Topsy-Turvy (OT)

I awoke this morning at dawn to see the sun going down. The sky was mustard yellow; the rain was coming from the ground and falling up. The cars were going down the streets backwards. Birds were flying north. I saw a house painted blue and orange.

Today I fully expect that right-wing talk radio will be singing President Obama's praises; all of Britain will wake up, come to its senses, and admit that baseball, football and pool are in fact far better, more sensible, easier to understand, more fun to play, and vastly more entertaining to watch than cricket, soccer and snooker; and the city of Washington, D.C. will change the racist-ass name of its football team to "The Washington Warriors" like it ought to have done in, oh, 1968.

It apparently really happened. I thought I was dreaming, but no, I wasn't—unless I'm dreaming now. It was "The Battle of the Backups," but the bottom line was that...the Chicago Bears came into Lambeau Field and they had the better quarterback. Or, to state the exact same thing using slightly different words, the natural order of the Universe was turned all upside-down. Did not compute.

Congratulations to Bear Nation and our Bear-fan friends. Including my nurse friend Cynthia*, my brother Charlie the Chicagoan, and of course Michael. See you on December 29th!

Mike

*Cynthia recently suffered the trauma of arriving for a visit and finding her toddler grandson dressed in a Packers jersey. Being an intelligent, analytical adult, she rationized that he will grow up being loyal to the team of his home State just like she did, but emotionally I'm sure it was not easy for her to, um, Bear.

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Comments

[Steve Pritchard]

In Britain we already believe that football is better than American grid-iron handball. (You don't get to call it football if just one guy on the team is allowed to kick the thing!)
Also, what's a soccer?

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Sorry 'bout that.*

* naw.

[Walt]

racist-ass name?????????

[Hi Walt, Of course, and I was a fan all the way through the Jack Kent Cooke years. 'Redskins' is a slur...as a Native American friend of a friend recently said, "No, it's not like calling the team the 'Washington N-----s. It's milder than that. More like the 'Washington Hebes' or the 'Washington Darkies.'" A disgrace to the city and the country no matter how one might want to slice and dice it. IMO. --Mike]

[expiring_frog]

"and admit that baseball, football and pool are in fact far better, more sensible, easier to understand, more fun to play, and vastly more entertaining to watch than cricket, soccer and snooker"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sD_8prYOxo

With all my love.

[See, now, you've lost track of my point, which is that in upside-down world, John Cleese would prefer American football to soccer. It's because, in right-side-up world, he doesn't. See what I did there? --Mike

P.S. It's amazing how he manages to *literally* look down his nose at us while *seated*. Quite a skill, that.]

[Marcin Wuu]

There is at least one thing wrong with this sentiment. There is no such thing as "soccer". The game's called "football". What you fellas on the wrong side of the big pond call "football" is actually called "handegg", or "handandsometimesfootegg". Just sayin'.

[Roger Bradbury]

Nearly everything is vastly more entertaining than watching football. (soccer to you) I once told a keen football man that to say I hated football was to infer that I actually had some interest in the game..... : ]

Just one of those little windups between the mechanical guys and the electrical guys. I did get banned from his office for a while! : ]

[Andrew Hughes]

Being a British fan of cricket, football (sic) and snooker, I have not a clue about which you are talking

Good night!

[Mike]

Lost me when you got to the bit about Britain - cricket less entertaining than baseball, error 402

[ScribblersDad]

Would have been better if Rodgers had not gotten hurt. Hate to see a competitor and athlete like that lost to injury.
That having been said, we'll take the win...!
:)

[T Bannor]

My condolences, Mike. If it's any consolation, the game wasn't televised on broadcast television in Chicago and we don't have cable. I went to bed early, but awoke at 5am to catch the sports on the WGN morning news. I was pleasantly shocked.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Soccer is a game that has no professional presence in the US, and most people are thoroughly socialized into using the name "football" for American football before they ever encounter the other game. (There've been various marginal professional leagues of different sorts, attempting to get going, but they haven't succeeded. Maybe some day in the future.)

The strange thing is that there were widespread college soccer programs before the game had any presence in highschools (my father played varsity soccer at UC Berkeley back in 1936). So it's been kind of a middle-out progression, though the professional end hasn't gotten anywhere yet.

Soccer really doesn't work very well on television; I watch coverage of European games sometimes, and even on modern large HD screens it's hard to see what's happening (this is partly due to choices in how the coverage is done, they probably have a much smaller budget per game than NFL coverage does). Until HD took over, I suspect most Americans trying to watch soccer on TV just gave up.

The two really big American sports, baseball and football, both move in brief spurts. I don't know if that's relevant to their popularity; it seems like it could let a gathering watching such a game be more social, since there wasn't game action all the time. (But basketball and hockey, the other two serious pro sports here, approximate continuous action, though basketball has an awful lot of fouls called.)

[William Barnett-Lewis]

Heh. I've become much more fond of EPL football over recent years, but I'll always love my Packers more than Arsenal. Or Chicago... ;) Still, it was a well played game by the guys who were able to play it and that's the important thing. 3 way tie in a four team division? Makes for some interesting games coming up.

[Steve Smith]

all of Britain will wake up, come to its senses, and admit that baseball, football and pool are in fact far better, more sensible, easier to understand, more fun to play, and vastly more entertaining to watch than cricket, soccer and snooker

What you call soccer is actually football. What you call football doesn't appear to involve feet, although it does appear to involve stopping all the time.

The only way to make pool easier would be to put one large pocket in the middle of the table and have the table's surface slope down into it.

Anyway, gentlemen play billiards, not snooker.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Wait a minute, why is rugby getting off so easily? Shouldn't it come in for some abuse somehow here?

[Nigel]

Cricket is vastly superior to baseball, and if you have not made the effort to understand its complexities, that is you loss;
American football* is indeed superior to soccer**;
does anyone really care that much about the respective merits of pool and snooker*** ?

*Or would be if it did not cause chronic brain damage to many of its participants:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24420-brain-damage-in-american-football-linked-to-head-trauma.html#.UnpKXBxmj74

**About which I share Roger's feelings.

*** Though pool did give us The Hustler, and snooker gave the UK this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nXUPHR17FI

[James]

Mike,
Sorry for the late response, but the Bears had the good fortune to have their best quarterback on the field while the Packers got their best quarterback injured. Let's face it, if Cutler had played he would have folded and the Packers still would have won. Both teams were depleted by injuries to good players, but some are more devastating than others.

[expiring_frog]

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
"Soccer really doesn't work very well on television
...
The two really big American sports, baseball and football, both move in brief spurts. I don't know if that's relevant to their popularity"

... in the US. What price sample bias? :)

The rest of the world disagrees with you on exactly opposite grounds!

(Also, surely the biggest American sport is still (real) football. Last I checked, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Paraguay etc. were all American countries.)

PS: Mike, John Cleese is amazing in general. And has good taste in sport :D.