Happy Gay Pride + US Exits World Cup 2010

Today in New York, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities across the US and globe, people are celebrating Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, and Transgender Pride, crowning what has been LGBTQ Pride Month. Other cities and municipalities have already held Pride celebrations, and others will be taking place throughout the summer and fall. It's been 41 years since the Stonewall Rebellion and similar uprisings, and 40 years since New York's first Gay Pride parade, which marke a new, public self-regard among gays and lesbians in the US. There have been tremendous civil, political and social advances for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the US and many parts of the world, but there are many more barriers to overcome, one of the most basic being complete and full equal and civil rights under the law. That, along with greater economic, political and social equality for LGBTQ people remains an issue in the US, as it does all over the world. 

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So the USA national soccer team is out of the 2010 FIFA World Cup after losing, once again, to Ghana.  The team's great but brief run included tying England 1-1 in its first game, drawing (and defeating, though the goal was denied) Slovenia in its second game, and defeating Algeria 1-0, quite dramatically, on Landon Donovan's goal in stoppage time, on Friday, to finish atop its group, C, over England. This number 1 finish in the opening round was a national first.  In the first two games, the US fell behind, only to come back--and, in the case of Slovenia, pull ahead. Facing Ghana in this Round of 16, the US again fell behind, on a defensive error, their weakest area, and went down 1-0, on a goal by Kevin Prince Boateng, until a successful penalty kick by Landon Donovan brought them even. But a tie doesn't suffice in the second round, so the US and Ghana went to overtime, and, once again, the US slipped, on another defensive misplay, when Asamoah Gyan struck on a breakaway.  The Americans couldn't come back again, falling 2-1 to the Ghanaians and out of the tournament.  At the game's start, the US team looked tentative; they appeared to lack any real strategy to press the Ghanaians, to manufacture a goal or two, or to at least expose their opponent's flaws, while the Ghanaians appeared to be relentlessly on the hunt. Yet by the beginning of the second half, the US, perhaps after a locker room dressing down, the realization that they were sending themselves home, or an emergence from 45 minutes of stupor, came out with effervescence, and kept pressing the Ghanaian defense and goalkeeper.  This led to the Ghanaian foul against Dempsey that set up Donovan's penalty kick. Jozy Altidore, Maurice Edu, Benny Feilhaber, and Dempsey all took shots on goal, but as has been the case with the US in World Cup games, they were off-target, straight at the goalkeeper, or had no followup. Sadly, there rarely seems to be a US player ready to pick up a rebound or errant ball the way Donovan did against Algeria. I'm not sure why, but it's been a recurrent problem for US teams each World Cup tournament. On top of this, the US looked exhausted by the end of the second half, and by the beginning of overtime, they were unable to connect passes or make decisive plays against the Ghanaians. They didn't give up, but it was clear that despite all their efforts, their tanks were empty.  Ghana, the only African team left in the tournament, advances to the quarterfinals.

FIFA 2010 World Cup Underway

Amid my reading of the final versions of the novellas, and the conceptual art projects, I've taken some time to catch some of the FIFA 2010 World Cup games, which began yesterday with host country South Africa's match against Mexico. To the relief of the South Africans, and perhaps the Mexican fans, the match resulted in a 1-1 tie. Draws in fact have dominated the tournament's first day; in the other opening day match, France and Uruguay finished 0-0. On Day 2, today, South Korea trounced Greece 2-0, while Argentina beat Nigeria 1-0, and nearly scored several more.
The match to catch (and I missed it because I've been at a poetics conference), however, was England vs. the USA. Despite having a team packed with Premier League stars, England could only manage a 1-1 tie, which counts almost as a win for the Americans.  The game started in heart-dropping fashion for the US when English midfield Stephen Gerrard scored only 4 minutes into the contest, based on a defensive lapse, the sort of harbinger of a US debacle to come. Yet the Americans were able to hang on from that point onwards, even surviving a potential injury to their star goalie, Tim Howard, when England forward Emile Heskey slid cleet-first into the Howard's chest, and, in one of the most remarked moments of the tournament thus far, tied things when Clint Dempsey kicked a squibbler towards the English net and goalkeeper Robert Green couldn't hold onto it before it crossed the goal-line. From that point onwards the US team made no significant mistakes, despite being outshot 10-4 and corner-kicked 8-4. A great deal of credit goes to Howard for unflappable play, and to Dempsey and Jozy Altidore, who nearly got another US goal, for penetrating the English defense.

