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07.06.2010
This is written for Allison and Ryan - I hope you enjoy it as well.
Just recently, I spent a weekend in a completely soccer-crazed environment. World Cup South Africa was on; during the matches, life stopped and seemingly nothing else mattered, especially when the teams were close to home, like Germany and England. Although I can barely tell a soccer ball from a beach ball, I got caught up in the moment as well - wound up watching several games. It was difficult to avoid, anyway - for example, during the Argentina-Mexico match, late night a Sunday ago, all restaurant waiters and all patrons congregated around the bar, while the bartender offered running commentary. Needless to say, food and drink had to wait. Next day, at a roadside restaurant in the middle of nowhere, the staff was setting up a large computer monitor on a chair in the outside patio, for the convenience of lunch guests viewing Mexico-versus-Slovakia. I must grudgingly acknowledge that it sort of grew on me and I also got into the spirit of the event.
One thing that I found particularly enjoyable was the total saturation with World Cup themes in the media. As an example, music channels and the European MTV were filled with soccer-related songs, which do not appear to have registered at MTV USA. There were "official" and unofficial event songs, "official" and unofficial team songs, etc. - not even mentioning the advertising. For your entertainment, I collected a few videos that very much caught my eye. |
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Update 07.07.2010.
Out of curiosity, I checked the charts on German MTV and what passes for video charts (between all the reality shows) on US MTV. It is amazing how different are the public music tastes; we do indeed live in different worlds. Just to give you an idea: |
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