So there I was on Friday night, ordering Martinis in a faux Cockney brogue (I can actually live my dream of being a Londoner here) when Jesse told me that we were going to a Badgers game on Saturday. A badger’s game of what, I thought? Please God, let it be tennis. That would be brilliant.
No, the Wisconsin Badgers are the (American) football team here at the University of Wisconsin. And it was a nice gesture from Jesse, as he knows I’ve been missing my sporting Saturdays. For those who don’t already know, I support a football team back home called Nottingham Forest. And they’re dreadful, in the most creative and consistent of ways. And yet, Forest games remain an important social occasion for me; they represent the weekend, they represent camaraderie, they represent inspiration, they represent possibility and hope. Most importantly of all, they represent a legitimate reason for going to Hooters.
I have to say, it was a far cry from my weekly sporting experience back home i.e. four men huddled round a Yorkie, watching 11 retards add another patch to their proud tapestry of irreversible decline. In true form (surely you’d expect nothing less by now) I did manage to embarrass myself almost immediately; the kick-off was greeted by the obligatory “woooooooooooooooaaaaaaahhhhh” as the kicker ran up, but to my complete and abject horror, I found myself to be the only one shrieking “YOU’RE SHIT, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” as the ball sailed through the air. Cue a sea of turning faces, foreheads etched in horror. One mother even cupped her child’s ears. It was that sort of afternoon.
The Badgers play in an 80,000 capacity stadium called Camp Randall. Now, as many images as that summons of bikers with handlebar moustaches, I have to say I was impressed. Not a patch on a Saturday afternoon down at the City Ground, granted, but after a while – somehow or other - you learn to live without the scent of stale urine, cheap meat and sweat. What I couldn’t get my head around was 75,000 people crammed in to watch a college sports team. I thought back to my inglorious 5-a-side days at uni – forget people paying to watch, the groundsman even turned the floodlights out on us once. But no, it’s nice watching young men throw themselves about for ‘the love of the game’, posturing already in full stride, egos tottering on the brink of meltdown. Not that you can blame them, really. There are whole stores here dedicated to the sale of Badgers merchandise; rows of jerseys, named and numbered, hats, mugs, newspapers, TV programmes, pizzas (hence the title - you try ordering a ‘large, hand-tossed Badger’ with a straight face), banners, scarves and posters… all dedicated to the hero-worship of 21 year-olds sleeping in condemned housing, eating mashed potato for breakfast. And funnily enough, some of these people turn into lawless sex criminals.
Sport in America privileges the spectacle. In England, we go for the match, but here they go for entertainment. And in many ways, it works. One can’t help but cast a wistful, admiring eye, for example, at a 200-piece marching band, when you’ve witnessed the half time Forest Crossbar Challenge (two people, usually children, have to take shots at an open goal, and hit the crossbar three consecutive times. Obviously this is quite hard, unless you’re David Johnson). It’s cool. I wish I had cheerleaders to look at every time Forest went 3-0 down in the first twenty minutes. The fireworks, the noise, the crowd participation… basically the sporting equivalent of a Kiss concert. And kind of with the same intention - distracting the paying public from the fact that what they’ve handed their money over to see isn’t actually very good. Credit where it’s due though to American fans; whilst we’ve learned to preoccupy ourselves with the business of heroic failure, they actually enjoy winning over here, and they’re quite good at it. Hence I was probably the only one in the stadium stood there with two minutes to go, and the Badgers winning 44-21, thinking “I bet they blow this.”
-----
I’ve been having some very strange dreams.
My sleep pattern’s not really settled since I arrived. I bought some new sheets recently – the tags are written in some mysterious kind of quasi-hieroglyphics, and I’m beginning to suspect a unique cotton/marijuana weave. It might also have something to do with my truly heroic consumption of Swiss Cheese before bedtime, but either way, for the past four nights, I’ve dreamt exclusively about zombies. Last night I was fighting zombies in the grounds of my old school, a grand, sprawling, complex of buildings. But these weren’t your generic shambling zombies. Oh no. Like panthers they moved! And they could talk, too, which was a little disconcerting.
To make matters worse, Tom Bamford was holed up in the Assembly Hall with an atomic bomb. Now, where in the shitting crikey Bamford’s got hold of a nuclear weapon I do not know. Perhaps the zombies were his doing, and he was trying to rectify the situation? If so, reactionary folly at its very worst. We had huge gates at school to keep the poor people out, and trust me, those zombies weren’t going anywhere. I was halfway across the East Block, dispatching my enemies with head shots and quippy lone-liners, when he detonated his bomb. All I can remember was this unbearable feeling of warmth and light. And since then I’ve had a small – but very real – sense of dread… exacerbated somewhat by my decision to watch Requiem for a Dream this afternoon, with the curtains drawn and some flat Coke.
So mum, work that one out. Zombies. Come on, earn your corn… and none of your mumbo-jumbo made-up disorders, please, like ‘dysphlanxiatis’ or ‘schizophrenia’.
-----
It struck me the other day that there’s a bit of a disparity between the number of visits to this blog, and the number of people who actually know about it (failing that, Sammo’s got it set as his homepage, and he accesses the internet over 30 times per evening, which isn’t entirely out of the question). This suggests that a fair number of folk reading this specious, meandering bollocks don’t actually know me. So I think I’ll dedicate the bulk of my next entry to some formal introductions, as I’m wary of this whole thing getting a little one-dimensional - for a change of pace, I’ll aim for something a bit more personal (whilst handily overlooking the fact that I’m not clever enough to be funny five weeks on the bounce).
Until then…
|
