BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD CUP 2010

Now, what is a gaming event without the stories? For me, the World Cup is about the stories that have passed down about Futbol, but also about my relation to Futbol events I have witnessed.

For example, I was 11 going on 12 years old when Maradona scored his famous Hand of God goal against England in the second half of a mythological game. We had moved to Florida in 83, and had recently moved to Miami at the beginning of 86, after having lived in West Palm Beach. We lived in an apartment complex called Horizons West.

The fact that we did not commemorate the event with pictures is only testament to the domestic nature of the event, and even in retrospect I don't think pics do the memory service. I remember my father, Tecnico Narcisas, Horacio Alberto Cura, jumping up and down on the bed like a feral adolescent; I distinctly remember my sister and mother looking at my father with out mouths agape. This is the type of tomfoolery that an event like the World Cup will wring out of fathers.

He hooted, he hollered, and that day made a solemn promise. "If Argentina wins this mundial, I am going to shave my beard". And Argentina did win that mundial and my father, as promised, shaved his beard off. I swear he wore that victory, as an Argentine, for more than two years. And no one dared talk shit about Argentina for a while. We had not only won the World Cup, but we had given birth to the monster of Maradona.

BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD CUP 2010

Okay, so, if you were under a boulder lately, or tucked into a spider-cave for the past six months, you probably haven't noticed that the 2010 World Cup is about to commence. In North America, we are suspicious of everything especially things we don't understand, like the World Cup. But, there are roughly 5 and a half billion people that don't live on the continent of North America that are about to go bonkers. The start of the World Cup is a little over two weeks away and the Erf is about to go into lockdown-mode. Prepare for two months of nail-biting anticipation, nation-pride rhetoric, and psychiatric fandom.

According to F.I.F.A. (Federation Internationale de Football Association), the 2006 World Cup "had a cumulative television audience of 26.29 billion." The final game between Italy and France had a global cumulative audience of "715.1 million viewers"(200There are roughly 350 million people in the U.S. so all of them would have had to have on two televisions just to try to reach the amount of people worldwide that watched the 2006 final. So, maybe, the first thing you need to know is that we are talking about big, big bucks when we talk about the World Cup and we are talking about the most watched sport on the planet.

And futbol has managed to do all of this with little to no fan base in the U.S. Let's face it, Americans think futbol is all right for their kids to play, but most Americans deem it unwatchable and the majority of Americans take major umbrage at how players throw themselves on the ground and writhe in pain when futbol is not a contact sport. If you have ever been beaned in the nads with a #5 for pitch then you know that soccer is a contact sport; likewise, going after the same ball when there is so much at stake is always a "contact" task. Alas! America's lack of infatuation with futbol (I refuse to call is soccer anymore!) is, thanks to Latinos, slowly eroding its not-interested-in-soccer exterior.

For example, the largest growths in number of televisions that viewed the games of the 2006 World Cup, were in the U.S. and African markets. In the U.S., the Spanish language broadcast network Univision experienced the "most viewed sports telecast in the history of U.S. Spanish language television with 6.7 million viewers" when it showed the Mexico vs. Argentina match in 2006. In the U.S., the "cumulative audience jumped 38.9% over 2002". In Africa, there was a similar tale. Coverage of World Cup matches saw an increase of "131.5 %". And, now, Africa is hosting for the first time in the history of the World Cup and there is a lot of rabble on the wires. The largest increase in coverage was in Asia, as it contributed the highest...overall cumulative audience of 8.28 billion in-home viewers".

ODE TO BALLACK

Brother, if I were Michael Ballack, I'd kick
back in the Poconos or the Pyrenees with a carton
of Long Island Iced Teas. I'd move to the south
of Germany, a village with the tallest tower
by a lake with gigantic carpenter bees. I'd
teach Goethe in a rural high school and Volvo
my daughter to recitals of Carmen. I'd live in
track suits, trainers, and logoless cotton shirts.
Maybe there are some honors not granted for hunger
of those honors makes for another hunger that is
possibly more essential for futbol sainthood.
In other words, watch Drogba and Ballack in
the sitcom, Chelsea Blues, in which they
protagonize two undercover cops in East London
with atrocious moustaches and polyester bellbottom
revolvers, smacking the crap out of balon
making it squeal like airbus swine, like a greezy
rat that's been beaten with phonebooks in question rooms.
I'd start a proto-kraut rawk musical junta and go on tour
with my model wife (different from standard wife-models)
until there is no hotel in Majorca which will render
us shelter. I'd start a University of Power, a Cathedral
of Brunt, a Montessori Compound for Teutonic Bruins.
Brother, this Ballack guy, is prone to head but
I.C.B.M.s into the farthest pocket on corner kicks.
He cracks balon like woodsman with vector knowledge.
There is no one can stop the laser-pointer once Ballack
lays it on you like the Lord's unequivocal retribution,
like a black rain that refuses to go into the gutters.
Brother, the Cup in Africa will miss its Ballack;
its balast of earned versus fortuned-upon. How, some
times, you must go to bed in a hungry palace to wake
up in the Turret of the Fatherland.

