• Home
  • Ashley’s 2020
  • Been there
  • Veni, Vidi, Vici

I am Your Sunshine

words are for those with promises to keep

Feed on
Posts
Comments

Bloody Confused! – Chuck Culpepper

Jan 22nd, 2009 by Ashley

Written by a two-time Pulitzer nominee Chuck Culpepper, Bloody Confused! subtitled A Clueless American Sportswriter Seeks Solace in English Soccer was published as Up Pompey in UK. They changed the name apparently because people here are clueless, and Bloody Confused! (with a hint of Brit*) may get a better chance of being noticed because they ARE bloody confused. I have to say that the title won me over. Usually I hate those don’t-have-better-things-to-do Americans publish their two cents (or less) on football, the real FOOTball. (Remember that infamous piece on ESPN page2?) But Culpepper showed that he’s different. He flat out admit that he’s a clueless American and he’s “bloody confused”. I love it. He’s not like your typical Americans who like to act like they know everything (while they do so little) and look down upon things they don’t comprehend. Culpepper acknowledged his “ignorance” towards football and was willing to learn with an open mind.

And being a “clueless American”, he offers his reader a different point of view from other jaded football writers. Like he illustrate his amazement toward the chants and songs in full capacity. This is something an European may find it ordinary but beyond extraordinary for an American sports fan who only knows “Let’s Go XXX” no matter what kind of sport it is. There’s a chapter in which Oh, Graham Poll, he’s a f–king a–hole, he’s a f–king a–hole, he’s a f–king a–hole occupied a tenth of the space. He’s recapping the game of Portmouth v Arsenal of which Graham Poll was the ref. He expressed his awe when witnessing the entire stadium singing unifyingly about someone being a f–king a–hole. Reading this pleased me immensely. XD

Too bad that however open-minded he seems, his American hypocrisy still seeps through his writing. The over emphasizing of political correctness, so on and so forth, shows that they cannot really see pass their own -cism, whatever it is.

It’s the part that turned me off. That, and the continuing use of the word soccer. XD

Posted in book notes | No Comments