San Francisco Bay Area sports fans were treated to an unusual double feature earlier this month -- the highly advertised "X-Games" involving street-smart daredeviltry with skateboards, bikes, etc. and, a week later, the semifinal soccer match of the Women's World Cup. Russell Morse, 18, expected to enjoy the former and sneer at the latter but he was wrong. Morse writes for YO! Youth Outlook, a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service.

When a friend asked me what I was doing on the Fourth of July, I told him I would be attending the Women's World Cup semifinals in Palo Alto. He was silent for a second and then he responded, "Oh, the ho cup!"

Sad to say, but at the time I had the same kind of thinking. You know -- I was going to spend Independence Day watching a bunch of chicks with bouncing pony tails taking their inferiority complexes out on a bunch of foreigners, while similarly frustrated adolescent girls watched and shrieked as if they were at a Backstreet Boys concert.

The X Games, held a week earlier in San Francisco, on the other hand, was an event that I could get into. You know -- young guys beating their chests and yelling out words like "awesome!" while doing flips and turns over dirt barriers and slick ramps. I was juiced and ready to go.

How wrong I was.

The Games turned out to be an event crowded with suburban middle school boys charged on Mountain Dew, clad in No Fear T-shirts, each one carrying his own prop -- either a skateboard or a BMX bike. Coming through the gates, I was attacked by loud rock music, dancing girls, strobe lights and countless promotional booths. Even the Marine Corps had a recruiting booth where everyone wore shirts that read, "Pain is weakness leaving the body." It was like being at a live performance of The Short Attention Span Theater.

No one seemed to care about the actual events -- most people seemed more concerned with trying to get on TV or seeing who could yell the loudest, most obnoxious epithet (mostly blends of two one-syllable words -- "you suck!", "rock on!" and "bite me!" were favorites).

Watching the X Games on TV was almost worse. ESPN2 didn't seem to want to film any one event in linear fashion or list the standings in a sensible way. Instead, they adopted the MTV format of quickly jumping from one image to another. One montage cut from a rock climber to a close-up of a tattooed skateboarder yelling at the camera, to a swarm of over-stimulated onlookers identifiable only by the size of their cargo pockets to a Motocross biker smashing his face in a mound of dirt. All of this was backed by the thrashing beat of a Garbage song.

In the end, the X Games made me feel that my generation has been sorely misrepresented. Backwards baseball caps, tattoos, body piercings, jumping out of airplanes, bleached hair, irresponsibility, short attention spans, rock climbing -- might describe the young people attending the X Games, it is not at all a fair picture of the many youth who would rather attend a poetry reading or David Mamet play than thrash and burn on a skate ramp. Unfortunately, you won't see any poetry-readers in a Mountain Dew commercial.

A week later, I headed down to the Brazil vs. USA Women's World Cup soccer semifinal with a cynical and chauvinistic attitude. Within a matter of minutes, this changed to pure admiration.

The turnout was amazing -- a crowd of over 73,000 men, women and children came to see our team take care of business. Plenty of young girls were running around in Mia Hamm jerseys, cheering on the team. I even saw a group of 12-year-old girls feeling one another's stomachs and heard one remark, "Whoa! She's got a washboard!"

Attending the Women's World Cup restored my faith in my generation. Male and female fans alike were engaged in the game with an unrivaled passion. I've never gotten emotional at a sporting event beyond loud yelling or anger, but I was honestly touched by the feeling in the air and the women's hard-earned victory.

In the end, I decided that this whole Y-chromosome/testosterone thing is too hyped. It turns out that the boys have a lot to learn from the girls as far as playing sports and throwing a party.

As for the grease on the wheels -- it's estrogen.