Ugly (VOL. I)

For years and years I've been a sports fan. This may or may not mean that I'm an expert on sports but I'm pretty sure it's made me at least somewhat of an expert on sports fans. Just like the depression-inducing 6 o'clock news does on a nightly basis, accentuating the negative makes for a more memorable viewing experience. Therefore I'm going to conveniently skip over the mundane actions of intelligent/reasonable people such as myself and cast the spotlight on the ugly fans. Does one have to be an ugly person to be considered an ugly fan? No, but it's certainly not a bad thing to have on the resume if that's the way you're leaning.

Here are the ugly ones who irk me the most in no particular order of loathesomeness:

The Contrarian- This is the sad individual who is so desperate for attention that they are more than willing to accept boatloads of the negative variety simply to advance their incomprehensibly misguided and twisted agenda. A person who moves to City B from City A but continues to avidly support teams from their hometown is not a Contrarian. Their attitude actually makes more than a small degree of sense. I'm talking about the bright-light who hails from City A, determines which teams annoy City A fans the most and then loudly and boisterously throws his support behind his hometown rival for perverse reasons that only he can possibly understand.

The Party Animal- Bars are in the business of getting people drunk in public. Liquor stores exist to allow people to get drunk in their own homes. Meanwhile, stadiums and arenas sell great quantities of grossly overpriced, underchilled and watery beer to idiots. Party Animals at sporting events are like the rest of us in that they want to support their favourite team. It usually all goes south however, about 2 hours in when these pinheads get liquored up enough to add stumbling, spilling, bad cheerleading, public nudity/urinating/vomitting and fighting to their list of fun gameday activities. The continual trips to the beer stand and the bathroom are a real treat as well for us poor suckers who simply want to watch and enjoy the friggin' game.

The Showoff (a.k.a. The Know-Nothing Know-It-All)- Some of us call others showoffs due to pure jealousy. That type of showoff has at least a modicum of talent which causes those of us with inferiority complexes to start pulling bushels of green leaves off of the envy tree. The ugly sports fan showoff has no discernable skills but does possess just enough actual knowledge to dupe his gullible/apathetic disciples into thinking he's an expert analyst. As someone who closely follows sports, I can't count the number of times I've wanted to throttle some loudmouthed moron sitting behind me at the stadium or arena who spends an entire game spewing his half-baked theories and factually incorrect information to his wife, his kid, his friend or whoever. The showoff thinks that his little audience is lapping up his dreck because it's just so profound when, in fact, they are simply too blindly loyal, lazy or weak-minded to do us all a favour and tell him to shut the hell up.

Negatron- Don't be fooled by this deeply troubled individual's superheroish monicker. This is a person whose every word and action is a desperate cry for help. How is it that Negatron emerges from his dank and drab lair only to show up at various sporting events? After yet another uneventful week working at a dead-end job where he earns and receives zero respect, Negatron frees himself from his mousy/indifferent wife and his shiftless/overfed kids for a few hours of the only thing that even comes close to bringing some pleasure to his doomed existence: exposing innocents like me to his unending negativity. What irks me the most about Negatron is, as sad and pathetic as he may be, he easily and often sucks me in and therefore 'wins'. As a rule I try not to be critical of my own teams but sometimes they simply make it impossible not to be. On those occasions, I want to let loose some negativity but I can't because Negatron has long since beaten me to the punch. I just want him to be proven wrong even if it means having to vocally defend the undefendable actions of the hapless members of my team. Nobody really wins in this scenario but Negatron gets to 'happily' slink back to his cave until my team provides him with the next opportunity to bring me down.

Gravy Guy- Okay, this one doesn't exist but to uphold the integrity of this blog, I'm going to make it work, damn it! Gravy Guy insists on putting gravy on everything available to him at the stadium: his fries, onion rings, burger, hot dog, pizza, nachos, diet Coke, ice cream, Twizzlers, mini-donuts, coffee, beer etc.. Once I even saw some disgusting pig double dip his corn dog in a vat of the stuff meant for the public before his nephew's wife blew the whistle on him and he was banished from the concession area forever.