World Cup

Posted by: visuvius

World Cup - 09/06/2006 16:18

Anyone planning on watching? I just sat through the first match (Germany-Costa Rica) and it was pretty sweet (Costa Rica got pwned).

I really wish soccer were more popular in the states. When the Super Bowl is on, they start coverage damn near 2 days before the event. The first game of the World Cup started at 9 am pacific time, and they started coverage at 8:55 on espn 2. booooooooooooooooooo.
Posted by: furtive

Re: World Cup - 09/06/2006 19:59

Quote:
pwned


I don't understand. Am I getting old? I mean I know the meaning, but I just don't get it.

EDIT: Oh, and yes I'm watching. Having to sneak out of an ante-natal class to see England tomorrow
Posted by: rob

Re: World Cup - 09/06/2006 20:10

I've had a little chat with my Tivo. It is now quite clear on what will happen to it should it decide to record any World Cup related footage, what so ever. I've already dusted off the sledge hammer.

Rob
Posted by: canuckInOR

Re: World Cup - 09/06/2006 20:29

Quote:
Quote:
pwned


I don't understand. Am I getting old? I mean I know the meaning, but I just don't get it.

Nothing to get, really. It's just a common typo that took on a life of its pwn.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: World Cup - 09/06/2006 20:46

Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
pwned


I don't understand. Am I getting old? I mean I know the meaning, but I just don't get it.

Nothing to get, really. It's just a common typo that took on a life of its pwn.

Wiki-rescue!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwnd
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owned
Posted by: tanstaafl.

Re: World Cup - 09/06/2006 23:11

I've had a little chat with my Tivo. It is now quite clear on what will happen to it should it decide to record any World Cup related footage, what so ever.

How do you do that? It is ieasy to persuade TiVo to include programming based on filter parameters, but I've never been able to make it exclude certain things.

For example, if I were a big fan of auto racing, I could set up a wish list to record any program about auto racing... but I would not be able to tell it to record all auto racing except NASCAR.

Similarly, how to you tell your TiVo not to record World Cup soccer, but still record other soccer games?

tanstaafl.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 00:21

Quote:
Nothing to get, really. It's just a common typo that took on a life of its pwn.

Best short explanation for it that I've ever heard. Bravo.
Posted by: Roger

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 05:26

Quote:
Similarly, how to you tell your TiVo not to record World Cup soccer, but still record other soccer games?


Since Rob won't be recording any other soccer^Wfootball games, I don't think that this is going to be a problem...
Posted by: rob

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 06:39

Quote:
Similarly, how to you tell your TiVo not to record World Cup soccer, but still record other soccer games?

As Roger says, this will not be a problem. Usually it wouldn't record any football anyway, but there are so many world cup related programs on at the moment there's the risk that it could happen. So, erasing all sports and blokes channels from the line up and thumbs-downing anything vaguely football related should do the trick.

Rob
Posted by: Vimone

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 07:31

another math will be kicked off in a few hours!And i really Love argentina
Posted by: thinfourth2

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 07:45

`i have been back in the uk for 36hours now and i already totally sick of hearing about football
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 12:01

So far I'm very disappointed with this World Cup: I just went to Tesco and the queues seemed just as long as when there isn't an England game on...

Peter
Posted by: andy

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 16:01

Quote:
So far I'm very disappointed with this World Cup: I just went to Tesco and the queues seemed just as long as when there isn't an England game on...



I am very keen for Ing-er-lund to make it as far through the competition as possible for just this reason. The two best South of England driving days I have had ever were:

- England's last attempt at the World Cup later stages
- Diana's funeral (the day I picked up my brand new MX5)

Nice empty roads both days.
Posted by: andym

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 16:11

It's not really the game itself that I find totally abhorrent, it's how fscking unbearable we'll be as a country if we win. I remember how everybody was a fan of rugby when we won that.

I had to pop into work today, which is in the center of Manchester near one of the big open air screens and it looked like ASBO central.
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 16:34

Quote:
I remember how everybody was a fan of rugby when we won that.

