konstantinwrites

[konstantinwrites]

Banging out

When I was about 11 years old, I was excited to go on trip to London with my family. In particular, my grandfather, Samuel. He had worked at the Daily Telegraph as what they called a ‘revise’ and he’d done it for more than 40 years, with only the pesky Second World War getting in the way.

So we went to see him retire from the esteemed newspaper. To quite literally pick up his carriage clock. That day I spent at the Telegraph I was mesmerised. Mainly because, almost constantly, small torpedoes of plastic would scoot through pipes in the ceilings and walls and arrive with a hurried hiss in the revise room where I was stood.

Inside each little torpedo - I discovered - was a short paragraph of newspaper copy, needing to be checked for grammar, sense and accuracy. My grandad (and colleagues) would open one of those little squat cylinders, studiously pause, read the copy, mark the corrections as they saw fit and then send the little missives back into the pipes. Onto the next part of its journey. Which was mainly straight on to the pages of the newspaper to be perused over the next day’s boiled eggs and soldiers. Of course, as an 11-year-old boy, I was easily as entranced by the whooshing, hissing network of mystery as I was to what the point of it all was. All day, I was allowed to load up - and empty - those little pellets. (Grandad had long been whisked off to the pub). I was in heaven.

But I also grew gradually intrigued by the process of making a newspaper. The studied brows, the shouts back and forth, the inky smell and the clashing cacophony of type, metal and people that seemed to make the whole building resonate, to hum, to breathe.

The spoken language in the room was ripe, ribald and loud. But the written language on the scraps of paper in there - that was crafted. Meant. Deliberate. It was spelling meeting spartans. By the time Grandad rolled back from the pub like a matelot on his first day of shore leave, it was time for us all to go home. What happened next is where the die was cast.

We trooped through the building. Memory tells me that we went down into the bowels of the edifice. Wherever we were, it was getting noisier. A distant. rhythmic banging became a nearer, rhythmic banging. A nearer, rhythmic banging became a VERY CLOSE rhythmic banging. Then, we were going through a very warm, very loud room full of men clanging chunks of hot metal against any surface they could find. CLANG, CLANG, CLANG as Grandad shook some hands unsteadily, emotionally, and carried on his way. Claps on his back augmented the rhythm as we went. I found it all a bit overwhelming and, I fear, spent much of the walk with my hands over my ears, frowning in disdain at the din. Soon, we plopped out on to the pavement and into a waiting taxi. That was 'banging out’. That was Grandad being given the traditional print/newspaper farewell. It’s a raw, simple, noisy, almost brutal show of comradeship and affection that has stuck with me ever since. A banging out still moves me greatly. Even though they now happen in metal-free newsrooms, the smell more likely to be that of artisan coffee than ink, there is still something primal about them. A gathering of noise and energy. They make me think of the traditions of journalism, those that went before, the truth tellers, or at least the truth seekers. The late night shouts, the breaking information, the truly historic stories, the presses being stopped in a hurry, then started again with more urgency.

They make me think of Grandad, of course. And how, all those years back, the seeds of my love affair with news and newspapers were planted during that trip.

They also make me realise how grateful I am to this fantastically flawed industry for keeping me in beer and sandwiches all this time. But now my time has come to an end and I will be departing. Not just the newsroom, I’m sorry to say. My illness means I am leaving for good. This terminal cancer has lived up to its name and will be seeing me off very soon.

I will be leaving the building but I won’t have the carriage clock.

That’s something I can’t be happy about. What I can be happy about - what I can hope is – at some near time in some near place, even if it is inside your minds, some of you will have a little 'banging out’ ceremony for me. I’d like that. I’d really like that. If you do, then make it loud. Keep the noise up. Just for a little bit.

[konstantinwrites]

It’s Not Like That

Ivan Shishkin - Near the Monastery

To be honest, I’m surprised that we have the opening match. I’m shocked that the day that is called the opening day of the 2018 World Cup has actually been reserved for the Russian and Saudi Arabian national football teams, and that’s it, and that today we haven’t been cheerily emailed a fresh FIFA statute determining that on June 14, 2018 it is Germany, actually, who must play Brazil, and try to recreate that 7-1 semifinal result four years ago, and on the Kremlin Alternative Cam, Mario Balotelli and Pope Francis will have a ping pong table set up, but they’ll also take a bunch of your Snapchat questions. I think that this is the last time an opening match of this kind of irrelevant proportions will be allowed, and that in 2022 there is no day where just Qatar play. Well, unless Qatar draw Saudi Arabia, too.

This is the extent of my World Cup cynicism, as it comes to football. I mention this because I keep ingesting tiny FIFA branded poison pellets - i.e., opinions of football and non-football journalists, Russian and British and Twitterian, i.e., bad moods, mostly, of people that use word processing software sometimes - in relation to just how weak and leaderless and dour the Russian football team’s performance at our home World Cup will be.

Maybe. And maybe they’re not “bad” moods that they’ve got; maybe some projections of tepid doom, with a red mirrored “R” in the headline (this is unfair; the Russian team’s kits are doing the prosaic-Soviet-font thing themselves), are complicatedly adult thoughts, considered from angles elaborate and newly discovered. I am happy that I, and everyone else, if you’re interested, about the national team that you support, have the choice to, just, watch the World Cup, and check out what happens at it. That seems to me to be the way to go. It is just kind of awesome, and not really implausible, to believe that your country can progress through seven matches of football, and inspire. 

I wish we also had Germany and Brazil coming up tonight, though.

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 4

unknown title (Antonietta Raphaël)

27: Flashlight by Kasia Moś (Poland)

Fun bulbous whirrs in the pre-choruses, even if they were added to mask the rhyming choices of fire/desire/higher/wire/non-qualifier. (One of those may be made up.) “Flashlight” feels more coherent with more listens and flows by relatively skillfully, as if it didn’t just rhyme a feeling of strong craving with rapid oxidation. 

Clearly, a decaf-violin version would have been better than this, and the violinist should avoid even looking at coffee, but the melody of Kasia’s vocals carries the song well. The intensity here is: Russian provincial crime dramas, all of which are going to license “Flashlight” and use it in every third episode.

Big fan of the stationary ethereal shark on the LED screen from 2:30-2:34, rotating around like a newly obtained Tomb Raider souvenir.

The music video, also (link in the title), is an absurdly apocalyptic edit of fantastically ordinary footage of the local city orchestra. On the film shoot, a Volgogradian gangster has just pulled a gun on his refined St. Peterburgian business partner, and all these musicians and birds hopefully earned some royalties.

When I first heard this song, it was my least favorite of the three that I reviewed, but after re-listening I think it just edges out Hovig for second place. The problem is that while she clearly has a great voice, it's hidden behind a bunch of junk. 

At one moment in the song, she holds a note for some time, but you can hardly hear it behind all that unnecessary electronic noise. At the same time, the song is just sort of boring and desperately needs something to put it over the top; something to change the song up a bit, since it didn't go the route of stripping it down to a simpler number where her voice could shine.

Ryan Haskell

26: Rain of Revolution by Fusedmarc (Lithuania)

When Spotify introduces the Completely Random Song From Our Library feature, "Rain of Revolution” will come up first. This crazed funk pop is the median in all things – musical category, level of stock continental goofiness and the length of time that a child would cry when hearing this at high volume (let’s say 40 seconds of crying, somewhere from 1:27 and on), to pick three things that don’t define all things.

There are lots of layers here, all perilously undercooked. Fiery V signs into the camera plus sneering baby boomer guitarist plus four(!) backing vocalists: a track like this needs hours in a name-brand bath of boiling water, except in two situations, in which it may be left as is: Lithuania in Eurovision and Lithuania in general as a nation. Fusedmarc is very much playing within their parameters.

But even taking this exception aside, "Rain of Revolution” is easier to like than to not like. I think I feel better when I let it be it. Thunder noises crack the song into existence. The horns just beep the same five notes, like an easter egg setting of a tired Roomba. Viktorija, the lead vocalist, crouches and stabilitates like a perennial neighborhood heelflip title-holder. Fitting heaving, whispered verses onto a cheery horn accompaniment is the median of “mostly doesn’t work” and “doesn’t work” and that is irrelevant. Everyone on stage and some faithful fans in the floor pit are so into this crimson pell-mell. Spritz me with your regime change rain, Lithuanian band. Let’s pick up a park bench and throw it at a tree, then pick up a tree and throw it at a kid. Speak with my V sign if you have a comment.

“Rain of Revolution” is Fusedmarc’s reenactment of an acid trip. An 80′s workout video sound mix accompanies the singer as she staggers around a stage highlighted by a trippy light show. The costume choice of a red turtleneck maxi dress and topknot further add to the cacophony of stylistic decisions for this song. The rainy revolution is one of the mind, and one with “no time for your illusion”.

