April 18, 2007 - Wednesday

April 18, 2007 - Wednesday
i'm into...hockey?

Last night I watched a hockey game.

It was the Ottawa Senators vs. the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Now, I know that manly men of the masculine persuasion are expected to like sports. I also consider myself to be a manly man of the masculine persuasion, but why is it I can't seem to get into them?

When I was living in Europe I was surrounded by people that were obsessed with football ('prancington' in the North American vernacular). Many of my English friends were hard-core and could rattle off obscure game statistics dating back eight decades like an autistic savant. And God forbid you openly support the wrong team because the last thing you'll see will be the sharp end of a broken beer glass right before it encounters your surprised eyeball. The problem was, it's a sport that looks –to me– like a bunch of girly-men throwing themselves onto the ground in bad renditions of fake melodrama all over a big green field. There also seemed to be a ball involved, but rarely.

I managed to confound some of my football obsessed friends with this perception because, not only did I not support a team, but I found lint to be more interesting. As it turns out, giving back equal amounts of total disinterest to someone's raving preoccupation unhinges people. Often, when I cut short a football-oriented monologue with indications that I have no idea what the person is talking about, their faces read like an essay on befuddlement: He doesn't like football? How can this be?

Should I attack?

Football dementia affected the day-to-day lives of many. This can be illustrated by the hordes of men who adjusted their hairdo (heavy emphasis on 'do') into half-assed chicken combs in deference to David Beckham (a famous English footballer who is known in North America for being married to, what appears to be, an ostrich sucking a lemon). It was a strange thing to see grown men proudly sporting the exact hairstyles their mothers had given them as toddlers in their childhood bathtub for a lark. Well, if the last of the Mohicans ever feel slighted by colonialism all they have to do is take a glance across the Atlantic and know that revenge, in part, can be served in style (so to speak). This is actually something that blacks figured out a long time ago and have been inflicting on stupid white people ever since.

In some parts of Europe, particularly the parts that smell like olives and/or paellas, they occasionally kill the actual players of the game in fits of rabid disappointment. In other parts, fans ecstatically kill themselves through shear asphyxiating numbers. If you combine the fatalities in Glasow, Cairo, Beunes Aires, Bastia, Hillsborough, Ellis Park and Anfield the amount of people that have died makes the Spanish Inquisition look like the Spanish Open-Ended Discussion.

What drives people to this level of total brain-damage?

And what's with the connection between being a sports fan and being manly?

I say this because I have noticed that men tend to question the sexuality of other men that do not like sports. Often my friends in Prague –in order to assure themselves and strangers of my heterosexuality– would explain away my disinterest in football by saying, "Oh, he's Canadian. He likes hockey." This, from the same guys that love to watch men running, panting, sweating, and screaming in outfits that would look much better on a girl. I mean knee-high socks and shorts?

Come on.

Okay, I admit to some truth in the Canada/hockey thing. I mean, I am Canadian (though barely), and Canadians love hockey. Invented in Canada and dominated by Canada, it is Canada's national sport. Canadians abroad, when they're not being mistaken for Americans or lambasted for lynching baby seals, are inevitably asked, "So, you like hockey?" and the answer is an unequivocal "Yes!"

And it's true, Canadians are goofy over the game. They'll paint their faces with their team colours and rows of them will each write a letter on their pale chests to spell out 'HE SCORES!' Of course, several beers and many trips to the toilet later, it'll be: 'SECS HOER!' This level of goofiness is no different from football in most of the rest of the world. The key difference being, we don't kill each other or the players over it –we let the players do that to each other. We also don't have people streaking a hockey match. Nudity and ice don't mix unless you're at the morgue.

