Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.

Lily Tomlin

(h/t Alida McDaniel)

Ah, the misunderstood Bonobo.  For those not in the know, the Bonobo is one of the two species of chimpanzee; the other is the “common” Chimpanzee – surely a taxonomic slight if there ever was one.  First discovered in 1928, the Bonobo has been the subject of various, contradictory determinations as regards their society and psychology.  At first they were the Peaceful Bonobo; matriarchal, empathic, altruistic, kind, caring, and more likely to send a handmade Thank You Card in response to a shitty birthday present than any of the other great apes.

Then, researchers stared noticing things about Bonobos.  As in, they screwed a lot.  Furiously, even.  With each other; with themselves (often); with stumps and gourds and warm muddy spots at the river’s edge.  Oral.  Anal.  Armpit?  Maybe – but I have yet to see a YouTube video of it. Did an earlier generation of prudish anthropologists, perhaps scarred by Margaret Mead’s counterexample in Samoa, fail to pick up on this, or was it the result of willful blindness?  Either way, it turned out that the reason that the male Bonobo sat by the side of the dying grandma-Bonobo was not to ease her transition into the next world, but instead it was so he could be the first to pluck out an eye and skullfuck the warm corpse.  The Bonoboite response to predators?  Screaming group orgy.  Homosexual proclivities were said to be “pronounced”, which is a funny adjective to use in that context, when you think about it.

But other researchers followed behind, and said, no, Bonobos are not the Paris Hiltons of the ape world; captivity introduced certain exaggerated behaviors.  If the Bonobos fucked a lot, it was because they were behind bars.  Everyone who has ever heard a “don’t pick up the soap” joke will nod their head in understanding here.  Nothing like prison stripes to fire up the old libido!

The fight continued.  Subsequent researchers, packing off to the Congo, perhaps to avoid the semen thrown from the cages, reported that the preternaturally active sex life was not confined to Bonobos in captivity – wild Bonobos did indeed throw 90210-style parties in the treetops south of the Congo River.  The battle continued.  What to make of it?  Biases and prejudices and fact-shaping by hypersexed (or, maybe just as likely, undersexed) ape researchers?  Feeding the public what they wanted to hear – a tribe of apes for whom “eating a banana” was the ultimate double-entendre?

To this day there are still fights among researchers about Bonobo sex.  It must make for some interesting party talk in Georgetown or Cambridge or Raleigh.

My point, if I have one, is that authority is subjective, often contradictory, and unreliable.  If you want to find the truth of the matter, use your own eyes and ears.  Don’t necessarily believe something someone else tells you – not even someone you trust, like, and rely on.  People can deceive; firstly themselves, but sometimes others.  Rely on your own assessments, intuitions, and conclusions.

Despite having just said all that, I leave you with one piece of advice that I hope you follow: never turn your back on a male Bonobo.

This past Friday I attended the avant-garde play Les Chanterelles, held at Le Magisterieux, in Rouen.  This was day one-hundred twelve of the production; a lifetime in theater terms.  This longevity speaks not only to the essential quality of the play, about which I’ll speak more later, but also about the uneasy, complex, and at times contentious relationship between regional French theaters and the capital city of Paris, which captures almost all artistic attention in France (and indeed, Europe). Rouen, in fact, is among the smallest of the regional theaters; the city’s population barely surpasses six figures, and yet is home to a vibrant artistic scene.

When assessing the reasons for this, Paris, of course, figures large: without Paris as counterpoint, the regional directors and playwrights would likely lose some of the combative motivation that results in output like Les Chanterelles.  Paris is the sun, the center, the gravity well, capturing light and heat.   To make a name for themselves, regional centers must needs abandon tried-and-true formulations, me-too second runs, and produce an essentially new creative spark.

The playwright and directeur of Les Chanterelles, one M. Toilé, has done just that, with a baffling, epic production.  At 8:10 PM I filed in to Le Magisterieux with about 250 others – locals, mostly, but, owing to the growing reputation of the play and the director, also many out-of-town critics from places like Berlin and New York and St. Petersburg.  I was warned beforehand by the proprietress of the hotel I was staying at that black tie was absolutely the fashion, and I was glad, for the rule was ostentatiously followed.  Again with an eye to the larger sister to the southeast, the crowd was formal, aggrandized, overflowingly so to my Seattle eye.  Like many American theater crowds with which I am familiar, among the audience there was much craning of necks and wide-eyed, unsubtle analysis of each other prior to the curtain – a shared transatlantic preoccupation, a bourgeois comparison.  Whispers are exchanged, low and urgent; one never knows what anyone else is thinking, but a gestalt emerges, that of an audience overly concerned with self-image and style.

