One thing that struck me was the variation of commentators.  The actual commentators for the TV broadcast, not my friends’ comments.  Although my friends’ comments struck me for a different reason.  Usually forced to turn on the game because of the one or two soccer fans in the room, they begrudgingly turned their attention to the game to comment half way through:

“Which is worse: a red card or a yellow card?”

“Which team is wearing blue?”

“I think Canada is the blue team.”

But what I didn’t realize before this World Cup was that each country has its own style of commentary for TV or radio broadcasts.  I had watched my first World Cup in Spain in 2006 (okay, it’s obvious that I was asking one of the aforementioned questions), and I assumed the experience was the same everywhere.  The commentators hardly paused for breath as they shouted out every twist and turn of the game.  The atmosphere matched the one at the bar, where crazed fans in German-flag colored mohawks jumped onto tables to cheer a good pass.

But now that I’ve seen the game in Sweden, I’ve been exposed to the Swedish style of commenting.  And I’ve even heard other languages thanks to the radio, and a host of international soccer fans.  I wondered what it would be like to hear all of the commentators together, telling one big story about the game.  I think it tells a little something about the different cultures.  Here’s how I think it would go:

England: “The score is Spain nil- Paraguay nil.”  “Pique passes to Puyol.  This team appears to be all mouth and no trousers!”

Sweden: Silence.

Spain: “THE PASS IS GOOOOOOOD!  PIQUE GOES FOR CARDOZO, OH NO!!!  IT’S A PENALTY!  WHERE IS THE REFEREE?”

Sweden: Silence.

Russia: “An interesting story about this player… he once got into a fight with a bear in the Andes, and only lost one sock.”

England: “Looks like Cardozo has gone arse over kettle.”

Sweden: “Penalty Paraguay.”

Spain: “NOOOOOOOOOO GOAAAAAL!”  “WAIT!  PENALTY SPAIN!  WHERE IS THE REFEREE?  WHERE IS THE REFEREE??”

Russia: “In the early days of football, before referees, team captains would consult with each other to resolve disputes.”

England: “This many penalties in this short of time is as rare as hen’s teeth.”

Sweden: “Penalty Spain.”  “Didn’t count.”  “Penalty Spain.”  “No goal.”  “How dramatic.”  “Indeed.  Very dramatic.”

Spain: “NOOOOOOOOOOO GOAL!!  THIS IS TERRIBLE!  OH HOW TERRIBLE!  THE FIRST GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL WAS GOOD AND NOW THIS!  THIS CRAZY REFEREE!”

And so on.  Thanks to the strangely calming white noise of the vuvuzelas, and the very sporadic comments from the Swedish commentators, I’ve seen a baby fall asleep on more than one occasion in Sweden.  Now you’ll have to excuse me.  I’m off to do some research about Canada’s big game tonight.

I dutifully followed thee, LOST, through the mind-boggling second season where we didn’t know if Ben was really a lost character of “The Wizard of Oz”… and through the terrible start of the third season, where the writers got cocky and thought they could out-crazy us and kept our favorite characters in cages… it all turned around when the eye-patched Russian guy brought some intrigue back into the game. Did he really need an eye patch to be evil? I mean, he was Russian. I was there, LOST, when Jack told character after character that he wouldn’t follow them ANYWHERE!, when Kate was told she couldn’t follow anyone ANYWHERE! and when Lapidus said… well, anything, and it was hilarious.

Some people might try to tell you that they didn’t like the ending, that it left questions about all of the weird stuff you tried to make us think was there “for a reason”. But not me. I know there are going to be questions long after anything is over- I mean, what was the fate of J.R. in Dallas? How long did it take after staying in prison at the end of Seinfeld for Kramer to start opening the metal doors and sliding into the jail cells? I have a feeling there won’t be any LOST reunion show. If there will, it will be run by Lapidus, and it will be called, “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”

I think the ending was perfect. To me, it didn’t matter what the island “meant”, or what everyone’s purpose was for. It didn’t matter what the Black Smoke’s name was. (Come on, what name could have possible been worth that much suspense? Of course they were never going to tell us.)

Was the alternative reality heaven? Doesn’t really matter. What was interesting to me was that we were offered a new idea of what death meant. For thousands of years now, humans have been left questioning over and over what was beyond the grave. As a kid, I used to think when we flew into the clouds we would see God.

