Ghost-Riding: Brake-Dancing With Zip Under the Hood (Washington Post)

“It might be the youth trend that most clearly epitomizes an age of exhibitionism. All the elements are there: Cars, music, dancing and the potential to make parents very angry — plus, it’s a spectacle tailor-made for taping and posting on the Web.” The Post may be a little late to the party with this “trend”, but at least they showed up.

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Kickball: the new adult sport?

“If you made it through second grade, chances are good you’re familiar with kickball. Now tens of thousands of adults are forming kickball leagues for grown-ups. The World Adult Kickball Association (which charges players $60 to join) boasts 20,000 players who compete in tournaments and win prizes. “

I’m going to go ahead and whole-heartedly throw my suppor in for a kickball association. I would love to get together with a group of people and play kickball on Saturday after a long week at work. In fact, I was hoping to get some kickball action going at school this past year, but I couldn’t get together enough friends to make it happen.

Could kickball become the new softball? After all, it’s nearly impossible to strike out in kickball and thus makes it so most everybody is involved in the offensive progression of the game. Sure, plenty of people will get thrown out at first… but at least you get the satisfaction of creaming a playground ball with your foot. In the end, however, it comes down to who can kick the home-runs and who can take multiple bases at once.

I’m proud to say that my sixth grade kickball team went to the sixth-grade championships. There were probably ten teams involved and we climbed our way up the d-squash ladder to play in the final game. Unfortunately, we will never know who the best team really was because we got rained out three times. I’m still convinced that my team would have been crowned champs, of course.

Visiting the WAKA (World Adult Kickball Association) website, you can find out if there are leagues in your area. Two pieces of bad news: the website only works in IE and a lot of it is out of date. Still, if you’re interested you can find your way down the right alleys to kickball glory. I’m fortunate to be in an area that has a number of teams. They just better not play when the Skins are playing…

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