Apparently the norm in Rouen is for men of a certain age to leave their wives at home, all fleshy arms and sagging bosoms, and bring mistresses twenty years their junior, bedecked in resplendent gowns, sparkling jewels, pale swanlike necks standing out in sharp contrast to the jowly countenances of the bankers and opticians that make up the merchant class in town.  I am not sure what to make of this other than as yet another attempt at visible ostentation.

The lights dim, once, twice; the curtain is drawn.  Immediately one is confronted with a Fauvist explosion; elephants, oxen, great swaddling pelicans on pink leashes parade across the stage, keepers swathed all in black, deprecating, imploring the animals to not trample each other, the backdrop, or (god forbid) the audience.  Girls dance and twirl about, throwing bright ribbons high in the air; from the pit comes a clash of trumpets and great booming drums.  Spotlights swirl and weave menacingly.  All is confusion for ten minutes.  Not once did I (knowingly) see the same animal being led.  Where do they stable these beasts?  What sort of municipal negotiations must have taken place to allow this amazing display to take place.

Then, silence; dark.  A more sedate scene follows, in which lovelies of various heights and stage of dress take places on stage right and alternately beckon and vamp to the audience, or standoffishly look off into the distance, pointedly distracted by their hair or nails or the straps on their extravagant footwear.  From left, accompanied by yet more drums, come a shambles of hirsute, older men, forties or fifties perhaps, carrying hammers or pickaxes or large plumbing wrenches, some rolling large stone wheels, others carrying furniture.  Motorcycles and televisions in various states of disrepair are set about in random patterns. Shirtless and sweating, they make a show of workmanlike obsession over their various implements, casting longing looks leftward at the now incautiously interested actresses, some of whom perform complex intertwined arabesques, orbiting closer and closer to the men.   An odd sort of sexual tension begins to develop as these young women pose and gesture and lean over suggestively as they approach nearer and nearer to the men, whose interests are obviously heightened.  One can almost smell the mixture of male sweat and female perfume from the middle rows.   There is a coquettish aura, and one wonders at the seriousness of the ladies, but the interactions become more and more physical, always – always! – directed by the women.  Crude attentions grow more and more pronounced, in the form of pawing and groping.

And then, all of a sudden, the interest wanes.  The women retreat to the right; the men, making a show of confusion and hurt, return to hammering and manual labor for a minute or two, then wander off, eyes occasionally cast back over hairy shoulders to reassess whether anything,can be made of the attentions formerly paid to them.  Nothing is forthcoming.  One marvels at the change, the interruptus, as it were. As soon as the last bureau is carried off stage left, the women spring to life, in an audience-participation mode, and engage the first several rows in leering displays of physicality – daring displays of thigh and breast and shoulder; opened mouths showing glistening white teeth; tongues and eyelashes and fingernails all using every flirtatious trick to get the viewers to reciprocate.  And they do.  Women lean forward and expose décolletage; men leer, gape-mouthed, and roar and growl and paw the air.  The cacophony swells to the very rear of the house, a frenzy of invitation and bluntly suggested carnality.  And then, abruptly – darkness again.  The Grand Tease, as this scene is known to the critics, shuts off.

(I am told that the male roles are mostly drawn from the ranks of itinerant laborers or out-of-work tradesmen.  Despite the meager pay (twelve euros per evening), and the built-in embarrassment of appearing shirtless, hairy, and emasculated evening after evening, the line to audition stretches around the block on Tuesday mornings.)

This back-and-forth, hot-and-cold is intentional.  M. Toilé has stated as much.  In an interview with Le Monde, he was quoted:

Unpredictability is the key to Les Chanterelles.  With unpredictability comes power.  As in Nature, which is subject to the laws of entropy, in which all falls apart, devolves, decomposes, we establish an anti-order in our production, and the audience is compelled to give their allegiance, as it were, to the mirror we hold up.  The unpredictable – the chaotic – cannot be controlled, guided, or influenced; it is arbitrary, capricious and in a way mirrors our conception of God, the god of shifting moods, of terrible vengeances intermingled with great kindnesses.  It is for this reason that I think we have had unrivalled success thus far.

