Grit is Horny, Horny for Hornussen
We need to talk about Hornussen, but first I want to talk about this Hornussen hype video. It has everything you would expect from the production crew that brought you the 80’s Nickelodeon’s “Wild & Crazy Kids.” It has synthesized music, rhythmic cows, several slow motion clips of random things thrown in the air, headbands and oh that wonderful Star Wars opening crawl.
Now that that has been addressed we can talk about the game of games, Hornussen.
The earliest reference to Hornuss is found in the records of 1625 of the consistory of Lauperswil, canton Bern, in a complaint about the breaking of the Sabbath. Two men were fined the sum of 20 francs for playing Hornussen on Sunday.
via Hornussen Wikipedia page
The first reference to my new favorite game in recorded history is a complaint because the boys were getting rowdy on a Sunday? Count me in.
The Swiss-invented farmers golf requires a super long stick often made out of carbon fiber with a block of wood called a Träf at the end. You line up your drive and hit the “Hornuss” (basically a puck named after a hornet because it buzzes while its traveling at 180 miles-per-hour) toward your opponent who tries to swat your Horness with giant goddamn pizza paddles for some fucking reason. If your puck hits the ground you score a point (or something, I really don’t know yet).
This lies somewhere between golf and baseball with, on average, triple the follow through. Ken Griffey Jr. would dominate with that beautiful windmill swing. I’m all in on Hornussen, and I can finally stop attempting to understand the complicated piece of shit game called cricket.
As with anything interesting and fun, Red Bull gave it some wings. Red Bull’s version gets rid of the pizza flipping losers in the Back-40 and lets you long bomb radioactive Hornussi with no fears of killing livestock or kinfolk like you were a safety official at Chernobyl.
