Model Behaviour

I'm off to Legoland this Friday, supposedly to accompany my daughter on her school trip but actually to undertake some serious blogospherical research into miniatures, souvenirs, model villages and all that kind of thing. Expect a miniature photo-essay and a bored eight year old as a result.

All of which reminds me of Fabian Mortitz's Lego recreations of World Cup games over the last month, viewable on The Guardian's website. The Spain versus Holland final is embedded below (in which you gotta love Sergio Ramos' long Lego locks and, equally, Arjen Robbens lack of them in the team line up right at the start). There's something about these recreations and the way they reduce the intense drama, physical effort and virulent nationalism of the World Cup into bathetic absurdity which makes them a kind of necessary antidote.

Which is a sort of fitting send(ing) off for Minus the Shooting, which I understand is going out with a bang rather than a whimper this week after providing some of the most interesting writing about the World Cup online. Giovanni's (possibly final) post about simulations and recreations of football games is particularly good and possibly worthy of some kind of follow up here if I can do it justice. It also made me realise just how much more there is to write on the topic, stuff about team strips, fans, flags and the cultural mediation of football in general. Anyway, go read, and watch.