The Unbearable Lightness of Landon

Mommy, can I get a new futbol team? No, Mommy! One without that diving pussy LA Galaxy Bundesliga washout bald guy on it! He stinky!

I've calmed down considerably. Someone I don't know all that well pointed out to me at lunch yesterday, in the aftermath of the disaster that was the US team's golden and serious opportunity to advance in the World Cup, that I seem to take sports seriously. Raucous laughter rang out from the four people surrounding the commenter--and from me. "Duke sucks!" cried one. "The Italians are diving pussies!" shouted another. "John Gilchrist's mother sucks eggs!" added a third. The fourth doesn't know enough about sports to make a good joke, but she laughed anyway.

Look, it doesn't matter. The Dempsey goal--and thank all that is holy we can get back to detesting him--had a real purdy mouth, sure. But that's the only goal these hosers managed on their own steam, in three fucking games. Reyna's an elderly fuckup, McBride's no fuckup but he's just plain elderly, and Donovan is, it is now plain, crushingly overrated (spare me any defensive whimpering). The PK awarded to Ghana was a travesty of mockery of a sham, but it doesn't matter (blah blah blah, it let the Ghanans play turtle up for 45 minutes, blah blah blah--fuck off, the best US chances on which they didn't score came against the Ghanans turtled-up defense). I'd have taken it too, if I were the Ghanans. And it's not like the US scored two goals.

There was a three-four minute stretch in the second half that did, as my friend bDr says, smell like goal. But that petered out into nothingness, and the team never resumed the attack with the same swarming ferocity. As their efforts grew more urgent, they also grew more pathetic, and had less of a feeling of something that might result in redemption.

Good luck to the Ghanans. DCeiver (and do scroll to the end of the post to view DCeiver's best argument for rooting for Sweden, which I find tasteful, if uncompelling) thinks they might have a chance against Brazil; I'd like to think so, but I don't.

We now resume our regularly scheduled program of World Cup evil.