I'm not going to be popular after this blog entry. In fact, I hazard a guess that this will kill off most of the Cranium Dump blog readership that has grown steadily over the past 8 months. Despite it not being the bile target of this blog entry, it started with me throwing out the possibility that the film "Star Wars" was, maybe, a little bit over-rated. This was against the backdrop of "Star Wars Day" (4th May). Apart from the reaction I've received for my antipathy towards football (which is to be the main topic of this blog article), never have I received an outraged, aghast response. The "Star Wars" argument that I put forward was greeted in the same way as me crowbarring someone's pet dog to death (dogs, another massively over-rated target of gross sentimentality - there you go, I told you I wasn't going to be popular writing this). "Sometimes you can be such a tit," said Anti-Hippy, which disappointed me, as he's normally a very good intellectual cutthroat. "The wrong in you is strong, my apprentice," claimed another rather addled observer. "You're just being arch and superior, Nicholson," spat my lovely red-headed/blonde Fragdoll friend - which probably hurt the most, as I was actually criticising "Star Wars" for being portentous, self-important and having leaden dialogue, as opposed to light-hearted, light-headed frothy space opera. That latter description could easily be applied to, say, "The Empires Strikes Back" which is witty, warm, dark and light in equal measures. In fact, being portentous, self-important and having leaden dialogue leads me rather neatly to football commentaries. And reaction to that triggers outright hostility, when I dare murmur that, well, you know, football is boring. And the one thing worse than football, is people talking about football - like some pathetic wannabe football pundit, all puffed-up and aping Alan Hansen (a little tip, wannabes; Alan Hansen can be quite funny, unlike you bores).
Testosterone-fuelled footie fans are often also the first people who point at any other hobby as geeky or weird. In the press, it's widely assumed that if you're into, say, "Star Wars", computer programming, maths or science, you're geeky or even mentally deficient in social skills. Yet, many men, when looking for a mental shortcut into conversation come out with the perennial, "Did you see that match last night?". It's a convenient neutral placeholder chat, a dull-as-ditchwater conversational fart next to the watercooler. Plus, a lot of football conversation strikes me as far more like borderline autism, if not out-and-out Aspergers Syndrome, than any of the 'hobby speak' I hear from other diverse fanbases. Think about it. Guys talking in depth about guys kicking a ball around, with barely a flicker of emotion or even acknowledging the mood of any other party in the room. The statistics that are trotted out give Freud's 'anally retentive' personality a whole new ball game (pun intended) to play with. These blokes are trotting out references to obscure football matches won in 1967. They're able to reel off names of every football player in a particular team's history - and it's not even the team they support. Am I the only person to think that encyclopaedic knowledge could've been used for something else? That if football wasn't inflicted on us, the state of the nation would be a lot healthier?
Things reach a sinister tone, when you realise ministers (of all political parties in power) often count on the so-called "Feel Good" factor of grand finale football matches. Supposedly, it aids a ruling political elite's future during a General Election, if the UK populous have painted the national flag on their face in celebration of their team kicking a ball into a net more times than another country's team. I've always felt there's a bit of "opiate for the masses" about this. And one of my first serious pangs of anxiety about football being used as a "control", was when this story about a banned TV advert broke three years ago. No newspaper or TV news bulletin covered it, despite the fact that it was the first time a TV advert for fucking charity was banned - and for what? The supposed anti-football stance that the advert is alleged to be making. I use that as an extreme example of the influence of "football lobbyists". In Scotland, it's even worse. A few weeks ago, BBC's "Reporting Scotland" had the leading news item as Rangers and Celtic maybe (emphasis on maybe) being put in an English premier league, with jaunty 1960s "Match of the Day" theme music soundtracking the news item. Hip fucking hooray. The second news item was on the first funerals being held for the North Sea helicopter crash. Am I the only person on the planet to think this isn't just appalling, but actually offensive?
