Monster Jam

A co-worker of mine had some extra tickets through a friend of his for the annual Monster Jam in Sacramento last Saturday. He invited me and my son to go with him and his buddy who bought the tickets. I have not been to one of these things since I was a yout in VA (where incidentally they called it a “Monster Truck and Tractor Pull, because they had souped-up tractors pulling things), but I had a hell of a good time. We saw the monster truck called Undertaker, and like five or six others, along with a bunch of regular 4×4’s racing, and some bikes doing some pretty amazing jumps.

Except for my friend, who is 1/2 Japanese, my son, who is 1/2 Filipino, and the odd Mexican or two, it was a sea of white trash. For those of you who are from the Sacramento area, it was like all of North Sac and Rio Linda emptied into Arco Arena for the evening. Ive never seen so many mullets in my entire life. And when I say mullets, I mean the kind like they had on that old show, The Mullets. Everywhere I turned I saw a racing jacket advertising auto parts that was like two sizes too small, platinum blond hair that had not been cut in years, and dirty little kids running around like mad-people. It was just a few steps away from freak show.

And boy-oh-boy, were they selling America. They had the Air Force honor guard there, a Hummer with the faces of Iraqi war dead painted on it, a 30′ American flag and cranked up Lee Greenwood. The best part was the guy sitting in front of me with the pierced C-spine and the half-naked (HOT!) girlfriend, who halfway through God Bless the USA raised his hand in a Ronnie James Dio salute and screamed at the top of his lungs,”I love my flag, man!!!”

But the best part of the show was the way my son reacted to it. He was as excited as I have ever seen him. He was jumping up and down, pumping his fists in the air, screaming for joy and waiving his Undertaker flag wide and proud. The next day he told me that he dreamed of Undertaker the night before, and “it was cool!” I think I’m going to go to this again next year. It was noisy, it stank, and it was NOT my typical crowd, but the boy and I had a great time. He usually shies away from crowds and loud noise, but this was definately something not to be missed for him.