Coffee Klatch

Hallelujah! After so many years of having New England as their nemesis, the Indianapolis Colts are finally going to the Super Bowl! And this AFC Championship game was as close and tough as anyone would have hoped for, despite the 21-3 score at halftime. What an amazing second half for the Colts! Now at least nobody can say that Payton Manning hasn’t gotten to the Super Bowl. It’s nice to see an AFC Championship instead of just an AFC South Division Championship. It means so much more. Plus it means going to the Super Bowl! When the game finished tonight, Alaric and I were chanting lines from some recent commercials, like “We’re going to the Super Bowl! We’re going to the Super Bowl!” and “I… get… a Diet Pepsi! I… get… a Diet Pepsi!”
Congratulations to the much-improved Colts Defense, the diligent Special Teams squad, and especially to Manning for finally getting to the Super Bowl. Woo-hoo!!

On a side note, this game was especially important for the city of Indianapolis, which is in the process of building a new Colts Stadium and is hoping to be selected for the next available Super Bowl venue. The city and game had a chance today to demonstrate that they’re able to manage all the details that come with a Super Bowl game.

Also, interestingly enough, the Colts haven’t been in the Super Bowl since Super Bowl V, 36 years ago, when they were the Baltimore Colts. The Bears haven’t been since Super Bowl XX, 21 years ago. Great for both teams and it should be a great game in two weeks!

[tags]Super Bowl, colts, Peyton Manning, AFC, NFL[/tags]

I was feeling the need to blog about this, but thought I’d check to see if I’d written something about this before. Turns out I did, and it was at this exact same point in the NFL season: the weekend of the conference championship games. But my previous post was about a difference facet. Today I’m talking about etiquette.

It is considered rude to sing along to the national anthem when someone else is singing it. The U.S. Code Title 4 Chapter 1 is about the U.S. Flag, how it should be handled and displayed and how it should be addressed when presented when the national anthem is sung. It says how to stand and what to do while the national anthem is sung, but it doesn’t talk about the singing along element.

During the national anthem that was sung before the Colts-Patriots game, not only could you clearly hear people singing along, but the cheering began as early as the “rockets’ red glare.” I think that’s rather rude and an insult to the singer. Why have some special singer come in when you’re not going to listen to more than half of their song?

Was it the custom in times gone by for the audience to stand and sing it together? If so, when did the custom begin of having a guest soloist?

My thought: either be quiet and let the singer sing or else stop bringing in soloists and have the audience sing instead. Both at once is bad etiquette.

To end on a positive note, at least both of the soloists today sang the national anthem with a minimum of those frivolous embellishments that are so irritating.

[tags]national anthem, sports, etiquette[/tags]

After waiting several months, Indianapolis has finally gotten its first real snow of the season! We had about four inches by 9:00 this morning. So the boys are now outside making a snow fort and enjoying the snow. Of course, it’s now lightly drizzling and is supposed to continue doing that off and on today. And then tonight it will all freeze, so commuting tomorrow morning should be really exciting!

Isn’t winter weather FUN in the midwest??