ODE TO PRINCE MILITO

A name like the Prince in Milan is worrisome
to me because even the Stazione de Milano seems
equipped for lieges, emirs, and potentates.

A prince in Milan seems destined to be the prince
of an eon, but Milito has been working the middle
for so long that the designation might just be,
in this case, not only earned, but satisfied, sated.

Some may see you, I am sure, as rapid assault clusters--
spatter that strafes doltish defensemen into sentinels.
Others may see you as opportunist rabble, a bum verdict
in Kerosene City, the powderkeg of the goal box,
closed-circuit Molotov.

A name like Milito in Genoa is much more serendipitous
than sylvester, because Genoa is a futbol club anchored
to a port. Actually, it's quite likely Diego's Italian ancestors
sailed to Argentina from Genoa. So, what kind of Sudaca
pound cake is this kid dropping to have reverted the laws
of Immigration? Emigre verso? The Count of Conflation?
How can almost all Argentine strikers have nazo tan
pero tan filoso? Could it be that, all the outrageous
Argentine strikers hustle outside the AFA mafia jardin?

If we shall concede the "new" Diego a province of repute,
we must concede him the Province of the Counterattack
for he bounds oryx-like from the halfway line, he seems to be
the most gifted simultaneous bipedal conveyance mechanism
since the malevolent cyborg in Terminator: Judgement Day. As satrap of the Province of Counterattack,
Milito gallops headlong into a gnatcloud of Roma defenders or
a bulwark of Bayern Visigoths and still manages to violate
the unbonded pockets of the holy rotten goalie box.

2010 SECOND NIKE COMMERCIAL, DIR GUY RITCHIE

This is the second one my friend Joel Nunez pointed out to me. This one is directed by Guy Ritchie. I am not sure it is as good as the previous one, but it is an amazing three minute video. Click on the link which will take you directly to the YouTube page. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsizQdNKhGg

NIKE WORLD CUP COMMERCIAL

This is the commercial directed by Alejandro G. Iñarritu and starring for the most part, Wayne Rooney. It is phenemonel. Click on the link which will take you to YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh23yE

INTRODUCTION TO MICHELLE CURA'S, "HUNT FOR THE HAPPENSTANCE"

If the happenstance are a collection of chance moments strung up like bulbous, milky pearls, they remind us that the majority of moments we record(as individuals of analog) end up on the closed-circuit cutting room of consciousness? But, if we are lucky, we get treated to a parade of insanely concocted images that make our inner cameras gush. If we know how to look and grow the patience of editors, the recompense is an existence in which the self forms part of sublime, surreal scenarios.

(I'm not necessarily talking about adolescent Jim Morrison seeing that Native American automobile crash and spying two souls fluttering like milky plastic bags towards Tecumshila; furthermore, think of all those times you thought to yourself, if I were the projectionist of my life, I would like this scene to stand out for some reason I can not now explain. Maybe, I am saying that we have all felt the compunction that our lives were being narrated, or filmed in a sort of secret project program. No? Just me? Well, all I am saying is stare into the retractable mirror in your bathroom and try not to think of anyfink.)

However, I am not not saying that the happenstance is what Michelle Cura "collects" either because that would imply a state of leisure in industry that she completely disdains. If you know her, you know her to swivel that putrid little camera out of her armpit like some secret turret and snap a photograph of you sans consent. I would be more inclined to state that Michelle Cura hunts the happenstance, than say that it willingly approaches her so that she can "collect" into the gullet of her camera.

LOS DIOSES ACCORDING TO NAZIMUL

FOR THE 400 QUEENS PUBLIC LIBRARIANS THAT GOT LAYED OFF

2010 JOINT REFORMA MINI-CONFERENCE @ THE N.Y.P.L.'S ARTURO SCHOMBURG

When people ask me what REFORMA is I mostly answer that it is a Latino library advocacy group or "The National Association to Promote Library & Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking".

However, you don't have to be Latino to join, and this year's Mini-Conference was a "Joint" venture between the American Indian Library Association, the Chinese American Librarians Association, the Asian Pacific American Librarian's Association, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, Inc. As such, it advocates for library programming that caters to a Spanish-speaking audience, and this sometimes means yes, service to illegals immigrants.

