Save the Eléfants

Thank you, Ivory Coast, for providing the first archivable don't-record-over-my-damn-tape match of the World Cup. Thanks also would have been in order to your co-worker, Argentina, if they were more willing to play along.

According to U2's Bono and other self-appointed spokesmen for Africa, you are a war-weary place of barefoot cannibals. Without iPods. Thats what we've heard on the TV. And TV is the only source of truth.

You're apparently the first country in a World Cup to have an unstable government with violent factions going at it during cycles of socio-economic anarchy. The other Group C nations, for instance, have never had such experiences.