A Total Futbol Neophyte Looks at Messi

Today, it seems like every friend I have who has kids spends half their year ferrying the kids to soccer and the other half to a sport played with a stick (softball, t-ball, baseball). When I was a child, we didn't have soccer as the ubiquitous kid sport. It didn't start to become popular in our area until I was well into high school.  I think my high school got a team together when I was a sophomore or a junior.

Prior to this World Cup, I have not paid much attention to the sport.  I don't know why, really.  I have worked with international students for years, was in-country in Japan the year before they hosted and observed the building of the stadium in Brasilia two years ago from the heights of the TV Tower.  I have friends who are rabidly interested and have talked about it all the time.  I guess I just don't pay much attention to many sporting events.

This year, though, I had intentions to watch.  Admittedly, one of the main draws for me was seeing Brazil again even from a televised distance, seeing how all the preparations had come together, seeing if the general unrest that those preparations had stirred up had settled any. The World Cup began while I was in Louisville, and I turned on the TV in the Galt House one afternoon as one of the first matches was starting.  I was tired from a long day of hacking my way through the underbrush of essays, and I said, "Okay.  This is the year.  I'm going to do this this time around."  And so I watched.

Coming to a thing about which you know nothing is always both a humbling experience and a great source of the joy of discovery. I spent a lot of time looking stuff up online and trying to learn terms, rules, positions.  Thank God for Google, eHow, the FIFA site, and the millions of other sites made for newbies like me. The longer I watched, the more I began to comprehend basic things that my students probably absorbed with their baby food.  I discovered I liked the sport quite a bit.

The second game I watched in this World Cup had Argentina playing.  I honestly don't remember who their opponent was.  It was the first match in the opening round.  Right before it started, ESPN did one of their dramatic little mini-highlights of Lionel Messi.  I watched it with a little bit of interest and settled in for the match.

And from that point forward, pretty much all I saw was #10.  He's sort of amazing.

(Which I know is not new news.  Bear with me.  And while I know he is considered to be one of the best players in the world right now by people who actually know what they're talking about, I'm still going to tell you why.  This is my space.  I can do what I like.)

Ronaldo was made much of early on.  He had a different haircut for each match, including at one point a zigzag with a gold stripe painted in it. (Where and WHY did he find the time to go get a new 'do?) Apparently, according to the ESPN announcers, he was met at his hotel by a topless model.  While these things in and of themselves are not crimes, in the games I saw with him, he always seemed very conscious of his own glamour.  While I don't doubt he's good, I find that whole over-the-top attitude and lifestyle very boring.

Then there's Messi.  His is another one of the big glittery names at this World Cup.  The announcers chant his name like it's a litany required for salvation. Games he's not even playing in make mention of him. The corporate sponsors splash him on screen for almost every product.  He's drinking Pepsi, gulping Gatorade, operating at "god level" for Adidas.

Normally, these are things that would make me put him in the same big-business-sports-star box with Ronaldo.  I just couldn't do that to Messi, though.  The longer I watched him, the more I realized that his hair is the last of his concerns. I love to watch him play for several reasons.

One, he does things that are very hard but makes them look graceful and easy.  He doesn't showboat as I've seen some of the other young ones try to do.  To watch him move the ball is a kind of magic. (And no, not the "bippity-boppity-boo" kind, but thank you, Gatorade.  I have that flippin' song stuck in my head for DAYS every time I see that commercial...) Every time the ball comes near him, things get interesting.  He can take it away from others.  He can move it himself.  Apparently Maradona has said that it's like "the ball stays glued to his foot," and that seems about right to me.  It's beautiful to watch.

Two, he is not selfish.  While right now, the big media phrase is "Messi Dependence" for Argentina, this isn't because he isn't passing and giving his teammates a chance.  I love him for that.  In the last few matches I've seen with some of the other one-name demi-deities, too many of them wanted to hog the ball at times when a wise pass would have meant a goal.  Although Messi has done the majority of the scoring for his team in this World Cup, it isn't because he believes he's the only man on the field.

Three, I respect him because he always looks just a bit uneasy when the cameras are following him around during the pre-game stuff.  He doesn't simper or smirk or smolder into the lens. I perceive his expression as being one of resignation.  He can't do anything about it, but man, he wishes they would get that thing out of his face so he could concentrate on the important matters ahead.

Four, I love to see the rapport he has with other players.  My favorite example of this came when Argentina played Nigeria, and Messi and Enyeama were clearly giving each other friendly crap after Enyeama saved one of Messi's goal efforts.  The next time, Messi got it past the incredibly-good Nigerian goalkeeper, and still there was no pouting. It was an example of what sport SHOULD be to me.  It wasn't personal. They were sportsmen who could each appreciate the skill the other had. They might have been opponents, but that didn't mean they were enemies. I've seen him do that several times, sometimes with people he plays with in his regular league, sometimes not. For him, there is still joy in the game.  There are some others on the pitch who could take a lesson from that attitude.

