Sport: it’s everywhere! Some sport is manual, while other sport is foot-based. But sport generally involves a thing, which must be treated a certain way. If your team can earn enough favor with the thing, then you win. Wagers are accepted in every state now.
But TotD, you say all bashful and slight, I don’t know too much about the glory that is sport, and there is so damned much sport going on right now. Can you bring me to speed?
I cannot, I would say as the hammer felt so sweet and heavy in my hand.
NO. STOP IT.
It has begun. I’ve opened up the Sixth Window. Hammer time.
I FORBID ANY MORE NIGHT OF THE HAMMERS BULLSHIT. It’s too real, man.
Go away. I’m talking about the glory that is sport.
And stop saying that.
Shh. TotD will now explain sport.
Soccer
There is an unbearable amount of soccer happening right now. (Not actually. There is actually less soccer being played during a World Cup game than at any other time. But I hear about soccer during the World Cup and that’s all I care about.) There is so much soccer right now that a Socialist got voted into the House. The World Cup this quadrennial is being held in Russia, and it’s as if the event were engineered to gain my apathy. The American team is not in the competition, which is sad but fitting, and even if they were, I wouldn’t care. Why? Because here are the facts about soccer:
FACT: Leftist by nature
Soccer is a Culturally Marxist activity. Not economically. The business of soccer is rapaciously capitalistic. Just culturally.
FACT: Completely possible for a game to end 0-0.
Simonize my asshole, soccer: 0-0? Or nil-nil or however you’d say it. How dare you call that a score, soccer? Ever seen an NBA game? They end up a billion to a billion-and-ten. Baseball is a desert of interest, but you get six or seven runs per game.
FACT: America has said ‘No, thank you, soccer,” for half-a-century now.
This has nothing to do with the comical ineptitude of the various ownerships, the lack of purpose-build stadia, the failure to develop either stars or talent, and the lack of a farm system. Nothing at all. It’s just that soccer sucks.
FACT: I’ll call it “football” when I die, you sonofabitch.
Try me. The Founding Fathers stormed Omaha Beach for my right to call that activity “soccer.” I beg you to come at me on this. I will die on this hill.
FACT: The field is too big and there should be additional ways to score and maybe trampolines.
Not too many trampolines. Enough.
FACT: Soccer riles up foreigners.
If you are watching a soccer game and don’t speak English, you are legally classified as a rioter. The World Cup has spurred two separate planetary spasms of violence. The foreigners watch the soccer and they stab each other and sing songs and stab each other some more. It’s all suspicious behavior and shouldn’t be encouraged.
FACT: Soccer men are sucky men.
Remember when Ed Norton destroyed Jared Leto’s face in American Psycho? I want to do that to Ronaldo. That face shouldn’t exist. There is someone named Messi who is named aptly, and various mononymic Brazilians. (If tradition holds, one of the Brazilians will have dolphin-teeth; another will have ludicrous hair.) There is something called Neymar.
“Kick me the ball, Neymar!”
“I’m kicking you the ball! I did it! I’m Neymar!”
And that’s the World Cup. That’s all it is.
Tennis
Wimbledon is going on, Enthusiasts. Wimbledon is a word believed evolved from the original brthonic language of the English isles. “Wimble” meaning to strike a white, or later yellow, ball over a net with a silly scoring system and “don” meaning on grass. Tennis started as and continues to be some colonialistic bullshit. Fuck tennis. You have to torture children into being good at it, too. Tennis is for dicks
Basketball
LeBron James is about to get really famous. Like, really famous.
That should do it for your conversational needs Enthusiasts. Should the dialogue continue to be centered around sport, you may deftly change the subject or, if socially deficient, headbutt the fucker right where the nose meets the skull.
I need a 73 Eyes after reading that
Edward Norton destroyed jared Leto in “fight club”.
You seem like the kind of guy who has read Among The Thugs by Bill Buford. If not I highly recommend it. You don’t have to like soccer to be highly entertained and extremely disturbed by this book.
Bill Buford wrote two of my favorite non-fiction books: Among the Thugs and Heat, about his time in the kitchen and a lunatic cook from Tuscany.
Loved ATT. My favorite bit was where he’s talking to soccer fans about how little police presence there is at sporting events in America and they’re amazed/horrified.
I had a feeling. I’ll add Heat to my reading list.
Excellent book, and written before the current Chef Worship that plagues the culture. He also describes meat beautifully.