You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Listening to the World Cup.
Of course I wanted to watch. Who didn’t, but I didn’t get to.
The round of 16; it was like an unofficial American holiday.
Team USA has captivated our nation with corner kicks, and PK’s and off sides calls.
Today was a soccer day of days.
USA vs Belgium.
The USA was a decided underdog.
The game was hyped like a heavy weight prize-fight.
Win and move on.
Lose and go home.
Hey who are you guys again?
Probably not that kind of anonymity, but close.
Soccer is the ugly step child of American sports.
Behind football, college football and the NFL draft , there is soccer.
Well maybe the NBA and MLB are more popular, but on this day of soccer day’s you could feel the sporting energy.
So watching this knockout game is a big deal.
It’s a national big deal.
It’s the USA vs Russians in the Olympics.
Do you believe in Miracles?
It’s the equivalent of a wild card weekend in the NFL.
I’d actually quit before I miss that.
The knockout game is at the worst possible time; 3pm on a Tuesday.
3pm on a Tuesday. You kidding me, FIFA?
Some people gotta work, you know what I mean.
Some of these fans have been in Brazil for 4 weeks. They are dressed like Teddy Roosevelt and the statute of liberty and Eddie Eagle.
Are these guys being subsidized Party City?
Game time 3pm on a Tuesday?
That’s like a bullseye of bad timing.
3 pm on a Tuesday. That’s when bosses get that mid day twitch and start pacing the factory floor looking for some ass to chew.
You think your boss gives a damn about American Soccer and it’s 3pm kick off?
I know many people who called in sick.
The boss went berserk. He publicly ridiculed them.
He questioned their sudden whooping-cough or case of enlarged gonads or unusual case of male menstruation.
I didn’t call in sick, but if I could have gotten my period, I would have.
I thought about it. I thought long and hard about it. I thought about how I would call. I thought about gargling with anti freeze to give my voice that failing sound. I thought about closing my hand in the car door and saying I had been attacked by a neighborhood yorkie.
Would they believe I was the 1st white man to contract one day sickle-cell anaemia?
Could I fake my own death, and then return from the grave the next day?
All these terrible soccer thoughts. But in the end, I simply came to work with the rest of the cogs and felt like a kid missing Christmas.
3 pm arrives. Workers are ignoring the boss at the afternoon meeting, straining to see any TV tuned in to the game.
I watch co-workers pretend to shuffle papers and pick up tapes and talk about making phone calls. But it’s a rouse, a theatrical demonstration designed to put them in front of a plasma tuned to ESPN.
I stop and watch.
“Just a minute,” I say to myself.
I watch the start. It’s the usual passing the ball back and forth, side to side, feeling out your opponent.
“You ready to go?” my photographer asks.
I look at the luscious green grass and the beautiful game and sigh.
“Yeah, come on, let’s go.”
We get in the car. It’s hotter than a fat man’s arm pit. The air in the car is hot enough to steam clams.
Vrooom.
The air conditioning blows into my face. Thank God.
Then the radio pops on and my brain does a rainbow flavored back flip.
“what’s that?” i ask.
“It’s 102.5. ESPN radio,” he says.
“It’s the game?.”
“Yeah, i know.”
Suddenly my brain is alive with imagery of the pitch and the crowd swaying and the flags unfurling and the players scampering up and down the field.
As we pull out of the parking lot, I listen to the play by play.
I see a sonic. I see a hobo on a bus bench. I see the Drake Motel across the street. The sign says “where the stars stay.”
Yeah, by the hour, I muse.
As the grey, blurred, soiled stretch of Murfreesboro road presents itself visually, I inhale the cool air and the sounds of my nation trying to do the impossible.
The radio is a welcome respite filling my thoughts with a place far far away.
“The USA with one sub left. Belgium has two,” the announcer screams, the crowd almost as loud behind him.
I notice a hooker on the corner. She lives by this bus bench, pretending to ride a bus she will never get on.
“Outside the Belgian box, now 30 yards away,” the announcer shouts with enthusiasm.
I can see the ball in the cool blue Brazilian sky. It is a rainbow orb floating with the precise amount of pressure, being kicked off the boot of sporting assassins.
Back in Nashville, a bus blows a billowing wad of black smoke at my window. I notice the sign on the bus for a bail bond company. It is written in Spanish.
I listen to the incredible excitement blowing through my speakers. “Michael Bradley holding…now to Marcus Beasely, back to Bradely in the circle.”
“Elm Hill Pike or Lebanon Road,” my photographer interjects, piercing my fantasy like a pin in a balloon.
Both are ugly hell holes of transportation, I think to myself.
“Elm Hill,” I say, trying to reestablish my own visual link to the action on the pitch.
“He’ll launch the ball from the right,” the announcer shouts. My mind sees the ball lofted in the air headed into the box.
Traffic is stacked up at the light in front of us. Nashville Rush hour looks hot and stagnant. It is a long way from Brazil.
The announcer doesn’t care about traffic or heat or hookers. He is announcing a game for TV on radio.
“He cuts it back to Jones in the box.”
I imagine this is how my dad spent his child hood, in front of the radio, listening to the Lone Ranger, riding on the announcer’s every word, letting his brain make the pictures.
“He blasts it toward the end line. Corner Kick, Belgium,” he shouts.
I am recording the game. I will know the score. I will still watch it later. I will watch it for subtle nuances, things maybe I missed on the radio broadcast.
But for now? It’s radio from Brazil. Visuals from Murfreesboro Road.
Worlds colliding in a mosh pit of patriotism, athleticism, and prostitution.
Wow.
What a world cup it’s been.
Sure hope we win. I’ll be proud if we don’t.
Maybe team USA can stay at the Drake. It’s where the stars stay; by the hour.
Ha.
Life’s Crazy™