The Sexism in Sports Journalism Bingo Card!

Share it wherever you want... it sure is relevant right now.

-Rob

Source: Roboseyo!

(UPDATED) Sexism Covering Female Athletes: Help Me Make the Bingo Card!

Edit (August 9) well... here is some nice vindication. As well as some leads for my bingo card! Ironic that it's published by The Korea Times (see below).



Literally one after the other on my Facebook feed this morning, were these two articles:


1. Government Website Under Fire For Sexist Content

Screenshot taken August 8

Yes. Those clueless, ignorant, sexist, bad government website people sure don't know what sexism is! The article describes an internet backlash against a page on a government health portal, about "healthy breasts" which includes a detailed description of the shape and proportions perfect breasts should have. With helpful drawings! (Of COURSE KT included the drawings.)

And then... just to make sure we know The Korea Times doesn't actually understand what the problem was... this article published by them came right after:

"Boyfriend a tall order for 192cm South Korean volleyball star"

The write-up includes digging all the way back to 2010 to find a comment from the player about the height of men she'd consider dating. A comment I'm 100% sure she made in response to a sexist question from a journalist who cared more about her relationship status than her volleyball game or ambitions.

screenshots taken August 8

The Olympics^TM are on. The quadrennial orgy of nationalism, people pretending to care about sports they don't care about for the sake of cheering for their country, increasing corporatization and censorious brand-protection. For once, female athletes (whose medals add to countries' medal counts just as much as men's! Score!) will be given as much attention as men's sports... leading to people who have no idea how to write about women asking dumb, sexist questions and making dumb, sexist comments and focus on their bodies, family situations and relationship statuses instead of the fact they're badass athletes who made it to the f***ing Olympics^TM.

Imagine if men got asked these same patronizing, brain-fart questions: (explanation)



So... tell us how Kim Yeon-koung trained. Tell us what she brings to the team. Tell us how she inspires little girls to excel in sports. Tell us the strategic benefits having a very tall player gives the women's volleyball team. At least friggin mention that she's an otherworldly talent who won the MVP of the 2012 London Women's Volleyball tournament. But this shit, which was the closing line of the article: "The average height of South Korean men is 174.9 centimeters. Regrettably, it would be better for her to look for a boyfriend somewhere outside the country." Just fuck on off out of here with that.

Keep trying, Korea Times.


Readers!

You know the idea of the bingo card: here's the "Men's Rights Bingo Card" -- see if you can fill it out while discussing gender on the internet! Or, for a challenge, see if you can fill it out in less than an hour while discussing gender on the internet.

Image warning: Misogyny ahead.

Let's fill out the "Covering Female Sports Bingo Card" which I managed not to find online after a few google searches... so hey. Let's make one! Suggestions in the comments: we've got 5x5 to fill out.


UPDATE: Final Draft

SuperBowl: I'm Glad the USA doesn't Love Soccer

So the Superbowl happened yesterday, with all the fanfare, hype, and overpriced advertising space. And Madonna something something and OMIGOSH A MIDDLE FINGER and something something of ALL TIME EVER! SERIOUSLY! Thirty seconds after the game has ended is perspective enough to make all-time statements, don't you know. And I'm glad. Glad it's over... but glad mostly that the good old USA gives such a great deal of damn about The Superbowl, and thereby leaves the FIFA World Cup for the rest of the world to enjoy. And I hope it stays that way! To all my American readers, real or imagined: enjoy your American football. And back up off REAL football (what you call Soccer). Please leave it to the rest of the world, and if you ever feel like taking up pro soccer as a new sports thing, kindly re-watch Michael Jackson's 1993 Superbowl halftime show, and forget whatever you were just thinking.

American Football is a pretty good game, all-told. It's an interesting exercise in cooperation of different role-players, a fantastic combination of power, brute strength, and finesse, and only hockey, and perhaps rugby, excels it in its ability to combine a sustained exhibition of human athletic potential with the real danger of deadly violence. Its regimented player roles and its tradition of marching band music echoes American military culture, its glamor positions (quarterback, running back) allow for fantasies of glory and spectacle, while its hierarchical nature reminds America's underclass that somebody's gotta block for the quarterback, and somebody's gotta polish fingernails for minimum wage in order for America's billionaires to become as rich as they have. It's the quintessential American sport.

But here's what Football isn't: egalitarian. And I'm not just talking about the way the Quarterbacks and Running Backs get all the glory, I'm talking about the way you NEED to be middle-class or better to become good at it. You know why? 

'cause somebody's gotta pay for all those pads, before you even get started. And replace them every time you grow.

The only worse sport is ice hockey, where you need to buy all those pads, PLUS skates, PLUS rent ice time at a rink somewhere (unless you live in Minnesota or Saskatchewan, and lakes still actually freeze over where you are).

You can play flag football, two hand touch, or street hockey, yes, but if you want to go anywhere at all in an organized way, somebody's going to have to bite down and swallow that equipment outlay. Because of this American Football will always shut out people below a certain income threshold. Because of this (and climate), Ice Hockey also will never be popular outside of wealthy, northern hemisphere countries.

USA even already has a more egalitarian major sport: basketball, which only requires a ball, and maybe a hoop (which is pretty cheap, and can be found in every playground) and the NBA is the most Youtube-friendly, starry-eyed-dreams-of-big-paychecks sport in the USA, perhaps the world...

Youtube Friendly.

So stay away from soccer, would you, America?

American Kids: dream of this:

not this.

Thanks.

The rest of the world deserves soccer to be theirs. Deserves to have the USA and its hyper-saturated sports media stay out of it. To enjoy it without you. To shake their heads when you talk about "real football" as if the oval ball version is it. To nod patiently when you talk about how you're trying to "get" soccer.

source

Why does the world deserve soccer to be theirs, to enjoy it without inviting the USA to the party? 