I think LOST’s portrayal of “heaven” was very compelling. Some characters had died long before, in a freak grenade-underwater-hatch-station accident, and others had presumably did years after, like little Aaron, who probably turned out to be a business tycoon who created a hotel chain with a paradise island theme.

But as Jack’s father said, the people on the island were all significant to each other, since they spent some of the most important time in their lives together on the island. (Although who knows, he was probably drunk.) Without knowing it, they had arranged to meet back in heaven at this church, to see each other once again. I thought it was an original idea, and quite a touching one. What if the ones we’ve lost are waiting in that special non-country specific non-denominational church, waiting for us?

I just finished reading the book, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven”, almost immediately after watching the LOST finale. The idea in the book is that when you die, you travel through five realities and meet five people, who unbeknownst to you, affected your life in some significant way. Heaven’s purpose is to make sense of your life.

The LOST finale might not have helped us make sense of the six previous seasons, but maybe the characters have been making sense of their lives all along. After all, didn’t Jack need to meet Claire to understand his father? Didn’t Desmond need to meet Faraday to understand what the heck was going on with time travel? I think the finale doesn’t need to stand alone- the whole series has been one big journey leading up to the final moment where we watch Jack’s father walk through those doors.

And as I search for another intriguing, humorous, foreign-language filled, weird, touching, exciting show to fill my Tuesday nights, I will be smiling about the ones I care about, and hoping we’ll meet one day in a place we arranged without even knowing it. And wondering if maybe I got a little bit too deep into LOST… Now, if only I can just find… Walt! Walt! Have you seen my boy?

I am turning in my thesis next week, and I, like my red-eyed colleagues, sit in the library, words swimming in front of me, totally unsure about what the next sentence should say. Why does the word “of” look so weird? We’ve been through it all: changing minds about our topics, checking books out of the library because they look small enough to read in less than 24 hours, seeing what that girl on Facebook from high school who won the hot dog eating contest on a technicality wore last Halloween… I see my colleagues through the thick glass of the computer lab, and I wave feebly- it’s almost time.

Next week, as we sit down with our supervisors one last time, and we decide to leave in the paragraph about Britney Spears, because there isn’t time to fix it, we will glance through the 100 pages one last time before committing to a PDF version. Which of course will have a spelling mistake in the title. How important is it to spell your last name right?

I know the feeling I’ll have as I hit “send”. Relief, of course, but also exhaustion. It will take a while to get back to normal- to remember what that bright thing in the sky is. But I won’t be able to shake the feeling that I did it.

A year ago, my friend gave birth. We were there with her for nine months, through the sickness and the fear, through the calm that surrounded her in the last months, and then in the terror that was the Birth Day. I will spare you the details, but it’s no walk in the park. Not even a walk that ends in stumbling upon a beehive or in crashing a golf cart into a bear. But she told us the next day, as she feebly stepped forward, her husband holding the sleeping infant, that as soon as they put the baby on her chest, she knew that it was going to be okay. We looked at the tiny curled fingers, and the soft, sleeping face, and we knew she was right.

The road might be long and filled with terror, but the moment you get there, you know it was the right thing to do all along.

The first time I couchsurfed, I was traveling to Northern Ireland for a conference with two of my work friends, and I decided to give it a shot.  Since my male colleague was traveling with me, it seemed safe to choose a man’s house to stay at.  When the time came to travel, my colleague went and got his passport stolen, and forced me to venture alone on this Couchsurfing expedition.  Thanks, Dave.  I wasn’t nervous, because I come from Naiveville, Vermont, where most houses don’t even have locks, but my female colleagues who were traveling with me kept asking questions like, “How big is your can of Mace?” and “Do you know how to break someone’s nose with a banana peel?”  I began to feel uneasy, and my imagination ran wild with scenarios, most of them ending up with situations much worse than fireplaces.  But when I met my host, I immediately felt safe, and I enjoyed his company.  He was so gracious, he even let me sleep on the bed while he took to the floor with only a blanket.  We talked until the wee hours of the night, which I just had to mention, because I was in Northern Ireland, and that grants me the use of the phrase “wee”.

Since then, I’ve been hosted in many countries, and every time, I’ve been amazed at the kindness of strangers.  The strangers on Couchsurfing don’t remain strangers for long: I am immediately catapulted into their lives, and learn personal details, like how reading Harry Potter in the third month of pregnancy can leave one sleepless, and less personal details, like how one can have an unhealthy addiction to KISS coverbands.  When I first moved to Sweden, I stayed with a very sweet Swede who spoke with a New Zealand accent, and she took me all around town apartment hunting (to get me out of her house?).  She made me pancakes from scratch, and showed me how to grow tomatoes.