To serve the purposes of unpredictability, on certain alternate nights the play’s format shifts.  On the evening I attended, the focus was on the ensemble, but other evenings the female presence is personified by a single individual. Sometimes she is a dark, venomous character, sliding balefully in and among her male counterparts, blackly condescending to expose herself physically and coarsely; on other nights she arrives as a sylvan maiden, trailing fairy dust, with a retinue of dwarves representing frogs and butterflies and other peaceful forest-creatures.  Children stand with arms clasped high overhead, index fingers pointed heavenward, waving slightly to and fro (they are lilies).  Pale skin plays off the dark backgrounds.  On these nights, the female lead still engages the audience, and the effort required for a single person, no matter how sexually endowed, to engage an entire theater in a a gasping, panting furor is such that the female leads require one week’s rest for each night they perform.  M. Toilé must have secured the services of every beauty in northern France to pull off such a stunt for so many months running.

What to make of the production?  It is a spectacle, to be sure.  Repetitions of the basic plot – crude and clueless male attention, calculated female unpredictability – repeats itself across two acts, in varying ways and intensities.   Clothing and skin are more or less interchangeable, most nights.  The play is suffused with sadness – real feelings, individual feelings, are submerged to the needs of the collective, the body, the symbolism.  However, I am heartened that an attempt so unusual – let’s face it, so abnormal – has garnered the attention and success it has, in a provincial outpost like Rouen.

It is curious that a playwright like M. Toilé, raised in the divertissement school of French theater, should have created a play so unamusing, so lacking in frivolity.  Even the nominally absurdist elements, like the parade of animals, evoke not smiles, but a wary concern.

Next for M. Toilé?  Uncertain prospects.  To say that Montmartre has yet to come calling is an understatement; in fact, the cold reception to Les Chanterelles in the mainstream Paris press is pointed and unflinching.  There are rumors of a production in the making in Lyon, or perhaps it is Marseilles.  It is certain that the trendy and fickle American audiences in New York or (especially) Los Angeles, with its Francophile-worship, would welcome M. Toilé with something more than a warm embrace, should he decide to make the trip; but he seems serious about conquering his home nation first, evening by evening.

I’m such a retard. I have two awesome books open right now – DeLillo’s Underworld and Amis’ London Fields – and have just decided, for nebulous reasons, to open a third – William Gaddis’ JR. I wound my way through the foreward and was sufficiently interested to dive into the book itself. And it’s a delight. Messy, verbal, confusing, multithreaded – if such a term can be used to describe a book, and not a piece of software – and fantastically courageous.

I’m already a fan.

I’ll of course do a full review once I’ve completed it, which, based on my reading habits of late, should be about 11:00 PM tonight. I jest, of course – I have actual work to do, work work, not the work of disentangling Gaddis’ language of counterfeiting and futures and inheritances and the salvation of art in a world absent all semblance of order.

Speaking of salvation, I’m operating under the assumption (today, at any rate) that salvation comes in small doses, not big advances. The Pacific fleet won the war island-by-island, after all, and by the time the Big One was dropped, it was surely all over anyway. So, measured steps. Lifted eyes. Burdens eased, and recognized, and internal commentary re: same reinforcing the stupendous opportunity I’ve been given (actually, plural: opportunities!). Productivity measured breath-by-breath, beat-by-beat as my Bodyrox station on Pandora goads me ever along.

A beautiful Saturday! I ran this morning, sagging slightly at the start from creaky 38-year old knees, but warmth and purpose warmed up those patellar tendons within a half-mile.

Now comfortably ensconced at a Tully’s coffee, laptop and cappuccino and iPhone all within easy reach, taking those short steps.

Have a wonderful day!

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

Andrew Carnegie

I wonder if one out of three ain’t bad.

I’m bound up, twisted, a Gordian knot of self-imposed burdens. I want to free myself, burst out and up in a delirious, unfettered, unselfconscious explosion of positive emotion, but I can’t. I want to jump on my horse and ride breathless through the long night, lantern in hand, yelling “The British are coming!” to one and all. I want to ride a barrel over Niagara Falls and emerge wet and laughing and yell “let’s do that AGAIN!”

