Wednesday, June 21, 2006

T�, al banquillo (repost)

I originally posted this a few days ago. I went in today to add a missing o to the word too, but for some reason, the whole entry disappeared.

Anyway, I love these Adidas commercials featuring Jos� and his amiguito gordito choosing teams for a pick up match on the plaza. The sequel is even better, especially when an exasperated Jose sits Kaka and brings out Lampard. And now they've released a making of clip, with interviews of the two principal actors, plus Kaka and Beckham. There's also a thirty second bonus of the two muchachos in lederhosen.

Nike's got some fun commericials with os Soccer Boys, but it's the Adidas spots that captured my imagination.

Do kids still play pick up games on the playground? We used to. We used to ride bikes, build forts; when it rained, we used to engineer the mud and channel the run off (I bet that's just a Pacific Northwest thing). Now kids have play dates and video games.

3 comments:

bitchphd said...

Dude, those are fantastic!

Delia Christina said...

they're cool! makes me want to play soccer.

oh, that's right - i used to until i got nailed with the soccer ball and ate dirt during PE.

(sigh. so unathletic.)

jp, i think generation x was the last generation to actually go outside. my sister and i used to play 'archeology' in our backyard and dig up marbles.

we also played 'deserted island' on our front porch and mom showed us how to make a hammock. no one else made hammocks on our street.

jp 吉平 said...

Just yesterday I was reading about why the US is so behind the rest of the world in soccer (sorry, I don't remember the site).

The theory was all about how when American kids play soccer, they are taken to practice in minivans and delivered to regulation fields, often well manicured, and play in highly organized, well equiped programs.

The rest of the world plays "street ball," and drew an analogy with urban playground basketball vs. the small town and suburban basketball.

The writer's conclusion? A) Playground pick-up games are both more frequent and more competitive, teaching players something the private clubs don't teach, and B) poor people have more ganas.

Intuitively, this seems to be at least part of the reason.

Bitch, let's see your X-Box teach you how to make a hammock!

By the way, when giving the choice between playing outside or playing Atari, I chose Atari every time. Which is why my parents never bought me one. Which, in turn, made my father VERY SLOW to buy a computer (he thought I would only use it for games) and, even worse, a printer. We got our first dot-matrix printer because I had a 20 page research paper in Senior Honors' English. It took him a good 10 years to wrap his brain around the fact that I NEEDED a computer AND a printer.

I'm still mad.