Last night I hosted my first Couchsurfers, and I was eager to show them the kindness my former hosts have shown me.  They were from my part of the world, so we had a lot in common, and I made sure to make them feel safe and at home.  So I gave them finger paints and let them go wild.  Not really…I made them stay in the lines.  I realized that what we all want is to have a comfortable place and a smiling face to come home to, especially if it rhymes.  The moment of recognition, when you realize that you rang the right doorbell, when you see that your host is not hiding a Joker playing card and an oversized knife– that’s when traveling becomes more than seeing monuments and huddling on multi-language boat tours, and becomes a step closer to knowing someone who knows a little bit too much about snakes, or who sculpts famous rockstars out of fruit.

And so we called.  The police, who don’t have much to do around here, arrived quickly after, and came to our door.  They were a man and a woman, who wore very serious expressions, and had night sticks and thick jackets on.  We pointed them upstairs, and we shuddered, looking at the muscles on the beefy policeman, who appeared to be a man to steer clear of.

We went back inside our apartment and started to have dinner, but we couldn’t eat.  The shouting above us had stopped, but we couldn’t tell when the police had entered the apartment.  We knew of another couple in the building next to us who had called the cops when they heard shouting, and when the police came back to their door, they found out that indeed, a man had been beating up his wife.  We were sitting at the dinner table, unable to eat, afraid of what we would hear, when we heard the clomping of police boots.

When I opened the door, the policewoman looked almost relieved.  “There was a football game,” she said.  It turns out that our upstairs neighbor had been watching the game alone, and had gotten so excited that he was running around the house shouting at various moments during the game.  She said she had asked him if there had been screaming, and he replied, “Yes, I did scream.”  With the case closed, the policeman smiled, looking the opposite of intimidating now, and I apologized for bothering them.  “Oh no!” she exclaimed, “You SHOULD call!  Just in case!”

They left, and we breathed a sigh of relief.  We pictured the scene of the two scary policemen showing up at our neighbor’s door and forcefully stating, “We got a call that there was a woman screaming in here?”  Not only is your football celebration too exaggerated, but it’s womanly too.  We wondered if the next time he heard me singing he would call the cops and report that chickens were being slaughtered in the apartment below him.  I heard a story from a friend who called the police for domestic violence, and it turned out the couple was just… making love.  Passionately.  I heard another friend tell me that she had called the police when she saw a fire in the furniture store across the street.  It turned out that there was a fire in a firepit on HER side of the street, and it was merely reflected in the window of the furniture store.  It happens, I guess.  I never, however, will regret calling.  Just in case.

But Paris is more than the Louvre, and I wandered around outside, next to the Seine river, and past the beautiful Notre Dame.  I saw the tiny cafes, where all of the customers turn their chairs toward the street, like they’re watching a show, soaking in the sun and lazily sipping wine in the middle of the afternoon.  Right, French people, it’s totally good for you… we believe you.

I knew it wouldn’t be long until adventure found me- it always does.  I turned the corner and stumbled upon the tell-tale signs of a fashion shoot in the process.  Against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, three of the skinniest women I had ever seen stood in brightly colored dresses, as artsy people with scissors and cameras and champagne hurried around.  I spotted the designer at once, unmistakable in his velvet jacket and puffy white shirt, shouting, “Hello!  What is taking so long?”  I stopped with the small crowd to watch as they set up the shot, and it was so interesting for some reason, to watch people fuss over one strand of hair, or pin a size negative six dress on a stick woman.

And while I stood and watched, one of the producers came over to talk to us.  And then, in a moment reserved for romantic comedies or Lifetime made-for-TV movies, she asked us if we’d like to be in it.  They needed some people for the background (read: normal people dressed in sweatshirts and looking like they’ve been traveling for days to make the models look like princesses).  So I of course agreed, had to sign a release, and got to stand behind the models, still watching like five minutes before, but now… as a Co-Model!

And if that wasn’t an adventure enough, on my way back, I was asked for some food by a man.  Normal, right?  Except that the man who asked me happened to be dressed like a gorilla, and the food that I gave him happened to have been a banana.  Weird.  As I watched the gorilla peel and eat his banana with his big, hairy gorilla hands, I thought to myself that maybe it was time to sign with a manager.  If I can’t get work as a French model, maybe I can find work in the circus.

