The Fabulous Destiny of Marked Accordingly

I like American Football. Is true! To begin with I liked it because I understood it and no-one else did, and I have a perennial and somewhat smug soft spot for things (and people) which are misunderstood by all but me. The phrasing of that last sentence has probably set you up for the revelation that I now like American Football for some deeper, more aesthetic reason now, but I am so used to reporting my past in terms of progress that I lapse lazily into that habit again with no good reason. I still only like American Football because I get it and others don’t. In fact, I like it so much that I used to go and see our now defunct NFL Europe team, the Scottish Claymores, at Hampden, a fairly bleak and depressing attempt at the importation of American razzmatazz, the 96% empty stadium eerily reflecting back the pre-recorded crowd sounds to the insipid Sunday morning, the Imperial March from Star Wars hollowly emphasising the evil nature of the imminent Amsterdam Admirals, the drunken halfwits jiggling shirtlessly around in a futile attempt to excite the attention of the distant dots of cheerleaders down by trackside, along with the patronising paraphernalia on the back of tickets and match programmes patiently explaining that “The rules of AMERICAN FOOTBALL are not so very different to those of your native variety of ‘rugby football’…” I don’t know now why I kept going. I think it was because the players whould’ve noticed if I’d stopped. I can’t remember if I think I’m kidding or not.

The reason I mention this is because I was reminded recently of an old sports management sim for the Spectrum called Grid Iron II which, as far as I can remember, was a £2.99 screensaver consisting of a repeating image of zombie spiders parading around an otherwise static stadium, interspersed with flashing, subliminal messages exhorting the viewer to “DEFEND THAT PLAY”. And I was too scared to turn it off because it was so wretchedly, self-sustainingly dull that it seemed to me more like a human being than a computer game, as if I had just inadvertantly loaded my Spectrum 128k up with the personality of a sad fucking bastard and if I so much as looked at the reset button the tape deck would hiss and chase me, snapping, down the stairs.

I am guilty of trying to end everything -conversations, anecdotes, reviews, routine toiletry purchases- with some sort of South Park-esque “YOU, the reader, have learned something today!” coda. I doubt anyone ever believes it. Instead I should probably just let everything tail off as it always does, with the bland, unsatisfying hum of “Umm…” fading off into silence, like some absurdist, beret-wearing play. No hugging. No learning. Umm.