Soccer

This got on my nerves

I don't hate soccer. I grew up loving it. It was probably my second favorite sport after basketball. Growing up, Cobi Jones, Eric Wynalda, Tony Meola, Alexi Lalas, and Brian McBride were heroes. I remember watching any friendly game I could on ABC and hoping in futility that my dad would flip soccer on the main TV. When we would go to the library on Saturdays I would spend my allotted internet time (Stone Age stuff I know) looking up the MLS team sites. As I grew older, my soccer interest waned as my interest in the finer things in life (football, women, and football) increased.

I'd say my souring on soccer came to a head when I played soccer my senior year in high school. I had a basketball hangover and wanted to squeeze every last drop out of my senior year so I went out for soccer. I had played a lot growing up and was invited to try out for the high school team as an eighth grader but forsake the game for four years. My coach was a former semi-pro soccer Cuban defector. His English wasn't the best and he used words like "pace" and "pitch" that I didn't understand. How was I supposed to put pace on the ball? Did I need to make sure that the ball stayed at a constant speed? How does one go about that? Did I need to sprinkle some salsa on the ball? What would that accomplish? I figured out that meant to kick the ball hard. Why didn't he say that? Why didn't he tell me to put some mustard on the ball? This coach was a masterful tactician and a horrible person. He berated and mocked his players and directed most of his energies, both positive and negative, towards his son. It was a horrible situation. We had a good season but I was glad when it ended.

Fast forward to 7/29/14. The World Cup is over, thank God. Seriously, thank God. I enjoy watching the United States play and will occasionally watch a game without the US but I cannot stand soccer fandom. Stop calling the field the pitch. Stop using the British version of "be" usage (i.e. The English team "are"). Stop calling the games matches. Matches are little sticks that create fire or indicate a combat sports bout.

The coup de grâce is definitely calling soccer "football". We live in America, football is football and soccer is soccer. This isn't an American problem, in Canada "football" means their version of gridiron football. In Australia, "football" means Australian football. In America, "football" means football. I recently read an entry in Der Spiegel that stated that as the word "soccer" has been on an upswing in American print media over the last 30 years, the word is on a downswing in the United Kingdom during the same period. Brits have taken offense at the Americanization of soccer and have stopped using the word. To those soccer fans out there that insist on me calling soccer "football", should I also refer to my truck as a lorry? Do I need to call my Oreos "biscuits"? No, no one suggests that.

Back to the original Facebook post that spurred this blog post. Saturday Night in the South is a sacred time reserved for the 2nd biggest SEC game of the day, not a soccer game. I am proud of the CFC making it to the national finals of their tier of the North American soccer pyramid. 9,000 people attended the semifinal game, yet you constantly hear that soccer is swiftly taking over the American sports landscape. Horsefeathers. In the same stadium, the hapless UTC Mocs averaged 9,900+ this past season. The Mocs are horrible. They've always been horrible. They have almost no following to speak of, no large student presence, yet they pull 9,000+ for trash games. As no one stat tells the story, we need to look at the MLS. For all the touting of MLS attendance figures, the league is not a freight train gaining steam. I constantly see soccer fans online bash the NHL, NBA, and MLB and say that the MLS is averaging more fans per game. Well, duh. When you play fewer games and offer tickets at half the price of your counterparts, of course you will average more fans. This blog post explains it better than I ever could.

The bottom line for me is, hey man, you like soccer? Cool, no need to attack other sports. As for soccer taking over America, stop trying to make it happen and enjoy your game.

Trends

I remember 11 years ago (am I that old), asking a friend of mine who was into the indie music scene if he had heard of a band called the Hives. He indicated that he had and used to like them until they got onto MTV and became mainstream. I didn't understand the logic used to no longer enjoy this song or the fun video.

Fast forward to last week. I asked a friend about the Mumford & Sons "hiatus". He indicated that he didn't follow that band anymore or the Lumineers because their sound had been copied across a wide assortment of genres and musical acts. I didn't understand that logic either.

I like what I like and don't really care what you like. I like Jesus, my family, my friends, the Tennessee Vols, Atlanta Braves, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Moutain Dew, classic rock, classic country music, 90s rock, 90s country, The Office, Scrubs, Life is Beautiful, The Natural, hot wings, fried food, summer, and running shoes. My guilty pleasures include professional wrestling (not just the WWE, I follow promotions that operate in high school gyms and draw 200 people), Creed, Daria, and the Great Plains. I don't care what you think about my likes no more than I care that you enjoy cutting grass, watching So You Think You Can Dance?, or listening to Barry Manilow. What difference does it make what I like and what you like? If you look at pictures of me from high school, my fashion sense hasn't changed. I still like t-shirt of my favorite sports teams, I still wear running shoes 90% of the time, and I still don't prefer polo shirts. What's that you say? You only wear polo shirts? Cool. I don't care.

