O, Doug Christie, Where art thou?

The other night, I went to the Lakers-Kings game with my mother. I’m not much of a basketball fan these days, but my mother likes it so I went.
As with any sporting event, I was obligated to get my usual: a hot dog (no ketchup, of course), nachos and about $40 worth of beer (that means one beer). I would have gotten a red rope but with how the Kings played and subsequently lost, I probably would have just used it to hang myself in the toilet. Besides, the limit on my credit card doesn’t go that high.
Had I known better, I would have gotten a sno-cone to numb the nature of my overwhelming discontentment.
Stadium food is like a diamonds commercial: “A hot dog, nachos and a beer – how else can three months salary give you diarrhea?”
The reason really is the same – you have to.
We as a culture have been infected with the idea that it is good, normal, reasonable and somehow symbolic of something, whatever it is.
If you want to be with the woman you love for the rest of your life then you have to buy a meaningless, crappy piece of shiny coal that some three-fingered Zimbabwean boy mined at gunpoint; and if you want to enjoy a ball game, you have to buy a $23 bag of popcorn, a $78 hot dog and a $447 beer.
That’s life.
Every time I go to a professional sporting event I remember why I never go (at least weddings have free hooch). With parking, ticket prices, gas prices, uncomfortable and crowded seating, the outrageous cost of food, the drunk guy yelling in my mother’s ear (actually, that might have been me), I feel like a stooge when I finally leave.
The whole ordeal is precisely that – an ordeal.
Hopefully, President Bush’s economic stimulus package will give me enough money to at least afford a bag of peanuts when I go to a Giants game; that is, if I don’t mind spending the whole thing.

Comments

[stella]

Once again, Matt, you have outdone yourself.