As it is currently constructed the NCAA Tournament is almost perfect.  From 1985 through 2000 it was as good as it gets, with 64 teams competing for the championship.  In 2001 they stupidly added ONE team and began the “play-in game” between the teams ranked 64th and 65th to see who gets to be blown out by the number one seed.  That idea made it possible for 34 at-large bids (instead of 33) along with the teams that qualified automatically.  Really?  That one extra team was necessary?  Why ruin the symmetry of the perfectly divisible 64 teams so that one more mediocre team can sneak in?

While I’ve been hoping the NCAA would do away with that 65th team it seems they are heading in the opposite direction.  The rumor is that the tournament will most likely expand to 96 teams, starting next year.  What exactly this means as far as selecting teams is yet to be seen.  My hope, first of all, is that this doesn’t happen.  In this year’s tournament there was actually a struggle to find enough good teams to fill out the bracket.  Two teams, Texas and Wake Forrest, had no business qualifying with the way they finished the year and yet they were matched up against each other as 8 and 9 seeds.  So not only did a struggling basketball team make the tournament, one of them actually had to advance.  Regardless, if this plan does get put in place my hope is that the THIRTY-ONE extra teams to be selected are taken more from quality smaller conferences and not just the 8th, 9th, and 10th place teams in the major conferences, who weren’t able to finish .500 in league play.

Adding these new teams means a few obstacles to overcome.  First, there are 31 more games added to the slate.  While this means 31 more games worth of advertising money, it also unfortunately means 31 more games for CBS to screw up.  This year CBS once again proved their incompetence in broadcasting the games, particularly if two happened to be finishing at the same time, so I’m excited to see how they’re able to add to the frustration.

Second, the schedule is going to be thrown off completely.  Currently the tournament fits nicely into three weekends, with games from Thursday – Sunday each week.  The new teams create a bit of a dilemma.  When will the extra games be played?  The new format will give the top 32 teams a bye in the first round, leaving 64 teams (32 games) to be played in the “play-in” round.  Currently, the one play in game is on Tuesday, two days after Selection Sunday and two days before the opening Thursday.  It will be tough to squeeze the games into that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday window and still give coaches a chance to game plan and avoid the disadvantage of a team playing on back to back days.  The alternative is extending the tournament into another week, which would ruin one of the best things about the tournament, those opening two rounds played on the first Thursday – Sunday.

Third, and finally, this means that the overall quality of the product will decrease.  With the new format the top 32 teams will not be playing any more games than they are now.  The next 64 best teams will play the extra games, meaning that fans will be shown many more Texas vs Wake Forrests while adding no more games for the elite players and teams.  And what will the effect be for the teams that receive a bye?  The opportunity to rest and scout their opponents will most likely lead to less upsets, another one of the best things about the tournament.

I’ve talked to quite a few people about the tournament expansion and, not surprisingly, no one I’ve met is in favor of it.  So thank you NCAA, for yet again finding a way to make more money by weakening your product and pissing off your fans.

Update: About an hour after this article was published, news broke that the NCAA tournament is likely going to expand – but only by 3 teams for a total of 68, instead of the expected expansion to 96.  This will add 3 more “play-in” games and while I don’t like the expansion, this is better than moving to 96 teams.  The other big news is that CBS and Turner Broadcasting have teamed up and won the rights to broadcast the tournament for the next 14 years and with the Turner stations on board, every game will now air live.  Great news on that end.

I was supposed to leave Portugal 5 days ago, and the day before my departure, learned that there was a big no-fly zone over Europe that had a huge X over Sweden. My parents went on their merry way, and I was stuck in No-Man’s-Land, a.k.a. Paradise. But the secret is that it’s not really paradise when you’re just waiting. And I do mean waiting. I waited over six hours in line at the airport for a new ticket, and then I waited four hours again today to get yet another ticket. People were surprisingly civil. Kids ran their energy out and then passed out on the luggage carts. Actually, so did old people. There was one Lifetime TV drama moment, when one man had his wife stand in for him for hours, and the riotous crowd wouldn’t let him back in. Picture a British accent, crying out: “We’ve AWLL been here since 7, AWLL of us!”