The song opens with the proclamation, “life like roller coaster / spinning me around / rhythm getting faster / when I’m upside down”, which sets the tone for what is to come. Her vocals are all over the place, never seeming to find a correct pitch until the end. The backup singers and their chant of, “dance to the rhythm of the soul!” are the best part, and mellow out the end of the song after its rocky start. This psychedelic rant is all over the place, so sit back and prepare for a bumpy ride. 2/10.

Liv Mothershead

25: Yodel It! by Ilinca ft. Alex Florea (Romania)

Did you know that there are two FIFA video games released every year? On September 29, 2017 EA Sports released “FIFA 18″, priced at $59.99. The older consoles and PC, meanwhile, added to their anthology the title “BALL”, for $7. Running on the same modern engine, but with players represented by word clouds of the most commonly said things about them on Twitter, and sometimes the penalty spot is a trap from which Uruk-hai (MUTILATED RUINED THICC EARTH PERFECTION WOMB) tear off time-wasting goalies’ legs to eat for brunch, “BALL” contains a licensed Europa League group stage, the World Cup third-place match, Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, a Career Mode starring Rolando during his loan to Anderlecht, and for the soundtrack of the menu screens, “Yodel It!”

But this song does not have an upmarket, monotonous, premium Thibaut Courtois card wholesaling equivalent. If you’re intrigued by the concept of “Yodel It!”, but aren’t fully on board while three to 300 sonic and visual issues with this performance remain unresolved, there is no societally palatable version to turn to yet. This is white-boy rap-rock on top of Romanian volksmusik; definitionally, it’s a trailblazer. It’s released by a label called “Cat Music”. No one is qualified to judge this properly. Maybe "Yodel It!” should be in first place. Maybe in -84.33rd.

I like how detailed the Wikipedia page for this song is, with screenshot commentary like it’s a hugely awaited action-adventure game. You know how these games work – you climb towers and dive off of them into piles of previous Romanian Eurovision entries.

Yodeler Ilinca certainly looks like she realizes what a warped thing this is – whereas 2013 Romanian entry Cezar, for example, didn’t seem to with his stage show, even after it was fine-tuned to a pulsing heap of bloody nude men – and she executes moves somewhere between halfheartedly and 70%-heartedly, functioning through it like a detached crowd of new Fusedmarc fans just waiting until “Rain of Revolution”. 

Her primary function, on the other hand, she completes perfectly professionally, in full verve. If I pass any further comment on yodeling I will end up getting a certificate in the mail notifying me of becoming a sanctioned regional yodeling judge, or something, but: what kind of happens is that “Yodel It!” gets you to feel well. I like Ilinca’s voice, which does what it intends to and transports me to early modern Europe. What she does with her voice soothes more micrometres of my soul than it abrades. It’s pleasant, even after a year’s worth of “teaching to the test”, which is creating anything for Eurovision. Also, I am now literally a sheep that marched too far from the farm and is being sung at to scamper back.

(Probably yodeling hasn’t featured in Eurovision in decades, but also probably fewer than a thousand people in the world have watched every Eurovision show, so who can really say for sure.)

The non-yodeler, the never-yodeler Alex Florea, a human semi-professional Neapolitan football team operating on a budget of protection money from the two pet supply stores down the street, hypes up the crowd and mostly himself with [what sound like reworded football chants from a particularly vehement set of ultras.]

Florea’s fulgent vigor for “Yodel It!” does bulldoze through a lot of criticism you could have for this song when introduced to it. Analysis simply does not matter when Alex buries you with imperatives – “DON’T HIDE THE LIGHT INSIDE OF YOU!” – or straight-up announces that he is to now “gonna act really crazy”. I mean, shit. That’s a man with nothing to lose and every televoter point to gain. 

If Ilinca got super sick and couldn’t perform in the Grand Final, Alex would, beyond question, volunteer himself to do the whole thing, every part, and be so intensely alert at rehearsals that any Romanian delegation-chosen replacement wouldn’t nearly match his carnality to restore the song and bring the Eurovision trophy home. 

(But, in the real ending here, he gives Ilinca a weird, forceful, kiss on the cheek, fingernails clawed into her face, so I don’t know about this guy at all.)

The first few times I listened to “Yodel It!”, it did nothing for me. I thought it was dumb and annoying and just plain bad. The more I’ve listened to it, however, I’ve come to appreciate this song’s originality and ambition. Don’t get me wrong — this is totally camp, super weird and really disjointed, but for some reason, I don’t hate it. Maybe it’s the inherent charm of a good yodel, or Ilinca’s natural charisma, but “Yodel It!” just keeps growing on me, which is super annoying because I really want to hate this song.

My main frustration with this song is that it feels very unpolished and disjointed. The live national final performance, especially, is full of awkward hesitations, rough transitions, and really bad staging and choreography. I like that this is a duet, and when they aren’t stumbling around each other on the stage, Ilinca and Alex have decent chemistry. I also think the weird genre mixing works to a certain degree — I’ve come to like the idea of interrupting a rap lyric with a sharp, clear yodel. The problem is when Ilinca switches from yodeling to her regular voice. If her only job was to whip out complicated, interesting yodels with limited singing, I think the song would be much better; it’s when she randomly switches to singing a ballad that I lose interest. “Yodel It!” isn’t terrible, but in the interest of maintaining some sense of dignity, I’ll end with this: Alex’s falsetto is horrible, and Ilinca’s leprechaun dress makes no sense. Leprechauns don’t yodel.

Hannah Fulmer

24: Apollo by Timebelle (Switzerland)

^⨀ᴥ⨀^ ooh there is other music in the world

This is a good song and I can’t find many more words, other than that competitively Switzerland has been pretty baaad at Eurovision for a dozen years now and I wouldn’t be surprised if they quit at some point? Here are three guest reviews in mixed media about “Apollo”:

VIDEO REVIEW! Embedded video not available because we’re in safe hands with Tumblr’s five-inline-videos limit.

Erin Pipes

It is impossible to distinguish from all the others. It cannot win. If it wins I will execute the hostages. 3/10.

Philip Piatt

Billy Moran

I asked Billy to play “Apollo” and draw a picture for the three-minute length of the song, about whatever sparked in his mind. He finished the house a little after the bell and says that it would have looked weird if only a quarter of a house was completed. “They built their house there because of how beautiful the view of the volcano is. But they were foolish to build their house next to a volcano, and now their child is getting away on the Bike Dinosaur.” Yeah. As I said, it’s a good song.

Crazily, Billy’s drawn family looks a lot like Maraaya, the Slovenian entry+couple who opened the Grand Final in 2014. He swears he has not seen them before...

Anyway.

23: Beautiful Mess by Kristian Kostov (Bulgaria)

If Salvador and Luísa Sobral did not win it for Portugal, "Beautiful Mess” would’ve been the Eurovision winner. (I guess all meaning I had there is that this song finished second.) It would’ve been a pretty “good” winner, I think, which is a hot new word that has begun to mean, “how placated will Eurovision fanatics and journalists feel if this song won and became the representative of Eurovision to the public”. (I tell you, this contest gets harder and harder to unspool...) 

Kristian punches well on his high notes, over this cool, moody string-percussion melody. Glum emo pop isn’t my thing, but the song aims big and delivers. I’m sure that “Beautiful Mess” will be one of the last songs that I hear before I die, hospice staff playing it over the PA to soothe and prepare families for sad, but kind of sexy, deaths.

I’m not going to pick a battle with “Beautiful Mess”, not least because Kristian seems real sweet and also the live production of this is kinda cyberpunk. Next year Kristian should enter something like, “Beautiful Apple Face ID”, and walk around the stage unlocking devices until he finds one that he can’t unlock and wails in anguish about it. It would take him over the line.

Life is a mess! But love, while not solving all the problems, soothes the troubled heart. Maybe you’ll luck out and get to have a sturdy, true and enduring love, and who doesn’t dream of an invincible love? Who wouldn’t want one that can’t be touched? And this guy has it! The quiet early bars lay out the difficult feelings and propose the hope that mutual, presumably romantic love will hold things together while trudging through the beautiful mess.

Why it’s beautiful we’re left to imagine for ourselves, but apparently there are no hard feelings. Let’s just survive and hang on — especially to each other. The drop comes just in time; it’s hard to slog through the swamp while gentle strains lull us to sleep. Maybe things will one day fall apart just as the untouchable love’s armour reveals its chink, but for now we’ll get through this day together and face worse days later, when we have more than overwhelming affection to arm us against the battle. A lot of us were helped through a lot of adolescence that way, and anyone listening to this song will know that feeling. 7/10.

Christy Wareham

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 3

Noonday Rest in New England (Julian Alden Weir)

32: Breathlessly by Claudia Faniello (Malta)

A gratifying melody, which ballad ultras will need just a few listens to remember. Anyone else looking to memorize this, however, will have to mainline it in the same way that we bludgeon-repeat newly loved songs for a seemingly mathematically impossible number of times over two hours.

