oh my god it's windy and sunny

jakke: assessing Occupy Wall Street's demands

So it looks like Occupy Wall Street is converging on some coherent and specific demands. From the point of view of protest efficacy this is essential; if you’re not defining what you’re protesting, then your protest is more performance art than anything.

However, unlike preschool students, the…

If you are looking for a nice, easy to grasp assessment of the informal Occupy Wall Street demands, read this. (Also: “Many other countries have their own governments, and they are generally unwilling to obey the legislation of the US government.” made me lololol.)

I just got done listening to The National for the last three hours or so (which is easy to do on a dreary autumn evening), and suddenly - after a bottle or so of wine - I sort of :: snapped :: up and realized I wanted/needed something upbeat, less heady, and just kind of sort of silly…but still good (at least in some sense). To meet this demand, I turned (for reasons I am not entirely sure of) to 2005-era Dierks Bentley.

Now, before you totally tune out, let’s talk about this.

Before we talk about it, however, let me preface the discussion with the fact that, yes, indeed, a lot of stuff the Big Music Nashville Machine (or whatever the hell you want to call it) churns out is terrible. (Have you heard that Ala-freakin-bama song or whatever by Trace Adkins? Dear god. That thing was born of a place of stupidity and denim that I hope to never ever visit in my life. Christ. What a stupid goddamn song.) At the same time, however, I always :: roll eyes so hard :: at anyone who says “I like all music except country” which is the shallowest and dumbest definition of music tastes possible. I mean, really? Really? Look, Nashville churns out a lot of crap. But so does LA. So does Brooklyn. So does wherever. There is bad pop music. There is bad country music. Christ is there a lot of bad “indie” music or whatever.

But, then, sometimes, there is a track that is good despite its genre. A really goddamn good song that somebody toiled to write and somebody else connected to and decided to sing. And I’ll be damned if that doesn’t happen anywhere and everywhere - even on the most mainstream of outlets. (See, currently: Adele.) Writing off a good song for no good reason is dumb, and I will think you are dumb if you do it and that is just how it has to be.

Now, of course, the above song - Dierks Bentley’s “Lot of Leavin’ Left To Do” - isn’t necessarily one of those songs. It in no way hits the pop perfection levels of, say, a “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (speaking of pop songs cranked out of the Nashville machine and popularized by some adult contemporary icon [don’t even get me started on how much I love Bonnie Raitt] and then repurposed for some indie bonus feature [Justin Vernon, I love you, but you are no Bonnie Raitt]), but there are, I think, some things worth defending here. Some of those things are objectively worth arguing, and some are pretty ad hominem, but it’s Tumblr so who cares…

1. It is a silly, pretty misogynistic song, sure. There is, I think, a self-deprecating edge that Bentley brings to the vocals that blunts some of the misogyny, but, okay fine. You’re right. But….

Let’s ignore the lyrics for a second and admit that, dammit, that is a pretty fuckin’ solid country backing track.* Ignore Dierks and his stupid graphic print shirts and just listen to the interplay between the lead guitar and steel guitar… :: pauses, let’s you listen to these things for a moment :: I KNOW RIGHT? There is some incredibly interesting and complicated stuff going on between those two, especially in the outro. (I like to pretend that they are aware that they are playing on a pretty silly Nashville country song and just decided to have this interesting musical conversation in the background because, what the hell, no one is paying attention anyway.) Sure, it’s not any sort of ground-breaking performance, but it is impressive nonetheless - especially the steel performance. (I do love some solid steel guitar, I do.)

2. I’ve seen Dierks Bentley in concert twice. Both shows, however, were in places that you would not expect me to have seen someone who is, at this point, sort of a big popular country mainstay d-bag or whatever. The first time I saw him was at the Quest, a venue in Minneapolis that was once owned by Prince (and is now some dance venue with a name like…I dunno? SOUND or BEATZ or PULSE! or EPIC or some shit, I have no idea), that was known much more for its slightly shallow alternative and indie lineups (sidenote: I saw Pete Yorn there after musicforthemorningafter came out and it was awesome - oh, and Phantom Planet opened that show and I ended up one of their music videos, NBD) than it was for anything else.

