More Kobe Bryant of an artist.

Won rings with my performance.

Goals of The Tournament Numbers One, Two, and Three -- order depending on what skill-sets you prize -- happened in the first 20 minutes of Ecuador-Chile.

That statement was true for about 30 minutes last night, 21 minutes into Brazil-Mexico to be precise. Nery Castillo's (WHAT!) and Ramon Morales's efforts quickly shunted those 3 down the ladder of sublimity, though they deserve mention in what was a pretty all-around amazing day of futbol. Just later. Now, regarding the above clip...

AB-SURD! AIN'T EVEN TOUCH THE GROUND BEFORE IT WAS IN THE NET! DO WE EVEN KNOW WHO GOT CLOWNED?! (JUAN.) ARTISTRY WORTHY OF -- YEP -- A BRAZILIAN. And Morales' 30-yard STUNNA was no slouch either. All credit to Mexican keeper Guillermo Ochoa as well for some out-of-his-skin saves in keeping Brazil scoreless. Scoreless.

Reigning blueandcream (¡respeito a los arquitectos!) Young Playa of the 2006 World Cup Luis "Michael-Thriller-Era-Jackson" Valencia (a.k.a. "Best All-Around Boytoy", as voted on by House Arbiter of Male Pulchritude, Miss Emcee M.C.) scored the first of the match, a pearl of a chip that curled into the upper left corner of the Chilean net after an equally lovely lofted ball over the defense (after a goal kick, even!). This all took about 7 seconds.

Then, maybe 9 minutes later, Humberto Suazo (nicknamed "El Chupete," literally one of these) let loose with what some Englishmen would call a Ripsnorter, tearing venomously past the Ecuadorian 'keeper. Before I could even 'skine that bit of info, Ecuador had gone ahead again, taking advantage of some slack Chilean defending. Easily the most exciting 45 minutes so far. Suazo tied it yet again, and Hector Villanueva won it with a gorgeous free kick.

All props to Gosfais for 1) predicting a somewhat less-than-brilliant Brazilian effort and 2) eagle-eyeing the Chilean Valdivia many months ago. He looked a live wire, though Suazo took all the plaudits.

Two losers on the day, but both teams played well enough to win. It only gets better, one would hope.

My mind is older.

When things get for real.

Joyeux anniversaire to dude, dude, & other dudes with French surnames.

Run for the border.

Go get a taco.

Alright, The Don has kept you on the line long enough. Time for Part Two of Daniel Corry's post (Read Part One!). And, appropriately, for Brazil-Mexico. Nossa!

If you thought to yourself, “Why does he need taco shells mailed to him if he is in Brazil?” The answer to that question is: go to Taco Bell and ask Aaron or Jose to stick the sour cream gun in your least favorite orifice until you achieve enlightenment. No one eats tacos in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and probably a lot of other countries in the south of South America. Mexico is far away and is thought of as a totally foreign place to people way down here. In fact, the only way to find taco shells down here is to go the richest supermarket chain and buy OLD EL PASO taco shells for like R$16. Or you can go to a Mexican restaurant, mimicking the experience of a Chinese immigrant paying R$12 for a box of chop suey at the restaurant down my street -- expensive and bad to those who know better.

So when Mexico plays Brazil this Copa, don’t think of them as brother countries any more than you would when the US plays, say, Denmark. In fact, when I asked Silvio if he is going to watch the Copa he said ‘no’ for two reasons. 1: the team sucks right now (0-0 with Turkey; Kaka and Ronaldinho on vacation) and two (after I told him the groupings): “Brazil doesn’t have luck against Mexico. You know this? Brazil doesn’t have luck in South America tournament. Brazil have luck in world tournament.”

The same sentiment was mentioned in terms of the recently expired Copa Libertadores (Argentine Boca whooped Brazilian Gremio in the finals). In fact, the name of that last-mentioned cup, which harkens back to Simon Bolivar & Co., liberators of South America from Spain, doesn’t have anything to do with Brazilian history. So in both these cups Brazil never quite feels at home among the people they themselves call ‘latinos,’ and so don’t expect them to vanquish in that group of death.

I mean, jeez, when the pope draws a line, it means something.

Concrete Peruvian

So go and sue me then.

Peru-Venezuela should be interesting, and not merely because of the insight that Emily Parker's great WSJ interview with Peruvian author, and former presidential candidate, Mario Varga Llosa provides.

