Referees and me. Hmm.
You know me. I’m mostly the agreeable type. Sure, I mutter insults to people who tailgate me and blow past me on the highway – all while snapping chats on their mobiles. But for the most part? Live and let live.
Except for, maybe, refs.
Not all refs, mind you. I’ve had enough run-ins with our striped adversaries to write a post on it. I’d be itchy afterward, though. I don’t really want to get into it. How bad does it get?
I wouldn’t go to Sports Clips for awhile because the stylists wore referee shirts.
I mean, if that shirt keeps you from seeing that blatant offside you kept your flag down for, what’s it going to do for my head when I need a trim?
Every game I try to reinvent myself with kindness toward everyone. Fans of the dodgers and raiders, people who throw cigarette butts out their car windows, and referees. I think there’s probably a patron saint for the lot of them.
1. What’s inside a referee’s flag?
Kryptonite, cyanide and Brussels sprouts, is my guess.
Wikihow says you can put a “bouncy ball” in the middle of the flag material. Seems like a bad idea. I thought they were filled with bbs, presumably minus the gun powder. Wikihow also says to fill a balloon with sand for the center – like a stress ball.
Referees challenge my Zen, and I could probably use a penalty-flag stress ball.
In fourth grade, I wasn’t relevant enough of a player to be flagged for anything. A teammate of mine on perhaps the most pitiful team in football history – the Jackson Park Jayhawks – got called for holding once, negating one of our rare decent plays.
When the referee announced Holding … offense … No. 60 … my teammate had to look down at his jersey to check his number. Dangit, he mouthed, or something to that effect.
Think refs are innocent bystanders just trying to do a job? Watch this.
2. Can an electric fence shock a golf disc?
None of my discs have ever complained – although one got impaled somehow by a branch, and another skipped through a nice pile of dog sh*t at Madison Park. I’ve got your doggie mess glove right here, pal.
To feel the force of an electric fence shock, one must be grounded, to the ground. That’s why birds on an electric fence don’t fry. (Also, an electric fence’s amperage rated around 3,000 volts. The shock you get from a doorknob? Around 5,000 volts. That’s puny.)
Peeing on an electric fence, presumably, would provide quite an interesting shock. Mythbusters proved this to be true. (I’m not including video of that.) But I promise to test out your question about electric fences the next time I see one.
About the golf disc. Not the pee.
3. All the best songs have weird lyrics, have you noticed that?
Gah. Forget rabbit holes. Looking into this topic is more like the holes that worm thing in The Empire Strikes Back would have burrowed in an asteroid.
Camdyn, you mentioned two songs: Turn Down for What and Gangnam Style. Let’s look at the first one first, By DJ Snake and Lil Jon, the second, by Psy.
Proving music does have a rock bottom, this first song is made up of 12 words. Twelve words too many, it turns out. Makers of commercials and movie trailers love this mindless noise as a backdrop to ill-advised badassery.
(Ill advised is the worst kind, you know.)
Essentially, the entire song is this passage, barked out over a bothersome clamor:
Turn down for what?
Fire up that loud
Another round of shots
Basically, it’s saying, why get sober? Let’s go.
As for Gangnam Style, here’s a stanza of lyrics on that one:
낮에는 따사로운 인간적인 여자
커피 한잔의 여유를 아는 품격 있는 여자
밤이 오면 심장이 뜨거워지는 여자
그런 반전 있는 여자
(That might mean the same thing as Turn Down For What for all I know.)
Gangnam is a rich neighborhood in South Korea where rich kids like to party, so actually, it is a bit like Turn Down for What. Psy sings about the kind of girl he’d love to meet (translation from AZLyrics.com):
A girl who covers herself but is more sexy than a girl who bares it all
A sensible girl like that
And the kind of guy worthy of a girl like that, who, incidentally, he says he is:
A guy who has bulging ideas rather than muscles
That kind of guy
So, it’s kind of like a snobby intellectual love song.