Oh, here's a rhetorical question - workplace jingoism caused by the so-called "Feel Good" factor increases productivity, doesn't it? No, this is patently bollocks. Again, it's worse in Scottish offices. If there had been a match of any particular significance, then an ex-workplace of mine just became unbearable to work in. All the men would strike up their best Hansen accent and proceed to talk about the merits of the 41st minute of a match. It would then go on... and on... and on. With nobody doing any work, sometimes for an entire day. The bosses never cracked down on this, because they were all doing the same thing. Frustratingly, it's spoken of in the press as improving morale and, hence, improving the economy. Not from where I'm fucking sitting, it ain't. Shockingly, the bosses got their promotions via the bilingual ball bollocks route in the first place. You think I'm idly theorising? An extremely respected female senior office worker, from my last company, told me something without knowing my prejudices. She told me that the reason my ex-boss had risen to the top was because he talked football with a lot of his office staff. He was therefore seen as alright by the male staff, because he liked football; meanwhile, his incompetence and sociopathic tendencies were never questioned. How utterly disheartening that two years of solid work could all be replaced with a well-timed verse on whether Arsenal could make it to the top league this season. In parallel, it certainly explains why somebody like the universally-hated Damian McBride rose to the top (note the one line dedicated to his personal life in Wikipedia). Supposedly, he was a fixture in the Westminster bars, pontificating at length with journalists about the merits of a strategic offside wank-off in some boringly obscure match.
This all leads back to what my personal pointless take on all this is. And, rather sadly, I don't have one, apart from a possible "can't beat them, join them" lame argument. Although this overlooks the fact that, apart from the odd Celtic match, I find football the ultimate example of time slowing down when you're having a dull time - 90 minutes somehow mutates into fifty years. One potential compromise solution was offered by an episode of sitcom "The IT Crowd" (clip here). One of the lead characters learns to "talk football" from a website, entitled Bluffball, without ever having to really know anything about the sport. As you can see, the website exists - sort of. Through the wonder of Twitter and with my web development background, I offered to develop the Bluffball site for Graham Linehan, the author/director of "The IT Crowd". The reason being that I want the damned thing to exist (other than doing a favour for a favourite comedy writer). As a sidenote, incidentally, the same comedy writer thinks he lost a fair few followers on Twitter a few weeks ago, for daring to criticise footballers when he was a bit tipsy on Twitter. Again, the idea of someone almost committing "blasphemy" for this new opiate of the people begins to reek of a form of religious brainwashing. I've just gone on as to why I hate the thing, so why do I need to learn to talk it? Because, implicit within the above few paragraphs is that it annoyingly affects my career prospects. I once was able to mention a few things about a Celtic match to some of my colleagues in my last office. Apparently, that made waves around the partitioned desks and my name was mentioned in a boardroom meeting of managers. Outrageous.
My boring psychological theory behind all this, is that it's a comfort blanket from childhood, given by the parents. The first football match that the Dad took his son to, is an introduction to the big world out there and with parental protection. Similar to other toddler milestones, like parents taking their children to their first ever movie at the cinema (such as "Star Wars"), or the first family outings to Sunday church service for religious teachings. Which is why I'm consciously aware that bosses, managers and even government push the "football agenda" - it's another control method, a way of keeping the populous meek and subservient. Oooh, watch out, scary terrorists - quick, retreat to the miasmic refuge of toddlerhood, so the parents of government can look after you. But I kind of wish we could all wake up from this "arrested development". With three Tory parties to vote for (all smeared by the expenses scandal), we could really do with a proper mass protest. But with football being piped at us, I suspect we're only four matches away from revolution. Till then, we're paralysed into sucking a thumb anxiously from infancy. Except, by thinking that all of this is a government conspiracy, I've unwittingly revealed my own childhood comfort blanket; my Dad reading long tracts from New Statesman magazine to me as a kid. I wish I'd been brought up another way, so I could wish away real life by cheering a ball being kicked into a net. No wonder there's something wrong with me.
End-note: If you liked "The IT Crowd" clip, go out and buy the boxed set. It won a BAFTA the other week and it got better and better, series by series. Oh and one final clip for positivity, this is a link to the joyful "Adam and Joe Show" song on football. Enjoy.
I know it's an ancient British tradition that men and women, up and down the land, shout obscenities and advice at athletes that are at the very pinnacle of physical health and mental prowess, while we drink beer and balance snacks of cholesterol on beer bellies. But, I mean, honestly... are Scotland the only nation that can be the bookies favourites to win and still muff it up?
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