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Okay, I've now officially seen everything. I spent a good portion of Friday night at the Birmingham Bulls hockey game. The fact that Birmingham has a hockey team is in itself funny enough, and the people you see in the crowd at the games is often even funnier. But what I saw wasn't in the crowd. It was on the ice.
No, I'm not talking about a bunch of mediocre hockey players joining together for either an incredible play or an incredible fight, though both did happen during the game. What I'm talking about are the two entertainment things they put on during the intermission between periods.
Friday night was free hotdog night. They gave away 10,000 free hotdogs, most of which I ate. But the funny thing is that between the 1st and 2nd periods, they had a hotdog eating contest! The last thing anyone in that crowd of people holding their stomachs because they ate too much processed "meat" wanted to see was other people make themselves even sicker by seeing how many they could eat in two minutes. The winner only managed 2.75 dogs, which I think I probably topped when I first got there. But at least I have enough dignity to not do it in front of a few thousand people.
The ultimate came between the 2nd and 3rd periods, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to go. I simply wanted to be able to say I had witnessed it. Six "lucky" couples were married on the ice. They rolled out a carpet for them, but the judge skated out with a helmet and all! He had to say "state your name" and "state your spouse's name" during the vows and stuff. As the happy couples walked off, "Mr. and Mrs. blah blah" was flashed on the scoreboard. It was a funny and yet sad spectacle. But hey, if that's their idea of romantic, who am I to judge?