 matches to be covered in just 90 minutes, and a third of that running time will probably be adverts.
1 MIN : So obviously we get a couple of montages before we even see a ball being kicked. Surely Matt Smith should have just appeared on screen and yelled ‘AAARRRGGGHHH! FA CUP!!!’ and then got right into it.
3 MINS : We start with non-league Macclesfield v Cardff City. I’ve got my suspicions that this probably isn’t going to be a straightforward away win for the Championship leaders.
8 MINS : Thought as much. A couple of Matthew Barnes-Homer goals win it for the non-leaguers. Double-barrelled eh? There’s posh. Manager Steve King is well-groomed and can both whistle AND bounce. He’s a kid on the way up.
10 MINS : We whisk over to Wolves’ visit to Luton Town, with that famous stand at Kenilworth Road that they made solely out of executive boxes. Wonder how much a season in one of those costs? Or are they acting as temporary emergency housing for the local homeless?
11 MINS : To no one’s surprise, it’s another upset, a 1-0 Luton win. Wonder if Nick Owen can still do bouncing and whistling…
13 MINS : We’ve got Gordon Strachan and Andy Townsend joining Matt Smith in the studio, and they’re poring carefully over the first two matches. Dressing room celebration footage – CHECK. The phrase ‘David and Goliath’ – CHECK.
14 MINS : Some adverts. Phew. This is high-octane stuff.
18 MINS : Brighton v Newcastle next. Again we all sit, arms crossed and say, ‘Okay, we know who’s going to win, now show us how, even though we don’t really care all that much’.
23 MINS : That’s all done and dusted in five minutes. A couple of Brighton goals, Ameobi’s red card, a post-match huff from Pardew and some gibber from Gus Poyet. Astounding pace.
25 MINS : Townsend calms things down with some monotonous blather – so that’s why he’s here. Meanwhile Matt Smith does a snorting laugh thing at the idea of Newcastle fans travelling back the full length of England after their side’s crappy display. They’re bound to appreciate that.
26 MINS : We get a barrage of goals from Nottingham Forest v Oldham. ITV don’t bother showing the score in the corner of the screen and it’s too confusing to be able to cope with. Think it finished 17-M (blue).
28 MINS : Time for a round-up from a few games involving Premier League teams. Bolton v Sunderland seems to have been filmed using cameras from 1990.
32 MINS : Darren Bent scores for Aston Villa. Who says there’s no romance in the cup? The rest of it was just a blur though.
34 MINS : More adverts. I take it all back. I love Match Of The Day really. I want it to come back. I don’t like different things.
38 MINS : Southampton v Chelsea. An all-Premier League ‘clash’ – boring. The Saints’ guest keeper this week is a statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel that has had 400 hazelnuts glued on to it. At the other end, Petr Cech and his Sex Hat are nowhere to be seen.
39 MINS : The commentator describes Demba Ba as ‘a ready-made goal machine’ as he bundles the ball into an empty net from nine inches out. Bit extreme perhaps.
43 MINS : 5-1 to Chelsea and it’s all about Frank Lampard who dazzles by earning a penalty that wasn’t actually a penalty. Meanwhile, the longest period of footballing mourning commences as the intensely annoying midfielder effectively starts working his notice period at Chelsea. Meh. Massive meh. Team game, yeah?
46 MINS : West Ham v Manchester United is up next, as shown live on ITV earlier. Which means double Townsend, as he was on analysis duties for this one.
49 MINS : Joe Cole isn’t ageing well. If you plucked him out of this match and put him in the café of a zoo, replete in full kit and everything, there’d be a queue of people going up and asking him where his carer was.
50 MINS : Another classy goal from Robin van Persie. He’s becoming a bit boring now. A scuffed tap-in from him would be refreshing.
51 MINS : Sam Allardyce seems keen to add David Beckham to his Dad’s Army. Who else – Matt Le Tissier? Ray Wilkins? Jack Charlton?
53 MINS : Ad break. I’m dizzy.
55 MINS : Bugger – it’s back already. We’re covering plucky Hastings United and their 600-mile round trip Middlesbrough. ‘Could an upset be on the cards?’ ponders our reporter. Erm, look mate, we’re an hour into the show – they’re going to get spanked aren’t they?
58 MINS : Yep. 4-1. Safe trip home, everyone. Treasure those memories, eh?
59 MINS : That amazing 1987 final between Spurs and Coventry is recreated at White Hart Lane. Sort of. The home team have it all wrapped up by half time and the ‘Magic Of The Cup’ is sadly lacking.
64 MINS : There’s a huge chunk of highlights, with goals flying in all over the place and no real sense of context. Suddenly, during Peterborough v Norwich, the score appears in the corner of the screen. They’re toying with us.
65 MINS : More adverts. I use the spare time to argue with a Christian on Twitter about an unrelated matter.
69 MINS : I note that ITV2 has a new panel show with Joe Swash as one of its captains. Can’t help thinking he’d be a welcome addition to the ITV FA Cup panel as well.
70 MINS : We’re back. Hull v Leyton Orient is ruined by a cameraman whose lens is stuck on ‘extreme close-up’. Meanwhile, Leeds and Birmingham play out a 1-1 draw. Fans of both sides will be delighted at getting to do it all again in ten days’ time.
74 MINS : Andy Townsend struggles to feign interest in Blackburn’s three-win run while Gordon Strachan gets the first name of Southampton’s manager wrong. We’re 80 minutes in and everyone involved would clearly be happy if a cyanide pill was offered to them at this point.
75 MINS : More adverts? Really?
79 MINS : We end with a bundle of the matches that, let’s be blunt, involved the teams that no one gives a toss about. It’s just a kaleidoscope of colours, goals, happy fans, sad fans, and a ground which seems to have a car park behind one of the goals. Tomorrow I’ll read the third round results in an attempt to try and work out what just happened.
85 MINS : It’s over. I feel like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka’s factory. I’ve just chewed a stick of gum that made me experience the rush of 29 football matches at breakneck speed and now I’ve turned into a giant blueberry.Aaron had come to realize he needed bars. They provided him with a type and level of socializing he craved. It was a need he’d as soon be rid of, but needs didn’t work that way. Aaron knew how to operate in a bar. Not in the sense of meeting women. The more any interaction moved towards a sexual encounter, the more Aaron’s ability to operate broke down. He worked well on the broad and shallow scale bars provided; myriad points of light interface, each easily broken off in favor of another. He could move from point to point, gathering or dispensing information. The data that moved back and forth in bar chatter was unfraught, and behavioral expectations were simple enough to figure out. Socializing in a bar was not unlike the web surfing he used to do late at night, back in college. He controlled the levels of interaction, he flitted from one site to another, drawn by information and the willingness to exchange it. The web gave up its information because it had been programmed to do so. People chose to give up little bits of themselves into the social world, to one another. Partaking in the commerce of these microexchanges, even while aware of it as commerce, had a humanizing effect on Aaron. It was a comfort to him he’d found a way to satisfy it in the thrum and rush of crowded bars. And the Real World, as much as he might hate to admit it, was his bar.
The Real World was different from most of the bars that sprang up during the Boom in that it was geared mostly towards techies. For the grand opening, flawed bits of code had been sent as invites, indecipherable to layout experts and content providers. With a series of deft fixes by the recipients, the code opened into an elaborately designed invitation. The bar felt sleek and sparse until you needed something, at which point you realized it had been close at hand the whole time. There