Sports. My dad didn’t watch them, I got picked last for everything in gym and I threw like a girl until someone corrected me at thirteen. I promptly forgot the technique and instead rely on placing things delicately when I want to move an object.

Mikhail invited me to attend a hockey game between the NJ Devils and NY Islanders with him over in Newark and I said okay. My brother loves playing and watching the sport and I thought I might understand the mongo better if I took an interest in his shit.

Besides Mikhail and I, there was Mikhail’s fiance and Dennis Chow AKA Glamnation. As we walked to the hockey rink Dennis and I were usually next to each other with Mikhail and Kate in front. It kinda felt like riding in the backseat with your siblings while your parents are up front.

Dennis, Kate and I waited in line for twenty minutes to get ten dollar cheeseburgers and eight dollar Budweisers and I squirted Wicked Hot Devil Sauce all over my coat. We carried our salted food to our seats as Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy “boomed through the stadium. LCD flames spread across the digital displays that lined the edge of the seating tiers. Dennis and I were both blown away by the fun Hell we were now inhabiting. They were playing an awful lot of metal for a sporting event. They also blasted “You Could Be Mine”, “Blitzkrieg Bop”, and some Rob Zombie song. The part where the stadium appeared to be engulfed in digital flames took me aback. The name of the team is the Jersey Devils but the name references a mythical beast, not the biblical devil and I figured the team would try to avoid too many references to Hell or Satanism. I figure a lot of these sports fans are also probably Christian. There weren’t any other references to evil, devils or Hell during the course of the game but it made me wonder who makes the decisions on what’s too evil for the Devils? What kind of ideas have been offered that didn’t make it? Pentagrams? Corpse paint? Jumbotron animations of the Jersey Devils burning churches?

This is Dennis. The seating where we were was treacherously steep and these obnoxious fucking kids kept having to go back and forth so they could piss and buy more giant cokes or just run around. We had to get up for those little fucking jerks like fifty times. I was really tired and towards the end of the game Dennis almost fell when he tried to get past me. Fuck whoever designed stadiums this way. You’re probably occupying a place that looks like the Jersey Devils rink right now.

Hockey’s an amazing sport to watch. Huge dudes with sticks are gliding around the ice at high speeds with acute dexterity and grace. Then they bash each other against walls, beat the fuck out of each other in fist fights and execute complicated plays that require chess-like strategy. Meanwhile heavy metal blares and a big inflatable devil dances to Devil in A Blue Dress with some cheerleaders. I’ve mostly been to baseball games. Sweating in the hot sun, squinting to see the field, eating the shittiest food ever with the shittiest people ever. That’s baseball to me. You go to Yankees Stadium and the whole fucking shithole is an extension of the men’s room. I like it but it takes a few showers before I feel clean again. The Devils beat the Islanders six to one and it was pretty amazing. I hereby declare this sport “good.”

Here’s another thing that’s different from Yankees Stadium. These buildings directly face the stadium and they’re unoccupied. Everything around Yankees Stadium is covered in Yankees shit. Yankees clothes, Yankees bars, Yankees bowling.

Here’s me sitting on the foot of a giant silver hockey player that lives outside the stadium.

After this photo was taken I immediately beat those children to death. Get out of the hockey games, assholes. Either that or bring catheters. There should be a fucking penned in area for families.

Wrong, subway ad. My stash is sticking around. Like it or don’t. Thanks to Daddy Mikhail and Mommy Kate for taking me to the hockey game. Hooray!

- Toilet Cobra