As The Skillet once told me, "You do you, and I'll do me." When I first heard this, I thought it was a thinly veiled masturbation statement before I realized it meant "Let's both mind our own business." Agreed. Like what you want, and forget what people around you are doing.

Southern Living

I recently had a night out with my in-laws and we went to Tupelo Honey Cafe. THC is supposed to be THE new Southern restaurant, a blend of down-home cooking and class. I was pretty excited but was quickly disappointed when I perused the menu online.

"Grateful Dead Black Bean Burger"

• A Veggie burger named for hippies?

"Southern Fried Chicken Saltimbocca with Country Ham and Mushroom Marsala"

• The greatest insult. "Fried Chicken" isn't on the menu but this is.

"Seasoned Salsa Verde Black-Eyed Peas and Goat Cheese Grits topped with two over medium eggs, two maple peppered bacon strips, cheddar cheese and Sunshot Salsa (substitute one soysage for bacon)"

• Soysage? Goat Cheese?

This is not the South. A Southern menu has fried chicken, chicken fried steak, a regular burger, plain, mayo-based cole slaw, and cheese from a cow. Tupelo Honey Cafe is a hipster's version of what it takes to make the South palatable, not a Southern restaurant.

Currently on Southern Living's recipe section of the website, they have steak recipes posted. The top recipe is coffee rubbed skirt steak.The second recipe is seared steak with potato-artichoke heart hash. I don't need to continue. You know what's a good steak recipe? Steak. You know what goes well with it? Potatoes, baked or fried. No artichoke, no need for you to rub coffee on it. I also see corn recipes on this site. You know what kinds of corn are good? On the cob, off the cob, and in a pudding.

What's happened to my South? Sweet tea, fried anything, and sports (preferably football.)

Nostalgia

Who likes reminiscing about the old days? I do too. I was recently cleaning out a closet and found my old CD collection. I soon found myself listening to "Dolphin's Cry" by Live in my living room. Though the doors were locked and the windows close, I'm sure all my neighbors heard my jam session. I probably listened to this song six times. This song was released when I was in middle school and when I heard it Live quickly became one of my favorite bands. "Lakini's Juice", "Selling the Drama", "I Alone", "Lightning Crashes" all world-rocking songs to 14 year old Jubal Foster. Later in the same day I found this video on the YouTube. I probably have watched this video 10 times in the past month and have only listened to Creed on my iPhone since. (This is a lie, I downloaded "As Tears Go By" last week. Wow, beautiful song.) What a great WWF highlight video. The early 2000s was the best era for the WWF. Such talent, great stories. If professional wrestling isn't enough of a guilty pleasure, my wife and I binge watched Dawson's Creek this summer. I love that show, always have. This wasn't my first foray into Capeside, I originally watched this show every weekday morning on TBS the summer before my senior year. I still got infuriated with Dawson for not making a move on Joey. I watched to punch Pacey with the same vigor as I did a decade ago when he made moves on Joey.

Anything that harkens back to the mid 90s to mid 00s, I eat it up. Friends, Seinfeld, ER? Definitely. I still watch the horrible NBC Thursday night lineup out of a misappropriated fealty. This song? Downloaded. Memorized. Most watched show on my Amazon VOD account? Daria. I have it bad. While I think the "Only 90s kids will remember" posts on Facebook are vapid, I identify with all of them.

Why do we look away to old times? And we definitely do look back to old times. Films like Dazed and Confused will always capture our attention and we will always identify with them. I've never been drunk, taken any illegal drugs, had sex contact outside marriage, or even played football but darn it, I see myself in Jeremy London in that film and you do too. Conventional wisdom will tell you that the old days were better times. When these claims are examined, this simply isn't true. Crime keeps falling, teen pregnancy is dropping, drugs use is falling, our air and water are the cleanest that they have ever been measured. For me, I believe that the old days are better in my mind because, in my mind they are. Let me explain. When I was 14, raw dog, hot dog, and chili dog were various ways of eating mechanically separated pork parts squeezed into a synthetic case not sex acts. I knew nothing of the Rape of Nanking, the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Darfur Crisis. I had never dumped a girlfriend nor been dumped by a girlfriend. In short, I wasn't jaded. Life wasn't hard, everything was good. I was becoming a man and passions were being awakened without the adulthood threats of employment, financial responsibility, or personal status. Appropriately (for this post) Creed's "Never Die" tackles this issue. We abandon our youth because we forget how to be a child. I cannot go back an unlearn what female genital mutilation is. I can't unsee Baghdadi children born with horrifying birth defects. I can't unhear Steve Winget mentioning beastiality in chapel my sophomore year of high school and frankly, I don't want to forget it, that was one of the truly funny moments of my life. Thanks for hitting the tough issues that 2002's teens are facing Mr. Winget.

The only moral you should ever take away from my porch time banter is to buy my white lightning by the jugful but if I could make one suggestion, guard your eyes and thoughts. The older I get, the more I can oblige someone when they say "You don't want to know." We'll never be kids again, but we should try.