For some reason, though, they booked Dierks Bentley (2nd album DB, before he was really capital Dierks** capital Bentley), and he was, at the time, on tour with Cross Canadian Ragweed (super fun and trashy Texas band btw). What was fun and interesting about this tour was that you had Cross Canadian Ragweed who are just some big loud rootsy Texas homies who wanna to rip some guitar riffs and throw back some Buds paired with an assembled cast of beyond-talented Nashville dudes backing Dierks on one stage under a “High Times and Hangovers Tour” banner.

Now, this show could have easily gone one particular way, and that is CCR (no, not that CCR) shaping up a little bit and pandering to the quasi-family-friendly-ness of the Nashville machine backing Dierks. But, instead, the opposite happened. Instead of staying faithful to the studio tracks, Dierks’ band ripped the living fuck out every song in his then young and sparse catalog; they played from a place that never, ever comes out in this recording. They probably didn’t throw back as much whiskey as the Drive-By Truckers do or nothing, but they certainly made a run for it. And I will be goddamned if it wasn’t one of the most impressive performances I’ve ever seen. And Dierks? For all his golden-locked goofiness, he really made his way around that stage. And his voice is legit - that guttural country baritone he’s got going on there is the real deal and, man, he proved it in that freakin’ weird venue. (Fwiw. I also saw Nickel Creek play there, which was quite an excellent show, as this was back when they were covering Radiohead’s “The National Anthem” and Nirvana’s “Lithium.” Hearing Sarah Watkins sing “everyone / everyone around here / everyone is so near / what’s going on?” was well worth the price of admission for sure.)

The second time I saw Dierks was at, of all places, Bonnaroo in 2007. He rocked a, like, 3 PM show on a side stage and, while it wasn’t as good as the show at the Quest, was still impressive. He had a bit more of the commercial Nashville machine thing going on (which included, christ, a fucking fake Marshall stack that was actually a fridge full of Bud Light), and he was promoting his cheesier third album around that time. But - again - the dudes on stage backing him picked up on the vibes in the venue and really let loose (it helped that they split the set with Sam Bush, so they got away from his “hits” for a minute). It was worth missing whatever act I was inevitably missing on some other stage somewhere.

The point here is, I guess, if I had written off this guy and his band as the “country” in “I like anything but country” I would have missed some of the more impressive individual performances from musicians that I’ve ever seen in my young life…and some pretty goddamn fun nights/days on top of that.

So, anyway. Those are my thoughts and they were sparked by the silly-ass country song above.***

*On this note, I would gladly pay regular CD prices to acquire a Faith Hill album that did not have Faith Hill on it. I spent a chunk of my early 20s in a country-rock cover band, and this involved - at one point - me having to learn the acoustic guitar part in “Breathe.” And, you know what? I’ll be goddamn if it wasn’t super fun to play, even if I cared nothing for the vocals. While learning this track off the recording, I grew to really love and appreciate what was going on behind Faith Hill’s big dumb why-the-fuck-do-you-sound-like-Kathleen-Turner-during-the-verses? vocal performance. I just wanted to erase her from it and really hear what the peeps in the background were doing.

** After typing his name multiple times now I am really realizing how ridiculous this first name is. But, whatever, I’m not gonna rag on it - it’s a dude’s name. Whaddya gonna do?

*** This post could have also been written about Keith Urban (stupid, stupid, stupid songs, but THAT GUITAR PLAYING JESUS CHIRST) and Brad Paisley (silly [but sometimes silly and good!] songs with unreal instrumental performances - I love watching that dude play a goddamn guitar.)

How Facebook Lies With Maps

Facebook’s recent changes (and their attendant controversies), coupled with conversation I had with Dave today, reminded me of an excerpt from an IM conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and GQ contributor Alex French, detailed in this 2008 (!) article:

(12:25 p.m.) Mark: There’s this definite evolution happening. Where the first part of the social web was mapping out the social graph. And the second phase is now mapping out the stream of everything that everyone does. All of human consciousness and communication.
(12:29 p.m.) Alex: Imagine if you could broadcast people’s emotions into a feed?
(12:30 p.m.) Mark: I think we’ll get there.
(12:30 p.m.) Alex: So how are you going to map all of human consciousness and communication?
(12:30 p.m.) Mark: We don’t map it directly. We give people tools so they can share as much as they want, but increasingly people share more and more things, and there’s this trend toward sharing a greater number of smaller things like status updates, wall posts, mobile photos, etc. A status update can approach being a projection of an emotion.

