USA! USA! USA! what a game! As an ugly American, I forgot how exciting fussball, I mean, football, I mean soccer can be. You just need to get re-familiarized with it. The drama, the athleticism (no pudgy soccer players) and how exciting some games can be. I'll never forget racing back from what was East Germany in 1990 to get to the first town in the west that had the final world cup game on TV after we crossed the border. The city we got to was Branschweig. "West" Germany. The final was against Argentina. We found a little bar on a side street (they all looked like side streets at that point) and went inside. If you have ever seen that seen from "An American Werewolf in London" when they go to the bar called The Slaughtered Lamb..that's what it was like. Everybody stopped talking and looked at us. We looked at them and said "Go Deutschland!" and they guessed we were ok, sort of. By the end of what was a rather dull game, Germany playing a very defensive style, the Germans won on a sudden death score. No matter, the town erupted in a scene I'll never forget. The entire town - I mean it - the ENTIRE town - poured into the street and began a spontaneous parade singing German songs. We were happy to join in the parade and walked in a circle, drinking beer and having fun for hours. Hmmm...fun times... I never had that much fun in any other mass celebration.

Today after a long meeting in one part of Seoul, we were hurring back (no, dammit, I did not score tickets to the game down the street!) and watching on the car TV. In a safety move, the visual feed on the TV only works when the car is stationary. Fortunately, there was plenty of traffic...and BTW, you have never seen intense driving and intense traffic jams until you have driven in Seoul. They have this radical "group" u-turn then they do, with 14 lanes of EXTREMELY aggressive driving...most cars have dents in them or scrapes of some sort. You note I'm sitting in the back seat hear in the photo

Anyway, it was a blast to watch live, so even sitting here in the hotel room before dinner it was great. Too late in the US! One more day here before returning to the US. Watching the crumbling of the telecom and related sectors in the US, hearing stories about $1 copies of DVDs up the road in China that are not available in the US yet, watching Hollywood flail around with digital media rights and silly laws (as if) I had the frightening though - what if people in the future only paid real money for "things" like tvs, mp3 players, computers, cars, planes, watches, teaspoons, toilets, clothing, toys, food, routers, pacemakers, viagra....and much of the soft stuff we are sooo good at in the US became "free"? Am I missing something? Is it possible that only live enternainment and the artists/athletes/actors that produce thoses make real money and bootleg recordings will prosper? Maybe it's time for bed.