Despite the best efforts of my 13-year-old son, a monthly subscriber to Soccer America and a devoted fan of English League Football, I’m suffering from a serious interest deficit in this year’s World Cup. And the sad truth is, the American in me is winning-out over my own best efforts to maintain the same level of interest I had four years ago.

Forget, for a moment, that the US soccer team’s chances of winning The Cup are about as strong as Dale Junior’s. It’ll take nothing short of a tectonic shift in the sport (most notably the off-sides rule) and/or the American psyche for soccer to generate anywhere near the interest it commands in the rest of the world.

The most obvious problem is, of course, the lack of scoring; an Unforgivable Sin in a culture increasingly insistent on instant gratification. Adding insult to injury, there’s the all-too-frequent occurrence of games ending in draws. As Rick Reilly (one of our least parochial sportswriters, in my experience)  wrote in his June 15 column on espn.com,  “In the NFL in the past 10 years, there have been two ties. In the first 11 games of this World Cup, there have been five ties. I hate ties. Doesn’t anybody want to win in this sport?”

Lack of scoring, however, is only one element of the more serious disconnect between soccer and literally every sport with a popular following in this country: It simply isn’t TV friendly.

For starters, there’s the near-impossible task of Americanizing the broadcast with eye-catching graphics, stats and human interest stories—since the “action” (a term itself with which many Americans would take issue) only stops for serious injuries. For one, it relegates the match commentators’ role in the perceived drama to the level of pinball-game narrators. And, for another, it eliminates the possibility of all-important beer-grabbing and/or bathroom-visiting during commercial breaks—while minimizing opportunities for highlight-show-worthy instant replays.

Soccer is, overwhelmingly, a game of flow—whereas virtually every popular American sport hinges on The Moment: Fourth down. Ball at the one foot line. Penn State down by six points. These are the moments we’ll discuss between plays, during timeouts, at the water cooler, across the dinner table, on the talk shows (hell, everywhere) for decades—and in American sports, virtually every big game produces scores of those Moments. Not so in soccer.

Moreover, because of that Big Moment structure, the crowds in American sports play a central role in the games’ drama. We love hearing the roar before and after every big play—in the same way that we love our sitcoms filmed before live studio audiences: That way, the folks at home always know when to roar, or laugh, as the case may be.

Soccer crowds have never been particularly punctuative. But this year, the human voice of the crowds is utterly de minimis, under the unsurpassingly-irritating drone of the vuvuzelas (3-foot-long plastic trumpets)—which South African fans blow, without so much as an inhale, from well before the national anthems to well after final whistle. Given their average 130-decibel output (10 above the human pain threshold), numerous players have complained they can’t hear themselves thinking—and (again, the TV issue) it’s forced ESPN’s technicians to dramatically alter the sound mix.

Yes, I understand vuvus are an important part of the South African culture—and since they’re the host nation, I should be sensitive enough to accept them. But the American in me cannot listen to those horns blare without asking, “Seriously, what the hell?” I’d honestly rather hear Mississippi State’s clanging cowbells.

And finally, for me the World Cup has suffered greatly in comparison to this year’s unusually compelling NBA Championship Series—Game Five of which, for instance, produced a third quarter so highlight-filled that even my wife was glued to the set. Except, of course, during the commercials—when we enjoyed every available opportunity to recount the Moments, grab more beers, and run to the bathroom. Because after all, that’s what we Americans like to do.

This column (which was written during the World Cup’s first round, or Group Stage) appears in the July print edition of B-Metro Magazine

June 18, 2010: After months of intense speculation, adoring fans across America are queued-up (some since the night before) to be among the first to own the latest release from Apple. It’s a scenario not uncommon to my generation’s once-upon-a-time frenzy to procure tickets to a Beatles concert. And in many ways, Apple today has become this generation’s Beatles. An analogy with its upside, and its downside.

On the upside, Apple represents much of what is great about America, particularly in its near-unrivaled history of innovation. From the original MacIntosh to the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Apple has literally created new product categories altogether—fulfilling needs that consumers didn’t even know they had, and in the process genuinely improving quality of life for millions.

But it’s not just product features that makes Apple so unique: It’s everything about, and around, those products. From his consistently impeccable sense of product-design aesthetics to his advertising, packaging and product-delivery system, Steve Jobs has created arguably the strongest single brand in the world today. A brand that inspires cult-like loyalty, and consistently rewards its fans with the best products of its kind.

And since that brand is so carefully controlled, we never have to worry about anyone at Apple claiming, for instance, to be bigger than Jesus. Or inspiring millions to experiment with mind-expanding controlled substances.

Then there’s Apple’s recent track record for blockbuster commercial successes—which has been almost as strong as the Beatles’ was. All of which is why Apple (despite lagging significantly behind Microsoft in total sales) now has a higher market valuation than its Seattle-based competitor.