The first reason: The brilliance of soccer/REAL football [soccer from now on; we Canadians call it that, too], and the reason it will always be the world's most popular sport: all you need to play soccer is four objects to be your goalposts, and one thing that's generally round, and small and light enough to move it around with your feet. And that's it. A ball of duct tape or tied together rags will do if you can't afford a FIFA regulation football. And with those things, the poorest kid in the slum of the poorest country can dream of being a world football star. Because ANYBODY can get started in soccer with a minimal outlay, countries that are nowhere near the OECD and the "first world" can be legitimate threats to do some damage in international soccer competitions in a way that they NEVER will in American football or hockey. In turn, these poor kids who made good set their home countries aflame with passion for the sport, and their team, and inspire more kids to bat around a ball in a nearby playground. 

source

Why horn in on that, you big rich meanies?

The second reason: I just don't think a country that has passionate followings for every college sport, NFL, NBA, MLB, Nascar, and NHL, deserves to take a run at soccer as well. Every few years, the sports websites write a few "Here comes soccer" articles, and US Women's soccer is a serious contender in every international tournament, but if the US wins the FIFA World Cup, with so much else on the sports calendar, the reaction of many Americans' will be "Sweet! Is Nascar on?" If South Korea won the FIFA world cup, you'd hear about it from anyone who witnessed it, for twenty, maybe forty years after. Ask a Brit the last year that England won the World Cup of Soccer. Most of them will know. Ask any over 45 what they think about the England/Argentina game in '86, and learn some new curse words. Ask a Korean where they were for the Korea-Italy game in 2002. Ask people from France where they were in 1998, or a Dutchman old enough to remember the 70s what it's like to have lost the final three times now.

Sorry to remind you of this, my English readers.

Because yeah, there are countries where other sports mean more to the people than soccer means to them -- India and Pakistan have cricket, New Zealand and Australia, and probably South Africa, have  rugby (I haven't asked any Indians, Pakistani, Kiwis, Aussies or South Africans, but it seems that way from here - please correct me if I'm wrong, and there's another sport you care about more - or if soccer's it there, too), Japan and Cuba and a bunch of other Central American countries probably care more about baseball, sure... but if you look at the number of soccer-mad nations, I think it's fair to say that in the aggregate, soccer means more, to more nations, than any other sport in the world.

And that's why I'm glad it's not also the top sport in the USA.

We've seen that if you throw enough money into sports programs, it's possible to become dominant: 

If we compare China's medal totals in the olympics: once China decided to go for a little national prestige by investing in its Olympic team, it went from "Did not participate" to first overall in the 2008 summer games. 

Meanwhile, once the Russian government had other things to care about than engaging in pissing contests with the USA, they went from first overall in Lillehammer (last time in a long string of first or second overall finishes, summer AND winter games) to 11th in Vancouver.

If USA became soccer mad, and invested as much in promoting and developing soccer talent as it does in developing talent in other areas, between its huge population base (talent pool) and the amount it invests in sports, the USA would get itself somewhere in the top ten, maybe top five, year after year.

But I'm glad it doesn't. I'm glad top US athletes try to become wide receivers, quarterbacks, running backs, shooting guards and power forwards, and to a lesser degree, pitchers outfielders and shortstops, rather than having all America's world-class athletes wreaking havoc in the world's midfields, backfields and goal lines. 

What would it take for Soccer to take over the North American sports horizon? 

Well, this is why I think we can rest safe: for the USA sports media to be electrified by soccer, they'd have to see the world's best players, playing awesome games, live on prime-time US TV, but thanks to the mostly European time zones of games involving the world's most competitive teams, and most thrilling players, that's just not going to happen for now. As it is, US soccer fans have to stay up late, or wake up early, or miss work, to catch the world's best soccer: these are things a dedicated fan happily does, but a marginal fan won't. This means there's a pretty low chance that world-class soccer will start catching channel-flippers at times when they're ready and primed to have a cool sports experience. This is why soccer is popular in North America right up to the college level, and then drops off, as North American soccer stars funnel towards the north american sports that have more lucrative professional leagues... or get recruited overseas, where they have a harder time inspiring other kids from their hometown to get into soccer: momentum fails to build.

source - this is what happens to North American soccer stars:

If the world's best soccer players started coming to the USA, and playing for US teams, it might catch on: superstar power works in the North American sports market. Look how Wayne Gretzky's move to LA changed things for the popularity of the NHL in the '90s. But right now, the calibre of the US teams, and the kind of economics they deal with, make signing a Messi or Ronaldo, in his prime, to a US Soccer club, an fiscal impossibility. It didn't work with Pele in the 70s, a washed-up David Beckham hasn't, and won't, do it, and if a player like Messi DID take a huge paycheck to sign with a US team, he'd be excoriated even more than Alex Rodruigez was when he took the money and signed for the non-contending Texas Rangers.

Secondly: too many 0-0 or 1-1 draws. The two most popular sports in the USA right now are sports where scores like 21-32, or 93-101 are considered completely normal games. Even the NHL has changed its rules to try and increase scoring, and give fans an outcome for every game, and more 4-3 games instead of 2-1 games, even if it's a shootout win or loss. The rest of the world would cry foul to the high heavens if FIFA suggested changing soccer's rules in order to win over American philistines who don't see the beauty in a 0-0 draw, who don't appreciate a 1-0 win with no shots on goal allowed as a thrilling and utter rout.

Thirdly: the flopping. And honestly, this is why soccer will probably never beat ice hockey on my list of "Sports I enjoy watching."

 Look at NFL football and NHL Hockey. North American sports fans, for the most part, respect players who take a solid hip check and keep moving, who shake off a tackle, who play hurt, and who don't pull dramatic waterworks in order to try and get a referee's whistle.

As long as the above funny commercial hits anywhere close to the mark, I'd say the brutal, glorious chaos of rugby has a better chance of becoming a major US sport than soccer. (And for that matter... if there were a battle royale between ten players of each team sport, I'd put my money on Team Rugby to come out on top, after a challenge from a group of hockey players who looked great at first, but got winded after they realized there were no line changes.)