I want to smile. Holding back my smile makes me sad.

Forgetfulness occasionally looks enticing. Take the blue pill; jump into the time machine; pay a visit to Lacuna. But that’s a dodge and I know it. And besides, there are silver linings all around if I were but to raise my gaze.  Tomorrow the stars could fall out of the sky, circle round my head, and bathe my soul in radiance.  I’m not feeling it, not now (ok, not at all), but it could happen.

You never know who or what will walk through that door.

Of course, it works both ways – stuff can happen that puts you at a further remove from your goals.  Soldier on? Double down?  Abandon hope?  So many things to consider.

One positive thing I’m doing is exercising.  I’ve been on a little mini-streak lately, and I’m going to explicitly go for 30 days in a row.  If that goes well, I may consider a repeat of last summer and go for 100.  Exercise – exhausting, angst-burning, mind-numbing exercise – is good for me, in so many ways.  Getting healthy and fit and trim doesn’t have a lot of downside, save for the time involved, which – let’s face it – can always be found.

So look for me on a road, running, looking up at the stars and wondering when they’ll descend and shine.

Imagine it’s 480 B.C.  You’re Xerxes, the king of the Persian Empire, undisputed, undefeated champion of the world. You’ve just concluded the first day of battle at Thermopylae.  You’re wandering the battlefield at dusk, through endless rows of dead Persians stacked like cordwood, and you’re thinking,

“Huh.  Pretty shitty day.”

Xerxes could hardly have been more surprised at how that day went than I was at the conclusion of this day.  Unlike Xerxes, however, who had to face those pesky Greeks and in particular that hunky Leonidas, the progress by which my day went from sunrise to shitty involved a totally self-determined course.  What use our minds, if not to construct hells of our own imagining?

When I say “hell”, of course I jest, I overreach, I go in for a bit of hyperbole.  Hell is for other people.  One-limbed Rwandan orphans, for example, or English football fans.  See, I begin to reacquire my sense of humor just in the writing of the thing, in the meritorious vomiting on the screen.  Writing is good for me as well as good for you, dear reader.  Maybe I’ll win a Webby!  My five words? I’m not sure, but OF COURSE it would have to be something bland and safe, since I’m a nice guy after all, always eager to do the right thing, to not ruffle feathers, to not press, not expose, not force, not grasp, not reach, not pursue, not render the canvas in bright aggressive colors but prefer instead an inoffensive palette of mauve and taupe, the better for my inoffensive pastoral scene.

Well, fuck it.  Fuck it fuck it fuck it.

I’ve written that want is a terrible affliction – I’m beginning to think that phrase will define the middle third of my life -  and yet I remain a passionate, eager, wanting individual.  The heart wants what it wants, and inoffensiveness chafes.   I sit here with all the advantages the 21st century has to offer – I’m a white American who makes a good living and is smart and nice and reasonably fit and healthy -  and yet I want more.  But every time I get into what I might call a “wanting stage” I find myself in a real existential struggle.  Man vs. Himself, just like in the thin-folio writing manuals.  Perhaps I’m overly devoted to an idea, an obtainable idea, and that letting go is the last final surrender to happiness.  Zen-like.  He writes, chin in hand; be happy with what you have, and do not want.  Let go.  Abandon.

And yet, part of the passion, the eagerness, the sensitivity, shall we say, is to imagine a better world, a better life; one in which dreams do come true, endings do come wrapped in scarlet ribbon, and credits roll with the audience smiling and clapping, exclaiming to each other that it was the best story they’ve ever seen.  No 3-D glasses required; just a big helping of karma, to align the pieces just so.

When I’m down on myself I think what kind of idiot believes that shit.  Fairy tales?  Bah.  But I’m genetically and attitudinally made to believe that way.  I’m me.  And if occasionally it means overreaching and then being forced to lunge back, ashamed and blowing on burnt fingertips, having tried to grasp more than I could hold, then that’s the required penalty.  So be it.  Xerxes and I both share an essential world-beating confidence, despite all the evidence stacked around us.  And the occasional blow to the head makes me realize (yet again) what’s really important, what I do have that I should treasure and keep safe and warm, and that’s a comforting feeling once the pain of the blow has subsided.  Focus on your gifts – those you have and those you are given.  That’s a sure path back to happiness.

