After several months of the banal commercials and lousy K-pop songs and corporate sponsered cheer, I was ready for the freakin' games to start. If you were subjected to this shit, you'd be ready for them to drop the ball too.
Those girls are attractive, granted, but having to listen to that music is just not worth it for some simple T&A (well, not so much T...or A for that matter).
The first game of importance was Korea's match against Greece on June 12th. The game fell fortuitously on a Saturday evening at 7pm, meaning there would be considerable crowds down at City Hall, which was where I wanted to be. Imagine something like this:
(not my pic, obviously. Thank you Google images)
Having lived in Korea for the last 1.5 years, I had obviously heard about the legendary crowds and outpouring of World Cup fever that hit back in 2002 (they never shut up about it...) and wanted to get in on that for this world cup. Sure the crowds wouldn't be nearly that big, as they were hosting the damn thing back then, but still there would be a couple of people there to party with. So when Saturday night rolled around, Jenna, Anna and I headed out for City Hall to watch the game. Too bad the weather didn't cooperate. It rained. So after we picked up our Red Devils (the nickname for the Korean national team) merchandise, namely some cheap little light up devil horns, we headed off to a bar just down the street from City Hall. We thought about gutting it out in the rain, but we generally didn't care that much about the Korean team to be wet for 2 hours. Plus, in a bar we're much closer to the booze. Double win. The atmosphere at the bar was awesome, but it was nothing I hadn't seen at Green Bay bars during Packer games. It's when the viewers and fans spill out in the thousands to the streets that you can really grasp the unique energy that is the World Cup. But that was weather permitting.
The game itself was all Korea. I had predicted a tie, with neither team being that good. However, Korea shocked me with how well they played and Greece shocked me with how shitty they were. They really, really sucked. At one point during the match, after witnessing some of the enthusiasm and energy the locals were putting into cheering, I said something to the effect of "If only they put this much energy into getting busy and making babies, maybe they wouldn't have such an awful birth rate". Then several days later I read the newspaper article talking about how condom sales were up 66% or something huge immediately after the Korea win compared with regular sales. Wallin the seer strikes again. Though, you're gonna have to "forget" the condom if you really want a better birth rate Korea. Just saying.
With the game over, the group moved to Hongdae to continue the evening. There we saw more and more jubilation. People jumping on car roofs, hanging out of car windows, jumping and running around in the street. Perfectly normal for a Madison friday night, but pretty uncommon for the more reserved Korean residents, especially since it was only 10pm. With all the celebration, you would have thought they won the whole damn thing, but when you think about it, they've only been decent for the past what, 3 world cups? So ever win means a little more. Although, I've been to no other soccer mad countries during the world cup, so this may just be standard operating procedure. Part of me hates all the celebration here because I know 95% of the fans are just fair weather/once every 4 years fans who know absolutely nothing about the game, but in the end I guess I'll take any support for the world cup, regardless of the source. We slowly made our way to some random club for dancing, but the people we were waiting on never showed up, so we just settled for watching the Argentina match. Soccer instead of dancing? Must be my lucky day.
With the Argentina game over and our friends clearly not coming, we decided to go home...on foot. Yes, despite being a considerable distance from our respective homes (me being the closest at 40 minutes by subway) we decided to walk. Was it for the fresh air? Possibly, but I wouldn't really call Seoul air "fresh" by any means. Maybe its because we actually see so little of Seoul because its so damn big and we always travel underground cuz its much cheaper. Whatever the reason we walked it and after 2 hours, had traveled 4 subway stops. Since we still had 8 subway stops to home, we decided to take a cab the rest of the way, which worked out perfectly as the US game, slotted for a 3:30am Sunday start time, was just starting. Which I watched (and enjoyed terribly. thanks Robert Green!) and then promptly passed out at 5:30am. A good day it was.
Korea's next match (June 17th) fell on a Thursday night here, so no big viewing party downtown. Well, there was, but I had work in the morning and again, I don't that much about the Korean team. However I did watch the game from one of Seoul's mexican restaurants with a mostly Korean crowd and that did provide a different a much different experience than the bar for the Greece. The experience was different mainly due to the final scoreline. As you might remember, this was the Argentina game and as everyone (minus the Koreans who were convinced they could win it) expected, the Argentinians rolled big time. During the whole game it was difficult for me to decide how to feel. Part of me enjoyed their suffering as retribution/revenge/justice for the awful home field advantage officiating and classless play that helped power Korea to the semi-finals back in 2002 (yes, I know thats an insanely long time to hold a grudge, but when Korea insists on replaying and reliving 2002 every other day, no joking, it doesn't really feel like 8 years ago) as well as their poor sportsmanship/whining about calls that didn't go their way at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The other part of me, however, felt sorry for these good people who really genuinely care about their team (at least during the world cup) and don't deserve to see their boys getting handled that badly. Make no bones about it, I was rooting for Argentina, as they are entertaining and exciting to watch while Korea....are not, but I didn't wish that kind of loss on them. 4-1 was a generous scoreline for them. Could have been much worse.
