Free Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry

wide-open, unmarked road, with Brazilian motorists weaving happily all over it at 70 miles an hour.
    The game day weather was beautiful, and a big crowd was gathering by a scenic lake next to the stadium. Sophie was wearing red, white and blue clothing and face paint; I was wearing a USA team shirt. There were a lot of Belgian fans on hand, and I made a sincere effort to hate them, but they were annoyingly non-annoying.
    It turns out that—speaking of Hellgium—the Belgium team is nicknamed the Red Devils; some of the fans were wearing devil outfits. One middle-aged Belgian guy had painted his face bright red and was wearing an all-red outfit, accessorized with a red cape and giant devil’s pitchfork. People were lining up to get their pictures taken with him. Despite my long-standing hatred for Belgium, I was one of those people.

    â€œOK,” he said. “But this is the last one. I need to start drinking.”
    (It turns out that the Belgians speak English better than we do, which is another reason to dislike them.)
    We sat in a heavily pro-USA section, right in front of a large group of flag-bedecked twenty-something American fans who spent the entire game jumping up and down and bellowing songs and chants, as they have seen fans of other nations do. I admired their spirit, but at times it seemed kind of forced and wannabe-ish, like when one of those bands made up of wealthy white middle-aged orthodontists performs a blues song.
    Also some of the American fans’ songs were, frankly, lame. They kept singing one to the tune of the 1963 hit by Little Peggy March, “I Will Follow Him.” Unlike the twenty-somethings, I am old enough to remember when that song was a big hit. I hated it then, and I still hate it, because—this is an objectively provable scientific fact—it sucks. It sucks even more with the strikingly unimaginative lyrics that the soccer fans have given it, which are:
    We love you! We love you! We love you!
    And where you go we’ll follow! We’ll follow! We’ll follow!
    â€™Cause we support the U.S.! The U.S.! The U.S.!
    And that’s the way we like it! We like it! We like it!
    Seriously, USA soccer fans? “And that’s the way we like it”?
    The thing is, there are many popular 1963 recordings that would make much better soccer songs than “I Will Follow Him.” Take, for example, the Angels’ 1963 classic hit “My Boyfriend’s Back.” I came up with these alternative lyrics in mere seconds:
    America’s back and we’re better and bolder
    Hey la, hey la, America’s back!
    So you better not try to bite us on the shoulder
    Hey la, hey la, America’s back!
    Granted, that’s a tad Uruguay-specific. But it’s still better than “And that’s the way we like it!”
    I don’t mean to be too harsh on the American fans. They made a genuine effort to be original in their chants against Belgium, which included this one:
    Your waffles are good!
    Your team is shit.
    Unfortunately, this was not accurate. The Belgian team was very good—better, overall, than the USA team. But the Americans had Tim Howard, who proved that day that he was the best goalie in the 2014 World Cup, and maybe the world, as well as clearly not a biological human being. He made a record 16 saves, some of them ridiculous. If Tim Howard had been aboard the
Titanic
, the Atlantic Ocean would never have gotten in.
    So after 90 tense minutes it was 0–0, which meant the teams had to play 30 minutes of extra time. The Belgians finally managed to beat Tim Howard, scoring a quick goal, then another one. Two goals is a big lead in soccer, and the spirits of the American fans were sagging. But then, with 13 minutes left, the USA scored, making it 2–1, and the American fan sections exploded.
    The last 13 minutes were nonstop, sphincter-clenching action, as exciting as any game I’ve ever seen—the U.S. team taking