And so I’ve been spending every day out in the sunshine, walking up steep, unpredictably beautiful streets so narrow that a golf cart would get stuck, with colorful laundry flapping in the lazy breeze over my head. I stumbled upon a concert in front of a bright white church, with neighborhood children playing bagpipes and revolutionary war drums. (Don’t ask…)

But the truth is, it was incredibly lonely. Sure, I loved the sea breeze, and the red roofs, and the beautiful blue tiled buildings… but something was missing. I waited every day for news that I would be able to return to Sweden. And no news came. And then I realized that what we’re all searching for is human contact: when I went into a shop, I found a tiny curly-haired three-year-old hanging out in her parents’ store, and I stayed for half an hour, a huge smile on my face, playing a game with the belts. (Not alone, she was playing with the belts too… otherwise that would have been weird…) When I walked out of the store, she waved a three-year-old hand at me, and I felt so much lighter. Also because I forgot my heavy coat there. Just kidding.

When I made friends with the people in the line around me, the time flew by, and I didn’t remember that I had been standing in the same spot for hours. I was weary to start up conversations, because, you know, once you start, you can’t really stop… you’re kind of stuck in the same three feet of floor. But once I did, I didn’t regret it. We were in it together, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore. Now if you’ll excuse me, Eyjafjallajokull is showing signs of decreased lava flow…

“A free demo is a luxury we have in the game industry that we don’t have in other industries such as film. Because we’ve had this free luxury for so long, now there are plans to change this people are complaining about it. The reality is that we might not see any free game demos in the future.”

I completely understand that I wouldn’t have to buy these “rip-off premium demos”. However, it would be sad for someone like myself who relies on demos to make a decision on getting games I am not 100% certain about buying. In the past I’ve purchased a number of games that I otherwise would never have considered playing based on a free demo I was offered.

Something I don’t really understand is why it’s such a budget burden. Of course I’ve never made a video game myself, but I don’t see what’s so difficult about offering the first level of your game and when the player beats the level, switch in a “Coming Soon” graphic for level 2. Okay, so that’s an over simplification. But honestly, where’s the great burden?

Also, choosing the film industry as a place that doesn’t have free demos (as Ron Burgendy would say) was probably a bad choice. Films are not interactive, so the demos are the trailers – and I’ve seen plenty of film trailers for free. The completion of a trailer is considered a part of a film’s marketing budget. So is it that the other areas of making games are becoming so overgrown and expensive that budgeting in a demo as part of marketing is becoming unsustainable? Though I admittedly have no expertise on this topic, is it possible that this is just poor planning on the gaming industries part?

Yerli’s argument continues to flounder as he tries to defend the move as anti money grubbing.

“I think EA’s strategy is interesting, overall. The thing is, every time we see a publisher doing something to improve the industry, making things more commercially viable and actually increasing the market, people instantly think this is only some money-hungry ploy.

(I suppose in Yerli’s defense he did use “only” here – he never completely disregards that this is at least partly a money-hungry ploy)

“Yes it is quite unpopular, but this is a messaging issue. The problem with any new strategy like this is it initially may appear as a blood-hungry, money-grabbing strategy. But I think there is a genuine interest here to give gamers something more than a small demo released for free.

“Really, what this is, is an attempt to salvage a problem. The industry is still losing a lot of money to piracy as the market becomes more online-based. So it’s encouraging to see strategies outlined to combat this.”

“I think the whole issue needs to be explained in a better way, because there is good thinking behind EA’s plan. I understand why people are thinking that all EA wants to do is maximise profits out of the audience, but really, what it’s really trying to do is get investment back but while being as fair to the gamer as much as it can. Ultimately, it will be a better deal for the gamer.

I’m a little confused. Is he saying that we just don’t understand what we’ll be getting with this “bamboozlement” “premium demo” plan and that’s why our negative reactions are unfounded, or that EA’s marketing people need to sell it to us differently? I’m sorry, no matter how you tell me to put the lotion on, when you throw me in 10 foot hole with the intention of making a dress out of my skin, I’m going to cry foul – even if I get the hose again.

The only point I can agree with Yerli on is that, “given the time pressures in making a demo – in fact given the time pressure of making a quality demo – I think it all becomes really difficult to work with, and I think we’ll see less and less of them in the future.” Okay, I can completely understand that. Just don’t expect me to buy your stupid $10 demo, now knowing that you spent precious “pressured time” making it, instead of making your full game better.

Perhaps this truly is a case of misunderstanding, and there is no greater way of maintaining a relationship than with proper communication. You know what, I want to understand this idea better. I’ll think about buying your demo – just let me just test it out for a few minutes so I can decide whether or not I want to spend money on it. That sounds like a fair deal, doesn’t it?