The Round Mound of Sound FTW

I always liked Charles Barkley, even when he played for the Knicks. I like him a little bit more today.

Hall of Famer Charles Barkley is certain he played with gay teammates on two or three teams during his basketball career -- and says it didn't bother him a bit.
He said he never felt threatened or hit-on in the locker room and was never bothered by the presence of gay teammates.

"First of all, every player has played with gay guys," Barkley told 106.7 The Fan, adding that any player who says he hasn't is "a stone-freakin' idiot."

"First of all, society discriminates against gay people," Barkley said. "They always try to make it like jocks discriminate against gay people. I've been a big proponent of gay marriage for a long time, because as a black person, I can't be in for any form of discrimination at all."

As more and more of the wall gets chipped away, it's nice to see people like Sir Charles doing some of the chipping.

It's All Jimi's Fault

The Holy Church has decided that the ‘60s are to blame for all that sexual abuse. There was a study and everything.

If you haven't taken liberties with an altar boy, put your hand on your head.

The five-year study says the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and '70s.

At least they’ve officially laid off blaming the gays, which is a nice gesture and all, but they continue to deny that having an all-male, celibate priesthood might be a problem. And blaming the sexual revolution doesn’t go a long way toward explaining, say, Ireland, which as far as I know didn’t exactly have a Woodstock vibe going on in the orphanages that deviant Christian Brothers priests treated like a buffet, nor toward explaining the serial groper priest my dad and all his altar boy buddies knew to avoid as ten-year olds in a small town in Illinois. In 1957.

Now that we finally have the goddamn hippies to blame, bishops are being encouraged to cooperate with civil authorities in abuse cases. Not commanded, of course--let's not be hasty here--but encouraged. I’m sure these baby steps will be a great comfort to the victims. I know I’m quaking at the absolute integrity of the Magisterium.

More Footy

More soccer notes, just because. In no particular order:

1. Joanna Lohmann was not in the US player pool, but the current Philadephia Cheesesteak has been one of the better writer-athletes on my radar for a while now. She blogs occasionally here. She is also paired up with Lianne Sanderson, who has the most interesting hair in the England national player pool; unless I’m completely misreading all those tweets, they’re the most uncloseted couple in the WPS.

2. Hope Solo is a profoundly angry person.

3. Given that, Fake Hope Solo was probably inevitable.

4. I don’t mind Kelley O’Hara being left off the World Cup roster. She hasn’t particularly impressed so far in the couple of WPS games I’ve seen, and she would have had next to no chance of breaking into the ironclad Sundhage midfield anyway. Plus, this way she’ll get to drink beer while watching the matches, with the benefit of instant replay—neither of which are amenities she would have on the US bench, even in Germany.

5. Speaking of Solo, how has she been playing after surgery and rehab? I have no idea, and the dozens of people who have actually been to a magicJackass game aren’t talking. Whether that’s by choice or by being Borislowed, I cannot say. Barney isn’t as good with her feet, but she is preternaturally calm, and that might be the most important attribute any US keeper could have at this Cup with the back line we’re looking at. How many matches or minutes does Solo get if she looks rusty or significantly diminished in the pre-Cup friendlies? How will that go if she sits?

6. Speaking of surgery and rehab, my knees are still objecting to being used for much more than walking or rocking out on an elliptical machine. League play begins again at the first of June. I have to be able to get just one good game in; my son is finally old enough to join up with the adult team, and I want to play with him one time before hanging up the boots for good and for real. Maybe slotting a perfect ball for him to run onto and blast through the back of the net. One game!

It's that Time Again

Sure as the swallows returning to Capistrano and the olds from Iowa, Minnesota, and Canada returning to their northern homelands, the steady stream of visitors ushered here today by the magic Google phrase "abby wambach girlfriend" signals that the Next Big Thing for the US Women's National soccer team is on the horizon, that being the World Cup in Germany in about six weeks' time.

US Soccer announced the final roster for the Cup this morning, so let's get right to it. No surprises here, except maybe the very mildly possibly unexpected inclusion of Lindsay Tarpley over Yael Averbuch in the midfield (depending on who you talk to) and Jill Loyden over Ashlyn Harris for the third and thus hopefully purely ceremonial keeper spot. Actually, my biggest surprise is that Pia Sundhage didn't find a way to simply list Carli Lloyd in every roster slot and call it a day. Maybe she'll pleasantly surprise me. Maybe the whole team will pleasantly surprise me. But we're shaping up for another invisible central midfield, given the inevitability of a Lloyd-Boxx tandem in the middle given this roster. Which leaves the backs to keep whanging the ball up as far as they can in the hopes that one of those boomballs will find Wambach's head, and the rest of us to hope that the side can just keep the score close until Sundhage grudgingly puts Alex Morgan on the field in the last ten minutes and she scores a couple of stunning goals, the memories of which will carry her through the first 80 minutes of the next match while she's sitting on the bench yet again.