However, when it was all said and done, I remembered why I prefer watching the World Cup alone. As previously mentioned, I figure around 90% or so of the "diehards" that crawl out of the woodwork every 4 years are in fact fair weather fans that have no clue about anything involving soccer, whatsoever. These people do not bother me as long as they don't talk. However, several of the ladies did not do me the pleasure of remaining quiet. As they knew nothing about soccer, they would begin shrieking and screaming if anything, and I mean anything, positive happened for Korea. Korea gained possession and moved into Argentina's half of the field? Clearly this was something exciting and stressful, so you have to begin shrieking. Literally my friend and I had this conversation upon him returning from the bathroom: "Eric, what did I miss? I heard some shouting and yelling? What happened?" "Ummmm, nothing. Korea got ball past midfield then Argentina took the ball away. That's it." "Really?" "Yup."
Nothing really to report for the Nigeria game (June 23rd here) as it fell on a Wednesday morning at 3:30am. Just me watching it alone in my apt in my underwear. The way sports were meant to be watched. Sans pants. Korea did just enough to get through.
The final game for South Korea in South Africa was against Uruguay, which again fortuitously fell on a Saturday night at around 8pm (June 26th). This time, though, I would be watching from a bar/club that was holding a concert/fundraiser for orphans. The details: one of the better clubs for music acts would be holding a concert fundraiser for a local orphanage as well as serving as a viewing party for the Korea game. Now, I know what you are thinking, "Wow, You are a much better person than I am Eric. How can I ever hope to be on your level?" Well, you can't, but that's not the question here. I mean, I help old ladies across the street and breast feed orphaned baby puppies, so whatever. Jenna happens to volunteer as a English tutor at the orphanage in question down in Suwon and had volunteered to man the information booth during part of the concert, and as such invited me to help the orphans too. And how could I have said no? The proceeds all go to orphans and North Korean refugees, they are stopping the concert for the Korea game, and the music lineup features one of the only Korean musical acts I would actually pay money to see live.
Before the concert, we grabbed dinner at a Italian restaurant that happened to be a converted house. And as it used to be a house, it of course had a bookcase filled with old looking ENGLISH books. Nothing unusual there, as I'm sure everybody, from Germany to Malaysia, fill their book shelves with distinguished and intellectual English books, rather than their own language's books cuz English is soooo cool. This place was no exception. Book of famous quotes from poets? Good, but we can get wordier and intellectual....ier. A book on molecular biology, right out of some Masters course? Better, but still you can do better. A Box Car Children book? That's what I'm talking about. That is some high level stuff.
With our reading done for the evening we moved to the concert. We arrived just in time to catch the Korean act I really wanted to see, The Rock Tigers. They classify themselves as rockabilly, which is the same genre as the Brian Setzer Orchestra, so they use a stand up bass and dress like they are members of John Travolta's gang of greasers from "Grease". It is definitely something to see Koreans rocking a pompadour straight out of America, cerca 1950. But they can play.
Not the greatest video of theirs, but whatever. It's just really sad to see a good band like this, who has received some international press attention, playing in a tiny little venue in front of almost all foreigners. Whether its because the Koreans don't like this kind of music (which is laughable considering the shite they do seem to like) or just nobody knows about them (since only K-pop gets any airplay and media attention), I can't say. You thought being an underground/struggling artist was tough in America? hahahah. At least there you can possibly make it big. These guys here will never, ever achieve any manner of success, at least not in Korea. Just not going to happen. And that sucks so so much.
After they ended their set, it was time for the Korea vs. Uruguay game. Or so we thought, but their screen projector failed us on several occasions, so the viewers had to switch several times between the downstairs and upstairs televisions. From what I saw, Korea looked pretty good, but just not good enough to win. Which was unfortunate as I would have really liked to see Korea and the US win so I could savor the US then wiping the floor with Korea in the next round. Sadly, it was not meant to be. And they had such an easy bracket too. Ohhh well. America and Korea just aren't good enough yet.
After the game and the rest of the concert ended, we moved onward to find a different bar to watch the US game. Only problem being that most places are closed down by 3:30 am and all of them are closed by the time the game ends. We did finally find a place to watch the game, but we ended up sleeping through nearly all the first half before they closed up at halftime. Not really like we missed anything. At that point we admitted defeat and just headed back to our respective homesteads, where I managed to catch the extra time period only to be let down again by the US team. Thanks guys, love that defense.
I'll let the Rock Tigers play you out.
No comments:
Post a Comment