Japanese and Danes and Italians. Oh My!

AKA - 'The Axis of Soccer'

I really enjoyed the first weekend of 2010 FIFA World Cup™ action. Actually, I’m still enjoying it. Right now. As I type. Thanks to ESPN’s online coverage, I watched 2 matches at work Friday. I kept the games running in the corner of my monitor while I entered invoices and did other various work-related tasks.

Actually, I’m doing the same thing today. I’m watching Cameroon v. Japan right now. I watched the 2^nd half of the Netherlands 2-0 win over Denmark earlier this morning. Good stuff. Funny thing is, I think it’s actually made me MORE productive as opposed to less. Odd, huh?

Watching these games releases a flood of World Cup™ (most of those also seem to involve the beach) and soccer related memories. None of which relate to my own soccer playing. I played soccer a total of about 9 months in my youth. I was more of a baseball/football kid.

I became quite the soccer fan in high school, though. Several of my friends played on our high school team. Because of that I attended many Bradshaw High School soccer matches.

My favorite Bradshaw soccer memory originates at the final Bradshaw/Coffee match of 1992. Coffee was, at the time our cross-town rival. The soccer matches tended to be even more intense than our annual football game.

One of my friends was kicked off of the soccer team earlier in the season. That suspension stemmed from the first Bradshaw/Coffee match-up of the year. We blamed Coffee’s coach.

We decided to have a cookout at the next game. And while we were there we would make our presence and displeasure known. We spent the entire game being very loud. What I remember most though is the yellow card. We, the fans, got a yellow card.

Bradshaw scored a goal early in the game. After the goal our group of 10-15 ran around the entire field screaming at the tops of our lungs. We were especially loud and obnoxious as we ran behind Coffee’s bench. The next thing we knew the referee was facing Bradshaw’s bench holding up a yellow card. Good times.

Other life happenings:

1) I did not go to Paducah last weekend as planned. I did however skip church Sunday morning. It’s the first Sunday I’ve missed in quite a while and the first time I’ve just stayed home on a Sunday morning in about 4 years. (The other times I’ve been out of town.)

2) We’re going to Birmingham early next week. By “we” I mean the whole family. Misty, the kids, and me. Misty has her second, and final, ‘site visit’ for school on those days. We decided to make it a family trip. The kids and I will visit McWane Center, the Zoo, etc. while Misty is in class over those couple of days. Should be a fun trip. I’m sure we’ll get to do some visiting while we are there also.

3) I had an interesting comment on a past entry yesterday. Here’s a link. The comment was Anonymous. My response follows. You know what, I’ll make it easy. Here’s the comment, followed by my response:

Anonymous said...

Your notes from UMC conference are interesting, not sure why in your blog you have to drop in words like slut (pizza slut) and ugly as hell. I have noticed this within all your threads. Is this for effect or just unable to find a better word?

Scott Coats said...

"Pizza Slut" - because that's what one of my lunch-mates called Pizza Hut.

"...ugly as hell" - If you'd seen the PowerPoint you would agree. I guess I could have said it was "uglier than a head on collision between Shelley Duvall and Steve Buscemi."

Actually, I like that better...much, much better. I'm going to make that edit now.

I made the edit. But the comment made me think. Why do I choose the words I choose? I decided that, yes, I do use them for effect sometimes. Other times it is sheer laziness, lack of creativity.

Before I go further let me say this, I do wish that commenters would leave their names. I like to know to whom I am responding. Plus, how can you win a Matt Miller Memorial COTY Award if I don't know who you are?

I’m not making apologies fro the language I use. It could be much worse. I do, though, apologize for my laziness. I will try to be more colorful in the future. I will not, however, apologize to Shelley Duvall or Steve Buscemi. They are ugly.

4) Italy’s fans, however, are not ugly. Wow! See Exhibit A on the right. (By the way, I’m watching Italy v. Paraguay now. One all at the 75^th minute.)

OK, that’s all I can say today. I had more, but work keeps getting in the way.

Wow, there’s a Paraguayan fan with eyes cast upward, praying for a goal. Silly Paraguayan. Everyone knows God’s an Italy fan. I mean, come on. Rome? The Pope? Are they in Paraguay? I didn’t think so.