatives when he says: "I don't want to eliminate government.  I just want to make it small enough to drag into the bathroom and drown in the tub."  Liberals are unsatisfied with things the way they are, and therefore they develop programs in an attempt to fix the problems they see.  Conservatives, in contrast, spend much of their time attempting to undo what liberals have done, creating very little of their own.

6.  Conservatives invoke the founding fathers much more than liberals.  Conservatives often cite the founding fathers in the course of arguments against change.  Strict constructionists, in particular, have a great deal of reverence for the founding fathers.  They decry "activists" who seek to change what they believe to be the intent of those who existed during the idealized time in the past.

7.  Conservatives are more likely than liberals to be deferential to authority.  One of the primary characteristics of Adorno's "authoritarian personality" is obedience to and reverence for authority.  Conservatives are generally more likely than liberals to have unyielding respect for sources of authority, such as parents and the church.  Their politics tend to be conservative because this same impulse drives them to have unyielding respect for the concept of America as well.

  If we look at extreme cases of conservatism and liberalism, the ways in which a person's orientation relative to the traditional status quo manifests itself become more clear.  The Nazis, who can be considered extreme conservatives, aggressively promoted things that they considered to be traditionally German - be it in art, music, or sports - and railed against the forces that they believed were conspiring to destroy the idyllic, pre-World War I Germanic existence.  On the other end of the spectrum, the Communists, who - whether in the Soviet Union, China, or Cambodia - were extreme liberals, threw out every vestige of the past and attempted to accelerate progress towards what they believed to be the future.

  I believe that a person's feelings about the traditional status quo is the best explanatory variable for the wide range political beliefs that constitute conservatism and liberalism.  Conservatives believe in small government, codification of majority values, and an America-fist foreign policy because that is what this country has traditionally done (that is, historically we have done these things more than we presently do).  Meanwhile, liberals are unsatisfied with the way things have traditionally been done, and therefore seek change in all three areas (the opposite of an America-first foreign policy being a foreign policy that takes into account the rights of other peoples).  I feel that this theory explains why there is an apparent contradiction within the two predominant political views and why certain behavioral characteristics tend to correlate with certain political viewpoints.

It's Not Offensive if it's Funny
Topic: comedy

  There's a lot of debating among comedians about how offensive a person can/should be in an attempt to be funny. Comedy - or good comedy, anyway - has an inherently subversive nature, and you can usually get a laugh saying something that people think but are afraid to say, so there's a natural inclination for comedians to test the limits of good taste. Sometimes - and you'll see this at pretty much any open mic you go to - the comic crosses the line. But where is the line?

  Obviously, the answer to that question is different for everyone, though there's some general agreement on standards; I don't know anyone who argued that Michael Richard's flipout was not over the line. I think the thing that makes offense in comedy so difficult to pinpoint is this: the quality of the joke is one of the things that determines whether it's offensive or not.

  Take, for example, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. It's exactly what it sounds like: a Web site (and now a book) chronicling all of the things that white people like. The first time I heard of this site, I was offended. I mean, the reason is pretty plain: it's nothing more than a list of racial stereotypes. Think of all the offensive things that would be included if stuffblackpeoplelike.com or stuffmexicanpeoplelike.com existed. If you're against stereotypes - and everyone claims to be - then you should probably be offended by this site.

  But I'm not. Because when I started reading it, well...it's really funny. I mean, really sharp, really funny. Not hacky - golf, for example, isn't listed as one of the things that white people like. Religions their parents don't belong to, however, is. The observations on this site are so unbelievably right on. Take, for example, this description of Sarah Silverman* (which is, itself, about saying offensive things in comedy...what a mindfuck):

 Her whole shtick is about saying really offensive things! But it’s ok because she’s pretty and has a small voice so it all sounds so cute! Get it? It’s not offensive, because when she says racist or sexist things she knows they are offensive. So it’s ok.

  Actually, that whole entry about comedians completely busts me, as do about 80 percent of the entries. 

