Sta-ha-har Spa-ha-ha-han-ga-ah-ah-ah-la-la-la-led Ba-ha-ha-ha-nuh-uh-uh!

Is there another country that plays with its national anthem as much as the United States? I was thinking about this on Wednesday night as I watched Kelly Rowland meander and "ooh, ooh, woo" her way through the Star-Spangled Banner before the England v. USA friendly. It is apparently musically sinful for American artists to perform the anthem straight. I realise that the United States prides itself on being a creatively ambitious country, but all that "huh, whuh, whoa" stuff makes it difficult for people to sing along, which is kind of what you'd like to do before an international match.

But it did manage to make Wembley feel more like an American sporting event, complete with random booing. As soon as England fans were able to determine that it was indeed the U.S. national anthem that was being sung (somewhere around "... o'er the land of the free..."), a handful of them started in with jeers.

Soccer fans everywhere (save, perhaps in the United States, where we live in fear-respect of our anthem and are therefore terribly uncomfortable booing another one, unless it's being played while a heel marches out during a pro-wrestling event) seem to do this. What's amusing is that the recipients of the booing always take it really personally, going so far as to make ridiculous claims of racism. I'm looking at you, country whose name starts with a "C."

I don't buy that. I mean, honestly, how many people in England (who would attend an international soccer match) are really going to boo the United States on principal: "Boo! You're overweight, unnecessarily capitalist, self-involved, bogged down in Iraq, saddled with a government that doesn't care about the majority of its citizens, and disliked by all your neighbours... Oh... Wait, a second..."

I'm pretty sure booing is much more simplistic than that. For the most part it's just a matter of child-level "cheer for the good guys, boo for the bad guys" thinking. To save deep insult, countries should stop playing their national anthems and instead develop boo-able ditties. They should have Iron Sheik-like mascots to stomp around and raise the ire of opposing supporters.

Unfortunately the U.S. wasn't able to exact revenge for the booing, going down as pretty much everyone expected. Although it's worth noting that England had put forward, arguably, the very best team it is capable of fielding and still didn't manage to do anything for 38 minutes. Usually when you go up against "a second-division team of spoilers" (fuck you sideways, John Motson), you don't have to field your big guns. But Capello felt the need.

I think that's proof that the U.S. is, slowly, coming into its own soccer-wise. I am convinced that sometime in the near future the rest of the world will get its wish and the United States will show genuine interest in the game. The world wants this for the money, but, of course, it will backfire on them because it will mean Yanqui supremacy. Then the world will have to turn to rugby and responsible financial management to find things that they are better at than the U.S.

But that day hasn't quite yet arrived. U.S. soccer is still dominated by strangely good-looking athletic fellas with unique names. For so many years soccer was the sport of the likeable fellow who wasn't quite enough of a prick to play home-grown sports like football, baseball and basketball. They are the sort of guys who don't scream, "Big game, fellas! Let's get fuckin' psyched!" before a match (a), because they realise it is silly and unnecessary and kind of negative. Take a look at the current roster and you'll see that most of those dudes are from California.

One thing fans need to do before the game gets truly big in the States: develop a few of our own songs. The majority of chants and songs recited by fans are lifted straight from English supporters. Anywhere they say "Eng-ger-lund," we've simply replaced with "U-S-A." Obviously, this trick fell a bit flat on Wednesday.

And one random additional note from Wednesday's match: Wayne Rooney is 25 years old. I am 32. But his hair is thinning considerably faster than mine. Bwahahaha!

(a) A guy on my rugby team used to do this before EVERY MATCH, no matter who we were playing.

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- Slightly witty name for a band. -

Assaulted by train staff

Two of the child bride's sisters are visiting the Cope estate at the moment, which means the days and nights are filled with the sounds of their virtually yelling at one another, punctuated by frequent explosions of cackling laughter.

The child bride comes from a large family, and the best way to be heard in a large family is to speak louder than everyone else. When the family members get together, the house reverberates with a noise that is almost physical; it pushes you around and makes you feel claustrophobic. Well, it does that to me.

