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Consider this dilemma...
Mother shouting for Switzerland...
Father shouting for everyone (except Portugal)...
Neighbour shouting for Brazil...
Conscience screaming for USA...
Hoping for Jose Antonio Reyes...
Singing Van Persie ditties...
The world cup was NEVER this complicated when I was four....
Maybe that explains this look:
Saturday night -- 10pm. What a great day.... We celebrated the "start" of the world cup today...
yea, yea -- I know -- it really is the second day -- but it was saturday and our first "legit" day off (after the mystery 2 hour bouts on Friday of "network access issues" followed swiftly by "must have had something dodgy at lunch").
Cian and I had decorated the house on Friday night -- European mini-flags outside plus one large Swiss flag and then inside, we had managed to stick soccer ball cut-outs all over the place... Outside did not look as good as the Arsenal decorations we did before but it was enough to get him and I all fired up! He was so excited on Friday about it, he could barely sleep (which probably explained the 4.30 AM wake up call I got).
Saturday -- It all started off swimmingly at about 10 AM when Cian and Jackson slid down the slide in the back garden and, unbeknownst to us (and them), landed gracefully in Austin's freshest pile of shit (equally gracefully positioned by the dog). So Cian with knees covered in dogshit crawled back up the slide (yes -- knee prints everywhere) and Jackson decided (with dog shit covered shoes) to climb up the climbing wall. You get the picture....
Out with the bleach water for the slide and wall and everywhere else they had tracked the stuff....
The the footie started... Foolishly we missed *ALL* the signs the kids and Austin were sending us -- and we settled in to watch the SHITE of England and Paraguay....
We happily dismissed the diabolical Englanders at half time to watch Cote D'Ivorie play the Argies.. Great game. That's the group to watch -- group of death is right.
So amidst all this, we had 11 adults (I use that term loosely), 8 kids and 3 dogs floating around. Chris and I decdied anytime Arsenal was mentioned we had to break into chorus which led to far too much singing (again loosely used)...We had taped the bottom of the TV to avoid the "score ticker" that runs on the bottom of the screen -- so we could avoid games we still wanted to watch... Then we avoided ESPN/ABC all together by switching to Univision (Spanish commentary)... Stroke of genius.....
The best part of this had to be the point where I was flipping pancakes at the stove and we had hooked up two TV's in the kitchen (voluntary simplicity, me bollix) and there were bloody mary's and mimosa's all over the place... and there was a game on each TV.... It was right there that it struck me, "this is what it is all about". Ah sweet life!
And that was pretty much it... We packed in the three games; stuffed our faces; polished off quite a few bottles of champagne; made a good dent in some vodka; sang lots of Arsenal chants; shouted needlessly at the TV; and even cheered when Didier Drogba scored.
What a great day --- thanks to everyone who made it possible.
Same place next Saturday!
So, it seems there is a fair bit of debate over BBC's decision to broadcast the World Cup games online -- and in addition they will broadcast highlight packages.
What?
We can watch the World Cup online - thereby showing up briefly on that morning conference call and still get to watch it? What joy!
Hold on -- there is always a catch... It is only available to users in the UK.
(Fuckers)
Seems like there is a good debate over on the NY Times blog about it.
People are already wondering about ways around it...
Seems like it'd be worth your while to try and run your proxies through a UK-based proxy. Not sure if BBC is looking into that and trying to block 'em....
But if you have managed to read this far down the post and are interested in trying to figure this out --- let me know (suffice to say I "might" have a solution -- if I was ever inclined to try to rig it up. Thanks to "the source" who shall remain un-named because of his profile in the Bay Area!!)
However -- if anyone has any other ideas on how us poor fuckers in the US can somehow "watch" online -- please leave a comment with just enough subtle hints!
With all the World Cup hype -- here is the extreme. I love it -- cars playing football!
Thanks to Google video for the following video - click once to "activate" the video and then click once more on the play button (or just keep pressing the damn play button until the video starts playing):
Well it seems that every website is telling us there are only 4 days and 18 hours to go until the World Cup starts.
Strangely -- I think there are 9 - 10 teams I could legitimately shout for (ranging from Ghana to Holland to Ivory Coast to US)... and all because of some Arsenal representation (aside from the US of course).
Alas -- if I stick to those rules, then I need to be somewhat encouraging to England -- what with queer boy Cole and colossal Campbell both bound to see some action.
There is a wealth of great content on line, that I want to recommend:
So as I find more fun stuff -- I'll update it! But bring on Friday!