Tag Archives: Surrealism

2026 World Cup wrap-up

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FIFA already has plans to expand the World Cup to 64 teams in 2030. This fait accompli dilution is justified by FIFA as an opportunity for more nations to participate in this great event. But the 2027 women’s World Cup will have only 32 teams. So why isn’t an expanded participation format good for the women’s game?

Qualifiers exist, which allow every nation (except Russia) a chance to make the World Cup. Note that there aren’t mandatory hydration breaks during qualifiers, because no one is watching relatively speaking. This speaks to FIFA’s true motive here, which isn’t player protection.

A 64-team World Cup format would only make sense if it were knockout elimination games from the start– like the NCAA basketball tournaments. A 64-team field with group play only mucks things up more, creating too many uninteresting matches. This tournament took too long to actually get going in 2026, because of the 48-team field. This inevitable move to a 64-team format was decided before this World Cup, and it’s why Fox analysts (& their corporate partners) defended the 48-team expansion so steadfastly. Criticism was curtailed as Fox broadcast policy.

Trump stated to the media yesterday, “This has been a tournament like no other, filled with fierce competition, unforgettable moments. Probably the most unforgettable is when they gave that gentleman — is it a red card? And I was forced to call Gianni and just make a recommendation. I said ‘Gianni, I’d like to make a recommendation. Let the guy in the game!’ No, I didn’t say that. I said, ‘I’d like to wage a complaint.’ I had no idea what was going to happen. But, you know, so much better the way it worked out because there’s no controversy. They won the game and our team had all of its players. [Infantino] made another great decision if you think about it. You’ll never get credit for that.”

For the record, the US lost to Belgium 4-1, in a disasterpiece performance, and there was plenty of controversy over Folarin Balogun’s one-game red card suspension being lifted. Such is the depth of Trump’s delusional ramblings. Neither FIFA nor the USSF has yet explained the discipline of assistant team manager Sam Zapatka & USSF CIA security guy Frank Pannell. ESPN published one brief article on this, which explained nothing, and has apparently moved on.

In 2034, the World Cup is to be held in Saudi Arabia. This means the US is in line to host again in 2038, due to FIFA host-bid rules. Only Oceania/Australia & North America are eligible to host the World Cup in 2038. NFL owners are already lining up their stadiums as 2038 host sites.

It is questionable whether a World Cup will actually be held in 2030, 2034 or 2038. Humanity is now at the outset of another world war, with fronts in Venezuela, Gaza-Lebanon, Iran, and Russia-Ukraine. World War 2 cancelled the World Cup in 1942 & 1946, as defeating the Nazis became a global priority over international sports. We are reaching such a historical inflection point again.

Football brings the people of the world together in joy for the World Cup, but it is not a given right. The World Cup was originally an idea for peace that has been distorted & corrupted by nationalism & international capital to a point where the game on the field matters less than the money & politics driving it. By the time it’s over, fans feel exhausted, not only from the games, but from the politics.

In short, there’s far too much Tom Rinaldi at the World Cup. People who are clueless on the game and who don’t belong in the broadcast booth are given a platform by Fox for their bland mediocrity & bad minds. It’s sad when the semi-finals & finals broadcasts have to be watched with the mute button active to make any sense of what’s happening on the pitch.

As much as I love Rebecca Lowe, Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich, I’m always forced to be at the ready to mute Alexi Lalas and his diarrhea of the mouth. Fox simply will not allow a serious football broadcast at the World Cup. They always insist on their stooges being present to muck things up. This is because Fox is about the NFL first.

The first American rules football game was Princeton v Rutgers in 1869. It was called football because the ball was carried on foot. Of course, international football had already been around for centuries, but no matter, American rules football was a fringe game at the start.

The forward pass wasn’t codified into the American rules until 1906, the year the NCAA was established.  Michigan v Notre Dame established the NCAA. The NFL didn’t establish until 1920, as college football was more popular in the US through the 1950’s. Long before the NFL Super Bowl-era established mass popularity of the game in America, the World Cup was already a global phenomenon.