  This site doesn't offend me because the jokes are so good. At the risk of overanalyzing things, I think this logic makes sense: the statements don't strike me as offensive because they are so clearly meant to be funny, not to be taken seriously. Take, for example, this paragraph, from thing #101- being offended:

  If you ever need to make a white person feel indebted to you, wait for them to mention a book, film, or television show that features a character who is the same race as you,  then say “the representation of <insert race> was offensive and if you can’t see that, well, you need to do some soul searching.”  After they return from their hastily booked trip to land of your ancestors, they will be desperate to make it up to you.  At this point, it is acceptable to ask them to help you paint your house.

  With that tone, the only people who could possibly take this site seriously are the same people who, when in a comedy audience, will boo at the mere mention of, say, the Vietnam War (regardless of what you actually end up saying about Vietnam War). 

  It's okay because it's funny. Or, at least, it's okay mostly because it's funny; it also helps that stereotypes about white people have not traditionally been a source of pain or subjegation in this country. And - and I'll keep this in mind next time the "when is it okay for comedians to use the n-word?" argument comes up - I found it interesting that I immediately wanted to know whether or not the author is white. It seems a lot more okay to me if the author is white - it would just affirm that this list is meant to be good-natured, not accusatory. But I'm not ready to say that obervations this sharp, comedy this good, should be ignored because of an over-developed sense of political correctness. What's offensive in regular life is not necessarily offensive in comedy.

*For the record - because I'm begging for an argument with my friends if I don't clarify this - I think Sarah Silverman is pretty funny, but also overrated.

Comedy Lies, Part 1: Stage Credits
Topic: comedy

There is a lot of lying in comedy. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Really, instead of saying "I just flew in from Cleveland..." would you really prefer that a comedian set up a joke "I just flew in from Springfield - Oregon, not Illinois - which, of course meant that I actually flew out of the Portland airport, and I had to switch planes in Cincinnati, so I guess you could say that I just flew in from Cincinnati, though the Cincinnati airport is actually across the river in Covington, Kentucky..."?

 

Some of these lies are innocuous (see above). Some lies are a bit more devious. In the interest of pulling back the curtain and giving non-comedians a better idea of what to believe and what not to believe, I've decided to write a series of blogs covering some common comedy lies. First up: stage credits.

 

Stage credits are frequently wall-to-wall bullshit. Not always, but frequently. Even more frequently, they're not complete bullshit, but are willful exaggerations of the truth. For example, immediately after my second college show, I began having myself introduced (and this is an extremely common, completely overworked intro) as having played "clubs and colleges up and down the East Coast." I had played University of Maryland Baltimore Campus and Georgetown University. Two points make a line. Anything more than one is plural. Both universities are within 50 miles of an ocean, which is to the East of a prominent land mass. Bam. Intro.

 

Here are some other common intros and what they actually mean:

 

"This comic is a really funny guy" = "This comic showed up late and didn't write an intro, so I'm giving him an intro that cannot technically be disproved." 

"This comic is a good friend of mine" = "I am aware of this person's existence, or at the very least I have a notecard with their name on it."

"This comic can be seen at venues throughout the area" = "This comic has access to e-mail and a basic knowledge of the English language, and is therefore capable of signing up for open mics."

"You may have seen this next comic on Youtube" = "This comic has a joke that's received 12 hits on Youtube, which means that the monkey with his finger up his ass is more than 14,000 times more entertaining than this next comic."

"This next comic comes to us all the way from New York City" = "Ooooooooohhhhh, pay attention, hillbillies! A real live New Yorker done took his auto five hours down the turnpike to show us small-town Washington folk how proper joke-i-fyin' is done! And y'all know he's good, cus he's down here doin' 7 minutes for free on a Tuesday night...just like that Seinfeld jew!"

"You may recognize this next comic from his online TV show..." = "There is no possible way you will recognize this next comic."

