Why is tennis so loud?

I saw Maria Sharapova play Ai Sugiyami of Japan last night. When I think of tennis noises, I usually think of controlled clapping, occasional gasps, and the rhythmic pops of rackets striking the ball. And if the event is in a quiet suburban area like Palo Alto, I expect almost zero background noise. Of course, at a Sharapova match, I would also expect Maria's grunting, but her grunting was the least distracting noise at the Bank of the West Classic. I guess you can't always expect to get what you expect.

First, the train tracks are about half a mile from the stadium, and trains passed at least twice. The rumble wasn't audible, but the horn was. I guess the players can be glad it was a ways away. Considering my expectations, I was a little distracted but not irked.

However, I was a bit concerned when I heard the Stanford "band" practicing. This amalgam of students who think their antics are fair compensation for their lack of skill were practicing a little bit during the match. I give them props for practicing, given that they need all they can get. And they were at least practicing inside, but they were audible from the court. Fortunately, they weren't too loud and didn't practice for long. But I was worried that I would be stuck listening to them at yet another sporting event.

There were also many toddlers at the tennis match. There weren't quite as many as at my family reunions or a daycare, but there were at least three one year olds within ten yards of my seat. And it's great that parents are getting out and doing things. It is. I was just surprised that so many parents took their kids to an event that involves metal bleachers, an expected quietude, and potentially three hours of sitting beginning at 7:30 PM. I don't mind the kids, but I thought the players might.

The biggest distraction was the sporting event--no, not the one I paid for, but the water polo event taking place across the way. This included raucous cheering, shrill whistles, and piercing horns. Every once in awhile, one of these sounds would burst forth from the swimming stadium. I couldn't help but think that Sharapova and Sugiyama would be annoyed by all the external commotion. Then again, they are professionals.

Even though I was often distracted by the many different sounds, the players didn't seem to mind. They were focused and didn't seem to notice the crowd. Sugiyami started out strong and Sharapova, though she seemed to have trouble getting her first in for a bit, crushed the ball and played many a nice drop shot. In the future, I will expect a good game but maybe not library-esque quiet.

Why is the Fourth of July crazy?

I witnessed first hand why setting off your own fireworks is illegal in California. No, I didn’t see a forest fire start. No, I didn’t see anybody get injured—but close.

I spent the Fourth at the beach house of a friend’s family friends. I call them my friends, but I don’t want you to think that friends my age are doing way better than I am—even if they are. Anyway, the house is great because from the balcony you can see the fireworks in Santa Cruz and Monterey in the distance. You can also see crazy people set off their own fireworks right on the beach.

We watched for about half an hour as competent amateurs set off their fireworks on the beach. Then a guy walking past told us that he had bought a thousand dollars worth of fireworks and was going to set them off on the beach pretty close to where we were standing. We were kind of excited to see some close up fireworks. All he asked was that we let him know if the police were headed his way so he could run away. He should have asked us not to laugh at him, too.

A few minutes later, we saw him and a buddy trudge out onto the beach and light one: popping noise, smoke trail into the air, ball of light in the sky. He repeated the actions a second time.

The third time, he decided that instead of running from whatever he lit, he would take three steps, drop to his knees, bend over, and cover his head with his hands as if being bombed. It’s a good thing he did that much because those are the first two things you’re supposed to do if you ever catch on fire: stop, drop, and roll. He didn’t catch fire, but the sequence went as follows: popping noise, pregnant pause, ball of light on the ground. Sparks from a full fledged firework flew about thirty yards in each direction.

At first, we gasped and wondered if he was ok. Since we didn’t see a flailing ball of fire where the guy was, we decided he was fine. We released our collective breath and decided it was then fine to laugh at him. Sometimes idiocy is comical. Two of his first five attempts at fireworks ended with fireworks literally on the beach. After those, the guy and his friend moved their launch spot closer to the ocean. That didn’t do much except make us feel like there was less of a chance of our house catching fire. About half of his attempts during the night gave us a very local display, which was nice because then we didn’t have to crane our necks. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

We were left wondering if he just didn’t know what he was doing or if he had spent that $1000 on fireworks in 1980. Either way, a sane person would have figured out what was going wrong after the first 3 duds or simply abandoned ship rather than risk getting burned on a beach at night.

God bless America and the crazies that entertain us.