I came across a few gems from songs that have weird lyrics. Like in Men At Work’s Land Down Under, when Colin Hay sings I come from a land down under/where beer does flow and men chunder – did you know chunder means to vomit?
The rest of the lyrics I found? They just got grosser and more morbid, even when I tried to find out who Go-Cart Mozart is in Manfred Mann’s Blinded by the Light.
4. How do you say red in French?
It’s rouge, pronounced rooj. (This pronunciation guide says it differently, and a little creepily. Don’t be fooled by the pretty girl on the image. I’m convinced this recording is an EVP.)
As in the song Lady Marmalade, Moulin Rouge, by Labelle (if I have to choose, it’s this one, ahead of Christina Aguilera’s version). Speaking of strange lyrics …
Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada (Hey hey hey)
Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya here (Here)
Mocha Chocalata ya ya (Oh yea)
Creole lady Marmalade
(Not sure, but it sounds dirty to me.)
5. When will we go camping again?
Soon. We should go soon.
It’s so hot though, and soccer starts in a week or so. Can you believe that? I like the idea of a fall camping trip. What do you think? Someplace like McDowell Nature Preserve, where we can fish, too. Where we can be out in the wilderness …
And 5 minutes from a 24-hour Harris-Teeter, a pizza joint and a Target.
When we first got our tent, Hayden, Camdyn and I tried it out in the backyard. It was a blast, and when the air conditioner to the house stopped running for 5 minutes, we actually heard an owl (between booming bass and a couple of motorcycles.)
It was cold – like, 40 degrees.
I froze my ass. I checked on the girls, convinced they’d be frozen too. But they were snuggled together. Their cheeks were toasty as fresh tortillas. So I went back to my icy bunker, wrapped in a thin blanket, thankful the girls planned better than dad.
So yeah. Let’s go camping this fall. We can leave referees and electric fences far behind for a weekend. And songs with dirty lyrics, too.
(Probably.)
Just a dad ... 
Camping is awesome! 🙂 The music of nature, best thing to listen to.
Camping up and away and far from man-made noises is the best, Joy. Nature keeps that golden track on loop too, doesn’t she?
Yes she does!
Even Red Wings fans? Camping is so much fun. Autumn is the best, IMO.
Thanks for the questions.
yes, even red wings fans. it’s been a while since the Avs have been relevant, but disdain knows no timeline!
Yes, fall camping. I would rather freeze a little than boil. I honestly thought I’d die on Independence Day last year, right there in the tent. I saw Barack Obama’s face in the trees, and knew I was probably going to next see the light. But I got better.
Oh gosh, you made me laugh, Eli. Yes… Hockey fans have zero forgetfullness when it comes to hockey. I can’t speak for other things.
I am glad you survived. Heat can make one see some things, as can extreme cold. BTW…I had a dream last night about camping. Maybe it it time…in a couple of months.
I laugh a lot during hockey season these days, LJ. I long for the Avs’ glory days again. A rival will always be a rival.
I stayed up that whole night. It was stifling. Same day years before, we needed coats at night. I strongly advise a camping trip soon.
yeh, what jaded said. and, maybe put the ref in the freezing tent with a thin blanket next time. song lyrics – i usually make up my own anyway, quite by accident,while trying to figure out words that at least end with the same sound i’m making up.
you wings fans. one ref told me he forgot his glasses. i have a song lyric or three for *that*. song lyrics are just suggestions, anyway.
Plan a camping trip, and yes, the French lyrics to Lady Marmalade are not something you want your girls to sing.
Referees and umpires who ignore the obvious remind me of the warnings in the Book of Proverbs about how The Lord does not like those who justify the wicked and persecute the innocent.
They were singing that Kid Rock song about “smoking funny things,” and I called them on it – and Camdyn’s response: “Dad, just because we sing it, doesn’t mean we’d do it.”
I’d like God to rain down a few locusts on a few referees.