However... the television broadcast rights for World Cup finals keeps spiraling, as the potential audiences reach heady highs -- the next World Cup Finals might reach 40 billion viewers or more (that's by some people watching more than one game), and advertising revenues for the FIFA world cup will likely surpass the ten billion dollars mark in the not-too-far-future. With all that money on the table, and many of the world's richest advertisers and the world's most lucrative sports market still being American based, my guard remains up, despite all the reasons I've listed not to worry... and it always will.

Random bit: Do You Know Shakira

So in my class, we read about Shakira, who (according to what I learned in the article) richly deserves to be a world star. (and frankly, who deserves to replace Britney Spears as the shorthand name-check to reference a top sexy female popstar - from now on, she's Korea's Shakira, not Korea's Britney Spears.) Among other things, she sang the theme song for the 2010 World Cup, the video of which probably set a record for star power that won't be topped until world cup 2014 (sorry, We Are The World. you're number 2 now). It's a pretty good video all around, too...



However... I couldn't help but laugh in my sleeve, because Shakira, doing a few African dances, made me think of "Aldous Snow" (the fictional rockstar character played by Russell Brand), and the video which ruined his fictional career somewhere between his show-stealing performance in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and the movie "Get Him To The Greek," in which he was the central character.

Well-meant, but completely racist and wrong-minded... how NOT to approach the Other, the best satire of dumb rockstars getting it wrong since "Christmas Is All Around," and maybe longer.


If I have time, I'll write up my thoughts on Sohn Hak Kyu's idea of including North Korea in hosting the Olympics this weekend. But as a good starting point, I agree almost completely with this great write-up from One Free Korea. Any group or organization that sidesteps or ignores North Korea's human rights situation has thrown any and all of its moral authority right out the window.

Later!

Canucks vs. Bruins. Game seven debriefing from a disappointed fan, and some Chris Pronger hate

I'm writing this while I still have the gross taste of tequila in my mouth: the barkeep at Yaletown gave free tequila shots to Vancouver fans after the team went down with barely a whimper, 4-0 in game 4.

I consider myself lucky: I moved out of the Southern Ontario region when I was 14. One or two more years there, and I would have formed a lifelong bond of loyalty with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and if you know anything about their history since NHL expansion, that's like putting your hand into the grab-bag of "hobbies for life" and pulling out "putting tabasco sauce in your eyes."

So compared to that, being a Vancouver Canucks fan ain't half bad.

And Vancouver fans are lucky, too: no matter how much heartbreak they go through as sports fans, they still live in Vancouver, for the most part, so they've got that going for them. They can go work out their frustration with a long walk along the seawall, or on a bike trail, or this winter at Whistler, or by taking a drive up and down Vancouver Island. Or chill out by smoking some of the best weed in the world... decriminalized. It's not a hard life. Better than being an Edmonton fan if the Oilers are sucking, when the only thing to do is ride your dogsled team down refinery lane. (That's an exaggeration.) And let's not even get started on places like Detroit or Cleveland.

I'm a Vancouver Canucks fan. Definitely. Been rooting for them, hard, all through these playoffs.

So here are a few thoughts:

1. Boston has had a friggin' INCREDIBLE sports decade: they've had a championship in all 4 major sports. If I were a 15 year-old Bostonian, somebody would have to pull me aside and warn me, "It's not always going to be like this."

2. Boston has lost five consecutive Stanley Cup finals heading into this one: running into a dynasty, a juggernaut or a transcendent player who would not be denied, each time: The Broad Street Bullies, the '70s Canadiens, the Gretzky and then Messier Oilers were their last opponents. The only Hockey team that's been snakebitten more are the Philadelphia Flyers.

3. It hurts me to say it, but Vancouver did not deserve to win this year's Stanley Cup. Not the way they played in Boston. Not with a goalie who got pulled twice in the finals. Not with the Sedins and Ryan Kesler all going silent during the finals. Not with all the biting, barking, and gamesmanship they partook in. Not after taking Boston's top goal-scorer out of the series. This series was a lesson in class and sports karma. Sorry to say it, Vancouver. Comport yourselves better next year, and try again.

4. Tim Thomas deserved to win. I don't know about the rest of the Bruins, but Tim Thomas did something incredible these playoffs, and my hat's off to him.  Did he have a single weak game?  He also gave Vancouver and Roberto Luongo respect in his postgame interview (though not in the pre-game shootaround). He is officially in my good books, and I'll root for him any time he's not up against Team Canada, the Canucks, or a Canadian team. The most memorable moment of these finals was probably when he bodychecked a Sedin in front of the net. He owned, pure and simple.

5. Even if Vancouver HAD won, Luongo and the Sedins still would have faced question marks, given the way they played in the finals. If your superheroes don't step up, what did you think was going to happen?

6. I can never feel TOO bad when an Original Six hockey team wins a championship. That's good for hockey's heritage in the long run.

My hockey rooting hierarchy goes like this:
A. Canucks

B. Other Canadian Teams (in this order: Calgary [until Iginla retires/moves; then they'll move back into a tie with...] Edmonton, Leafs/Canadiens [tie] Senators/Winnipugs)

C. Original Six Teams (Red Wings, Blackhawks, Bruins, Rangers, in that order)

D. Hard luck teams that have earned some success by going through a lot of heartbreak [Flyers, San Jose Sharks, with the caveat below]; also: great players who have never won the cup can fit in here. I rooted for Ray Bourque... though not every player who jumps to a contender gets this free pass: sometimes they're front-runners and I root against them [see also: James, LeBron].)

E. The U.S. Teams my favorite Canadian players are playing on [Crosby's Penguins, Sakic's Avalanche and Yzerman's Red Wings as examples].

F. U.S. teams playing an interesting, exciting style of hockey, and whose existence predates 1990s expansion, and who have cool, knowledgeable fans.

