Another thought I had that was just a little too long for Twitter.

We seem to like our sports to be episodic (for lack of a better word). Think about basketball, baseball, and football, all have easily definable segments (possession, at bat, play) that either end with success (a basket, a hit, or a first down) or failure (turnover, out, or failing to convert/turnover). So if someone does something awesome, it 99% of the time leads to some sort of success. So, Americans are very used to episodic-type sports.

Soccer, on the other hand, doesn’t have these chunks, coupled with the lack of scoring, you’ve got this situation where a guy makes an awesome move at midfield and it essentially leads to nothing.   So they moved the ball 10 feet further down the field and then someone just took the ball away or the dude kicked it out of bounds. Soccer is, essentially, a single big episode, which requires a whole different kind of watching. Americans are so conditioned to viewing sports episodically that I doubt they’ll ever be able to appreciate soccer, in the same way that I doubt many people overseas will learn to appreciate American football because it’s so choppy to them.

Essentially, my argument is that it’s all baseball’s fault.  Baseball established the episodic-kinda format and basketball and football (boxing/mma too for that matter) reinforced it.

Oh and why didn’t I mention hockey, which is seemingly an exception to this episodic theme?  Well, 1.) because it doesn’t support my argument and 2.) I’d argue that hockey has never actually been a truly popular sport in the same way that basketball, baseball, and football (and even boxing back in the day) are.

If I could get footnotes to work, I’d insert this note here in support of the second argument: How many non-hockey fans can name who won the Stanley Cup last year?  I can’t, and I even watched a good chunk of the playoffs (go Flyers).  On the other hand, I imagine most people (or at least significantly more) could name who won the Super Bowl or the World Series.  So bam! take that hockey, in your face!

*Late Edit* Someone I was talking to brought up NASCAR.  True NASCAR doesn’t really fit the paradigm, but I also have a completely unscientific argument about how NASCAR is really fake-popular, so I think my point still stands.

End Soccer Talk, Begin Movie Talk

Got a chance to see Adventureland yesterday, it was good little movie.  One which is profoundly different from what the trailers would lead you to expect.  Instead of a raunchy sex comedy ala Superbad, it’s a really well done love story, which is really held together by Kristen Stewart’s(!) acting.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny, but it’s also got all this very real (and quite good) romantic stuff in it. Heartily recommended.

The greatest downside of my movie-watching experience was the audience who, during the trailers, laughed uproariously at the jokes in the sure-to-be comic masterpieces of Dance Flick and The Proposal (the Ryan Reynolds-Sandra Bullock vehicle, not the sweet Australian western by the guy who’s directing The Road).  It wasn’t a bad audience otherwise, but come on, Dance Flick?

By the way, I’ve gone back through some old posts and noticed some really irritating typos (really self? fucking up their vs. there?).  Just wanted to apologize, I don’t really proofread these things, feel free to point out errors you find so I can fix them.