SPECTACLES: Buenos Dias, Argentina

Succumbing (happily) to a case of World Cup fever

The affliction smites countless millions around the globe every four years, come what may. Duration of the attack: 25 days at its full-blown stage, preceded by weeks of increasingly restless intensity. The symptoms: curious declines in national productivity, chronic absenteeism, peripatesis, extraordinary outbursts of chauvinistic expression. The cure: absolutely none. The malady is World Cup fever, and as teams from 16 nations* descended on host country Argentina last week for this year's play-off for world soccer supremacy, North Americans were more or less on the sidelines: a large portion of humanity...

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