Mr. Vargas Llosa's bold ideas and expressive language may make him one of Latin America's finest writers--"Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter," "The Time of the Hero" and "Conversation in the Cathedral" are just a few of his classic works--but those same traits didn't necessarily serve him well at the polls.

Parker explains:

During the 1990 presidential campaign Mr. Varga Llosa emphasized the need for a market economy, privatization, free trade, and above all, the dissemination of private property. He didn't exactly receive a welcome reception. "It was a very different era, because to speak of private property, private enterprise, the market--it was sacrilegious," he says. "I was fairly vulnerable in that campaign," he continues, "because I didn't lie. I said exactly what we were going to do. It was a question of principle and also . . . I thought it would be impossible to do liberal, radical reforms without having the mandate to do them."

And befitting MVL's characterization of himself, he is more than forthcoming about Latin America and one of the hemisphere's most polarizing figures:

He is relatively upbeat about Latin America today: "I'm not as pessimistic as others who believe that Latin America has returned to the time of populism, leftism." The region has its problems, to be sure, one major one coming from Caracas in the form of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. But according to Mr. Vargas Llosa, perhaps what is most remarkable is what Mr. Chávez has not been able to do. "We have a big problem with Chávez," Mr. Vargas Llosa admits. "He's a demagogue and a 19th century socialist. He is a destabilizing force for democracy in Latin America, but what he thought would be so easy hasn't been so easy. There has been a lot of resistance."

One of Mr. Chávez's major errors was his refusal last month to renew the license of popular Radio Caracas Television, or RCTV. "International hostility was enormous," Mr. Vargas Llosa notes. "For me, most important was that the protests in Venezuela were very strong, in particular the sectors that were once very sympathetic to him, for example the students in the Central University of Venezuela, not only the students in the private universities."

It is such infringements of free speech that highlight why in places like Latin America, reading a good novel can be much more than just a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. "I think in countries where basic problems are still unresolved, where a society remains so traumatized by deep conflicts--as in Latin America or in Third World countries in general--the novel is not only a form of entertainment, but it substitutes for something that these societies are not accustomed to seeing--information, for example," Mr. Vargas Llosa says. "If you live in a country where there is nothing comparable to free information, often literature becomes the only way to be more or less informed about what's going on."

UPDATE: For those that want to focus their anti-imperialist fury inward, check out this NYTimes piece from Sunday's Magazine, where the stones @ Machu Picchu play a significant role.

By any means I'm a eat.

Cigarettes.

Don Rodriguez is always happy to welcome the words of his irmão de outro, Daniel Corry, who is currently at work on a novel about Brazil, the moon, and the evolution of man, necessarily in that order. I once dreamt it was titled "True Love Waits".It is not, as far as I know. This is Part One of a continuing series. Stay tuned for more, and for more guest contributors. Oh, and Brazil plays Mexico tonight; should be a cracker.

You may be surprised to hear that Murphy’s Law exists in the social universe of Brazil, but you simply need to say Lei de Murf to draw a wry smile out of anyone. But Murf here has a scarier, fully Brazilian counterpart -- Lei de Gérson. I found a wiki on Gerson’s Law in Portuguese, then its brutally translated English version. (I use brute as an adverb in honor of Brutalism, and in honor of the New York Times Book Reviews mailed to me in air envelopes (also often containing soft taco shells) by my mother in which, perhaps due to the semi-recent translation issue, all works reviewed that have been translated into English need to have the following clause- The book, ________ly translated by__________).


My friend Silvio, know by the Don, told me about the Law when he was explaining how the construction company which built his house had screwed everybody in the housing unit by installing water pipes with much less than the necessary diameter, causing water shortages and necessitating the smashing of all the sidewalks and reinstallation of said pipes. Besides that, I can’t say nothing that wiki can’t, so I’ll let it do its work. You just watch out for it.

Gérson's Law | Gérson

It feel hot at night and shit.

It's the wind.

WATCH: Peru's Second Goal (2-0, Mariño)
WATCH: Peru's Third Goal (3-0, Guerrero)

So Uruguay's slick forward men tried to get their swerve on tonight against the Peruvians. Surprisingly, and rather ironically, those who rep Machu Picchu 'til they die -- well, quite simply their G was just too futuristic for the boys in light blue.
Three goals and some listless defending on the Uruguayans part is what you were left with if you donated your time to this opener. Good sign for he rest of the games though.

