Posted on 07/22/2010 1:41:12 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
If you were into the final minutes of watching a soccer match during South Africa's recent World Cup extravaganza and suddenly you had the overpowering urge to go out and kill somebody, blame the vuvuzela.
...When blown like a trumpet, the vuvuzela produces a loud monotone which musicologists say is pretty close to a B-flat, three octaves below middle C.
...Played by a bunch of rowdy soccer fans, however, a blast from the vuvuzela could strip the chrome off a trailer hitch.
...During the World Cup, TV audiences often heard only the sound of vuvuzelas. Networks examined the possibility of filtering the noise.
Some players believed the incessant noise degraded the quality of team performance. Others remarked that vuvuzelas disrupted team communication and players' concentration during matches.
Apparently demand for earplugs during the World Cup outstripped supply, with many pharmacies running out of stock. One major vuvuzela manufacturer even began selling its own earplugs to spectators.
This week, Tottenham and Arsenal became the first English Premier League clubs to ban the vuvuzela from their stadiums.
A Tottenham official was quoted as saying, "Following discussions with the police ... the club will not be permitting vuvuzelas or similar instruments into White Hart Lane on match days." The official went on to say the club felt the presence of the stadium horn posed unnecessary risks to public safety. What?!!! ...
(Excerpt) Read more at stratfordbeaconherald.com ...
It's like the salesman on the sidewalk offering free brownies and $5 toothbrushes.
Shooped!
I don’t see a dilemma, the things are annoying and used en mas create a hearing damaging decibel level, ban ‘em.
English fans would never allow it, the singing and chanting from the stands are a huge part of the game there.
Final minutes? More like the first 2 minutes. But absent vuvuzelas, I get an overpowering desire to take a nap when watching soccer. Better than feeling violent, though.
OK ... maybe the vuvuzela is annoying. But a risk to public safety? Come on, guys. I smell just a tinge of cultural snobbery here.The vuvuzela is clearly an African innovation and perhaps the English soccer clubs want to keep their game free from "foreign" influence.
Or perhaps the English soccer clubs would rather hear people cheer and sing and boo - you know, hear some diverse reactions, we all do love diversity, don't we - rather that just a constant monotone blare that drowns out everything else. What's wrong with cultural snobbery? We were told that everyone had to listen to those horns in Africa because that was African culture. Fine. So why shouldn't people have to listen to cheers and boos and songs in England because that's English culture?
I organized a 30 piece kazoo band for a NHL game once. We played songs like the old Gillette “Look Sharp”.
A third higher than a tuba? Not even close.
If those danmed things had been been Scottish, they’d have been eliminated long ago.
Don’t you know!!?? Being against the vuvuzela....”that’s raaaacist!”
I coach girls soccer, they were 12 years old last fall. One team last year had a parent that had a horn - perhaps one of these things. It was annoying and obnoxious. They would blow it not only in excitement, but also when one of our girls was with the ball near them. A big distraction to some of the less confident girls.
I suppose if it gets out of hand I can mention something to the ref about it. Parents can not “missbehave” on the sidelines. Hard to prove though that blowing a horn to distract a young player is missbehaving. Swearing at a player or yelling “knock her down” is much more obvious.
The vuvuzela is perfectly shaped to be inserted into one or more of the vuvuzelist’s bodily orifices ...
Except if I yelled “Hey - blow it out your arse!” then I would get ejected! I guess it is just like anything else in sports, the player needs to adapt to it and not worry about it - but it is hard enough to get a 12/13 year old to ignore what they think is “unfairness” on the field and just play on.
Soccer fans need to do something in order to not die of boredom at a game.
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