I was seated next to some of the most incorrigible people imaginable. For example, I would have never noticed that one of the assistant referees was sporting an honest-to-God hard-on if it wasn’t for these people. I would have been blissfully unaware. Hard-ons are nice and all, but on the pitch, really? As you’re raising the offside flag?
For all we know, of course, there’s an entire kink associated with offside flags and their awesome power as, like, almighty extensions of the willie or something like that, and the ignorant are missing out.
The night ended well, though:
“And now that the score has reached 6 – 0, I propose that everyone on the team goes ahead and scores. And then the keeper can run out at the very end and score too.”
I tried to picture either Pjatov or Shovkovskiy doing that, and somehow, that ended up being funnier than anything else about the evening. Well, except for the hard-on.
I was wrong to stop watching football out of spite. A halfway decent football game on television opens up a portal that beams a certain atmosphere into any occupied space. It may be a tense atmosphere, it may be a “FUCK, I’M GOING TO GLUE BEERMATS TO MY EYES AND PRETEND THIS ISN’T HAPPENING” atmosphere, but you never feel empty when football is on. And there is great spiritual wisdom in that. Maybe.
Natalia A. 
I don’t understand the appeal of football/soccer. Wouldn’t you rather watch a sport with females? They get little love.
I agree with you that women’s sports get little love. But besides thinking football is a pretty game, I also kind of like watching fit men in shorts running around. If dudes are allowed to check out hot female tennis players, it’s only fair that straight women should be able to give the footballers some love.
Here is a short list of the reasons why I must profess my undying love for you, Natalia V. Antonova:
You’re fuckin’ weird.
You like soccer.
You read Ivan Bunin.
You talk about ripping out people’s entrails then you give the same people little kisses on the cheek when you run into them. And you’re totally genuine when doing both.
Staring into your eyes cuts out the need to do drugs, which saves money.
For an evil genius, you have laid-back fashion sense.
You could totally ruin my life and make me like it.
xo.
(Don’t let depression get you down for much longer.)
Oh, Hank. Thank you for loving me. That was beautiful. Especially the part about the entrails.
xo.
Nothing wrong with a woman who loves sports.
Natalia, good luck to Ukraine in the World Cup qualifier next month
Just think about it. guys. That’s one less argument over the television if your both tuned in to the same sporting event and cuddled up watching it.
Whoever said something about millions of [moderately or utterly] poor chaps watching 22 rich sods chasing some ball around was right, on one plane of reality, and probably wrong on another, whence the ‘great spiritual wisdom’ is pouring into funny thing so called ‘real life’ is 😀
Ukraine is game to you?
You know, I can totally see myself doing that, under the right circumstances. “I come from Ukraine” – SMASH.