This past Saturday night Kate and I drove to Milwaukee to meet some friends for dinner and then go see the Milwaukee Admirals play the Chicago Wolves. After the game there was a concert by the Drop Kick Murphys.
The Admirals are an American Hockey League farm team for the Nashville Predators of the NHL.
I love hockey.
I'm not a big sports fan at all. I can't sit through an entire football game on TV. I really can't sit through and entire baseball game on TV. I am a Cubs fan, but that's absolutely not the same thing as being a baseball fan. I don't give a shit about March Madness, and I've lived within walking distance Camp Randall stadium for over twenty years and I've never been to a Badger football game.
But I love hockey.
I played as a kid. I play and coach in an adult recreational league now. The only thing that I think is better than playing hockey is playing more hockey, and I'll go watch live hockey of pretty much any level at any opportunity. So we jumped at the chance to go to the Admirals game. Kate and I used to go to minor league hockey games in Madison when we were dating, but there hasn't been minor league hockey here for ten years (the Ice Muskies don't count, since they didn't last a full season).
There's really only one down side to live hockey.
Hockey fans.
Hockey fans, as a group, are a mind-numbingly stupid bunch.
Once in a while we'll go see the Badgers play with our friends Kathy and Kevin. They have season tickets. The games are great and there are a bunch of guys in the NHL that are former Badgers. It's great hockey to watch. Except for the dumbasses that yell that every scoring play made by the opposing team is full of penalties, and yell "You Suck" at the opposing goalie or other key players. Yelling insults at and denigrating the ability of someone that's more athletic on their worst day than the yeller has ever been in his or her life from bleachers over a hundred feet away and behind a protective wall and the anonymity of the crowd is the height of embarrassing low-class cowardice to me.
If the yeller was afforded the opportunity to say whatever they're saying to the object of their derision at arms length and without the glass and crowd and security, most likely they'd just piss themselves.
I'll cheer for the home team just like everyone else, and I certainly want to see the Badgers or Admirals or Blackhawks or US Olympic team win. But sometimes they don't. And when they don't it's almost always because their opponents outplayed them (like Canada did this past Sunday). Be classy about it. There's no glory in winning without deserving to win.
What's just about the only thing that can bring the level of a hockey crowd down to even deeper depths of collective dumbassery?
A hockey crowd mixed with punk rock fans that have no interest in the hockey game and are only there for the band. That's what.
I don't know that I'd call the Drop Kick Murphys a straight up punk act, but they referred to their show on Saturday night as a punk show, and they certainly know better than I do.
The Murphys play what's generally referred to as Irish Pub Rock, or Irish or Celtic Punk. This is a sub-genre of music that lands somewhere between punk rock and traditional Irish folk. Closer to one or the other depending on the particular band that you're listening to. The seminal Irish punk band is The Pogues from Ireland. They were the first, as far as I know, to take traditional instruments like mandolin and banjo and penny whistle, add in guitars and full drum kits and amplification, and then speed the whole thing up a lot. There have been a lot of other acts in that genre since the Pogues in the last twenty years or so. The Murphys are one of the best. Those of you not familiar with the genre still have likely heard their song "Shipping off to Boston" when it was on the soundtrack of the film The Departed with Jack Nicholson. We liked that movie a lot by the way, but the original Chinese version was better.
Anyhow...
The Drop Kick Murphys are one of my favorite bands. Their 2005 album Blackout is one of the best rock and roll albums of all time. Really. Up there with Born to Run and London Calling and Dark Side of the Moon. Not a single bad song on it.
So for me Saturday night was great. Hockey and the Drop Kick Murphys. Can't get much better than that. Kate enjoys hockey games when they're live, and tolerates the Drop Kick Murphys, but I don't think it was as big a deal for her. I appreciate that she came along.
But...
The problem with punk rock shows is all too often punk rock fans. They're like hockey fans with sillier wardrobes and possibly even worse haircuts.
So there we are at the game. I've been thinking a lot about what kind of person the boy might turn out to be. So at the game it was fun to think about taking him to games in a few years. Maybe he'll want to play. Maybe in twenty years or so Kate and I will be in the section reserved for parents at some college or AHL or even an NHL arena listening to the announcer announce our kid starting at wing or defense.
I'm watching the kids on the Admirals and the Wolves skate around and I'm thinking in twenty years that could be my kid.
Then I look at the idiot in the pirate hat yelling "You Suck" at the Wolves' goalie.
Unfortunately, in twenty years that could be my kid also.
No, I'd much rather think of my kid as one of the players.
During the break between the first and second periods there's the guy that turns up at every punk rock show I've ever been to riding the Zamboni. There are several regular archetypes at most live music shows. This was the five foot five inch three hundred pound guy with the scraggly beard and the bad tattoos. Overflowing the seat to the point that it's almost invisible, drunk off his ass, and making devil horns with his hands while he screams "Fuckin' Murphys! Yeah!" at the top of his lungs twice a minute. Spraying bits of whatever fried thing he'd eaten an hour ago over his shirt, and the Zamboni driver, and the freshly groomed rink.
That could be my kid in twenty years.
I'd rather think that if I'm seeing a punk band in twenty years it's because my kid's the drummer or singer or whatever. Kate and I could be in the box above the stage reserved for family and industry execs.
Then I look at the two skinny morons stoned out of their minds trying to climb over the glass rather than wait in line to get to the pit in front of the stage. Acting like nobody in the whole arena is on to them until they finally drop from the glass into the waiting grasp of arena security who have been standing on the ice waiting for them to disengage their flannel shirts or the laces of their doc martens from the rivets and get down there already so that they can be escorted out. Then as they're getting escorted out waving at the crowd that's jeering them because they're so stupid they're mistaking the response they're getting for approval.
One of those could be my kid in twenty years.
In the end I know that it doesn't really matter as long as he's happy.
At least I know I'm supposed to say that. And mostly I mean it.
As long as he doesn't turn out to be the fat drunken asshole that thinks the coolest thing he can do is get a ride on the Zamboni.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment