HUZZAHHH! It’s here! It’s finally here! Hooorrayyyyyyyyy! Or something!

The first World Cup game went off this morning and I woke up early, brewed some coffee, made myself some toast and sat on my couch to watch what has been built up to be the be-all and end-all of sports events on television, and here are my observations:

1) WHAT IS THAT NOISE?

While watching bleary-eyed at 7 in the morning, I wasn’t sure if there was a swarm of bees outside my window, if my ears were imploding, or if my TV’s audio has suddenly reverted to 1950s quality. Turns out, it was coming from the crowd, blowing on these beastly kazoos-on-steroids: Vuvuselas. If this is how the rest of the month is gonna go, I’ll be wearing earplugs.

2) ZOOM IN, PLEASE.

In American football, the MetLife blimp is used for fancy pre-commercial zoom-outs and shots of the city. But apparently in soccer, they film the entire thing from some entirely too high spot; I can barely follow what’s going on! Mind you, my eyes are about as weak as a naked mole rat’s, but still. Can we get some of those cameras on wires that fly across the field like in American football or what?

3) THIS COMMENTARY BLOWS.

Well, probably because I can’t understand it. So many accents! It’s like when you play two dissonant chords on a piano and your brains tries to commit suicide out your ears.

4) A TIE?!!! I WOKE UP FOR A TIE!???

WTF, dude. I am used to the kind of endings in sports like last nights Lakers Celtics game, where people were screaming bloody murder as the buzzer sounded because YAYYYY SOMEONE WON! This whole, “well, good job to both teams, moving on” thing is weird and stupid and I don’t like it.

5) THIS IS CONFUSING.

After angrily storming into work and demanding that someone explain to me WHY I woke up at the crack of dawn to watch a game that ended in a stalemate, I was sat down and given a full, whiteboard-illustrated run down of the rules of the World Cup. And I felt like someone was trying to explain the theory of relativity to me, it was so damn confusing.

Needless to say, I can still sort of kind of a little bit understand why people are so excited for this event. People are screaming, players are doing choreographed victory dances (South Africa > Mexico for sure in that department), and this game was the intro for a month most of the world has been looking forward to for two years.

USA vs. England tomorrow. I’ll let you try and impress me again, FIFA.