[Leica] World Cup Musings

[rclark01 at comcast.net (Robert Clark)]

I'll talk Formula 1 racing all day long!  Would have been at Indy this past 
weekend except for a small eye problem keeping me home.  We have quite a few 
people on the list who are very knowledgable plus one real insider, too!

Robert Clark
Lancaster, PA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marc James Small" <msmall@infionline.net>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug@leica-users.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 6:36 PM
Subject: [Leica] World Cup Musings


> This is an International list, though I suspect that a plurality if not a
> majority of the LUG are USians.
>
> We had a discussion some years back about Rugby.  Now we are having a LOT
> of discussion about the World Cup, with fervent statements by all sorts of
> folks, including some USians.
>
> We never seem to discuss sports with a great deal of interest to many 
> North
> Americans such as baseball, real football, basketball, ice hockey, or 
> golf.
>
> The US media has not given a great deal of coverage to the World Cup, I
> will admit, other than articles on the concerns of the German police over
> the potential for fan rowdiness or the possibilities of terrorist attacks
> on the major games.  You really have to have an interest in 
> football/soccer
> to find much about the standings from the print media, though the 'Net 
> does
> allow us to easily find this out if we dig a bit.  (Every US daily will
> print the daily baseball standings during the season, by way of 
> comparison,
> and will certainly cover the real football standings during the NFL 
> season.
> But outside of the big national papers, the US print media seems to only
> provide a brief article or two every day and to simply announce 
> forthcoming
> games with the broadcast schedule.)
>
> The difference in concentration is interesting:  non-USians seem much more
> intense on the World Cup that USians do on, say, the NCAA Final Four or 
> the
> World Series or the Superbowl, and seem much more concentrated on
> discussing it on inappropriate fora such as the LUG <he grins> and in
> spreading out their predictions.  How many of you guys predicted that
> Germany would win the World Cup?  <again, he grins>
>
> Come this Autumn, maybe we can have dozens of messages on the World 
> Series,
> followed by dozens more on the Superbowl and, in the Spring, the Final 
> Four
> and the NBA playoffs and the NHL Stanley Cup doings, and the like.  We can
> also give a lot of words to the prime golf tournaments, the watching of
> which is much akin to the watching of paint drying, and then we can do the
> National Trap-Shoot Competition and the Triathalon.  And there is the
> Triple Crown in horse-racing -- we probably should expand this to include
> Epsom Downs and Ascot, I guess.
>
> How come you non-USians never want to discuss Formula 1 auto racing?  We
> really ought to be discussing "America's Favorite Sport",  stock-car
> racing, aka NASCAR, with its junior-leagues below it.  We can have a great
> bit of talk about that, and then we can do the pony-car circuit.
>
> Then we can get into disscusing US professional wrestling -- described by
> the Encyclopaedia Britannica as early as 1940 as "grotesque gesturings by
> weirdly costumed clowns".  Or let us dissect the claims of that Pope of
> Virginia Beach, Pat Robertson, to have done a one-ton leg-lift in his 60's
> -- I have never met Pat Robertson, but I knew his father, a very decent,
> gentle, and honorable man who lived a block from me for a couple of years,
> and find that this sort of claim simply makes my skin crawl.  Youse guys
> wanna talk about it?
>
> Let's ask Brian to rename the LUG the ISF for "the International Sports
> Forum", and then we can all talk at great length about the World Cup and
> Formula 1 and who won the latest yachting match off the Isle of Wight and
> .....
>
> Give us all a brreak, guys.  By now, we have identified those interested 
> in
> discussing the World Cup.  Why not talk the chat off-line?
>
> Otherwise, us USians might inflicut you all with a blow-by-blow account of
> each game of the next October Classic, the 2006 World Series, live-time as
> each error occurs and as each passed-ball flubs by the catcher.  And those
> of you from the UK and the Shards of Empire can give us a similar
> play-by-play of the next Test Matches, und so weider.  Again, perhaps 
> Brian
> ought to rename this group so that the name properly represents its 
> primary
> focus .... <again and aagain, he grins>
>
> Marc
>
>
>
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@aya.yale.edu
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
>
>
>
>
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