Tomorrow's games should provide some excitement, though I forsee Germany tromping over Australia, and Ghana v. Serbia ending a tie while I predict Slovenia will defeat the unheralded Algerians. The game I'm waiting for is Brazil's opening match, on Tuesday, against North Korea. In tribute to the match, I even wore my Brazil socks yesterday.  Below are a few of the photos from the games that I was able to cull thus far.

South Africa's goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune (R) and defender Aaron Mokoena (C) try to stop Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos (L) from scoring during their 2010 World Cup group A first round football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. (GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images)

South Africa's midfielder Kagisho Dikgacoi vies with Mexico's striker Giovani dos Santos during their Group A first round 2010 World Cup football match on June 11, 2010 at Soccer City stadium in Soweto, suburban Johannesburg. South Africa and Mexico play in the opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. (PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images)

Classes (Nearly) Over + 2010 FIFA World Cup

Classes have (nearly) come to an end. Or rather, this is the final official week of classes in the College, though I still have one more class to teach next week, during reading week. (We'll be discussing the final three student novellas in workshop.) Now that it's over, I can shout from the blogtops Conceptual Art/Writing class exhilarated me; I feel incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to teach the class, and to have been able to do so with students who were willing to step out, as it became clear, on what sometimes initially appeared to be shifting ice. By which I mean, to be looking at, thinking about and creating work--and whose exemplars--that remain under tremendous contention.  The class served as an intellectual transfusion for me, as it required me to think through a genealogy that was indistinct, but discernible, and put it together, in coherent fashion, for the class, while also making clear that this was only one reading of the history of this constellation of art forms. (It helped too that we have the graduate level Poetry and Poetics Working Group, because its conversations informed those in my class.) Now that I've done it, I feel I have a much clearer and deeper sense of conceptual art's history, its origins and antecedents, and its relation to and phantasmal presence in other canonical and non-canonical artforms. As I was saying to a friend, I feel capable now of reading backwards, before the coining of "conceptual art," to see conceptual practices in many different places and forms. (This was also the first time that I've taught the work of figures such as Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Goldsmith, Rob Fitterman, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and many others.) The students all created 6-8 projects, grounded in language and its possibilities, and it was a delight to read them, and imagine how the ones containing the possibility of performance might be realized. One student proposed realizing them--performing some of them--during the assigned exam period, so we'll see how that turns out. At any rate, the class, like the other one I'm teaching, represents one of the most enjoyable aspects of teaching, which is transmitting knowledge to students, watching them learn, grow intellectually and create knowledge, and learning from them in the process.  And who knows, down the road another Yoko Ono or Marcel Duchamp might emerge from this experience.
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The 2010 FIFA World Cup begins in two weeks, on June 11, running till July 11, in South Africa. This is the most watched sporting event in the world, and this is the first time it'll be held in Africa, with the host country leading a group of 32 national teams, including prior winners England (1966), France (1998), Italy (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006), Germany (1954, 1974, 1990), Brazil (1958, 1962, 1970, 1994, 2002), Uruguay (1930, 1950), and Argentina (1978, 1986), and stalwarts such as Netherlands, Japan, Portugal, Mexico, Denmark, Cameroon, South Korea, and, interestingly enough, North Korea. Though the opening matches, pairing South Africa and Mexico, and Uruguay and France, will be held in Johannesburg and Cape Town respectively, subsequent matches will be held all over the country, culminating in the third place match at Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth, and the championship match at Soccer City in Johannesburg.