Tapa Update #6 - TIROUUUL!!!

This time, something a little different. This is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down ... well not quite, but here's an entertaining little anecdote about this one guy you might've already heard something about.

Behind the Scenes
The True Story Behind Tyrol Guy

With almost every single skit in my videos you can rest assured that the (often quite random) scenario depicted simply came to life by me sitting at my desk, thinking it up out of thin air. Almost. In some very rare cases inspiration strikes when you least expect. Like last video's Tyrol Guy.

Let me set the scene: A smallish stadium on the industrial outskirts of Wiener Neustadt. It's Austrian Bowl time - Austria's top tier (but still pretty provincially seeming) American Football final. But not yet. First: The Ladies Bowl - Final of the three-team women's league. A clash between Salzburg and - You guessed it! - Tyrol. My pal - Tyrolean by birth and creed - and I sit in the Salzburg fan section. We're not sure why, but whatever. The game goes on for a while and Salzburg gets royally demolished. That's not important, though. What is important: Sometime during the game - could be in the halftime break, in any case nothing exciting whatsoever is happening at this moment - a single voice thunders into the sky behind the Salzburg fan section: "TIROUUUL!!!" My friend and I, we just look at each other. Did that just really happen? And if so ... why?

Fast forward to a few weeks later. The scores of Ladies Bowl and Austrian Bowl are long forgotten, but that heavenly yell still lingers. Chances to yell "Tiroul!" just keep on coming. And as I'm writing the script about the Austrian state flags, I know exactly what to do. Tyrol guy gets a prominent role in the video, and thus, enters into legend, to amuse people for many years to come.

Qomments and Cuestions
"I think insisting on interpreting "gold" as a dark-yellow as soon as it's on a flag instead of a shield is unfair. Why not assume that the heraldic language is being used there too (and many flags are defined with heraldic terms like "pall", "quartered", "fess", etc.). And the bottom stripe of Germany's flag is also called "gold" but represented as yellow."

The problem here is that heraldic terminology only works within the bounds of heraldry. While vexillology owes a thing or two to heraldry, it makes little sense to adopt color names from a different field simply to keep terminology the same. Keeping in mind the history of heraldry, the color terms make perfect sense, even if they might be confusing to those not knowledgable about that history. In vexillology, it makes no sense at all, since flags are not made out of metal and do not share that history. And so, to avoid confusion it's best to just use color names that are recognized and understood pretty uniformly all around the world.

Germany's flag is actually a great example of this. Yes, it's usually referred to as black-red-gold - also in the German constitution - and because of that, it's not uncommon to find people confused when they see the yellow color actually used on the German flag. Thanks to historic reasons, that terminology will stick around and confuse people for a long time to come. It might not sound as grand as "gold", but by simply calling "yellow" by its correct name, everyone would have a more accurate idea of what the German flag is actually supposed to look like. And I'd argue, that's most important.

Interesting Stuff
The Power Broker - The Best Book You'll Never Read

A 1100+ page biography about a 20th century New York public works bureaucrat? - Yawn, right? - Wrong.

Granted, this book is a huge, chonky boi. But it's incredibly entertainingly written and filled to the brim with things you didn't know you wanted to learn, but - like me - will be immensely thankful you did learn. It goes into astonishing detail, but with good reason. More than anything, this book will make you understand political power in a way no news article can ever dream to do. As someone who doesn't enjoy biographies, this biography is one of the greatest, and most important, and most enjoyable things I've ever read. Big recommendation.

That's it. Stay hydrated. Well, not too hydrated. Just, like, drink some water when you feel like it. You don't need an app for that, my guy.

Have a good one!
Tapa