In the night's featured matchup, the Sulfur King of Caracas, Hugo Chavez, faced off against Evo "So High I Can Eat A Star" Morales, or rather, the national teams of their respective nations did. The game finished 2-2, which may or may not help in the host nation's push to progess to the second round for the first time ever. We shall see...

Also, it's finally dead-ass summer in NYC. The Don's exact words.

Much, much more to come...

Whose World Is This?

It's mine, it's mine, it's mine.

Though he'd rather not say for which nation it beats hardest, the heart of Don Rodriguez is Latin, through and through. Which is why, for the next few weeks, we implore you, reader, to spend your free minutes and hours with us -- screaming, shouting, meditating, opining, and smiling -- as we spend our time glued to Telefutura, watching the 2007 Copa America. For those that don't know...

This is the 42nd edition of the South American football tournament (a.k.a., for all you pro-/proto-imperialist bastards, the "European Tournament of South America"). For the first time in its history, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela will host the cup, which runs from June 26 - July 15. Fans of petroleum and Beelzebub will know that nation, and its president, Hugo Chávez Frias, quite well.

Don Rodriguez would love to tell you about its many wonders. Sadly, all he learned about Venezuela he learned over many whiskeys on an all-night flight to Europe from a balloon-breasted half-Italian, half-Venezuelan that wouldn't let him fall asleep. The information is not necessarily reliable, shall we say, though the Don maintains, "That one, she was a real sweetheart, that one."

But back to the tournament. Uruguay and Peru get us started tonight (as we speak, in fact!), as do the hosts against Bolivia. European soccer gets more than enough burn, more than enough ink. Support the New World. Show your mates that you know a little more about L'Amerique Sud than the conquering Frenchmen that drew the map above in 1514. Join the Don on his new mission to show as much love as possible to our Socialist brothers from the South, and to wish only the best for Juan Roman Riquelme.

And do yourself a favor. Please, please, please watch it in Spanish. [And don't be afraid to root for Diego Forlan. Mama Don "has a crush." We'll leave it at that.]

COPA AMERICA SCHEDULE (check local listings, ha)

Group A: Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay, Peru
6/26 Uruguay vs. Peru
6/26 Venezuela vs. Bolivia
6/30 Bolivia vs. Uruguay
6/30 Venezuela vs. Peru
7/3 Peru vs. Bolivia
7/3 Venezuela vs. Uruguay

Group B: Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador
6/27 Ecuador vs. Chile
6/27 Brazil vs. Mexico
7/1 Brazil vs. Chile
7/1 Mexico vs. Ecuador
7/4 Mexico vs. Chile
7/4 Brazil vs. Ecuador

Group C: Argentina, Paraguay, United States, Colombia
6/28 Paraguay vs. Colombia
6/28 Argentina vs. U.S.
7/2 U.S. vs. Paraguay
7/2 Argentina vs. Colombia
7/5 Colombia vs. U.S.
7/5 Argentina vs. Paraguay

7/7 Quarter final match: Teams TBA

7/7 Quarter final match: Teams TBA

7/8 Quarter final match: Teams TBA

7/8 Quarter final match: Teams TBA

7/10 Semi final match: Teams TBA

7/11 Semi final match: Teams TBA

7/14 3rd place match

7/15Final match: Teams TBA

The Boomin' System.

Cars ride by.

"C to the O to the O to the L to the I to the N
To the F to the R to the O to the N to the T to the I to the N
That means I'm chillin."

The only book on Thierry's summer reading list [etexts linked @ bottom of page].

Buy U A Drank

I'ma take you home with me.

TOM: "Let's talk money."
DAVID: "I talk that."

Walk Like a Champion

Rom-pa-pa-pom-pom

Buju Banton - Champion

Exactly what Becks & Co. are listening to at this late hour, we're sure of it.

