Mexico 2, South Africa 0; South Korea 2, Czechia 1

Karin came home from the office.

John-Paul: “So, are your colleagues excited that the World Cup is about to begin?”

Karin: “Oh, yes, it has been mentioned many times.”

John-Paul: “Really?”

Karin: “No, it hasn’t been mentioned at all. HA, HA, HA, HA, HA …”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

However competently the New York Times might report on the logistics, economics, and politics of the World Cup, I’m afraid the journal doesn’t credibly judge how well or poorly the sport is played.

How could any reader take seriously an article titled, “Re-ranking the 48 World Cup Teams after Day One of the Tournament”?

(As if two matches involving four also-rans warranted a comprehensive re-think.)

It’s the praise for Mexico’s curtain-raiser, however, that’s just bonkers:

An accomplished, drama-free opening victory against South Africa was pretty much everything Mexico hoped it would be. The excellent Julian Quinones’ early goal settled any nerves[,] and then came the emotive, heart-rending second from talisman Raul Jimenez in the second half. With potentially more to come from Edson Alvarez (left out as he builds up his fitness) and wonderkid Gilberto Mora, Mexico may feel the benefit of home advantage more than anyone, what with that unbelievably passionate Azteca crowd.

accomplished: Hardly.

drama-free: Nope. His side having assured victory, César Montes, Mexico’s captain, needlessly got himself ejected.

pretty much everything Mexico hoped it would be: I don’t know what Mexicans hoped for, but see the previous comments.

excellent Julian Quinones: (Is basic Spanish orthography too much to ask for? His name is Julián Quiñones.) He was decent, not excellent.

emotive, heart-rending second [Mexican goal] from talisman Raul Jimenez: (Ditto: it’s Raúl Jiménez.) These sentiments are not relevant to ranking teams.

with potentially more to come: Ditto. Not relevant.

The Mexicans then were catapulted up six places in the NYT’s rankings. If such effusion is lavished on the USA’s co-hosts, I shudder to think what will be written about the USA.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Koreans and Czechs then staged a much better contest. Neither side oozes talent, but both at least operate with clarity, and each managed one rather clever goal last night. The pressure is now on the Czechs to make up ground against the Mexicans. Neither Czechs nor Koreans should have trouble with the South Africans, who are out of their depth.

June’s poem

Wilfred Owen’s:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. –

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Better to chase glory in the World Cup than in war.

It’s Iran’s privilege to do both. The soccer team will be forced to fly into and out of the United States, each game day, to keep appointments.

Africa’s top-rated referee – a Somali – has been refused entry by the U.S. government.

The piano (cont.); bridging; teething

The good news is, we won’t have to keep our new piano in the garage, even if we’re never able to fit it through our front door. We’ve agreed on a “Plan B” destination for it.

The bad news is, that destination is the kitchen.

The other bad news is, we would have to clear a path through the garage and “mud” room to get the piano into the kitchen. A monumental task.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel completed Kindergarten. We attended his “bridging” ceremony. (“Bridging” is Montessori lingo for graduating.) During the ceremony, students crossed an actual bridge which had been set up in the gymnasium. This symbolized the passage from Kindergarten to the first grade. A first-grader greeted each graduate on the far side of the bridge.

Then the students sang two songs and their parents shot video.

One of the parents I spotted was R., with whom I’d gone to college. “Hi, R.,” I said, “remember me? I’m John-⁠Paul.” “Yeah,” he said, and walked away. A shrinking violet, R.

The next day, Samuel nonchalantly lost a tooth – his first. It lies among his Lego bricks somewhere. Already, a new tooth emerges from his gum.

He has been listening to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.

The piano; the sports

We’re not a musical family. Karin plays her clarinet sometimes, and a smidgeon of guitar. The children strum on toy ukeleles. That’s all.

BUT today we acquired a piano from my cousin, Annie, and her husband, Johnny, who are moving out of their house and distributing their possessions.

(I’ve long dreamed of learning to play the Rach. 3.)

Alas, we couldn’t fit the piano into our house. Our entrance is too small. We had to leave the piano in our already-too-cluttered garage.

This story isn’t over. (It had better not be.)

STAY TUNED.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This morning, I wore my Chicago Bears t-shirt to a medical appointment and then endured a barrage of small-talk on that subject.

Caleb Williams is on the cover of this year’s Madden, said the doctor.

I did see that, I acknowledged.

Do you believe in the Madden curse?, said the doctor.

I told him I did not.

