After the last post, in which I predicted the Miami Heat would take the NBA Title for the East, my team lost two straight games in the West to the Tejas Mavericks, owned by a man Mark Cuban who looks like he sticks a kilo of white powder up his nose before each game. It kind of got me thinking that I had jinxed the Big Man, and I felt horrible about the post. Here I was, trying to show love to the East and to the Big Man, and in fact all I did was jinx him and his Heat. I really felt awful.
My sister chimed in with a comment on the post, asking, why did I care about basketball? Was I confused… didn’t I know that the World Cup is going on? Well, first of all, to address my sister and all her European friends, I am an American young man. Second, there is no one of Shaq’s fantastic girth playing footballs. My saucer eyes are entertained only by the big bodies. But to give a little update, I have been watching the World Cup.
Just last Friday we had a cableman on a same-day mission to the Grill to install cable television for the kitchen. Who do you have to know to get same day cable installation? The owner, Mr. S., who wants me to call him “dog”, made a couple of phonecalls and the cable was installed for the kitchen fellas the same day. Many of them are from El Salvador and it was very important for them to be able to watch the World Cup, even if they were in fact getting paid to do something completely different. He explained to the waitstaff that he made the decision to install a television with cable in order to… “prevent a revolution in the kitchen.”
So all the boys back there, even the ones who grew up over here in the USA are watching the World Cup and drinking beers and sustaining minutes long group-shouts of “Goooooooooaaaaaaaaaall!!” I work with Italians, Brazilians, El Salvadoreans, Morrocans… one girl whose last name is Fitzgerald Kennedy… all kinds of people. We are all getting caught up in the World Cup excitement, though not quite to the British level of punching each other in the face. But Shaq plays in the NBA.
Thankfully, the Heat came thru in Miami tonight and won a damn game, and I can post again. For a minute, I thought that my boasting posting had jinxed my main men and that they would spiral down to a Texas sweep. Didn’t happen, thank goodness. I was reading Eugene Robinson’s opinion column on the World Cup, titled Taste a Cupful of Passion, in the Washington Post the other day and he mentioned the story of Andres Escobar:
“…sometimes winning is most definitely the point. In the 1994 World Cup, Andres Escobar of Colombia scored an “own goal” — accidentally putting the ball into his own net — in a match against the U.S. team, handing the Yanquis an undeserved victory. A few days after Escobar got home, he was gunned down in the parking lot of a Medellin nightclub by an irate fan.”
In my posting boasting of the Heat winning, before they had even taken to the court and followed by two straight subsequent losses, I felt like Andres Escobar. Scoring a goal against my own team. Shaquille is a sheriff or a federal marshall of some kind ya’ll, you know he’s got guns and badges and stuff. To make amends to the Big Man and how I almost jinxed my boys, I mashed up my face onto Andres Escobar 1994 playing card. May he rest in peace.
We’ll try to stay blind
to the hope and fear outside
Hey child, stay wilder than the wind
And blow me in to cry
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone
Who do you need, who do you love
When you come undone…