Claudia surfs up and down her notes pleasingly. The ambient country-music noises in the first verse set a fine ensorcelled mood, and the horns are fun. Uncreative is the light rock that builds up the second verse and chorus, and at one point I wrote that the percussion is “utilized appallingly”. That’s a bit overkill, but it pales to the degree that “Breathlessly” is underkill.

Girl's got some pipes, and I dig the video. A little sappy, but it's that kind of contest. 6/10.

Philip Piatt

31: Never Give Up On You by Lucie Jones (United Kingdom)

Somewhere around 9th grade, when my brain progressed and regressed 50 times a day, this is the kind of deathly-earnest driving ballad I’d put on while looking over box scores of sports games on espn.com. This is oomph-ous. Sports leagues do make their own compilations that you can binge on - “Five for Fighting NHL” is a playlist - but venturing out on your own, combining the Eastern conference semifinals with an aria like “Never Give Up On You”, is the sign of a promising young adult. Try it when the playoff round of whatever you care about comes along.

I have no feelings about this song.

Hannah Fulmer

30: Don’t Come Easy by Isaiah (Australia)

Australia participates in Eurovision; it is their third year now. Those who disagree that Australia should be here are, as far as I remember, very very valuable humans and must hide and never opinionate again, or else a newly spawned horror organism will sniff them out and destroy the Earth just to eat all their good thoughts up. I think that’s the latest revision of this European Broadcasting Union law.

“Don’t Come Easy” is all second fiddle to the fact that on most days Isaiah looks like a hangry Sanjaya, and on other days a particularly melodramatic Lib Dem youth activist profiled for GQ. Sinfully not performing as “Isaiah Firebrace”, his given name, Isaiah Nothing Else enthusiastically serenades through the provided piano pop, splashing all of our usual daily phrases – “in my mind”, “no, I don’t”, and “it don’t come cheap” – with vibrating, emotive grandeur.

It’s surprisingly palatable, and I’m not really sure what works. "Don’t Come Easy” benefits most from a kind of moody absence of sound, with its weakest minute the last, as it brutishly crescendoes into itself. For the most part, however, Isaiah delivers expressively and addictively. He ate a big lunch.

Isaiah's song really helped me to feel the struggle of wanting more in a relationship. Poor him for being burned too many times easily - I hope can break through the stone and find love. His voice is lovely, though. He really has mastered those runs and can hit those high notes. I thought the melody and key of the song suited his voice really well. Other than that, I hated the music video and I think he could've been way more creative with it. 7/10.

Kate Sullivan

29: Fly With Me by Artsvik (Armenia)

To their unfortunate state of affairs, I often hammer friends with the tired old line that today the definitions of “modern music” and “Eurovision” are interchangeable. Songs here can be fresh. It’s a ModernVision for you in 2017, like an inaugural tagline for an instantly doomed centrist party, but instead about thriving centrist music. And when architecture of the kind in “Fly With Me”, replete with moreish subtlety, qualifies to be part of the show and with luck could be on the radio everywhere, it’s clear that Eurovision does lack a repertoire of understated stuff. Pop that doesn’t pop is still a rareish bird here.

The other morning I was pulled into an 11th grade class at the last minute with no explanation. With nothing planned, and knowing I couldn’t get a group of unruly teens to do anything on my own, I just sat patiently in the front of the class and we all agreed to be quiet and do our own thing. Remembering that I promised to write this review, I brought out my laptop and started playing “Fly With Me” on low volume. Suddenly the students went quiet and stared at me. I looked up, smiled, and raised the volume. They smiled back in approval and started dancing in their seats and bobbing their heads to the beat. It was a great moment. Their response made me feel cool and hip in the way that only nonchalant teens can.

That feeling of young, modern coolness permeates this song, but there’s more to it than that. It has a sense of gravitas that makes you want to keep listening. The song combines electronic elements, like the pulsing beat of the bass guitar, with traditional drums, to form a compelling base for Artsvik’s engaging melody. Overall, I like it a lot. It’s catchy and fun, and unlike Spain’s entry for this year, I don’t mind it getting stuck in my head.

Hannah Fulmer

28: Blackbird by Norma John (Finland)

My choice of songs that I think are better than this mesmeric ballad will render me deranged in your eyes, totally porangi. It won’t be one of those “shawarma over haute cuisine at 1 a.m.” arguments, in which you kind of see the point for either. When you hear the shawarma ahead, I know that it will be 12-15 years before you’ll make me eligible to apply for parole.

But it’s rather difficult to remember more about this than the water vapor on stage and being cheated of the song’s bathyspheric immersion with a last-minute switch to red, like Vincent Tan and Cardiff City, so maybe I will escape your sentence. Oppressively somnolent and not too bothered about containing things that can be heard and not just surmised, it’s a surprise that the showrunners cued its instrumental recording on time with the vocals.

Putting aside that “Blackbird” sounds like an outro to a Kickstarter’d baroque pop album that didn’t reach six of its stretch goals (not putting this aside at all), it’s kind of beautiful and the cascading faint electronic pulsations are real cool. This song will be bent in every direction forever, like space, or the dark web, and one day Leonard Susskind will rush over to smack it in the forehead with a candlestick and finally put some damn entropy on it.

“Blackbird” is certainly one of the most downtempo songs in this year’s contest. Sung in the form of a distraught ballad, the story is simple: a woman is tortured by her former lover’s memory in the form of an omnipresent blackbird. The imagery of a forlorn lover haunted in this way has a folklorish appeal that is very unusual (she pleads with the bird to “somewhere else go make your home/don’t nestle here, go find lovers of your own”). Lyrically very simple and repetitive, consisting of only 40 different words, the song is carried by Leena Tirronen’s ethereal vocals.

With its delicate, unrestrained piano, the bridge promises a major tonal shift of some sort. Unfortunately, though, it only brings a louder repetition of the chorus to the end of the song. Overall, “Blackbird” is a beautiful song about the pain of nostalgia. That said, it ends up feeling somehow incomplete and leaves me wanting just a bit more substance. 7/10.

Richard Hansen

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 2

Old Man Warming Himself (Vincent Van Gogh)

On we dodder...

37: On My Way by Omar Naber (Slovenia) (Returnee, 2005)

I like the Gmail chat message noises that Omar lined his chorus with. Bww-ling. Bww-pling. Instead of staring at my palms and thinking of something to say about “On My Way”, I end up checking my inbox, tabbing over to Livescore for soccer match updates, forgetting about my task and looking at thumbnails of upset Pep Guardiola from when possession stats just didn’t turn into goals. All of a sudden, I’m 40 seconds into my next track on Spotify, “On The Regular” by Shamir, and I’m imagining how sharp and voluptuous of a Eurovision entry it would be. Omar Naber’s “On My Way” is a great song.

“I do not dignify this schadenfreude with comment.”

Omar Naber has a good voice. Unfortunately, it’s not a voice which is well suited to this song – especially when it comes to the modulation and the big finish, where it seems like he struggles to deliver. “On My Way” itself is a fairly standard power ballad, and the live performance is fairly stale and doesn’t really capture attention. All in all, I don’t think it’s a good song, nor do I think it is a bad one. I do, however, find it a forgettable song.

Rebecca Milne

36: Grab The Moment by JOWST (Norway)

The looping “ki-ki-kill tonight” stab lines sound terrific, and the glitchy on-screen visuals and color scheme are rad. It’s constant electronica here and it tries to be low-key and likable. That would be nice, if the listener was rewarded. As it is, JOWST refuse to take a simple risk. Leading into the chorus, the rising volume and fastening beat signal that complicated emotion, “fun”, even if Norwegian based fun. The vocal-led choruses are pallidly disappointing. What we get is trudging downtempo, like DJs mixing Spandau Ballet songs into their music, but unmemorably. The rising-pitch bridge at 2:16 is lame and discomforting, too, with all low bass key notes like Super Hans on the keyboard.

There are a lot of electronica based songs at Eurovision each year, but EDM is still a rarity. Visually, at least, JOWST can expand Eurovision’s palate. Aurally, I wish they’d provided a higher band of emotion than Arman from Terrace House talking about becoming a firefighter at some point sometime.

I like this song a lot. It’s not necessarily the strongest entry this year, but it is likely to be memorable since it is breaking the mould of songs falling into a few genres. The melody is repetitive, but the performance manages to grab attention despite this. The main concern here is whether the live performance of the pre-recorded backing vocals and samples do the song justice.

Rebecca Milne

35: Hey Mamma by Sunstroke Project (Moldova) (Returnee, 2010)

They’re great on stage and a practical tool for Eurovision, producers able to fit this funk dance pop in between ballads that are probably better, but that probably don’t have saxophone. Yes, it’s with sax, like before. “Hey Mamma” is a lot better live, particularly because they can’t play their music video on stage, which is “Stacy’s Mom”, but shit. Linked in title.

