(via LikeCool) Check this “Refait”, an urban remake of the classic 1982 World Cup shootout between Germany and France. The intense (and I would imagine highly emotional for a Frenchman) moments on the field were meticulously reconstructed – down to exact gesticulations – on French city streets by Pied La Biche. Pretty far out stuff, the deeper meaning of which I don’t exactly get.

The Canucks usually make any reference to sports fan craziness easy. We have our share of yahoos right here at home. But I wonder if our affection for hockey could even come close to matching the mass hysteria that seems to grip the rest of the world every four years. The World Cup incites either joyous celebration or abject despair on a level that emotionally crushes what our regional enthusiasms we might muster. If your national side is playing, until the final result there is no middle ground in the psyche between fear and hope. Ordinary people are suddenly imbued with a strength of feeling that could power rockets and make therapists twitch.

Truly, I can’t imagine a Canucks fan doing something like La Biche’s project. Can you see any Vancouverites spending day after day recreating the 1982 finals against the Islanders? No. That probably has something to do with ice skates and concrete not being best buddies (and the fact that we lost), but I’d wager it’s mostly because Canadians surrendered their blood-boiling patriot genes shortly upon arrival from whichever far off place they came from. I’ll don a Gerrard jersey and wear my South African colours, but no matter how loudly I cheer my cousins and old friends have got the deeper better of me.

Must be fun. Sniff.