World Date UpCup

(ed. note: We think he meant World Cup Update but he's tired and cranky... didn't have the heart to mention it)

The World Cup of soccer is in full swing. Africa, at long last and to the great joy of her citizens, is now first among equals in the great family of nations.
During the opening ceremonies as we were welcomed back, with open arms, to the source of our origins I couldn't help but get a bit choked up. First Obama and now this...bye bye White guilt and good riddance!!
I watched a short film clip about the vuvuzela, new to me and apparently some kind of indigenous instrument that the locals played with great delight. It looked and sounded almost identical to the plastic blowhorn I had as a kid, but what did I know.
I still remember my last blowhorn; I was 11 years old and brought it to a sparsely attended Expos game. I played it loud and lustily and around the 7th inning a nearby drunk asked to take a look at it. "Sure" I said and watched as he calmy held an end in each hand, broke it in two and handed it back to me!!
Well...there are thousands of 11 year old me's at any given world cup match and the rest of the planet has turned into that ballpark drunk. Infuriated and vengeful but this time with no recourse. Commentators, columnists, and bloggers have raled and foamed at the mouth. FIFA tried to ban the instrument from all stadiums but all to no avail. The horrid, annoying, loud buzzing noise is with us for another 3 weeks, like it or not.





This clip is more or less typical of the bitter tone that has characterized the uproar.

"What can they possibly be thinking?" you may well ask. The source of so many of our most engaging and enduring forms of popular music and THIS is what they come up with??

Its like the nerdy, poor kid from a backwards family who's parents finally let him have a party in their basement because they won a 50" 3D plasma TV and everybody wants to come check it out and they serve sardines and cream soda and he pulls the chairs out from under the cool kids as they're about to sit down and cracks up and squirts them with water pistols all night (and cracks up).

That's pretty much how it seems on first glance but here at The Blob we like to scratch below the surface to see what worms of truth we can unearth.

My South African operatives put me in touch with Mbuko Seke Ngolobasele, and elderly gentleman who was there at the beginning of what he calls "the vuvuzela movement".

"The instrument was invented some 10 years ago ... a plastic version of a horn that has been used for many years by the Duduk tribesmen to talk across great distances while tending to their herds. Then we got the World Cup the people in the slums and shanty towns started to talk. "We will get nothing from this " they said "but still, the world will come to our doorstep!" And so it began. We are a poor continent, maybe backwards in the eyes of some, but we understand revenge as well as anybody else. We were all encouraged to buy the vuvuzela, it is not expensive, and in churches and elsewhere we were taught to play it as loud as we could and with the most brittle of tones. After centuries of exploitation at the hands of imperialists...enslavement, rape, pillaging, plundering of our wealth, support of the most bloody and corrupt regimes... No we are not rich and cannot afford many bombs but we would have our revenge!!"

And so the African fans, in a tremendous display of passive/aggressive retribution are ruining our party and clearly delighting in doing so. I guess we deserve it but in 3 weeks it'll be all over, the playing field will be even once again and we will all emerge winners!