At least everyone had previously heard of rugby. The best instant fanbase of recent years was when we won the gold medal for curling a couple of Winter Olympics ago. All of a sudden the commentators, who sounded as if they were used to giving a 20-second bulletin at the end of the local news on BBC Radio Extreme Outermost Hebrides, had to fill three hours of prime-time BBC1. And even though essentially nobody south of Gretna had ever heard of the sport of curling in their lives before, we all lapped it up. And the next Winter Olympics, we didn't do half so well and the news coverage all stayed in the Hebrides.

I'm guilty of the same thing myself, mind: I was an insta-fan of cricket last year when the Ashes were on, although that was partly from a sense that both Warne's Australia and Flintoff's England were unusually strong teams, and that watching them clash was probably as good as cricket was ever going to get.

Peter
Posted by: Taym

Re: World Cup - 10/06/2006 22:06

Quote:
It's not really the game itself that I find totally abhorrent, it's how fscking unbearable we'll be as a country if we win. I remember how everybody was a fan of rugby when we won that.


You're not alone. Here in Italy it is... just the same.

I haven't watched any World Cup game yet, and I've already had enough of soccer/football (whatever you like). It's already everywhere.
Posted by: frog51

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 10:12

I am doing pretty well at avoiding any coverage so far. Only found out it was in Germany about 3 weeks ago, so I'm doing well. Don't get me wrong - I like football, but not watching others play it. I just don't get it as a spectator sport. Ah well - I guess I am in a teeny minority on this
Posted by: andym

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 10:30

I decided to go shopping while the england match was on, best descision I ever made!

Four years ago, a project I was working for was due to be completed for the first match. I ended up pulling an all-nighter to get it done.... another reason why I hate the world cup!
Posted by: tahir

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 10:35

Quote:
Only found out it was in Germany about 3 weeks ago, so I'm doing well.


I found out on Friday. All I know is the proper world cup is in France next year.
Posted by: Taym

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 11:28

Here it is not humanly possible not to know it is in Germany, unless you managed to skip all TV news and newspapers and magazines and occasional conversations with... anybody, since last Christmas.

Anyway, I am part of that even smaller minority of people who are completely uninterested in soccer, so I don't even play it

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy people have fun with soccer. It's just that I, persoanlly, find it mostly boring and irrelevant. During the world cup I feel like an alien in my own country , but that's not a bad feeling for all the reasons you listed before. Rome without traffic is just impossible to imagine!
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 11:34

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Anyway, I am part of that even smaller minority of people who are completely uninterested in soccer, so I don't even play it [...] During the world cup I feel like an alien in my own country

Your fellow-countryman Umberto Eco has a great essay on "The World Cup and its pomps" (in English; don't ask me what the original Italian title was), which echoes your views exactly. The English translation is in the book "Faith In Fakes: Travels In Hyperreality", but again I wouldn't know where to get hold of the Italian original.

Peter
Posted by: Taym

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 12:00

That's a pretty famous essay, here (and I did not expect you to know anything about it! Umberto Eco must be even more popular aborad that I expected, or you are very informed about Italy, Peter! ).

Still, while I have to agree with Eco about soccer, I really hope I did not sound as snobbish as he does in his writing(s). A great scholar, Umberto Eco is also unbearably pompous to me; in all that I have read by him, I seem to perceive his desire to state how much he knows, more than anything else.
In this, I believe Eco and I disagree
So, just not to be misunderstood, I don't get soccer, but that's just me being insensitive to it, not at all "superior" in anyway to anybody who likes it. Most my friends and people I value love soccer.
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 12:15

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Umberto Eco must be even more popular aborad that I expected, or you are very informed about Italy

Definitely the former, I'd say. He's the benefit of some really excellent translators; if the essay had stayed in Italian there's no way I'd have heard of it. He doesn't come across as terribly snobbish in the essays IMO (though he does in Foucault's Pendulum, all those damn chapter epigraphs in different languages with no translations). The breadth of vocabulary is astonishing, though... you find yourself reading his stuff in "the Umberto Eco position": book in one hand, dictionary in the other...

