I raise my sons

Little Abel has been feverish; his napping has been so fitful, he hasn’t remained asleep when I’ve tried to separate my body from his. Today he was less ill but just as unwilling to be parted from me. The household chores have suffered; my reading and writing “projects” have suffered; Abel’s napping “schedule,” insofar as one exists, has suffered. In the afternoons, I’ve had to haul him, at his groggiest, down the block to retrieve Samuel from the bus.

Samuel has brought home a workbook of optional math exercises. Most days, I force him to complete a few pages. He screams bloody murder but then settles down and does them easily enough.

Daniel, the middle child, finds ways to claim attention. He and I discuss the English and Spanish alphabets. He firmly believes in che, elle, and erre, although the Real Academia Española disavowed those letters in the mid-1990s. Alas, Daniel follows YouTube, not his father. His Spanish is therefore overcomplicated. His approach to reading in either language is downright glacial. He can sound out syllables but has to pause to lecture me about every letter. I tell him it’s no way to form words, let alone whole sentences. What would really suit him is a language of pictographs and ideographs. His calligraphy is rather good; he might learn to design type before he can read it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Most days, Abel and Daniel are good friends. They play and bathe together. Daniel has given them superhero bathing names: “Soap Man” and “Bubble Man.” Abel likes to pour water out of the tub and onto the bathroom floor.

When Abel is old enough, I’ll take them all outside and force them to run around the track next to the school down the street. The two younger boys, especially Daniel, already like to run around the shed in our yard. They didn’t like to before, but I persuaded them with reverse psychology or some such trick.

Following a tumultuous afternoon: a conversation with my chastened first-grader

Samuel: “Look at what I’m drawing, Dad.”

He shows me his LCD drawing tablet.

John-Paul: “Is that a ‘peace’ sign?”

Samuel: “Yes. Today is International Peace Day.”

John-Paul: “So it is. Did you learn that at school?”

Samuel: “Yes.”

I briefly reflect on this country’s warring. I decide to let it pass.

John-Paul: “That’s good.”

Samuel: “I’m drawing this ‘peace’ sign to calm myself.”

He’s banned from TV this evening.

Samuel: “Now I’m turning the ‘peace’ sign into a crying emoji.”

He does.

He presses the button to clear the screen.

Samuel: “I’m writing with a colored pencil because I’ve lost the stylus.”

I hadn’t known, or had forgotten, that the instrument is called a stylus.

He shows me the screen. He has written:

peace = calm

Return to me!

Every day this week, Samuel has come home from school expecting to have received the latest issue of his (free) Lego magazine. No luck. I share in his disappointment.

Today, then, we were happy to find a magazine in our mailbox.

But it wasn’t the Lego magazine. It was an unexpected, free issue of Harper’s.

Eveloping the regular cover was an outer cover, on which was printed this enticement:

Dear Former Subscriber:

Remember the story of the prodigal son? How his father put on a feast and welcomed him back with open arms?

Well, that’s what we at Harper’s want to do for you.

Instead of setting a sumptuous table, we’ve come up with something far more satisfying: a money-saving opportunity to subscribe to Harper’s at the lowest available rate!

Restart your subscription today and get a full year of Harper’s (12 issues) for only $14.97 – that’s 86% off the annual newsstand price. You save $92.91 just by saying YES!

And so on.

I have to say, I’m put off. Harper’s Magazine is not my Heavenly Father.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. Even so: In the pretentious field of long-form journalism, Harper’s achieves a kind of modesty by going out of the way to pose as what, in Peppa Pig, is referred to as a “clever-clogs.” (The “clever-clogs” in Peppa Pig is Edmund Elephant.) The Harper’s style is to dress up serious reportage or reflection in snark.

Harper’s plays the wise fool.

The quintessential Harper’s article is Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness” (1932).

Articles mentioned on this issue’s cover:

“Revolt in the Heartland: Can Old-Time Populism Save the Country?”

“Ghost Towns of the Darién Gap”

“On the Front Lines of Canada’s Ostrich War” (didn’t the Australians have an ostrich war? No, they fought the emus)

That I’ve been a more faithful subscriber of Harper’s than of, say, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, or The New York Review of Books surely reflects my own penchant for off-the-wall self-effacement.

Or that I’m a cheapskate. Those other mags are pricey.

Now that I’m old

Three books by Tim Mulgan, a future-minded philosopher before “longtermism” was in vogue:

(1) Future People: A Moderate Consequentialist Account of Our Obligations to Future Generations (2006)

(2) Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy after Catastrophe (2011)

(3) Philosophy for an Ending World (2024)

The trajectory is not encouraging.

About a decade ago, I read and enjoyed several chapters of the middle book, Ethics for a Broken World. I would read that book again. I wish I could teach it to students of the past. I’m less sure about today’s and tomorrow’s students. The book is a series of “lectures” about late-20th- and early-21st-century moral-and-political philosophy, delivered to university students in the (ravaged) future three or four generations hence. Even this bleak scenario now seems naïvely optimistic. It assumes that there will be students in the (ravaged) future.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

E. H. Carr, in What Is History?, says:

The historian belongs not to the past but to the present. Professor Trevor-Roper tells us that the historian “ought to love the past.” This is a dubius injunction. To love the past may easily be an expression of the nostalgic romanticism of old men and old societies, a symptom of loss of faith and interest in the present or future. Cliché for cliché, I should prefer the one about freeing oneself from “the dead hand of the past.” The function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

Now that I’m an old man of forty-four, not hopeful for the (this-worldly) future or much enjoying or understanding the present – at least as it exists outside my household – the past does seem more lovely. The picturesque past, that is. If this makes me an unfit historian, so be it.

September’s poem

A.I. could kill everyone before the decade ends, tech experts believe (or so a whistleblower claims). We all lose: not just this or that way of life, but life itself.

Of all the stupid ways to go.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The smith with the tongs both worketh in the coals,

and fashioneth it with hammers,

and worketh it with the strength of his arms:

yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth:

he drinketh no water, and is faint.

The carpenter stretcheth out his rule:

he marketh it out with a line:

he fitteth it with planes,

and he marketh it out with the compass,

and maketh it after the figure of a man,

according to the beauty of a man;

that it may remain in the house.

He heweth him down cedars,

and taketh the cypress and the oak,

which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest:

he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it.

Then shall it be for a man to burn:

for he will take thereof, and warm himself;

yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread;

yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it:

he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto.

He burneth part thereof in the fire:

with part thereof he eateth flesh:

he roasteth roast, and is satisfied:

yea, he warmeth himself, and saith,

‘Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire’.

And the residue thereof he maketh a god,

even his graven image:

he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it,

and prayeth unto it, and saith,

‘Deliver me; for thou art my god’.

They have not known nor understood:

for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see;

and their hearts, that they cannot understand.

And none considereth in his heart,

neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say,

‘I have burned part of it in the fire,

yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof:

I have roasted flesh, and eaten it:

and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination?

shall I fall down to the stock of a tree?’

He feedeth of ashes:

a deceived heart hath turned him aside,

that he cannot deliver his soul,

nor say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’

‘Remember these, O Jacob and Israel,

for thou art my servant:

I have formed thee: thou art my servant,

O Israel, thou shalt not be forgotten of me.