American rules football isn’t played with the foot, except for punters & kickers. The modern game is pass dominant, so everything about American rules football is a misnomer today. Yet, NFL fans all insist their name is correct, and that FIFA and the rest of the world have it wrong– and that it’s called soccer.

Soccer v football is much more than an argument over semantics. It goes to the heart of the meaning of words. It represents the idea that wrong-headed thinking can be imposed on a nation as correct by a wealthy & powerful ruling class. It smacks of arrogance & ignorance.

The US men can’t win at the World Cup playing soccer. The world is playing football, and as long as a misnamed American sport takes priority over historical truth and the true meaning of words, the US will continue to crash out of future World Cups. More than anything, that has been my final takeaway from the 2026 World Cup.

Hypothetical situation: I have just invented a new sport and I’m naming it basketball. It’s not the basketball everyone knows– NBA, WNBA, etc– it’s a game played with an oblong ball and woven baskets with completely different rules. I insist the world must refer to it as basketball, otherwise I’ll get upset.

Sat 18 Jul 2026 08:00 PM CDT

US pregame show technical difficulties on Fox led to Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich being swapped-out before the third-place England v France match. My guess would be a power outage due to violent thunderstorms passing through Brooklyn led to them going off-the-air in New York. Doesn’t Fox have weather professionals who can predict this stuff and be ready if/when the power goes out, while keeping the host & analysts protected from the rain? That, and doing an outdoor broadcast in choking wildfire smoke could also upset the talent. Since it wasn’t game day in NY, an indoor broadcast studio would have been more appropriate with these outdoor conditions, and apparently Fox couldn’t figure that out.

It appears Fox failed on all that. It was a third-place game, which no one wants to be part of. It just happened to become the greatest third-place game in World Cup history, which is like saying it was the greatest NIT final ever played. and I hope Thierry Henry & Zlatan Ibramivich enjoyed their day off after walking out on what was very likely Fox studio incompetence. I’m just speculating because people are wondering, while Fox is deflecting on this.

Darren Fletcher-Owen Hargreaves did a more-than-adequate job carrying the one-hour Fox pregame. The best thing of all was no Alexi Lalas. At halftime Rebecca Lowe was back on-the-air in New York with her B-squad analysts. Rebecca Lowe is too professional to walk out on a broadcast, even though I sense she’s frustrated with Fox. Thierry & Zlatan have had enough.

* All day Fox advertised the Dodgers-Yankees in the Bronx as their Saturday night MLB broadcast. That promotion ran through the World Cup post-game show. After which, Fox viewers were sent to the Giants-Mariners because the Dodgers-Yankees are rained out & postponed.

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The rights for the US broadcast of the 2030 World Cup are to be bid upon soon. Fox/Univision, NBC/Telemundo, Disney/ESPN/ABC, Netflix, Amazon, & YouTube are the early partners & competitors, and the asking price is $1.5-2B. For comparison, Fox paid FIFA $485M for the US broadcast rights to the 2026 World Cup. FIFA wants to bundle English & Spanish language US broadcasts in 2030. Fox is upset that English speakers in the US are watching Telemundo over Fox broadcasts.

The popularity of the World Cup (like the NFL, NBA & MLB) will eventually put these games behind a paywall. In 2026 every game was on either Fox or FS1 (cable), meaning people could watch most matches for free with a ‘rabbit ears’ antennae. If FIFA & its corporate partners have their way, this World Cup will likely be the last time that happens.

Sun 19 Jul 2026 10:15 AM CDT

This is the only mainstream article I could find on the Fox NYC technical difficulties yesterday at the World Cup. It’s remarkable how the Fox World Cup broadcast, which everyone was watching, has had virtually no media commentary concerning its obvious issues yesterday. Near the end the article it reads, “In a last-minute wrinkle, a transmission issue forced the team to bring in a full production truck — Mobile TV Group 53RP is parked on Water Street — instead of the BRISK (Broadcast Remote IP Studio Kit) unit that has supported nearly all the remote studio shows throughout the tournament.”

