Two Worlds, One Cup - Volume I

Welcome to another edition of the blog. If you're still reading at this part, you've gotten further than most, and if you continue reading you will be treated to the first part of this three part musing leading up to the 2010 World Cup Finale. If you're reading on Facebook, you can read all my blogs at http://stevemcdevitt.blogspot.com/ , but ultimately all this means is that you're wasting valuble time that you could be using to Facestalk, tweet your BFF, or possibly get in some quality sexting on your Iphone...And now to the write up...

FOR most Soccer enthusiasts, the start of the World Cup after waiting four excruciating years, is a jovial beginning of sportacular bliss, but for others it feels like that intoxicated hook-up one calls every six months that nine out of ten relationship therapists suggest you probably shouldn’t; sure you have a great time with her after a few too many, but the next day you sneak her out the back and spend the afternoon trying to convince your roommates you went to bed early, yet all they heard all night was what sounded like a dying, or at the very least, a wounded manatee screaming in agony coming from your room. (Or just choose an entirely different analogy that is less despicable and flippant that works for you…). This is how I feel about soccer ; every four years, I can’t get enough of it, but if I had to watch it on a regular basis, I may have to erase “Blue Shirt Girl, Tavern Bar,” out of my phone completely.

now, now, it's not you it's me...

Watching a World Cup game is like having a bad case of explosive diarrhea and you are exasperatingly pacing outside a bathroom awaiting your turn, but the bathroom’s inhabitant keeps jiggling the door as if he is coming out, but never does. (Or, again another more appropriate analogy…) You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, tension is building, and just when you think something is going to happen, nothing does, the game ends in a tie and you’ve just soiled your pants.

Since I only watch only every four years, I have been willing to sit and take it like a penalty kick to the rear, but if I’m going to suffer through a 90-minute contest that ends in a freakin’ tie, then I think I deserve to throw up a few yellow cards…

Yellow Card # 1 - Vuvuzela Horns

This year’s World Cup at least has hit one milestone – it is the first World Cup that a beekeeper and soccer fan can finally combine their two loves into one blissful-matrimony. If anyone reading has heard these horns, you would know that If a blind man sat down to listen to a game, he would probably run for his life in fear of attack since these horns sound exactly like a swarm of ferocious yellow jackets. In America we have an occasional cheer, yell or drunken idiot screaming “Jeter Sucks,” but at least they give it a rest after a couple taunts. Who has the lung capacity to keep these horns going for an entire ninety minutes – a Grey Whale? I recently blew up a small beach ball and nearly passed out afterwards due to oxygen loss. Shouldn’t these horn blowing-buffoons be using their breath-holding talents for something more productive, like saving drowning children in one-hundred feet of water… Like…on Jupiter? If you go online, there are German computer programmers who have figured out a way to filter the buzz from your TV broadcasts, so you can actually hear the announcers call the game, using a high scope band stop filter which removes the frequencies which will work on a computer with a sound card with low latency... Seriously? This is what they’re wasting their time on? What these crafty Hasselhoff-loving engineers didn’t realize, was that most soccer fans under the fear of an impending killer wasp attack, are not exactly the savviest at reading directions, and probably went insane before even managing to turn on their PC’s. Here is just a minor suggestion – stop blowing the blasted horns!

Darn-it Sheila, I knew we should have just gone to Applebys

Yellow Card #2 - Scoreless Ties

The ties I get. 1-1. 2-2. 3-3, fine - but a scoreless tie? A fan pays $100, sits and watches ninety minutes of soccer, witnesses absolutely zero goals, and then the games ends, without either team accomplishing the one and only point of the game – scoring a goal. Basically, if the players never set foot on the field, the same conclusion could have been drawn. What exactly do you talk about after the game with your buddies? “Wow those were some great sideline throw-ins – who am I kidding, gosh darn it Rico, we got screwed…”

Yellow Card #2A Blowouts

I have no idea what constitutes a blowout in soccer but I do know that Portugal beat North Korea 7-0 in Group stage. This is probably the equivalent of winning a baseball game 114-0.

* Check back for Part II of this riveting saga tomorrow, and for the record no manatees were harmed during the writing of this blog. Blue shirt girl, is merely a figment of one's imagination, like a sasquatch, yeti, or the credulous belief, that one can walk into Taco Bell and place an order without an interpreter...