I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions,

and, as a cloud, thy sins:

return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.’

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Isaiah 44:12–22, KJV; line-breaking and punctuation of The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible)

“And the residue thereof he maketh a god, / even his graven image: / he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, / and prayeth unto it, and saith, / ‘Deliver me; for thou art my god’.”

Body-text fonts, pt. 55: Apollo

Shockingly, this is my first exhibition of the great Adrian Frutiger’s work. Behold.

Very nice, but one must tolerate long descenders. Observe the lowercase ps, qs, ys, and, especially, js (“jolly good job”). (The specimen is from a story by Francis Wyndham.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The household is watching Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) in installments: our attention spans are not long. The movie is faux-British. Barry Levinson, Chris Columbus, and Steven Spielberg are named in the opening credits.

Holmes and Watson are schoolmates. The school is proto-Hogwarts. There is a very picturesque scene with all the boys dressed for dinner in the Great Hall. The camera lingers over the table at which the Masters are seated. It cherishes their extreme decrepitude.

In other scenes, old men are injected with poisoned darts that cause them to hallucinate and kill themselves. The hallucinations involve the coming to life of chicken dinners, hatstands, and stained-glass windows.

Little Daniel excuses himself during these scenes.

“New America”

The politicians of New Mexico have responded to Trump’s latest proposal.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel has been complaining about the wasting of his time. E.g., when someone else chooses a video to watch, that person is “wasting my [Samuel’s] time.”

He can be rather sweet about it, however.

“Mom is working [napping, etc.]. She is wasting my time.” He clarifies: “I wish I could to talk to her instead.”

Evelyn Waugh, Scoop:

He had published eight books … beginning with a life of Rimbaud written when he was eighteen, and concluding, at the moment, with Waste of Time, a studiously modest description of some harrowing months among the Patagonian Indians.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Daniel: “Mommy, I am going to bed, and [the letter] A is going to spend the night with me. Can you carry me and A to bed?”

Aztecs

Two books:

(1) Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (1991), reviewed by the Psmiths;

and

(2) Pablo of Texcoco, How to Be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude (2025), reviewed at NDPR.

It was jarring to come across both reviews in the same week. It was like reading about Nazis and then learning that a collection of mid-20th-century Germanic homespun “wisdom” had just been issued by a major university press.

The “Nazi” remark isn’t a cheap exaggeration. Clendinnen’s work unavoidably brings the Holocaust to mind.

Still, the analogy isn’t perfect, especially when it’s applied to the other book. Pablo’s “wisdom” was written down quite a few years after the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. Would we demand that every postwar Germanic writer address the sorrowful legacy of the Nazi period? If not, then perhaps we shouldn’t object when Pablo and his 21st-century expositors choose not to dwell on the same Aztec qualities that Clendinnen describes.

Perhaps the introduction of Christianity into Nahua culture accounts for the surprising gentleness of the “Pablo” book.

Or perhaps not. It’s not unheard of for the same people to manifest brutality and exquisite etiquettical sensitivity.

How does Clendinnen’s work go down these days? Her scholarship is impossible to ignore. I fear that she is becoming unfashionable, however. I see that in the second (2022) edition of The Mexico Reader, the selection from Clendinnen has been considerably shortened.

(The article it is taken from is here.)

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 102: Loved up

Her drunk, laughing mother climbs into the tiny bed with her after a night out. For 18-year-old Sarah (Lena Headey), it’s the last straw. She resolves to leave home. A younger sister is left to contend for herself.

What could have been a depressing first scene is oddly bouyant. It’s lightened by notes from Leftfield’s song “Melt.” Rave music sounds throughout the whirlwind opening third of this 70-minute BBC drama for teens, as Sarah meets, takes ecstasy from, and moves in with Tom (Ian Hart). There are tracks by Orbital, the Prodigy, and similar musicians.

Trainspotting, the more famous drugs-and-techno movie, was released around the same time. Loved Up is much gentler. It’s basically an earlier version of The Spectacular Now, treating of an unsettled but ultimately tethered girl and her rootless boyfriend.

Tom lives in the Now. He pretends not to – he takes pride in his regular employment and considers his after-hours partying to be well-earned – but the truth is, he parties all day long. He plays with the merchandise in the toy shop where he works. He can’t relax at home: his pals are always dropping in, and he hankers for the club.

The movie’s final two thirds are a gradual come-down from the initial high. But what a high!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As soon as Tom has given Sarah the ecstasy, he takes her to his pals. They all go clubbing and joyriding, and when a postal truck loses a sack of mail, the revelers open the letters and drive around the neighborhood, delivering the happy-sounding items. Bills and such, they throw away because, what use is unhappy news?

Then, at the flat, Tom and Sarah consummate their new love. The movie may have been broadcast to teens, but its U.S. rating would have been a solid “R.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Hart and Headey would go on to become famous for, respectively, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones. Headey also would hold her own as Stellan Skarsgård’s co-star in Aberdeen, playing a more grown-up version of Sarah. (Hart re-appears there, too.)

I guess Loved Up is a cautionary tale, but Hart’s and Headey’s heedless glee is what makes it worthwhile. Hart and, especially, Headey are infectious early on – Headey for Sarah’s wide-eyed innocence as she enters Tom’s funhouse scene, Hart for Tom’s pose of worldly assurance. The eventual undermining of these stances is a poignant, if minor, tragedy.

That’s not to put down the rest of the movie. There are some fine later sequences. Sarah invites Tom to meet her alcoholic mother, and Tom obtusely brings along a pal – and a bottle of sherry. Later, when, in an emergency, Sarah summons Tom, he loses the address and tells the cab driver to just follow after other cars.

Meanwhile, Sarah makes her own blunders, losing her job, trying to compensate for forgetting her sister’s birthday, and allowing herself to grow too close to Tom’s dealer (a charming, snaky Jason Isaacs).

None of this is irreparable. There’s little of Trainspotting’s fatalism. One realizes, of course, that Tom will have to wake up, or else. The movie isn’t quite an argument for shortsighted revelry, but it doesn’t come down hard against it, either. What it does argue against is the permanency of this state.

I don’t think any viewer – teen-aged or otherwise – would wish to end up like Sarah’s mother.

“Lake America”

What I want to know is, how will this trade war affect my streaming of Da Vinci’s Inquest?

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Reading:

The Castle (Franz Kafka)

The Castle (Jon Ronson)

The Sandcastle (Iris Murdoch)

Haunted Castles (Ray Russell)

Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth)

The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole)

I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)

The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson)

I really am reading some of them!

R.I.P. Dolly Parton

… whose music I don’t know well – I confidently recall only her songs “Jolene,” “9 to 5,” and “Islands in the Stream” – but whose generosity I appreciate. My children have received dozens of free books from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

Speaking of libraries: Abel has become almost impossible to supervise in actual ones. He climbs on tables, ravages displays, chews tips off markers, and dumps toy bins upside-down. I follow in his wake, cleaning his messes. Today, while I was picking up toys, he moved through the Spanish-language book section like a tornado, pulling several shelves’ worth of volumes onto the floor.

The library’s rules, unfortunately (or fortunately), do not permit me to reshelve books.