Speaking of five words for the Webbys: “Want Is A Terrible Affliction”.  That’s original and pointed and timely.  A keeper.

Germany just finished dismantling England 4-1 in the round of 16 and I’m sad, but not as sad as if I would have predicted an England victory.  The fact is that England has been pretty poor this tournament, and Germany today took back their form they showed against Australia.  Firepower to spare.

(aside – I wonder when enough time will have passed for a German attacking side to be given a nickname from WWII?  Luftwaffe.  Blitzkrieg.  etc.)

I am not going to say much about Lampard’s disallowed goal – this stuff happens, and it wouldn’t have stopped the Muller counterattacks at 67’ and 70’ anyway.   Our defense was wobbly, imprecise, and lacked confidence.  I’m not sure if the Ferdinand-to-King-to-Carragher-to-Upson merry-go-round really was the problem, or if we just don’t defend well as a team overall.  Both?  More than that?  Our structure coming off free kicks exposed horrible flaws up the middle.  Too many attacking midfielders and not enough holding players?

My two picks to go all the way – Holland and Uruguay – are still very much in it.   Uruguay played a very exciting match yesterday against South Korea and are set to take on Ghana, a match they’ll certainly be expected to win.  They may take on either Argentina or Germany.  On the strength of today’s performance, Germany may be favored all the way through to the final, but let’s see how Messi & c. do this afternoon against what I expect will be a very overmatched Mexican side.

The knockout stage of the World Cup begins.  I’m currently 3:41 into the first match, Uruguay vs. South Korea, playing from Port Elizabeth.  The pressure and excitement is intense.

Surprises?  Oh, a bunch: France’s implosion.  Italy’s fizzle.  Spain’s shocking loss to Switzerland. Germany’s loss to Serbia.  Africa’s terrible underperformance – 14 points from 54. Chile’s six points and feisty match play against Spain yesterday, down to ten men and yet remaining full of fight.  Chile are really the darlings of the WC so far, with impressive, tenacious, beautiful play.

Group by group:

A: Uruguay look really good and I remain convinced that they are good enough to reach the final.

B: Argentina are very impressive.  Is there a more fun player to watch than Lionel Messi?  Dribbling is sexy.

C: England and the U.S. both look nervous.

D: Germany has underperformed despite their six, and yet it wouldn’t surprise me if they reach the final based on their play against Australia.

E: Holland are winning ugly.  Can it continue?  I think so.

F: Paraguay and Slovakia?  Huh.  Thanks for the gift, Italy!

G: Brazil are sneaky, on seven points but they will easily make it to the semifinal at least.  Portugal won’t get any more North Korea results, but they’ve yet to concede a goal and – as much as I hate to say it – may surprise as well.

H: Spain and Chile both can play beautiful football.  I think the Switzerland result was a fluke and that Spain will do well from here on out.

So, predictions:

Uruguay, Argentina, Germany, U.S., Holland, Japan, Brazil, and Spain through to the final 8.  The ENG-GER and ESP-POR matches will be the fun ones from the round of 16, with BRA-CHI possibly being the upset of the century.

I love the World Cup.  It’s going to be an exciting couple weeks!

Yes, another made-up-word for a title.  But it’s my fucking blog!  I can make up all the wordles I want to.  Actually that last one, “wordle”, isn’t exactly a made-up word.  It’s related to tag clouds and sounds cute, at any rate.  But I digress.  Pigment – pigment is the topic of the day (evening) – a friend writes and says “what’s up with all that color stuff you posted earlier,” or words to that effect.  I shall explain.  Or attempt to.  I confess I initially feel like Christopher Hitchens trying to explain his alcoholism – a bit indignant, perhaps, at having to explain something that makes so much goddamn sense that words are no longer necessary, when words are a hindrance, a distraction even.  Such are the vicissitudes of language – sometimes words help, and sometimes words betray us in the most pitiful ways.

Color is of course a metaphor, but for what?  And what does lack of color imply?  Let’s start with a mental image – that of the huge jawbreaker, licked through to the center, which is all white, clean, clear, colorless.  Or another image – a crisp white t-shirt, which, after having been tied in knots and dunked in dye, ends up still white – a miracle!  Heads are scratched.  Brows are furrowed.  How can something resist?

