David Wastes His Life

Since moving into my new apartment in McLean Gardens, I've done little else but play FIFA 2010 on my roommate's XBox. Andy and I started out small, playing the little expansion 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa as the U.S. Men's National Team against eventual World Champion Spain. After 3 days and one goal to show for our efforts, we finally broke through and defeated them. We started to play Brazil, but that was just absurd. We learned to hate 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, because it displayed an obvious anti-American bias. Xavi once knifed Cherundolo in the 52nd minute without getting so much as a slap on the wrist, while Michael Bradley was once sent off having received 2 yellows in the 4th and 6th minutes for repeated infractions of "being bald." We, too, were amazed that EA had animation for either of those.

I eventually just started playing FIFA Soccer 10, in the hope that I wouldn't have to have thumbs made of Pele in order to win. I was wrong. In this utter hopelessness, we took a rest from FIFA for a little bit.

And then Andy bought a 42" television set. It looked alot like this:


And it was good.
And it had a remote control holder. That sticks to the fucking wall. And it looked alot like this:


And it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, and the TV was still astounding to gaze upon. And the remote control holder still hung firmly on the Wall of Black Athletes.

But something had changed. While watching an MMA fight, we realized that two grown men were actually making each other bleed in our living room, on our off-white furniture. Mario Lemieux stickhandled a puck between my legs in the 1991 Stanley Cup Finals en route to a goal against the Minnesota North Stars. C.C. Sabathia hit me with a pitch, and I took my base. We grew afraid to turn it off lest, due to its massive size, it develop its own gravitational pull and, much like a black hole, suck in everything in our living room before ultimately collapsing upon itself and turning our very lives into a sit-com. We had gratuitous amounts of television, and we needed to play FIFA upon them.

And so we started playing FIFA again. We rose from the mire of holy-hell-why-do-we-keep-doing-this-to-ourselves to a level of consistent mediocrity. We even scored occasionally. It was fun.

Now I told you that story to tell you this story. On the evening of August 20, 2010, Schmatthew Schmazik - yes, the very same "Schmiladelphia Schmouthpaw" - joined me for dinner and a wild night of FIFA play. We stood facing the flag for the national anthem and played the first game with Andy. We lost to Sweden 2-0, but then beat Mexico 1-0 with a beautiful shot from the outside of Landon Donovan's right foot across the goal mouth in the 116th minute, as per my thumb's command. Upon this occurrence, we lost our shit.

Andy, meanwhile, leaves to go do his thang, and Schmatt and I continue to get our respective FIFAs on. Playing as VfB Stuttgart (pronounced "fow-eff-bay," if you want to understand my reasoning behind the choice) against Blackburn Rovers, we quickly take a 1-0 lead. A mere seconds later, some random German guy under my control has taken a through ball and dribbled through everything in sight, including the goalkeeper's hands. No more than 3 feet of green, green grass separates the ball and the goal. If I sneeze hard enough at this point, I might blow the ball into the net through the television screen; after all, a life-sized computerized soccer match is taking place literally in my living room. But I don't sneeze. Instead, under the gravitas of the situation, I undergo a massive bowel movement, the likes of which had been previously unseen since Arius of Alexandria fatally shat out his liver in 336 AD: I hit the A button. Pass. My video game soccer character stops on a dime to deliver a gorgeous, on-target, useless pass to a player 15 yards behind him and under Schmazik's control, who, in the understandable shock of the situation, kicks the ball into the side of the net. Neither of us know it yet, but something extraordinarily terrible has just happened.

We find this utterly hilarious. After all, we've been kicking Blackburn's ass for the entire game, and should be up 2-0 at this point. No big deal. We'll get it back.
Incorrect.
They score on a penalty kick. 1-1. Then, in the 86th minute, they score again. 2-1. Game. Naturally, we have to play again. We deserved to win, and, God as my witness, we were going to do it.

Approximately 15 games later, we haven't won. We've scored 5 times. Schmazik scored each of them. I've hit 17 posts.
That's not to say we never came close. We came close. Hell, we almost won once. Taking the lead on the greatest build-up in the history of sporting video games, involving a left-to-right cross, 3 through-balls, a give-and-go, and an extraordinary individual effort to score the goal, we further extended our lead when the opposing goalie unwittingly punted the ball into the ass of a player running back towards the other end of the field with enough force to one-hop it back into his own net. After replaying this scene about 10 times (each time laughing just as hysterically, thank you very much), we get back to the game, up 2-0. By the 81st minute, it's 2-2. We're sad. We go into extra time. At the 117th minute, it's still 2-2. At the 120th minute, it's 4-2. For those of you who don't know how to tell FIFA-time, that means Blackburn scored 2 goals in approximately 5.2 seconds for the sole purpose of pissing us off. Eventually, after a few more humiliating games, we try a new strategy.

We decide to play as the U.S. National Team against Sydney FC. The Australian professional soccer league is one of the worst in the world, and we're the goddamned U.S. National Team. We figure this should make us feel better about ourselves.

Approximately 10 minutes later, we're down 5-0, the play-by-play has been reduced to Martin Tyler and Andy Gray's prerecorded laughter, and we're scrolling down to the "Restart Match" button to avoid this getting into the permanent EA Games record. We have to play one more time for our dignity. We lick our wounds, and only lose 1-0 this time. Rather than kill ourselves to end our misery, we decide to call it a night and go to bed.

Then, just when all appeared lost, the Lord our God showed us that He does, in fact, have greater plans; that every single loss, every post hit, every on-field knifing were each divine events directed toward a single objective; and that this objective was to make the next 7 seconds of my life as awesome as possible. As soon as we've turned off the XBox console, we hear a key jimmying in the door and it slam open. A blur runs into the apartment. Amidst a chorus of angels coming in from the hallway, we here a single cry of "Fuck! I owe this cab driver outside so much money!" and see the bright flash of Andy bolting back out.

Thou hast not forsaken us.