Before we get rolling here in advance of the Algeria-England match, a little something for your dartboard.
The fellow in this photo is named Neil van Schalkwyk, and he is the self-described "innovator" of the vuvuzela, the ubiquitous plastic horn that has been the number one topic of discussion at this World Cup.
He makes no claims to be the inventor, since people have been blowing horns from the beginning of time, and there have been various sorts of plastic horn-like noisemakers used at sporting events for decades.
But the way van Schalwyk describes it, he had a true eureka experience. While playing soccer for a local under-19 side, he scored a game-winning goal, and noticed in the celebration that followed someone in the crowd blowing a homemade horn made of tin.
"That's the moment that really stuck in my head," he said Thursday at a modest press conference held near the Cape Town waterfront.
Van Schalwyk worked in a plastic factory. He figured that if you could mass produce something similar to the tin horn (that age old business principle - make something that costs a penny that you can sell for a buck), it might catch on with South African football fans.
He worked by day in the factory, and at night perfecting the design.
"I lost a lot of sleep," he said. "So my sympathy is with the people who are now losing a lot of sleep because of the vuvuzelas at night."
Rim shot…
Sales began in 2000, and started slowly, with only 500 units moved that first year. But with the Confederations Cup tournament here last year, and of course now the World Cup, they've taken off.
Van Schalwyk's company claims about 25 per cent of the market, and to date has done about a million dollars worth of business. They hold patent rights only to the name (the origins of the word "vuvuzela" itself remain unclear) when stamped on the product, so there are all kinds of perfectly legal knock offs, and anyone can refer to their horns as vuvuzelas.
But by buying the real thing, you get a nice smooth mouthpiece that won't cut your lips, you get a design that breaks into three pieces under stress (and therefore is ineffective if used as a weapon), you get a sound that has been intentionally cut down from a maximum of 140 decibels to 121. And in some cases, you now get a complimentary pair of official vuvuzela earplugs.
Van Schalwyk is also working with a South African professor who is determined to teach people to play the damned things properly so that they can make a variety of more musical sounds - though the "innovator" is skeptical.
"He has found it very difficult to convince people to blow it that way," he said.
As for the worldwide criticism about the din, and of the fact that vuvuzelas kill traditional soccer singing and chanting, van Schalwyk has a ready answer.
"The vuvuzela is a big part of the game for South African people, and it has been for ten years or so.
"We've got eleven different languages in South Africa. Certain songs are not understood by everyone. But the vuvuzelas are used by everyone. The twelfth language of South Africa is the vuvuzela."
On to football now - the wheels have already come off the mighty German mannschaft today, at least temporarily. Now let's see if the United States and England can dispatch relatively weak opposition in Slovenia and Algeria respectively, and remain head-to-head for the honours in Group C.
It would be easy to see the Americans falling into the emotional trap of a match like this. And it would also be easy to see England finding their form and putting a beating on the Algerians.
But so far, this is a tournament that hasn't always played according to script….