La Copa Mundial!

I have a confession to make. I've turned into a football fan. Or, as you ugly Americans call it, soccer. I've thrown aside my sleep schedule to follow the plucky US team on their run through the holiest of international tournaments. And, to be honest with you, it's been an otherwise great break from my usual bouts of insomnia, to watch a tilt between Cameroon and Ireland at 2AM with a crowd that's 90% Korean going nuts over the action even though they probably don't care who wins. There's an energy in a World Cup game that rivals anything we've got over here. It's a month of Game 7s, and the winner rules the world!

But here's the deal: I can't take the US Television announcers. I watch my fair share of ESPN... I got nothing against Jack Edwards... but there's so much silence in the broadcast, and Edwards just doesn't quite have that verve in his voice. I'll give ESPN a try again if they let Gary Thorne take a crack at it - but then I think Mr Thorne could announce bowling and make it exciting. And let's not even start with the incessant in-game promos. This is NOT just a soccer thing because of the low commercial time. I squarely point the blame at Fox Sports for this one. Used to be, in the "Good Old Days", at the end of the game the TV stations would tell you what's next. Not anymore. Now you know BEFORE the game what's on tonight, this week, and two months from now. And it gets repeated every 30 seconds. This has to stop. But I'm digressing... Normally you've gotta stick with the US broadcast, but the World Cup is an international event.

So I've got an alternative. Univision.

Yes, it's spanish language television. I'll get to the soccer in a second, but first I'd just like to point out what a great station Univision is. Quite frankly, it's the best thing on television Saturday night. Why is this, you might ask? The answer is simple: Sabado Gigante. Literally translated it means "Gigantic Saturday". And it lives up to the hype. Tune in on Saturday nights to find host Don Francisco presiding over... well, I'm convinced that anything can happen on this show. Last time I watched it, there were a bunch of Chinese circus performers on. The time before that they were doing some sort of wacky karoke gong-show type thing. It's truly gigante...

SG... palabra.

Now about the soccer... I took six semesters of Spanish in college. This apparently qualifies me to understand about 10 words of a spanish language soccer broadcast. Pelota, equipo, arquero, esquina, derecha, izquierda, saca manos, en vivo, partido, and, of course, GOL! (In order: ball, team, keeper, corner, right, left, throw in, live, game, and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!) So to be honest, I have very little idea what the announcers are saying. But they don't shut up. At all. And everything is apparently incredibly exciting. This causes every attack, every counter, every shot, save, and goal to have just that little bit extra excitement that really makes watching fun. That's why I watch Univision... and as a bonus, I don't have to put up with the promos. Either that or I just have no idea that they're happening. Either way, I'm happy.

Oh, and one more great thing about Univision... the commercials. Even though many of them are the same as their english language counterparts, they're just... better, for some reason in spanish. I've been walking around work for two weeks now saying... "Me escuchas? ... Bien!" I'd feel like a whore for Verizon wireless except that I don't think anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about... Heh heh.

Like I said, I don't really know soccer from my own butt. I can make extrapolations from frisbee about changing sides of the field to attack, and other things like that, but really I'm just watching for the entertainment of it, and I must say that the US team had me entertained. I enjoyed watching the Portuguese players look stunned when they went down 3-0, and couldn't come back. I enjoyed watching the Koreans come back for a tie in a game they pretty clearly should have won. Talk about some team speed... there could've been 15 Koreans on the field for all I could tell. I enjoyed watching them rope-a-dope Mexico, and I even enjoyed watching them control, but lose to, Germany. And from the sounds of it, the US even has some players to watch, too. I'm not sure, but when the Univision announcers refer to Landon Donovan as "LANDON!" all the time, I think that means he's good. Gotta love the soccer players going by one name only...

Landon!

As far as the rest of the tournament goes... I enjoyed watching Senegal. I don't know any of their names, but they were entertaining. And Brazil seems quite talented too. The final is on Sunday... those crazy Brazillians versus those plodding Germans. I don't know soccer... but I'll take wacky and talented any day. My money's on Brazil... and if I can move my body at 10AM Sunday, I'll be cheering for Brazil.

...while watching all the action on Univision. GOOOOOOOOOOOL!

Look for more of this on Sunday...

On a completely unrelated note...

Watched a bit of the Wimbledon action today... is there anything more annoying than all the fucking grunting? I don't know why, but it REALLY bothers me. Dad came in and sat down for a bit while I was watching, so I lamented it to him.

ME: "I wish they'd stop grunting."
DAD: "It's a waste of energy."

That's a point so good I wish it had been me who said it. Serena Williams is virtually screaming with each shot. You try simply grunting that forcefully every 8 seconds for an hour and see how tired you are... and that's on top of running around and the actual playing of tennis. So all you grunters out there: stop it. You're being inefficient.

Fin.