The above exchange betrays the motivation behind Facebook’s Open Graph (or whatever we’re calling it) and the new Timeline, and it is pretty clear, in light of these comments, why the recent Facebook changes work the way they work and look the way they look. Of course, it’d be difficult to argue that tracking and mapping things like Spotify and Netflix usage represent “all of human consciousness and communication,” but they do track and map certain human activities (as do FB’s check-ins, “likes,” and link and media sharing functions). But what is important to keep in mind is what Zuckerberg says in that last line: “A status update can approach being a projection of an emotion.” Based on this line, it doesn’t take much to imagine the sorts of things Facebook thinks it can glean from its users’ activity, such as emotion from a status update (and I don’t even think this concept is all that controversial - I mean, some status updates do, indeed, project emotion).

What matters here is the totality of what Facebook seemingly thinks it can construct out of its data: that by “mapping out the stream of everything that everyone does” they can approach a map of all human consciousness and communication. Now, as is well understood, the aggregation and use of all of this information raises obvious issues of power, privacy, access and control, and context - topics that other writers and commentators will address much more eloquently than I could at this juncture. Some of these commenters will cry (or, more likely, already have cried) foul at Facebook’s entire enterprise when couched this way, and I don’t think they are necessarily wrong to do so. I, however, am not one of those people (at least not today).

I am more interested - especially in light of the recent changes - in the problems inherent in the construction of Facebook’s map of “all human consciousness and communication” and in the problems with maps generally, that is: maps lie.

Consider the opening paragraph to Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps:

“Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it’s essential. To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or a video screen, a map must distort reality. As a scale model, the map must use symbols that almost always are proportionally much bigger or thicker than the features they represent. To avoid hiding critical information in a fog of detail, the map must offer a selective, incomplete view of reality. There’s no escape from the cartographic paradox: to present a useful and truthful picture, an accurate map must tell white lies.”

The same goes for Facebook: to portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on an online social networking site, Facebook must distort reality. And, at least according to the most recent changes, part of that distortion includes categorizing the automatic reporting of certain “light-weight” activities (“Tony Hoffmann is listening to Robyn on Spotify.”) as “sharing.” Some have seen this move as demonstrating an unusual or unorthodox conception of sharing on the part of Zuck and company (or even that Facebook is actively interested in reconceptualizing sharing altogether). As Farhad Manjoo writes over at Slate:

Sharing, in Zuckerberg’s view, has morphed from an affirmative act—that video was hilarious, I think I’ll Like it!—to something more like an unconscious state of being. I watched that video, and therefore it will be shared.

At an item by item level, this certainly seems to be the case. Manjoo further notes:

For as much as he’s invested in sharing, though, Zuckerberg seems clueless about the motivation behind the act. Why do you share a story, video, or photo? Because you want your friends to see it. And why do you want your friends to see it? Because you think they’ll get a kick out of it. I know this sounds obvious, but it’s somehow eluded Zuckerberg that sharing is fundamentally about choosing.

Again, at the level of individual updates, this seems to hold true. But, if we zoom out a bit, things start to look a little different. If, as Manjoo asserts, sharing is fundamentally about choosing, then it is hard to say that users don’t still have a choice - they can choose to enable or disable these new notifications and, subsequently, not “share” such light-weight updates. In this sense, Facebook hasn’t re-conceptualized the act of sharing - they’ve relocated it. They’ve essentially just moved the locus of sharing by bumping it up one level of abstraction. Instead of sharing song by song, or film by film, users are simply implored to share “music” or “film” generally (via particular services, of course), and once a user has agreed to do so, these light-weight updates take care of the rest. More than demonstrating any unusual conception of sharing, this move, I think, demonstrates the ways in which Facebook views and categorizes and manages those things that users share.

Or, to put it another way, it demonstrates the lines that Facebook draws on its map of the world. Instead of oceans, lakes, and rivers, it’s music, movies and books; instead of continents and countries and cities, it’s brands and products and services. And just as the representation of the world is at the discretion of the cartographer, the representation of human behavior on Facebook is at the discretion of Zuckerberg and his employees. And this isn’t automatically a bad thing, it just is; a map must tell lies.

In saying this, I don’t mean to be a Facebook apologist, giving the company license to carve the world up however they please (though they undoubtedly do). Rather, by invoking Monmonier’s work on maps, I only mean to reorient our point of normative inquiry: instead of asking whether Facebook’s recent changes are good or bad or smart or dumb or whatever, we ought to ask what the world looks like according to Facebook’s map of it. And, further, in asking that question, we must be actively aware of Monmonier’s caveat that…

…a single map is but one of an indefinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data.

