Foooooooooottie !

Uncovering urban lifestyle, contemporary trends and other (Canadian) peculiarities from a totally biased and nonobjective European perspective. Infiltration, intrigues, wonder and more ...

"I work at Starbucks: ask me ur questions!"
"Which finger do you use to push the butten that makes the coffee?"
- [Welcome to Vancouver]

One unmovable and slightly admirable quality of the Canadians is their urge to copy everything almost but not quite like its original and then add "Canadian" as a pre or suffix. Take for example Canadian Football (suffix example would the "Football Canadian" (Canadian Football as it´s called in the French speaking part of Canadia, in case you were wondering).

You may ask if I jest - I´m not; Canadian Football is as real as the proverbial train at the end of the tunnel pretending to be light and salvation. It´s not only a lame proverbial paraphrasing but also as close as Canadian Football comes to any form of speed... more on that later.


Canadian football is basically American football with a few minor adjustments. There´s still a bunch of guys dressed up in excessive padding who run into one another to stop the other from going somewhere. There´s a grass field with a goal on each end to make the grass look pretty. Teams score by running into the "end zone" of the opposing team, whilst carrying a ball... yes, football has hardly anything to do with feet in Canada as well. There are differences compared to the American version, but they are subtle and hard to spot (aka irrelevant) to the untrained eye. But a difference is a difference, and therefore it´s not American football, so the Canadian is a happy moose again.


Mentioning Canadian Football in Vancouver,points to the home of the B.C. Lions. At about twice the size of its smaller, but more popular brother the Canucks Ice Rink, the B.C. Lions Arena dominates the southwest landscape of downtown Vancouver. Needless to say, but good to mention for the slower amongst us, it was ripe and waiting for an another insidious infiltration mission.

infiltrate the concrete composition; bonus points for finding funny looking people

Aided by the usual suspects, we arrive at the ticket booth, where we´re met with the blank stare of a teenager who hasn´t managed to escape puberty quite yet...
"Sold out" the spotty shrimp behind the counter offers.
"And what about the silver ring seats?"
Uninterested. "Sorry, we only have bronze..."
"Is that any good ?"
The shrimp looks confused and tries to make a statement. Thinking the better of it, he lamely shrugs his shoulders. First class salesman.
"I guess ... We´ll take bronze then ?"
"Whatever..." he mumbles from behind the glass wall that keeps the world outside.

Happy with our tickets, the prospect of beer, hotdogs, and a free cavity search at the entrance, we set onwards ... into an empty stadium. We look around, to see rows of empty seats, followed by more rows of empty seats. We blink and the stadium blinks back.

good times

As the cheerleaders take the field and we try to enjoy the sight of their supposedly luscious curves from our sky high bronze seats, another supporter shuffles into the stadium, followed by another one. Things really get busy as two more enter the arena on the other side. By the time the opposing team is greeted by the friendly tunes of the "imperial march", the stadium is at least at five percent of its capacity. The entrance of the Lions themselves pushes the mark to seven percent... somehow there´s a lot lost in translation of the concept of "sold out".



The intro of GnRs´ "Welcome to the Jungle" announces the kickoff, and under loud cheering of the twelve people making up the "crowd", the teams clash into another. This apparently takes so much effort that the entire team on both sides gets replaced within minutes. One minute later the game continues for a whole four seconds, after which the teams take another minute to restart the game. Here´s an impression on how exciting this is:

The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.

Pause, thirty minutes to rest from all this excitement.

The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions. The team takes one minute to get into their positions, the ball is played, a player is tackled and another minute is spend walking back into positions.

...

In other words: If I would get paid per word, I´d go into football reporting - millionaire in two articles. In more other words, despite the victory of the BC Lions that night, the most exciting thing that happened after our hot dogs was passing through the revolving high speed doors on our way out. I´ll stick with cheering for the Canucks for a while ...

Coupland wrote the book I wanted to write and Yathzee is giving the reviews I wanted to give; good stuff if you don´t mind a million British words per minute...