And now that experience has come to my tiny house, in my tiny space on this tiny island. Rachel and her sisters seem to have lost any sense of the concept of "inside voice" and bellow at one another like excited deaf people. They quote lines from films they watched as children (almost always in that loud and high-pitched Queen Victoria voice that everyone does), gossip about so-and-so who lived down the street and is probably gay now, and cackle with laughter over every little thing.

It's that sisterly thing, of course. I know several guys who are very close with their brothers and they just don't act like this with each other. When my brother and I get together, we more often than not stare at each other until he asks me a question out of politeness ("So, how's that book going?"), and I accidentally answer in seriousness and he says, "Yeah. That's cool," which is Jon Code for: "I'm not going to make fun of you right now, but I reserve the right to do so at a later date."

Thursday found the sisterly triad and me wandering the streets of Bath, where the presence of other loud American tourists helped to lessen their effect just slightly. I was secretly happy when Jenny didn't respond to the text I sent her about our being there. For the sake of our friendship, I wasn't particularly eager to subject her and Chris to this mobile theatre of cacophony, but I felt it would be rude to visit their fair city without so much as a hello.

Anyway, we had an alright time, eating dinner at a Spanish restaurant in city centre that is effectively buried underneath the road, and were in good spirits as we arrived at the station to catch our train home.

As we walked into the station, I heard the announcement for the train to Cardiff Central and shot off up the steps. Now, I am one of those people who prides himself on being able to catch trains. If I had somehow been able to transpose my train-catching skills to rugby, I would have been Eastside Banshees RFC's top try-scorer, because I bound up steps, leap over things, break through crowds and run at shocking pace when trying to save myself 30 minutes of sitting around waiting for the next train.

For those of you playing along at home, most of the train doors here are automatic. They will all close at once but for one, that one being where the conductor stands. He/she leans out of said door while the other doors close, gets the signal from the platform conductor, shuts his door and signals to the driver that they are good to go. In that space of time that the other doors are closing, one can jump on the train via the conductor's door.

And so it was that I flew onto the 20:08 train from Bath Spa to Cardiff Central.

"Alright, mate," said the conductor as I got on. "Let's go."

"Just a sec, my wife and her sisters are right there," I said, pointing to the three-woman hurricane that was now about 30 feet from the train.

"No time," the conductor said. And he pressed the button to close the doors.

"Whoa. Hold on," I said, putting my shoulder into the doors to stop them from closing. "I can't leave without them!"

"Well, get out, then," he shouted. And he pushed me out of the train.

By this time, Rachel and her sisters were standing outside the door, looking shocked that I had been forcibly removed*. I spun around and shouted back at the conductor through the half-closed doors: "Come on, mate. They're all here. We're all standing right here."

"No!" he blustered, frantically pressing the button to close the door.

But then karma kicked in.

The doors refused to shut. He had fucked them up by throwing me into them. When it became obvious that he was going to have to completely reopen the doors to shut them, he grumbled permission for us to get on. He was still fussing with the thing as we sat down.

Even though it was dangerous to shove me from the train -- my foot could have gone into the gap, my foot could have caught the door or I could have been turned and gone head-first into the concrete platform -- I've decided not to file a complaint with First Great Western. It's just as effective to blog about it and less likely to result in any kind of unnecessary disciplinary action for a conductor who was probably just having a shit day. After all, this train had come all the way from Portsmouth; I'm sure he had been dealing with charming idiots all night long. And besides, he was polite to us once we were seated.

Still, one has to wonder sometimes why I am such a Britophile.

*Well, perhaps Rachel didn't look shocked. My being attacked by someone wouldn't surprise her at all -- she would assume I had done something to provoke them.

U-S-A

A while back, I suggested that if the United States could score a try against either England or South Africa, they could go home feeling that their campaign had been successful.

With only one match played, the United States' World Cup campaign has been successful.

A 28-10 defeat doesn't really leave one screaming "Do you believe in unlikelihoods?!", but today's USA vs. England match turned out better than I think anyone could have realistically hoped.