That “last minute wrinkle” was obviously the severe thunderstorms which washed-out Saturday’s pregame broadcast from Brooklyn, as well as the Dodgers-Yankees that evening. Fox Sports senior VP of remote studio operations, Rod Conti, waxed artistic on his production choices, “In the old days before mass media, paintings were commissioned to tell a story. If Napoleon won a battle, the painter who was commissioned would represent him however the story needed to be told. That was like your press. And that’s essentially how I look at our backdrops for sets… When you see this backdrop, you’re seeing Manhattan, you’re looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, you’ve got the Freedom Tower in the frame. We all felt like this was gold.”

The problem for the most logistically complicated production that Fox Sports has ever attempted was that it couldn’t stand the weather. Therefore viewers missed out on Adidas promoting their “New York home of soccer” complex, Tom Rinaldi, and all the rest that Rod Conti & Fox had planned. It was a welcome third-place match reprieve for football fans. Sunny conditions in NYC today– for better or worse.

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Like every football fan, I’m awaiting Spain v Argentina. Like every sports-loving American, I’m awaiting the fan response to Trump being shown on the big screen at NY/NJ Stadium. The world’s leading war criminal will then present the FIFA World Cup trophy to the winner. This will be visceral for everyone, and the mass media will surely downplay the ferocity, intensity & totality of World Cup fan response to Trump. It will be surreal. If I was Rod Conti, I would commission surrealist painter René Magritte to depict this story.

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Exclusive US broadcast rights (English & Spanish) for the women’s World Cup in 2027 & 2031 are held by Netflix, and according to Google AI, the financial terms of the broadcast deal between Netflix & FIFA have not been publicly disclosed. Netflix says there will be no subleasing to cable or over-the-air networks. The World Cup for women has disappeared behind a tech giant paywall. Note the 2031 World Cup will be jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica.

Today, US viewers have the option, for the last time, of switching to Telemundo for the World Cup final. I want to hear the crowd singing and the football coming off the feet of the players, but I don’t want to listen to John Strong & Stu Holden reciting their scripts & MLS promotions. I also want to hear the crowd reaction to Trump, without Fox jump-cutting & AI filtering what’s going on. This option to switch from a major Fox Sports broadcast to Spanish-language Telemundo will NEVER be allowed to happen again in capitalist America.

* According to Google AI, macro-level data reveals that nearly half (49%) of the total US World Cup audience chose Telemundo & Peacock over Fox Sports during the tournament.

Sun 19 Jul 2026 03:20 PM CDT

Participation trophies for everybody / as long as you can afford to pay-to-play

That was the halftime show message from Global Citizen. Insert banal melody & repeat ad nauseam. The crowd was NOT electrified by this lip-synced halftime show. Football fans went to a World Cup final in NY/NJ, and a bad Fox Sports musical production broke out.

Sun 19 Jul 2026 05:35 PM CDT

Spain 1, Argentina 0 after extra time. The best team won. Football won. The broadcast was much better on Telemundo with two Spanish language teams on the pitch. I noticed Telemundo gets the same feed as Fox (& presumably Peacock), but their resolution isn’t as good. No matter. It’s the announcers energy & passion that hold the English-speaking viewer. Telemundo also stays on the field during the hydration breaks, instead of cutting to commercials like Fox. FIFA clearly had a deal with Fox Sports on this and fans saw right through it.

Fox Sports blew this 2026 World Cup because their executives thought they could get away with doing whatever they wanted. There is a palpable level of Fox executive contempt for international football, who feel this game threatens their beloved NFL. But streaming & a Spanish language alternative in the US gave fans freedom of choice, so football & Telemundo won. Over half of Fox’s viewing audience tuned them out by the finals. Sponsors who paid for World Cup advertising on Fox aren’t happy. How does Fox explain that?