"You may have seen this next comic on Law and Order (New York)/CSI (LA)/The Wire (DC/Baltimore)" = "This next comic has played a dead body on Law and Order/CSI/The Wire."

"This comic has performed at venues all over the world" = "This comic drove up to Toronto this one time." 

"You may have seen this next comic on Last Comic Standing" = "This comic tried out for Last Comic Standing. His elbow was in the shot when that blonde lady who sounds like the female David Brent was interviewing the guy in the diaper." 

"This comic has opened for (fill in impressive yet semi-believable name)" = "A club did some open mic thing and (impressive yet semi-believable name) showed up at the end and did a guest set. Bryson told me that he also ended up banging that waitress with the red hair."

 

Other phrases/things to watch out for:

"Shared the stage with..." - If you're bullshit detector doesn't go off when you hear language this ambiguous, you need to get it replaced. 

"BET's Comic View..." - Comic View will apparently let any black comic in New York do a 20 second set if they hang around long enough.

"Performed at (some notable club)" - "Performed at" does not mean "was paid to perform at." Most clubs do some sort of open mic.

"Graduated from ______ comedy class" - Contrary to popular belief, the matriculation rate from comedy and improv classes is surprisingly high. It's not West Point.

More than 3 stage credits - If a comic needs to try to convince you that badly, then they know that they won't be able to do it with their jokes.

Elaborate intros that require even good MCs to read from a notecard - if you can't write a short intro, then you can't write a good joke, either.

TV credits that are not comedy - Actors are not comedians...they're actors. The only good thing to come out of the whole Michael Richards thing was that this was proven definitively and very publicly. 

Anything that sounds way too good to be true - Wow, he just had a one hour special on HBO and now he's doing 5 minutes at 11:00 at Cafe Japone? Looks like we showed up on the right night!

 

Of course, everything I listed above are sometimes legitimate - everything except for the online TV show one. And then, of course, there's the fact that some MCs and sound guys just make up stage credits without even asking you - I've been introduced as having been on HBO and having had a half hour special on Comedy Central. So, given that you usually can't trust stage credits, why not just do this: decide for yourself whether the comic is funny or not.

Looking Back at England, Forward to Spain
Topic: soccer

  Friendly number 2 of 3 against quality opponents is today. The first one, against England, went badly. My post last week covered seven things I'd like to see against England, so I'd like to revisit those seven things:

 

1. Eddie Johnson on the bench. Nope - he played 90 minutes, and, to be fair, I thought he played better than normal. Which is to say: he still did not play very well.

2. A decent scoreline. This was probably the big victory, if there was one. 3-0 or maybe even 4-0 would have also been fair scorelines.

3. A good game for Bocanegra. Actually, I thought that he - and the entire back line, actually, played pretty well; they were just under pressure the entire game. The one criticism I have is that they didn't play the ball forward extremely well, which contributed to them being under pressure the entire game. Bocanegra probably didn't help himself much in the eyes of most Premiership managers, but he probably didn't hurt himself much, either.

4. A good game for Freddy Adu. I thought he was fine, but it's not like he made an irrefutable case for more playing time to Benfica's new manager. I think he'll get a shot today against Spain; with Donovan out, a creative option is sorely needed, and he's the only other name on the roster who fits that description.

5. A good game for Beckham. Yep, pretty good. Better than Gareth Barry, in my opinion. Now that I'm seeing Beckham play on a regular basis, my opinion of Beckham is this: without his right foot, Beckham is a good player. Not a great player by any stretch, but a solid, quality player with good technique and a decent work rate. But his right foot is absolutely atomic. It bumps him up from good to world class. I can't think of any player who can strike the ball as accurately and with as much pace as consistently as Beckham. Roberto Carlos has a laser beam free kick, but he can't play the bending ball that Beckham plays all the time. Juninho and Nakamura are probably Beckham's equivalent as far as scoring from free kicks is concerned, but Beckham is probably the better crosser both from dead balls and the run of play. If Beckham got hurt and could only take free kicks, it would probably make sense for the Galaxy to just play with 10 and then trot him out there for each dead ball. He's that good.

