Shall we call it the (Asian) elephant in the room?

No, I’m not being harsh.

When a country accounts for one of every six people on the globe yet exhibits incompetence at the most global sport, we need to talk.

As of this writing, among 211 entities ranked by FIFA, India stands at 138.

That’s behind Haiti, Palestine, and…the freaking Faroe Islands.

The country declined an opportunity to play in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, meaning it has participated in the event a grand total of zero times.

And don’t talk to me about poverty—the place has the sixth largest nominal GDP in the world.

In fact, in the 2026 World Cup Edition of Soccernomics, the authors recognized India for being the relatively worst soccer team on the planet. In their exact words:

Our model says that India, given its population, soccer experience, and national income, ought to have had a positive goal difference in the 2010s. But it scored 1.3 goals a game less than it should have. Admittedly that’s not as bad as its neighbor Myanmar, but then Myanmar has the excuse of being stuck in a civil war. India gets our Soccernomics award for the relatively worst soccer team on Earth.

All this leads to one question: Wtf—why does India suck at soccer?

The answers, of course, make sense.

• A national obsession with cricket—infrastructural, financial, and emotional—leaves little oxygen for anything else.
• Grassroots player development is lacking.
• In keeping with the above, infrastructure for player development is lacking.
• Standard Indian corruption has infected the All India Football Federation, resulting in anemic growth of the sport.
• Indian kids would rather study.

But two and a half decades into the 21st century, India is well aware that branding matters.

Look at South Korea—its global prominence has skyrocketed ever since the country forced us to listen to sh*t music, nicknamed K-Pop.

Stated another way, if all it takes to earn a little respect is kicking a damn ball, India is on board.

And there’s hope.

The Indian Super League, the highest level of Indian soccer, began play in 2014 and now boasts 14 teams (though financial viability remains a concern).

In 2017, India hosted the FIFA U-17 World Cup.

Local leagues and pitches are multiplying, at least in large metro areas.

This interest has been fueled in part by television, which regularly broadcasts English Premier League games.

Finally, in the Asian qualifying rounds for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, India fell victim to a horrendous call in Doha against eventual qualifier Qatar.

In other words, decades from now, Why does India suck at soccer? could have the same answer as Why do Rochester and Buffalo suck at life?:

They don’t.

The post Why Does India Suck at Soccer? appeared first on ComposeMD.

It’s complicated.

It’s the sport for everyone, except here, where it’s for wealthy suburban kids.

And it’s the global obsession, except here, where it’s a niche curiosity.

There are the Americans who don’t watch, unable to tolerate the dearth of scoring and the mysterious timekeeping.

And there are the ones who do watch, partly as a flex of their worldliness—they usually ride bikes and claim to like jazz music, too.

But the greatest complexity of all, the one that presumably exposes the dumb American (said to live somewhere in the Rust Belt), is what to call the sport in the first place.

Don’t blame us.

Blame the Brits.

Oh, and blame AI for the fact that I know this.

The prompt was rather simple: What is the origin of the term soccer?

The answer, scraped from a delicate blend of Britannica, Time, Wikipedia, Quora, and, of course, Reddit, changed my life.

In 1863, as Americans had taken to killing each other during the Civil War, the English had taken on a more pressing matter—standardizing the rules of their games.

To differentiate what would become two key sports, they established official names:

• Rugby Football
• Association Football

Later in the century, students at the University of Oxford developed their own slang, shortening words and adding the suffix -er.

Rugby football became rugger.

Association football became soccer (in lieu of asser, I believe).

For years, the Brits used soccer and football interchangeably to describe the sport of FIFA. Meanwhile, countries they had spawned—like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa—began developing their own versions of football. To avoid confusion, these countries stuck to soccer when referring to the British export.

(In other words, the dumb American is no dumber than the Canadian or Australian, at least in this regard.)

In the 1980s, realizing that their empire had collapsed and their global significance was dwindling, especially relative to that of the Americans, the Brits began a campaign to bash the American use of the term soccer.

And that got me to the next prompt:

Who’s dumb now?

The post Stop Blaming the Dumb American for “Soccer” appeared first on ComposeMD.

I was supposed to be working—or doing the dishes. For that matter, anything else would have sufficed.

But as a writer, even of the uncompensated variety, daydreaming is a prerequisite for rolling the pen on paper.

And on this particular day, the thoughts took on a life of their own.

December 2, 1859. Charles Town, West Virginia. The place was still part of Virginia, whose western cousin didn’t exist yet. That’s when the abolitionist John Brown was hanged for raiding a federal armory in Harpers Ferry. So much for the slave rebellion he was trying to incite.

