Loose Cans

Steven and I went to our favorite pub last night, Ma Reilly's, to take in the friendly football match between Ireland and Brazil. This was big news. In October, I think it was, Ireland was shamefully battered by Switzerland, and therefore failed to make Euro 2004, which is being held in Portugal this summer. That was the first time I'd watched the Irish team play since the 2002 World Cup, when they (or, more accurately, their star striker Robbie Keane) pulled off more last-minute miracles than the New York Mets. Anyhow, as I watched them getting abused by the Swiss, I distinctly recall thinking, "These lads are absolute shite." Understandably I was a trifle doubtful about their chances against Brazil, the reigning world champions.

Those of you with no interest whatsoever in football, I entreat you, don't stop reading now; all this exposition will be proven to possess a more general relevance in short order.

So last night, a whole lot of the national teams were playing friendlies against each other. Even the USA were playing someone, can't remember who, maybe Holland, a quality squad. But the thing about friendlies is, they're friendly. They don't count. The play usually isn't all that interesting because no one cares that much. Often, club teams will withhold star players from playing international football, fearful of letting anyone get injured. That's what happened to Ireland last night. See, Ireland have three truly extraordinary, world-class footballers at the moment: Roy Keane, Robbie Keane, and Damien Duff. I will now give background; please don't be bored; a point will soon be made.

Roy Keane is certainly the best player Ireland has ever produced. The captain of Manchester United (for those of you what don't know, Man U are the Yankees of soccer, by far the most popular team in the world), he was just last week ranked among the five best players in history by the great Pele. He used to be a fireball, tempestuous and rough, a vicious enforcer. In his old age, he has since calmed a bit (at least on the pitch), and now just plays magnificent solid football. But he does not play for Ireland, period. Firstly, his duties to Man U, combined with his advanced age, forbid it, and secondly, he just doesn't much like them: he came to the World Cup in 2002, but apparently threw something of a fit, and then went absolutely ballistic on the coach, Mick McCarthy, calling him an "English cunt." Then he walked out. So that's Roy. Nice fella.

Then there's Robbie Keane. No relation to Roy. He's brilliant, Tottenham Hotspur's star striker. He always plays for Ireland; they're nothing at all without him. He can play because Hotspur are not in the race for the Premiership title.

Finally Duff. Left midfielder for Chelsea, a superb playmaker. He usually plays for Ireland, but not this time: Chelsea, along with Man U and my favorite team, Arsenal, are in a blistering hot three-way race for the trophy (Arsenal, being undefeated, have just gone five points up on Man U and are in first place yes!). This Saturday, Chelsea and Arsenal face off. So there's no way Chelsea are letting Duff, who just came back from injury, risk his neck against the Brazilians. This leaves a major hole in midfield.

So we are talking about a somewhat crippled Irish team here, playing against a fully-stocked Brazil squad, sporting some of the most gifted footballers ever seen (Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos, etc...). No one figures they have a chance. But the match is being held here in Dublin, at Lansdowne Road. The Brazilians are in town, holding open training sessions, and staying at the Burlington Hotel. They are relaxed. By seven, Lansdowne is packed; every dad wants to take his kid to see Ronaldo. At Ma Reilly's, Steven and I settle into our stools by the fireside (well, not so much settle as sit down, then start rocking because the legs are different lengths and you have to put coasters underneath to keep it stable). No one gives the Irish a chance.

Now the first point. I can say with confidence that I have almost never in my life cared so passionately about a match. Of any kind. I say almost because the first game of the 1998 World Series (Michael Kay: "SEVEN RUNS! IN THE SEVENTH INNING! OF THE FIRST GAME! OF THE 1998 WORLD SERIES!") nearly gave me a coronary. But this might have been more. Every single touch we watched with a passion unheard of outside the realm of sports. I understood finally why this is the most popular game in the world: it's hypnotic. You can't take your eyes off the screen.

You see, I am a white male New Yorker American Yankee fan. I have never known what it's like to be an underdog. I've never known what it's like to face...well...me. Because I represent the hyperpower. I am Brazilian football. But last night, for the first time in my life, I understood the small-market fan. I was a Cubs fan. I have never felt less American, either. I did not want Ireland to win. We were not thinking Win. Win was impossible. We wanted, more than anything in the world, dignity for Ireland. Respect. We wanted them to make the Brazilians work for it. I wanted to see the titan, the superpower, America--struggle.