And the teams I actively root against:
G. Sun belt teams. Hockey doesn't belong in Nashville, Atlanta, or Florida. California deserves one team, not three. Maybe two, if the fans are loyal and knowledgeable. I was SO choked when a Florida team took the cup from Calgary, and then a Carolina team took it from Edmonton, and then a California team took it from Ottawa, three finals in a row.  I get conflicted when Canadian players dominate on sun-belt teams (Tampa Bay Lightning, Anaheim Ducks, and Carolina Hurricanes' cup wins were cases of this; currently, the San Jose Sharks stir up mixed feelings in me) - why can't those boys bring their talents (and the cup) back home?  At least Vancouver lost to an original six team, and not to the Phoenix Coyotes, who stole their team from Winnipeg, or the Orlando WhyDoWeHaveATeamHere's, or the Mexico City Chinchillas.

H. Teams that stole their franchises from Canada. Now that Sakic's not with the Avalanche, I wish them nothing but ill for stealing a team from Quebec City. Wayne Gretzky is diminished in my mind for taking part in Phoenix, a team stolen from Winnipeg. To a lesser degree, this also goes for the Dallas Stars, who stole their team from Minnesota, a state that deserves hockey. This one is mitigated by the fact Minnesota has a team again; I MIGHT forgive Phoenix if Winnipeg gets another team... but probably not Gretzky.

and most of all...

I. Whichever team Chris Pronger is playing for. I hate that guy, and I want to see his team lose. Every time I see him in a game (except when he's on Team Canada) I root for him to get injured in the most embarrassing way possible - to tear an ACL because his skate hits a groove in the ice, or to lose a fight to somebody half his size and break his cheekbone, or to break his hip while scoring an own goal - I friggin' hate that guy. Ever since he sold Edmonton out the offseason after they reached the finals, moved to California, and helped beat the Senators for the cup the next season, with his defection sending the Oilers (always a team I've liked) on a spiral from which they haven't yet recovered.

7. Canadian teams are now on a 5 finals losing streak: Since the Canadiens won in 1993, it's been Vancouver '94, Flames '04, Oilers '06, Senators '07 and Canucks '11. This is unfriggingbelievable. Next thing you know the Leafs are going to make the finals just so they can get their stomachs punched, too.

8. Vancouver's fans stayed in the arena to cheer for the champs after the game. Classy of them. Especially compared to Miami's fans, who were filing out of the arena with five minutes left in game six of the Heat/Mavericks final.

9. WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED TO THE RESILIENT TEAM THAT BEAT NASHVILLE AND SAN JOSE? Weren't, like, all the games in the second and third round come from behind wins? How did the team become so mentally brittle once they made the finals? Can't come from behind? Can't play a good road game? WTF, Vancouver?

10. I hope the Bruins have an escape route planned, that takes them directly from the arena to the airport. Sounds like things are getting a little rowdy in Vancouver.

It was a good season, and a great run. It's too bad things shook out how they did, and Vancouver embarrassed themselves in the finals, both on the ice, and in the press conferences. If I were Vancouver's coach, I'd demand all my players do a Mark Cuban next playoffs.  I'm sad Vancouver lost, but I'm glad they didn't win like this, and I hope they can pull something even better (and classier) together next season, before their window closes...

OK. I'm finished. I feel (a little) better now.

Great run. Here's to next season.

MinJeong Kwak (민정곽) at KCC Switzen All That Skate (Yuna was there too)

Last night I saw Kim Yuna at the KCC Switzen "All That Skate" Ice Show.  Wifeoseyo somehow scored tickets, and it as a seriously awesome show.

I'll put up more video when I have time to post it -- I didn't get everything, because readers, I love you all, but there are times when I'd rather focus on experiencing something, than focus on recording the experience in order to share it with you.  

However, a pleasant surprise, for me, were the performances of the two other Korean skaters at the show: Hae jin Kim  is a young up-and-comer who was quite good at using her movements to tell a story - she was cute as anything - and Minjeong Kwak 민정곽 has the chops, folks.  She, too, is very expressive, and really fired the crowd up with her charisma.

She was also at the center of two of the best moments of spontaneous fun: 1. after her show, her interaction with the cameraman on skates was the beginning of a kind of a running gag where skaters had different interactions with him - avoiding him or turning their back on him, or skating in the opposite direction, etc., each time drawing a laugh from the crowd.

2. After taking her bows, she headed for the offstage exit... at the wrong end of the ice.  Cracked herself, and the audience up.  So... she's cute.  In that "tell me about your cute niece" way.  Really cute.

The Evening Show Fun, plus: Korean Soccer

Yes, readers, I finished one week at The Evening Show.  Every night, I do a segment that's about 15 minutes long, and it's called "The Bigger Picture."

It's a call-in show where listeners call and share their opinions.  Last week went really well, but because it's a call-in show, the show's only as good as the callers.  So, readers, follow me on Twitter, and friend me on Facebook (yep, it's a verb now) and follow my tweets and status updates.

Question of the day today: how will Team Korea do now that Park Jisung has retired from international play?  He'll no longer be representing Korea in competitions like the Asia Cup, or World Cup qualifiers...

on the other hand, he's had a pretty good run, with he and Lee Young-pyo being the only remaining players who were part of the 2002 World Cup team that went to the semi-finals.

Are you a soccer fan?  Are you a Team Korea fan?  Who's going to take Park Jisung's place, are there young guns ready to fill his shoes?

Leave a comment, or shoot me an e-mail if you want to call into the show.

Congrats to the Korean Under-17 Women's Soccer Team

They just won the Under 17 Women's FIFA World Cup in a penalty kicks against Japan.

Plus, they totally dumped their coach when they tried to lift him over their heads after the team photo: skip to about 4:30 of this video, which won't give me the embed code.

Korea-Uruguay in City Hall

Went down to City Hall to see Korea vs. Uruguay.  Missed the other games in a public, mob-setting, so I'm glad I went out to catch that one.