When I don’t have enough money for travel, I give Sunstroke Project tapes to share-taxi drivers as payment. If you insert a “Hey Mamma” disc into the CD tray of your local eastern european minibus, you get to ride for free for the season.

Hey I actually enjoyed this one! Thank you, Moldova!

When I first heard that saxophone, I didn’t know whether to feel positively or negatively, but ultimately it reminds me of other European hits (see Alexandra Stan, “Mr. Saxobeat”) and I feel that Sunstroke Project only did good things by incorporating it into “Hey Mamma”. Musically sound and danceable, if I was switching radio channels in my car and “Hey Mamma” came on, I would let it play to finish.

I really enjoyed the music video - there’s a 1960s vibe going on with whatever filter they slapped over the lens or added during the editing process. This makes itself evident when Sunstroke Project’s girlfriend cracks two eggs together while sensually baking a cake. The LED violinist playing in a dimly lit, cable-filled room is also highly appreciated.

I feel that Moldova let themselves have a little more fun with their entry, producing an upbeat, enjoyable, lyrically understandable song with a humorous music video. It definitely feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to other Eurovision entries. I may even listen to it again for my own personal enjoyment, while sending good vibes out to Moldova for their success.

Patty Ritter

34: Dance Alone by Jana Burčeska (F.Y.R. Macedonia)

Congratulations to Jana on getting engaged during Semifinal 2! That was crazy! She also sang this monotonous nothing of a song. That wasn’t so crazy.

This one has a catchy 80s chorus. The lyrics are less filthy and less clever than Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself", but it must be an inspiration. I can imagine dancing to this at a late hour. I like it well enough for a fun, forgettable ditty. 7/10.

Philip Piatt

33: Running On Air by Nathan Trent (Austria)

Look, this is the kind of iPhone case-with-a-stars-and-universe-design saccharinity that "Running On Air” is: I thought that Nathan is refusing to say the word “chest”. At 1:15 I thought that he is singing, “Whatever you want, whatever you need, you gotta get it off your chest.” (Except with a cute bloop noise covering up “chest”.)

But it’s not the chest. It’s, “You gotta get off your ass” that he won’t finish, which, hey, let’s take it easy here, boys, we’ve all just had a bit too much. Nathan doesn’t want to be the baddest blonde in town, I understand, although he does get fucking wild with, “Hey now, if you let me drown I’ll swim like a champion”, a scenario where his lifeless body rolls around on the seafloor better than any other mafia victim. That’s a victory and hell yes you’ll count it.

“Running On Air” is able to capture zero aspects of genuine human experience, but that’s okay for the day. It’s empty and it’s lovely and it’s not quite ass.

An early version of the song.

Every day brings moments that are better and some that are worse; now and then things suck all day, the low points sinking beneath the surface of water. “Struggle” is the background, here, and the solution will be a combination of indifference — “But I don’t care” — and determination — “I’ll get up again”. Along the way, “People who were there to believe in me” appear for moral support, but this person intends to be the hero of his own triumphs.

Christy Wareham

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 1

Small Worlds XI (Wassily Kandinsky)

Hi friends! So, I ranked all 42 songs of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. It was as simple as comparing each song to every other and missing every social event for a month. I didn’t give /10 scores and didn’t add a bunch of space between songs to signify gaps in quality, like a cool blog would. However, many generous friends of mine reviewed these songs as well. For an alternative, reasonable point of view, theirs is here.

I understand that asking to listen to 42 three-minute songs on the Internet should be reserved for astonishing lovers, but I hope that you’ll give them a play. The reviews are based primarily on the studio versions, linked in the title, but for fun I more strongly recommend the embedded live performances. This turned into an epic nine-parter only by luck -- Tumblr wisely halts this kind of obsessiveness by setting a limit of five embedded videos per post. 

Anyway, I think you’ll like at least some songs. Not this next one, but some.

42: Spirit of the Night by Valentina Monetta and Jimmie Wilson (San Marino) (Returnee, Eurovision 2012, 2013, 2014)

I will make a conscious effort not to embalm you in Eurovision completely, but I have to bend here since Valentina Monetta breaks all unwritten rules anyway. This was her fourth Eurovision appearance, all for the Most Serene Republic of San Marino, in six years. San Marino houses less people than you saw this weekend, sure, but there are probably a few other musicians in the country that would like a boost to their career.

Maybe some of them were on stage for 2012’s timely “The Social Network Song” (titled “The Facebook Song”, pre-zucc), with which Valentina began her pillage of this contest. (If you have patience for exactly one hyperlink...)

 The lyrics incandesce:

Are you ready for a little chat?/And a song about the Internet It's a story ‘bout a social door/You’ve never seen before;

And the “Social Network” music video, all morning bedsheets and Safari browsing and wild leers into camera, is like the aftertaste of a burp from the dude who ran ARK Music Factory. 

Throughout the last eon, the early to mid 2010′s, peace still ruled. It was underpinned by dark respect for the creature, and fear, but effective and true peace it was. In Year 3, Monetta qualified to the grand final. Appearing in that show was supposed to be the prologue to another Sammarinese age of serenity. Yes, she breathed too hard and accidentally set the Finnish commentators on fire, then threshed her wings and flew out through the arena roof. Human Eurovision performers have gimmicks, too. It was our Monetta, we prayed to her benevolence, and she made other countries and micronational principalities respect us as well.

But we grew tired of living in fear ourselves. If our Monetta was truly done with this world, we would be happy to raise a new generation in peace. Families waited to resettle back to their birth land, planning carefully. At dawn, sometimes, you noted the unsavory magicks in the distance, still discharging in the air. The tribe elders knew that kids were their most important constituency: every evening, a few fun rhymes with the kids that made each of the elders look silly; every forgathering, the children could run off after roll call. Irreverence and joy, with which the children played games on the hills, was as crucial as the considered warnings that the adults were made to hear.

Come spring, at the agora, Elder Dendroch took his deepest breath of the year, all wheeze, as he screwed in the VGA cable to the projector, casting the San Marino 2015 Eurovision artist announcement onto the smooth side of the hill. During the countdown, even All-Naked Christoph went silent. This was to determine his capacity to continue to gyrate himself around the fire each morning without being clawed by Monetta and thrown into the nearest cactus. Her swift retributions of All-Naked Christoph was one of the few Acts that the tribe was grateful for; however, now they yearned for calm and agency. They were ready to pay the price -- and cover their eyes at breakfast.

What a cheer, then. It was, indeed, someone else for 2015. The slothful bards were worth their silver on this day, spooling blunt limericks on the spot, tribesfolk teary with laughter. The eyes of all, awash with joy and soapy bubbles, feasted on daydreams about this new era. Resettling back to town, with everything as it has been (apart from the bread, now a furry green pet), we gleefully watched Anita Simoncini rap -- for we could scream, “No!”. The year after that, Serhat proselytized us, trying to make what sounded like, “I am a dick tit” happen. We loved telling him that it’s not going to happen, and besides, he was the neighboring queen’s chief accountant and she was not letting him out on any more trips like that. Our power was back.

But, well... You saw the rest. You saw 2017. Not even Mostly-Naked Christoph thought that eurodance would rise again. Not even the gloomiest of the kids ever had in mind that Monetta was always in control, and that there is nothing that we can ever do but point our projector at the stars.

“Spirit of the Night” is a dance anthem structured around a conversation between two horny and dim-witted patrons of a San Marino club. “Hey, are you the one I dream about?/Baby, I am.” After successfully capturing his target’s interest with this awful line, the man proceeds to use amateur pick-up artistry to delve into the murky depths of her insecurity. “Every time I see you smile/There is sadness in your eyes.” 

Luckily for him, his quarry eats this obvious nonsense up. After connecting through dance, he seals the deal by revealing that he’s a hurt, insecure man who is in need of a woman to protect him. “Hey, are you the one to take my pain?/Just take my hand/I’ve been so hurt before, it’s hard to trust again.” Nonstop key changes and a reference to obscure weather phenomena attempt to mask the utter vacuity of “Spirit of the Night,” but nobody is fooled. 1/10.

Richard Hansen

41: Keep The Faith by Tamara Gachechiladze (Georgia)

Ten seconds in, this has all the potential in our supercluster. It becomes “Keep The Faith”, but that moody horn-driven bar can lead into a Jay-Z track, a Antony and the Johnsons symphony, or the title screen of “Swordfish”. But it becomes “Keep The Faith”, and it’s a little awkward; I live and work in Georgia, and super enjoy this country. 

However, this song is derivative garbage, devoid of any sensory pleasure. It has many siblings, songs of this type, all grey, parts-per-million pollutant specks. It’s a pure ballad and a very specific type of ballad, none of which have ever been enjoyable: pie-eyed on piano, throaty-vocaled, vowel-elongating, forcefully important, crudely pitch-raising, artless fat zeppelins of songs, avoiding melodiousness by purpose and not even by chance. 