The similarities between the two games are as follows:

Many men are moving about
They fall over sometimes
They play in a large rectangle with walls
They chase a thing
They try to put the thing in a netted area
The netted area is guarded by a man with crazy gloves
They are all controlled by other men with stripy shirts and whistles
The stripy men frown on any behaviour that would make the game more interesting
Everyone keeps their testicles protected

And that's pretty much it. In hockey, the men glide around at incredible speeds on skates. In football, they jog around on Addidas. In hockey, the men use large sticks on each other and the thing that they're chasing. In football, they use words and cheap theatrics on each other and the thing that they're chasing. In Hockey, when someone gets clobbered, they fall down. In football, when someone falls down they should get clobbered. That last statement I truly feel. Nothing bothers me more than when some mincing ponce collapses to the ground clutching his knee when it was clear that nothing more than an errant fart from another player could have inflicted his grievous injury.

Ah, you see? Now it sounds like I'm just denigrating football in favour of hockey. Like a true Canadian would. But listen: I think hockey is okay as far as sports goes; It's fast, hard-hitting, basic, and interesting to watch. But I, in no way, harbour an unhealthy preoccupation with the thing like many of my compatriots. Ultimately it's just a fucking game; a hell of a lot more interesting than watching golf, and a lot more coherent than cricket.

It's very difficult for me to dredge up any interest at all about sports that don't directly involve me in some way. For example: I'm actually playing it then and there. Take baseball: I actually enjoyed playing it in my youth. Catching things, throwing things, running and swinging a large stick appealed to me (A bit incongruous, actually, because I don't like playing sports in a team. I'm not what you'd call, a 'team player'). But, I will fully acknowledge that watching the fucker is like having a hatpin slowly inserted into your ear. Similar things could be said about watching golf (getting kicked in the balls by a yak), curling (being hung by your eyelids from an operating ceiling fan), and volleyball (being beaten on the head with a whale tongue).

As a matter of fact a better question to ask is what sports do I enjoy watching?

Aside from boxing, road rallies, and amateur female wrestling…well…none.

I do know that watching sports is made much more interesting by listening closely to the running commentary:

"Whoa, he really put his stick up into the crease!"
"In a man-on-man situation, you don't want to be caught with your pants down!"
"Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like they've got eleven Dicks on the field!"
"He knows that if he wants to take him from behind he's got be sneakier, and a lot faster!"
"If he leaves himself wide open you know someone is gonna come along and score!"
"He's a young guy, but he's strong, talented, and a great stick-handler!"
"When you're playing this game you've really got to strap it on and go at it full force!"
The thing about sports commentators –and this is why I love them– is that they're only good at one thing: rapidly giving play-by-play description as the game is occurring.

Left to their own devices their brains switch to idle:

"Well Bob, there was definitely some exciting play out there on the field. Filled with tension and excitement."
"That's right Phil, it was a tense game on the field, but very exciting."
"You just don't see that much tension or excitement in this sport these days, right Bob?'
"Sure Phil, the excitement was tense, and the sport was these days."
"And, Bob, you know that this amount of tension can only be more intense with all the excitement surrounding today's game."
"Indeed Phil. It's truly intense. Surrounding tension amounts with Bob's excitement makes today's game tensely excitified."
Who are these guys –gibbons they've trained to speak?

Anyway.

Perhaps my general disdain towards watching sports springs from me generally sucking at them. But this doesn't seem to stop other people. And there are some sports that I enjoy doing and am active in; namely, windsurfing and skiing. I just don't want to have to watch people windsurfing or skiing.

To me watching a sport like hockey is a bit like watching a porn with too much plot. I'm really watching the thing to see guys get slammed hard into the boards or throw their gloves down and brawl. Yes, the goals are exciting and the level of skill and dexterity is magnificent, but don't describe to me how Mitzy got trapped in a boarding school with a bunch of aggressive lesbians. Show me what she's going to do about it.

And frankly, although I enjoy the comradery, I'm not even very good at being a spectator. Last night, when watching our city's team play, they scored two goals. Part of the male ritual surrounding your team scoring a goal is to give your fellow spectators high-fives. I was not only unable to land a single one, i even managed to slap a fellow spectator on the forehead in the process.

Instead of the room being filled with clapping noises it was filled with an embarrassed silence.
Rather like this one…