world cup 2010: usa lose to ghana

The US team lost to Ghana 2-1 in their knockout round World Cup match.  It was fierce at times, but fatigue and wear and tear were obviously taking a toll on the Yanks.  It was only Wednesday when Landon Donovan boldly won the match for the US in stoppage time against Algeria.  The soccer gods blessed the team that night... but you can only cruise with their blessings for so long.  32 teams enter into the World Cup... 31 leave with hearts broken.

Our hearts are broken.  But the US team played bravely, honorably, and will no doubt improve on this inspiring World Cup run.

Onward! 

Love,
apm

glenn beck is un-american and hates soccer

Glenn Beck is a douchebag and a phony.  I'm not stating anything new or shocking here.  Many of you probably think the same thing or worse.  If you do actually like him, though, I'd seriously question your judge of character, your morals, and your ethics.  It's a safe guess that you're a douchbag yourself with horrible tastes in music, humor, and movies.  You're also probably an illiterate, scared, racist, homophobic, superstitious, jingoistic, and deeply disturbed person... just like your hero Beck.  You're a dung cretin.

Why am I going off on weirdo Glenn?  I seriously don't give a shit about him.  I've never seen his FOX show and the only time that I've really seen him in action was when I accidentally tuned into his old show on some other network years ago and he was babbling about his sky god and the "End of the World" with some oily televangelist.  It grabbed my attention for five minutes and then he was forgotten.  Who knew he would be such a malignant cultural presence a few years later?

But now he's grabbed my attention again.  It seems that Glenn Beck is un-American.  On the eve of the US national soccer team's last 16 match against Ghana in the World Cup, the leper messiah of crackpot television wants you to know that he hates soccer, doesn't think it has a place in this country, and insists that Americans don't like it either... despite repeated evidence to the contrary.  He's probably praying for the US team to fail.  That doesn't sound very patriotic, does it?  Why does he hate this country so much?   Sounds like something only a douchebag would do.

countdown to euphoria... anxiety

In exactly two weeks the 2010 World Cup will begin in South Africa.  For soccerheads, Christmas comes only once every four years.  But it lasts a month.

These two weeks are going to feel interminable, though.  It can't come fast enough.  The trick is to stay busy until kick-off... not to give into the anxiety.  That will come soon enough once the tournament begins.

So this morning, while trying to keep my mind off the fact that I have to wait yet another two weeks before the start of the matches, I came across these cool World Cup murals done by the am i collective based out of Cape Town, who were hired by Portland, Oregon ad agency Wieden + Kennedy through ESPN.  The 32 murals, inspired by wonderfully cheesy Ghanaian movie posters from the 1980s, symbolically show the respective warriors of the pitch ready to take the ultimate crown of the only game that matters.  Vanity Fair magazine also did a piece on it and you can see more of the murals here.