I like the few seconds in the bridge where Tamara and the backup singers go, “Oh - ohhh - oh! - ohhh!”, and I like the final string cadences, the last two notes in the song. I wish they’d signaled the end to something not so comprehensively dopey.

Please also let me just add here that I adore “Mzeo” by Mari Mamadashvili, the Georgian winner of Junior Eurovision 2016. 

I’ve cried listening to it. I’ve showed her performance to many people. Don’t revoke my residence permit. Look at how much good stuff Billy wrote.

Having heard a plethora of Georgian music over the past year, I really didn’t have my hopes up going into this one. But I have to hand it to Tamriko, she may have actually pulled it off. The song’s video isn’t much to talk about, and I found the opening lyrics about hiding behind a veil and then panning to a woman in a hijab to be slightly off color, but the tune and subsequent lyrics are actually pretty cool. One might say the video had my sentiments shaken, but not stirred. That’s right, I referenced James Bond (Jamesi Bondi) and how could I not? The ominous violin, three-key piano repetition and horns - the song practically screams, “put us in the next movie!” and I happen to agree.

If we got rid of the whole weird hip-but-frowning aspect and replaced it with an unmistakable gun-toting secret agent silhouette, complete with tastefully nude female figurines, Georgia might actually have a hit on their hands. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in letting music speak for itself and in many ways this song does, but at the end of the day it’s also a pop song and that music video HAS to be tight. Get this out to Eon Productions, Georgia; I’ll be disappointed if Ed Sheeran gets to do another title sequence.

As far as vocals go, Tamro fits the role pretty nicely - she can really belt it and it adds to the overall grandness of the song. As a matter of fact, grand is probably the word I would use to describe this. It’s the kind of song that makes you clench your fists and pump your arms dramatically and ceremoniously. Tamo’s powerful vocals and lyrics are engaging and entertaining; my only real worry is that with such a Bond-sounding song, people might have a difficult time seeing it as its own thing. Not to mention, if people dislike James Bond, they’re probably just going to see this as some hack interpretation of an Adele hit. While some might view it as lacking in theme originality, I see it as a distinguished work operating in a certain genre (a difficult one at that). I don’t think the sky will be falling on this song any time soon! Qochagh, Sakartvelo! 8/10.

Billy Moran

40: Gravity by Hovig (Cyprus)

The lifetime of this adult contemporary rockvomit is: released to the suffering masses, all 4th grade boys for three days repeat-blast “Gravity” on the family speakers, then torrent Battlefield and yelp and chaotically shake their faces to its menu music and forget about “Gravity” forever. No other integration of this song into a human life can be permitted.

This wailing, free trial-distortion-effects, tragically detached one-dimensional nonsense would take aback a NHL video highlights editor, and they’re immune to this stuff. “Gravity” is for a montage of, like, a corrupted toothpaste factory, where the toothpaste is evil. There is something a little demonic with the toothpaste. It’s been breached. There are lich in the toothpaste, hiding themselves and their sorcery, and they now terrorize users of toothpaste all over the world. Only those who still use tooth powder have not yet turned. With this paragraph, I have now released more beauty into this world than the Cypriot entry. I’m not proud of putting lich and toothpaste together. I know I’ll answer for this one day. Sometimes you have to drive a point home.

This is a solidly made pop ballad with a catchy chorus that I could see getting good radio play for about two weeks before being promptly forgotten. While somewhat catchy on first listen, it quickly loses its appeal and you realize there is nothing more there than another over-produced pop song that makes oatmeal look plain and generic. This song is the definition of standard, meaningless pop. It's begging for some sort of edge to it, some sprinkles to go with its vanilla. As is, I'd much rather listen to “Hook” by Blues Travelers.

Ryan Haskell

39: Dying to Try by Brendan Murray (Ireland)

I like Brendan’s voice. For 54 seconds, he makes a serviceable dyingtotry. I like that the first line of this Segway-speed ballad gets close to saying, “Take a leak of faith with me”. I like his tuneful delivery through the lightly layered first minute, and you could stroll to this and take sips of still water and feel correct.

Then the songwriters take out their game hunting rifles, trundle us into the basement and serve us a soup of impotent key change, never-ending chorus and string accompaniment, all of which we would spoon out of the dish in a less savage situation. You eat — you have to — belch, relax a bit, and then notice Brendan at the table, his meal long finished, as he mouths to you, “trying to die”.

As an American who grew up American, with American parents and American grandparents, I myself am American. That said, I definitely identify with the Irish a bit - they’re my ancestral roots and I root for the guys for sure. But I have to say, Brendan Murray, bud, you let me down. The song can be summed up in one word: boring. The kid looks to be about 15 and, sure, he has some pipes (little Irish pun there), but I have to believe these impressively high notes he’s hitting have more to do with his lack of pubic advancement and less with actual talent.

The music video takes us on the journey of love’s rocky road, complete with a daughter of Elrond and a poodle man that would make Dr. Moreau jealous. Perhaps I would have paid more attention to the lyrics if the featured couple were less visually jarring. I mean, the woman was fine… But the poodle man! That hair! There’s a million elf-y looking guys in Ireland to complement the girl, and they choose that guy!

My biggest complaint comes at the peak of the song’s rising action. Brian is walking through the grassy knolls of Ireland, as one does, and the viewer is treated to a beautiful melancholy landscape that just screams of Ireland. But instead of giving the listener something to complement the breathtaking view, we get a gospel choir harmony as Brian dives into his chorus. It was the perfect moment to incorporate cultural music - so poorly utilized by Israel - and Ireland missed it! If a lovely flute had accompanied Brian as the camera raced across the Irish shoreline back to our visually perplexing couple, I think I would have poured a shot of Jameson on the spot and shed a tear for all the struggling lovers in the emerald isle. Instead, the song loses its identity and all my invested interest is gone with it.

Brian, the wise fifteen-year-old he is, ever wary of love’s slings and arrows, tells us, “No one can promise that love will ever learn how to fly”, but I can promise Brian that his song won’t be flying to the top of any billboard charts. Maybe something a little more fun next year, huh Ireland? Sláinte! 4/10.

Billy Moran

38: My Turn by Martina Bárta (Czech Republic)

The indifferently mute student can be the most frustrating. Staring at the arithmetic poster for two minutes at a time, boring with their pen more and more millimeters of their desk hole, finding the right moments to sip a hidden can of Fanta with the vigilance of a mosquito pursuing a meal from a human absentmindedly playing the Chrome dinosaur game -- apathetic students cause little obvious trouble in class. However, asked to contribute to any task, their monastic silence and translucency can drop a teacher’s command of the classroom to the floor. Other students, especially ones wavering between “kind of paying attention” and the Frowning Face With Open Mouth emoji, sense the student’s apathy, think that the lessons are, indeed, for nothing, and mentally teleport themselves out of there as well.

Which brings me to “My Turn”. It would be out of date during Pangaea, but out of date is very often fine. The prime disappointment is that it has a harmonious, sentimental melody to throw around, as most ballads do, but concretely refuses to get out of the hotel elevator, or the Saturday morning wine tasting. There are many piano works like these; it shouldn’t be an excuse to bunt and be another, especially because it’s got a pleasant tune. I’ve listened to “My Turn” at least 30 times and can recall the main progression with roughly the same clarity as remembering why Fletcher Christian mutinied and vamoosed to Pitcairn Island, the Wikipedia summary of which I probably read once, or maybe someone told me. Before going home, Teacher Eurovision will leave an inspirational message for Martina on her desk. “You can be different!” The next morning it’ll only be used with a shout of, “Kobe!” and be another clump a few feet from the trash basket.

Czech Republic’s Eurovision results, 2007 (debut) to 2017:  28th in a 28-song semifinal; 18th in a 19-song semifinal; 18th in a 18-song semifinal; Not participating for five years (understandably); 13th in a 17-song semifinal; 9th in a 18-song semifinal, 25th in a 26-song final; 13th in a 18-song semifinal.

Czech selection committee: just put a donk on it. You’ll like the results.

Not only did Ms. Martina choose to submit a song written in English to the Annual Eurovision Ritual, helping the beast of globalization devour her culture and language, but she also submitted a song with lyrics so boring that they flee from my mind immediately after I’ve heard them, as if Gilderoy Lockhart himself has just charmed them directly out of my cerebellum. Lyrics: 2/10.

Luckily, the music video itself is far more interesting than the song itself. I’m at least 80% sure this video depicts what people experience while rolling on Ecstasy. Nude bodies of various age and shape, writhing in ways that are at once harmonious and cacophonous. Here an old white man finds peace in a warm-towel embrace of a large black man. There a bald man hangs his head in his ultimate shame only to be comforted by an equally bald woman. At one point the bacchanalian dancers just all freeze and turn their heads sharply to one side, staring at the audience with eyes that contain something between abject misery and ultimate pleasure. Disturbing! Music video: 7/10. I found this video hilarious. Personal enjoyment: 9/10.