My two least favorite librarians were on duty – the ones who sternly call me “Sir.” They were kind this time.

Yes, it’s good that we receive plenty of books at home, thanks to Dolly Parton.

A culinary dream

Sometimes, my CPAP machine pumps my stomach so full of air that just before I wake up, I have dreams like this one:

I’d just had a large breakfast when Martin showed up at my house and said, Come with me, I’m taking you out for pancakes. There was no refusing him. (Cut to the diner.) The pancakes were impressive – one was actually a huge, flattened cinnamon roll – but afterward, goodness gracious, did my belly hurt. (Usually, in dreams with food, I don’t get to eat the food.)

The dream also may have been prompted by my having gotten back on the dieting horse. In three weeks, I’ve lost eight pounds.

If there’s anything more tedious than having to listen to other people talk about their dreams, it’s having to listen to dieters tell about their new regimes and food hacks.

Our new food hack is the George Foreman grill that Karin found at Goodwill.

I also just learned a great way to fry an egg. Pre-heat the pan; put in a little fat; put in a tablespoon of water, and then the egg. Cover the pan.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Why do Karin & I keep going on dates to Niles, Michigan? What is the town’s allure? Is it the riverwalk? Is it the pleasant drive from Granger, Indiana, where we deposit our children with Karin’s mother? Is it Casperson Books? Is it Pizza Transit, with its series of outlandish “pizzas of the month” (e.g., Mexican street corn pizza)?

Is it the Wonderland Cinema?

Is it the knowledge that Ring Lardner walked Niles’s streets?

IT’S ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Today’s excursion was to eat hot dogs and popcorn and watch The End of Oak Street, David Robert Mitchell’s movie about time-warped dinosaurs preying on suburban Michiganders. Another of Mitchell’s wry commentaries on the inevitability of death.

Body-text fonts, pt. 54: Poliphilus

I used to mistake Poliphilus for Bembo. “Old Bembo” is how I thought of it. Of course both are derived from the work of Francesco Griffo.

Poliphilus lacks its own italic but usually is paired with Blado.

This specimen is from Aesop, whose fables I like to read to Samuel on those nights when he’s too tired to stay awake for anything longer.

“A lion and an ass made a partnership and went out to hunt.” (Sometimes a fox joins them.) It’s surprising how many fables begin that way.

It’s surprising, also, how often the lion is not just the strongest but also the wisest character. Aesop has something of a “might makes right” streak in him.

I literally wrote this blog entry in my sleep.

A backward/forward look

We have been immersing ourselves in intermittently glorious, surprisingly mostly dreary Oxford drama: begun in Inspector Morse (1987–2000); continued in Inspector Lewis (2006–2015), which features Morse’s former Detective Sergeant; and retraced in “origin story” form in Endeavour (2012–2023), which is titled after Morse’s Christian name. It’s Endeavour that we’ve started with. Long ago we saw some of “Morse Proper,” and knowledge of it gives Endeavour a foreboding air: this young 1960s constable will turn into a first-rank curmudgeon, an object of near-horror. There are some explicit portents – Endeavour Morse is solitary, has a savior complex, relishes crosswords and classical music perhaps too much – yet the dread is inchoate. There is unease even as this hero, with each new success, rises in his profession. There is gravitas even as the genre’s tropes are trundled out. The classic “Morse” theme music, equally suited to a mountaineering documentary, has been retained for the prequel. As Young Endeavour, Shaun Evans is brusque, skinny, and sallow, with a deer-in-headlights expression. The show’s real human treasure, however, is Endeavour’s mentor, Detective Inspector Fred Thursday (Roger Allam) – surely one of the genre’s wisest men. Had he been higher-born, he could have been a don; as it is, he holds his own against the silly college men he questions, who consider him beneath them. Rank is all in Thursday’s world (and at Oxford). And yet, unlike his own superior, Thursday doesn’t lord it over Morse. The show’s other great virtue is its artifact selection. I’ve not seen anything else in which beer mugs and wallpaper were so lovingly exhibited. The story could be nonsense, the historic University could be ignored, and I’d still watch just for those props.

Our chemical romance

Ziva (cat no. 2) and Dory (no. 3) used to fight several times each day, really brutally; but since we’ve begun using air fresheners to pump feline pheromones into our house, they’ve gotten along much better. This gives me hope for the harmony of our household, and for that of humankind.

Seriously, things are more peaceful now.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

We attended a quite lovely wedding after-party this evening, in someone’s back yard. There were many children. There were dogs of very different breeds and sizes, to warm the heart. The music was from the nineties and early aughts; the catering was local Mexican. There also was much uninhibited vaping. I was amused to see the bride and groom puffing away together at their special table. But they weren’t the only ones. Everyone was at it. Perhaps the vaping was what made everything harmonious. Halfway through the party, it started raining, and no one really minded.

The children played in a sandbox and got filthy. They had a precious time; afterward, we had to drag Daniel, kicking and screaming, to the car.

Apparel

Warm congrats to my cousin, Matthew, and his wife, Megan, on the birth of their second daughter.

Most of my paternal grandparents’ grandchildren began having children rather late in life. So, although perhaps it shouldn’t surprise me, it always does – pleasantly – when another little niece, nephew, or once-removed first cousin comes along.

What a world to come into, though.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Then again, things arguably were worse in Genesis-time. I have a couple of colorful t-shirts with the caption, “Need an Ark? I Noah Guy.” There’s a picture of the ark on the shirts. (Alas, I can’t find the picture online – just other shirts with the same caption but different artwork.) I obtained these shirts after a children’s program at my church. They were spares.

I wear them around because I’m edgy like that. And because they fit.

No one ever has commented on them – the occasional raised eyebrow is as far as things have gone – until today, when I wore an ark shirt to the to the Salvation Army Kroc Center. (The boys have been taking swim lessons there.)

My goodness, how many laudatory remarks I got.

Did you go to the Ark Encounter?, one man asked.

My people.

Now what I need is a Coach Cignetti shirt to wear to the Kroc.

August’s poem

… is “If – ” – by Kipling, of course.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

One of the best poems. Kipling thought it too popular for its own good. No doubt the parodies irked him. Some are clever indeed: see Elizabeth Lincoln Otis’s “An ‘If’ for Girls” (but her last couplet is nothing as fine as Kipling’s; it’s his “my son” that makes the difference).

“The jellyfish that has cracked the secret to immortality”

From the Guardian:

[Turritopsis dohrnii] “is unique,” [says marine biologist Maria Pia Miglietta,] “because when faced with unfavourable conditions – and I mean high temperature, physical cutting, starvation, chemicals in the water, you name it – when you try to kill the jellyfish, it doesn’t die.”

Most normal jellyfish start off life as larvae. They metamorphose into polyps (tiny, stationary soft bodies) that bud off swimming medusas, which grow up to become adult jellies. Eventually, after reproducing, most will stop swimming, crumble a little and then die.

But the immortal jellyfish escapes that fate. It reverts to a juvenile form, and starts its life cycle again.

