June 10, 2010 Softball Founded in 1850, Vanquished in 2010 By Christopher Cox After the jump, a recap of Tuesday night’s softball game against Harper’s Magazine. Read More
June 9, 2010 World Cup 2010 The Rules of the Game By Will Frears A director’s take on the 2010 World Cup. If you want to have a successful World Cup you have to have one team that you absolutely want to win. Three is even better. Five is fantastic. More than seven and you’ll start to have trouble keeping them straight. Herewith, a few guidelines/ground rules: Everyone is required to support Brazil, it is absolutely the done thing. It is never ever OK to root for the oppressor over the oppressed—really, how terrible a person are you to want Portugal to beat Angola or France to dispatch Senegal? Hasn’t enough harm been done already? (And so, despite the global love affair with Obama, everyone, all the billions watching around the world, wants the US to lose.) You can simply follow the team of the country that issued your passport. This puts you in the category of fan, which means you must be willing to enter into arguments with people who don’t like your country about the relative merits of both soccer and national style. I would caution against going too far down this road. It leads to something that feels a lot like politics, which is much less fun than soccer and has, historically, led to many more bouts of hooliganism. Or you can support both your country of passport and your country of familial origin. Let’s say you’re Italian-American: Italy is much more likely to win than the US so the odds on your happiness have just improved. (Plus if the Italians win, as they did last time, you have something to crow about over all your friends.) This strategy merits consideration even if the country before the hyphen doesn’t have a prayer but does have a reputation for likeability and a certain grooviness among the fan base. There is nothing better to be at the World Cup than Cameroon—nobody knows anything about the place, but the word itself rolls nicely off the tongue and whenever the camera cuts to the crowd, they seem to be having a good time. Everyone likes Cameroon. Read More
June 7, 2010 World Cup 2010 On Loyalty By Will Frears A director’s take on the 2010 World Cup. England’s sole victory in 1966: I will only support England if I know England is going to lose. (Photo: National Media Museum.) The World Cup operates as a get-out-of-jail-free card for soccer fans. For nine months of the year, our moods are, to an extent that is profoundly unhealthy, determined by the fortunes of our team: win on Saturday against a rival and we believe that this week is the week, we will close that deal, call that girl, our desires will actually actualize. After a good performance on Saturday, everything is attainable. The converse is equally true; lose a match and that’s it for all your hopes and ambitions, completely up the spout. This clearly is no way to live, and every four years the World Cup comes along and offers the possibility of promiscuity without consequence—a spot of “who do you want to be today?” “Oh today, I fancy a bit of Brazil, I feel like feeling like a winner.” Tomorrow, on the other hand, it’s all “come on you, North Korea” because who, in the end, doesn’t want North Korea to triumph? If I had to support England, the country of my birth, games would have to mean something to me. The pleasure of the not meaning it is one of the charms of the World Cup. Also—and this may be a more personal reason—I spend nine months of the year loathing all of the England players. I accuse them of terrible crimes, of having profoundly flawed characters; I have been known on more than one occasion to be delighted when they are injured. I cannot find it in myself every four years to care for those for whom my dislike is so integral to my being. Especially when there is the potential joy, no matter how unlikely, of seeing them get absolutely leathered by the mighty Slovenia. This rule will be suspended when England plays the USA. I am English and live in America, or at least in Brooklyn, so my normal dislike of England is offset by my desperate anxiety that we (see how quickly it comes) not lose to America. There are also other exceptions to this rule. If the majority of supporters in the bar where I am watching the game are anti-English, in the supporting-another-team way rather than for any kind of xenophobia, then I will become an England fan simply because I like to be on the side of the fewer cheerers. I am also entirely free to support England if I know England is going to lose, and most likely on penalties. In three out of the last four world cups which England has actually managed to qualify for, they have lost on penalties to Portugal, Argentina, and Germany. In all of these games, I have desperately wanted England to win, secure in the knowledge that they didn’t really have a chance. Will Frears is a theater and film director living in Brooklyn. For the next few weeks, he will be blogging about the games for the Daily.
June 2, 2010 Softball Team Paris Review Dominates Vanity Fair By Christopher Cox After the jump, a recap of last night’s softball game against Vanity Fair. Read More