The Kernkraft 400

Gentlemen...start your engines!

What exactly is Kernkraft 400? Is is the best NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Race you've never heard of? Maybe in the Nationwide Series? It's not IndyCar is it?

Hell no. And if you get your jollies from watching a bunch of geriatrics (Mark Martin, only 50 years old, really??) dominate a sport where grown men drive in circles for 5 hours and finish at the same place they started, and the most athletic thing you can expect to see all day is a Carl Edwards backflip off the top of his Ford Fusion, then this is not the blog for you. And we recommend you just take your kids to a freaking carousel for crying out loud.

Moving on. Ironically, everyone but NASCAR fans is probably intimately familiar with Kernkraft 400. They just don't know it yet.

To help refresh your memory, take a listen to the video below:



That my friends is Kernkraft 400. What's with this song? Which arena pumped it through the loudspeakers first? And how in sam-hell did it permeate throughout every major US sporting venue from minor-league hockey outfits to major-league baseball stadiums?

For whatever reason, a lot of fans want to claim that their team or school was the first to discover and pioneer this tune, and bring it forth out of the relative obscurity of underground pacifier-laden European dance clubs to the US equivalents of the Amsterdam Ajax, but no one, not even Wikipedia, knows for sure which team got this bad boy spreading like a Baltimore County STD in the first place.

Here's what we do know. The song was written by the German electro-techno-tecmo super bowl band reverently referred to as Zombie Nation. Great. The song Kernkraft 400 apparently means "Nuclear Energy 400" in German. It was released in 1999 and reached the #1 spot on the charts in Greece that same year. Wonderful.

Here's my beef (100% USDA approved to you Mr.Wienerschnitzel). As US sports fans, we can't even get "the wave" going anymore even when the topless token drunk guy is in the front row leading the way during the "kiss cam" timeout, and we need the most dumbfoundingly repetitious and lyric-less song to get us N'rhythm, N'sync, and most of all, N'volved. But as unclever Americans without cheers of our own, it's like we're robots, or maybe even zombies that can't help ourselves from getting up and screaming and jumping along with this unsanctimonious song. Seriously, next time you're at a sporting event, any one, it doesn't matter, observe the riotous reaction that this song elicits from the most fair-weathered of fans. As a Nation, we love it. We're addicted to it. And that's why I hate it.

Check out this amateur video from some Euro Arsenal fan. These Euros even have songs for individual players!:



Now compare that to these Gonzaga hoops fans:



How about the Nittany Lion football fans:



Terps fans, this guy gets a little winded:



Wake Forest, yawn:



The Nats fans were the only ones that apparently had immunity to the song's ill-effects, but you probably couldn't even get them to stand up and cheer for a streaker eluding the authorities out in center field:



You catch my drift. I could go on for hours with videos like these. For Pete's sake we all look like a bunch of zombie paranoid androids!! Is this German song from the 1990's the only thing that gets us stoked anymore? Do we even stand up and sing along during the 7th inning stretch anymore? Do we teach our kids the YMCA by example anymore? Or has the gentle candle flame that is the innocent light in our children's near-sighted little eyes already been extinguished by the sounds of the Zombie Nation? Sheesh.

I think it's a cop out. I think it's unoriginal. And most of all, I think it's dangerous. Check out this article entitled: "UCF to Modify Stadium for Sway"

"Last season, when the song "Kernkraft 400" by Zombie Nation was played, fans would jump simultaneously, producing a synchronized motion that caused the stadium structure to move. The modifications will be made to decrease the synchronized motion that some fans found uncomfortable, Grant Heston of UCF News and Information said."

Believe me, UCF already has enough problems to worry about, not to mention this $400,000 renovation due to Zombie Nation. Maybe Cowboy's owner Jerry Jones can flip the bill, he knows a thing or two about shotty-structural engineering.

Here's the bottom line. If you think your school or team was the first to play this song, trust me, you weren't. Mine was....just kidding, bad joke. If you think you're something else because the only time your oblong butt gets out of its seat is to jump up and down to the beats of this slanderous song, well think again.

If you want to be original, be the only school or team that doesn't let this bastardized excuse for a song into their arenas. If you want to be original, take a page from the European football fans that have their own songs and chants that they sing in unison throughout the entire match and whose "arsenals" never have to worry about getting dirty or wet because those bastards are on their feet the whole time!!

This is Little Boy Blue and I'm 6'2 soaking wet, Peace and Prosperity-

(I have to admit that the baseball player in the video below made me laugh out loud, well played and touche' young sir.)

Does Kernkraft get you out of your seat at athletic events? Do you prefer Kernkraft or the Macarena? Please share your thoughts.