The process is called “cellular transdifferentiation,” Miglietta says. The jellyfish looks like it’s dying and sinks to the bottom. Then – like a butterfly returning to a caterpillar – it shrinks into a ball, and within 24 to 48 hours, buds off a new polyp with the same identical genome, she says. …

In the lab, where Miglietta studies them, these jellies can theoretically live for ever. However, for some in the wild, getting eaten may eventually end that dream run.

(My italics.)

Some more quotes:

James Lenman (“On Becoming Extinct,” p. 254):

The Second Law of Thermodynamics will get us in the end in the fantastically unlikely event that nothing else does first.

Peter van Inwagen (“The Possibility of Resurrection,” p. 121):

Perhaps at the moment of each man’s death, God removes his corpse and replaces it with a simulacrum which is what is burned or rots. Or perhaps God is not quite so wholesale as this: perhaps He removes for “safekeeping” only the “core” person – the brain and central nervous system – or even some special part of it.

John 3:3:

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

And see Lewis’s Mere Christianity – especially its last chapter, “The New Men,” to which everything in the book conduces.

Body-text fonts, pt. 53: Equity

… which is Matthew Butterick’s update of the classic Ehrhardt typeface.

Equity (darker version; lighter version) is excellent – and underused. I’ve seen it “out in the wild” only in books by Butterick or by his enthusiasts: e.g., in Bryan A. Garner’s Legal Writing in Plain English.

(Of course, Ehrhardt already is good enough for most uses. Perhaps Equity is superfluous.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Equity is this month’s featured font because private equity is in the soccer news. Infantino is trying to make room for investors – Trump associates! – to buy a substantial share in FIFA’s tournaments.

Some FIFA member nations expect to benefit from the deal. Others – those that have no trouble paying for their soccer operations – staunchly oppose ceding business control to outsiders.

The European nations have resolved, unanimously, to boycott all FIFA competitions unless Infantino’s proposal is withdrawn or voted down.

I hope they get their way – without the boycott. I am not taken with Europe’s “principles.” Europe has a long history of thinking itself too good to play with anybody else.

Tim Vickery, in this video, explains:

Vickery’s diagnosis and proposal are very nearly my own, and so I’ll leave the matter there. But this is not to treat it lightly. The World Cup’s continuance is in danger.

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. Tens of thousands of Moroccans illegally crossed into the tiny Spanish semi-exclave of Ceuta yesterday. Spain and Morocco, along with four other countries, are slated to host the 2030 World Cup together.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 101: The Big Green

I try not to review bad movies. If I watch a movie and don’t admire or enjoy it, I don’t review it. The Big Green (1995) is an exception.

I chose it because I have just finished watching the World Cup.

(Alas, I’d forgotten that the conclusion of Captain Tsubasa, a.k.a. Supercampeones, was broadcast in 1995.)

Having written the review, though, I wonder if The Big Green might not be as bad as all that.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Roger Ebert didn’t care for The Big Green. His review bemoans its triteness.

A team of small-town misfits are inspired by their offbeat coach to master a sport. They start out incredibly bad. They are humiliated by the ace team from the big city, with the expensive black uniforms and the obsessive coach. Then they start getting better. No prizes for who wins their big rematch. … Why soccer? Because their teacher is from England, and is visiting tiny Elma, Texas, on an exchange program. … Under the influence of this inspirational teacher and the discipline of the sport, [the youngsters] transform themselves. This will come as a shock to anyone who has not seen Dangerous Minds, The Dead Poets Society, and the countless other homages to the same idea.

Of course, some such “homages” – Hoosiers, notably – are not bad movies. It helps when the story is traceable to something that actually happened. This imposes constraints of accuracy – or, at least, of plausibility.

Plausibility is not the aim of The Big Green. Many of its elements are unabashedly fanciful. For example, racial groups from every major landmass but Australia and Antarctica are represented in the little Texas town, although the population is low enough that the schoolhouse has just one room.

But let us grant that diversity and inclusion, no matter how unlikely in a given location, befit an idealized tale of the global game.

It’s still important that characters be compelling individuals.

Alas, the individual children in The Big Green are stock figures with particularly unappealing traits. These range from cloying cuteness to frightening psychosis to clichéd hardbittenness.

The runtiest boy is recognizable as Alfalfa from the previous year’s Little Rascals movie. (The Big Green has improved his hairdo.) This lad shows no aptitude for soccer but nonetheless is chosen to take the decisive penalty kick.

Meanwhile, the boy who tends goal – Patrick Renna, reprising his “fat kid” role from The Sandlot – hallucinates that the opponents are ninjas, pirates, knights on horseback, etc.

He copes by redirecting his hallucinations into a productive channel.

Finally, the “tough” girl’s father is a drunkard. (Recall, from Hoosiers, the Dennis Hopper character.) This is the movie’s sole attempt to provide background detail about any of the children.

No, that’s not quite right. A new boy’s reason for coming to the town is withheld during most of the movie; then, near the end, it is revealed. This gets the plot over the hump.

The grownup characters fare better.

The most conspicuous local grownup is a none-too-zealous sheriff’s deputy (Steve Guttenberg). He is serviceably obnoxious as the love interest of the new teacher-coach.

About that teacher-coach, then – the genre’s central figure. This particular coach is an odd duck. It’s traditional for these movies to mention the coach’s personal demons. Happily, Miss Montgomery appears to have none.

She’s played by the fresh-faced Olivia d’Abo, the 1980s and ’90s equivalent of Felicity Jones.

It is Miss Montgomery’s mission to bring British jollity to disaffected U.S. youth.

MISS MONTGOMERY

I believe that you’re all special because you live here in America, and America is a place where you can be anything you want to be.

THE FAT KID

I think that was before Reaganomics, Ma’am.

(Not bad, kid.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been treating The Big Green as a genre piece, transposed, awkwardly, into a comedic and fantastical key. But I believe that despite its perfunctoriness about the sport itself – the gameplay is wholly unbelievable – the movie does capture various Hoosiers-style social truths.

Children and youths in mid-’90s U.S. prairie towns really were this jaded (or worse). I know because, in 1996, I went to school in rural Missouri.

Soccer really was viewed as a curiosity there. My classmates knew more about The Big Green than about the 1994 U.S. World Cup.

The movie is correct that pickup soccer didn’t exist in such places, and that the only way to play was to join an urban or suburban league. This still is the case. Millions of U.S. children have no access to the world’s game. The harvest is ready but there are too few Miss Montgomeries; and, if there were more, their efforts would be appropriated by the pay-to-play industry. Indeed, this is what appears to happen in The Big Green.

The movie is correct, or nearly so, that ultra-competitive coaches of the city youth leagues pace the sidelines shouting through bullhorns, brandishing swords, and leching after any Miss Montgomeries who cross paths with them.

COACH HUFFER
[Jay O. Sanders]

You know, we have a little tradition down here among the coaches. Before the final game, we always make a little wager.

MISS MONTGOMERY

Really? What are we betting?

COACH HUFFER

Well, now, I couldn’t take your money from you, but, you know, I’m divorced. I wouldn’t say no to a kiss.

MISS MONTGOMERY

Deal. But if you lose, you have to kiss our mascot, Ernie. He’s that lovely little green goat over there. He’s divorced, too.

