Item: 1 CD - La Historia, by Ricky Martin
So I'm borrowing this CD, on which Track 09 is "La Copa de la Vida" (La Cancion Oficial de La Copa Mundial, Francia '98). This is strangely serendipitous, since I was planning on writing about the World Cup tonight. But, that's what happened.
I can't help thinking about the World Cup in contrast to the Olympics earlier this year. I like that it's a regular schedule: 3 games a day, and there's something going on every day. This is enough to make life interesting, but it's not too much to keep up with. Plus, it actually feels like an international event. In the Olympics, as broadcast by the networks here, you would never see a game like Portugal vs. Angola.
Maybe the really nice thing about it is this: the US has not figured out how to dominate this sport yet. There's something about the World Cup that has much more of an African flavor, a Latin American flavor, a European flavor, and that makes it seem like I'm experiencing something unusual, something special.
It has plenty of logos, official songs, corporate sponsors, of course. Even seeing it in Spanish when I can't understand everything they're saying, I can tell this. Maybe another language removes these things a level so that they seem less obnoxious. It's funny, you just know that whole villages in Paraguay are glued to whatever television is available watching their team's matches, and this seems like a totally different thing than when Americans are sitting around the television. In others, this seems like a particularly heartwarming behavior, and maybe it's the glamor of other people's teams that twists the whole thing in intriguing ways and makes me feel like I'm watching something I haven't already seen a million times before.
This "La Copa de la Vida" song, if I look at the lyrics, does seem like maybe it was written to be a cheesy thing for an opening ceremony, but still - it rocks. Ale, ale, ale!
I can't help thinking about the World Cup in contrast to the Olympics earlier this year. I like that it's a regular schedule: 3 games a day, and there's something going on every day. This is enough to make life interesting, but it's not too much to keep up with. Plus, it actually feels like an international event. In the Olympics, as broadcast by the networks here, you would never see a game like Portugal vs. Angola.
Maybe the really nice thing about it is this: the US has not figured out how to dominate this sport yet. There's something about the World Cup that has much more of an African flavor, a Latin American flavor, a European flavor, and that makes it seem like I'm experiencing something unusual, something special.
It has plenty of logos, official songs, corporate sponsors, of course. Even seeing it in Spanish when I can't understand everything they're saying, I can tell this. Maybe another language removes these things a level so that they seem less obnoxious. It's funny, you just know that whole villages in Paraguay are glued to whatever television is available watching their team's matches, and this seems like a totally different thing than when Americans are sitting around the television. In others, this seems like a particularly heartwarming behavior, and maybe it's the glamor of other people's teams that twists the whole thing in intriguing ways and makes me feel like I'm watching something I haven't already seen a million times before.
This "La Copa de la Vida" song, if I look at the lyrics, does seem like maybe it was written to be a cheesy thing for an opening ceremony, but still - it rocks. Ale, ale, ale!
posted by Karen at 7:39 PM
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