6. A good game from Michael Bradley. Nope - I thought he was pretty poor. He tackled well and didn't draw a red card, but that's about all. He really didn't play the ball forward well. He did poorly in tight spots. He didn't link up with the forwards, and didn't get forward much himself. Not an impressive showing. I think he'll be paired with Mastreoni today; maybe that will allow him to focus on offense a little bit more.

7. Minutes for Kenny Cooper. Okay, I really blew it on this one: Cooper wasn't on the roster. But I'm a comedian writing about soccer; I don't think it's reasonable to expect me to have even the vaguest idea what I'm talking about. 

 

Other thoughts from the England match, Larry King News & Notes style:

- I've felt this way for a long time: the national team really needs Landon Donovan. That doesn't bode well for today's match versus Spain, which Donovan will also sit out.

- Dempsey had a howler.

- I've never liked Josh Wolff much as a striker (he can't finish), and was not surprised when 1860 Munich started playing him on the right wing. I though that's where Bradley was going to put him against England, with Dempsey up top.

- The US striker pool is pathetic. When you can make a convincing argument why Nate Jaqua should be starting - and I think that you can - you've officially fallen on hard times.

- It's only a friendly, where you want to test out promising young players, and we still put Frankie Hejduk, Eddie Lewis, and Josh Wolff on the field. Nothing against those guys, but the fact that we can't replace them at the moment is a very bad sign.  

 

 Now on to today's game against Spain. I think we'll get a better performance based on the fact that our guys want to atone for the England match, but I really worry about the team that we'll be putting on the fied. For starters, we still have no strikers. Eddie Johnson is like a koala bear: the koala survived because it had no predators, and Eddie Johnson keeps getting minutes because there's no-one there to displace him. That being the case, here's the line that I think we'll see versus Spain, which also happens to be the lineup that I hope we'll see:

 

-------------------------Johnson----------

--------------Adu---------------------------

Beasley-------------------------Dempsey

---------Bradley------Mastreoni---------

Pearce---Boca-----Onyewu-------Dolo

----------------Howard--------------------

 

Yes, that's right: I am advocating a starting lineup that contains Eddie Johnson. Ugh. It's come to that. As I mentioned, a good argument can be made for Jaqua instead of Johnson, but I think that we'll have to defend and counter against Spain, and Jaqua isn't built for the counter attack.

Of course, the real solution to the striker problem should be obvious by now: Jozy Altidore must be sent into deep space, where he will age at a faster rate, a-la Planet of the Apes. He needs to be 22 now. World Cup qualifying starts in a few weeks; if we can't get Altidore on the field somehow, then somebody better get Brian McBride on the phone.

What I Hope to See Against England
Topic: soccer

  Friendlies are like open mics: the result is less important that what you learn. Here's what I'm hoping for against England:

 

1. Eddie Johnson on the bench. I'm over him; he's not the guy. My worst fear is that he'll play and have a semi-decent game, which will subsequently earn him another ten games of back-passes and donkey touches that cause the commentators to say "he just needs to find his form..." He has found his form: his form is shit.  

Of course, it looks like Donovan might not play, which means that Johnson probably will.

 

2. A decent scoreline. I'd love it if the US won, but England are the stronger team and they have to be considered the favorites. If the US lose by two goals or one, that gets remembered as: "The US came to Wembley and England won." If we lose by three goals or more, that gets remembered as: "The US came to Wembley and got their asses kicked."

 

3. A good game for Bocanegra. He's out of contract with Fulham and is looking for a new team. He's proven that he's good enough to play in the Premiership; a good game here could help him latch on with a Premiership team. 

 

4. A good game for Freddy Adu. He's dominating at the U-20 and Olympic levels, and he's still only 18 (which seems impossible - shouldn't he be about 35 by now?). It's time to start giving him regular looks with the full national team. Benfica have a new coach and some good performances in high-profile matches should help Freddy get a look.

