Or so I thought. It's actually nothing like it. It's much better.
Still, that's not saying much.
Tonight, though, I secured a free ticket for the playoff match between Salford and some team from Wales. I've been told that we hate teams from Wales. Very well.
I meet up with a group of guys at the Steel Club at 6pm. Paul is bowling, and he can't come. We are renting a bus and going to Salford, which isn't far from here, and incidentally, is where my family is from. The guys are: Alan, an old football star who has a thick moustache and a beer gut; Morry, a really nice guy who lays bricks for a living, who takes me under his wing and tells me about his travels to Australia and also tells me to not listen to what anybody else says; Ab, a Scouser who ignores me the whole trip and seems like an asshole to be hon-
BREAKING NEWS: Speaking of assholes, Comcast has banned my site because of some harsh language I apparently used a few posts back. I told my friend the other day that if the Comcast people actually read my site and liked it, or at the very least deemed it "appropriate", I would consider it, and myself, an abject failure, and I would have to live with that shame for the rest of my life, as the Comcast owners and stockholders obviously have a collected intelligence level less than that contained in a rhesus monkey's tit.
Anyways, back to the crew: Mark, who is tall and skinny and likes to yell obscenities at strangers out the window of the bus; and Roger, who came to the match with his young son and likes to make racist jokes. My favourite goes like this:
Q: What's the KKK's favourite football club?
A: Blackburn.
Ooohhhhh....
Oh, Christ, come on. It's funny.
See, the match is a hot ticket; the winner moves on to the league final, and at any rate, both teams are moving up to the highest division next year. Salford has been playing at this stadium, called the Willows, since 1901, and will be moving out in 2010 to a brand new ground.
Is Salford a city on the rise, then?
Not bloody likely. Salford is a rough town, says everybody in the know. Rough, they say. They say it over and over. Rough. It's rough, mate. Rough. You're going to Salford by yourself? Regent Road, you say? Rough road, that. Rough town. Rough.
Well, how rough is it?
Terry knows. Terry, a close friend of Paul's, was born and bred in Irlam and went to college in Salford. One of his first days he saw a man mugging an old woman, and noticed at least ten people milling about the area pretending to not notice what was happening. He decided to do something about it, and so he ripped the old woman free from the grasp of the mugger, and then promptly got his ass beat by the assailant, before the man ran off. Before too long, a man came and helped Terry up off the ground, where he had been kicked repeatedly in the gut. Terry got up, with considerable effort, and thanked the man, who told Terry with all honesty that he deserved the beating.
That was then, and this is now. Now may be worse. We have the bus driver drop us off five feet from the entrance of the ground, and we get in without getting mugged. Yes! These are tough Salford-born lads I'm with, and they're still scared. They are nervous, but they think they can fool the wide-eyed American. No luck. We enter the ground and go straight to the bar. We don't go to our seats once during the whole match, which sounds worse than it actually is; the bar is situated above the ground somewhat, and we get seats that overlook the pitch, so we might have one of the best seats in the house. Everyone agrees that Salford should take the match easily; they get slaughtered beyond comprehension.
What went wrong? Well, first off, the referees obviously descended from some sort of primates - possibly Rhesus Monkeys - so there's that, and there's also the fact that Salford isn't very good. Still, the match was far more entertaining than any American football game you've ever been to in your life, in fact we had some American footballers out here just the other week, you know, the club decided to give them a go, you see, and they made it through the first practice and they said, sod it, we're going back to the States, see, none of this bloody running around with no pads or anything...
Umm, guys... I've never been to watch an American football match...
Oh... well, it's still better. Hey, I'm not arguing, I'll be the first to admit it! I hate American football, I think it's a terrible excuse for a sport, and I think rugby is ten times more entertaining...
"So I suppose you support the Seattle Seahawks, then?"
No! I hate the Seahawks! I hope they lose every game they play for the rest of their lives! That's how much I don't care about them! I don't think they believe me, but whatever - they're still buying me beer and at this point I don't even know who to thank for the beers because they are coming at me from every direction. I just take what they give me. I am Being a Gracious Guest.
Game over. Back to the Steel Club. I meet back up with Paul and Terry, who both buy me beers. Aw, jeez, man. Morry pulls me aside and explains to me English-style ribbing: "Y'see, the thing is, d'yer know wha' I mean, is that we're all havin' a laugh, see, and it may not seem like that to an outsider, but it's true, yeah? And the idea is, you know, the idea is, beyond anything else, to get the target to conveniently forget that little tidbit of info, right? And so when they crack, which is the whole idea, we can get in their face and tell them that they're out of order, see, and so the next day they come grovelling back and apologising, and by that time it's us that's having the laugh, and so that's important right there, d'yer know wha' I mean, is to not lose your cool, because, bleeding hell, it's like you don't want to be caught with your trousers down, mate, you know, and so you've got to be dry and just let it roll right off you because..."
Terry asks Morry if he can steal me away for a second before he goes. "I just have to ask you, before I leave, Tyler, I have to ask you if that Barack Obama has a chance."
Sigh.
Okay, here goes, once and for all:
"No, he doesn't have a chance in hell. People won't vote for him because he's black, and that's not just in Texas where everyone is racist and backwards pigs. That's even in Portland, where people are somewhat progressive, at least compared with the rest of the country. But he doesn't have a chance because McCain and the Republicans have a monopoly on the stupid people in the country, which far and away outnumber the educated and reasonable ones. The knock on Obama is that he is an elitist and he doesn't have experience; at least, that's the downfall as perpetuated by the Republican party, and by extension the press, and so that becomes an issue, this "experience" nonsense, when it doesn't have anything to do with it. John McCain is a nasty old warmonger who happens to believe in exactly the opposite of what the majority of Americans believe in, and yet he still is in a position to win the election and become the most powerful man on Earth. Funny, that."
They look at me and grin. They are wondering if I'm done, so they can chime in.
"Well," I say. "Either way we're screwed."
TJH
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