The World Cup has turned America into a discovery channel for the rest of the world.
And they are not handling it well.
In the best possible way.
Here is what they are discovering:
Free public restrooms. Europeans pay every time.
Free water at every restaurant. Just appears.
Free refills. Coffee. Sodas. Iced tea. Unlimited.
Free chips and salsa before you even order.
Free warm bread with dinner.
Ice in drinks like civilized people.
Air conditioning everywhere. Not a moral debate. A fact.
Parking lots attached to the actual place you are going.
Drive throughs where the food comes to the car while you sit in it.
Ranch dressing by the gallon.
Tex-Mex that cannot be explained only experienced.
Dental care that actually works.
Buccee’s. There are no words for Buccee’s.
Then they found the grocery stores.
Five of them within one mile.
Each one the size of an aircraft hangar.
Burgers. Steaks. Brisket. Ribs. Pulled pork. Lamb. Veal. Every cut of every animal ever domesticated by human civilization available in one refrigerated aisle at ten in the morning on a Tuesday.
The Germans stood in the meat section for forty five minutes.
In silence.
Processing.
They finally understand why we do not have trains.
We have roads wide enough for the cars we actually drive.
Parking lots the size of small European countries.
Airports in every city worth visiting.
Why would we need trains.
The Germans are taking ranch home by the bottle.
The Dutch found queso and briefly lost the ability to speak.
The Japanese are photographing HEB like it is the Louvre.
The Czechs are weeping in West, Texas.
Welcome to America.
Everything is free, enormous, air conditioned, comes with chips, and has five grocery stores within a mile that will sell you any cut of any animal you have ever imagined.
Write that down. 🦋
I can’t speak for the entire country, but I can speak for my own backyard.
My baseball-obsessed 7 year old hasn’t ever so much as touched a soccer ball in his life and now he’s spending his evenings out here pretending he’s Flo Balogun.
I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the impact this World Cup will have on this sport’s popularity in America.
THE GREATEST POST GAME TRADITION IN ALL OF SPORTS HAS FOUND ITS WAY TO THE WORLD CUP
I’m not kidding, I get goosebumps & a little teary eyed every single time I see a video like this…
God bless John Denver
God bless West Virginia
GOD BLESS AMERICA 🇺🇸
@SoB_Evan I am interested in the details of this situation when they come out. I know there were family issues, but it all went very quiet for along period of time.
He was one of the good ones. I hope this is best for him and his family.
Australian World Cup fans were caught chanting:
“Aussie boys are on a bender, Donald Trump is a sex offender.”
The tournament is barely underway and the chants are already in midseason form. 💀
Fun part of this World Cup is learning about all these specific ethnic enclaves in the US, every game has some cut that’s like “and here’s the famed Curaçaoan community in Wilmington, Delaware” and it’s some random bar with like 450,000 people
Haiti v Scotland is the World Cup’s only group-stage match where both countries occupy the smaller, mountainous part of a major island shared with a larger neighbour.
Haiti has western Hispaniola. Scotland has northern Great Britain.
Stay tuned for more cutting-edge, geography-based World Cup analysis.
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Introducing the Scottish-American travel dictionary 🇺🇸🏴
We’ve put together this guide to keep the Tartan Army out of trouble in the States.
Read carefully to avoid confusing the locals, deeply offending the country, or being interrogated by Homeland Security over a sandwich.
I’ve decided we need a cultural exchange program in the autumn where we send the Europeans to college football games and send Americans to go and see Arsenal/Spurs or Rangers/Celtic or Newcastle/Sunderland
This will heal the sporting divide between our nations