The World Cup

I'm not as into the World Cup as some people, but I've been watching the games when I've had the chance and checking the scores online the rest of the time. I'm enjoying it, even though I certainly don't know much about soccer (yeah, I know everyone else calls it football).

Since I only have the very basic cable package (i.e. no ESPN), and because ABC only has shown the games that have been on weekend afternoons so far, this means that I've been watching them on Univision much of the time. Even though I don't speak Spanish, and captioning doesn't seem to be available, it's still quite entertaining to watch. For one thing, the sportscasters are much more animated and energetic than the ones on ABC, which is an acceptable tradeoff for me in the absence of being able to better understand the action.

There's long been a stigma in the U.S. (though I think it is going away) that soccer is boring because scoring is so infrequent. I don't see why that is, and I've not found the games boring at all, save maybe for the blowout against North Korea. Hockey games, for example, don't always have more goals scored than your average soccer game.

I think that the World Cup and soccer in general will continue to get more popular in the U.S. as time goes on. Perhaps some day one of the major networks will give it the wall-to-wall coverage that Univision gives it now. Assuming, of course, that Univison doesn't become one of the de facto major networks. Which, to be honest, would be kind of cool.

Lost No More (No Spoilers)

Last night we had a mini-marathon of the last four episodes of Lost, as well as the two-hour special that aired right before the finale. We had them sitting on our Tivo for a while and had never gotten around to watching them, due to being pretty busy, so with the series ending, it seemed like the right time to finish it off. Plus, I figured I could only stay unspoiled for so long.

I know people were quite divided on whether or not the show ended well. I don't want to get into a big discussion of its merits or flaws -- there are certainly enough of those elsewhere on the Web already -- but overall we were both very pleased with it. Yes, there were a few plot threads and elements they didn't address, but in terms of character development and their personal stories, they reached a highly satisfying conclusion.

Eventually, I want to go back and watch the series from the beginning; the special and certain moments of the finale reminded me of a lot of awesome scenes from earlier on. And I'm also looking forward to being able to finally watch Glee in real-time next season too.