(Face paint, check. Funny hat, check. Catheter, check.)

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It happens every four years. Top-shelf athletes from countries across the globe gather, setting aside their border-based differences for a few perfect days to celebrate that purest, most cherished aspect of athletic competition: product endorsements.

As you probably figured out, we’re talking about the World Cup, the only time European guys manage to run around in public for several hours without using their hands.

Americans call the game soccer, though the rest of the world calls it futbol. Of course, that sort of “you say potato, I say spud” thing happens a lot when comparing us to other nations. I mean, it’s almost like those other countries have a different word for everything. For example, the leaders of many countries call themselves king, but America has Barack Obama, who calls himse … okay, bad example.

Soccer works like this: each team is comprised of eleven guys — ten sadists with multiple oversized hearts who in utero were already wearing cleats, and one mitt-wearing masochist (known as the goalie, or the keeper, or that guy with no remaining convex facial features). Both teams spend ninety non-stop minutes running up and down the field (the pitch) trying to kick a round ball into a mesh net (the mesh net), pausing every so often to fall down and try to win an Academy Award for acting injured. (Best Feigned Agony Performance by a Non-Wounded Adult)

Finally, when the game is over, the game isn’t over. Some invisible official has randomly added several minutes to the clock, so the players have to stay on the field and keep running, while the coaches go find the timekeeper and slay him.

Actually, there are officials all over the place at your average soccer game, though nothing I’ve described so far would lead you to believe it. But during a soccer game, a player will occasionally do something particularly egregious, like use his hand, or suggest a red wine with fish. When this happens, a referee will put down the crossword puzzle he’s been working, trot out to face the offending player, and hold up a red card (yellow if they’re serving fish). The guilty player then performs the obligatory “Who, ME?” dance, like a Congressman caught in a public bathroom stall with a brick of tin-foiled money and three sheep dressed up as Penn State cheerleaders. Too many red and yellow cards, and the offender can get ejected from the game (unlike members of Congress). Then he has to go sit on the team bus and get gang-adored by fans.

If you’re not familiar with futbol, it can admittedly sound like an odd sport. But then, we live on an odd planet, a place where fast food chains will take rib meat, cut out the rib bones, then machine-stamp the meat to look like it still has ribs, and customers buy the nasty things by the mcMillions.

And the world is full of candidates for “Most Psychotic Sport.” In Afghanistan, tribesmen play a game called buzkashi, whenever they’re not actively focused on turning all their women into Sylvia Plath. In a buzkashi match, which can last for several days, Afghanis on horseback basically race about slinging a dead goat at any nearby PETA evangelists. Not that that’s a bad thing.

And speaking of odd sports — in Mongolia and Tibet, the Mongs and the Tibs make a habit of racing yaks, which could be a humor column all by itself, but we really need to carom back to our original topic. (I just mentioned the yak racing to pester PETA.)

The first World Cup was held in 1930 and was hosted by Uruguay. (national motto: Nobody exports more frozen bovine meat. Nobody.) Uruguay is a South American country near Paraguay (literal translation: two guays). Sadly, though, only a handful of countries showed up for the first Cup, because it was a really long drive from Europe, and Al Gore still hadn’t invented Frequent Flier Miles.

Since 1930, the World Cup has been held ever four years, except for a short break during World War II when FDR rationed Nike endorsements.

This year’s competition is being hosted by Brazil, which is also called Brasil, but only by the people who live there. Russia will play host in 2018, assuming Vladimir Putin can find a shirt; fours years after that, Qatar, a small Middle Eastern country paved about twelve miles deep in American money.

(For some reason, Qatar is variously pronounced kotter, gutter, and ka-TAR. But when you’ve got that kind of money, that’s how things roll. By the time the 2022 World Cup rolls around, the country could be calling itself Sylvia.)

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the current World Cup is only about half over, so there’s lots more socfut to see. And the games are not without their share of transnational drama, either; for example, the match between Switzerland and France, which almost didn’t happen at all. At the coin toss, Switzerland refused to take a side. And then, during the Swiss national anthem, France surrendered to the band.

Then, in a nail-biter between Iran and Afghanistan, there was a slight delay when the Iranians brought a tactical nuclear warhead onto the pitch. But tensions subsided when Iran insisted the weapon would only be used to generate electricity.

But no matter where the World Cup is played, or how many ways people misspell football, it’s simply gonna take some time for Americans to adjust to it all.

Here’s a perfect example: during the match between Honduras and Ecuador, Honduras scored…and nobody cut to a commercial. Then, almost immediately, Ecuador scored. And still, no commercial break.

Weird. How do futbol fans ever decide which car to buy?