Cody Phillips

[konstantinwrites]

Electrode England 1791™

                                                             Ascending and Descending, M.C. Escher

Let me fact this up first: Leicester City, a football team, tonight plays Atlético Madrid, same, in the second match of the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League. Last week, Atlético won the first match 1-0 in Madrid. Tonight, in Leicester, England, the local Foxes will also try to score and then score more to make it to the semifinals. The Champions League is the buff bazooka – its past three winners are Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, and it’s the trophy they’ve cherished most.

“Leicester football” may seem like a new phrase, and it is. Their team won the English Premier League last year, in the age of phrases like Manchester United and Chelsea F.C., and the likelihood of their achievement was thought to be 😂.* Every fourth adult on Earth spends two hours a day in solemn contemplation about defensive midfield tactics, and none ever broached “Leicester victory” before Leicester won.

So this waggonette of history is playing tonight, trying to take Europe. (And next year, the World Cup.) Atlético have made it to the Champions League final twice in the last three years, and now Leicester will knock them out. Maybe. It’s not likely. The odds are low, eight to one. This is because Atlético are what Leicester are: a pinball machine owned by Louis XVI. That may strike you as odd. Modern-day football teams aren’t also table games inside a neoclassical château. That’s not what happens. Give a bit on this, because when it does happen, like now, it’s very exciting.

This is how Leicester 2017™ want a football match to go: (l – Leicester players, p – opponent, . – ball)

         p (goalie, bored and sleepy)

         p       l                    p         l    p      p     p        l   p      l p. l       l      p   p   p   l        l         l            l            l (goalie)

Meaning, Leicester’s main game, what they’re best at, isn’t controlling much of the flow. They don’t take the ball at whim. They often don’t even want to play with the ball. What they want most is for the opponent to be in possession, for them to march down with all the players that they think are really great and end up opening swaths of space in the bored sleepy goalie half of the field.

Opponents then often lose the ball and are out of position. Their defenders are forwards, their minds are screams. They scramble back in formation. They scramble more. A few Leicester players have already passed the ball for their forward. Leicester’s forward wakes the other goalie up.

And this is how Atlético 1791, created long before, want to play: (a – Atlético players, p – opponent, . – ball)

           p (goalie, on a siesta)         [a t would love to be here, but, offside rule]                  

                            t    p   p     p  t   p    p    t  p        t       t   t  p   p   p   t            p.                t  t  t            t (goalie)

Meaning, Atlético show you that they will eat your coins. Usually your whole allowance. Sometimes all of you! Coming up to the machine, you know that your ball is pinned, it will have no free will. But this Tuesday night, Leicester locked themselves in the arcade to try and free it.

(* A graphic of Leicester’s seasons throughout history. Please treat it more kindly than Russell Brand.)

[konstantinwrites]

Michael Dukakis: the notion that people in L.A. will not ride good public transportation is nonsense

     Lidy Prati, unknown title

       Hi friends! In March 2014, I spoke with three-time Massachusetts Governor and 1988 U.S. presidential candidate Michael Dukakis on behalf of the Daily Bruin. Dukakis resides and works in Boston and for the past two decades of college winter quarters has marched south to Los Angeles, teaching public policy and politics at local universities. The former governor graciously agreed to meet in his office at UCLA’s Public Affairs building. 

     Surreptitiously, I wanted to chat to cognize what a low-key post-presidential election life is like. Governor Dukakis’ professorship is close to that of nonpolitical career educators; while expertly involved in public policy, Dukakis still turns the wrench, teaching freshman courses and grading exams. It’s a sober career, in line with the governor’s workmanlike sensibility.

     For exposition: Dukakis wore New Balance sneakers and has an aged 19-inch LCD for an office monitor. I’m a suffocating sports demon, so we talked Red Sox and Olympics bids, but we did get to American interventionism and rogue freeway construction. Dukakis examined L.A. public transport as well, having been a lifelong instigator of funding for rail projects and an Amtrak Board of Directors member.

     The interview was not selected to be published in the Daily Bruin. The interview is edited and the opinions expressed are as of March 2014.

On Russia-Ukraine Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy

     Michael Dukakis: I won’t bore you with my thoughts: we’re really kind of dumb, I don’t really understand it. I mean, nobody really knows what the hell is going on in the Ukraine in the present time. Who are the rebels? They’re an interesting crew. Why did Khrushchev decide to take the Crimea and stick it in the Ukraine in 1954? And knowing the United States, nobody understands this stuff. Look: Putin is not going to get the Man of the Year award from America’s Civil Liberties Union. But he’s a hell of a lot better than Joe Stalin…and I remember Stalin. We need Putin badly when it comes to Iran and Syria and a few other places where we’re in big trouble – largely thanks to our own [involvement]. I was around when we overthrew the democratically elected Governor of Iran in 1953, without which none of this would’ve happened. It’s crazy stuff. 

     As I said to somebody about a month ago, “Can’t the EU handle the Ukrainian thing? Does the United States have to be involved in every single one of these things, wherever it happens?” Because I think Europe probably understands Russia and the Ukraine better than we do. In any event, they’re Russia’s biggest customer for natural gas, so the Russians have some interest in making nice with the Europeans, under certain circumstances. In the meantime, we’ve got to focus on Iran and Israel and the Palestinians, among other things, not to mention our own problems here at home.

     Ever since World War 2, we’ve had this [mantra]: “We’ve got to police the world and be everywhere…wherever there’s a conflict, we’ve got to be there.” I’m a committed internationalist, but I think the U.S. ought to be doing everything it can to build strong and effective international peacekeeping institutions, so we don’t have to run around like the county sheriff every day. Now, we’ve got a new African military command, we’ve got special forces all over Africa – what are they doing there? Chasing [Joseph Kony] in Northern Uganda, a drone base in Mali – we’re very close to the first time in world history where war is being ruled out as a means of settling disputes between countries, [but] that doesn’t mean you won’t have civil strife within countries, particularly in the Middle East where it was the [British] and the French that drew the map of the Middle East after World War I. 

     It had nothing to do with ethnicity, religion or anything else – the [British] wanted oil and the French wanted something else. So we’re going to have to live with that for a while. But if six countries are scrapping over who owns a bunch of worthless islands in the South China Sea - send them to the World Court, for God’s sake. That’s what it’s there for. What are we doing, running around? Now we’re going to have a drone base in Japan.

     Look, we’ve made progress, and the interesting thing politically is that the right-wing conservatives are the most passionate interventionists, which is kind of strange. Rand Paul is a genuine conservative, whether you agree with him or don’t. When it comes to international stuff, he’s kind of with me [on the topic of] constant intervention and so forth. Now, is he a committed internationalist – I don’t know, but he’s kind of a genuine conservative. Guys like [Ted] Cruz, they don’t want to do anything in the United States, but they want us everywhere.

On the Red Sox and Public Funds in Sports

     Konstantin Samoilov: The MLB playoffs haven’t started yet, so I still want to congratulate you on the Red Sox championship.

     MD: Thank you. We were all surprised. Kitty [Dukakis, his wife] and I were in the 30th row of the centerfield bleachers for Game 6 of the [2014] World Series. It was a wonderful experience. We’re a 20-minute walk to Fenway Park, pretty close. I went to my first game when I was four and a half, and I had a seven-year-old brother [Stelian] at the time. My mother, who was this Greek immigrant who’d come over here when she was nine, and was the first Greek young woman ever to go away to college in the history of the United States, was very much American, with all of her immigrant background. We were swinging a bat when we were three or four, and she didn’t know a bat from a broom handle. 

     At that time, we lived very close to Fenway, and we badgered her and finally she said, “Okay.” We went down to Fenway and I still remember the starting lineup of the Red Sox in 1938. We came back very excited – “Mom, Mom, can we go again?”, and she said, “Boys, if you want to go, you can go, but I will not be with you. I have never been so bored in my life.” But when you’re born in Boston, you’re infected with two things – politics and the Red Sox.

      This ownership team [led by John W. Henry] is really an extraordinarily good group of people. After a brief romance with [former Red Sox manager] Bobby Valentine, we’ve got a very solid manager [John Farrell], very thoughtful, mature, intelligent guy and he did a hell of a job. He’s got some great coaches. I don’t know how they put it together, but they put it together. Being in the centerfield bleachers for that 6th game was terrific. Kitty and I have been in them for a long time.

      After I left office [as Governor of Massachusetts], we came that close to tearing down Fenway. I thought it was crazy. The whole establishment was going to build a phony version of the real thing and spend $815 million, $300 million of which was the taxpayers’ money. Massachusetts, to its credit in my opinion, has not put a nickel into a professional sports franchise, and I hope it never will. I’m a fan, and I was a pretty decent athlete when I was a kid, but I think putting taxpayers’ money in sports franchises is crazy. I was one of the few folks around – in addition to this wonderful group of “Save Fenway” people – who thought tearing it down would be a huge mistake. The new ownership team, fortunately, took a look at it and for a third of the cost of the proposed version, Fenway today is just breathtaking.