Let's set the scene: We're at Arena. It's late, and getting early. And from where we're standing, just over van Nistelrooy's bobbing head we can see Roberto Carlos, standing atop the bar, wearing one of those tiny sombreros and his game shorts, inviting patrons to admire the definition of -- and perhaps stroke -- his thighs. There is a sizeable line. The rest of the Brazilians are dancing furiously, Emerson throwing 'bows so as to give Robinho and Cicinho ample space to move. A generous soul, he is. Guti, having promised the team he'd shave his head if they won the league, has been fantastically successful convincing girls on the dance floor that he is indeed David Beckham. Iker Casillas is doing his level best to cock-block, as per usual. Guti hates this. Raul is having problems convincing people that he is Raul. Cannavaro never made it inside the club -- still outside posing for paparazzi. Antonio Cassano, who hasn't yet picked up Spanish (he considers it an inferior dialect of Italian, fit for children, maybe) and spends all his time with his fellow countryman, is sulking next to the bouncer, halfway through a pack of Ducados, which he'd be the first to admit are terrible cigarettes.

Our boy Becks? I think you know just as well as we do who he's with and what he's doing. Yeah.

But for, um, real, normalmente no soporto los merengues, but Don & Co. are genuinely happy for D.B. When this guy is on you side, you can't go wrong, can you?

UPDATE: Watch...Highlights of Madrid-Mallorca + ensuing celebrations

Or put some money on your head.

If you can't pay the fee, shout out my n***a fee.

Poor Dida. Despite from birth having to overcome the borne-by-the-world preconception that "Brazilian goalkeeper" is a contradiction in terms, and later the ignominy (not to mention fright/health concerns) of being struck in the head by a criminally overzealous Internazionale fan's flare (see above) during a match a few years ago, AC Milan's sad-faced shot "stopper" isn't even worth a Benjamin on eBay [Cheers, Soccernet].

An angry AC Milan fan put Brazil goalkeeper Dida up for sale on the internet ahead of next week's Champions League semi-final return with Manchester United.

The 33-year-old, who joined Milan in 2000, was a hero after the shootout win over Juventus in the 2003 Champions League final but his popularity has slumped after a series of errors.

He was criticised following last week's 3-2 first-leg defeat to United at Old Trafford, when he flapped a Cristiano Ronaldo header into his own net and then left his near post exposed for Wayne Rooney to blast home a stoppage-time winner.

Dida failed to attract great interest on eBay. The price, before the Brazilian international was removed from the auction site on Friday, had reached 71 euros ($96.66) after 25 bids.

The old baby-on-the-corner trick.

Not gonna fall for that sh*t.

Don Rodriguez is quite fond of the mixtape, but c'mon.

As someone smarter than the Don quipped, if you say real talk, I probably won't trust you.

Please say the baby, I guess:

Lil' Wayne - "Crazy"

Yeah, that shit I hated.
Like early '90s, late '80s,
I was hustlin' as a baby,
you can ask Evil Street [?]
about me, I'm a G.

Back in the studio and do the REMIX!

Every time they shoot a shot, it's like, swizz.

Don Rodriguez and myself only wish that either player, Maradona or Messi, after an ecstatic, orgasmic goal like that, allowed their respective egos to run slightly wild in celebration, beating their chests, you know, sort of like they were King Kong.

[We haven't been able to make a tripartite joke work yet. But we're always looking for the opportunity.]

"They drink Haterade."

Or something to that effect.

Either Don Rodriguez is doing his part to prepare America for the already ridiculous level of scrutiny with which David Beckham is already looked at in places that do not solely associate the man with movies where he supposedly bends things, or he's cashing his fat, pound sterling check from David's publicist.

But anyway, dunny got a new tattoo.

Seemingly derived (OK, maybe only in the Don's free-associative mind) from the Dungeon Family School of forearm ("sleeve") tats, it appears that his new arm art consists of a mixture of scenery and text. We're sure the pictures are pretty, but we're more concerned with the words here, as is the classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, since the message is a Latin slogan rendered in English on Becks. To wit:

The original reads in Latin: “Oderint dum metuant” (a nice example for you Latinists of the use of “dum as proviso, plus the subjunctive”). According to the Daily Mail, Becks first of all wanted the real Latin, but it was the word dum (“provided that/as long as”) that caused the problem. Could it be taken as a reflection of the mental agility of Mr Beckham? Better perhaps to play safe by avoiding it entirely?

In fact as any classicist must know, the word ‘dum’ is only part of the reason why having “oderint dum metuant” or its English equivalent might be an own goal.

