A Space Odyssey

In the aftermath of two very different football matches I came up with a fun way to troll Orient Player during the next goalless draw.

When you go to a game there is always some sense of excitement. Even if you’re there as a neutral. That feeling of nervousness and expectations rub off on some level. This is true even if the match itself doesn’t offer much entertainment. There is usually something happening that keep things interesting.

If you’re at home listening to the game it’s a different story. Distractions abound, and those other things will probably cause you to lose interest completely. One way to avoid this is to make sure to minimize outside stimuli. The problem with this solution is that most people think you’re weird sitting alone in a dark closet with a laptop. Also closets have an annoying habit of messing with your wifi reception.

The Notts County game experienced through Orient Player was one of those drab dull games. A perfect example of why the phrase bore draw was invented. No excitement, no incidents, no goalmouth scrambles or shots hitting the woodwork. The sole word sticking in my brain after the game was - puddles.

I think that the memories of the Notts game carried over to the Port Vale encounter. When the commentary decided to go AWOL during the first few minutes, and Orient as a team started the game on the back foot the Orient Player natives got restless and made their fears known on twitter.

The doom and gloom of the twitter time line during the first 40 minutes of the Vale game was classic Orient. Except possibly for the lack of some FFS Ling exclamations and the fact that folks were moaning about only making the play-offs instead of flirting with relegation.

Russell Slade should be told, in the sternest way possible, that building expectations isn’t a nice thing to do. At the very least he ought to be aware that failing to score in over 120 minutes entitles to the use of a few heartfelt Slade Out! tweets. A Dean Cox goal later the Bring on Brentford messages quickly pushed the negativism out of scrolls reach.

The 2-0 win at Port Vale was impressive in many ways. The pure excitement of the second half, as it was portrayed through Orient Player, more than made up for the non-event that was the Notts game. Nathan Clarke’s first goal, Eldin celebrating the disallowed goals and that rare Robbie Simpson appearance. Breaking a 57 year old winless streak was pretty satisfactory as well.

Speaking of satisfaction I have a plan that should keep things interesting the next time Orient play an inept team on a crap surface and doesn’t seem likely to score. All we need to do, as a collective (I’m talking Orient Player subscribers here) is to turn the texts and the tweets to Dave Victor into a space odyssey.

We only tweet and text lines from the movie 2001. With enough people doing it the effect should be - entertaining. Here are a few examples to get things started.

The 2001 smorgasbord

@DulcetDave Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

@DulcetDave Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

@DulcetDave Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop Dave? Stop, Dave.

@DulcetDave You don't mind talking about it, do you Dave?

@DulcetDave I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.

@DulcetDave Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

@DulcetDave Thank you for a very enjoyable game.