It was a glorious feeling.

And it was a glorious match. The Irish did it. When they started, you could tell that they were intimidated (imagine the fear of the Polish cavalry facing down the Nazi tanks). They tripped up, shanked balls, skittered anxiously around the pitch. But they kept threatening, too. Somehow, the ball kept returning to the vicinity of the Brazilian goal. And their defence was brilliant. A masterpiece of discipline. The Irish wanted it. They played like it was an audition: perform well and we'll take you. And they did. At the half, it was 0-0. Already shocking. But they came back in the second half and did it all over again, only by this time, they weren't afraid anymore. Long through balls to the corner, crosses to the center (the best chance of the game, which nearly won it for Ireland, came on a brilliant cross to Keane, who headed it just over the crossbar), gutsy tackles. This was like La Resistance.

The Brazilians, relaxed in the first half, picked it up too. The jogo bonito ("beautiful game," it's the name for the flashy Brazilian style) began as they turned on the afterburners, but the Irish stayed solid as a rock, and by the end, it was, shockingly, a clean sheet for both teams. I can't remember a better game. It was absolutely extraordinary. They were MY team. And for the first time, really the first time, I felt like this was home. Allegiance. This is what makes a country. Not blind following but fervor, investment in the context. That's patriotism: self-investment in the context.

By way, as a final note, I know when America will reach its zenith as an empire, and slowly begin to crumble: the day the USA finally win the World Cup. Twenty, thirty years from now, the Coupe du Monde will go to the Americanos and suddenly there will be nothing left to win. Football is the last thing in the world untainted by the American hegemony, the last pocket of resistance; the day it goes will be the beginning of the end.

Having just spent an hour and a half playing ultimate, I want to go home. So I'm making this short.

I hope I haven't mentioned this yet, but it's been gorgeous this past month. 10ºC every day (50ºF). Very strange for February. And for a while I figured it was just flukey. But then I mentioned it to Sparky (who's been stationed here since 2001), and she explained that--get this--the seasons are actually different here. I thought she was taking the piss, but I talked to a bunch of other people, and it turns out to be true. Each season starts a full month before they do in the states: fall begins in August, Winter in November (which explains the horrendous weather that whole damn month), and--you guessed it!--Spring in February. When an Irish person thinks August, they think Fall. How weird is that? It's springtime now. And the trees are starting to flower, the sun's coming out, the wind's calming...it's absolutely lovely.

I'm shocked. I mean, I just don't know what to say. This is lunacy. Has the whole world gone mad? Honestly, I can't find the words to describe it, it's like a disturbance in the force, like some kind of tsunami of Impossible Inconceivable InfuckingSANE, my God--is there not something seriously wrong here?

So here I sit musing, while other things, like Old English translation, could be happening. I'll get to that later.

My latest notion is about happiness. More to the point, how it can be bought. It occurred to me recently that this is happiness: the willingness to spend money, any amount, on a thing. It is not the spending, or the ability to spend--that is, the wherewithal. It is the sense that in this instance, money is of no matter, that this value of this object can't be pinpointed, can't be priced. Fuck you, Mastercard adverts. Anyway I say this to justify my having recently purchased the New Yorker for €8.59. Over $10.

Look, it was the Anniversary issue with Eustace Tilly on the cover, the real Eustace Tilly looking through his monocle at the butterfly, and it had Roger Angell and David Sedaris and Hertzberg, and an article about Michael Moore, and the back page was Bruce McCall, and they sell it every week at this little bodega right around the corner where they jack up the prices like crazy, but there it was, and it just hit me. I'd been seeing issues--two copies only--sitting there for the past few weeks, changing on the tuesdays, and wanting them so badly, and then finally, I saw Sedaris and Angell and said I must have this. I would pay a million dollars for this. And I bought it. And it's beautiful. The Talk of the Town, my god, the Talk of the Town. Nothing like it. There's a brief essay about New York's lamppost enthusiasts, and I can't describe the burning desire it gave me to be back in New York. When I go home I shall be looking at the lampposts. I have read almost all of it but the reviews and the guaranteed-to-be-depressing article about Cheney's ties to Halliburton. I even read the little finance page at the back of the Talk of the Town. I read Goings on About Town. I can't remember the last time I read with this kind of voracity. I urge every student who does not yet have one to get a subscription to the New Yorker. It will make you happy.