As game action goes, Uruguay looked really sharp on the goals they scored, and Korea will rue that goalpost free-kick in the first ten minutes. Uruguay was dumb to lay back and let Korea attack for the beginning of the second half, but the way they scored to re-take the lead made it look like they'd been toying with Korea all along. On the other hand, the Uruguayan goalie was forced to make some pretty tough stops on some very impressive setups...but he did. All in all, Korea put in a good effort, but didn't quite have the chops to top Uruguay; however, they should hold their heads high. They put forth a very respectable showing this year. The crowd was the main reason I went, though the wind went out of those sails after Uruguay's first goal; however, it's still worthwhile to get out and join tens of thousands of Korea soccer fans once every four years: the atmosphere, especially before the kickoff, is great.

And there was barely any booing of the Uruguayan National Anthem! One drunk guy near me was shouting shut up, and a few people booed in the first five seconds, and then stopped: it seemed like they got shushed by people around them who actually knew what sports are for.

The crowds, then:

The station was a madhouse, with police shepherding people to the correct exits, and blocking others.


Because it was dark, and rainy, the photos I took around city hall had longer exposures, and they have a kind of blurry, dreamy quality.  I like that.  The crowd here was awesome during the build up to the game, but as soon as Uruguay took the lead, it started kind of sucking.



These three very nice people are students at the KDI, from central-asian countries.  They invited me to watch the game with them.  I did, until the crowd behind us decided to sit, and told us to sit, which would have meant parking my but in a puddle, which sounds like the opposite of fun to me, so I took off to get more pictures of other areas.








Heres' a video of what the scene was like.


By Gwanghwamun, the cheering section was nicer, the crowds weren't so insane, and the atmosphere was generally more laid back.  In a good way.

Maybe my best crowd shot of city hall.  I didn't have my camera out as much as I'd have liked, because it was getting rained on, and I don't want my camera messed up with water damage right before my family comes to Korea, I get married, and I go on a honeymoon.  That'd, like, suck.


raindrops on the lens: looks nice, unless you're the one who paid for a camera that's getting wet.




after a while, the crowd called on people to stow their umbrellas, which made better viewing but fewer layers to the photos.  I lost my umbrella.  I lost two umbrellas this weekend, and gave a third away.





Gwanghwamun plaza wasn't too busy.


I was lucky enough to be filming when Korea scored... that reaction, and some of these other reactions to some close calls, are worth a watch as well.



Down the sides of Gwanghwamun Plaza was a big display of Korea's world cup history.

I especially liked this frame: I had no idea color film wasn't invented until after 1986.



or that giving birth to opposing players was legal during gameplay.


A lot of people were happy to pose for the cameras.

Some of them gave me  cigarette smelling hugs.  (not these ones, though)]


These next two pictures are cool: I like the way these two young people were totally rapt with the game action.




And the giant poo watched over it all.  and it was good.


Sejong and Admiral Lee weren't as into the game action as the rest.  Maybe the team could have used admiral Lee as a coach.  Except he'd have invented "Turtle cleats", and that might not have gone so well in a game of speed.

Other than city hall proper, the crowd was relatively sparse.  Rain'll do that.


Most of the world cup, uh, fashion, was covered in raincoats... but I caught a picture of this little group.

Bwahaha! Youtube Vuvuzela For The Win!

I was poking around on YouTube, procrastinating on wedding prep stuff, when I saw this...

Did you notice it?

Look at the bottom right corner:

If you click on that soccer ball, you can watch any Youtube video with Vuvuzelas droning in the background.

I howled with laughter.  Try it out.  The more relaxing the original video, the funnier the vuvuzela is.  But it won't do it with the embedding.

You can also surf the internet with vuvuzelas at this site: just type in the site you want to visit,

and I enjoyed this remix of Invictus, set in south africa, set to vuvuzela noise.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

and of course Lord of the Rings, with great music.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Finally, the vuvuzela has a twitter account.  Here.  It's very well thought-out.

Love the viral jokes.

and just in case that wasn't enough Korea content for you, just so's you know, on the topic of vuvuzelas, now that they've won the group, Argentina are being kinda jerks, and saying that the only reason Korea scored their lone goal in the 4-1 loss to the Argies, is because of the Vuvuzelas.  Just to remind us that bad sportsmanship is an international phenomenon, not limited to Koreans crashing Swiss web servers and stuff. (see final paragraph)

Been Watching Soccer/Football:

So I had to miss the Korea/Argentina game because of something more important: Koreabridge's discussion on workplace unions in Korea - worthwhile if you're an English teacher; check it out.

But the upshot is, I'm glad Korea made it to the round of 16, so that I get to go watch Korea play in the knockout round, and yeah, I'll wear my red horns, and yeah, I'll be mixing it up with the masses in City Hall.  It's an experience unlike anything you've ever had before.  What would it take to get 600 000 or 1 000 000 Canadians gathered in one place?  I can't think of anything, except a broom the size of Saskatchewan.

Because he helped me with the translation request from the last post, I'm totally pimping my buddy's blog: Korean Football.  Go read about the world cup there!

BTW I'm still looking for a few people who can help with English to Korean translations.


A few other thoughts about soccer (as we North Ameracaners call it)

1. It will always be the world's most popular sport, because any poor kid can take four rocks (goal posts) and something resembling a ball, and play a game of it.  The only other sports even CLOSE to requiring so little equipment are basketball and track and field.

2. It will NEVER be popular in North America, the way it is in the rest of the world, until players get penalized, I mean, really penalized, for falling at the slightest contact.  I like the rule suggested by an (american) sports columnist: if play has to be stopped because a player goes down, he has to sit out for ten minutes, no questions asked.  Substitution can be allowed, but he has to be off the field for ten minutes: if you're actually hurt, you need the ten minutes.  If you're not, you get up and suck it up.  As long as jokes like this (see video) are made about soccer, it won't gain traction in the continent of ice hockey, lacrosse, and 'Mercan Football.



