elsewhere

Not that I support or encourage Dave Eggers in any of his varied (but always obnoxious) pursuits, but his article at Slate about the World Cup and the US has its funny moments:

The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. There is no other sport that can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match. If there are three or four coordinated kids among the 22 flailing bodies, there will actually be dribbling, a few legal throw-ins, and a couple of times when the ball stretches the back of the net. It will be soccer, more or less.

Also funny and on great display during the USA/Italy game this weekend is this:

Flopping is essentially a combination of acting, lying, begging, and cheating, and these four behaviors make for an unappealing mix. The sheer theatricality of flopping is distasteful, as is the slow-motion way the chicanery unfolds. First there will be some incidental contact, and then there will be a long moment—enough to allow you to go and wash the car and return—after the contact and before the flopper decides to flop. When you've returned from washing the car and around the time you're making yourself a mini-bagel grilled cheese, the flopper will be leaping forward, his mouth Munch-wide and oval, bracing himself for contact with the earth beneath him. But this is just the beginning. Go and do the grocery shopping and perhaps open a new money-market account at the bank, and when you return, our flopper will still be on the ground, holding his shin, his head thrown back in mock-agony. It's disgusting, all of it, particularly because, just as all of this fakery takes a good deal of time and melodrama to put over, the next step is so fast that special cameras are needed to capture it. Once the referees have decided either to issue a penalty or not to our Fakey McChumpland, he will jump up, suddenly and spectacularly uninjured—excelsior!—and will kick the ball over to his teammate and move on.

Of course, because it is still Dave Eggers, it also has moments that make me want to kill things with my hardback copy of that AHWSGORNDMWFOVVWTF! book of his. Par for the course. But I'm reinforcing the positive today, people. Happy thoughts.

crouch, bringing new definition to the word akimbo

This is just never going to stop being a funny picture to me, ever. Also, YAHHH ENGLAND!

futebol!

I grumbled out of bed early on Saturday morning - okay, I didn't grumble. But I grumped out of bed early on Saturday morning to head down to our local EuroCafe in Astoria to watch England beat Paraguay one-nil (as Stuart insists on my saying, rather than one-zero, pfah, pedant). Yes! I got out of bed early to watch sports. I know, what's next, NASCAR?

In all seriousness because I'd never enjoy the near-death that is race-car driving, I enjoyed the game immensely. Football - and before you say anything, I have to call it that, it's in my marriage contract - is one of the few sports I both understand and enjoy watching. I understand baseball but it's boring unless it's the minor leagues, I willfully do not comprehend [US] football because I was on drill team and was forced to watch a whole year of games wearing lycra, and basketball is just too loud for me to enjoy in person and too boring to watch on TV. So that pretty much leaves football and cricket, which will take a full lifetime to explain to me and I'm using my lifetime, thanks.

So, what I'm saying is, World Cup = good. I'll be watching all the England games (and the games in England's group) and the Brazil games, as well as the USA games for, ahem, as long as they continue. I even spent 20 grueling minutes of my lunchbreak finishing off the Czech-USA game in the bar across the street (I had a COKE, okay). My personal favourite moment of the football-laden weekend was when Stuart explained offsides to me for the umpteenth time but this time involved TEAM SWEET-N-LOW V. TEAM DOMINO with a wadded bit of napkin as the ball. GO TEAM DOMINO! I still barely get it and whilst watching an actual match, have a hard time spotting an offside until someone points it out, usually Marcel Balboa, that sweet-voiced young thing.

Also, wicked points for all the hot young players on the field (hello, baseball, NOT SO MUCH) and getting a little verklempt when Stuart hums "Three Lions". Forty years of hurt, indeed. Plus, watching the afternoon games on univision because ABC has moved on to golf means hearing "GOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ... AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!" reverberating across the apartment.

This month could make a hooligan out of me yet.