I sang the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium - at a baseball game - which was crazy; there was, like, 60,000 people there, which is a huge deal in America - singing the National Anthem.
When you come out and know you're singing the national anthem, it gives you a buzz and gets you lifted for the game.
Players who take a knee during the national anthem do so to protest injustice across the country - fulfilling a patriotic duty to never accept injustice, but to call it out when we see it.
There is fireworks before the game; there is the national anthem before the game, so that is a huge difference to how it is in Germany: like, after the warmup, you touch the ball 20 minutes later. So that is a little bit different. The league, for example, the MLS is quite a young league, actually, but it is developing.
Most people have to learn the words to the National Anthem before they sing it. I learned these words when I was a child in elementary school, so this is something that's been embedded in me ever since I was an adult.
I've stood for the national anthem ever since grade school. It's a patriotic thing for me. I understand what Colin Kaepernick and others are doing, but it's not for me.
As a former NFL player, I am one American who will have nothing to do with any NFL Team that cannot find the corporate courage to stand for the millions of courageous past great Americans whose sacrifice gave meaning to our flag and national anthem and to the millions upon millions who still dream to come to its free shores.
We're all Vanilla Ice. Look at Girl Talk and Danger Mouse. Look at William Burroughs, whose cut-up books antedate hip hop sampling by decades. Shakespeare remixed passages of Holinshed's 'Chronicles' in 'Henry VI.' Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' embeds the French national anthem.
I've been to New Zealand before, many times. And of course it has a significance to me because I do have something that's very special in New Zealand. I have '10 Guitars,' which is a very popular song, and I understand it's like the second national anthem over there.
I am nervous all the way through the national anthem and the first play. Once I get up and down the court a few times, it fades.