That’s a wrap. The World Cup ends just like that, and leaves everyone wanting more. If the world wants more amazing World Cups to enjoy, they will have to be fought for & earned. Over & Out

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Political guide to being an artist

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Music is personal and everyone does it for their own reasons. Everyone who has tried knows that. This essay is to concisely explain my reasons, which are mostly misunderstood. I started like everyone else because I love music and wanted to do my own thing. At first the goal was to be a rock star. I eventually learned that wasn’t possible, so I outgrew the idea and became something more. I became an artist with socialist consciousness.

In the history of popular music, this has only been tried a few times, and it has always been met with virulent hostility & blacklisting from the entertainment industry & ruling establishment. The surrealists led by French writer André Breton were the earliest 20th century example of art & socialist politics meeting (through Trotsky), and their movement was deeply influential, though it was finally overwhelmed by fascism across Europe in the 1930’s. The surrealist movement deserves careful study today in terms of content, revolutionary potential, and its inherent limitations.

Mexican painter Diego Rivera, whose frescoes & murals dazzled the art world in the 1930’s, flirted with Trotsky, but eventually retreated to his mansion as World War II broke out in Europe.

Post-war art has been kept under the thumb of anti-communism, ever since President Truman laid out US Cold War policy, which has continued up to this day. Cold War policy can be summed up as: Russia is the evil enemy, and Marxism is never to be tolerated. If you were an advocate for civil rights (women, blacks, immigrants) & anti-war in this era, then you were branded as a godless communist that must be expunged from the Earth [!].

Popular folk music group, the Weavers, whose best known song was “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” were blacklisted because leading member Pete Seeger was a socialist. The Weavers had a “clean” playlist for live performance, but it didn’t matter to the anti-communists in 1950. The original Weavers disbanded in their prime by the summer of 1952, due to no gigs. They revived themselves a few years later with their famous Carnegie Hall performance, recorded Christmas Eve 1954, but not released by Vanguard Records until April, 1957.

* As a footnote. these irrational hysterics & witch hunts were brought back to life by today’s anti-communists with the Black Lives Matter & MeToo campaigns in the 2010’s. Their goal (as always) is to artificially divide the working masses through identity politics. No serious discussion of class inequality & imperialism is allowed with anti-communists. That’s when they get hostile & violent.

Bob Dylan’s working class appeal in his early to mid-1960’s era made people take sides on issues like racism, class society, the Vietnam War, etc. Fans & the establishment turned on him when he electrified (which magnified his message), to the point where he finally had to retreat & hide away.

On July 29th, 1966, a month after his final classic-period masterpiece Blonde On Blonde was released, Bob Dylan crashed his motorcycle near Woodstock, New York. He used this (relatively minor) accident as a pretext to remove himself from the political discussion in the mainstream. He did this to save his life. At this point, Vietnam was becoming out in-the-open & overwhelmingly polarizing. Bob Dylan risked being killed like Malcolm X, as he was the white equivalent at the time with his songs. MLK, and Democrat for President, Bobby Kennedy were gunned down in 1968, just to give you an idea of the times.

I don’t blame Bob Dylan for doing what he did to save his life, and neither should you. There was no organized political party on the left that he could have joined to protect himself and his political convictions. In revolutionary terms, Bob Dylan was too far ahead of his time. He had to retreat back into capitalism to carry on.

In the jazz realm, Sun Ra (pic above) stands as the shining star of revolution, with a catalog & body-of-work too vast to discuss here. His avant garde piano/electric keyboard/synthesizer style, backed by his Arkestra, seems to have come from another planet, which he claimed it did. Everything he did, from Saturn Records, to how he recorded & marketed himself, while holding his Arkestra together for 40+ years until his death (and then beyond), deserves careful study.

