PEEVE DU JOUR #14

Yatter Yatter Yatter (Part A)

Is there a law that says announcers and spectators have to yatter, scream and make gorilla noises throughout every event they're watching? Not just sports events on television but awe-inspiring events in nature, too. Why can't people just observe without commenting? STFU!

Some years ago I was in Glacier Bay, Alaska watching 400' high chunks of ice calving from Margerie Glacier. It was a magnificent thing to see. Each calving was preceded by a series of loud cracking noises as the ice then broke away from the glacier and plunged into the bay. The instant there was a cracking noise everyone began yattering.

"Listen!"

"There's one!"

" Here it comes!"

" Here we go!"

Then when the ice broke and began to fall, all I could hear was more yattering.

"There it goes!"

"Oh my God!"

"Look! Look!" as if everyone was not already looking at what was going on in front of them.

I hate it when someone yells, "Look! Look!" at something I'm already looking at.

"Look at the wave!"

"Look at the water!"

"Look at the ice breaking off the glacier and falling into the water!"

You'd have to have a serious Attention Deficit Disorder to miss it.

Even from 1/2 mile away, these calvings are very loud. The roar of the breaking ice crashing into the water, along with the crumbling 400' high towers of ancient ice roaring down behind it, was pretty much drowned out by all the observers screaming, yelling, cheering, pointing and telling everyone to "Look! Look!"

I doubt this happens when one is alone in nature. It's only when we're with other people that we feel compelled to verbalize everything we're observing as if everyone around us needed an announcer to tell us where to look, to explain what we were looking at and what they should do before they could fully grasp what was unfolding before them.

Here's a link to a typical video of a calving glacier I found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doNuav3wSQ&feature=related



Yatter Yatter Yatter (Part B)

Is there a law that says graduates of Sports Announcer College with a BA in Blabbermouthology have to team up with an equally qualified graduate in order to get a job? These guys always wind up being announcers and color commentators on football and baseball games, and boxing matches. And all they do is yatter throughout the event. Yatter Yatter Yatter Blah Blah Blah Yatter Yatter. They interrupt each other, finish each other's sentences and talk about what I just saw as if I were watching the radio.

What do they have against letting me hear a sports event?

The worst of these are announcers at boxing matches. The two or three announcers just never shut up. They tell me what the boxers are thinking, what they have to do to get the job done, what the other guy has to do to prevent the other guy from getting the job done, what his strategy is going to be, what it should have been, and what a boxer has just done. By the time he speaks the words needed to describe what the boxer has just done, the boxer has delivered five or six more punches, so I don't know what the hell the announcer is referring to. And I don't care to begin with. But I have no choice. If I want to watch the match, I have to put up with the announcers.

So I never get to hear the punches getting delivered, that brutal smack of leather to ribs, fist to face, the grunts, the groans, the crowd. No. All I hear is Yatter Yatter Yatter Blah Blah Blah Yatter Yatter.

Wouldn't it be great if one of those sports channels had an "A" and a "B" option for viewers. Choice "A" is for announcers, choice "B" is for no announcers. They'd make a fortune from subscribers who'd choose "B" and save another fortune by not paying for announcers.

Here's a great example of Yatter Yatter Yatter Blah Blah Blah Yatter Yatter at a boxing match:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHqEUX2Vw6k&feature=related

STFU!