Now, this is apparently not the first time Beckham has run afoul of spelling, grammar (or here, accidentally advocating tyranny) in terms of inscribing something on his person that can't easily be removed. Supposedly the tattoo on the inside of his left arm -- "Victoria" in Hindi -- actually spells out "Vihctoria." Which is tragic and hilarious. But anyone who's watched Miami Ink even once -- and I've watched it twice goddamit -- knows that for some reason, people find it nigh-cancerous to actually go and check on the spelling and/or grammatical/syntactical correctness of a phrase that they are having, painfully, applied to their body. Go figure. Or don't, then have someone tattoo it on your face.

Next thing to prepare America for re: Becks: his voice. Think Mike Tyson.

UPDATE: An eagle-eyed reader pointed out that I neglected to give those reluctant to click on the TLS link the English translation of D.B.'s tattoo. It reads: "Let them hate (me) as long as they fear (me)."

One man band man.

Bad man. Bad man.

Okay. Maybe the best player in the world is, once again, small and Argentine.

Ronaldo, Sr. Rodriguez is waiting for an answer.

Can you tell me how good my French is?

Bon jour, money. And au revoir, b*tches.

Not really sure why these Canal+ producers felt "Karma Police" set the appropriate mood for a father-son, side-by-side comparison, but strictly on elegance and symmetry of movement alone, this clip is pretty effective.

Now it is of course ridiculous to start obsessing about 12 year-old Enzo, but for anyone who's watched his pops do, well, just about anything that requires moving a body part, there is a certain recognizable and peerless grace to the way ZZ touches and runs with the ball. And it's remarkable how similar both these, and the particular angles Enzo strikes are to dear old papa. Je dis seulement.

A retour.

Gimme that.

Oh shit.

Come and talk to me.

[Forgive me:] Just press play.

Don Rodriguez exists for days like this. So excited is he about this momentous meet & greet that he just can't wait to tell you a few things that you may or may not have known about these two "living legends."

• Diddy enjoys recycling his “I had the dopest paper route” story.

• Diddy can’t say the word “intern.”

• Diddy cannot be called Diddy in the U.K. because someone else there is called Diddy, and won a legal right to the name.

• Rio Ferdinand is the world’s biggest Jodeci fan.

• Rio Ferdinand is the “most expensive defensive footballer in the whole wide world.”

• Rio Ferdinand smells of Diddy’s cologne. He has a bottle in his bathroom. He is peeved that he was made to pay for it.

It's a joke, it's a joke.

Grant Farred knows this was Ronaldo's very first touch of the match.

Diminutive Manchester United left back Patrice Evra has ideas on how to stop teammate Cristiano Ronaldo.

"Probably the only way to do it is to kill him.

"I have never seen anyone like him before in my life. When he runs at you, you try to grab his shirt or do whatever you can. But he just goes past you, makes fun out of you and leaves you kicking the air.

"I see him every day in training. I watch what he can do and I think 'Cristiano, no. It is a joke'."

Don Rodriguez had a very spirited email conversation the other day with a prominent, American-born Arsenal fan, and being that I was only able to peer over Sr. Rodriguez's shoulders, I will quote selectively. The conversation went as such:

Arse: I hate Ronaldo more than I hate KKKarl Rove. He is the Britney Spears of pro soccer and will eventually be exposed for the fraud he is.
DR: Hating Ronaldo is sort of like hating Brad Pitt. What's the use? Just enjoy it.
Arse: Yeah but I don’t hate Brad Pitt. I think its more like hating Colin Farrell.
DR: Colin Farrell can't do stepovers. Or act. Ronaldo's actually good at both of those things.
Arse: I consistently want to punch both Colin Farrell and Ronaldo in the face. Never Brad Pitt.

In light of Evra's observation, it seems this Arsenal fan was talking team tactics and not merely out of spite, jealousy or ill will. Or not. Perhaps we all should just watch the last three runs on this video and decide for ourselves. [Mixtape fiends will recognize that this highlight reel is set to Kanye West's "Livin' A Movie."]

So much white it'll hurt your eyes.

"Ha-ha!"

Now that's what I'm talking about.

“For the first time in the rap game history, we finna get us a street team of nothing but pretty white girls to promote this single,” group member Slick Pulla said in a statement. “The blondes, the brunettes, the green eyes, the grey eyes, the red heads, the freckles, all that man.”

Caucasian Ladies (and this is no joke): please email, ahem, whitegirl@corporatethugzent.com if you're "down."

Wow.