3. It also will never be popular in North America because there are too many draws, and too many 1-0 games.

4. It doesn't need to be popular in North America.

5. In international competitions, I root against the USA, not because of the Canadian inferiority thing (that only kicks in when it's Canada vs. USA), but because if Brazil wins the world cup, it's a month-long party in Brazil.  If France, England, Argentina, etc. win it, it'll make that country's sports half-decade.  USA has SO many sports things going on, they don't NEED the world cup, too.  If US wins the world cup, most Americans will go "Yeah! Awesome!  Is Nascar on?" (or whatever their favorite sport is) and forget the world cup next time a baseball pitcher takes a perfect game into the 8th inning, or A-rod takes his shirt off in Central Park, or Terrell Owens comes out of the closet.

6. In the same way that bad horror movies are more watchable than bad movies of any other genre, blowouts are more watchable in soccer than any other sport I've seen.  Spain dismantling Honduras,  Portugal spanking North Korea, Germany handing Australia their jockstraps: a superb team in total control is actually fun to watch in Soccer (as long as they aren't slowing down the game).  In Hockey, the closer the game is, the better it is, and the more evenly matched the teams are, the more fun it is to watch, and blowouts are boring.  Most other sports, too.  In soccer, some of the evenly matched games were actually more boring, because each team just moved up and down the middle, and then took turns failing to penetrate the other side's defense.

Plus, the fact that a two goal game can count as a blowout, means that every once in a while, a team might dominate the ball, but concede a fluke goal or two that ends in a wacky result.  Mistakes are REALLY costly in soccer - it's the anti-tennis (tennis, where you can make dozens of unforced errors and still win).  That it all comes down to one game, and goals are so hard to come by, means that anything can happen.  (Go New Zealand!)

7. It's amazing how, even with a dozen players on the pitch per side, the stars somehow manage to assert themselves.  Somehow BECAUSE there are so many players on the field, they find ways to shine, which seems counterintuitive - you'd think they'd get lost in the crowd.

8. FC Barcelona have the best jerseys of any sports team I've ever seen.  Messi's fun to watch, but those jerseys are exactly my colors.  I want one.  I'll wear it to the new Manchester United bar in Jongno.

If you see me at the next game in City Hall, say hi.

Question of the day:

Which sport's highlights are the most fun to watch?

Hockey


Soccer/Football


American Football


or Basketball

Enough with the Sports Victimhood Already

Had a conversation with Girlfriendoseyo about bad sportsmanship on the third last day of the Olympics: she mentioned how the Russian team officials were so disappointed at their poor showing these Olympics that team officials and government members left before the games were done, and even the president is calling for heads to roll. Figure saking silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko bitched about not winning gold rather than giving credit to Evan Lysacek. I came back with my memory of the 2002 winter games, when team Russia was so dissatisfied with their bronze medal finish in hockey that they didn't even show up for the medal ceremony. No class.

Then I mentioned the death threats against Jim Hewish, the referee who disqualified the Korean skater and gave Apolo Ohno the gold in 2002, and this year called back the Korean women's team speed skating gold medal for crowding a Chinese skater. (It's interesting that the hate this time is for the referee instead of for the Chinese skaters... but something I've noticed recently is that Korea will get all noisy and outraged in hate for America or Japan, but Korea doesn't mess with China. When the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay ended with the embarrassment of Seoul being unable to control the crowd of Chinese boosters, who violently quelled any protests around city hall, and darn near mauled a fella in the Soul Plaza Hotel lobby, the Chinese students arrested weren't even deported, and the whole thing disappeared from the media in two days, unlike the trumped up story against US Beef, which was a pure fiction, but sparked street protests for months, to say nothing of all of 2002 except the World Cup.)

So Jim Hewish had to be put under police protection in Vancouver. Brian cited a comment at Marmot, that these netizen outbursts can, and WILL undermine Korean attempts to host huge events like Olympics and World Cups - is the IOC really going to hold a Winter Games in a country where they might be unable to guarantee the safety of referees or players, if a call or a close game goes against Korea? Do they want to risk 200, or 1000 of THOSE kinds of people waiting outside the venue every time the hated ref of the day comes and goes?

In Korea's defense, Girlfriendoseyo said that she read that Jim Hewish had a history of other calls against Korea, and that he'd been suspended for two years for one such call (possibly the one in favor of Ohno?)... but I, with my extensive research skills (googling "Jim Hewish Suspended") haven't been able to find any confirmation of this from news sites. And yeah, the 3000 meter thing sucked. Sure.

But one commenter I read pointed out: Korea's own bad sportsmanship may well have caused Jim Hewish to make more calls against Korea. You see, Kushibo explains:

South Korea's hardcore netizenry may be entirely to blame for this one. The call was one that, according to the link The Marmot provided, could have gone either way, but the orgy of hate unleashed by the hardcore super comment tribe and their hacker buddies in 2002 forced his hand in Vancouver: Were Mr Hewish to have sided with the ROK team this time, he would have left himself open to accusations of caving in against his judgement.

The Joongang Daily has an editorial (HT Brian's twitter) about how bad calls are poor sportsmanship... which conveniently fails to mention that planting flags on pitching mounds and death threats are poor sportsmanship, too...
(source)

I don't really care to get into a back and forth about who's right and who's wrong, so all I want to say to Korean sports fans is this:

Folks, here's the thing. Sports Karma exists. The sporting gods, who determine who gets good luck and who gets bad luck, watch the behavior of athletes and fans, to decide who gets the lucky bounces, and who gets the bad calls.

Here's how sports Karma works - and I've seen this best by following Canadian hockey for quite a long time:

Basically: what goes around comes around. Send out bad sports Karma and it'll haunt you later. Send out good sports karma, and you'll benefit. Seriously.

Being a sore loser = bad sports karma - if you bitch and moan when bad things happen, more bad things will happen. Seriously. Russia's sore losership in the past is, in the Sports karma way of things, the direct cause of their poor showing in these Olympics.