Peter
Posted by: tahir

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 12:36

Quote:
he does in Foucault's Pendulum, all those damn chapter epigraphs in different languages with no translations


That turned me off him completely, gave me a headache that damn book.
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 12:45

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That turned me off him completely, gave me a headache that damn book.

Me too, which is a shame, because buried deep in there is a really good story, sort-of doing to The Da Vinci Code what The Da Vinci Code does to the Catholic Church.

Peter
Posted by: Robotic

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 13:12

I watched part of Mexico vs. Iran yesterday, but the American commentators sounded like they were attending a golf game.
No excitement- very flat. They hardly followed the ball and mostly stuck to statistics and other drivel. Every two minutes they mentioned when the American team would be playing.

I really think it's the big-network commentators in this country that have turned me off of all professional sports.
Not that I was ever a big fan anyway- it's just that they don't do much to entertain.
Posted by: CrackersMcCheese

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 15:19

Talksport's commentary is p[retty good and they're covering all the games online at talksport.net

I play their commentary while watching the tv.
Posted by: visuvius

Re: World Cup - 12/06/2006 15:39

The commentary on ESPN here in the US blows. They are just not very lively.

Man o man, the US is getting creamed...
Posted by: Taym

Re: World Cup - 13/06/2006 22:37

Quote:
He doesn't come across as terribly snobbish in the essays IMO (though he does in Foucault's Pendulum, all those damn chapter epigraphs in different languages with no translations). The breadth of vocabulary is astonishing, though... you find yourself reading his stuff in "the Umberto Eco position": book in one hand, dictionary in the other...



I may be biased against Eco exactly because the Foucault's Pendulum, or maybe this is just something that gets lost in translation, being hidden between the lines in Italian, but I personally find that Eco has an attitude that makes him unpleasant. While he definitely is knowledgeable, he is the prototype of a certain kind of "intellectuals", as they are often referred to, here, who seem to strive for redundant complexity rather than clarity, and confuse erudition, or simple factual knowledge of things, with "culture", so that "the more you quote, the better you are".
There's nothing bad, in principle, in having to read a book holding a dictionary in the other hand (and that's what I did too when reading the Faucault's Pendulum, which I never finished either), but I seem to read in Eco's writings his desire to tell the known universe how much he knows, rather than bringing knowledge to the reader, if not pleasure of reading, not to mention the joy of experiencing written art. As you said, the really good story is buried deep.

He definitely uses an extraordinary vocabulary but... is he a good writer? In my opinion, not so much. He probably wants to be our contemporary Dante (haha!), but miseably fails at that. I believe many consider him a great author just because of his complexity, which to me is, in the end, just naive.

Of course, many Italians would disagree with me.
Posted by: julf

Re: World Cup - 14/06/2006 06:09

Quote:
he is the prototype of a certain kind of "intellectuals", as they are often referred to, here, who seem to strive for redundant complexity rather than clarity, and confuse erudition, or simple factual knowledge of things, with "culture", so that "the more you quote, the better you are".


Unfortunately that is a trait that some Dutch authors have copied as well - Harry Mulisch is probably the best example.
Posted by: peter

Re: World Cup - 14/06/2006 06:30

Quote:
Unfortunately that is a trait that some Dutch authors have copied as well - Harry Mulisch is probably the best example.

Oh, I hadn't really spotted until now that The Discovery Of Heaven was translated from the Dutch. Now that really is a book where all the flummery and intellectualism is there to hide a weak story. (Not that flummery by itself is necessarily bad -- there's such a thing as good flummery in its own right, such as in Gormenghast or The Pope's Rhinoceros. But if the flummery's no good, and the story it's hiding is no good either, what's the point?)

Peter
Posted by: julf

Re: World Cup - 14/06/2006 16:21

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Oh, I hadn't really spotted until now that The Discovery Of Heaven was translated from the Dutch. Now that really is a book where all the flummery and intellectualism is there to hide a weak story. (Not that flummery by itself is necessarily bad -- there's such a thing as good flummery in its own right, such as in Gormenghast or The Pope's Rhinoceros. But if the flummery's no good, and the story it's hiding is no good either, what's the point?)