 

5. A good game for Beckham. If Beckham plays poorly, everyone in England will say: "His form is shit because he plays in MLS." We need a good game from Beckham in order to be spared that inane chorus. Of course, a good game from Beckham will not cause anyone in England to give MLS any credit whatsoever, but it will at least minimize the disparaging remarks.

 

6. A good game from Michael Bradley. Another guy who's basically on trial; he could all but cement a spot in the Premiership with a good game tonight. Most important for me: no brain farts in the closing moments of the game. He has a very bad habit of drawing stupid cards and committing stupid fouls after the 80th minute. 

 

7. Minutes for Kenny Cooper. He's the anti-Eddie Johnson: he's consistently good, and yet nobody seems to notice. I don't think he'll ever be a great national team player, but I could see him being a reliable, solid option, a la Jimmy Conrad.

Big Night
Topic: soccer

I've got a triple-header of contests tonight, which will determine whether I go to be happy or completely pissed off. In order of importance:

1. DC United at Toronto

2. Drafthouse Comedy Challenge

3. Champions League Final (I'm for Chelsea - I just really don't like Man U and I feel that the criticism of Avram Grant has been over the top)

 

I know - "the Champions League final is #3?" Sorry - these just aren't my teams; it's hard for me to find a reason to care very much. Still, it should be fun to watch.

What constitutes a win for the night? Any combination of two wins. Anything else is a loss.

Comedy Contests
Topic: comedy

Tonight is the DC Comedy Showcase finals at the DC Improv. I'm not going, but I wish everyone luck (a stupid and disingenuous thing to do, because they can't all win, right?). I'm in the Drafthouse Comedy Challenge tomorrow. Also tomorrow, I'll post my most recent podcast, which is about comedy contests (featuring some of the guys in tonight's Comedy Showcase). It's comedy contest season in DC.

I don't want to rehash too much stuff that I covered in the podcast, but I do want to hurry up and get some of my opinions about contests on the record before tomorrow night, at which point whatever I say could be perceived as sour grapes or gloating. So here we go:

I think that comedy contests are good for comedy but bad for comics. Contests are good for one reason and one reason only: they create shows that would not otherwise exist. For example, if the Drafthouse cancelled their comedy challenge, they wouldn't replace it with a comedy showcase; they'd replace it with a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

Contests bring crowds. Contests encourage comics bring their friends – some contests are almost entirely bringer shows. People are intrigued by contests and like the competitive aspect - witness that virtually every popular reality show includes the competitive element. Practically anything that brings audiences to see comedy is good for comedy.

Okay, enough being positive: contests are terrible. They’re discouraging. They’re unfair. They’re stupid – what’s more subjective than comedy? No matter how well run – and some contests actually are well run – they’re still unbalanced and arbitrary. And here’s something that came out in the podcast that I hadn’t thought about much before: contests stoke the competitiveness between comics.

There’s already plenty of competition in comedy. It’s just the nature of the business, and I don’t think it can be gotten rid of. My generation of DC comedians tried very hard to avoid competitiveness between comics, which was a well-intended effort but, in hindsight, probably also a bit naive. The people in the most recent podcast, who are a bit younger than me, were big enough to admit to competitiveness, which I think is a positive step. As Bryson said, admitting to competitiveness is a bit like admitting to racist tendencies: it’s healthier to acknowledge it and manage it than to try to deny it.

Personally, I think I’m making progress in the way I approach contests. I’ve seen such stupid things happen in contests that it’s getting easier to actually convince myself that they don’t mean anything. In the past, when I’ve lost to shitty comics it’s eaten at me for weeks; this time, I’m just going into the contest with the knowledge that it’s extremely likely that something I view as completely unfair will happen (for the record, I don’t know whom I’m competing against tomorrow). Of course, it’s hard not to not care when money, opportunities, or prestige are on the line, so I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want to win. But, if – wait, when I lose, I honestly think that I’ll be more pissed off about the money than the competitive aspect. It’s greed, not ego. I think that counts as progress.