(My favorite line. All right, the movie has some charm.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Perhaps the oddest and, to me, most intriguing thing about The Big Green is that its skies are so dreary. Indeed, all the lighting is rather dim. (The poster misleads.) The story is hokey nonsense. Why not prettify the visuals, then? Would it have been too costly? Or could it be that behind the story lurks a somber attitude? Hoosiers, which takes place during the winter, is awash with radiant color; but then, Hoosiers is uplifting. Nothing about The Big Green is; not really. The cheerful Miss Montgomery is not inspiring so much as freakishly out of place.

J. L. Carr wrote a novel, The Battle of Pollocks Crossing (online here), about an English schoolmaster who accepts a temporary job at a school in rural South Dakota. The Booker judges shortlisted the novel. I doubt anybody reads it nowadays.

It’s supposed to be a quirky story. The schoolmaster involves himself in some sort of campaign, on behalf of the “Have-Nots,” against the “Haves.” Farce ensues. The resolution is perhaps less than triumphant. (Bear in mind, I haven’t actually read the book.)

The sky of the book’s cover looks a lot like the sky of The Big Green.

My own fancy, almost certainly false, is that someone set out to turn this oddity into a movie. The script was fed through different writers’ groups. The profit motive was accorded too much weight. Eventually, only the barest outline of the original tale remained. The U.S. World Cup was approaching, and so soccer was grafted onto the story as an afterthought – or perhaps as a vestige of fidelity to Carr (who also wrote a soccer novel, How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup).

If anyone wants to buy Pollocks Crossing for me, I’ll gladly read it and report whether this daydream is true.

“Bad” and “good” guys

Bots must have read my previous entry and decided that I would approve of this Substack post: it has come up a few times in my feed (in Spanish, more often than not). The post is by one Éamann Mac Donnchada, “an Irishman resident in Barcelona, deeply marked by his years in Argentina.”

Indeed, I found it moving.

(See also this post of Mac Donnchada’s, written before the final.)

Mac Donnchada offers a nice counterpoint to what I have been reading and viewing elsewhere. For example, the Guardian – don’t think it doesn’t have an axe to grind! – would have us believe that Argentinians are morally undeserving, as indicated by the fact that some U.S. Blacks and some non-Argentinian Latin Americans prefer not to cheer for Argentina.

(The piece on Latin America begins, amusingly, with a Brazilian – a citizen of Argentina’s chief sporting rival – saying, I *would* cheer for Argentina, *but* … )

Of course, I can’t speak for – or to – everyone belonging to these groups. But the obvious rejoinder to the argument is: Look closely at Spain. Look closely at Europe. Look at their histories and their present attitudes (which are cosmeticized, as Mac Donnchada notes). Are the Argentinians really so much worse?

As Mac Donnchada remarks:

Football has acted as a socially acceptable pretext for saying things that would have been unacceptable in any other context. National sporting rivalry has licensed people to express prejudices that normally remain hidden behind progressive language.

To wit, prejudices against Argentinians.

Which isn’t to say that Argentinians aren’t themselves prejudiced. But it does shed light on the team’s conduct. When the Argentinian players turned their backs on Spain’s post-game celebration, it may not have been entirely a matter of bad sportsmanship. It may also have been a refusal to applaud a country where Argentinians suffer prejudice.

(Argentinians often are bad losers; I’ve seen Ecuador beat them enough times to know that. 😆 Even so, I’ve noticed that Argentinians tend, after the obligatory period of fisticuffs and grousing, to bestow grudging respect.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Politics aside, the more I think about the final, the less convinced I am that Spain dominated Argentina as thoroughly as it seemed. Yes, the stats – possession, passing, shooting, etc. – favor Spain; but how were those figures achieved? As Hannah Frye explains, in tennis, the scoring system allows the side that returns service just a little better to tally many more games and sets than the opposition. Soccer is thought to exhibit the opposite tendency – goals are not predictable amplifications of modest superiority – but, as every devoted viewer understands, the focus on goals is misleading. It’s other metrics that predictably get amplified. The Spanish were able to record better numbers, and to look vastly superior, by repeatedly exploiting a single weakness that the Argentinians were aware of but almost powerless to correct. The Spanish understood that the Argentinians were too old and tired to effectively press Spain’s back line. (This was evident as early as Argentina’s match against Cape Verde.) This allowed the Spanish to constantly advance their teenaged central defender, Cubarsí, into the midfield; and the resulting numerical advantage in that sector allowed them to control possession. Yes, the Spanish are good at passing and recovering; but are they so much better than these same Argentinians who, four years earlier, overran the French? The answer is: Yes, with more youthfulness and rest and an extra player in the middle. That’s all we really can tell. The Argentinians, of course, knew that they were being made to look inept. And they knew how. Their response was logical. Fernández occasionally would leave his place in the middle and join the front press – not to generate turnovers but to “persuade” Cubarsí to retreat. It was desperate but necessary, and it resulted in Fernández’s expulsion. It was an altogether more proactive gambit than, e.g., England’s total retreat into the box.

Hannah Frye: “The resilience to losing that you have to have [in tennis] is, I think, unlike any other.”

But much the same could be said about Argentina in this final. The team showed more resilience than any other I can think of, despite the humiliating amplification, all over the field, of the failure of the press. The Argentinians were so resilient, they almost won. The Spanish, for all their “dominance,” almost didn’t. This was no 2009 Champions League final, no low-scoring affair with an outcome nonetheless settled early; this was a live contest until the end. The Spanish never did pass all the way through Argentina: they hoofed a ball into the box, where a couple of fresh substitutes got to it first. (And yes, the earlier goal’s disallowal was correct.)

There was, then, a certain reactiveness to Spain’s game, a certain fundamental preoccupation with the opponent rather than with proactive excellence (e.g., the Spanish were in no hurry to obtain a lead). And, I daresay, a certain smugness. I’m reminded of a story of my Uncle John’s. The classical guitarist, Andrés Segovia, once listened to an earnest amateur’s performance. He then took the guitar and played it back, cruelly replicating each mistake. What is an opponent to do in the face of a virtuoso’s calculated meanness? I don’t say that Spain played as cruelly as Segovia. But it was a virtuoso one-trick performance. Spain could have tried different things but didn’t – until the end. Then the ball simply was hoofed into the box. Argentina tried more things. (It’s a mistake to claim the opposite.) None worked. That’s all.

Let me end with a quotation from a different Spanish youngster: Gavi, who took a few knocks after the final whistle.

No, to be honest, I don’t think [the Argentinians] should be suspended. I realize it doesn’t set a good example for the children, but there’s also that side to football that’s a bit more violent.

He’s magnanimous because he’s young, the pundits say. Perhaps. Or perhaps Gavi is wise enough to put himself in the other’s place. Or perhaps he’s not especially proud of how Spain approached the game. That’s not to say he should be ashamed. You play the way you know; you try to win the way you can.

Postmortem

The World Cup has ended. I congratulate the Spanish. They are deserving champions. If I never see another World Cup, I won’t regret having seen Spain win last.

I also hugely admire the Argentinians. Outclassed, they came close to winning through sheer determination. They were the tournament’s most antagonistic team – and, from the competitiveness-prizing point of view, its finest.