(We returned to the reception area.)

Don’t let Andrew know you’re a Bears fan, the doctor said in a loud voice, tilting his head toward one of his half-dozen flunkies.

Yes, the Bears are very bad, I said, attempting to nip the issue in the bud. (Actually, the Bears weren’t bad last year.)

But you’re loyal, right?, they all insisted.

I gave them a woeful look, to convince them of my bonafides.

(I am loyal to the Bears, but I do not respect them.)

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 99: The castle

(Not based on Kafka’s novel.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Seldom viewed outside of Australia, The Castle (1997) is revered in that country. Wikipedia tells us that this movie

can be seen as a social study [of] the lives and aspirations of the inhabitants of suburban Australia. The central character, Darryl Kerrigan, ties into the stereotypical depiction of an “Aussie battler,” a man who will protect and serve his family through bold and sometimes ruthless assertion.

I’ve not observed Australians in their natural habitat. Doubtless, there’s much about this movie that I don’t understand.

Even so, I love The Castle.

One begins by snickering at the protagonists – Greater Melburnians pursuing the Australian Dream in their dismal, airport-adjacent cul-de-sac. But in the end, one is touched by these people. One wishes they were one’s neighbors.

(It’s gratifying when one well-heeled outsider – a broadminded constitutional lawyer, played by the grave but twinkling Charles “Bud” Tingwell – is admitted into their circle.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Darryl Kerrigan (Michael Caton), patriarch and hero, is lovable because there is so much that he loves: his family, his dogs, his tchotchkes, his boat, his garden, his pre-fab country house on a nondescript lake, and of course his family’s suburban home (his “castle”). Not to mention his neighbors and his lawyers. Having thrown in his lot with X, Darryl loves X proudly and unconditionally. We hear him declare, in a wedding speech, his family’s love for the new son-in-law; and what goes for that adoptee goes for every animal, vegetable, and mineral that Darryl claims as his own (or as his own’s own). It doesn’t matter that Darryl’s wife and children are pitifully ordinary, or that one son – in what I believe to be a reference to Australia’s colonial origin – is in prison. Darryl treats each family member with something approaching veneration. And each of them responds in kind.

Darryl is not a rich man. He earns his living towing cars (i.e., clearing away others’ property). His boat, house, house-extensions, holiday house, and dogs – purebred racing Greyhounds – have been accumulated opportunistically. The Kerrigans scour the trade papers for bargains. Once acquired, each purchase is accorded quasi-heraldic status. Non-purchases too: witness how the household acquires its front gates.

The Kerrigans are consummate appropriators. It is a sly irony. The movie recounts their struggle against appropriation by outsiders.

One day, the Kerrigans receive notice that their house is to be compulsorily acquired by the airport, so that the runway might be extended. The Kerrigans and their neighbors oppose this order in the courts. But their lawyer is out of his depth, and the airport is backed by powerful business interests.

“I’m starting to understand how the Aborigines feel,” mutters Darryl.

(It’s a sign of comedic deftness that this low-key political statement produces one of the movie’s biggest laughs.)

It isn’t hard to guess that the Kerrigans’ misfortunes will be reversed. In time, the lawsuit is heard by Australia’s highest court. The judgment favors the Kerrigans, and the “castle”-dwellers end up better off than before. The legal aspect of the story is, I suspect, sheer fantasy. The movie’s really interesting questions aren’t about law; they’re about value. There are questions about ownership and appropriation, and there are aesthetic questions. Can a life of utter tastelessness be good? How important is the aesthetic component, comparatively speaking?

Proverbs 15:17 says: “Better a vegetable dinner with love than a stall-fattened ox with hate.” The movie illustrates this principle.

For it leaves us in no doubt that the Kerrigans’ aesthetic capacity is very, very poor. Indeed, it’s their utter non-descrimination, their determination to embrace absolutely every piece of kitsch, that enables them to love each other as they do. This is made clear from the beginning, in brilliant faux-naïf voiceover, by Darryl’s youngest son, Dale (Stephen Curry):

I believe the movie is responding to a particular book – a classic Australian work of architectural and social criticism – The Australian Ugliness (1960), by Robin Boyd. (See the book’s Wikipedia article, and its Text Classics webpage.) Images of jet planes, electrical wires, and large TV antennae feature prominently in both works. It can’t just be a coincidence.

Some day, I’ll read the book, and then I’ll understand The Castle better. As funny, touching, and socially observant as it is, it’s an “ideas” movie, really.