My sons are athletes. They\u2019re even good athletes. <\/p>\n
Given one-half of their genetic makeup, that\u2019s an astonishing fact. When I used to play right field in little league, I got bored and sat down during most of the innings. In contrast, my twins are the stars of their competitive soccer team, which often leads me to wonder who their real father is.<\/p>\n
As athletes, particularly soccer athletes, my boys are following the World Cup with rabid interest. The USA\u2019s tie with England was cause for celebration, and they sit and watch the games on the only channel we get that carries them \u2013 channel 12, the Spanish-language channel that includes rather interesting, if incomprehensible, Budweiser commercials. <\/p>\n
Real Salt Lake, the Major League Soccer champions, play at a stadium about five minutes from our house, and we try to attend as often as we can afford. We were at a game about two weeks ago where Real beat Kansas City by 4-1. (Because Real scored three goals in a single game, each of us got a coupon for a free Burger King croissanwich! Good, good times!) <\/p>\n
I enjoyed watching the game, mainly because there are no time outs and the whole thing is over in less than two hours. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll tell you what I don\u2019t enjoy, though \u2013 the drums. <\/p>\n
Over on the south goal, groups of die-hard fans spend the entire game pounding on drums. Lots of drums. Loud, big, thumpy drums. The drumming begins at the beginning and ends at the end, with only a brief respite during intermission. Except these drummers decided to walk around the stadium during intermission and parked themselves directly behind our family and pounded like mad. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not spirited or exciting. It\u2019s not pleasant. It\u2019s just frickin\u2019 LOUD. <\/p>\n
Why? Dear Thor, WHY?!!!<\/p>\n
I thought of this again this morning as I read the Drudge Report links to articles about the Dr. Seuss-named vuvuzela horns that are destroying the World Cup. Patrons are calling it the \u201cworst sound in the world.\u201d Apparently, France is saying that the vuvuzela noise is the reason they lost. I don\u2019t doubt that, even though it\u2019s French people saying it. Even the name is annoying, at least on paper\u2013 I mean, who wants to type vuvuzela? <\/p>\n
It\u2019s fun to say, though. Maybe people should just chant \u201cvuvuzela\u201d instead of blowing on those infernal horns. <\/p>\n
Bottom line: I empathize. Empathy is my middle name. Except that soon, I\u2019m going to change it to \u201cvuvuzela.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mysons are athletes. They\u2019re even good athletes. Given one-half of their genetic makeup, that\u2019s an astonishing fact. When I used to play right field in little league, I got bored and sat down during most of the innings. In contrast, my twins are the stars of their competitive soccer team, which often leads me to ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}