Wait, whatever happened to Angie Everhart? Remember her—the redhead model who was in that Schwarzenegger movie Last Action Hero (and a ton of other stuff)?

I briefly looked at the blank computer screen and noticed the song playing in the background.

Chrissie Hynde did have a fantastic voice.

That show Providence was pretty good. I wonder what Melina Kanakaredes is up to these days.

I looked back at the still-blank screen.

How cool would it be to win a Pulitzer Prize? Rita Dove won the Pulitzer for Poetry. I think she was the United States Poet Laureate or something.

She must have been like the LeBron James of poetry.

Man, those NBA Finals between LeBron and Steph Curry were so good.

I stared at the computer and noted the music again.

The Black Keys weren’t very good live. I still like them though.

That was nuts in second grade when we all huddled around the TV in the classroom to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. And then they just ushered us out of the room without saying a word. Poor Judith Resnik.

James Harrison was undrafted?! He was such a dominant linebacker for the Steelers.

My wife called and asked what I was doing.

“Uh, making money online,” I blurted out, hoping she wouldn’t check the bank account any time soon.

I sat back and wondered.

Had I just had the daydream from hell?

Or was it from Akron, Ohio?*

—

*Everyone mentioned was born in and/or spent spent significant time in Akron.

The post My Daydream From Hell appeared first on ComposeMD.

After all, it was the New York newspaper that incited me to take action.

On May 22, 2026, in between doing nothing, I discovered that the Journal had published a piece called “Dad Books Are a Dying Breed”.

The gist—sales of so-called “serious nonfiction” books, particularly the print versions, are down and out.

To blame is the smorgasbord factor, i.e. the mix of podcasts, Substack newsletters, Netflix documentaries, and so on that sates the desire of men to know boring stuff.

In the mix, of course, is a societal shift away from plain text as a means of consuming information.

And that gets me to the Great Lakes reading list.

What should a text-obsessed middle-aged man confronted with an uncomfortable reality about the future of text do?

Simple—push more text.

If you think that makes me fuddy-duddy, just wait for the books I recommend.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan

Bro—as in Egan—can write. In fact, the former reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel can write so well that he’s been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize on multiple occasions.

If you only read one book on the Great Lakes, this should be the pick. Meticulously researched and fantastically readable, the blend of science, history, and storytelling amounts to a biography of the lakes, with special attention to how human actions like canal building, shipping, and farming have paved the way for invasive species and toxic algal blooms, thereby threatening one of the world’s most important natural resources.

In the final notes, Egan writes: This book is the sum of more than a decade of reporting…

It shows.

The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas by Jerry Dennis

Dennis has made a name for himself as a nature writer, and this is perhaps his magnum opus.

Despite already being a walking encyclopedia regarding the lakes, the Michigan native set out to find an overarching narrative that could tie his knowledge together.

Enter a six-week journey on the Malabar, a schooner that in the spring of 2000 would take Dennis through his beloved inland seas.

The result is a passionate memoir, one peppered with enough historical, scientific, and nautical nuggets to make you an expert of the lacustrine variety.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon

Bacon, another Michigan native, has carved out a career as a sports writer. But in this masterpiece, he stepped out of his comfort zone to take a deep dive into one of the most haunting shipwrecks in American history.

The 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior has inspired safety regulations, an iconic song, and a world-class beer, but perhaps its greatest legacy is having spawned this chronicle of human tragedy.

Along the way, Bacon shines a light on the iron ore mining, Great Lakes shipping, and steel production that created some of the most vibrant cities the country has known.

Note: YouTube videos and Instagram Reels are cheaper and less time-consuming.

The post Your Mandatory Great Lakes Reading List appeared first on ComposeMD.

And by special, I mean weird.

Hear me out, even though I’m sure you already agree.

There’s this city on a river, across which lies another country.

Census data tells the burg’s story, if you’re willing to listen.

In 1820, there were four figures—1,422 to be exact.

A century later, there were six—993,678.

And thirty years after that, in 1950, there were seven—1,849,568. Only four American cities were more peopled.

That’s when, in the parlance of the medical profession, began the taper.

Every ten years, the dose was decreased by varying proportions.

• 9.7% to start
• Then another 9.5%
• Then a generous 20.4%
• Next a drop of 14.6%
• And finally, a more gentle 7.5%

It was the year 2000, and the figures were back down to six—951,270.

Some yearned for a maintenance dose, a stop-the-bleeding moment if you will.

But the taper continued.

