The case against living in las Malvinas

… a.k.a. the Falklands.

Argentina came within a point of qualifying for the World Cup, defeating Uruguay, who fell in the standings. Ecuador rose to second place. We’d dropped to fifth because Brazil and Paraguay won their games; but then we beat Venezuela, 2–1, in what should have been a cakewalk but became rather fraught when Venezuela scored.

Enner scored twice for Ecuador but missed a penalty kick, as is his way. Other outstanding players were midfielder Pedro Vite and goalkeeper Hernán Galíndez. The latter dislocated his finger; Pervis pulled it back into place.

Five games remain for each team. We’ll play on Tuesday, in Santiago. The Chileans are last.

Karin took Samuel to the emergency room last night because we worried that he had appendicitis. He didn’t, thank goodness. Today we’re all much happier.

“The __ and the __”

“Book titles, great,” file under.

(Source.)

In the same league as:

“The Beautiful and the Damned” (Fitzgerald)

“The Power and the Glory” (Greene)

“The Drowned and the Saved” (Levi)

“The Naked and the Dead” (Mailer)

“The Gutter and the Grave” (McBain)

“The Nice and the Good” (Murdoch)

This template deserves a revival. How about:

The TRUSTY
and the
SUS

Yesterday was one of reiterated puking by little Daniel. He has my sympathy, but he’d have more if he’d used his bucket instead of, you know, our best furniture.

The BUCKET
and the
COUCH

My compatriot, Pervis Estupiñán, scored a nice goal for Brighton today.

The breaking of the fellowship

It has come to pass. 😢

These were (most of) Brighton & Hove Albion’s South American players during the 2022–2023 season:

Left to right:

Moisés Caicedo (Ecuador).

Jeremy Sarmiento (Ecuador).

Julio Enciso (Paraguay).

Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina).

Pervis Estupiñán (Ecuador).

This season, Sarmiento was lent out to West Brom; Mac Allister moved to Liverpool; and, yesterday, Caicedo signed an eight-year contract with Chelsea. His transfer fee is said to be £100–115 million; the British record is £106 million.

I’m proud of and happy for Caicedo, I guess, but I really liked seeing all these guys play together at Brighton.

An ode to Brighton

Hardly anyone read my latest movie review. I can only infer that the opus in question, Dalziel & Pascoe, series 1, episode 3, “An Autumn Shroud,” already is so well known that my commentary on it is superfluous.

Karin vomited many times today and stayed home from the office.

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One of the luckiest things for me this last year was that Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. employed three Ecuadorians, spurring me to watch most of Brighton’s games and affording me a view of what surely has been one of the most breathtaking teams in the history of sport: a team all the more remarkable for bossing games while languishing mid-table.

Brighton’s manager, Graham Potter, was poached by Chelsea several games into the campaign. But then his successor, Roberto De Zerbi, actually made Brighton better. (There is a YouTube cottage industry about this.) Chelsea ended up sacking Potter.

All game long – in game after game – the broadcasters would sing Brighton’s praises. But the roster isn’t deep enough to lift the club very high up the table. Mind, I say this after a game in which key starters were rested and their substitutes propelled Brighton to a 6–0 victory.

The roster, such as it is, might well be gutted before the next season, as the clubs with deep pockets come swooping down.

How about this season, then? There have been high hopes, but things look bleak. Brighton will play six of the final seven matches against the league’s top four and bottom two clubs. The top four will be tough because they’re good. The bottom two will be tough since they’ll be fighting to avoid relegation.

The good times might already be over.

I like seeing Moisés Caicedo and Pervis Estupiñán on the field together, featuring for a team that plays how Ecuadorians like to play. I don’t want them to be snatched up by bigger clubs next year. But that’ll probably happen. The most enjoyable club season of my life will have been a flash in the pan.

To each his own

The chicken-and-beer diet: lose 15 lbs. in 40 days.

I’m not surprised. A half-chicken + Pit-Tatoes® (from Nelson’s) < 400 kcals.

Do you know what else is good? Pollo Gus.

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I read another great little Sciascia novel: To Each His Own (1966), which is as Chronicle-of-a-Death-Foretold-ish as The Day of the Owl. On the evidence of these two shrimpy works I’d say this guy should have been given the Nobel Prize.

