¡Vamos la Naranja! It was a great pleasure to be at the stadium last night, with my son and some friends, to see the Houston Dynamo lift a trophy. Their 2018 Lamar Hunt US Open Cup championship, won in their own stadium, is the first hardware the club has won since the 2007 MLS Cup.

Single-elimination tournaments are tough. But so are the Dynamo players. As with the NCAA basketball tournaments, you have to keep winning or you're done. Through a combination of luck and labor, a squad that has had trouble winning in the league this year managed to win all five Open Cup matches. And I do mean luck: The draws before each round were rather generous, giving the Dynamo home field every time.

Despite the thrilling match and its more thrilling conclusion, I have a few grievances to air, some of them not for the first time:

1. Sure, it was a weeknight, with heavy rain a possibility. But there are 6 million-plus people in Metro Houston, & we could only fill about 12,000 seats for a tournament final? I have seen BBVA Compass a lot fuller, even this season. When the Dynamo played at UH, they didn't have the acres of empty seats they've had so often in recent years. On the plus side, the 12,000 or so who did show up were into it.
2. Sure, it's cool to be able to win the tournament at your home ground. Other countries have their tournament finals at a neutral ground, usually a national stadium in the capital, like Wembley or St. Denis. The USA doesn't have such a stadium for big national and international matches. Actually, given our size, we should have two or three of them: e.g., seldom-used stadia like RFK Stadium & the Rose Bowl. We could even modify & repurpose the Astrodome for that if current plans fall through.
3. Last night EaDo* was a hellacious mess, partly due to street construction and mud everywhere, but mostly due to the thousands of millennials in various corporation t-shirts at the George R. Brown Convention Center for the Grace Hopper Celebration. As I was making my way to the stadium via MetroRail, they poured out of the GRB & flocked into EaDo for dinner & various functions, filling up all the available restaurants & bars. The Green Line train took 15 minutes to get from Austin Street to Convention District Station (four blocks). Unlike riding the bus, one can't just jump off the train between stops & walk the rest of the way. (Even if it put a crimp in my night, Grace Hopper certainly deserves her own annual celebration. I hope those assembled for it had a splendid evening. Too bad it's such a corporate-centric affair.)

* If the designation "EaDo" for Second Ward just east of Downtown offends you, I'm sorry. It offends me too, but it has become a ubiquitous usage.

What an up-and-down weekend. On a beautiful Easter Fools' Day afternoon, I got together with some beautiful friends for an Alice in Wonderland–inspired tea party amid the painted trees at Spotts Park. It's always uplifting when free spirits of various ages, ethnicities, and orientations can create and enjoy such harmonious vibes. It was one of those moments that make me reflect on why I am proud to call myself a Burner.

I went from that to Rudyard's, where several dozen friends joined Angie Hayes of Clinic Access Support Network on her first evening as Angie Hayes-Yousif. Yes, she and her beloved Amar got married on April Fools' Day, with her brother David officiating in a shall-we-say non-traditional ceremony.

Monday morning...back to depressing reality.

The news from Gaza is depressing even for Gaza, reminding us that the real Axis of Evil consists of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the good ol' US of A. Today's Democracy Now! headlines also included an incident in which a sheriff's deputy drove his vehicle into a woman protesting against Stephon Clarke's murder-by-cop in Sacramento. It was not a love tap: Wanda Cleveland had to be taken to a hospital for treatment.

If you think that there's no connection between cops shooting an unarmed man in the back in his grandmother's back yard in Sacramento and Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the back, or that it's strictly coincidental...well, think again, my friend.

He Always Plays "Saint Patrick Battalion" in Texas
David Rovics, aka "the musical version of Democracy Now!" appeared at Dan Electro's Guitar Bar Friday night. The last time I saw Rovics perform, at a fundraiser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2016, I left the event profoundly depressed; this time he wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, but the songs he chose and his presentation were more inspiring and upbeat. Torry Mercer's Deconstruction Crew also turned it a pretty good set.

Still, there were two intensely disappointing facts to relate about Friday night's event:

1. ​It was a fundraiser for the Houston Peace & Justice Center, and the turnout was rather light: about 40, with the average age well above that number.
2. While I tallied some petition signatures, a lot more people in attendance voted in the Democratic Primary that didn't. These folks either still believe that the Democratic Party actually represents peace & justice, went and voted out of sheer reflex, or had some favorite progressive candidates they wanted to boost. It gave me a perverse sense of glee when Rovics said, between songs, without couching it in any diplomatic verbiage, how much he hates the Democratic Party.

Consolation: I scored an Everything Ever Recorded by David Rovics flash drive for $30.

Soccer and Stainless Steel Sculpture
Even Saturday night's Dynamo match was depressing. Kayleen and I watched the Orange get dismembered by a relatively weak New England Revolution. USMNT left back Damarcus Beasley took a red card for the team, knocking down a Revs attacker to stop a clear scoring opportunity in the 35th minute. Four games into the season, this team has already lost more MLS home games than in all of 2017.

The Dash played a scoreless draw with the Utah Royals, the team that replaced the now-defunct FC Kansas City. Two home games, two points. The consolation there is that USWNT goalkeeper Jane Campbell continues to impress.

Meanwhile, echoing my post last week about the Dash's no-show Christen Press, Houston and Chicago find themselves in a good-natured war of words over who's giant stainless steel bean is more awesome. Well, it's mostly good-natured: Gray Matters blogger Cort McMurray, when he doesn't have anything nice to say, can be counted on to say whatever's on his mind. (NOTE: You may need a digital subscription to read the Chronicle online.) McMurray is also quite conscious of—and comfortable with—Houston's renowned inferiority complex.