Real Salt Lake: tedium in shorts or boon to area?

Chuck: It feels good to be alive. I'm considering donating a slice of my DNA to science as evidence of reincarnation because one Saturday not that long ago I'm sure I died of boredom from watching a ReALly awful soccer match against FC Dallas.

So I won't be attending Saturday's home finale against the Houston Dynamo, which astonishingly is still only the next-to-the-last game of Real Salt Lake's season-that-never-ends. Barring hideously bad luck — like qualifying for the Major Soccer League playoffs — Real won't bring closure to its 36-game odyssey launched waaay back on April 2 until Oct. 15 at Chivas USA. By comparison, baboons give birth faster; Major League Baseball played its entire 162-game schedule with time to spare.

Lest you think I'm too harsh on the worldly cousin of American-style football, you should know this wasn't my only near-death experience this season at the corner of Rice and Eccles. I also attended a "thriller" against the Colorado Vapids, which ended scoreless after regulation before RSL eventually lost in overtime.

Like 90-minutes of regulation tedium wasn't enough?

Now soccer baron Dave Checketts, impersonating Ronaldo on a breakaway, has skillfully maneuvered through a cadre of Wasatch Front politicians and is on the brink of securing a big wad of taxpayer cash and prizes to build a state-of-the-art soccer crib in that soccer hotbed of Sandy. This for a team few care about in a sport most are indifferent to.

Isn't that what we built the E Center for?

I give Baron Checketts credit for skillfully playing Sandy Mayor Tom Dolan and Utah House Speaker Greg Curtis, who represents Sandy. Both apparently want an edifice to sufficiently memorialize their greatness as political deal-makers. And Checketts must have copies of receipts of Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon filling up a 38-foot-long Itasca using a county credit card, or something. How else can you explain one of the greatest political flip-flops of a Democrat since John Kerry?

Amy: Dude, where is your vision? Having this soccer stadium will benefit the community in more ways than Checketts can count his money. Have you forgotten the fight over light rail? The Gateway? There are far worse ways to spend our tax dollars than investing in something that will benefit us socially and economically. Businesses get all kinds of tax breaks because of the benefits to surrounding communities. The arts also get substantial financial taxpayer support, and every time I go to a play or concert I'm grateful for it.

You call them manipulators; others call them visionaries.