Unoriginal Soundtracks #94: Desert Golfing

Every other Wednesday, I share a playlist of songs tangentially related to a single game or series. Songs about alien sex for Mass Effect, world leaders for Civilization, and so on. Make requests to @USPodcast on Twitter.

To hear a mirror in a song
And heaven in a music podcast,
Hold infinity in your ears
And 27 minutes in Unoriginal Soundtracks for Desert Golfing.

The "World" Cup Looks Sternly At US

Americans like to dominate. Some evidence is as follows: McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Disney, Wal-Mart, World War II. We like to be the best, the most prolific, the most ubiquitous, the winners. But sometimes we fall short; and sometimes we miss the boat entirely. See: soccer. Even the name of the sport indicates a schism from the rest of the world. (The Japanese call soccer sakkaa, but since it is a loan word, and since there is nothing that they call "football" [American football is called just that: amerikan futtobooru] it seems that they just want to copy America.) No, we didn't want soccer, or "association football," to keep its original name. We had a new sport for that, a sport with a lot more beer and hot chicks.

But our general ineptitude regarding soccer and the culture that surrounds it is the really truly astonishing thing here. Why did baseball and American football win the hearts of Americans while soccer won the hearts of rest of planet Earth? And why, since that is clearly the case these days, do we suck at pretending to like soccer?