Any given map serves a given purpose, and

…map authors can freely experiment with features, measurements, area of coverage, and symbols and can pick the map that best presents their case or supports their unconscious bias.

With this caveat in mind, we ought to look at the world according to Facebook’s map and ask ourselves: does this look like a world we could live in?

[Cross-posted here at anthonyhoffmann.org]

tobybot and I, upon hearing the rumors that the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (rival to the Large Hadron Collider) may have discovered the Higgs boson.
[Full size] — tobybot and I, upon hearing the rumors that the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (rival to the Large Hadron Collider) may have discovered the Higgs boson.

[Full size]

Bad Vegetarian

Some of my IRL friends on here, and a few of you more astute followers, may have noticed my posting about trying poutine today and thought, “hey, isn’t this guy a vegetarian?” The answer is yes and no. Let me try and explain…

My restraints on eating meat have taken various forms over the last 5 years, vacillating between being strictly vegan at times to, well, eating meat at times. My “true” (whatever that means) vegetarian friends probably wouldn’t count me among their ranks, but my “true” (again, whatever) meat eating friends probably wouldn’t claim me either. (Though, lord knows, Neil has tried.)

Basically, my attitude towards meat is the same as my attitude towards oil. I generally do not support the industries that make these products available for consumption. In the case of oil, I mostly bike commute. Does that mean I refuse to ever get in a car or bus? Of course not. Will I avoid it when I can? Sure. Same with meat - there are some situations where I will eat meat. But, for the most part I avoid it if I can. Now, a few points on this analogy:

Do I think I am “changing the world” or some other t-shirt slogan BS by doing this? No. (Do I think that if everyone in the US used as much oil and ate as much meat as me that both industries would be radically transformed? Yes. At the same time, do I expect people to consume as much oil or eat as much meat as me? No, not at all. Conversely, I always, always forget to turn lights off. So, there’s that.)
I know there are ethical problems with Big Ag (or whatever its called), too. But, not to be too bleeding heart for a second, I think there is a difference between, say, what goes on in mass chicken farms and what goes on when a farm produces grotesquely giant genetically-engineered tomatoes en masse…and that difference is that CHICKENS ARE LIVING ANIMALS. I’m not going to use that same reasoning in an argument against eating meat to a meat eater - in that context, I honestly don’t care - but I think it’s an important distinction for my purposes here.
Sometimes, especially in large swaths of the US or in certain foreign countries, there are basically no choices outside of meat. Just like, if you want to fly to Europe, you’re gonna have to take a plane that uses up tons of oil. *shrug*
I never liked poultry anyway. Even when I was a full-on meat eater and these silly distinctions didn’t exist in my brain (or on my equally silly Tumblr). Pork, on the other hand…well, sometimes I miss pork.

It’s not the most hard-lined of stances. Call it my weak deontological (or maybe rule-based utilitarian?) approach to vegetarianism. It is why I have decided on the title of “bad vegetarian” when it comes to explaining my dietary preferences.

That being said, my meat-eating exceptions are, generally:

There is no other option. Every vegan or vegetarian has encountered this. We’ve also encountered the limited options moment, where it is either meat or this pile of PLAIN BOILED RICE THE CHOICE IS YOURS YOU DUMB HIPPIE. Some people will go for the rice. I am not those people. (Unless the other choice is poultry. Gross. Always gross.)
Cultural experience. This may be the cliched “you only live once” excuse, but, hey, you only live once. Did I eat fish and chips in London? Duh. Fresh fish and mussels from the Ionian Sea while in Albania? Of course. Gyros in Greece? Fuck yes. (Ocassionally, I count a Friday fish fry in Wisconsin among “cultural experiences.” After 3 years of living in MKE, I’m not sure I can continue to do so…but don’t tell anyone, k?)
Local experience. Similar to the above, but localized exceptions. When Neil makes an award-winning beef and bourbon chili, and I spend the day in the kitchen helping, of course I’m gonna try the stuff. My dad takes grand old fishing trips and brings home walleye he caught - if he cooks it, I will try it. Plain and simple. This is where poutine falls - today is Canada Day, and I’ve never tried poutine ever in my life. Screw it. Let’s try it!
Conejito’s.

