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.