Sun Ra approached music as a conscious objector to WWII. He lived with, then ran afoul of the Black Panthers, a point ‘Afro-futurist’ racialists avoid. Sun Ra created his myth, to protect himself, and it worked. He died naturally in 1993, and never had to change his message.

If you are not a myth, whose reality are you?
If you are not a myth, whose reality are you?
If you are not a reality, whose myth are you?

— Sun Ra

Let the verse cited above roll around in your head for awhile, while contemplating deeply. I love Sun Ra, but I don’t want to be a myth, I’m a reality, so the question eventually became for me, as Ric Size: How do I become a revolutionary artist without having to retreat politically or descend into mysticism?

First, you must educate yourself in all spheres. You can’t be fooled by the bullshit, old & new, and you can’t rely any anyone else to tell you the truth. You must discover it for yourself & always keep it close. You must know yourself completely.

But beyond that you need help. No one is an island, and eventually everyone dies. You need to affiliate yourself with an organization that represents your political values and will survive into posterity. By the time I became serious about being an artist in the late 2000’s, such a political entity had come into existence– the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS).

The WSWS has had an Arts section from the start, at the insistence of Arts editor David Walsh. As I understand the discussions which took place back in 1998, (and I wasn’t present), it was David Walsh who insisted on the inclusion of an ‘Arts’ section as essential, and he had to convince David North & Nick Beams (among others)– and finally did. It was a far-sighted inclusion which deserves socialist merit, because it is art that sparks revolutions by defining it to the masses through songs, film, literature, paintings, etc. You can’t separate art & revolution.

Let me finish on musical artists with socialist consciousness by pointing out that there is revolution in the reggae music of Bob Marley & the Wailers, Scratch Perry, etc. Same with P-funk, punk & post-punk. Same with Fela Kuti’s Afro-beat. Same with Eno, Fripp, Byrne…

I affiliate myself with the ICFI, the Trotskyist party of international socialism. By doing this, I never have to walk anything back. My art isn’t perfect, and there is no such thing anyways. All it’s meant to do is inspire & educate. As a revolutionary artist, you light a candle so others can follow. Whatever comes after is left up to others, as it should be.

All an artist can do is continue to work. The critics & naysayers will always be there. You can’t have fans, without having haters. The idea is to love your fans and always be true to them, while appropriately dealing with the haters. It’s serious work, so make sure you find good help & trusting allies.

I’ve written a lot about baseball analytics on this site and for good reason. There is a truth in the numbers, that is often hidden through only observing. MLB is such a long season, and the subtle differences between good teams & the best team, are often too slight to see with the naked eye. If you can see them, it helps to have numbers to back up what you are scouting.

It’s like this with art & politics. Art is creative freeflow, where politics can be studied scientifically using orthodox Marxism, known as Trotskyism. To make sure your art stays true to the truth, you need Trotskyism (the WSWS) as a political guide. Once you are fundamentally sound (politically speaking), a dialectical change will occur, and then you will be able to write anthems that appeal to kids & the masses with a revolutionary spirit.

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Art: Explained by an Artist

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What is art? How does it happen? What’s it’s role in human society? These questions are now more important than ever. They demand immediate & correct answers. Here they are.

Art is how we express our inner essence. It’s the best we have in us, as art applies to any profession, passion, or endeavor you choose. It has traditionally been achieved through paint, music, film & pen. Art moves minds. True art is revolution, embodied in its form.

Oscar Wilde was correct when he said the public needs to become more artistic. Most people still try to tell you it’s the other way around, for whatever reason they may have. Everyone has it in them to be artistic. Applying this instinct is a primary tool in defeating fascism. Conversely, ignoring & desecrating art, leads directly to fascism.

Attempts to wipe out art are futile & hypocritical. Recall the Nazi’s of Germany who ruled Europe from 1933-1945, they were infamous art thieves & hoarders. Much of their booty is still maintained in private collections around the world, stolen from persecuted Jews in WWII.

