Why didn’t someone think of this before? Kicking & Screening festival on deck this week

Alternate headline: "Because whenever there’s a chance to mention Victory, you just have to jump on it"

We interrupt the regular content on this dreadfully déclassé blog – which is generally all grass-stained and smelly due to grime and boy sweat and frequently dragged down with naughty, naughty words – for something more refined, a more well-bred entry that says "dinner party" rather than "kegger."

We’re trying to class up the joint.

So today we’re talking about Kicking & Screening, a Washington, D.C., film festival where the beautiful game keeps some genteel company with the well-mannered cinema crowd.

That’s a fancy way of saying "film festival of soccer movies." It’s this week; more info is here.

Some of the films do look a little better than Victory, a punch line from the 1980s, where fans today still debate over what which was worse, Sylvester Stallone’s acting, Sylvester Stallone’s inability to play soccer or a premise as flimsy as soaking wet newspaper.

Me? I’d love to be there to see The Damned United, Peter Morgan’s adaptation of David Peace’s book about Brian Clough and his clumsy, failed reign at Leeds United in the early 1970s.

I’d also be stoked to check out Les Yeux dans les Bleus, a doc about France’s victorious run in the 1998 World Cup. (A special time for me because it was the first World Cup I covered on European soil and because I met the woman I now live with that summer in Lyon.)

Rumor has it the current version of the Kicking & Screening festival took root when multi-media soccer property Greg Lalas went on a blind date with Rachel Markus, the festival’s founder and organizer, who had come oh-so-close to getting it off the ground previously in London. (And proving once again that men will do anything – anything! – to curry favor with the fairer sex. I mean, this dude is helping putting on a whole festival to impress this woman. G’ luck, my man. Hope this seals the deal.)

Greg’s a good dude. He’s also a smart egg and a heck of a writer. So, if Greg is involved it’s probably worth checking out.

I suppose I could go to the fancy-pants analytics program attached to my blog and discover exactly what percentage of you are within a train ride of the festival. On the other hand, even if you can’t make one of the screenings, it’s good to be aware of such things as we all support soccer. So even if you can’t get there, if you see Greg or one of the other organizers on the street, give ‘em an "atta boy," would ya?