Five, I saw pictures of him with his son.  Oh my God.  How totally precious.  Somebody retweeted his birthday post last week, and it was him with his little boy in his arms.  He had an expression of total happiness on his face. He has his son's handprints and name tattooed on his calf.  How can you not love someone who loves his little boy that much?  ESPN showed his wife carrying the little boy into the stadium before one of the matches, and he has a very small Argentina jersey with number 10 and the word "Papi" on the back.  Pardon me for having a girl moment, but, "AWWWWWWWWWWW."

Six, he does good things off the field.  He served as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF.  He makes sure children who need medicine (as he did when he was a child) have access.  He gave money to restore the oncology wing of a hospital and train their doctors abroad.   His foundation additionally works to promote and ensure educational opportunities are there for those in need.  He gives back.

Seven, finally, (and to your eternal relief, no doubt)  to me, he's just beautiful.  Sure, I suppose he's not classically handsome in the way that Ronaldo considers himself to be.  When he smiles, though, or when he looks up and grins after a score, how could anyone possibly prefer that overly-groomed Portuguese?

I am looking forward to tomorrow's matches. If Argentina get past Sweden and should the USA manage to get by Belgium (about which I refuse to make predictions in either case), it's theoretically possible my national team might be facing my favorite player.  I'm not going to think about it much, though.  Instead, I'm just going to enjoy another day of Messi.

The Allure of Shiny Tech

Every year I do the AP national reading, I set aside part of that check for something special.  This year, the vast majority of it has been earmarked for the various portions of my National Boards, but as always, I have decided to keep just a little back to spend on something nonessential.

I have a FitBit, and I love it.  I wear it almost all the time, and it really has helped me increase my activity.  (Well, except right now in the summer when it's hotter than nine hells outside and World Cup is on all the time...)  The only thing I wish is that the FitBit had a watch on it.  If I'm going to have something on my my wrist, I wish it could at least tell me what time it is.  There are many situations where I simply cannot pull out my phone, and I do not want to wear a regular watch, so having the time on this slender band would be great.

Recently, a whole new batch of smartwatches has been released by several companies.  I looked at the ones from Samsung, and I liked what I was seeing.  They have gone past the Pebble phase of something functional but quite ugly and are actually becoming interesting.

I was most interested in the Samsung Gear Fit, a combination of fitness band and smartwatch.  When compared to the other things that are available, the design is lovely.  It is designed to do all the things I want one to do, measure my steps, run my music player, show me notifications, tell me the time.  However, when I started doing research on it, the reviews were almost universally lukewarm.  Everyone loves the design but hates the functionality.

I could have dismissed some of the reviews.  Those people expected it to summon a space pegacorn to sweep them to a solid gold house, apparently.  Some of them had such piddly little faults or expected such massive things no simple smartwatch is probably going to be capable of for a long while that I took them with the required grain of salt and moved on.  I probably would have already ordered one except for the repeated claim that it does not measure steps accurately.  One reviewer claimed he'd been sitting in his chair, swung his arm to reach for something, and the Gear Fit registered 36 steps.

Yeah.

That's a problem.

Again, one or two such instances would have been possible to discount.  The fact that almost every single reviewer on every site I checked said much the same means I just can't justify spending the money on a device that isn't what is should be.

There's another option coming later this summer, apparently.  Motorola is going to join the fray, and from the
very vague ads they have, I am optimistic that this could be the thing I need.  For one thing, it looks gorgeous.  It's not a conspicuous square with a technofabulous band that screams, "HEY!  LOOK AT ME!  SMARTWAAAATCH!!!"  Instead, its face is round, its band interchangeable, and with the right clock face selected, it wouldn't draw that much more attention than the old-fashioned analog watches I wore for years and years.

What they say it will do, however, would make my life so much easier.  It has deep Google integration, and just the little teaser previews available here and there promise fitness measuring and everything else I want.  Granted, this one probably doesn't have a "summon pegacorn" setting, either, but that is totally fine by me.  My wants and needs are simple.  (heh)

So I'm still waiting.  I'm sure that as we get closer to the season of commercial feeding frenzy (aka Black Friday/Cyber Monday), more of these devices will appear.  I'm not going to jump on the beta device wagon this time.  I want something that I can use for a long time, and I will wait until it appears.