Science, technology & ideology always impact & define art. When revolutionary ideas become embodied in art, it becomes very powerful. Art impacts society as soft power, enveloping an era in its influence & vision. The ruling class always fears this, as art unites the oppressed workers with the youth, who see no future in the current set-up.

Art can jump outside that box, as Pablo Picasso, the Surrealists & Andy Warhol are 20th-century examples of artistic geniuses transforming society. Once their ideas exploded into mass consciousness, society was forever changed. It’s often waxed in social terms as, “no longer being innocent.”

The Beatles were revolutionary artists, who abandoned their teeny-bopper beginnings, and became 1960’s counter-culture. Psychedelic rock & transcendental meditation side-trips became cultural oddities, that eventually transitioned into an anti-Vietnam War movement. Rock music had been sanctioned art, by the creation of Rolling Stone magazine in 1967, with John Lennon featured in its inaugural issue.

That watershed moment was the birth of rock music criticism. Art spawns criticism, which seeks to influence art. Generally speaking, critics are a bureaucracy meant to represent the ruling class in art. Often lawyers, guns & money aren’t enough, so controlling the narrative becomes the purpose of criticism.

For eons, humans have been creating art, and others have been judging it. What’s different today, is the level of expertise & authority these self-sanctioned critics reserve for themselves. Today Rolling Stone magazine remains a powerful force in American popular music, with sterilizing everything as its corporation mission.

In contrast the leader and revolutionary genius of the Beatles, has been dead for nearly four decades. He was murdered by a reactionary psychopath, with full approval of the ruling elite. John Lennon had been a target of the FBI since Nixon was president, as later revealed in declassified CO-INTEL-PRO and other documents.

Everyone appreciates some form of art. The problem is when too many people become too narrow in their tastes & definitions of art. There’s a whole lot out there, that you aren’t even aware of, and it’s criminal to short-change yourself in not appreciating as much of it as you can. Art depends on an audience, otherwise society is condoning cultural vandalism.

Great art doesn’t just happen. It is deeply thought-out, planned, and worked through in great detail. What the public sees as the final work, is often years of hard work. Creating new material and staying ahead is the most challenging task. It often involves going to very dark places in your mind. This is emotionally exhausting, and involves personal sacrifices in health & happiness, which is why so many artists burn out.

It is necessary for artists who truly love, to understand how these ruling sociopaths think & act. They are manipulating the levers of power, which affects the ability for art to be shared, and therefore they have very rational reasons for their psychotic behavior.

The most obvious example today is media & Internet censorship & blacklisting. This reaction is sweeping through sports, entertainment, and politics like a swarm of locusts. The only force that can resist witch-hunts & fascist goon squads, are a united youth & working class, armed with revolutionary socialism.

Marxism, and more specifically Trotskyism, is the most reviled political tendency in bourgeois politics. Any mention of Leon Trotsky is proscribed in the mass media. If his name comes up, there is an immediate hysterical reaction from fixers & political heavyweights– who are always monitoring. This is because Leon Trotsky was the most artistic & influential political figure of the 20th century.

Today this repressive apparatus which involves the corporate-intelligence deep state, has launched an all-out, multi-pronged attack campaign on art. When Hollywood actors are witch-hunted, and their careers destroyed by a #MeToo campaign of right-wing feminism, then artists know the official political spectrum has tipped completely to fascism.

As much as art is universal to the human experience, we all sense it uniquely. Example: Stevie Wonder! That is the mystery & magic of art, which is challenges & seduces all of us. Understanding & embracing art is how we avoid being manipulated by hidden interests with evil intentions.

Art in the hands of a united working class, with revolutionary consciousness, can internationally transform society into a global community with socialist foundations. My music & albums are on all the major streaming services, and those songs are meant to be anthems for revolution. The more that ideas such as these are expressed, distributed & absorbed, the closer we get to a revolutionary scenario, where the working people of the world can come together & win.

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