So, that’s that. I am a Bad Vegetarian. Pics of poutine to follow.

In continuing with “WTF? When did Tony’s Tumblr become a World Cup Tumblr?” Soccer Theme, I decided to wear my Boca Juniors training jersey to kickball tonight.
Which calls for a little storytime! Specifically: Why I like Argentina. Well…
Back in my undergrad days, I wanted to study abroad something fierce, but none of the standard options (Europe, Europe, Europe, and Europe) really appealed to me then. I wanted to go somewhere, but not somewhere everyone around me was going. Also, being a film student at the time, I learned quickly that I hated Asian cinema - and you get a lot of Kurosawa shoved down your throat - so that turned me off of the Eastern options right quick. There really weren’t any African programs relevant to my study at the time, and Oceania wasn’t on my radar. However, I did really love Latin American film. Memories of Underdevelopment was (and still is) one of my favorite foreign films. Certainly, The Hour of the Furnaces will stay with anyone who watches it. And, on a completely different note, Gilda-set in a fictionalized Buenos Aires at the end of WWII-was my favorite Hollywood film ever until Children of Men (directed by a Latin American director [duh], Alfonso Cuaron) bumped it to #2. (Oh, and, as horrible as it is, I totally loved The Three Cabelleros when I was a kid.) In many ways, my cultural affinity for Latin America set the stage for the day a certain email rolled across my University of Minnesota email account: “Study Language and Culture in Buenos Aires, Argentina!”
I knew before I even opened the email that I was going. There was never a question. I applied immediately. Sure enough, that next fall semester I found myself on a plane to Argentina, where I lived for 4.5 months. Many (many, many, many) other stories aside, I crushed hard on certain beautiful Argentine girl who worked the front desk at the hotel where we lived. Fortunately for me, the crush was mutual (though chaste and, uh, from afar…mostly). We struck up a friendship (as, sadly, she was married for 4.25 of the 4.5 months that I was there), and I discovered her father worked for Boca Juniors. For those unaware, Boca and River Plate make up the heart of football in Buenos Aires - the town is literally split in two - you’re either a fan of blue and gold, or red and white, and there are no in betweens. We’re talking 100 times more serious than even the most serious Man U/Arsenal rivals. Deathly serious business.
Being in that environment piqued my interest, and the girl helped it along. Eventually, I visited Boca’s stadium in the wonderful La Boca neighborhood, and made the trek out to the far suburbs to see the Juniors play Quilmes. I hadn’t seen anything like a Latin American football match - all the myth and hype is true. The energy was off the charts. We had to glue ourselves to the back and keep our mouths shut lest we be discovered as Americans, and, despite doing so, a fellow student-abroad got her jewelry ripped right off her neck on our way out, cheap gold chain links and fake diamonds flying everywhere. I heard, firsthand, what a truly authoritative “puta” sounds like. I was scared shitless, stupid little American boy that I was. I loved it. A defining moment for me trip-wise, and probably life-wise. Since then, I’ve been a football (soccer, futbol, whatever) fan.
Oh! And I was also there when Tevez played for Boca…and when he made the controversial move to Corinthians in Brazil (eventually, he wound up in England, playing for West Ham, Man U, and now Man City). The politics and public reaction to his move, relatively unprecedented for a player of his standing (as the best Argentine players usually do not pass Go, collect millions of dollars, and go directly to Europe, so his move to Brazil was seen as a sort of cultural betrayal) was fascinating.
Also, I was living there when the US re-elected Bush. As you can guess, on those nights when I wasn’t pretending to be Canadian (or, on one extremely drunken occasion, Norwegian [by cranking up the MN accent and trying not to laugh]), I, as an American, wasn’t very popular. But football was a great way to hedge - they hated our politics (and so did I!), but, you know, the Argentine national team could absolutely crush the United States’ team. So, on some level, I guess we were even.
And that’s pretty much where I stand today: I’ve got even love for the US and Argentina. I always give some happy nods to Mexico and Portugal, and this year South Africa! (we’re all secretly pulling for an African team this time around, aren’t we? ZA won’t bring it home, but Côte d’Ivoire could do it, and I’ve got outside hopes on Ghana, especially since they aren’t in the same group as the US this year). But, above all, La Albicelestes and the Americans are what drive me to drink at 6:30 AM, for better or for worse.
And I have Argentina to thank for it. — In continuing with “WTF? When did Tony’s Tumblr become a World Cup Tumblr?” Soccer Theme, I decided to wear my Boca Juniors training jersey to kickball tonight.