The Things We Leave Behind

Yesterday, I went junkin' to get out of the house.  I usually really enjoy it.  I've been feeling pooish the last three or four days, apparently the run up to a migraine that woke me up early this morning, and so maybe that's the reason I looked at everything differently yesterday.

I browsed as I usually did, but I kept being struck by the little things, the cut glass knickknacks, the chalk wall plaque of the smiling bird, the assorted rolling pins casually lying in a Pyrex bowl, the rhinestone brooches, and the tattered toy biplane hanging from the ceiling.  All those things had belonged to someone else.  At some point, presumably, all those things were valued by someone else.  Now, they were piled haphazardly into the various booths of the flea market, priced with a small sticker or tag, and waiting on usefulness to come again.

Some of the items moved me more than others.  One booth had a kitchen's worth of cast iron.  The skillets were crusted in rust.  The Dutch oven was, as well.  I picked up a couple of pieces with an eye to finding something to refinish and put back into use, but I couldn't stop thinking about how many meals, how many family moments, those abandoned vessels represented.  I wondered if whomever used them worried over them, kept them shiny and well-greased, enjoyed the heft of them as they took them out of the cabinet the way I do with my own pieces.  It made me sad.

A young fluffy couple, both of whom were entirely too overly groomed to be junkin' in an unairconditioned building in 95-degree weather, were sweeping up and down the aisles, noses firmly in the air.  The ridiculously preppy man snidely commented to his ridiculously preppy mate that "this place seems like a horror movie."  And even though I didn't agree with the reasons behind his comment, for the first time ever, there was something horrible about one of my favorite places.  Everything around me was something that had been left behind.

I started thinking about my own house, all the things I treasure, my collection of ceramics from Japan, my bits and bobs of jewelry from various trips, my Fiestaware, all those PEZ I've collected, my own cast iron.  What will happen to it when I'm gone?  I have no one to leave it to, no daughter to teach my grandmother's cornbread recipe and skillet with, no son to whom I can give my grandfather's WWII uniform or the knife my other grandfather made from a bayonet and stacked glass circles from the windshield of a downed Italian plane.  Some day, someone will have to come in, slog through, box up, and all my things will wind up in some rag and bone shop, too.  That old saying from Lamentations came to mind, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity..."

I forced myself to put the thought away.  I found an interesting and amusing pair of old sunglasses, a purple whisky bottle for my bottle trees.  As I walked out to the vehicle with my purchases, though, I looked at the old bathtubs sitting around the edge of the parking area, and it returned with a vengeance.  I had to look away.

Watching Team USA

It's game day with Germany, and like what I hope is most of the US, I am watching my country's representatives fighting Germany.  Nobody expects us to win.  I personally sort of believe in the concept of any given team on any given day, but then again, I have been accused of being a hopeless optimist.

We're into minute 15, and I have a separate timer sitting beside me counting down the time left on a batch of rice pudding that I mixed up during the pregame show.  I also cleaned my whole kitchen at that time.  It seemed the thing to do.

I was in the middle of washing up last night's pots and pans when it came time for the national anthems.  I stopped, cut off the water, and walked into the living room to hear it.  There is something about hearing a stadium full of people singing "The Star Spangled Banner" that gives me both goosebumps and tears.  At the very end, that last phrase, "home of the free, and the land of the brave," seemed to sum up what we are all about here in Brazil.

We are not a soccer superpower.  We aren't jaded when we show up here.  Other countries have accused us of being fake underdogs.   They say we have money, power, economic status.  How can we possibly be an underdog anymore?  Announcer and journalist eyes roll.  Snide memes proliferate.

I think America is always going to be the underdog, though.  Despite our status, whatever it may be in this current world, I'm not sure we are ever going to get over being the new guy at the party, the nouveau riche guy who came from humble origins and sometimes can't quite figure out how he got there in the first place.  He's not quite sure of the etiquette.  Maybe he doesn't feel comfortable in the clothes.  However, he's here now, and he's going to do the best with it he can.

I'm not sure why the rest of the world seems to resent us so much for this.  We have traditionally demonstrated the trait of working hard to achieve a goal, even when it didn't seem possible.  I think America has always been at her best when things come down to the rock-and-hard-place moments.  It brings something out in us that we don't always see at other times.  There is a relief in being able to roll up the sleeves, lay hands on the obstacle, and work to remove it.

And shouldn't everybody feel that way?  What does a team or even a private individual show up for if the plan isn't to give everything, to do the best you can?

Undoubtedly, I'm just a product of my national point-of-view. Maybe it sounds naive or idealistic, and I'm sure it is in some ways.  However, that's very American, too.

I don't know if we will win this, get the draw, or go through.  I hope whatever the outcome may be that we will be able to leave with a feeling of satisfaction at our effort.