MADELEINE MONDAY

Haven't had the kid on for a while, although I wish it were under better circumstances. Except for baseball, I have little interest in sports. It was a childhood pleasure. We rarely go to games because it's so damn expensive but I took the family Saturday night for the next-to-last game of the season. A major drawback for all of us is the sound technology. The owners whip up the crowd with ear-splitting, thumping pop music we often don't recognize. (I prefer unpopular music.) It's past the point of painful and about drove Ellie mad.

When I was a boy I could get a general admission ticket at Yankee Stadium for what was in a kid's pocket. Hard to believe now, but there were once cheap tickets at Yankee Stadium. The only sounds were cheering and an organ. Seems blissful by today's standards.        

I HEAR THAT TRAIN A-COMMIN' IT'S COMMIN' ROUND THE BEND

As the massive Big Boy locomotive left St. Louis it made a stop Monday morning in the suburb of Kirkwood, a town big enough to have an Amtrak station. There was quite a crowd but I squeezed my way to the front, looking for a clear shot. The backlighting was terrible but this will do. 

As the train pulled to a stop right in front of me it let go a mighty blast of its whistle. Ow! The sound meter on my phone said it was 113 db but I bet the reading would have been higher if the phone hadn't been tucked into a holster. Half a minute of that can cause ear damage according to some web page I found (so it must be true). I haven't experienced the like since maybe the last Led Zeppelin concert I attended.         

Shut Up

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Warning: curmudgeonly post. We do advertise the occasional rant.

Downtown St. Louis can be pretty quiet. On a night when there is no sports event or Lady Ga Ga concert, you can shoot the proverbial cannon down Market Street and not hit anything. Our core has been bled by highway construction and suburban sprawl.

The sports events - baseball, hockey or football - are a big exception. The new baseball stadium is in its fifth season and is mostly nice, except for the horrible noise level. There are huge, unavoidable speakers everywhere. They blast out advertising, up-tempo rock music and pseudo-cheers at a volume that is unquestionably dangerous to our ears (plus really, really annoying). There was a piece in the New York Times yesterday about the damage caused by teens' use of MP3 players and such, and also the added risk of today's high ambient noise level. The Cardinals' audio assault on their fans is irresponsible. I much prefer the Cubs' home, Wrigley Field in Chicago, where the only sounds are the cheers of the crowd and a simple organ.

I've been guilty of plenty of noise self-abuse. When I was in college, my friends and I used to lean loudspeakers into one another, tent fashion, stick our heads in and play Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown at maximum volume. In later years, I've been known to play the Dies Irae from Berlioz's Requiem at a sound level similar to the end of the world that it describes. Now I gave difficulty understanding speech if someone else is talking or there is much background noise. What a dope. Take care of yourself. And turn it down, Cardinals.