WORLD CUP FEVER

It's summertime, but it's not just Hamburgers on the grill being fired up, cause out in Hamburg, Germany... IT'S WORLD CUP TIME!!!

Ready for the Soca warriors march on to victory? Or Iran reel off some explosive games against their Pool D competition?

No? Well, alright, neither was I.

If Page 2 on ESPN.com is the pulse of the amalgam between American pop culture and sports it would seem that the biggest story out of Germany is Dirk dropping 50 and subsequently Phoenix outta the NBA dance. The World Cup is apparently not even major sidebar material, sorry Trinidad...

It's not like I have a particular vendetta against soccer, it's just I've basically grown-up watching everything but (well, not everything, according to a certain Tracy McGrady, curling is on Canadian television all the time but it has not piqued my interest).

The thing that really gets me is when people who do enjoy it deride North Americans as being so full of themselves because it's the most popular sport in the world (these are usually the people who insist on calling it football even here). Well, newsflash, a lot of the world also does not enjoy things like clean running water or reliable electricity, but I'm not going to see how "awesome" life can be without those things. Last time I checked, the USA had 300 million people, that's a lot of people who don't really like soccer.

People like that remind me of movie and literary critics who thumb their noses at pulp fiction and action movies. Last time I checked though, those guys are writing two-bit columns for some local paper (although I can only wish to be at that level) whereas Oprah is a multibillion dollar woman and Arnold, the governator of Cali. All those art-house snobs can tell me how great a movie about a gay love affair between two cowboys is, but I'm still going to watch X3 (which by the way is pretty good, but the first 30 minutes nearly relapsed me into trauma not suffered since Transformers: The Movie [sidenote 2: Upcoming Live-action Transformers? Stop trivalizing my childhood!]).

So here's to you football snobs, unless the World Cup involves a position called nickel cornerback, with a guy named Roderick Hood playing it, on a team called the Philadelphia Eagles, it's not football to me. Don't correct me either, cause it's just the way it is; it is in most of North America anyway. I realize the hypocritical angle that reeks of the same snobbery I just denounced, but it just makes it easier for them to understand.