I was voted Most Optimistic my senior year of high school.

No, not really. Again, maybe they'll surprise me. Maybe O'Reilly will turn her undeniable energy into something worthwhile. Maybe Rapinoe will find some consistency in both play and attitude across an entire match (the new hair can't do anything but help). Maybe Morgan will get a few starts or at least more quality minutes. Maybe A-Rod will find the back of the net. Maybe Lloyd will look like an actual center mid. I will happily eat my words if she brings home the Golden Boot. And I won't even talk about the hideous uniforms.

Until then, I'm nervous. Three friendlies in the next three weeks will either make me feel better or send me into full howling mode, particularly the sendoff match against Mexico. We will see.

Carpentry

Replacing the vintage 1972 giant single-pane window in the hallway with a smaller, double-glazed window resulted in considerable new expanse of wall space. The custom-built CD case that fit the previous space perfectly now looks orphaned, so I’m moving it someplace else and contemplating what to build in its place. Last night the girlfriend asked if I’d decided what to do there.

The real answer that played through my head went something like: I’m thinking of a sort of hybrid piece that incorporates features of the antique pie safe that sat on my grandparents’ back porch for as long as I can remember, maybe with a tin-clad shelf and nooks echoing other pieces I grew up with, because the full-sized pie safe is a little big for the space and I don’t have the pie safe anyway because one of my uncles claimed it before the auction like the other touchstone pieces of furniture I had hoped for from their house so maybe if I put some punched-tin panels on it somewhere it will look close enough to the real thing and honestly I don’t know how I’m going to design this because every time I think about my grandparents and their house being gone for more than fifteen seconds I spiral down into a place of loss and untethered-ness that is both unreal and unbearable and I cannot believe that I will never be there or talk to them again.

The answer I spoke out loud was I’m not sure yet.

War Room

We are playing catch-up here due to a whirlwind of house renovations and extra work-work to make up for taking time off at the end of the month. Somewhere in there between framing in a new window and writing a stunning summary of 19th-century European gunflint industries, a couple of very pretty Brits got hitched and some very badass USN SEALs offed Osama bin Laden.

Two birds, one stone.

I am gratified that bin Laden is dead, and do not feel even a little bit of remorse for hoping that his last 40 minutes were filled with mounting fear and the ultimate soul-sucking realization that his god had utterly deserted him. Osama, meet DEVGRU. They don’t like you. Be that as it may, I was somewhat taken aback at the crowds chanting U-S-A-U-S-A, like we’d just won the hockey gold medal or a World Series that actually included the entire world; it felt just a touch unseemly—though I admittedly am unsure of the etiquette surrounding the chumming of the Indian Ocean with a murderous fuckhead—and a little premature. He’s dead, but it’s more akin to cutting the head off the hydra rather than the snake, which means this mess ain’t nowhere near finished. Ayman al-Zawahiri, ‘nuff said.

May the Fourth...

Yes, I am the biggest dork in any galaxy, either here or far, far away.

Mulling

Dear annoying person: Maybe you aren't really the most annoying person who has barged into my life recently. Maybe you are simply an angel (which I do not believe in) sent from heaven (which I do not believe in) to prompt me to reach deep inside myself and find my better lights (which I do not believe has a snowball's chance in hell--which I also do not believe in--of happening). When did I get so set in my ways, and so goddamn grumpy?

Another day in the self-improvement arena, another abject failure.

One more bourbon down here, neat, please? Thank you.

Time

Wasn’t April 1 just yesterday, or maybe last week at the latest? Jesus. Trying to cram a month’s worth of stuff into a couple of weeks makes the calendar evaporate, apparently, and my instinctive reaction (remember how stressed you were, that one time? Let’s see if we can’t top that by, oh, a factor of fifty or so) seems to give time the flashpoint of acetone.

Right now, the remodeling project in the hallway stands half-finished. We will be sneezing drywall dust for days. A trip to New York for the stepdaughter’s graduation looms. Was I planning on dumping ten pounds before then? Probably. Is that likely to happen? No. Do I know where my e-ticket is? Of course not.

The calendar is relentless.