Ferndando Torres, Liverpool’s No. 9, gets in two nice digs at a former No. 10 and a current No. 14:

I have never thought about leaving the club. . . . My team in Spain is Atletico Madrid and my team in England is Liverpool.

I don’t think I’ll play for another English club, and definitely not Manchester United.

He’s a rarity: a young, immensely talented footballer with his head screwed on right.

The Beautiful Game has one less “good guy” today:

Sir Bobby Robson, the former England manager, has died aged 76. He passed away at his home in County Durham this morning after losing a long battle with cancer.

Sir Bobby’s death should bring perspective to the “silly season” but it probably won’t. Sigh.

You won’t catch me quoting Alex Ferguson often, but his tribute is pure class:

His parents instilled in him the discipline and standards which forged the character of a genuinely colossal human being.

Football needs men like Sir Bobby; football will sadly miss Sir Bobby.

From novelist Tim O’Brien’s Atlantic essay, “Telling Tails”, on the well-imagined story:

A well-imagined story is not generic. It has not been lifted off the shelf at your local literary Wal-Mart. A well-imagined story is not predictable, or at least not wholly predictable. A well-imagined story is not melodramatic; it does not rely on purely villainous villains and purely heroic heroes; it does not use formulas in place of inventiveness; it does not substitute cliché for fresh vision. . . . A well-imagined story does not rev up bland, everyday events with lurid, purply, overwrought language that seeks to elevate such events beyond their due.

This is why I can say without doubt that writing fiction is the hardest work I’ve done in my life. It is also, without doubt, the most satisfying.

NPR’s Morning Edition on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House:

Drive past the grime and glitz of Hollywood toward the hills of Griffith Park and suddenly, there it is: a Mayan temple perched above the city. Ennis House is one of Wright’s most famous creations—and not only to architecture buffs.

I’m not one who wishes for wealth, especially ridiculous Gatesian wealth, but . . . I wish I had the money to buy and restore this beauty.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so awed by a house as I was a couple weeks ago, standing with friends outside this modern Mayan temple.

A fantastic review/overview by All About Jazz’s John Kelman of two of my favourite Canterbury Scene albums: National Health’s National Health and Of Queues and Cures:

Esoteric’s timely reissues of these two National Health discs are a strong reminder of just how important [keyboardist Dave] Stewart was at a time when there were few, if any rules and it was not just acceptable, but demanded to pursue all avenues to their logical conclusions . . . and, often, beyond. Esoteric’s forthcoming Hatfield and the North reissues will, no doubt, bolster this belief even further, providing further evidence that it was and remains possible to create music of great compositional depth without resorting to excessive self-indulgence or over-consideration.

At a time when national health is on every yanqui’s mind, the only national health that anyone should be paying attention to is of the musical kind from late ’70s England.

What does it say about Landon Donovan—a complete disgrace to The Beautiful Game and to his yanqui countrymen (the complete opposite of USian and former Fulham star Brian McBride)—that this Liverpool supporter would prefer that Everton beat the MLS “allstars” in tonight’s friendly?

Again, on “genre” and disrespect . . . Stuart Evers discussing prejudice and the Harrogate Crime Writing festival:

For all David Simon’s protestations, The Wire is a cop show. A cop show that redefines the genre and refuses to be limited by it, but a cop show nonetheless. Mainstream critics have called it a masterpiece, one of the best television programmes ever made. I can’t imagine this being the case if it was just a novel. No one has given the same rapturous reception to one of [George] Pelecanos’s novels, for example, though he was sanguine about it all afterwards—“So long as people read the books, I’m into it,” he said.

Although I hate comparing two different mediums, Evers is correct. Novels may transcend their genres, but they’re never considered literary masterpieces.

Pity poor Mervyn Peake . . .