385: Trying to get into the spirit of the football season

For the first time in my life I live within earshot of a major football team's stadium during the season. There is a big thing called Old Trafford football ground where a team called Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Football Club, formerly of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Newton Heath depot, play their ball games. There is also this thing called LCCCCCCCC where Bon Jovi play and so do some cricketers. Newton Heath LYR FC now go by the less traditional name of Manchester United, having outgrown Newton Heath over a hundred years ago. In another hundred years they will be Greater Manchester United, and in two hundred they will be North West United FC, etcetera etc &c.

I walked to the shop (milk and eggs) to no more noise than the usual background fuzz of distant roads, children playing and larks singing. Minutes later, laden with dairy, the wind brought the roars and chants of 75,000 people, whose ability to pay up to £50 a ticket matched their enthusiasm for a self-important, over-indulged game. Personally I hate football; it's just two kids kicking a tennis ball against a wall. Having said that, over the next ninety minutes the open window of my mouldy flat let in the ecstatic cheers of frenzied fantatics. Not just once or twice, but eight times. I believe this is good. Football is fabulously fetishized past the point of perversion, but that sounds like fun.

Sometimes I try to get football, but it's so rare it becomes interesting. Essentially it's a nerd subject: statistics, unpronounceable names, pointless tables of dates and numbers. I'm all for nerd subjects, just not this one. The conversations about it are boring at best, and unfathomably spiteful and bilious at worst. Imagine the radio is on, but instead of BBC 5 Live, it's just normal pop (Manchester Key 103 or something). A song by, for example, Olly Murs is playing. I'm shouting to anyone who will listen ahh, you know what his fucking problem is? Not enough going on in the lower register; too much up top. Then a live performance by Lady Gaga comes on, during which she plays perfectly, except for one note being a semi-tone out: stupid fucking wop, you're shit and you know you are, you're shit. After which David Guetta comes on, who I hate due to some ancient and obscure rivalry based solely on close geographical proximity: die of fucking AIDS and go back to where you came from.

I calm down slightly when Cher Lloyd starts to sing: you know what she needs to do? She needs a choppy electro-funk on the middle-eight, into a lilting reggae march for the chorus. Bring that down for the rap, and then a low mixed distorted guitar, and some retro tweekin' acid, during the chant-along outro. She pulls that off and she'll be top of the pops come the end of the season. Mind you, she needs to watch out for the new signing by Beyonce. She's got that new Swede in doing session drums on her latest, and he has good form. He helped take Basshunter to the top of the Swedish pops two seasons running.

Anyway you get the idea. Being a football fan requires a psychotic level of hate directed at people you don't know, both players of your own team and all others, and managers, referees and linesmen, too boot. Remember to throw in racial slurs and calls for unpleasant death. Then you need to feign a faultless knowledge of tactics and the uncanny ability to accurate predict the results of any slight tactical change. Back this all up with tedious trivia about youth squads, 'form' and whatever, and you are fully prepared to bore the pants off everyone, except your fellow footie folk.

All that aside, I am obviously guilty of the same boring rubbish. It's just my own obsessions don't allow me an instant topic of conversation with the surprising number of men who seem to enjoy football (or pretend to in preference to awkward silence). I'm obviously just jealous. Actually, I definitely used to be a bit. Back when Baddiel & Skinner's Fantasy Football League was on telly I wished I felt the excitement of football. The TV show was interesting, weird, likable, clever, and most importantly hilarious, self-aware, and down-to-earth. All attributes I have never attributed to the world of football before or since. Turns out it wasn't the football that made the show, they could have been talking about anything, and indeed they did on Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned which was just as good or better.

So, yeah..... whatever......

P.S. - I've just realised my last post was one in which I revealed I am a total wrestling statto nerd, which most people would consider a thousand times more pathetic, and that having just watched some Fantasy Football on YouTube I've remembered how much fun it all is. Oh Bollocks!

and because they've yet to get old:

191: it's a funny joke

I’ve written a joke:

What’s the difference between nerds and geeks?

“I don’t know, what is the difference between nerds and geeks?”

Before I address the question of the differences, please allow me to first address the similarities.  The two terms are commonly used interchangeably to describe a physically-unimposing person with specialist knowledge or shameless enthusiasm for specific intellectual pursuits; for instance, technical or scientific subjects often coupled with deep knowledge about a hobby.  Hobbies popular amongst geeks and nerds include but are not limited to science fiction/fantasy, comics, superheroes, manga/anime, puzzle solving, history, and even sports statistics.

A geek or nerd is typically more concerned with cerebral matters; placing their own interests above more conventional pursuits such as socialising.  Obviously these descriptions are stereotypical and should the statistics be collected, they may show that many nerds or geeks do not conform.

For instance many geeks/nerds have gone on to significant achievement, both intellectually and socially.  Some examples follow:  Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Ross, Spiderman, and Barack Obama.  Further analysis would undoubtedly provide more examples.  I have not done the research, and at this point must defer to those who have to provide deeper understanding, and to correct me on any errors I have made.  As a minor comic aside please allow me to quote a scene of dialogue from popular American animated situation comedy, The Simpsons:

Lisa: Nerds are nothing to fear, Dad. In fact, some nerds of note include popcorn magnate Orville Redenbacher, rock star David Byrne, and Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

Homer: Oh no! Not Souter! (buries face in hands) Oh nooo! 

Joking aside I will now proceed with regard to the original question highlighting the differences over the similarities for comic effect.  N.E.R.D. are a hip hop group featuring Neptunes members Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, plus drummer Shay Haley, whereas ‘geeks’ are touring carnival side-show attractions whose act consists usually of some form of wilful bodily degradation, the term originally deriving from an old German word loosely meaning fool.  There may be other subtle differences between the two words, however these are undefined and open to dispute.

Thank you for listening to my joke; I hope it has provided the requisite satisfaction.  Please consider this an experiment during which I have been collecting data.  With that data I will draw conclusions and plan further experiments.  I will eventually publish my original hypothesis, experiments, and data, along with my conclusions so that others may verify or discredit my work.