This weekend was a lot of fun but featured too much of everything. Too much sun, too much water, too much food, too much drink. We stayed out on Amy’s folks new pontoon boat from around 11:00 to 5:00 and soaked in the lake. Athena chased her floating frisbee for much of the time and is now catatonic. I got a bunch of water in my ear and had to take a decongestant to clear it up and I’m now awake. At 3:00 am.

The word for the day will be “sluggish.” I had a great torta cubana (my new favorite dish) for dinner Saturday night, and followed that up with a lunch of chips, two Tecates and two MGDs for lunch today. Sluggish.

Amy’s pop surprised me with a gift of a book: How Soccer Explains the World: An [Unlikely] Theory of Globalizationby Frank Foer. My father-in-law knows I love footie and I love reading and made an impulse purchase because he’s that kind of guy. And he hit the nail on the head. The book is 250+ pages with generous margins but its sheer readability meant I finished the whole thing in less than 24 hours.

It’s not a great book but it is a very good one. The chapters address, in order: soccer’s place in the break-up of Yuogslavia; the religious nature of Celtic vs. Rangers in Scotland; Jews and football; the sentimental Chelski hooligan; Brazilian soccer’s web of corruption; Nigerians, racism, and the Ukrainian league; the Italian oligarchy’s stranglehold on the sport; the spirit of Catalan nationalism in Barcelona; Iranian women illegally attending footie matches; and the sport’s place in the US culture wars.

The chapters I liked least were the ones about Spain and the US. Foer overly sentimentalizes Barcelona claiming the club transcends…well, everything, actually. And the chapter on the US brings up meathead idiot Jim Rome and how the sport here is elitist when everywhere else it’s populist, but then makes it a point that the US is at a disadvantage playing at home because all of the Hispanics who attend games and cheer for their home country. Foer doesn’t really connect the two and makes some dodgy conclusions, like baseball has little appeal outside North America and that only white kids are playing the game here. His numbers for players are based on the Sporting Goods Manufacturers of America’s numbers, which really only tells you how many shoes and balls are being bought. Factor in things like I had three pairs of shoes—cleats, turf shoes, and studs—while a poorer kid may play in tennis shoes or his/her older sibling’s boots and the SGMA numbers go to hell quickly.

Besides these shortcomings (and the fact that Foer’s both an Ars*nal and Barca fan) the book is a fast, engaging read and recommended for anyone interested in how globalization has impacted the world’s game.

Current Mood: I Am Going to Be Very Tired|