After the final, Western European pundits tarred the Argentinians – and, alas, all South Americans – as violent and uncouth. The good guys won, the bad guys lost, was the pundits’ gloat. Football was saved. Even supposing it were true, the self-righteousness astounds. Europeans also misbehave. Harald Schumacher, Zinedine Zidane, and Sergio Ramos all played more despicably, for all the world to see, than any Argentinian did in this tournament. Italian squads have been as defensive as Argentina, and as petulant. The Dutch of the 2010 final, and the Dutch and Portuguese in their notorious match of 2006, were shockingly, comically violent. (The English – poor people – have mostly just harmed themselves.)

I also recall that many pundits – not French ones, of course – worshipped these same “uncouth” Argentinian players when they won in 2022. I suppose that like most people, pundits are knee-jerk home supporters first, rival haters second, victory worshippers third, and objective judges fourth; and, all the while, hypocrites.

A more respectful and realistic European is Tim Vickery; he points out that Argentina’s initial strategy was not just to defend and foul. (Ignore the other pundit.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Organization-wise, the tournament is broken. There are too many games. Temperatures are miserable. Players look tired. Distances between host cities are too great. Tickets are too costly. Price-gouging for amenities is unrestrained. Refereeing isn’t credible. Political interference by the hosts, once deemed unacceptable, has become the norm.

Only four years ago, this still was the most watchable event in sports. Say what you will about how Qatar prepared, the spectacle was lovely.

This time, I just wanted it all to end.

The 2030 World Cup will be held in six countries, including Spain and Argentina, and on three continents. The number of teams may be raised.

It is rumored that the USA will bid for the World Cup of 2038.

The best players, managers, referee, goal, and games of this World Cup

Bear in mind, the final has not been played.

(I’ve italicized the Best XI.)

Front-line players: Mbappé (France), Haaland (Norway), Kane (England), Messi (Argentina).

Midfielders: Ødegaard (Norway), Bellingham (England), Fernández (Argentina), Rodri (Spain), Xhaka (Switzerland), Ruiz (Spain), Tielemans (Belgium), Olmo (Spain).

Defenders: Cucurella (Spain), Mazraoui (Morocco), Laporte (Spain), Lisandro Martínez (Argentina), Akanji (Switzerland), Lucumí (Colombia), Muñoz (Colombia), Porro (Spain).

Goalkeepers: Bounou (Morocco), Nyland (Norway), Emiliano Martínez (Argentina), Pickford (England).

(English journalists have been savaging Pickford for letting in two goals that weren’t his fault. All the more reason to choose him.)

Most valuable player: Messi.

Best-all-around player: Bellingham.

Outstanding old player: Messi (39).

Outstanding young player: Bouaddi (Morocco) (18).

Outstanding substitutes: Lukaku (Belgium), Lautaro Martínez (Argentina), Quintero (Colombia).

Best managers: De la Fuente (Spain), Scaloni (Argentina).

Best referee: Barton (El Salvador), especially for Türkiye vs. Paraguay …

… and for France vs. Spain.

(The final will be refereed by Vinčić, the Slovenian. I thought him too generous toward Mexico; Argentina will eat him alive.)

Best goal: Kane’s second versus the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Best games: Türkiye vs. Paraguay; Ecuador vs. Germany; Netherlands vs. Morocco; USA vs. Belgium; Norway vs. Brazil; Mexico vs. England; France vs. Spain; and every knockout contest involving Argentina (may the final be the same).

Semifinals: France 0, Spain 2; England 1, Argentina 2

Which manager was worse?

(I) Thomas Tuchel, for:

(a) ceasing to attack …

and

(b) permitting Messi & Co. to hammer away at the English goal …

for forty minutes;

OR:

(II) Didier Deschamps, for:

having no response for anything that Spain did.

I vote: Deschamps. This is the second time he has “crashed the Ferrari” in the World Cup. (I’m not considering France’s Euro defeats.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Deschamps almost “crashed the Ferrari” in the 2018 World Cup final. The Croatians were passing through the French at will, and had scored once. But then the referee gave France a second goal.

Deschamps’s tactics with France always have been simple.

(1) He fields three or four prodigious scorers – even if they don’t maintain possession, defend, etc. He values their scoring so much that he requires little else of them.

(2) He overpopulates the defense. He prefers central midfielders and fullbacks who are defensive specialists. (That is putting it kindly; at times, he seems to prefer that they have offensive limitations.)

(3) He ignores transitional midfield play. He figures that as long as (a) his attackers seize on mistakes and put in goals and (b) his defensive multitudes keep goals out, the middle of the field doesn’t matter.

In short, he gambles on offensive talent, which of course France has in spades.

Well, these tendencies bit him in 2022, against Argentina, and again in this tournament, against Spain. The vaunted attackers weren’t outplayed, exactly. Rather, the opposing midfielders cut off their supply. I had expected that Mbappé, Dembélé, et al. should have enough chances provided them. Everyone expected this. Instead, they were starved. Rodri, Ruiz, and Olmo – great players – bossed the middle. But they were aided by Deschamps’s abdication of that zone.

Halfway through, it was clear that France sorely missed the few polyfunctional midfielders employed during Deschamps’s tenure:

• Griezzman, an attacker willing to drop back to defend and to build up play. (Retired.)
• Kanté, ball-winner extraordinaire, known also for jump-starting the attack. (Old; languishing on the bench.)
• Camavinga. (Left at home.)

(Moussa Sissoko was discarded after featuring in the 2016 Euros; Steven Nzonzi was a bit-player in 2018; Manu Koné, in this World Cup, has been an occasional substitute for the not-fully-fit, defensively-minded Tchouaméni. These are versatile players that, at different times, Deschamps has not preferred to use.)

I said, at the beginning of the tournament, that the French could win any match with just twenty good minutes. Spain granted five. By then, for France, it was too late.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Spain’s midfield is tactically and technically superb; but so is Argentina’s. And Argentina has grit, grit, grit. Only the Croatians approximate them. This should be a fascinating final. I’ll bet on Argentina; these Spaniards have yet to meet such willful adversaries. But I wouldn’t mind if Spain won. Both these teams are worthy.

I’m afraid that this is just not your day, my friend

CLOUSEAU

I’m afraid that this is just not your day, my friend.

DREYFUS

But it is my day. It is, my friend. After three long, terrible years, it is at last my day. I will not permit, repeat, not permit anything – repeat, anything – to spoil it. Now, I will walk you to the gate, and I will kiss you goodbye –

[He kisses CLOUSEAU’S cheeks]

– and you will drive off in your new car – which should rightfully be mine – and I will have my interview with the Sanity Commission, and they will set me free. And then: I will kill you!

[Chasing]

Kill you!

CLOUSEAU
[Fleeing]

François!

DREYFUS

Kill you!

CLOUSEAU

Start the car!

DREYFUS

Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill you!

[Restrained by sanitorium guards]

I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him! Let me go. … Ha, ha, ha! I want to kill him.

(The Pink Panther Strikes Again)

July’s poem

This poem is for the eliminated World Cup teams. The thing about international soccer is, you can’t just go out and buy the crucial missing pieces. You make do with what you have. (But if you’re France, you’ve already “imported” so many pieces that everybody else is scrambling for your castoffs.)