Being an ungracious winner = bad sports karma - if players gloat when good things happen, bad things happen in the future. (cf: Flag planting, Korean audiences getting up and leaving after Kim Yuna skates instead of watching the whole show, gold medalists talking shit about runners-up)

And here's the big thing about sports Karma: if you remain competitive, keep trying, and respect the game and the other players, what goes around comes around. Seriously. In Canadian Hockey, a few bad referee calls have robbed Canada when they should have done better... but for every disallowed goal or bogus call that went against Canada, there's one that went our way, that benefited us, at some other time. If Canada lost this gold medal game because of a bad bounce, or an unlucky play, or a bit of bad refereeing at the wrong time, or if they just ran into a hot goalie, like they did in 2006, I'd be a bit upset, sure, but I'd also know that buddy, that doesn't change too much: Canada played hard, and next Olympics, they'd be in the mix again. Dear South Korean sports fans: it's the same for you! If you try your best, and lose with grace, that's good sports Karma, which improves your chances next time around. Losing a heartbreaker? That's good sports Karma, too, and it just makes it more satisfying when things finally DO go right (cf: 2004 Red Sox World Series). Getting the women's 3000 relay gold next Olympics will be way more satisfying if you win it back after being robbed this year, than it would have been if you'd just kept winning.

Korea's last two Olympics were, as far as I can tell, its best showings ever... so enjoy that, and be happy about it, support your athletes, learn to enjoy the awesomeness that is sporting excellence, no matter who's playing and winning, and seriously, back off with the victim thing - two Korea stories were in the nominations for the most controversial moments of the Olympics, and that's bad Karma - and go enjoy another Kim Yuna replay. The bad sports fan thing is tired, and it's building up bad sports karma which will hurt your teams and players in the future.

Thank you for listen my essay.

Rob

Olympic Wrap-up

The Olympics are finished, and even though I couldn't see any of them in person, living in Korea and all, it's been a pretty satisfying run.

Here are the three things I was rooting for during these olympics:

1. Canadian Men's Hockey gold.
2. Kim Yuna gold
3. (I'm a petty old codger, but...) Canada finishes ahead of Korea in the medal standings.

And squee with glee, dear readers: I got all three!

So Canada won 14 Gold medals (an Olympic record), including the one we would have traded the other 13 for: Men's Hockey Gold. Way to go, Canada. I watched the game on tape delay (it aired live here at 5am), and got to enjoy it. And holy crap, what a great game that was.

Sidney Crosby is officially Canada's new national hero, and Joannie Rochette is not far behind. Plus, he was assisted by Jerome Iginla, one of those prototypical Canadian hockey players who can throw his weight around, or dupe you with a swift move. Now if only Sidney were playing for a Canadian team, too, and Toronto didn't suck, everything would be right in the hockey world.

Kim Yuna has achieved goddess status in Korea -- seriously, she could run for president right now and win, she could read the phone book and people would watch the telecast, she could become a pitch lady for Toyota and they'd hit #1 here. You could make money selling empty jars of air labled "Yuna Farts" (I stole that joke... but girlfriendoseyo's friend's mother said almost the same thing - "I bet even her poo is pretty", which is about the equivalent of "she pisses perfume" I suppose.)

That's all for now.

KIm Yuna (김 연아) - sit back and soak it in

Sit back, dear readers, and enjoy what you are seeing: Kim Yuna, right now, is Tiger Woods in 2001, Michael Jordan in 1991, Wayne Gretzky in 1985, Babe Ruth in 1927. She's good. She's real good. She just treated her competition about the way a zamboni treats an ice rink: she steamed it, soaked it, flattened it, and moved on without taking names, and we get to watch~!

I've written about Kim Yuna before, and probably will again. I'm mad about this lady.

First of all, as a sportwriter once wrote about Tiger Woods: "You will never be as good at anything, as Tiger Woods is at golfing" - you will never be as good at anything you do, as Kim Yuna is at figure skating right now.

Image

The Korean internet is crashing right now, because everybody wants to watch Kim Yuna's skating video. Do you know how hard it is to make the Korean internet crash? (Not hard, if you mean Korean web browsers [IE6, baby!]... but I mean the Korean INTERNET) is not responding to my requests for anything Yuna. So I want to give you a video clip, but the clip won't play, because 50 000 000 other people are trying to watch it right now.

I did, however, get to watch it on TV, live. It'll be replayed a lot, but seeing fresh, that first time, with everything still up in the air, was a thrill. And dear readers, Kim Yuna NAILED THE HELL out of that program. I watched a few other skaters before her, and it was like watching a different sport entirely-- except Asada, who is also amazing. Her movements were so clean, her jumps were technically perfect. So Yuna rocks.

(I missed the performance of Joannie Rochette, the bronze medalist, and a Canadian. Good for her, especially after losing her mother this week. Sorry Canada, but this time I'm rooting for Yuna... and here's why)

(see more pictures like this one) - this photo via The Blogger Formerly Known As Korea Beat

Dear readers, Korea needs Kim Yuna. Actually... Korea doesn't need Kim Yuna. Korea has other heroes and such. But young Korean women need Kim Yuna. In particular, young Korean girls need Kim Yuna, because here is a woman who is famous for being really excellent at something, for working hard at something spectacular and beautiful, and achieving it. The heroes Korean girls have to work with are pretty slim pickings. There's the girl who was tortured to death for protesting Japanese colonialism. (with the hate Japan subtext) there's the woman who was an amazing accomplished poet, painter, and thinker... whose image has been manipulated into that of a good mother and dutiful wife (with the mother/wife/get in the kitchen subtext). There are a few more modern female heroes who are getting in the mix - I'm fond of Yi Soyeon, the first Korean in space, and a female, but she's been mostly out of the public eye since then.