The topic that the mini-conf discussed was, "Cultural Competencies and Equity of Access: What Today's Librarian Will Look Like Tomorrow," and I have to say it was a very appropriate one given the unemployment rates that abound. I myself was drawn to this event because I am currently looking for work as a librarian in California. To that end, this conference was extremely useful in pinpointing what it means to be a facilitator with a MLS. It means that a large part of your future job is going to entail the ability to liaison with department heads but also people from the community that may not have earned PhDs.

Therefore, the librarian of tomorrow has to be able to handle several audiences and speak with candor about the importance and obligations of a large library. The panels that I heard there have changed my mind about the importance of outreach and how versatile employers need for their librarians to be; it's almost as if, employers of librarians are saying in desperate unison that they don't have the money to support petty divisions of labor. A librarian of the future must be able to catalog and produce metadata, consult and instruct, deploy and contract, asynchronous and one on one, virtual, viral, and pugnacious about the importance of the hub that the library invents and recedes from every day on every campus on every country in the world.

The keynote speaker was Camila Alire and she gave a lecture via powerpoint on Cultural Competencies. Alire made several interesting points about diversity and the ability for people to empathize with people from other cultures. Her lecture via powerpoint was lively but personal as she related the valuable lessons she had leaned from her experiences working in the library of the U of New Mexico with Native American librarians. Alire said that even though she grew up around Native Americans, it wasn't until she worked with Native American libraries that she learned what she knows about Native American culture.

ODE TO FAUSTINO ASPRILLA

The black Faustus, speed lotus, locomotive parapet.
In 96 F.I.F.A. names you sixth best player in the world.
And that was even a whole year before you were knighted
by the demi-gods of the Tyne for besting the 97 Barcelona squad.
Afro-Colombian wind engineer, a variable of lift en el Choco.
The fourth goal in that spanking Colombia gave Argentina
not unlike spankings unleashed on Parma via Newcastle.
Keegan grew as you were inflated, your Cochabamba lore
your humble origins polishing mother of pearl in conchs
the cimarrones slapping the floors in time to palenques.
Lastima Asprilla likes to bust caps and dust broads
in Cartagena, or spray automatic fire at guardposts
when your private platoons gets uppity stuffity.
The halls of private wealth are suffused
with serpentine auto-iniquity

BABDY DON CHEADLE CHEWBACA CHAKALAKA

Dear Baby Don Cheadle Chewbaka Chakalaka

You are making your mother turn into a comma.
I swear, I have never asked a person if they're all right this much
in my whole life, which is like saying two of yours.
We lay in bed coming up with names, or your mother
steals my hand onto her stomach, only for you to cease kicking.
Pa' que sepas, your mama has forbidden me from matriculating you in any
variation of boxing not Tae Kwon Do or Karate.
And coming back to names, can we just concede that whatever
your name is going to be you will be made fun of for it?
Like, we could name you Michael and kids would taunt you for being named
after God's funkiest angel; they would call you an un-commie Mikhail.
People named Steve would make fun of you for having a more common name than them.
They might even jeer at you from the windows of their Windstars.
Etcetera is what I say when Fu-Shnickened with the scenario of naming you
something that will save you from being the butt of name-jokes.
I say, look at your Pops with a moniker like Yago, with which miscreants
derived permutations like Yoda, You Go, Yoga, Yugo, Devo(?), Yallup, Yarbro, Yargen, We Go, You Go, Y'all Go, Yowza, Yakuza, Yoruba, Yela.
Can we just both agree that whatever it is that serves as name is ridiculed
as an act of existence, as a registrant of being, because it must needs premise.
And that you are the most special non-existent punctuation in the galaxy.
You will be christened accordingly.

INTRODUCTION TO "POSTCARD FEAT" BY YAGO S. CURA

According to a March 2, 2010 Reuter’s Online News article titled, U.S. Post Office Looks to Cut Costs as Mail Dips, it is estimated that “traditional mail volume in 2010” will decrease by about “10 billion” parcels. This means that the U.S. Post Office is looking at a “cumulative shortfall that could hit $238 billion by 2020.” The main culprits are obvious: electronic mail, FedEx & U.P.S. And, while “the other guys” have surely contributed to this scenario, it is obvious that the real decrease in traffic of parcels rests with the ease, access, and availability of electronic mail.

