or what happens when Amy and Elinor invoke their inner valley girls
Okay, so looking at us, you probably wouldn’t think we’d be the kind of girls who go to hockey games. And you’d be right. But after reading all the hype in the Watch, we thought we might be missing out on something. So finally, we let our boyfriends persuade us to go . . . just to check it out.
Elinor: I’ll start with the arena. It’s fine and everything, but it’s, like, dirty! And the way it’s decorated is soooooo, like, 1973. Hello. So you sit in these silly little fold-up seats. And then if you’re really lucky, you get to sit in a greasy La-Z-Boy rip-off while people feed you chips. No, thank you.
We had seats right by the net - behind this pane of glass or something that stops the big pimply men from actually bumping into you when they’re trying to kill each other. You get to watch them skate right by you, just inches away, on the other side of the tank . . . I mean, rink. But it is kind of like Sea World on ice.
Amy: And, like, the whole place is totally sloped... with these, like, concrete stairs. It was really hard for me to walk around in my 5-inch heels. And sweaty, dirty men kept bumping into me. The air was, like, so dry it was giving me wrinkles. I had to run to the bathroom - and I don’t want to even get into the bathroom - to apply moisturizer like, three times. And the arena was totally rank with the odor of aftershave and cheap sport deodorant. I mean, ew.
When the hockey players actually came out, I couldn’t even tell the teams apart. Both teams were, like, wearing red and white. One team had yellow, too... hello, color clash? I mean, GET some fashion sense. Really.
Elinor: And, okay, how much do these guys get paid? I don’t even know, but it’s too much. At least three times, somebody tripped and fell over on the ice. In skates. Please. I mean, just like Amy, I was wearing heels AND a miniskirt AND a push-up bra and I didn’t fall over once. I was so not impressed with these guys.
It was pretty hard keeping it all together, too. The place was just not conducive to beauty maintenance. And they have this camera that zooms in on people with no warning. What if that happens to you and your mascara is running? It’s just not right.
Okay, so that was annoying. And then the game actually started. And I just don’t get it. I think this part of the male mind is just always going to be a mystery to me. These big men in ugly padded outfits chasing this little black thing up and down a big chunk of ice. For twenty minutes.
Amy: Yeah, and then it was like, halftime, or whatever it’s called in hockey. And this guy with a painted face and this ugly smiling yellow thing that looked like a cross between Elmo and Fozzie came out on the ice. And they started throwing t-shirts or something. So I decided that I’d rather go get some food, cause I was hungry, and they sucked. And, like, everything they sell at that rink is totally loaded with calories. Hello? Some people don’t want to be blimps, okay? So I bought this, like pretzel that supposedly had no cholesterol and no fat, but I think it totally did. And I got a diet coke. It was so crowded and I had to wait in line behind this smelly man with a beer belly who was eating some greasy pizza. Ew.
Elinor: We went back in for the second period and they had switched nets or something . . . the team in the really ugly outfits was trying to get the black thing into the net that the team with the less ugly (but still really nasty) outfits had been trying to get it into before. So, I thought, what, did they just need a change of scenery or something? Can’t they wait until after the game? It’s confusing. Sheesh.
Amy: The thing that totally annoyed me the most was the music. Sometimes they played little bits of songs. And sometimes the songs were cool, you know, like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and, like, N’Sync. But they only played them for 5 seconds! And they played some stupid song about hockey, and they played the whole thing. And they had all these sound effects like flushing toilets and stuff... ew. And they played a tango. I do not know why.
Elinor: I bet nobody there even knew how to tango.
Amy: Yeah. And, oh... the players were wearing so many clothes that I couldn’t even check them out properly. Their faces were hidden and they all looked fat because of the padding. But they were probably all ugly, anyway.
Elinor: And they must have spent half the game trying to beat each other to death, so even if they were good-looking at the beginning, they wouldn’t have been by the end. I guess that’s their way of expressing affection or something.
Men are weird. Like, whenever the home team scored a goal, they’d set off fireworks and the little screen at the end of the arena would say something like “YAY!” and everyone would cheer for two minutes straight. And I did not see what the big deal was. So they got the black thing in the right spot! So what?
Amy: I think it’s sort of like when you get your liquid liner on perfectly.
Elinor: Okay, but when I do that, I don’t cheer. And anyway, why do we need a screen to tell us what to do? Are men, like, so dumb that they don’t know what to think when someone scores a goal?
Amy: Maybe. Oh, and then the guy with the painted face (I think his name was ‘Fanatical Phil’) put on this, like, dress, and a really hideous wig. It was brown with fake looking blonde streaks. So 1995. And he ran up and down the aisles screaming like he’d just broken 5 nails.
Elinor: And he made us do the wave. It was so embarrassing.
It was just no fun at all. And the thing is, our boyfriends do this all the time. It’s like shoe shopping to them. And they did not understand why we wanted to leave.
Amy: There was another halftime (hey, wait...), and then they switched nets again. At least this time I knew what to expect. The home team scored another goal. And everyone cheered, because this meant that they won or something. And then it was all over and we went home.
Elinor: We are not subjecting ourselves to this again. Next time they ask us to go to a game, we are going out for cappuccino instead.