      If there are a few things you can do to be helpful…we’ve just opened up a new commuter rail station [Yawkey MBTA station] that will serve Fenway as well as the area around it. I’m all for providing good public transit access, but we’d do that for any legitimate business. By the way, the [New England] Patriots, to their credit: same deal. Gillette Stadium doesn’t have a nickel of taxpayers’ money, is without a dime’s worth of subsidy. And [Patriots owner] Bobby Kraft, who was standing in front of a polling place in Brookline with a “Dukakis” sign when he was 17 is a very sharp guy, and he’s done a great job of leading that team.

On Transportation Choices and Opinions

      MD: L.A. would benefit from having an N.F.L. franchise here, sure. But it’s got to be done in a way that pays for itself – if it doesn’t, then you can’t justify it. The teams tend to play off these cities against each other – who will offer them the best deal and the most money. We’ve got things to do with public money. If they build a stadium, they ought to build it right next to one of the new transit stations being built in the city. When this transit system is completed, this city is going to be incredible. It’s going to fill up with people. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed coming out here. The notion that people in this town will not ride good public transportation is nonsense.

      Boston killed off all these highways that people wanted to build and invested the money in public transportation. I can’t believe it myself. Because of our success, we now have an affordable housing problem, but we know how to deal with that – if you want to build affordable housing, you can. For San Francisco, Boston, or Los Angeles, that’s an essential part to keep the city healthy and diverse and balanced so it doesn’t just become a place for rich folks. Boston is a shining example of what happens when you stop putting money in freeways that don’t work and invest in public transportation. 

     KS: I found Boston not just walkable but quite bikeable, too. During your terms in office, was there a push towards urban biking approachability?

     MD: Not as much as has been done since [his terms as Massachusetts Governor]. At that time, we had a 10-year battle over whether or not we were going to build this so-called Master Highway Plan, which involved 6 eight-lane expressways into the city, and then something called the Inner Belt Highway, eight lanes elevated, right through the Emerald Necklace, one of the great urban park systems – three feet from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It was a done deal. In the meantime, the public transportation system was a basket case. 

     Then, fortunately, we were the first state to be permitted to use its interstate highway money for public transportation. I got elected, and over time had $3 billion in federal highway money, which we poured into The T [operator of public transport in Boston]. We have one final job to do, connect the North and South Stations by rail – one mile, underground. Should’ve been done when we built the Big Dig…the Reagan administration was fighting us on the whole project. They went bananas when we wanted to just put down a double rail line. Imagine, you rip up the whole city and don’t connect these two stations? That would permit high-speed trains to go north through Boston, New Hampshire, Maine and Montreal, and would take 60,000 cars off the road every day. That’s my next big [desire].

     But we [Dukakis’ administrations] never really got into the bike thing. I was a runner, I’m a walker, but I think the bicycle thing has been relatively recent - last 10 or 15 years. [Former Boston Mayor Tom] Menino and [Boston Mayor Marty] Walsh are very strong supporters of this. Boston didn’t have a full-time bike coordinator until 10 years ago; now we’ve got a rental bike system that’s doing three times the business they anticipated. It’s just a logical place to encourage bikes and the integration of bikes with public transportation.

     KS: In your experience, would you say that LA is a good walking city? I like walking and it’s rather easy here, but few others seem to do it…

     MD: It’s a great walking city - you’ve got a climate like this year-round - and it should be a great biking city. It should be a great city for combining both modes. There are a lot of people jogging these days. As a guy whose running days are over, but who walks all over the place, it’s a wonderful place to walk. It’s lovely, it’s got a great climate, how can you beat it?

     KS: I still often feel a bit like a second-class citizen when walking in LA. I don’t feel this in many other cities.

     MD: Well, they used to arrest you for that, you know. [Laughs.] So progress is being made.

On Statistics and Student-Athletes

      MD: Academic standards for athletes have to be high and have to be kept that way. An American university should not be a farm team for the N.F.L. or the N.B.A. When the coach at Ohio State is making $5 million, there’s something wrong with this. 15 years ago, the San Jose State graduation rate was about 7%. As someone who was never a [NCAA Division I] guy, but played small college ball, I think it’s very important for the student body to have athletic opportunities even if they’re not varsity-level athletes. 

     One of the reasons I went to a small college, frankly [Swarthmore College], is because I was never going to be a starter on a D-I team. I wanted to play and was able to do that: cross-country, basketball and baseball in my first year and then tennis. My roommate, Cooper, one of the finest national athletes I’ve ever known, was drafted by the L.A. Rams – but, in typical Swarthmore fashion, chose instead to go to MIT and get a PhD in economics. It’s a terrible disservice to the student-athletes themselves for colleges not to expect good academic performance. When it’s all over and they’ve played their average three years in the N.F.L. – then what?

     Harvard [was selected for] the [NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship] with a young African-American center [Kenyatta Smith] who was a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. Kenyatta Smith’s grandmother, who sings in the choir at Saint Sophia’s Cathedral, converted to Greek Orthodoxy, and he was brought up in the Church. I remember, we’d go to Saint Sophia’s and there was this outsized kid – at nine, ten – and I figured he was Ethiopian, because Ethiopians are Eastern Orthodox and there are substantial numbers of them in Greek Orthodox churches. Kenyatta is studying modern Greek at Harvard. Harvard is a pretty damn good team. The coach, Tommy Amaker, has a breakfast club [with the players] to discuss major political and policy issues once a month. Tommy invited Kitty and I to come over and join.

     It’s not an accident that these guys keep emerging in interesting ways, intellectually, even while they’re playing in the pros – including Richard Sherman. [Sherman] came from Compton, and the guy was a math whiz from the time he was five or so, just has it when it comes to quantitative stuff – apparently he’s got a photographic mind. He majored at Stanford and graduated with a damn good academic record. We’re not doing kids a favor by running them through a system that doesn’t hold them to high standards and then dumps them into a professional league.

On the 1984 (and 2024) Olympics

      MD: About [the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles], I remember that everybody was scared to death at what was going to happen in what was, at that point, an almost entirely auto-dependent city, and for whatever reason, it worked out well and people responded – there were no transportation problems. I hope that the next time L.A. has the Olympics, it will have a first-rate, rail-based transit system.

     My son has been asked to help out [with Boston’s defunct 2024 Summer Olympics bid] and be involved through his [advertising] agency. I said to him, “Wouldn’t it be special if Boston could prove that you could do the Olympics without spending - forget about $50b, how about [under] $10b? Turn Harvard Stadium into the Olympic Stadium…and we could certainly use the housing once the athletes are gone.” But the [International Olympic Committee] is very tough about what they expect. The athletes have to be housed in one place for security reasons. Could we do that? We probably could – but how much of the taxpayers’ money do you put into this? When you’ve got 30 colleges, all of whom could participate in some way, that would be great for the city, but wouldn’t require huge expenditures. If there’s any city in America that’s transit-dependent – in the best sense – it’s Boston.

A warm thank you to Governor Dukakis and assistant Vernessa for finding the time for the interview.

[konstantinwrites]

Wintry Station Bird

           Whatever you think about murder and idolizing metal things, the Vikings were at the top of their world. They hunted, others gathered, the jarl hunted again. The regular citizenry, non-Vikings and non-slaves, supported its warriors with skills: smithing and crafting, farming and loving. That middle class is soccer defenders, obviously. Building facades so that attackers feel valiant; polishing the team silver so that the gold lusters.

In defense, the German national football team often starts Mats Hummels, a precisely synthetic ugly duckling; Per Mertesacker, nicknamed the Big Fucking German; the gravely secretarial Philipp Lahm, who gravely rampages enemy ends; and Jérôme Boateng, a defender for the German national football team.

            Boateng, an unfailing occurrence for Germany and Bayern Munich for the past three years is, once again, a centre-back footballer on both of those squads. Smart and blocky and sedulous, he’s already checked a happy-crazy goal moment off the “do once, because you won’t do it again because you’re a defender” list. Seldom ruffled, his lack of red cards is impossible combinatorics: did the style of the Bundesliga, or his own tranquil nature, or Bayern trying to be classy, or maybe being teased by his midfielder brother for not being a midfielder create his professionalism and dearth of lively YouTube compilations? After 15 minutes of the Netherlands-Argentina semifinal, everyone watching already correctly predicting that it will end at 0-0, it’s easy with Boateng too: at 25, a prong for two of the best soccer teams in the world, the esteem of him will rise significantly, but in the last third of his career. Beard-King Andrea Pirlo is a good example, but the most accurate is perhaps the century-capped Ashley Cole, continuously so sterling that journalists, having lined firebrick around his persona, just smashed it up and revered again.

