Monday! World Champs!
we won the footy, my friends
I have lived here in the US since September 2001 and this soccer team has made me feel like an American, just the good kind, who works to defeat the bad government. What a game:
It was the second straight World Cup title for a dozen of the American players, who claimed their first championship in Canada four years ago. It also cemented their status as the gold standard in women’s soccer, even as Europe — led by teams like the Netherlands — mounts a sustained assault on their crown.
The tears flowed freely after the win: from striker Alex Morgan, who tied for the tournament lead with six goals; from Kelley O’Hara, who was forced from the game at halftime after a scary head-to-head collision; and from the Dutch, who fought the Americans harder, and kept even with them longer, than any team at this World Cup.
The Netherlands was the only team to hold the United States off the scoreboard in the first half in France but they, like all the other teams before them — Thailand, Chile, Sweden, Spain, France and England — could not hold them off forever.
Rapinoe’s goal came after Morgan was kicked in the shoulder by Netherlands defender Stefanie van der Gragt in the penalty area, a rare loss of composure by the Dutch team. Rapinoe, Coach Jill Ellis’s preferred penalty taker, calmly stepped up and buried her attempt past goalkeeper Sari van Veenendaal, who leaned to her right but barely moved as the ball rippled the net.
A few important tweets:
Okay, whew, let’s see our Featured Pet of the Day. I am delighted to introduce you to Rosie:
Her human companion, Jean, reports: “She's a ten year old Pit Bull, and had been my darling puppy since she picked me out when she was just four weeks old.”
“She's lived in four states and seven houses, and kept me sane through grad school, marriage (she was our ring bearer!), big moves, and now motherhood.”
“She loves playing fetch more than is probably good for her, hogging all the pillows, and waiting patiently for our daughter to drop goodies from the high chair during meal time.”
Thanks, Rosie & Jean! We love you, what a great way to start the week.
Well, this whole story about Megan Rapinoe and her brother has me crying:
DAYS BEFORE THE first game of the 2019 Women's World Cup, Brian Rapinoe jokingly texted his sister, Megan Rapinoe -- co-captain and star midfielder for the U.S. women's national team: "Megs, breaks my heart that you couldn't fly me out for an all-expenses-paid trip to France." She shot back: "Oh yeah, so sad I couldn't pamper you for a month in France."
An hour before kickoff against Thailand on June 11, the rest of the Rapinoe family found their seats in the Stade Auguste-Delaune in Reims; Brian charged his ankle monitor and rounded up the other guys in the dormitory at San Diego's Male Community Reentry Program, a rehabilitative program that allows an inmate to finish the final 12 months of his sentence taking classes or working jobs outside of prison.
The MCRP common room might not be France, but it's a vast improvement over solitary confinement, where Brian has watched Megan play in the previous two World Cups. He sat on a couch in his red USA jersey, watching on a 60-inch flat-screen, and felt "f---ing great." He had accomplished a major goal for himself: to get out of prison in time to watch his kid sister play in her third World Cup.
Every time the U.S. scored, the room full of men cheered loudly. Nobody there thought the U.S.'s 13 goals against Thailand and exuberant celebrations after each were done in poor taste. "This is what soccer should always be like," one man said.
"It's the World Cup: There's no f---ing holding back," 38-year-old Brian says. "This is every four years."
And his sister didn't hold back. When Megan scored goal No. 9 for the U.S., she sprinted to the sideline, spun around twice and then slid to the ground for a foot-kicking celebration. As the camera zoomed in on her, one of the guys yelled, "Holy s---, it's Brian!"
He has the same face as his sister.
The face, the charisma, the wit, the tendency to burst into song: In so many ways, Brian and Megan are alike. But they are also a study in contrasts: At 15 years old, Brian brought meth to school and has been in and out of incarceration ever since. At 15, Megan played with her first youth U.S. national team and started traveling the world. As a young inmate and gang member, Brian was inked with swastika tattoos -- an allegiance to white supremacy that he now disavows; as a professional soccer player, Megan was the first prominent white athlete to kneel to protest racial inequality.