So, I think that we’re stuck with contests, and we’re also stuck with the competitiveness that they inspire. Probably the best thing to do is realize: 1) Contests are extremely random, so it probably doesn’t make much sense to let results affect your mentality too much one way or the other, 2) We don’t need to go through the charade of pretending that we don’t care about the outcome; we just need to try to keep our competitiveness from turning into vitriol.

The Premiership: the Most Boring League in the World
Topic: soccer

The British press was freaking out last week about the end of the Premiership season. They were calling it the most exciting season in years, the closest Premiership race ever, etc. And, in a way, it was - it was only the fourth time in the history of the Premiership that the title came down to the final day. Here's the thing: I can't understand why I'm supposed to care about any of that.

I'm not a Chelsea fan or a Man U fan. I also don't cheer for Arsenal or Liverpool. Actually, I feel that any American who cheers for any of those four teams better have a damn good reason for doing so - there had better be some sort of family connection or other very good explanation. In the case of Chelsea, it's okay if you became a Chelsea fan before Roman Abromavich bought the team (Grant Wahl did this). But, barring those exceptions, for an American to pick any of those four teams as "their" team is blatant frontrunning.

I probably went too far in the other direction: I cheer for Fulham. I chose Fulham for obvious reasons: they're the team with the Americans. And now they're my team forever. I'm not changing. As I mentioned in the previous post, I will stay with this marriage no matter how bad it gets.

So, obviously, my attention last week was with my team. And it was a great week; they won and, against all odds stayed up. Which means that Fulham's 2009 relegation-avoidance campaign will be broadcast in the US. Hooray?

Here's the thing: because I don't cheer for one of the big four, my team will never, EVER win the title. Never. I could live to be 100, and Fulham will never win the Premiership. They're already 0 for 129 years, and their highest finish ever is - drum roll please - ninth. Cheering for Fulham is different than cheering for any American team in that I don't know exactly what the ultimate goal is. In the US, the ultimate goal is always to win a championship. For Fulham, and many teams like them, the goal is...what...? Avoiding relegation again? So, 17th place is a victory?

Fulham aren't the only team in this position - not by a long shot. Pretty much any team in the Premiership outside of the big four can't aspire to more than a UEFA cup spot, and a few can maybe hope for a place in the Champions League (where they will be promptly dispatched by a G-14 team). Everton, Newcastle, Tottenham, and a few others might consider themselves title contenders, but they're kidding themselves: they are not close to even sniffing the title. Realistically, they are competing for fifth place.

I would be willing to bet that no team outside of the Big Four will win the Premiership in the next 20 years (unless a team undergoes some sort of Chelsea-esque financial infusion). Already, only four teams have ever won the Premiership in its 16 year history. The one break from Big Four dominance came when Blackburn won in 1995, and that's looking like more and more of a fluke. In the past 13 years, it's been only Chelsea, Arsenal, and Man U. The Big Four have finished in the top four spots for the last three years. And every year that they earn more Champions League money only widens the gap between the Big Four and the rest of the league.

If I haven't started caring about the Red Sox or Yankees after all these years, then I'm not likely to start caring about the Big Four, either. I care about my team. And my team is never involved in the title race, nor will they ever be unless something changes. I think that some people in England are starting to realize that the lack of parity is a growing problem; as money becomes more prevalent in soccer, the gap between the rich teams and the poor teams becomes more apparent on the field. This might - one day - lead England to adopt a very American solution: the dreaded salary cap.

Of course, there won't be a salary cap any time soon. The very fact that the US pioneered the idea probably pushes it back by at least two decades. So, in the meantime, the Premiership is basically a four team league, or maybe even a two-team league. And that's not very exciting to me. Don't get me wrong - I'll keep following the Premiership, but I'll be following the bottom of the league, where my team plays. The top of the table is just boring to me.