It’s demoralizing knowing that, however well you use what you have, you or whoever beats you will eventually surrender to France.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

For want of a nail the shoe was lost,

For want of a shoe the horse was lost,

For want of a horse the rider was lost,

For want of a rider the battle was lost,

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost –

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(From The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, edited by Iona & Peter Opie. Recited, in The Clocks, by Hercule Poirot. Previous versions due to: Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack; the poet George Herbert; the Germans; and the French.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Is the “want of a horseshoe nail” an “INUS” condition? (That is: an insufficient but necessary part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition; in ordinary English: a cause. See: J. L. Mackie.)

Losing the battle might suffice for losing the kingdom, even if the kingdom could be lost in other ways: e.g., due to a meteor strike.

Losing the rider might suffice for losing the battle, even if the battle could be lost in other ways: e.g., due to a meteor strike.

And so on, for each preceding line. (Let’s say the meteorite gets smaller and smaller.)

Or is causation better analyzed in some other way? I’m getting too old for this.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Q: What was the “horseshoe nail” that Ecuador wanted?

A: Goals. And (controversially), according to some journalists, avoiding getting death threats from Mexican cartels.

Canada 0, Morocco 3; Mexico 2, England 3; USA 1, Belgium 4

So, the co-hosts of this rotten World Cup have been eliminated, pop-pop-pop, in the same early knockout round, and I couldn’t be more pleased; I’ve waited eight years for this moment. Canada, I fault only for having joined a corrupt alliance. (I didn’t much like how the Canadian team played, but put let’s put that aside.) Mexico, I fault for having long ago entered into faustian hosting arrangements with the United States, in this World Cup and in other tournaments; for having greedily sought to host the World Cup a third time, ahead of countries that haven’t had a turn; and for gross inhospitality. All of Ecuador cheered when England beat Mexico. I certainly did, even though I cheer for England as little as possible (just three times since the 1998 World Cup).

As for the USA, well, it may not be gracious to “pile on,” but certain matters must be addressed. If you don’t know the immediate context, you can read about it here or in countless other sources.

Know this, at least: a certain U.S. politician admitted – bragged – that he’d interfered in a supposedly neutral disciplinary process.

As it turned out, the meddling hurt rather than helped the intended beneficiary. The U.S. team already was out of sorts when it took to the field against the Belgians. Those opponents carved up the U.S. with professional, surgical precision – until the last minutes, when the ball was trickling into the U.S. goal every which way; then, they unleashed the “Trump” dance.

It’s gratifying to see on-field retribution. But the urgent lesson is that stricter and more explicit rules against political interference must be adopted, or else matches themselves will lose whatever credibility they once had. (Today, undue controversy surrounded Argentina’s victory over Egypt.)

Moreover: in a better world, certain FIFA officials would be impeached. And a certain country would be barred from the World Cup, for at least as long as the Chileans were barred in the early 1990s for their procedural violation.

It might be objected that in the present case, the politician’s meddling backfired, and so no harm was done. I couldn’t disagree more. A legal analogy: specific instances of bribery, intimidation, or jury tampering might backfire; but they should be punished anyway, because such offenses corrode the integrity and the trustworthiness of the court.

Mexico 2, Ecuador 0; Portugal 2, Croatia 1; predictions

Still he was a pius man in his way and found relief in prayer.

(Daisy Ashford, The Young Visiters)

We lost because Mexico was the home team. It pretty much boils down to that.

Mexico shouldn’t have hosted this tournament, but that’s a topic for another day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

To my dismay, I’ve been driven very close to embracing a conspiracy theory.

Not because Ecuador lost, but because of how Portugal beat Croatia. A penalty kick was bogusly awarded to the Portuguese; later, Croatia’s tying goal was disallowed due to a tiny spike on a chart. The spike indicated an otherwise undetectable touch registered by a chip inside the ball.

Not even video review could corroborate it.

It’s not that I don’t believe the technology works. It’s that I’m not convinced that this chart isn’t a fabrication.

(It doesn’t help that this technology’s only other beneficiary has been Real Madrid, for a notorious judgment that decided a Champions League series.)

Or, to retreat just a little, a Croatian who chose to doubt the chart would be within his rights.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Enough lamenting (for now). These are my predictions for the rest of the tournament (see the bracket). I may revise them after the round of 16, should Spain lose to Portugal, Norway to Brazil, or Colombia to Switzerland.

The Belgium/​USA match is hard to predict, too, but its winner shouldn’t last longer than one more round.

Morocco over Canada

France over Paraguay

Belgium over the USA

Spain over Portugal

Norway over Brazil

Mexico (at home again) over England

Colombia over Switzerland

Argentina over Egypt

France over Morocco

Spain over Belgium

Norway (unless undone by Miami’s heat) over Mexico (no longer at home)

Colombia over tired-looking Argentina

France over Spain

Colombia over Norway

Spain over Norway (or vice versa; it’s just a consolation match)

France over Colombia

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 100: Late night with Conan O’Brien

Ecuador will play against Mexico in a few minutes, so I don’t have time to review a feature-length movie.

Please enjoy this joke by the late Norm Macdonald. It’s about a pig with a wooden leg.

What more is there to say?

Go Ecuador.

Ecuador 2, Germany 1

As one would expect.

That’s Gonzalo Plata poking the ball past Manuel Neuer, after Kevin Rodríguez’s flick-on. This was our winning goal, in minute 77.

Nilson Angulo had leveled the score in the ninth minute. He was assisted by Pedro Vite.

Immortals.

Disgraced: Tori Penso (referee, USA) and Joe Dickerson (VAR assistant, USA) for allowing Germany’s goal to stand although Germany had fouled Vite.

Our reaction was tremendous. We overcame the Germans and officials and claimed our just reward. The yellow-clad New Jersey crowd was overjoyed. Our players, so harshly criticized, were overjoyed. I was overjoyed, as were my parents and siblings and our spouses; we all watched together.

Just before the winning goal, I was holding Abel, and I thought, When the ball goes in, I’ll try to avoid shouting, so as not to frighten him. Please, God, let him not be frightened. Ecuador scored, I shouted – we all shouted – and Abel was calm, so calm, greeting the occasion as a matter of course.

I got a little misty when you all shouted, Karin said afterward. She suffered before the game, worrying she’d have to bear a houseful of anguished in-laws. No doubt our friends felt the same. Then the game ended and our phones exploded with congratulations.

Facebook reel: tying goal.

Facebook reel: winning goal. (Dale con fe.)

Facebook reel: winning goal. (Gol hjpta.)

Facebook reel: postgame. (Una moneda.)

The woebegone

I’d hoped to write a long entry about Ecuador’s companions in misery in this World Cup. But, scanning the list, I found just two, maybe three, comparably disappointing teams: Türkiye (eliminated, having lost twice); Uruguay (nearly eliminated, having drawn twice); and Senegal (nearly eliminated, having lost twice). (I fancy Senegal’s chances against Iraq, however; I don’t fancy Uruguay’s against Spain.)

