OK, so I don’t actually have a proper bucket list yet, so this may or may not count, depending on where you stand on the issue.
For years and years, I’ve thought (and even gone so far as to say on occasion) that Denver has many, many great sports teams, and that I should go to a game. Thursday, July 4, 2013 was the day that I wound up doing exactly that. My friend Chris White was moving to St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Rapids game was his last hurrah. So Audrey and I got tickets to sit in the Supporter’s Terrace with Chris and his girlfriend, some of Chris’ other friends who we’d not yet met, and our friends Erin J. and Sean B. Oh, and several hundred other rabid Rapids fans…
…who never stopped screaming, who sang the same 10 dumb fight songs that were clearly lifted from other sources, with fuckall regard for things like timing or cadence or sense, cramming the team color “Burgundy” into two syllables as often as possible. and John Denver. Butchered. Over. And. Over. At least the game was exciting!
Who am I kidding? The game was the most boring thing I’ve ever watched, surpassing watching both the Florida Marlins and Arizona Diamondbacks play (ant-sized) Major League Baseball in the 90’s. A full 45 minutes went by, and NOTHING HAPPENED¹. At least in baseball, people walk on and off the field in semi-regular intervals. Nope. 45 minutes passed almost completely uneventfully, aside from some skinny dudes walking around a field and occasionally kicking a ball or something. The clock was the most interesting thing on the field. Then there was a “halftime”, where two people and a ton of handlers came onto the field, and each guy got three kicks to get a ball into the untended goal. But there was some other weird rule because one guy got 1/3 in, and the other guy got 2/3 in, but none of them counted for some reason. No idea. They probably explained it over the PA system, and perhaps the other 39,000 people in the stadium understood what was going on, but I couldn’t hear the explanation over the din of Yet Another Refrain of “Mountain Roads” by Don Jenver. After that, something cool happened (FINALLY). The players came back, and the Rapids scored a goal (on the far end of the field, for maximum dull from where we were sitting, of course) within the first 2 minutes of play. Then the New York Red Bulls (whose mascot is inexplicably an adorable fox – Audrey wondered, and I commented that the Chicago Bulls probably had a lock on the actual bull-of-red icon. Either that, or a giant can (a la Saints Flow) would be “too blatantly commercial”.) scored a goal. Except it wasn’t a goal. They totally scored, and it didn’t count. Then the Rapids scored again. Then the clock reached the allotted 90 minutes, but apparently nobody told the players this, as they kept on playing for some time after that. Then the end of the game happened at some seemingly arbitrary point, the crowd went wild.
Then, it being The Fourth of July, the (semi-famous, and totally-awesome) Denver band Flobots had a concert set between the end of the game, and the start of the fireworks. They let everyone onto the field, and I initially thought they’d have a stage set up someplace adjacent to the field, so that Flobot-Fans (raises hand) could get up close and personalish with the band. But the band was no place to be seen, and the “concert” was apparently only visible on the giant TV screen in the stadium. I could see hands raised in the video feed, so there were live people there, like, someplace, but nobody knew where this secret Flobot underground concert bunker actually was.
Finally, there were some pretty spectacular fireworks with some neat designs (I’m absolutely a fan of the tech that goes into commercial grade fireworks, and the way that they’re able to do new things with them year after year), and a completely subversive soundtrack. On the 4th of July. It was amazing listening to Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA, Tchaikovsky – 1812 Overture, and the finale was a song that Audrey and I both love, but she pointed out was a Swedish band. Subtle, and well played.
So there you have it.“Y’know? I should go to one of our local sports games. Not NFL, NBA, or MLB, though.” DONE, and glad of it. Kinda sad I don’t have any pictures of it, though.
¹ To be fair, there were three shots on goal by the Rapids in the first period. Two of those went so wide that the ball wound up in the bleachers, so I shouldn’t say NOTHING happened. The girl 3 yards away from me took a hard hit to the right side of her face on the first shot, and the second shot nailed a guy right in the ($7) BEER. Here’s a thing I don’t understand. Soccer fans give the ball back, too. What the hell is that? Fuck you. You spilled my beer, I’m keepin’ your ball.
Post Post Notes: It looks like the game was just a really boring game, even by the standards of people who are really super into it.