Frustration yields to ecstasy

What is the point of watching sports? For 90 minutes, I sat alone on my couch with the TV on in front of me, grinding my teeth and cursing at some men in shorts kicking a ball around on another continent. Utterly ridiculous. For 90 minutes, the U.S. SOCCER team managed to hit the post, miss from 3 yards out, miss empty nets, have goals disallowed, get bloody noses, scramble around on defense, and fail to do what our tax dollars pay them for. Our entire jaunt in this year's world competition would be remembered (largely forgotten actually) for three heartbreaking TIE GAMES. For all the soccer haters in the country, "I told you so" was already forming on their lips. With England comfortably ahead in their game against mighty Slovenia, I was ready to switch the TV off and find a syphilitic dominatrix on Craigslist to put on a FIFA referee jersey and violate me with a linesman's flag. 90 minutes struck, and the dude with the electronic board (if you're so opposed to technology, FIFA, why not have the fourth official just do a honeybee dance to signal the amount of stoppage time?) showed 4 minutes of extra time. Algeria was booting the ball away like a bunch of Negative Nancy's, and Clint Dempsey was beginning to look a bit like Rocky. It was a horrendous show.
A minute later, I was jumping up and down in my empty living room shouting at the top of my lungs. On a fast break, Dempsey had sent another shot into the arms of the admirably able Algerian keeper, only this time he failed to hold onto it. And this time, we didn't fail on the rebound. [SPOILER ALERT!!!!!] Donovan smashed it into the net and everybody knew it was over.

There aren't many moments that I've experienced U.S. nationalistic pride, but this was definitely one of them. As I left the house, I expected to find the streets transformed into a carnival atmosphere, with mayhem in the streets and car horns blaring out their vuvuzelas. Of course, the scene didn't resemble this in the slightest, but it didn't matter. The referees tried to fuck us; the English tried to fuck us; non-caring America-at-large tried to fuck us. But they failed miserably. U.S.A. topped the group and will get to take the field at least once more during their time in South Africa. If we were going to redesign the logo for the U.S. men's national team, I would just want a picture of a ball, some stars, some stripes, and in big neon print:

FUCK YEAH!