Despite their different paths, the brother and sister have stayed close through letters, phone calls and texts. "I have so much respect for her. And not just because she's the s--- at soccer. It's her utter conviction in the things that she believes in and the stances she takes against injustices in the world," he says.
I spent the long weekend out at the cabin with the kids, it’s cool enough up this high that it’s kinda sweater weather, my fav weather, and we just went on a lot of walks and I got to delve into a friend’s incredible non-fiction book that isn’t done yet AND I was able to successfully make a completely inconsequential note about Episcopalians that caused him to remove a…not an inaccuracy, per se, but something that would have made an Episcopalian be like “this man is not an Episcopalian” (he’s not) so now I feel like:
I also started reading Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality, and AIDS in the History of Male Flight Attendants, which is…so fascinating?
In this vibrant new history, Phil Tiemeyer details the history of men working as flight attendants. Beginning with the founding of the profession in the late 1920s and continuing into the post-September 11 era, Plane Queer examines the history of men who joined workplaces customarily identified as female-oriented. It examines the various hardships these men faced at work, paying particular attention to the conflation of gender-based, sexuality-based, and AIDS-based discrimination. Tiemeyer also examines how this heavily gay-identified group of workers created an important place for gay men to come out, garner acceptance from their fellow workers, fight homophobia and AIDS phobia, and advocate for LGBT civil rights. All the while, male flight attendants facilitated key breakthroughs in gender-based civil rights law, including an important expansion of the ways that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would protect workers from sex discrimination. Throughout their history, men working as flight attendants helped evolve an industry often identified with American adventuring, technological innovation, and economic power into a queer space.
That book recommendation came out of an interesting convo I had on Twitter (it happens!) about Gaetan Dugas:
My plan for the upcoming week, other than a larger-than-customary amount of work, is to do said work while working my way through this list of Swedish horror movies.
I was tipped off by Bob Saietta to the full version of my favourite movie’s Beatles scene and you have to watch it RIGHT NOW:
He tipped me off after I spent at least two hours tweeting about Alan Siegel’s actually perfect oral history of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which made for a wonderful porch morning:
I screenshotted so much of it for Twitter that you have to promise me you’ll read it or I will have committed a crime.
I feel very bad for this young woman, bc I know so well that feeling that if you could just talk about it you will either reunite or obtain “closure,” which doesn’t exist even after you’re both dead, and I’m glad she’s getting mostly decent advice:
My (24F) now ex (25M) broke up with me over text after 3 months of dating and 6 months of seeing each other. Things were going really well, we communicated great and had lots in common, until a few weeks ago when my mental health issues started getting really bad. I have always been upfront with him about my mental health. I felt at the point where I could come to him with it when I was having an especially bad day, and had done so in the past and he was relatively helpful/receptive to it.
After a few fights over the weekend last weekend, I told him I wanted to meet up and talk about what happened to talk things through (and so I could apologize for being so overbearing and needy the past few days). He kept saying no, to call instead, but then would ghost me for the rest of the day, so we never got a chance to talk. We didn't really text apart for a handful of tries to figure out when we could talk this whole past week (usually we were texting pretty frequently). Friday, when I was out drinking with friends, he sends me a text at 10:30pm saying he didn't want to do this by text but that he doesn't want to see me anymore, no explanation or justification or anything.
I'm having a really hard time understanding why he did it over text and couldn't just wait to tell me in person (it would've meant a hell of a lot to me), after all it had already been a whole week of not talking. If he was going to do it over text, couldn't he have just done it earlier in the week and be done with it??
Now I feel like I have 0 closure, and I'm the type of person who needs that to move on. I still don't fully understand why he is breaking up with me, and my imagination is running wild with all the different scenarios. I just want to know why.
Am I justified in asking him to meet up so we can talk about what happened so I can understand?
TL;DR my short term boyfriend broke up with me over text. I want to ask him why/what his reasoning is.
I did not need to read past the subject line to cheer for this lady:
I have never had a good relationship with my in laws and they have never liked me since day 1. They were rather supportive during the pregnancy as this is their first grandchild. I’ve only put up with them because my husband is close with them and always will be.
