The last time we spoke was way back in March and I was bemoaning my complete and utter inability to avoid being roped into yet another March Madness basketball pool. For those of you keeping score at home I'm pleased to report that while I didn't win said pool, I did do my homework when it came to selecting what pool in which to swim; the fact that nobody in our group had the Final Four right and that nobody had either of the two Championship-game teams picked proved, once and for all, that there's not a shark amongst us.

Now, these two months later, I find myself in the midst of yet another tournament. That's right, the World Cup is back and all the world is aflame with "football" fever. Entire continents have been swept up by this other game of roundball, a game so incredibly popular with so many people in so many places that societal schisms are somehow swept aside every time this tournament quadrennial circus comes to town. Civil wars are momentarily laid to rest, feuds years in the making are temporarily forgotten, and grudges nursed for generations are put away for a few glorious weeks. In the United States, on the other hand, we are happy to blissfully, ignorantly, and incomprehensibly watch Simon Cowell's latest edifice of cranial gruel, America's Got Talent. Americans, it would seem, just don't give a fig about the World Cup, in particular, and soccer, in general, and it doesn't seem to matter what anybody else has to say about it. I don't fully understand why. Soccer fans will tell you that soccer really IS popular in the States, that it's never been SO popular, that more and more Americans are learning the game, are falling in love with the game, are playing the game. Companies from Beaverton to Broadway are spending zillions of dollars to market soccer, to make it more appealing, to make it more accessible. Brand-new technologies are being pumped up as the peanut-butter to soccer's jelly; "Watch today's game in HD!!!!" The commercials scream. And media outlets everywhere, from newsstand to broadband, are happily shoveling more and more of this World Cup tripe straight down our throats.

And like stubborn, obstinate, intractable, pertinacious children, we Americans, for the most part, just don't seem to care. Oh, we'll watch some of the games, maybe catch the highlights, glance at an article or two and try to make ourselves maybe just a bit better informed. But we do it, for the most part, with a particular sense of joyless obligation. "Who won the game yesterday?" we'll ask, not because we particularly care, (Angola v. Iran, anyone?), But because we know we're supposed to care. It is, after all, the World Cup, and the entire rest of the planet is engaged in a giant, international lovefest when they're not to busy trying to beat the snot out of each other in streets across Germany. Maybe it's because we're just not very good at this particular game quite yet, and maybe never will be. We were knocked out of the Cup in the same round (that would be the first) as international dreadnoughts Togo, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. The good news is we had more points than, well, Togo. Ghana, Australia (the Soceroos) and Ukraine are all still in this thing, and the American team is still trying to figure out when the game is gonna start. Half of the goals we scored were actually scored by our opponents. Against themselves. By putting the ball in their own goal. What makes this even sadder is we scored only two goals in the whole first round. In over 270 collective minutes of soccer, the American team put the ball in the goal one time. And people say watching NASCAR is like watching paint dry. The world loves soccer, which is fine. Americans don't, which I also think is fine. And to those Americans who DO love soccer, double fine. I'm happy for you, really. Wrap yourself up in that warm fuzziness of 0-0 ties, and 2-1 barnburners, and grown men whining and flopping all over the field like Nancy Kerrigan after getting clubbed by Shane Stant. (The one thing I am jealous of is that magic spray that seems to heal any soccer-related injury, letting the lame walk and the blind see. It's a miracle in a bottle, I tell you!) Enjoy watching Ecuador and the Netherlands and Sweden duke it out for title of Soccer Master of the Universe. I couldn't be happier for you. Please just don't make me watch.

cuda24@yahoo.com