Indeed. He is still considered one of the 3 "great" Dutch authors.
Posted by: Taym

Re: World Cup - 10/07/2006 22:14

Back to the topic, I admit I'm very happy. Of course, it's good to see flags all around, everybody happy and thinking life is good and all is fine.
I don't even mind hearing, reading, seeing football/soccer everywhere

But, I'm afraid in few days it's going to be a little daily nightmare...
Posted by: visuvius

Re: World Cup - 10/07/2006 23:09

Well I (almost) thoroughly enjoyed the 2006 World Cup. I watched the majority of the games in full and it was super entertaining. Its really cool seeing everyone so fired up. And I gotta be honest, its a bit sappy but I really got a kick out of things like hearing the crazy fan chants and jersey swapping at the end of the game.

Like many, I was disappointed with the way the final ended. Zidane is awesome but I was completely dumbfounded at the end of the game? The guy was on his way to becoming a legend but his stock took a serious hit when he knocked that italian to the ground.

Why Zinadine, WHY?!?!
Posted by: Robotic

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 06:25

Quote:
Why Zinadine, WHY?!?!


Note to self: Don't *ever* tweak a player's nipple.
I'd like to know what words were exchanged in the moments between the tweak and the head-butt.
Posted by: sein

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 06:55

Quote:
Note to self: Don't *ever* tweak a player's nipple.
I'd like to know what words were exchanged in the moments between the tweak and the head-butt.

For a split second there I thought you were implying that Marco Materazzi threatened to go outside to the carpark and break the nipple off Zinedine Zidane's Empeg VFD. That is the kind of thing that would definately justify a headbutt.
Posted by: sn00p

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 08:19

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The guy was on his way to becoming a legend but his stock took a serious hit when he knocked that italian to the ground.


It's changed nothing. It'll all be forgotten in a couple of weeks, Zidane is one of the greatest players to grace the football field. He is nothing compared to the player he was 5 years ago, we saw moments of it this world cup, but 5 years ago those moments would have lasted complete games.

It'll all be forgotton and he'll go down in history as one of the truely special players.

Look at maradona and everything he did on and off the field, he's still one of the greats and will be forever more, you can never tire of seeing footage of him playing.
Posted by: Tim

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 11:53

Quote:
Quote:
Why Zinadine, WHY?!?!


Note to self: Don't *ever* tweak a player's nipple.
I'd like to know what words were exchanged in the moments between the tweak and the head-butt.


Zinadine has a history of doing stuff like that, but so does Materazzi. Hardly anybody remembers the Red Card (and two game suspension) he got for intentionally stepping on the player's back when he was down or the previous headbutt. Maybe because it didn't cost them the championship that time, but great feats on the pitch tend to overshadow the uglier aspects of competitiveness.

The report I heard said that Materazzi called him a 'dirty terrorist'. I don't know the exact political climate over there, but even though that isn't exactly a nice thing to say it shouldn't have provoked him that badly. Materazzi denied it, so it is a case of 'he said - he said' and we might never find out what provoked him.

Overall I enjoyed all the matches I was able to watch. The final was especially thrilling.
Posted by: DWallach

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 12:04

History or no, Zidane did it in front of a billion people, replayed over and over. It's hard to forget. I figure that Zidane will be permanently tainted by this is in precisely the same way that Bill Clinton was tainted by the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal. No matter all the good things he did in his career, the scandal will always hang around his neck.
Posted by: Tim

Re: World Cup - 11/07/2006 15:54

I totally agree that it was bad, and it pisses me off that he ended his international career like that. However, some of his other outbursts were in highly publicized games (the headbutt in a Championships League game while he was with Juventis) and the stomping on the Saudi's back was during the World Cup (1998).

At the time, he got all kinds of coverage for the two game suspension from the World Cup because of that 'attack' (what it was referred to as at the time). A couple weeks later, nobody remembered it and everybody was focused on his scoring two goals to help France destroy Brazil in the finals. It will taint his reputation, no doubt about that. It wouldn't taint it nearly as much if France ended up winning, though. It is almost as if he is being used as a scapegoat for France losing to Italy.