What, praytell, does this have to do with “Postcard Feat,” the codex (published by Hinchas de Poesia Press) that you currently hold in your hand? Postcard Feat started out in 2007 as a practice website Yago Cura created for a microcomputers class in the Queen’s College Library and Information Science program. Since the architecture had to involve the design of web pages and images, Yago thought of Postcard Feat as a way to satisfy the parameters of his assignment, while creating an interesting visual project of personal, yet global, proportions.

So, Yago enlisted the help of fellow poet, C.S. Carrier. Over the course of two months in late 2007, Yago and Chris sent each other a postcard a week that contained one image plus one poem. This became their Feat, and they achieved it using Postcards of singular design. However, through the efforts of the U.S. Postal Office, Yago and Chris were able to place myriad people in direct contact with their images and texts. The fact that they were doing it using one of our most venerated (and ailing) institutes, the U.S. Postal Service, is testament to the importance of these communal hubs.

Whether you look upon the U.S. Post Office with Norman-Rockwell-piety or with po-mo derision (Newman!), the fact remains: there are few truly “American” institutes like the U.S. Postal Service. The only other truly more “American” institute is the municipal lending library. Both have lost tons of money and prestige to the Internet. Both can boast impressive caches of triplicate, Federal formulaires. Both have replaced surly practitioners with automated iterations. Both have phones that will just sit there and ring all day. In the case of Libraries, however, more people are using it and less funding is going towards it. The case of the U.S. Postal Service is worrisome, to say the least, because more and more people are finding it less and less useful at a time when it receiving less and less revenue. The intent of their message is simple: why take days to send something when you can steal it in a matter of seconds?


Works Cited
Bartz, D. (2010). U.S. Post Office Looks to Cut Costs as Mail Dips. Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN021815192 0100302.

MATTHEW BAIGELL'S, "TERRITORY, RACE, RELIGION: IMAGES OF MANIFEST DESTINY" IN SMITHSONIAN STUDIES IN AMERICAN ART, VOL. 4, NO3/4, 1990

So a good friend of mine, John Hill, is a graduate History student at City College and asked me to read this article. So, I wanted this post to serve as a response to him but to also summarize and extrapolate certain quotes and ideas that seem integral to Baigell's article.

What Baigell is looking at exclusively is, as the subtitle suggests, "Images of Manifest Destiny". The first two works Baigell examines are a Charles Wimar, Attack on an Emigrant Train (1856), and, The Emigrants (1900), by Frederic Remington. What's remarkable about both of these paintings is that the progress of the settlers or emigrants is literally blocked by gangs of roving, evil native Americans.

It is as if they are literally standing in the way of the upright, righteous, civil settler who is marching through "[their] backyard" (5). Baigell affirms, "in an Orwellian inversion of images, if not language, the native Americans are shown as marauders, and the whites, the real plunderers who are seizing their lands, are portrayed as defenders. Wimar and Remington painted a kind of visual doubletalk by reversing the roles of defenders and aggressors." (5)

Baigell even delves into the history of the phrase, informing his readers of the life and times of John O Sullivan. For example, if it were up to O'Sullivan, "possession of the entire continent, from Panama to the North Pole" (6) would have been our true gauge and we might have even gone to war with Canada (yet again) to steal a little land from them as well. What I hadn't remembered is what a catalyst the Mexican American War had been for the U.S. and how it polarized many popular sentiments about "outsiders"

In fact, Baigell, corresponds the Wimar painting, The Emigrants, with our increasing imperialist acquisitions due to the Spanish American War. It seems like common sense but I had never though that the two largest pushes (in terms of acquisition of lands) came during the time of our two notable might is right showings in the 19th Century.

MY UNNASTANDING IS RUBE GOLDBERG

The contraption pumps Kool Aid syrup jargon
levers, pulleys, cogs, and wiley switches
retardent antelope graze mortise and pestle
slope quotient and grumble patchwork formidable

marble largesse down runway elevator console
gallop parole, rigamarole of glob courtesans
holy roller pew squaw truant officer corpse
dollops leapfrogging toward a sordid caulrdron

The contraption programmed from awful barnacle
of a cosmic oyster in which the teeth unhinge
slower than tugboat pilot lights quarantined
by the incremental approach of velvetine straps.

POEMA DE CUMPLE PARA EL GORDO MATOSA

Sabado llevamos al Gordito to Central Park,
cerca de Columbus Circle y nos soliamos.

Despues lo llevamos a comer coal-oven pizza
y le sacamos una foto de diez as if he had
la camiseta del numero diez.

Domingo lo llevamos a jugar futbol en un square
de astroturf y estuvimos radiados, traspirando
como dead men walking.

Y el Domingo a la night we took him to
a South African restaurant where he had
ostrich shish kabob.