Monster Trucks at the Verizon Center
It's become a clichéd national joke. When someone mentions monster trucks, someone else says "SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!" Unfortunately the Monster Jam was at the Verizon Center Friday and Saturday, so we didn't get to hear those immortal words on TV. But aside from Bigfoot happy meal toys when we were little, we'd never gotten close to a genuine monster truck. Much like a Godzilla movie, the monster truck rally sounded great in theory, but didn't quite live up to what we hoped for.
The Verizon Center was nearly full for the late show on Saturday, including tons of kids, and the arena floor was covered in a hockey rink-shaped layer of dirt. The excitement began in the stands, where a fight broke out in the section next to ours, followed by an extremely drunk guy laying for awhile on the stairs. Eventually security folks arrived and escorted him out.
Then the trucks came out and were introduced, including Grave Digger, the A-list star of monster trucks, and our favorite, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. The event was actually a little hard to follow at first. It's not just trucks crushing stuff -- there are heats where two trucks race to be the first over the cars and cross the finish line. The narration was also, perhaps not surprisingly, hard to hear, and less surprisingly, not as TV-commercial over the top as we had hoped. The sheer noise of the trucks was impressive, though we wish we sat closer to get the full effect.
The races are short and are generally photo finishes, which makes it a little less exciting. The heats were then followed by "quad races", or races of four-wheel ATVs. The little vehicles were divided into Team D.C. and Team Philly, much like the good guys and bad guys in wrestling, and also seemed to be rigged. The leader of Team Philly told the crowd to shut up about 10 times, which sort of gave it away, as did when the Team D.C. guy came back to challenge for the title, and of course, won in the end. And like another racing sport, NASCAR, half the fun was waiting for the crashes.
After the quads and more monster truck heats, a number of guys on motorcycles jumped a big gap and did stunts like handstands on a bike while in mid-air. We'd seen this before on ESPN, but in person it was impressive. The riders also appeared to be really young.
Then came the finale -- the "freestyle" monster trucks. In this, they wheeled out a van to be smashed, which highlighted another aspect of the show we didn't like -- all the cars were pre-smashed. What's the point in having giant monster trucks drive over cars that are already flat? The fun's in the doing. Crushing the van was pretty great, however. The trucks revved up and did various passes, springing and wheelie-ing over the cars, followed by Gravedigger's almost out of control bouncing, which brought everyone into hysterics. It is pretty exhilarating seeing a giant machine bounce and spin over the remains of others. And luckily for the Caps, the trucks didn't break the floor.
Photo by Andrew Wiseman