8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live, The Onion

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble — literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education — they’re choosing the latter.

“America Goes Dark”, NY Times

(Is it weird that the footlong burger looks pretty awesome to me? “You can really taste the length.”)

My current work project, in a nice coincidence, brought me back to the homeland. Tonight we made it out to PNC Park, where the Pirates made me feel more at home by losing. (They even gave up an inside-the-park homerun. Nice.)

Gotta give it up though for the best stadium in baseball:

Here’s hoping it leads to increased updates around here.

You mess with the whale, you get 40 tons of that whale all up in your grille.

For real, this is the most whaletastic boat-ownage since the wreck of the Essex.

(Image from South African EPA via NPR.)

• It’s too bad Uruguay and Germany weren’t the finals matchup. That was certainly the more entertaining of the two weekend games.
• Things I will miss now that the Cup is over: The country going nuts after the Donovan goal; France collapsing in hilarious fashion after cheating Ireland; the fact that a tremendously meaningful game was happening nearly every day during June; Ian Darke calling out poor players and cracking jokes during the play-by-play — let’s get with this idea, American sports announcers.
• Thing I won’t miss: the diving. It’s weird to compare World Cup referees to NHL playoff refs: World Cup refs call fouls that don’t actually occur; NHL refs wouldn’t call a major penalty if a player’s head rolled past them on the ice. Runner-up thing I won’t miss: TV commentators only referring to Africa in mystical, isicathamiya-backed generalizations instead of as a multinational continent with real, modern people.
• As much as the Donovan goal was an amazing national moment, and as much as the same “Soccer is here to stay!” meme goes around the American media every four years, it’s time to realize that professional-level soccer’s failure to widely catch on after 1990, 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 means the sport’s only going to be major-league popular in this country during World Cups — and that’s totally fine.

  I love watching the world’s best players every four years, and seeing these guys in action makes me curious about their pro careers, but I know it’ll be 2014 before I follow soccer again. In talking to my World-Cup-loving friends, who should be prime candidates to follow MLS or the Premiership, I’ve learned I’m very typical in this regard. I have the NFL and the NHL, and I’m cool with that.

  Rather than the tiresome debate between the misguided American pro-soccer optimists and the xenophobic “Real Americans hate soccer, and get off my lawn” grumps, let’s just enjoy the World Cup Olympics-style: as a fun, international treat that comes along just often enough to be special.

And the requisite highlight vid:

But in my quadrennial soccer-fan career, I have really enjoyed this 2010 World Cup, so I feel I should go ahead and find a side to support. My man Tony argues for the benefits of historical symbolism in World Cup matches, so I’m taking a page from that.

Because Ireland deserved to be in this Cup and was unfairly cheated out of it, and because I’m of Irish descent, I’m going to base my decision on Irish history and go with Spain. Spain and Ireland had the Catholic thing in common, they had the Spanish Armada thing and the subsequent Black Irish myth, and today they’re both known as PIIGS. Meanwhile, the Netherlands was the home of William of Orange, the infamous usurper of James II and winner of the still-a-sore-spot-in-Ireland Battle of the Boyne. (Coincidentally, that battle ended on July 12, and the game is July 11.) Maybe Spain and William were on the same side in that fight, but I’m not about to let facts get in the way of this nerdy argument. The Dutch dudes even wear orange uniforms — this one is a no-brainer.

So ¡Vamos España! — let’s all eat tapas and fight some bulls this Sunday. I look forward to my last day as a soccer fan until 2014.

A few days ago, a friend asked, “What’s that called when you have an area that’s contaminated with hazardous waste and there’s some federal money to clean it up?” and I instantaneously chimed in with “Superfund“.

You can take the dude out of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take the Pittsburgh out of the dude.