UPDATE: As I type, the South Koreans are losing to the South Africans; if the result holds, they’ll finish third in the group. And if they don’t scrape through in that position, it will be a tremendous disappointment.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Other teams have been eliminated or soon will be, but none came into the tournament with the expectations of Türkiye, Uruguay, Senegal, or Ecuador (UPDATE: or South Korea). There’ve been no shocking breakthroughs (UPDATE: not unless the South Africans preserve their victory, anyway). But some teams have exceeded expectations on the field, if not in the standings. I tip my hat to the eliminated Panamanians. I tip it to Cape Verde and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, each of which may yet pull through. I tip it to New Zealand (in dire straits) and Iran (in straits slightly less dire).

I might be expected, for graciousness’s sake, to tip my hat to the Curaçaoans. But I won’t unless they acquit themselves against the Ivorians. Ecuador outplayed Curaçao, after all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

More notes. This is turning out to be a World Cup for top-drawer strikers. Messi, Haaland, and Mbappé have astounded. Vinícius Júnior and CR7 have shown flashes, if less consistently. And the whole Dutch front line looks good.

Less famous but also excellent: Germany’s Deniz Undav; Morocco’s Ismael Saibari.

I couldn’t say the same for any of the defenses, except maybe Argentina’s – which is considered fragile by some pundits. (Nor have the Mexicans and Spanish conceded, but they hardly have been tested.) The best individual defensive performance was by Bosnia & Herzegovina’s captain, Sead Kolašinac, against Canada.

As late as yesterday, it was mathematically possible for Ecuador to win the World Cup without ever scoring. I told my brothers I’d gain pleasure from such an outcome. I don’t think they agreed. Their Internet silence was rather loud.

Postmortem

So, we failed to score against Curaçao, arguably the World Cup’s weakest participant – certainly its smallest. This is no surprise. Scoring is the surprise. Every goal of the last two four-year cycles has seemed miraculous. Enner, our country’s greatest scorer, is not a reliable scorer; he, too, is gripped by the national malaise.

My blood ran cold very early on, after Enner’s first miss. I knew it would be almost impossible to win.

It wasn’t a matter of not creating chances. Enner (and others) had chances.

It wasn’t a deficiency of technique. Enner has technique. And he has noûs. He does brilliantly until the final touch, and then he scuffs, or aims at the wrong side, or shoots too softly.

What of the longer-term perspective? How might the strategists have failed?

It’s not a matter of not having dredged the talent pool for better strikers. I doubt there are better ones. One could always scout farther afield or try out prolific scorers from the domestic league. But … I’ve watched Ecuador a long time. Even our best strikers have had miserable conversion rates with the national team.

We have no automatic scorers. No Ecuadorian believes that scoring for Ecuador is his God-given right.

Ecuadorians can believe in themselves to keep goals out, to win the ball, to pass or dribble around opponents. But tabulation is of another order.

It’s like accumulating riches. Talent, luck, and elbow grease can bring in large sums. But financial dominance requires illegal or legal ruthlessness: cheating, gouging, strongarming, or hoarding. In any case: a tremendous sense of entitlement.

For better or worse – for better, I’d say – an entitled attitude is something very few Ecuadorians have. Especially when they measure themselves, as Ecuadorians, against other nationalities.

It’s a thousand times easier for another smallish and good-willed country – Norway – to produce a goal-gobbler like Erling Haaland. Firstly, because his sort never worries about getting enough to eat. And secondly, because the Norwegians know their ancestors were Vikings. (If you don’t think old history inspires them, well, you need to watch more reels of Norwegian soccer players.)

Not that Haaland is a baddie. But one can understand why he has no trouble accepting that his destiny is to score goals.

Our next game is against Germany. Ecuador must win to advance. We could outplay the Germans. They’ve not impressed, and I do think we’re that good. But will we score?

It could happen. But it would be a miracle.

World Cup notes; body-text fonts, pt. 52: Fairfield (old and new), Fanwood, and Fanwood Text

Tuesday evening, we were without Internet. I couldn’t stream Norway’s first World Cup match since 1998 – Iraq’s first since 1986. Norway won, 4–1.

Then I missed Argentina’s brushing off of Algeria. Messi equaled Miroslav Klose’s scoring record. After his third goal, I relented and tuned in to Fox. The commentators asked how the Argentinians would motivate themselves. They played for Messi’s sake in 2022, they said, but now that Messi has won the World Cup, what will they play for?

It’s for such imbecilities that I avoid tuning in to Fox.

We reprogrammed our TV and, happily, gained offline access to Telemundo before the midnight match. I caught the Austrians’ first World Cup appearance since 1998. I went to sleep before they finished putting the Jordanian debutantes to the sword.

Iraq and Jordan were the first Asian teams to lose. Iran, on the previous night, salvaged a point against New Zealand. Humorists produced this headline: Kiwis Learn How Trump Feels after Stalemate with Iran (or words to that effect).

The French had a glorious second half against Senegal. Along with Argentina, they are the favorites (Spain failed to defeat Cape Verde). The French are frightening. They could win the tournament with just twenty good minutes in each game.

I have kind feelings but few words for: Belgium, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay, England, Croatia, Ghana, Panama, Colombia, and Uzbekistan. Their games were entertaining.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Fairfield (des. Rudolph Ruzicka, 1949) was shortened and fattened by 1990s digitizers. This is what one comes across in, e.g., recent Norton Critical Editions:

(There is a lighter body-text weight.)

Compare with the original metal-type in Henry Hazlitt’s influential primer. This type has longer ascenders and descenders:

(More Hazlitt:

Actually, “in the long run we are all dead” is a problem for “longrunism.”)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The newer Fairfields may be easier to read at small sizes, but the original is more beautiful. Thankfully, the metal-type’s dimensions have been digitized as Fanwood (lighter) and Fanwood Text (darker).

The Fanwoods have no boldface. But they are free to download and use. And lovely. It’s gratifying to come across them in new books.

E.g., in Freida McFadden’s.

(Our sofa is like the cop’s.)

The piano (cont.); World Cup notes

The piano has been moved to the kitchen, its likely resting-place for as long as we live in this house.

Now we must learn to play the thing.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What follows is highly selective.

Ivory Coast 1, Ecuador 0: An even, chaotic contest decided by an 89th-minute goal. Chaos doesn’t favor Ecuador. Our strength is tidy defending.

Piero Hincapié had trouble marking 19-year-old Yan Diomande. The goal came from an attack down that flank.

Thrice we hit woodwork. Our attacking woes continue. I will say, it’s hard when foulers aren’t penalized. The Ivorians were spared a couple of second yellow cards.

Brazil 1, Morocco 1: Has-been vs. emerging superpower. The same is true of their respective continents. The Moroccans were breathtaking in the first half; having established their superiority, they ceded the initiative. Brazil had a single brilliant moment.

Australia 2, Türkiye 0: The most entertaining game so far.

(Some would choose the Netherlands vs. Japan [2–2].)

I love watching the Turks. They attack at breakneck pace, slickly, all game long. But the Australians defended stoutly and landed two counter-punches.

USA 4, Paraguay 1; Germany 7, Curaçao 1; and Sweden 5, Tunisia 1: Three blowouts that tell little about the winners (and not much more about the Tunisians, who fell apart late but weren’t consistently bad).

Mid-half hydration breaks, twice per game: I am sick of them.