• 25%
• 10.5%

That landed the river city in a year better known for a viral pandemic—by then, the blight was old news, fodder for comedians, bloggers, and bankruptcy lawyers.

The number, at that point, was down to 639,111.

Mercifully, another decade would have to pass to officially know the next dose reduction.

But the hints were screaming—the US Census Bureau calls them population estimates.

2021: 635,046

2022: 634,219

2023: 637,452

Eyebrows were raised.

2024: 644,035

Heads were turned.

2025: 649, 095

Tears were shed.

The city on the river, the one gazing upon another nation, is celebrating Easter.

Because just like Jesus, Detroit is rising once again.

The post This Census Data Will Make You Cry appeared first on ComposeMD.

Was it 1718?

I mean the year you were founded by the French guy with the long name.

Is Mardi Gras even a big deal in France?

And didn’t the US version start in Mobile, Alabama?

Anyway, the French lost the Seven Years’ War to the Brits and handed New Orleans over to…the Spanish?

But then how did the French get it back? Because weren’t they the ones who sold you to Thomas Jefferson and the Americans?

And after the Seven Years’ War, more French speakers came down from the north? Why did you call those Acadians Cajuns by the way?

That reminds me—wasn’t the French Quarter kind of built by the Spanish?

Then you had the West Africans—enslaved and free.

Native Americans were in the mix, of course.

And no doubt you attracted some Caribbeans—just look at the map.

No wonder no one can explain to me what jazz means. Or, for that matter, what Creole means.

The Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico (America?) meant a port.

That meant more immigrants—I’m talking about the regular kinds, like Irish, Italians, and Germans.

You were thriving.

But then you shrank. Your metro is smaller than the ones in Omaha and Tulsa—and Rochester (NY)!

Yet you still have the NFL and NBA?

And Super Bowls?!

The tourists keep flowing.

Is it the seediness?

Or the white powder? (And I don’t mean the kind on the beignets.)

In any case, let me get this straight, New Orleans.

You’re that city where the Brits never were—well, aside from that time in the War of 1812 when they tried to invade. (Andrew Jackson had something to say about that, even though the war was already over, I think.) And there was the one Brit I met there the other day—tatted up, sporting a New York Yankees jersey, and asking me if I had any white powder. (He wasn’t hungry.)

You’re diverse as hell.

But everyone speaks English (now).

And you’re racist as hell, I’ve been told. Because that’s not the story my eyes conveyed.

You’re over the top.

And under the sea.

You’re alive.

And dying?

You’re a bounty of riches.

And a magnet for the poor—just look at the streets. (And the po’ boys.)

You’re the place with the artists and writers and dreamers.

Are they still dreaming—or just drinking?

Why is the National WWII Museum in New Orleans?

What’s chicory again?

Did you really invent the Sazerac?

Why the streetcars?

I will say you have charm.

And oil refineries.

And, unless I’m mistaken, prostitutes.

In other words, you have it all, New Orleans.

Or do you?

The post New Orleans Has Me Dazed and Confused appeared first on ComposeMD.

But were you actually listening?

Once more, I’ll remind you of a few facts.

Western New York is separated from Canada—Ontario to be exact—by a measly river.

Sure, the Niagara River does have some impressive waterfalls, but at some points along its 36-mile course, it looks like a mere stream.

And when it comes to stanching the flow of people, ideas, and…love, that little stream doesn’t stand a chance.

Again, you’ve heard this in the past, but I do enjoy repeating myself.

Buffalo and Toronto share a public media network—Buffalo Toronto Public Media—that serves both Southern Ontario and Western New York.

Western New Yorkers are far more likely to get their morning cup of joe from Tim Hortons than from Dunkin’.

Labatt Blue, the most Canadian of beers, is brewed in part at the Genesee Brewery—in Rochester, New York.

Similarly, The Tragically Hip, the most Canadian of bands, has a popular tribute band—in Buffalo.

The Triple-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays plays in Buffalo. During COVID, the actual Toronto Blue Jays played in Buffalo.

Approximately 21 percent of Canada’s population lies within the 75-mile radius considered by the NFL to be the Buffalo Bills’ home market, explaining this map.

View this post on Instagram

But as this article so eloquently points out, all of the above is thin culture.

How about thick culture?

What is life truly like on the international border?

I asked if you were listening for a reason—because that’s where the answer lies.

The Buffalo Sabres of the NHL play both the Canadian and American national anthems before every game, even if that game is between two American teams.

On April 28, 2026, before a playoff matchup with the Boston Bruins, the microphone malfunctioned during the Canadian national anthem.

