The Kind of Girl Who … cheers for blood

NTKOG #47: The kind of girl who sits back with a beer and one of those big foam fingers, shouting obscenities and screaming for carnage. So. Y’know. A hockey fan.

I am: a pretty peaceful and laid back dude. I mean, aside from that time I punched Muscles.

I am not: a sports fan. Despite forays to a football game five years ago and a Sox game recently, I’ve still never actually sat through a full sporting event.

The Scene: Agganis Arena, with sister, wearing my requisite BU shirt (thanks, sis!) and reluctantly prepared to cheer on the men’s ice hockey team. Although she totally denied my request for a preperatory screening of Mighty Ducks (call me, fifteen-years-ago Emilio!), Sister spends our wait in the will call line and the beer line explaining the finer points of the game. When I’ve more or less gotten this down, she explains a few of the more off-color traditional student-section cheers. Much more to my liking.

Also, because she would kill me if I didn’t mention it, apparently BU’s team is supposed to be pretty good this year. They were like the 2009 NCAA National Champion team (do those words mean things?), after a season so intense that some poor little sophomore actually LOST HIS SPLEEN in an effort to score a goal. Lost his spleen, guys! Apparently he just like hooked the fucker out with his own hockey stick.

So, actually, that plus an on-draft Sam Adams got me reasonably fired up for the game that was to ensue.

And oh my god, you guys. By twelve minutes into the first period, I was complaining that nobody had lost a single tooth, and I’d yet to confirm the compelling rumor that blood freezes before it hits the ice. By sixteen minutes in, we’d scored our first goal, and I was so friggin’ psyched, I didn’t even care about the lack o’ bouncing frozen blood. (Well, I cared a little.)

Don't you hate it when the guy in front of you wears a big hat?

I’m not going to actually walk  you through the dang game, as most like reasonably socially developed people have probably actually been to sporting matches before. But stuff that was totally awesome about hockey:

• Beer. God. Have I become a beer drinker? The guys behind us were so drunk that they kept trying to invent their own multi-lingual rally cries. And you know what? Everyone else was so drunk that it actually kind of seemed like a good idea.
• Face-planting. So, I usually have a pretty refined sense of humor, more prone to wordplay and layered allusions than slapstick comedy. But dude. Dude. Burly guys sliding belly-down across the ice like newborn penguins, before slamming their skulls into boards? HILARIOUS. I may or may not have laughed uncontrollably every. single. time.
• Crowd mentality. One thing I’ve absolutely never been able to do in public is shout with abandon. I mean, I’m one of those people who positively writhes with embarrassment at concerts when the band asks you to clap along. Let alone actually letting my voice be heard in the dang crowd. But for whatever reason, the cruel mass taunting that comes so readily to hockey fans? Totally contagious. Before I’d even had anything to drink, I was already shouting “Ugly goalie!” and “fuck ’em up, fuck ’em up, BC sucks!” with the most rambunctious of them.
• Between-period entertainment. I, um, may or may not have gotten up and danced spastically for the Dance-Off Cam. I definitely did plot to make sure every second date I go on in Boston is to a hockey match, until I get face-time on the too-cute-to-be-real Kiss Cam.
• Brawling. Um, you can just go ahead and call me a Cullen, ’cause I was seriously, seriously lusting for blood. (Also, dude, I am in no way a Twilight fan, but weirdly, that’s maybe not the most inappropriate Twlight reference I’ve made lately. Strange.) You guys! Burly dudes! Swinging sticks at each other! Also, at one point, one of our guys seriously fucked up another player, so in retaliation, one of the dudes from Michigan straight up head-butted one of our players in the stomach, then, when they collapsed in a heap, kept bashing him with his stick until he was called out of the game. IT WAS SO GLORIOUS.

Oh, also, we won in a pretty thrilling last-second victory. Spleen-Free Dude, through some physics-defying miracle, hooked the puck into the net while he was standing like totally right behind the goal. It made no sense. It was amazing.

The Verdict: Lord help me, I loved hockey. Loved it loved it loved it. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d probably get season tickets. (I can pratically hear my sister’s told-you-so dance as I type this.)

Read Full Post »

The Kind of Girl Who … shakes her pompoms (metaphorical pompoms — no, not THAT metaphor)

NTKOG #20: The kind of girl who gets all painted up in her team colors and hoots and hollers them all the way to victory!

