THE CUP of the WORLD
by Ted Walker, tedwalker25@gmail.com
I don't speak Spanish, first off, which made the prospect of watching the U.S. team's first World Cup game on Univision all the more pleasurable. I've long enjoyed Spanish television, with its wrestling midgets, its leggy spokesmodels, and its dubbed-up late-night replays of "Commando." But how would I fare watching something real, something live? Let's just say that I didn't have any idea what the sportsca
sters were saying (damned if I couldn't find “Goooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!!!� on a single one of those on-line translator sites), there were spokesmodels all over the pre-game "show", and there weren't enough midget wrestlers. Which is to say there weren't any midgets at all (C'mon, Freddy Adu ain't that short. He's pretty short though). I let it all wash over me like a mail-order carnival.
I set up shop on my favorite end of the couch and flipped to good old channel 122 on the n
etwork dial. I've always thought 122 to be a good number, and sometimes on a late night if you're lucky you can pick up some of Cronkite's broadcasts from the sixties still floating around in the electronic ether. The pre-game show was as surreal and wacko-bongo as I was hoping it would be. Three "hosts" held the floor: the obligatory chubby dude with well-done coiffure and melon tie, and two obligatory bosomy genero-babes who talked up an unintelligible storm. There was a man in the field piped in on the monitor from Munich who was a kind of Barry Melrose knocked over the head with a Nerd Stick. At one point, for reasons I was unable to translate, a man in a cowboy hat dragged a foosball table out into the German streets. Before I could uncork my first Corona of the morning (if Willie Nelson and Alan Jackson say it's 5'o'clock somewheres, I believe 'em), old Cowboy Hat was down one-nil to a wacko-bongo U.S.A. fan in some kind of flag-hat/solar panel that made Carrot Top look tolerable.
But an awkward silence, it seems, knows no lingual bounds, and it became quickly obvious that the pre-game show needed some zest. And zest there was! The three "hosts," in Now Back to the Studio mode, suddenly leapt up from their cushies and half leaned, half dove at the camera screaming something that seemed just about as wacko-bongo as is legally allowed on a Monday morning. I don't know what the words were, but when the two genero-babes leaned in and yelled 'em, my attention was downright rapt. And they did it over and over. Sit back down, talky talky, jump up again and yell and shake. It was truly glorious. World Cup, what? Right, the soccer, right. I hear that Landon Donov--whoa there they go again with the yelling and the swivelling!
Soon it wa
s game time, and the Three Amigos threw it over to the mustachioed vets in the faux-Fox Sports headquarters. But first there was a faux-Fox Sports graphically charged, computer animated pump-up to get the World Cup action of the day started. The language barrier, at this early juncture, presented no problems whatsoever.
Homoerotic gladiators, star-swipes and rocket boosters, it seems, leap cultural boundaries more nimbly than Brangelina on a kid-hunt. Explosions, robotic arms, etc., then the gladiator itself appears. He was glorious in his leather-strapped soccer jersey (I swear I saw a nipple), as he glared at the green-screen glory imploding and deploding before him. Then he walks out into what looks like a broiling mechano-abyss, only to step onto a metal walkway that formed before him with each step. He was like a studly, plastic-armored, Mexican Magneto. And the game hadn't even started yet.
To be honest, the game itself was a bit of a let down after such a wacko-bongo build-up.
Kick, run, kick, give up goal to Cosmo-Kramer-if-he-joined-the-dark-side, give up two goals to K.D. Lang here to the left. There was little to note vis-a-vis the Univision experience during the game itself. The announcers' banter zipped along like Luke Skywalker's landspeeder, and I could’ve more easily fixed up a broken down speeder than given you word one of that broadcast. Notable perhaps were the escalating zeal and volume of those words when the ball bounced within 50 yards of either goal. This led to an uncontrollable and immediate rise in Viewer Blood Pressure (or VBP)--no matter your native tongue. It’s like if I’m in Beijing, I know that you’re telling me that my ass is on fire, even if I don’t know that you’re telling me my ass is on fire.
My VBP took a noticeable (and doctor recommended!) dip after the halfway mark when, with precious little hope for a U.S.Anything-resembling-goalage, I nodded off to sleep (that's why it's my favorite side of the couch). The occasional burst of announcer enthusiasm roused me blinking from the tiny village of Nappington, but when I finally woke up for real it was like it had all been some sort of strange dream. You know those dreams where you can't understand what anybody is saying? And there are gladiators in cowboy hats dancing with mustachioed genero-babes? And K.D. Lang is scoring goals against you at will? Yeah, it was, like, one of those dreams.