             It just happens this way, and Boateng is actually affable. Football media is massive and ridiculous, and neither of us are helping right now, and we still just can’t physically remember every dude’s dramatic arc all the time. Germany is the favorite to win the World Cup, and unless Boateng does a thing or another, he’s probably the least-mentioned member of the lineup now and until our public consciousness monster finds him. (Unknown Benedikt Höwedes is down there as well, but his rarefactional existence is at least a Subplot C.) This weekend, the final referee skips preparing for Boateng’s psychological profile, because, like, idle hands are the devil’s tools; I mean, the centre-back will stretch for balls and grimace in challenges and “react”, as the FIFA photo wire typically titles his efforts. What else?

              Of course these defenders play a solitary game, away from the rest of the match. A player launches the ball into some paths, and triumph is his cluelessness that the route to you is just a really bad idea. Zoom! A secondary mission on a pinball table, belching for yet another multiplier, is just there to waste the time. Forget the difficult angles the main quest requires! Get more chances here. Zoom! Yeah, you shouldn't have attacked our civilian. They're more important to us than we are to each other.

[konstantinwrites]

...And the Starfish

Brazil unhitched their campaign amidst a twilight. The duskiness of São Paulo - not too many floodlights - and the mood in Arena Corinthians, grey-blue and anticipatory, butterflies floating above the crowd like green indicators in The Sims, described what the Brazilian national football team replicates today.

They replicate ambassadors, and even in the positive sense of that word that I am surprised to write. Even though the only real job of ambassadors is to pliantly approve installations of comprehensive spy equipment, they do represent their home nation. It’s probably sometimes maybe a tough thing, and they have to keep themselves healthy. There are back-end agendas to skim, sushi to ask staff to order, angry people on the bottom floor waiting for a visa to avoid. It’s exactly like the routine of a well-conditioned star soccer player who is always expected to perform supremely well for their nation. Maybe not exactly like that, but maybe something like that. 

In the second half of Brazil’s opening match against Croatia, 22-year-old Brazilian attacking midfielder Oscar ran parallel with a teammate for a dozen feet, without the ball, that was all that he was doing—some other burdened Brazil player had the ball and was computing the least embarrassing move to make—and I thought: millions of people are watching Oscar right now, as he’s just running. At least a million people are watching Hulk, the Brazil forward, pacing around the penalty box. At least a million people are thinking about every Brazil player on the field right now. The audience is so large and every player on the host country’s 2014 World Cup squad is so significant that they linger in the mind even when completely uninvolved in the match.

The floodlights crafted a gigantic bulbous shadow of Oscar in that moment and then it was easy to see: in the past four years leading up to this tournament, the Brazilian public have deeply followed the stories and twists of each national team player. Dani Alves and David Luiz and Júlio César: their faces on earnest highway billboards here and ruminative interviews on national TV there. Ramires and Thiago Silva and Neymar: sobbing press conferences here and funny quotes about memorizing the national anthem there. Without living there or speaking Portuguese, it’s still perceptible: Brazil has probably the most background knowledge of its team that a World Cup host nation has ever had.

After Brazil v. Croatia, national team captain Silva said, “I didn’t look like I was Thiago Silva. I was asking myself: ‘Did you stop playing football? Are you nervous?’ It was our debut. It was a big word that put a lot of emotion in me. I’m going to stop talking because I’m a big cry baby and I’m just going to start crying here.” If this Brazil team wins this tournament, soccer may revolutionize emotionally, for the better.

Brazil v. Croatia looked like 1970: colored in pastel, twinkling with a feeling of national transformation in Brazil (however true it is), reminding of Pelé as an ambassador to the world. Brazil v. Chile will be back in 2014, flaxen sunrays diffused on their canary yellow shirts. Brazil will be the starkest humans in the stadium, even with everyone already following their trails.

[konstantinwrites]

Found this hilarious passage about Alex Song while writing a fake page of Theo Walcott’s book.

[konstantinwrites]

We Fall

Martin Rose/Getty Images

Chopping firewood is hard. It’s the only substantial thing I’ve ever done with my hands and a time that I easily remember because it stimulates neurons that daily life never will. The facts seem to be that everything that we do once in the city is irredeemably dreadful—never again, car towing receipt for $483.75—and everything that we do once in the country is going to be deeply gratifying.

Indeed, it happened just once, this incredible outdoors story about chopping some wood. And even though the firewood industry seems to have greatly advanced and made cut firewood available for purchase, it always felt worthwhile to swing an axe for a couple of hours in a village outside of Moscow.

I say this because I can’t find a way to care about my home country, Russia, during the 2014 Winter Olympics, and I think it’s because I’ve never done anything worthwhile for it. The Russian men’s hockey team lost to Finland in the quarterfinals in Sochi two days ago and are knocked out of the men’s hockey tournament and that’s fine. Maybe we’ll win next time, in four years. That will also be fine.

And so I wish I’d done something for Russia in my life, because I find my detachment hard to accept. At 21, I’ve lost the obsessive passion for club teams that I picked by feel in childhood. The prettiness of Liverpool’s liver bird logo and my dream of becoming Michael Owen does not any more carry me through to caring whether they win or draw against Southampton next week. The only fundamental personal connection I have to sports are Russian national teams, and I can’t summon proper emotions for their results. 

There must be a way to stir up national pride. Join the Russian army? Become a civil servant? I hope not the latter. Even the daily life of the Maldivian government must feel morbid after a couple of years. I don’t know what’s worthwhile enough to care about international ice hockey again. It would’ve been nice if Russia won the gold medal, but I don’t think that I would’ve been overjoyed. Maybe I’m just a fair-weather fan in the fair-weather Olympics. Maybe accepting that for the time being is worthwhile enough.

P.S. I’m disappointed that NBC edited the opening ceremony, but they've got a point. Did you see the live stream?

7:59 p.m. A hush in the stadium. Drab illumination, falling snow, a dark-grey tint. Foreign dignitaries think: this is how I’ve always pictured the USSR! The spectators are a lasagna of complimentary red ushankas on complimentary grey sweatpants. Hordes of volunteers wheel out indecipherable objects.

8 p.m. A series of shrill sounds in the clouds above. Everyone’s smartphones and laptops die. 

“Hello. Tonight will be an intimate encounter.” It’s Putin. 

“Please reach under your seats. We have got the welcome gift.” Under each seat is a live experiment in a plexiglass rectangular box. Some people get a box of garish chemicals mixing together, forming a layer of Sochi 2014 branded ice. Some people get a frenzied mouse in a maze, demolishing a roach.

8:06 p.m. “NBC is on tape delay. For these two weeks, each of you here, and—camera one, please—each of you watching at home... It is you who is mayor. Your games. Your power.”

[konstantinwrites]

Every Other Way

I still don’t know whether Borussia Dortmund should feature in a Champions League semi-final today; I saw their two-goal comeback in additional time against Málaga in the quarter-final, the craziest and most unfair moment in soccer this season, but haven’t watched any post-mortem clips. I’m sure that all the post-match interviews [roared]. I know that Jürgen Klopp, the Dortmund manager, was in only his kind of delirium, in which he . Still, I haven’t been able to allow myself this treat.

Growing up, I couldn’t stand to keep watching a match after a big referee decision was proven to be wrong. It felt wrong and all you hoped for was a mistaken decision going the other way. It didn’t matter on the night of Málagarazo. There was no match time to give up on.

The comeback was obvious. Predicting “BVB [40, 90+1, 90+3]” may look unlikely, but for this match, every single person watching was only pretending to be surprised by the finale. Obviously Dortmund bombarded Málaga goalkeeper Willy in the final minutes. Obviously they scored two goals and stunted Málaga’s growth by 20 years. Borussia Dortmund is very large today, and their existence in the semifinals fits the soccer community’s world view much more properly. 

The comeback highly diluted the usual warmth from seeing a team’s extraordinary happiness; the obvious injustice only bubbled up thoughts about fairness. The result didn’t feel astonishing, or appropriate.

But Dortmund’s semifinal is against Real Madrid, and Dortmund is the likable team again, by default. It’s going to be just men running on grass as usual, but I guess we still want Dortmund men to win. If they win, I’m sure we’ll want them to win the tournament. It would be a wonder, no matter how this Málaga match finished up. If Dortmund end up festively passing the Champions League trophy to one another at Wembley, it won’t matter where Bayern will be festively passing Mario Götze to one another.

A random team called Málaga that got so close, without two of their best players last season, Santi Cazorla and Nacho Monreal, should have been unreeled from this situation somehow. A sudden double elimination bracket, or a 5th team in the semifinals; UEFA people love coming up with tournament structures. It’s painful that they won’t. Will Málaga ever appear at this stage again? Whichever surprising team is appearing next, I hope that their experience will be more winnable.