And here’s what 19,070 (mostly) Americans had to say about the situation.

Because that’s how we roll on an international border.

The post That’s How We Roll on an International Border! appeared first on ComposeMD.

Or, better yet, I could drive ten minutes down the road.

Because as William Faulkner said: The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

In the Rust Belt, history is learned on the way to Walmart.

Past, present, and future—the lines are blurred.

Is that a factory, a startup, or just abandoned?

The hope is for the first two, but we have expertise in the third.

—

When do abandoned buildings become ruins?

Twenty years?

A half century?

A full one?

As a pragmatist, I try not to partake in such esoteric debates—I leave that to the bloggers.

On the other hand, I am interested in why such debates exist in the first place, as in why the abandoned structures are left to stand.

Imagine a strip of abandoned homes. It’s perfect for the homeless, drug-addicted, and criminally-predisposed.

A city knows the neighborhood is unlikely to become a tourist attraction.

And there starts the merriment.

Who owns the home(s)?

Can they be contacted?

Can they be pressured (via fines) into maintenance?

Or selling?

Would there even be a buyer?

If taxes are delinquent, can the city or an associated land bank seize the property?

If so, after clean up, can the property be handed over to a developer?

Does the local economy make such a project appealing to developers anyway?

Are the developers reliable?

Or is demolition the only option?

Should the cleared space become a park?

Or a public art display?

With an eroded tax base, where does the money for all this come from?

The county?

The state?

The feds?

How long will the entire process take?

Even if it ultimately comes together, what if the new incarnation is still appealing to the homeless, drug-addicted, and criminally-predisposed?

—

When do abandoned buildings become ruins?

Twenty years?

A half century?

A full one?

The post The Only Ruins I Actually Care About appeared first on ComposeMD.

On that particular afternoon, I found myself in the Queen City, a fancy nickname for the Rust Belt town of Buffalo.

The primary purpose of the visit was for a dance competition, and, no, not because I’m sophisticated—because I’m a father.

And at this point in my dance dad progression, I don’t have to pretend I care about watching the other competitors anymore.

I’m there to prove to the world—aka my family—how great of a father I am.

But in between events, now that’s where things get interesting.

That’s when I do pretend to be something—cultured.

In 2025, stranded alone at a dance workshop in Sandusky, Ohio, I ventured to nearby Toledo and its art museum, even taking this picture to prove it.

So to keep tradition alive, on April 18, 2026, I made the bold move to visit the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

That museum, as you know, has one of the most significant collections of modern and contemporary art in the world.

I even mentioned that here.

In full disclosure, I didn’t really know that—I took the line from another book, 100 Things To Do in Buffalo Before You Die (giving full credit, of course).

Upon arrival to the gallery, I wondered if the one in Toledo was a better product—and by better, I mean cheaper. While parking and admission in the Glass City were free, Buffalo set me back $34—$12 to ditch the car and $22 to enter.

I’ll just skip the café, I thought.

Once inside, I started the aimless stroll, feigning interest and, more importantly, expertise. To play the part, I had abandoned the sweatshirt in favor of a collar, throwing in the occasional head nod sprinkled with a few hmm‘s.

I saw a couple names I recognized—guys like Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol.

But there was one room that stood out because, well, it seemed like the museum wanted it to stand out.

The space was dedicated to the work of one Clyfford Still.

And that left me with a burning question:

Who the heck is Clyfford Still?!

I read the placard quickly, knowing those are typically written to violate all rules of writing I’ve learned—you know, use a lot of words that no one understands and find the most circuitous route to saying nothing.

Then I turned to my companion, AI.

Clyfford Still (1904-1980) was a leading American Abstract Expressionist painter.

Not exactly knowing what that meant, I discovered some other key figures in the movement:

• Jackson Pollock (see above)
• Mark Rothko (the name reminded me of the guy who plays the Hulk)
• Willem de Kooning (the name seemed familiar, but I might have been confusing it with Kaiser Wilhelm II)

Still was apparently a bit grumpy, rejecting commercial art markets in favor of reclusion, ensuring that people like me would have to resort to AI to figure out who he was.

The dude loved jagged shapes, the kind in this picture I nabbed (no flash obviously).

And for some reason, he took to the people of Buffalo—their museum would boast the largest collection of his work until the 2011 opening of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.

To fund that project in the Mile High City, Still’s estate sold a few paintings, with one going for $61.7 million!

As I made my way back to the dance competition, I noted smugly that thanks to Clyfford Still, I had become officially important.

The post Who the Heck Is Clyfford Still?! appeared first on ComposeMD.