“To each his own” is unicuique suum in Latin and a ciascuno il suo in Italian. Reading the book, it helps to know these phrases.

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These volumes aren’t supposed to rest on the same shelf, but Samuel decided to line them up together. They do belong to the same series. (He must not have been able to reach the Locke book.)

I wish he’d organize his books.

Feliz cumple to Pervis Estupiñán who twice assisted Brighton & Hove Albion’s goalscorers today.

The best players, manager, referee, goal, and game of this World Cup

Check out my friend Andrew’s YouTube channel, “This Was a Movie”: “An ongoing series of overly-elaborate film essays focusing on peculiar films on the bizarre periphery of film history.”

The channel won’t just review horror movies, Andrew assures me.

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All rightie! This is my list. My First XI are italicized.

Goalkeepers: Bounou (Morocco), Livaković (Croatia), Szczęsny (Poland).

Left-sided defenders: Estupiñán (Ecuador), Théo Hernandez (France), Mazraoui (Morocco).

Right-sided defenders: Dumfries (Netherlands), Hakimi (Morocco), Molina (Argentina).

Central defenders: El Yemiq (Morocco), Gvardiol (Croatia), Otamendi (Argentina), Saïss (Morocco).

Defensive midfielders: Brozović (Croatia), Casemiro (Brazil), Kovačić (Croatia), Tchouaméni (France).

Attacking midfielders: Gapko (Netherlands), Griezmann (France).

“Mixed-use” midfielders: Amrabat (Morocco), Idrissa Gueye (Senegal), Leckie (Australia), Modrić (Croatia), Valverde (Uruguay).

Left-sided forwards: Mbappé (France), Perišić (Croatia).

Right-sided forwards: Álvarez (Argentina), Saka (England).

Central forwards: Giroud (France), Messi (Argentina).

Yes, I realize I’ve listed thirty players even though a roster is supposed to have just twenty-six. Feel free to draw four of the non-italicized players out of a hat and demote them to “alternate player” status.

Meanwhile, I’d like to add two more alternates: Aboubakar (central forward, Cameroon) and Méndez (defensive midfielder, Ecuador). They were flawless, except that they earned suspensions for accumulating yellow cards; Aboubakar accumulated two in the same match.

Not to be too patriotic, but I really don’t think that anyone apart from Hernandez and Mazraoui was a better left fullback than Estupiñán, even though he only played in three games and his third game was a letdown. (I chalk that performance up to a faulty tactical scheme.)

Besides, he was robbed of a goal.

Most valuable player: Messi.

Best-all-around player: Modrić.

Outstanding young player: Bellingham (England), with 19 years. One could make a case for Gvardiol, who is only 20 (almost 21).

Outstanding old player: Pepe (Portugal), with 39 years; he is of the immortals.

Best managers: Dalić (Croatia) and Regragui (Morocco).

Best referee: On the whole, I was most satisfied with Wilton Sampaio of Brazil. Szymon Marciniak, of Poland, will take charge of the final; he, too, is deserving.

Best goal: There were lots of excellent short-range goals in this tournament. Brazil seemed to specialize in them. But I suppose the best one was Argentina’s third goal against Croatia, scored by Álvarez and assisted by Messi.

Best game: Brazil vs. Croatia (quarterfinal).

Bonus award – best commentator: I watched on Telemundo/Peacock. My favorite commentator was the Uruguayan Sebastián “El Loco” Abreu.

Web bots, pt. 2; a birthday weekend

Quickly, a follow-up to the previous entry. A reader tells me about this announcement on the Canon Press website:

(To enlarge the image, click on it.)

No wonder the Web bots led me to The Case for Christian Nationalism.

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Thank you, well-wishers and gift givers. I turned forty-one upon a day of classic “John-Paul” weather, as gloomy as all get-out (and windy). For my birthday supper, we drove to my in-laws’ house in Granger. The traffic was dense – Notre Dame was about to host a game – and, along much of the route, the power was extinguished; intersections had to be negotiated in the manner of four-way stops. We passed some accidents. We arrived safely.

“Meat loaf and cheesecake,” Karin’s mom said, afterward, when we were stuffed. “What good choices, John-Paul.”