First off, we scored a try. Tongan-born Utah resident* Matekitonga Moeakiola trundled across the try line in the 74th minute, which leads to another reason to be happy. In the final, most exhausting minutes of the match, the United States, with only a handful of pro players, appeared more fit and into the match than England's all-pro squad.

Earlier in the day, Japan (the only team the U.S. has ever beat in the history of the World Cup) was clobbered 91-3 by Australia and New Zealand stomped all over Italy 76-14 -- it was generally expected that the United States would meet a similar fate. But instead they held England off and forced them to treat the U.S. as a legitimate threat (something France failed to do against Argentina the night previous). Even the blatantly pro-England announcers found themselves forced to extend respect to the U.S. team by the end of it.

The U.S. should now go into its match against Tonga with a tremendous amount of confidence. Tonga is beatable for them. Afterward, a win against Samoa is unlikely, but not impossible. If those two things happened, though, it would be the Eagles' most successful World Cup ever. Right now it feels just barely maybe possible.

The USA-South Africa match, however, is almost certainly going to be brutal. I think the U.S. goal for that one should simply to avoid getting any players killed.

*Hmm, Tongan-born Utah resident. What religion's he then? Holla, Mormons.

Don't worry, they're mine

Jenny's mention of being scared shitless for 25 seconds made me think of this story:

When I first moved to England, my Midwestern mind full of mush had been filled with irrational fears over the IRA.

"Bombs go off there all the time," wide-eyed big-haired farm girls had told me in hushed tones.

And while I didn't believe them... I did. On some irrational, emotional level I envisioned this strange perpetually gray and sooty land where buildings and trains randomly exploded. Angry Irish guys, I imagined, would stomp up to me, ask my religion, and punch me in the face if I answered incorrectly*.

In Portsmouth.

I had every article of clothing that I owned bundled with me into two backpacks and an Army duffle bag when I got on the train from Gatwick to Portsmouth. Because I had to that point in my life only ridden on novelty trains, I had boarded a train that stopped at pretty much every station along the route. Normally, the trip would take about an hour; this train took, oh, I don't know, three months. I stuffed all my things into the overhead racks, unwilling to put them in the luggage area at the front or rear of the car because I had also filled my head with crazy "Let's Go!"-inspired fears of theft, and sat down to dwell in trepidation of my new environment.

I hadn't bothered to look at a map, nor the estimated time for the journey, so I had no idea when to expect the train would arrive at my station. As a result, every time the train slowed I sat up and readied myself to dart out onto the platform, fearing that the train would take off before I could get out and then I would be arrested for being on past my stop and thrown into some Eastern European gulag and strapped to a chair and forced to confess to crimes against the state while they released earwigs down my shorts.

After a bit of this, I found myself looking at some of the other bags on the overhead racks; much smaller than my three bags, but, you know, big enough to hold a bomb. Anything is big enough to hold a bomb, right? And of course, all bombs -- regardless of size or type -- produce massive Hollywood-style explosions. When I couldn't immediately determine the owner of said bag, I would get nervous and sit so that I was sort of ducking behind the seats in front of me.

At one point, a woman got on the train and stood for a second, holding her purse, looking at me and then at my bags. She furrowed her brow slightly. I was occupying four seats (two each facing each other), with my feet up on the opposite seats. My bags, which should have been in the luggage area, were taking up way too much overhead rack space. I had a mouth full of chocolate bar and a can of soda in my hand.

"Oh, don't worry," I said in my broad American accent, pointing to my bags. "They're mine."

"Yes," she said tersely. "What lovely white socks you have."

"Oh, thanks," I said.

I thought I was making a friend. Obviously, in addition to understanding nothing about Ireland and having no comprehension of acceptable social behavior on trains, I had yet to learn the subtlety of English sarcasm.

*I got this idea from Brad Pitt, who claimed in an interview to have been punched in the face for stopping to look in the window of a Protestant book store whilst researching his IRA character for "The Devil's Own."