On about the fourth day of the trip to America, we went to see an 'ice hockey' match, between the home team known as "The Boson Bruins" (FUN FACT: a bruin is a type of bear), which had a stadium full of fans and which, the commentary implied, were a force for good and a shining beacon of civilisation over the 'ice hockey' world, and the 'Calgary somethings' (Can't remember) who had about two fans, wore cowboy hats and were, the commentary implied, evil.
I was a bit annoyed as I walked into the hockey arena, for two distinct reasons. The first was that, on the coach ride to the rink, we watched the remake of Godzilla, and I was really annoyed at the ending. Yeah well done Mattew Broderick and Maria Pitillo, you killed all of this creature's children, then when it got (quite justly) annoyed at you, you ran away and got your mate with a helicopter to blow it up. Wow you heroes. I mean Godzilla didn't even TRY start a fight on you. It didn't eat meat it posed no actual threat to the people other than the fact that it was big and a bit clumsy with its tail. And we were meant to feel happy when they killed it at the end. Fuck that I hope they all get AIDs and die.
The other reason that I was annoyed was that I had just been given a free tshirt. Now usually this is a cause for jubilation and celebration - free things are always good, free tshirts 100 times more so. But firstly the tshirt was made of what I can assume was paper. It was also XL size, and we're not talking British 'Slightly Podgy' XL sizes, we're talking American "I drink a bucket of bacon fat every day for breakfast" XL here, thus the shirt was easily big enough to fit over my head and the four layers of clothing I was wearing. However what really annoyed me was the logo printed on the shirt, which proclaimed that I was now "Property of the Hub of Hockey". HOW CAN YOU BE PROPERTY OF A HUB. It made no sense and it annoyed me. But whatever I still wore the shirt because, to be honest, it was free and anyway I soon forgot my annoyance when I walked into the main rink area itself.
I mean, wow. It's hard to find a decent simile to describe this rink. I suppose if you're American you have probably been in an "ice hockey" rink at some point so I suppose you know what I'm talking about here, but we are British and the most extreme our sporting arenas get are perhaps having some Mozart piped over the rugger at half time or having - on really wild days - a performance from the Queen's bagpipe regiment. But we have NOTHING like this arena. Christ man, it was like being trapped inside a giant pinball table. A giant japanese pinball table. A giant japanese pinball table inside a huge commercial break.
I had already intuited that America is a country that runs on advertisements, flags, and being generally over the top, but fucking hell... literally every seat, every barrier, every player, every surface, EVERY NOUN YOU CARE TO MENTION was covered in huge LCD screens advertising beer bank accounts mobile (sorry, 'cell') phones mcdonalds kfc dunkin' donuts tv stations radio shows more beer coca cola upcoming games applebees pepsi ice cream. Interestingly, I noticed that there were few, if any, adverts for "Get A Life", the latest novel from Nobel-Prize-winning South American author Nadine Gordimer. My ears were bombarded with a thousand different (and equally tacky noises) - adverts blaring, children crying, ten-second snatches of hip-hop flashing, virgins dancing, hard-rock blasting, electro blooping... it was like one of those films when the main character gets the ability to hear people's thoughts and then there's invariably a scene when he's in Time Square and he suddenly hears EVERYONE'S THOUGHTS AT THE SAME TIME and he's like "Stop it stop it" because it's just a dinnish cacaphony of sound pollution and then he starts crying and he puts his hands to his ears BUT THATS NO GOOD because the sound is INSIDE his mind. Like that. And this was even before the players skated on. This was like the warm up noise.
When the players came on, I was rewarded with yet another interesting glimpse into the psyche of the American people (about three seconds in I decided to take an anthrologist's view of events) - they have literally no concept of fair play. I mean, they don't even pretend to be impartial. The home team each came on seperately, each greeted by a personal introduction, their own soundbite, a little fanfare, and raucous fan applause. They got to skate about a bit. The commentator was basically orgasming over them.
Then the opposition came on. All at once, with no introduction, to the gusty booing of the assembled fans. But I mean, I was a little confused. I didn't even know that they were the opposition. I mean, how was I to know? There was no hint. I wish that they'd, like, signposted it more. I dunno, they could have played the Imperial Death March from Star Wars when they came on. Or, like, made the entire rink go ominously red and flashed skulls on the huge video screen? That would have simplified the entire procedure up and really showed me who to cheer for. OH WAIT THEY DID. It was so ridiculously biased.
This interesting one-sidedness continued into the play itself. Every time the Bruins piloted the puck into the back of the net, all the lights in the stadium flashed on and off repeatedly, the American Flag appeared on the video screen, and the commentator screamed "BOSTON SCORE! WOO!" (NB: he actually said woo. It was a properly excited woo. WOO) However, whenever Calgary blasted a puck into the back of the net, all the lights sort of went sad - not sure how lights can go sad but trust me they did - and our commenter was like "Calgary - sigh - score" as those he had to announce that his mother had just been raped by a cactus.
(Sorry I just have to pause here. I'm typing this in the library and a guy wearing a huge mustard yellow and ketchup red checked scarf just walked past me. He looks like such a fucking mug)
It was actually hilarious. Because I consider my political ideology to be 'contrarian' and because I felt so damn sorry for them, I started to cheer for Calgary halfway through. The yank sitting in front of me actually turned round and glared at me as though cheering for the opposite team was a display of bad sportsmanship. He was pretty hefty looking and looked like he could take me in a fight (who am I kidding Dale Winton could probably take me in a fight), so I shut up. Luckily, at that point the game also stopped, so it didn't really look like I had backed down on my contrarian principles. When it restarted again, after like fifteen minutes of adverts, I cheered under my breath (Go Calgary) and nobody noticed.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention; the game consisted, as far as I can tell, of three twenty minute long thirds. We were in that rink for literally two and a half hours. You know how in football when there's a red card or something, they pause the game for a few seconds to sort it out then get right back into it again? Because they know that people come to football matches to watch other (better paid) people play football, yeah? It seems to me that people go to 'Ice Hockey' matches just to watch adverts. They would play hockey for ten minutes, then all the lights would flash and an advert would pop up on the big screen while people ran around the rink with brooms. These ads were so weird - they basically consisted of display the company's logo on the screen next to crowd footage. They pretended that they were just free fan giveaways - "Papa Joe's Pizza wants to award a free seat upgrade to THIS PERSON *show video footage*" and everyone just lapped it up, but I knew better. I. Knew. Better.
This doesn't sound too bad, but turst me: it reached preposterous limits; about halfway through the second third, the lights came up and an advert for, like "KFC's Special Fan" or something came on. "Jimmy Squashinger" boomed the commentator (can't remember the actual name) "Is tonight's KFC special fan: Jimmy has a rare terminal neurological disease that has crippled him and has limited his life severely... SO IN CONJUNCTION WITH KFC WE ARE GIVING HIM FREE TICKETS!!!"
Then the screen showed a shot of Jimmy and his family just hangin' in their seats. They all waved enthusiasically. Well, Jimmy didn't, because he was just some fat slug-boy in a wheelchair. He was pretty much staring into space. SO HIS MOTHER GRABBED HIS ARM AND MADE HIM WAVE AT THE CAMERA TOO.
Everybody in the audience cheered.
I wanted to cry.
I still do. But mainly because I'm hungry. But on the other hand, I made up a new slogan for America.
"America: we go beyond self parody."
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