I am: indifferent, at best, to organized sporting events. My idea of a good sportin’ time is a Frasier marathon. (Hey! The word marathon’s right in there, guys!)

I am not: into sports, okay?

The Scene: Fenway. Reluctantly.

Last year, in the Travel section of the New York Times, I read an excellent article comparing the best foods at ballparks across the nation. Out of polite interest, spurred on by visions of a Pilgrim Sandwich (turkey, stuffing + cranberry), I casually called my Red Sox fanatic sister and asked: “Hey, do you know where Fenway is?”

Turns out that was a bit of a stupid question. After over a year of intense mockery — “Oooh, see that, TKOG? It’s Fenway Cafe! I’ll bet they have patio seating in the green monstah!” — I decided to prove myself by actually facing said monstah. She scored three tickets to last night’s Sox v. Angels game eight months ago, but had plans to go alone-together with some guy. In a totally unprecedented move, I asked for the third ticket.

“Well, I was just going to throw it away. I guess I could give it to you. Same thing.”

So she armed me with a #15 jersey and a hand-drawn map of Fenway (complete with all nearby bookstores with huge do-not-go-here-you-wimp X’s slashed through them.)

I arrived at Fenway this evening a bit after the national anthem. And I did not figure out how the hell to get to my section until midway through the second inning. Once I actually elbowed my way into the standing room section at the top of the pavillion. I was ready to see some friggin’ ball! Here’s what I saw instead:

With distractions like "the field" and "players" out of the way, I was free to focus on more important matters.

I didn’t actually see the literal baseball until halfway into the sixth inning — and I only knew it was the sixth inning from checking out the ESPN coverage helpfully displayed from a flat-screen TV across from the pretzel stand.

But surely the rabid Sox fans would carry this baseball neophyte through on the crest of their enthusiasm, right? I dreamed of jocularly sloshing foam on some ruddy-cheeked all-Amurikun baseball fans, jumping up to do The Wave together, leading a chant or two (“A pox! a pox! a pox on those who oppose The Sox!”). Instead, I listened in on an old walrus mustache dude trying to pick up a tipsy au pair by asking about the benefits of a season pass to the aquarium. Two conversations over, a tall young man with a disproportionally long torso and rose-petal pink cheeks explained to a trio of rapt girls the intangible benefits of dating a single mom with a special-needs autistic son (“She’s just, like, so guilty all the time. It’s kind of hot.”)

Right. This called for more booze.

While I was actually at the famous Chez Fenway, I figured I’d actually tuck into the famous sandwich, and spent another inning and a half navigating the concessions plaza — a concrete apocalpyse bunker, brimming with fried dough, the heady waft of hops, and restrooms every twenty feet — kind of a glorious shopping mall for the id, all things considered. When I finally found the deli stand (under section seven, Sox fans; don’t ask me what section seven is, though), the giant pimple behind the counter had just served out the last of the stuffing. Forget seeing the game! I couldn’t even get friggin’ food in this cavern of horrors!

So I set about returning to my seat. But, mindful of my difficulty finding the ramp upwards to the pavillion last time, I used a sneaky trick and follow a large stream of people up a ramp by home plate and directly into … a men’s restroom. “You lost?” barked a serious Southie; “Uh, so, this isn’t the pavillion, is it?” I tried to smile winningly, accidentally catching the eye of a man at a urinal. Okay, I take back my endorsement for the restrooms every twenty feet thing.

Once I finally found the proper ramp, I realized a little secret about having crappy seats: dude, just do not go to them. Go to other ones! After a couple of innings of boozin’, apparently no one notices. So I watched an inning or so, actually getting to see the batter for the first time of the night!, marveling over how life-sized the players seemed. Held out for the seventh inning stretch, and got the hell out of dodge(rs country.)

Turns out the game is only marginally more interesting when you can actually see it.

As I was leaving, in the beginning of the eighth inning, I realized: I didn’t know the score. Heck, I didn’t even know which team was winning. I stopped a couple of guys to ask, but they just laughed, so I checked my iPhone instead. Apparently we won. Go team?

The Verdict: Sorry, Pedroia, I don’t enjoy ya. A Red Sox game: definitely not the place to go for an anxious, sports hating intellectual; indeterminately the place to go for a decent Thanksgiving-style sandwich: DEFINITELY THE PLACE TO GO if you’re looking to mack on mothers and childcare professionals.

Read Full Post »