But here's where Yuna shines:

First, she's AS cute and charming as the pop starlets that everybody idolizes , and that young girls want to be like (unfortunately, this is still a requirement for Korean female role models: Ye Soyeon and gold medal powerlifter Jang Miran are cool, but not conventionally beautiful, and I doubt a lot of little girls say they want to be like them when they grow up, and I bet parents would discourage their daughters from becoming powerlifters). The Wondergirls, Girls Generation, and the like, are cute, charming, whatever, but the fact is, they're famous more for shaking their lovely asses (and singing and making asian poses at cameras) than anything else. Yuna's telegenic enough to totally run with that crowd.

But then on top of that, she set a goal, to be the best in the world at something, and NAILED it. She did what she had to do, including living in Canada and sequestering herself from her own fans, withdrawing from competitions to focus on Olympic gold... and then when the day arrived, she didn't just rise to the occasion, she vaulted 23 points ahead of her nearest competitor (who also set personal bests), and 15 points ahead of her own personal best. She looks cute making heart fingers... but she's also got the eye of the tiger, as surely as Michael Jordan did.

And she's been chasing excellence, not fame, not beauty, not a rich heir boyfriend, not praise for her domestic skills, and she did it. Really did it. And every little girl in Korea should dream of becoming excellent at something, and stopping at nothing to reach her goal, and that would be great.

So today's a happy day for Korea. And for me. Watching her long program (short one too) approached the sublime, and the mounting jubilation of the people around me as she nailed jump after jump, heightened the experience that much more. It's a great day for Korea.

That's all for now. Way to go Yuna.

Ahh Sports Nationalism

First off: I hate NBC. Not for any other reason but this: they don't like to share. Due to the clutchy grabby way they protect their content (any clip from any NBC show gets pulled from YouTube, etc.), the NBC Olympics page will only play in the USA, so I can't even see it on their (advertising heavy, showing an extremely limited selection of their programs) durn website.
What sucks the most is that two of the greatest online clip-generating bits of TV programming out there -- Olympic coverage, and Saturday Night Live, are both owned by NBC, so the only way I can see Kim Yuna's Olympic performance is on TV, and the only way I can see "the more cowbell skit" is by downloading it illegally. So here's me biting my digital thumb at NBC.
(source: the DiCaprio Romeo and Juilet)

I haven't been able to watch Kim Yuna's amazing skate with Korean announcers yet... so I can't report whether they absolutely lose their shit the way they did for Park Tae-hwan.

Anybody got a link?

On the bright side, I deleted the time-waster that caused this February to be one of my lightest posting months in a long, long time.

Look forward to more Roboseyo soon.

Rob

Kim Yu-na tops herself again. (김연아)

Girlfriendoseyo says Kim Yuna is now only competing with herself, and I agree. As she gears up for the winter olympics, she set yet another world record in her short skate, and was nearly twenty points ahead of the second place-winner in the short skate.

Here's one clip of her performance:


And here's another.

Two Sports Stories. Usain Bolt 9.58, EJ Yang

Just look at Usain Bolt's 9.58 race.


And EJ Yang, a Korean, becomes the first person to catch Tiger Woods when Tiger's leading a major tournament after 54 holes. Bringing down the deadliest assassin in golf, and the most reliable closer, is pretty darn impressive, too. In fact, I'll have to check the rules on this, but getting smacked around by a Korean in a Major might mean that Tiger now becomes part Korean, and Koreans can henceforward take credit for his future successes. (I might be wrong there, though.)

OK, Brian, I'll bite. Here's some Yuna for you. 김 연아

Since I'm apparently Brian in Jeollanamdo's main source for Kim Yu-na stuff, I'll give him what he's obviously looking for.

Kim Yu-na performed at the Festa on Ice here in Korea, to entertain her rabid Korean fans and get paid. The show was playing on a television in the restaurant where I had dinner with my buddy, and it was . . . quite a show. Three of the five cheesiest songs I know came on (fortunately, "You Lift Me Up" either didn't make it onto the card, or played while I was out of the room), but the goofiest point came when Kim Yuna did her solo ice dance, wearing a short, flappy skirt, and some dumb, besmitten cameraman did some of the worst camerawork I've seen in my life.

See, when watching figure skating, the long shot is important to see the full skating motion. This one goofball cameraman started perving on Yuna with his camera, aiming way-too-close shots right at her lady bits instead of panning out to actually show what she was doing, and leading to the low point of the night, the extreme close-up of the crotch-shot jump at 1.12. (And for the really pervy of you, in slow motion at 4.20 (heh heh. 4:20). He also can't keep her face in the frame at 3:30...I'm guessing he was operating the camera with one hand, if you know what I mean.



Anyway, there you go, Brian. Hope it was good for you; I prefer the competition stuff.

My buddy Charles was visiting from Canada, and he asked me if Koreans were fans of figure skating before Yuna came along, and whether Koreans were figure skating fans or just Yuna fans. I answered as honestly as I could, and said, "Really, Koreans are Korea fans, and any Korean who's doing well will find a fanbase here, and a bunch of sudden diehard fans of the sport." I have more to say about Korean sports nationalism, and sports nationalism in general, but Korea sports nationalism isn't much different in type than other countries...though it might be different in degree. Especially now that Koreans are doing well in various arenas, I'd say that if you wanted to imagine Korean sports nationalism when living in Korea, think (if you're a baseball fan) of living in an entire country of Boston Red Sox fans. The rabidness, the "we've been through hard times" narrative, exacerbated by the smugness of "look how well we're doing now!"

But good for Yuna. At this point, she could sell her bathwater as perfume in every boutique in Apgujeong, and rabid moms would make their daughters drink it in hopes that some of her star power would rub off on them before the exam.

For your Benefit: a translation

I made comments a while back about the way Korean sportscasters can sometimes go a bit too far in their enthusiasm, and referenced Park TaeHwan's gold medal swim from the Beijing Games.

Well, I'm proud to say, with a friend's help, I've translated the commentary on that video, so that you, my dear readers, can see what they were saying all along. A few of my translations might not be entirely accurate, but I think I got the drift across.