The All-white World Cup Final:

It's a dream come true.  The all white Argentina will be playing the 95% white Spain for the World Cup.  England was predominantly white, but it had too many blacks on the team for comfort.  But Argentina put paid to that, and left the world with the purest, whitest, snowiest final ever.

Argentina's run to the final has been a series of magical, miraculous moments.  Outlasting Cape Verde (Cape Verde!!) 3-2.  Coming back from down 2 to Egypt in the last minutes to score three goals and beat them 3-2.  Looking like they would lose to Switzerland until the stupid black Embolo on the Swiss team feigned being tripped when he was never touched (as proven by video replay) and was rewarded with a red card for his efforts.  After which Argentina took care of business and won again.  And now this, coming back from a goal behind to score two goals in the last ten minutes and win the semifinal.  They need to make a movie about this Argentina run.  It is the most incredible story in soccer history.  Obviously I'm cheering for them to win it all and put the cherry on top, but by God, already, they've spun a legend of all legends on the field.

Messi was at the center of this victory as well, with two assists, both goals Argentina scored.  He has been at the center of every victory in this entire run.  He needs to be rewarded the golden ball trophy as well as the golden boot, he's earned them both.  He is the greatest of all time.  Not just the greatest soccer player, just plain the greatest athlete of all time.  He personally dragged Argentina to the World Cup final not once but twice through a series of insurmountable odds.  No one could ever do what he's done.

Watching Messi trying to create opportunities out of nothing, with amazingly accurate lob passes, short wall passes, crosses, or dribbles straight through the defense, is vertiginous.  This simply isn't the way any other team scores.

No one can take this World Cup from me.  The greatest World Cup ever, the all white World Cup of my dreams.  The best teams in the world are both all white.  It's so glorious.  So perfect.  So beautiful.  With the white population of the world descending towards nothing, we'll probably never see this moment again.  It's like watching the elves in Lord of the Rings.  The passing of the great race in full flowering.  Messi will never take the field for Argentina again.  He's too old for 2030.  This is it.  This is our finest hour.

I won't watch The Odyssey in theater, it's too long for comfort for that.  But I do plan on watching it eventually, as I love all things Greek and Roman.  Aside from the DEI casting of peripheral characters, the actual main cast is white -- Penelope, Telemachus and Ulysses.  90% of the time it will feel like I'm in ancient Greece, which is good enough.  I respect Christopher Nolan as a movie maker and I think it's great that he's bringing such a classic to new audiences.  I of course read and loved The Odyssey, the actual Homeric poem, way back in high school.  But most people aren't like me.

I did watch two other movies today, though, Jumanji and Ford vs. Ferrari.  They were both pretty good.  I think they should have titled Ford vs. Ferrari 'Shelby vs. Ford,' though.  After all, the villains of the movie are all Ford corporate honchos, not Enzo Ferrari who's just a worthy rival.  Actually I think Shelby pulling continuous dirty stunts on Ferrari was despicable, and if anything America should be ashamed of itself for how we won that race.  Though I do believe we would have won without cheating, the fact is we cheated and it leaves me with disgust instead of the patriotism the movie was supposed to inspire.  As for Ken Miles, his fate was sealed the moment he tried to make a living driving prototype race cars.  It gets sort of tiresome how men all build their reputations as 'great' at something by taking insane risks instead of anything legitimate.  Women who don't take risks but steadily build out happy families with safe, healthy children are so much more impressive.  Anyone can be lucky enough to win the lottery, that doesn't make you great.  Likewise, risking your life over and over and being the one lucky one who survives all those episodes doesn't make you any better than all the people who died.  And of course Ken Miles ends up dying too, which proves my point.  It was only chance that he lived as long as he did.

Jumanji is kind of interesting because the story is very parallel to Sword Art Online, except written in a completely American way.  Five kids are trapped in a game they must clear to escape, and their real lives are on the line.  They learn to appreciate each other by overcoming obstacles together in the game and take that mutual respect with them back to the real world after they win.  This almost exactly parallels SAO, except SAO is infinitely more serious, tragic and beautiful, while Jumanji plays it all off for laughs.  Watching Jumanji made me really wish SAO's books and anime would continue so I could be experiencing it instead.  Someday.