Which calls for a little storytime! Specifically: Why I like Argentina. Well…

Back in my undergrad days, I wanted to study abroad something fierce, but none of the standard options (Europe, Europe, Europe, and Europe) really appealed to me then. I wanted to go somewhere, but not somewhere everyone around me was going. Also, being a film student at the time, I learned quickly that I hated Asian cinema - and you get a lot of Kurosawa shoved down your throat - so that turned me off of the Eastern options right quick. There really weren’t any African programs relevant to my study at the time, and Oceania wasn’t on my radar. However, I did really love Latin American film. *Memories of Underdevelopment* was (and still is) one of my favorite foreign films. Certainly, *The Hour of the Furnaces* will stay with anyone who watches it. And, on a completely different note, *Gilda*-set in a fictionalized Buenos Aires at the end of WWII-was my favorite Hollywood film ever until *Children of Men* (directed by a Latin American director [duh], Alfonso Cuaron) bumped it to #2. (Oh, and, as horrible as it is, I totally loved *The Three Cabelleros* when I was a kid.) In many ways, my cultural affinity for Latin America set the stage for the day a certain email rolled across my University of Minnesota email account: “Study Language and Culture in Buenos Aires, Argentina!”

I knew before I even opened the email that I was going. There was never a question. I applied immediately. Sure enough, that next fall semester I found myself on a plane to Argentina, where I lived for 4.5 months. Many (many, many, many) other stories aside, I crushed hard on certain beautiful Argentine girl who worked the front desk at the hotel where we lived. Fortunately for me, the crush was mutual (though chaste and, uh, from afar…mostly). We struck up a friendship (as, sadly, she was married for 4.25 of the 4.5 months that I was there), and I discovered her father worked for Boca Juniors. For those unaware, Boca and River Plate make up the heart of football in Buenos Aires - the town is literally split in two - you’re either a fan of blue and gold, or red and white, and there are no in betweens. We’re talking 100 times more serious than even the most serious Man U/Arsenal rivals. Deathly serious business.

Being in that environment piqued my interest, and the girl helped it along. Eventually, I visited Boca’s stadium in the wonderful La Boca neighborhood, and made the trek out to the far suburbs to see the Juniors play Quilmes. I hadn’t seen anything like a Latin American football match - all the myth and hype is true. The energy was off the charts. We had to glue ourselves to the back and keep our mouths shut lest we be discovered as Americans, and, despite doing so, a fellow student-abroad got her jewelry ripped right off her neck on our way out, cheap gold chain links and fake diamonds flying everywhere. I heard, firsthand, what a truly authoritative “puta” sounds like. I was scared shitless, stupid little American boy that I was. I loved it. A defining moment for me trip-wise, and probably life-wise. Since then, I’ve been a football (soccer, futbol, whatever) fan.

Oh! And I was also there when Tevez played for Boca…and when he made the controversial move to Corinthians in Brazil (eventually, he wound up in England, playing for West Ham, Man U, and now Man City). The politics and public reaction to his move, relatively unprecedented for a player of his standing (as the best Argentine players usually do not pass Go, collect millions of dollars, and go directly to Europe, so his move to Brazil was seen as a sort of cultural betrayal) was fascinating.

Also, I was living there when the US re-elected Bush. As you can guess, on those nights when I wasn’t pretending to be Canadian (or, on one extremely drunken occasion, Norwegian [by cranking up the MN accent and trying not to laugh]), I, as an American, wasn’t very popular. But football was a great way to hedge - they hated our politics (and so did I!), but, you know, the Argentine national team could *absolutely crush* the United States’ team. So, on some level, I guess we were even.

And that’s pretty much where I stand today: I’ve got even love for the US and Argentina. I always give some happy nods to Mexico and Portugal, and this year South Africa! (we’re all secretly pulling for an African team this time around, aren’t we? ZA won’t bring it home, but Côte d’Ivoire could do it, and I’ve got outside hopes on Ghana, especially since they aren’t in the same group as the US this year). But, above all, La Albicelestes and the Americans are what drive me to drink at 6:30 AM, for better ~~or for worse~~.

And I have Argentina to thank for it.