“Karin chose them,” I disclosed.

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Stephen visited today; we watched the first leg of Barcelona’s championship series against Aucas. Barcelona lost 0–1 and didn’t deserve better. The concluding leg will be played next week. I can truly say, I’ll be glad for Aucas to join the list of title winners.

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In this photo, Moisés Caicedo celebrates his birthday with the other Spanish speakers of Brighton & Hove Albion FC. There are three Ecuadorians, an Argentinian, a Paraguayan, and a Spaniard.

I wouldn’t be surprised if all but the young Paraguayan were chosen for the World Cup.

Chile 0, Ecuador 2

Big, big victory for Ecuador in Santiago, in the stadium of Club Deportivo Universidad Católica. We dominated in the early minutes and were rewarded with a well-taken goal by Pervis Estupiñán. Then Chile’s Arturo Vidal committed the red-card foul of his life. To the Chileans’ credit, they rallied hard and played with courage. But Ecuador created the better scoring chances – many of them squandered by Michael Estrada. It wasn’t until stoppage time that Moisés Caicedo struck the coup de grâce.

The Brazilians have qualified for the World Cup. The Argentinians have qualified. We are third, with a six-point cushion over the fourth- and fifth-placed teams, and seven points above the best teams in the disqualification zone. There’s a decent chance we’d scrape through even with four concluding defeats.

Tonight I was running my many laps, in the cold and wind and snow, and it was bleak, and I thought of quitting; but I remembered the pibes – the lads – and was inspired to push on ahead.

The misfortunes of Ziva – and of Karin, Samuel, John-Paul, and Ecuador

I feel much better, though I’m still coughing and blowing my nose. Karin and Samuel also have got bad colds. They probably caught the germs from me and then compromised their bodily defenses on Wednesday night.

We were outside in the cold for several hours because little Ziva had escaped through a hole in the screen door.

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It was a desperate time. We searched the yard and then the neighborhood. Then we heard Ziva mewing under our porch. She couldn’t come out the way she’d gone in: either she couldn’t remember how to, or she was obstructed.

We removed several boards nailed to the edge of the porch, only to come up against an even sturdier barrier of wood and concrete. This barrier had a gap in it, however, which Ziva approached. She mewed and looked out at us. We reached in and petted her. We gave her food. But the gap was too small for her to squeeze through.

We decided to tear one of the planks out of the porch floor. But it had been screwed in too tight, and so we had to wait a few more hours until a friend could bring over an electric drill so that we could make a hole large enough for Ziva to fit through. The drilling terrified Ziva.

An hour later, she finally mustered enough courage to climb up onto the porch. By this time it was about 11:00 at night.

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And so, ever since, Samuel and Karin have been sick. It didn’t occur to us to go back inside the house and leave Ziva in her despair – or to put on jackets. At the time, I hardly felt my own illness or the cold.

When a loved one is making desperate little cries, it’s easy to forget about yourself – and other loved ones, I’m sorry to say.

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Last night, then, Karin and Samuel lay around, pretty miserable, as I’d done earlier in the week. I spent the evening web-surfing until I was able to find a video stream of Ecuador’s first qualifier for the Qatar World Cup.

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I remember how, in 2004, Ecuador lost 1–0 to Argentina in a thrilling World Cup qualifier played in Buenos Aires. Hernán Crespo was the goalscorer.

They were two good teams, two mature teams.

Last night’s fixture in the Boca Juniors stadium had the same scoreline but lacked virtuosity and excitement.

Messi scored with a penalty kick and gave a few good passes.

Lautaro Martínez did nothing.

Ecuador’s lone striker, Énner Valencia, was stranded.

Our shining young talent, the left-back Pervis Estupiñán, gave away the penalty.

Alexander Domínguez had to tend goal rather too well for the comfort of the nation.

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Ecuador did improve as the game went on. I hope that, in the coming months, the team will be afforded more practice sessions with its new manager (so far, only two sessions have been held). The other South American teams also have been severely disrupted by the pandemic.

Ecuador will play the next game, against Uruguay, in Quito on Tuesday. Five substitutions will be allowed, which will enable more Uruguayans to come off the field once they’re short of breath.