Others: the sno-cone that turns the raspberry flavoring clear.  The vanilla ice-cream cone that sloughs off the crisp chocolate covering.  The harvest moon, clear and white in the otherwise red glow of dusk.

The skeptics wag their fingers. Intentionality plays a part, prima facie, they assert.  If so it’s a grim sort of intention, for who intentionally resists the bursts of color that present themselves to us, indeed, are forced on us from time to time?  The sheer joyous oral-expulsive delight in being one with the rainbow, washed with pigment, gasping and fluttering and shrieking in the ROYGBIV-ness of it all.

Others, less skeptical and more insightful, might cluck and point to deeper meanings, teasing apart the language for clues.  Jawbreaker. Colorless. Resistance.  A kremlinology of the heart and mind ensues.  Hair is burnt. Palmists consulted. Chicken bones tossed and tossed again.  Clues – unforthcoming.

Of course one can always ask, but there again I run into a sheepish inability to articulate exactly what I mean.  What DO I mean? I’m not sure.  I’m really not sure.  And I really hesitate to both (a) inquire too deeply or (b) make any bold proclamations.  Instability and uncertainty and a healthy respect for the tides that do not turn beachward inform my thinking.  A plea for simplicity? A considered indifference?  A preparatory stage, a canvas upon which some future story can be drawn?  A mute complaint about the machinations of physics and chemistry?  I don’t know.

Like most associations, there are elements of what is and what was and what may yet be.  The what is is the interesting part for me – because what is is is always partial and subjective and inconclusive – for aren’t all of our world’s own reflections either aspirational or critical?  We see ourselves as either (a) how we would have others see us (aspirational), or as we secretly think they actually DO see us (critical).  There is no reality, just a constant crabwalk among shifting dunes, blown hot or cold by our mind’s own wind.

So – retreat.  Retreat to the invisible, the inconsidered, the simple, the singular, the clean slate, the tabula rasa.  Let the color come back when and where it may, at some future time, in some future place.

Do I start with the “odd” or with the “end”?  Today is a day remarkable for bringing something of a sense of clarity after a short period of intense muddling slogging, made even more remarkable by my near-complete insomnia of the past couple nights.

I start with the World Cup.  Yes, that was a segue, a blunt and un-signalled segue.  France is off, sent home in disgrace after forgetting their balls on the pitch in Kynsna last Sunday.  They were in shambles today against South Africa and are perhaps the worst team in the Cup Finals, sinking even lower than the robots from North Korea.  I can’t say I’m too disappointed.  Anelka and Evra are both a disgrace and should be booted from the national team.  Domenech – well, I’m not sure what to make of Domenech.  He led the side to the final match in 2006, but the CW is that the side was *really* led by Zidane, and I can’t say I disagree with that assessment.

At any rate, the drama drops by 50% as soon as the French hit the tarmac for their ignominious flight home.

I stand by my prediction from early June that Holland are favorites, with Uruguay the dark horse.  Forlan has looked good for the Uruguayan national side, and while the Dutch will always hear complaints that their style is not 1970-s era Cruyff, they get the job done and are probably going to win their group with no loss of points.  Other contenders have faltered.  All the major European sides have taken a fall, and the main challengers look to be the two strong South American sides, Brazil and Argentina.

I still think Germany will bounce back from their embarrassing defeat to Serbia, however.

Back to the moment.  I’m trying to think how to describe my state of being right now.  I suppose that I feel drained of color, which, if you know me in real life is a sort of joke, because I am nearly the whitest white guy this side of an Albino.  The sun shines in China and my ass gets sunburnt.  But I feel like no pigment can adhere to me right now, no color; all would wash off, to be left white, or black, or perhaps gray.  Perhaps there is an occluding force in play, blocking the light, the heat.  I’m not sure.

The quickest way to die is to live in uncertainty.  Move fast or perish.  Take chances, reach out, be aggressive and overt and goal-oriented and you’ll be fine.  Take your life into your own hands, because others’ will never do.

Back to football.  Tomorrow England and the U.S.A play their final group games and my prediction is that at least one of the two sides fail to advance.  I’m going to go out on a limb and predict the Americans will fall, drawing to Algeria when a win should be forthcoming.  However – however.  That’s why they play the games, because pundits and pontificators don’t get to establish the results.

Moving forward.