I don't speak Spanish, first off, which made the prospect of watching the U.S. team's first World Cup game on Univision all the more pleasurable. I've long enjoyed Spanish television, with its wrestling midgets, its leggy spokesmodels, and its dubbed-up late-night replays of "Commando." But how would I fare watching something real, something live? Let's just say that I didn't have any idea what the sportsca
sters were saying (damned if I couldn't find “Goooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaal!!!� on a single one of those on-line translator sites), there were spokesmodels all over the pre-game "show", and there weren't enough midget wrestlers. Which is to say there weren't any midgets at all (C'mon, Freddy Adu ain't that short. He's pretty short though). I let it all wash over me like a mail-order carnival.I set up shop on my favorite end of the couch and flipped to good old channel 122 on the n
etwork dial. I've always thought 122 to be a good number, and sometimes on a late night if you're lucky you can pick up some of Cronkite's broadcasts from the sixties still floating around in the electronic ether. The pre-game show was as surreal and wacko-bongo as I was hoping it would be. Three "hosts" held the floor: the obligatory chubby dude with well-done coiffure and melon tie, and two obligatory bosomy genero-babes who talked up an unintelligible storm. There was a man in the field piped in on the monitor from Munich who was a kind of Barry Melrose knocked over the head with a Nerd Stick. At one point, for reasons I was unable to translate, a man in a cowboy hat dragged a foosball table out into the German streets. Before I could uncork my first Corona of the morning (if Willie Nelson and Alan Jackson say it's 5'o'clock somewheres, I believe 'em), old Cowboy Hat was down one-nil to a wacko-bongo U.S.A. fan in some kind of flag-hat/solar panel that made Carrot Top look tolerable. But an awkward silence, it seems, knows no lingual bounds, and it became quickly obvious that the pre-game show needed some zest. And zest there was! The three "hosts," in Now Back to the Studio mode, suddenly leapt up from their cushies and half leaned, half dove at the camera screaming something that seemed just about as wacko-bongo as is legally allowed on a Monday morning. I don't know what the words were, but when the two genero-babes leaned in and yelled 'em, my attention was downright rapt. And they did it over and over. Sit back down, talky talky, jump up again and yell and shake. It was truly glorious. World Cup, what? Right, the soccer, right. I hear that Landon Donov--whoa there they go again with the yelling and the swivelling!
Soon it wa
s game time, and the Three Amigos threw it over to the mustachioed vets in the faux-Fox Sports headquarters. But first there was a faux-Fox Sports graphically charged, computer animated pump-up to get the World Cup action of the day started. The language barrier, at this early juncture, presented no problems whatsoever. Homoerotic gladiators, star-swipes and rocket boosters, it seems, leap cultural boundaries more nimbly than Brangelina on a kid-hunt. Explosions, robotic arms, etc., then the gladiator itself appears. He was glorious in his leather-strapped soccer jersey (I swear I saw a nipple), as he glared at the green-screen glory imploding and deploding before him. Then he walks out into what looks like a broiling mechano-abyss, only to step onto a metal walkway that formed before him with each step. He was like a studly, plastic-armored, Mexican Magneto. And the game hadn't even started yet.
To be honest, the game itself was a bit of a let down after such a wacko-bongo build-up.
Kick, run, kick, give up goal to Cosmo-Kramer-if-he-joined-the-dark-side, give up two goals to K.D. Lang here to the left. There was little to note vis-a-vis the Univision experience during the game itself. The announcers' banter zipped along like Luke Skywalker's landspeeder, and I could’ve more easily fixed up a broken down speeder than given you word one of that broadcast. Notable perhaps were the escalating zeal and volume of those words when the ball bounced within 50 yards of either goal. This led to an uncontrollable and immediate rise in Viewer Blood Pressure (or VBP)--no matter your native tongue. It’s like if I’m in Beijing, I know that you’re telling me that my ass is on fire, even if I don’t know that you’re telling me my ass is on fire.My VBP took a noticeable (and doctor recommended!) dip after the halfway mark when, with precious little hope for a U.S.Anything-resembling-goalage, I nodded off to sleep (that's why it's my favorite side of the couch). The occasional burst of announcer enthusiasm roused me blinking from the tiny village of Nappington, but when I finally woke up for real it was like it had all been some sort of strange dream. You know those dreams where you can't understand what anybody is saying? And there are gladiators in cowboy hats dancing with mustachioed genero-babes? And K.D. Lang is scoring goals against you at will? Yeah, it was, like, one of those dreams.
posted by Rival Room Editor at
2:48 PM
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