HOT DOG MAN
gets a little pub.
Just so you know, this is a story loosely based on a script written by me, which you can find below. I mean, how can they not include the chants?!
“U.S. Blues”
Willkommen nach Deutschland!
The place where American soccer comes to die.
I spent $440 of my own hard-earned money to hop the pond for my first ever World Cup match, and all I got in return was this lousy bumper sticker.
That and a chance to watch Team USA get schooled by the Czechs, who did it for free. “Domination” does not sufficiently describe the beating we took on Monday before a crowd of 52,000. When the smoke cleared, Bruce Arena’s jokers were lucky to have lost by just a hat trick.
Three goals to nil – not since one of my purple Nexium meds broke open in my mouth last month have I had to swallow such a bitter pill.
Right now, sitting in my hotel in the nothing German town of Gelsenkirchen, I’m feeling pretty red, white and blue indeed.
It’s this nasty case of World Cup Fever I’ve got that’s to blame. It’s contagious; it’s nearly incurable; and if not treated, I’ve heard it can be deadly. In the past 24 hours, a fair-weather U.S. soccer fan who could name less than half of our own starters has been transformed into a diehard U.S. football fanatic, one who second-guesses our formations and substitution patterns like an old soccer sage.
Of course, I never would have caught the Fever in the first place had I not invested so much of myself emotionally into yesterday’s opener against the Czech Republic.
There’s something about wearing a costume to a World Cup match that just forces you to raise your game as a fan. You’ve put yourself in the spotlight, after all, so it makes sense that people would expect more out of you than the next guy. The same rule applies to any sporting event, really: When you choose to wear a costume, you’d better be ready to get rowdy and stay rowdy, or else you’re going to look like a complete fool.
The problem with this, of course, is that when your team gets destroyed, and your ridiculous costume is forcing you to put on a happy face, it’s not much fun.
Especially when it’s 96 degrees in the shade, and you’re wrapped in a bun. Literally.
People with a satellite dish and an affinity for German television may have seen the Hot Dog Man yesterday, covered in an American flag, dancing a jig in the streets of Gelsenkirchen, but the rest of you will simply have to visualize.
Picture a six-foot American wearing a six-foot hot dog suit made of foam and felt – bun, frank and wavy line of mustard included. With an eight-inch hole near the top for my head, a U.S. flag fastened around my neck as a cape, and another U.S. flag – this one a bandana – meant for my head, I fit in well with the pre-World Cup Halloween-like party atmosphere. There was an Uncle Sam, a Captain America, a pair of girls wearing U.S. flags as bath towels, and about a million other costumes incorporating the Stars and Stripes.
But Hot Dog Man: World Cup Edition was a star among stars. Not even my own mother, nor any girl I’ve ever dated, has taken that many pictures of me in one day.
“You didn’t think hot dogs were German, did you?!” I would exclaim to intrigued passersby who paused for photo-ops with this raving madman drenched in sweat. “They invented the frank; WE came up with the bun! God bless the U.S.A.!”
Toby Keith would have shed a tear at the sight.
I am typically pretty wary of flag-wavers and overt displays of patriotism, but yesterday, I was ready to go to war. The red, the white, the blue, the stars, the stripes, the “Don’t Tread on Me” flags … for about three hours, I could say with the utmost degree of sincerity that I was proud to be an American. Check out some of the chants of which I was a hearty participant:
(Sung to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know it”) -- “You can shove your Pavel Nedved up your a**! You can shove your Pavel Nedved up your a**! You can shove your Pavel, you can shove your Pavel, you can shove your Pavel Nedved up your a**!”
(Sung to the tune of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” by Frankie Valli) – “Da-Mar-cus BEAS-ley, he plays for P-S-V! DaMarcus BEAS-ley, he came to Ger-ma-ny! DaMarcus BEAS-ley, he plays for the red, white and bluuuuue!”
(My personal favorite, sung to the tune of “I Got a Dollar” from “The Little Rascals”) -- “No-body likes us! No-body likes us! No-body likes us, we don’t care!”
American creativity: Brilliant.
American soccer: Not brilliant.
Until the latter can catch up to the former, I’m going to be singing the U.S. Blues for quite some time. I’ve got World Cup Fever, and winning is the only cure.
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