Duck, duck, it's
After spending Saturday evening post-Towering Slab & post-Wheelie Bus drowning (yes, even such a behemoth cannot stand up to suburban tidal waves) & toweling water out both the basement closet & the edge of Lunatic Offspring the Younger's Batcave -- disturbing to be actively in favor of sunny skies; not sure I'll ever recover from that descent into practical madness -- I was ready for some non-roto-rooting for a cherished side, world stage David, Uruguay, home of 37 people, eleven of which were seen sprinting on my computer screen.
Decades ago, it was a story, a picture, & an improbable script (from which book or magazine, that knowledge has slipped deep into the ether), a childlike fascination with how a soccer match could conjure the twin, beautiful extremes of a romanticism beaten too often these days into silence by a club of dry, efficient jade.
The Drive silenced eighty thousand. This, nearly in triplicate.
That black & white grit soon moved in color television, modern, industrial, punitive, for Uruguay at the 1986 World Cup put on a medieval (what happened to modern? As une amie is fond of saying, correctly, nothing really changes) torture clinic, thirteen(!) bookings in only four games, a hypnotizing grimness perhaps still unsurpassed save the Argentinian horror movie marathon a scant four years later. Their coach even got sidelined for the knockout stage, if memory serves, a suitable companion piece to a 50-odd second red card.
Scary as José Batista.
Despite such grotesquerie, Uruguay (along with the Netherlands, a story for another time) remained the team of choice to launch hyperbolic arcs, every pass floating as the most erotic dreams of Charles Hughes. English, this bottle, some Soccer Digest scribe said, & the occasional copy of When Saturday Comes; how that found a transatlantic current into a late 80s Parmastani bookstore is still a mystery worthy of Holmes. Today, such grit sprouts maximized from the fecund mind of Tabarez the Alchemist, festering pustules of controlled violence transmuted into talents of helpful gold, spirited in Diego Forlán who, unlike in the World Cup, hasn't finished with aplomb (cue the agreeing screams of Atlético fans)
"What do you call this, Yank? "
whilst doing everything else, a mop-topped Jason Kidd, all pitch vision & effort. & then there's Luis Suarez, totem of deception, of artful histrionics, football's answer to, since we're referencing the world's second most popular sport, Dennis Rodman. A motherfucker gifted with technique & annoyance, to be punched in the jaw until he's on your team & you love him dearly for every foul, every yellow card he pulls out of the ref's hat on the way to one more goal. Now he just needs to dye his hair like a stick of Fruit Stripe.
Love that do-or-die football. Sure, tiki-taka is indeed gorgeous, but everyone conveniently forgets it's available only to those with the resources of empire, money &, above all, time, the jewel national associations no longer have stashed next to Blatter's goose in their back pocket.
The limitation of a month-long tournament to reveal the truth, especially one including lockbox Paraguay, be damned, the beguiling possibility of random lightning strikes paints a kind of allure, a summer fling, a snapshot, a poem, that the moneyed bloat of a hundred-side, nine-month club competition designed to weed out all but the financial elite cannot.
13 comments:
...& post-Wheelie Bus drowning...
What?! Thw Wheelie Bus drowned and you didn't take a picture?
The profession of Photojournalism weeps.
~
...toweling water out both the basement closet & the edge of Lunatic Offspring the Younger's Batcave...
Haven't had that calamity, yet, but recently I did find a condom in my son's room.
Nothing worse than water in the house. That happened to us once. Of course it was right after we had our new carpeting put in.....
You need to read my Blog post from Saturday if you want some real soccer excitement. ;p
((Hugs))
Laura
P.S. I'm pretty sure "Randal wishing for sun" is the last seal that needs to be broken before the end of the world comes to pass.....
Maybe the Powers That Be are right in seeing that I've upset the order of created things.
Are you going to start golfing next?
Graves, you swine!
One must agree with That Girl, of course; Golf is the thing for you. You can booze it up, swing sticks, wear plaids and stripes (at the same time), and wear white belts and white shoes -- which in the SF of my youth was called The Full Cleveland.
Of course, it isn't that much of a change for you, so carry on and keep score.
Regards,
Tengrain
Be sure to include some white socks with the white belts and the white shoes, as befitting a Real Man of Parmastan.
if, why would I let my photojournalist hobby get in the way of my higher calling of slack?
BB, I'm not sure whether to thumb up or down.
laura, but was the acting world-class?
Gotta go, there are four dudes on horses galloping down the road.
thatgirl, it's bad enough you ruined libraries, now you're ruining lives.
tengrain, the only whites are my socks & my epidermis, though this extra sun has landed me one step closer to orange than I'd like.
thatgirl, to counter the Real Librarians?
Is there a group of Real Librarians™ you need to watch out for?
I'm reminded of this.
~
At least living on the 7th floor of a concrete box I'm spared the vicissitudes of flood. I'll let you know later about the other six.
I used to feel about baseball the way you do now about soccer. There's nothing like redirecting passion to unsullied causes.
Meanwhile, I'm happy to know another fan of Coffin Joe, he who delighted in eating meat on Friday.
"disturbing to be actively in favor of sunny skies"
What??? Say it isn't so! Or the wrath of Gsdfluihasdflkjh will rain down upon you!
And just what little ditty will Randal be playing as the four horsemen gallop onto scene? Inquiring minds want to know.
Sorry to hear about the basement flood.
Forgive the nit pick, but I couldn't help but notice this needs a comma after "elite."
if, don't get me started.
susan, there's much sullying (the disembodied hand of Sepp is everywhere), but I figure wasting time watching soccer keeps me from stabbing people in their eyeball.
Dammit, I'm hungry. Know any good coffins?
tom, a terrible spell hath been cast upon my soul!
demeur, duh, this, sir.
SWA, hey man, cut me some slack, I was only on my second cup.
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