The first day of me being in labor my in laws came by. We didn’t want them in the room while I delivered, he broke the news to them and he said it went well. It was his mother, father and his 2 brothers (11 & 16). My mother was still driving up during this time. It was okay for a while but my FIL and BIL’s started asking really inappropriate questions. Things about my parenting skills, my weight and my vagina. Eventually the nurse told them they had to leave because they were being loud and were disturbing other people. They left, upset, but would be back after the baby was born.
About 10 hours later my mother arrived and I was about ready to push. My husband told me he didn’t think it was fair his parents weren’t going to be there and wouldn’t let up on it. Finally I told him fine because it was their grandchild too and I did feel bad about my MIL not being there because I actually did like her, she just has no control over her sons or her husband. MIL and FIL showed up around the time I started pushing. 5 minutes in I heard FIL giggling and I snapped and told MIL and FIL to get the fuck out and don’t fucking come back until visiting hours. I heard a lot of commotion but my mother was just keeping me focused on pushing. Eventually everything was done and I had a beautiful boy and my husband and I just enjoyed our brand new baby and finally got some sleep.
The next day, my family and our close friends came but none of his family did. He was upset for sure. Around 12 pm texts started rolling in from his extended family about how it was horrible what I did and they would not be coming to see us or our baby. My husband was horribly upset. His brother (22) who is in Japan with the Air Force, he is a year apart from and they have a very close relationship, told him he was cutting contact with him over this and so was his mother, father and other brothers. My husband is devastated. It’s 3 am now and he left and told me he’d be back tomorrow to come pick us up. My husband just keeps saying how could I tear his family apart like this and his father laughs like that when he cries because he was so happy to have his first grandchild. I feel so horrible about it now and I didn’t mean to cause all this. I was pissed and am still pissed about the immature questions they were asking but now I am conflicted as to if I reacted in the correct way about it. So am I the asshole?
Tldr: I told my in-laws to get out while I was delivering my baby because they made inappropriate jokes earlier in the day and started family drama which caused my husband’s family to cut contact with us. Husband is devastated.
MUSIC VIDEOS:
chaka khan
my other fav Rufus
marvin gaye, we need it, even if that’s just watching TV and going to bed, but with this energy
youtube keeps popping this up in my algo, and I actually do love this song and used to call my local classic rock station to request it, so I GIVE IN
I know i’ve already done this one, don’t care
chet baker while he was healthy, doing my fav number
I am politically mad at these lyrics but what a tune
this is my second-fav Tom Petty song, first performed live
and now in studio:
i actually listen to this album on vinyl, and it’s a fuckin concept album by Lou Reed about living in Berlin being married to a heroin addict but some of the songs are beyond beautiful
too depressing to end on, so let’s go w kd lang's transcendent skylark
Let’s make it a good one. I think it’s gonna be a good one! Also, I am in San Francisco (MOM DO NOT READ THIS THERE WILL NOT BE AN EARTHQUAKE) to been in that book event that Jasmine Guillory and I have been hyping on July 16th! Come hug.
Love you! xoxoxoxoxo
n
Having a lot of struggles with the Megan Rapinoe story about her brother. It is very sweet in those grafs, but it’s also 2019, and I’m so very frustrated with how easily we accept former white supremacists, covered in Nazi symbols, as “now disavowing” the ideology, and giving them glowing profiles. It’s really tough for me as a WoC to see that the difference between a bad white supremacist and a good one is the existence of a famous USWNT soccer player sibling. Lot of great USWNT narratives to share, lot of non white USWNT women to feature, before giving more airspace to the reformed white supremacy of, well, a white supremacist.
I don't know why it is so difficult for people to understand that the person in labor gets to decide who in the room during delivery. The thought of having my in-laws (who are wonderful people and I love dearly) in there is kind of stomach churning. And not only did I not have my own mother in there with me, I had made the decision that we would not even tell her I was on the way to the hospital. We called with the good news when it was all over. (The correctness of this decision hit home the next year, when my sister had a baby. Our mom went to the hospital with her, it was a long and difficult labor, and my mom was freaking out so badly that the doctor gave her a sedative and sent her home. "Someone will call when there's a baby.")