That’s pretty much where the rosy side of the analogy ends. For starters, the Beatles created art. Music that touched the souls of millions, and still resonates with listeners more than 40 years later. Apple makes things. And that new Apple thing you want so much right now? It’s replacing that old Apple thing you wanted so badly just a year or two ago. Forget about that new thing you just bought touching your soul for forty years. The 4g Thrill you’re currently experiencing won’t even last four.

Then there’s the fact that people actually waited all night, sleeping on sidewalks, to buy that thing. When people waited all night for Beatles tickets, they actually got better Beatles tickets. Waiting all night for that new Apple thing didn’t get anyone a better thing. It only got you an extra day or two with that thing. And honestly: How could an extra day with that new thing possibly be worth the pain and inconvenience you endured to get it?

That’s where the analogy gets really sad: What does it say about us, when one of our single most unifying cultural icons is a publicly-traded corporation producing perpetually-replaceable objects—rather than anything of lasting value?

I’ll bet, if you asked Steve Jobs in complete confidence, and promised to cut off your 4g high-def camera before he spoke, he’d admit that, fifty years from now, Apple’s latest Coolest Thing Ever Made will inspire about as much loving hyperbole as the Altair 8800 or the Commodore PET does today.

And yes, I freely admit that the iPad and iPhone are very possibly the two coolest things ever made. But if you asked me, Steve Jobs’ enduring legacy, the accomplishment that we’ll still be talking about fifty years from now, will be his role as a co-founder of Pixar Studios. Where they know a thing or two about touching people’s souls.

This column also appears on the B-Metro website: http://bit.ly/appletoapple
(Special thanks to Kevin Boyd for the photo illustration)

Note: This column was originally posted on the B-Metro website July 15, a week after the column above, and a couple days after the iPhone 4 “dropped call” problem made headlines.

Apparently, Apple Computer is bigger than Jesus. If that intro line made you mad, 1) It should, and 2) The line was a reference to a previous column in which I advanced the argument that Apple has become this generation’s Beatles.

That said, given the company’s initial public responses to the discovery that the iPhone 4g drops calls whenever it’s held a certain way, we are very possibly witnessing the dawn of a PR disaster on par with John Lennon’s offhanded “We’re bigger than Jesus” remark in 1966.

Let me emphasize that Apple’s real problem is not the phone’s design flaw. It’s the company’s response—starting with Steve Jobs’ catastrophically-stupid suggestion for solving the problem: “Just don’t hold it that way.” Yesterday (July 14), I ran a Google search for “iphone 4 don’t hold it that way”. It generated 5,500,000 results. To be perfectly honest, I did not click on all 5.5 million results—but of the sites I hit, not one said, “Great idea! Thanks, Steve!”

Now comes the news that not only has Consumer Reports slapped a Not Recommended rating on the iPhone 4g, but that the Apple.com Forum moderators had deleted multiple customer posts reporting CR’s decision. What’s more, there’s still no indication that Apple intends to fix the problem (although, to be fair, the company is offering refunds).

All of which has a lot of longtime loyalists wondering why they never noticed the emperor’s suddenly-conspicuous lack of clothing—while instantly boosting credibility for crackpots (like me), who can’t tolerate the restraints that come with buying products from consumer technology’s number one Control Freak.

A few of my Jobs-related complaints over the years: He builds the best, and most user-friendly, computers money can buy—then equips them with a never-ending series of infuriatingly typist-unfriendly keyboards. He refuses, for years, to equip his computers with a 2-button roller mouse, because it isn’t as aesthetically appealing as his plain white mouse.

He makes the best MP3 player in the world, but won’t allow it to work with Rhapsody—a music service which enables subscribers to download (to any MP3 player but the iPod) virtually any track in its 750,000+ album library. All for a single monthly fee of $14.99. Wouldn’t that be neat, to fill your iPod for less than the purchase price of 13 songs from iTunes? Not gonna happen.

Finally, there’s the aforementioned iPhone—which you cannot use without an AT+T Wireless subscription. I freely admit that The iPhone is one of the coolest things ever made. But I’ve never heard anyone, particularly former Verizon subscribers, say they loved AT+T’s service—whereas I’ve certainly heard people say they hated it.

All that said, I’ve shared those rants, ad infinitum, with Apple customers over the years—and you know what? They don’t care. Frankly, they shouldn’t care. Not as long as their products’ positives outweigh the negatives. What’s more, they won’t care as long as they perceive that, ultimately, Apple is serving them. Rather than vice versa.

And that’s the real problem with the current iPhone design fiasco: Given the tone of the company’s response thus far, suddenly the issue of who’s serving whom is not nearly so clear.