I'd like to mention one article in particular, however: Alex Ross, their main music critic, has a long essay about why he hates "classical music." It's brilliant. He calls for the dissolution of segregating nomenclature (any deconstructionist worth his salt looks at the term "popular music" and immediately perceives a classification of the Other, that is, classical music, as "unpopular"), which is one of my own particular ambitions, though I concern myself more with the need to hurl aside terms like "novel" and "poem." Anyway, he speaks glowingly of his iPod, how he happily switches between the Beethoven "Eroica," the Butthole Surfers, and Missy Elliott. He says near the end, "I have seen the future, and it is the Shuffle option." Set your iPod to shuffle. I did it for the first time this morning walking in, and I had thirty-five minutes of brilliant listening. You never know what you're going to get, and in the moments before the next song starts, you brim with anticipation, breathless, so wholly absorbed in the prospect of the music to come that when it finally does begin, you listen to it with a raptness you never had before. It's astounding. This morning, I began with a drab spoken section from Die Zauberflote (Blogger won't do umlauts), which became this Irish group, Flook, who use dual flutes to rock out, which suddenly turned into the most insane shocking guitar solo ever, Hendrix' "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," on which he again uses that maddening trick of making the balance shuttle from back and forth between your headphones so it seems like the music's passing right through your skull. This then turned into Percy Grainger's choral arrangement of the song Danny Deever. And so on. It was really quite something. It just gives the old, tired, wrinkly music a fresh, taut new skin.

The Trinity Hall Warden, the mother of us all, has just sent out a mailing advertising Lent. I am a little taken aback by this, if for no other reason than that I was rather unprepared to see an exclusively Christian tradition be openly endorsed by the administration. It's somewhat disconcerting, though it must of course be said that she is not saying, Do this for the good of your souls or you will burn in Hellfire for all eternity. She's suggesting a "radical 24-hour alcohol fast" for which one gets friends as sponsors and donates the proceeds to charity, though she does rightfully tip her cap to the few (very few) students who have claimed that they will go the full 40 days without touching a drop. We are being exhorted--though that word's a bit strong; let us say, encouraged--to drink tea. I'm sorry, tea is what we drink the morning after. It is a much, much better remedy than coffee. In any case, I must admit to being slightly nettled; I'm happy to do charity, but having to identify it with Lent is not something I'm exactly big on. It's not some kind of reflexive animadversion towards all things goy, but I can't envision the administration of any college in the states, barring Southern Christian or Bob Jones or Principia, doing something like this. Oh well. Welcome to Ireland.

Funny story, by the way. About hangovers, because I had a terrific one last friday, after white wine and Cuba Libres. I could swear that somewhere, maybe stateside, maybe in a dream, I saw a TV ad for this "hangover remedy pill" called Chaser. I wished to see if it actually existed, so last night, on my walk home, I stopped into the pharmacy and asked your man if these things were for real. He had no idea what I was talking about. I decided I must have dreamt it. I said, Back to Advil. But then I asked him, What do you use? He pointed at this particularly potent ibuprofen called Nurofen Plus. He said this the night before, and then coffee. We had a pleasant chat about the merits of coffee as a cure (something I stoutly disbelieve), and in the end I didn't buy the Nurofen, because I can't believe that there's any force on earth potent enough to negate the effects of white wine and Cuba Libres. Cheers!

I would like first to amend, though not rescind, my recent comments regarding Scholars, or, as they are known, Schols. It is, of course, extremely hard to get in, and were this not English studies (that is to say, were it a subject requiring actual WORK), I would have long since abandoned interest subsequent to my friend Karen's informing me that it generally requires a student to study his arse off during the summer after JF year (first year). I do not want to spend this summer studying. I want to spend it working at some hopefully-not-too-monotonous and fabulously remunerative job which will add some number of thousands of dollars, and less euros, to my bank account. I say this just to let the elder parties, whom I regret, to an extent, having informed of my ambitions, know that while I still view Schols as a goal, it is not something to hound me about.

In other news I have a lecture.