Go AK Wild!

The AK Wild shortly after the last TD

Go Alaska Wild!

Better than Fairbanks, for sure.

Everyone else? Uh uh.

Tonight, the AK Wild (Anchorage's Intense Football League team - essentially Arena Football) kicked off their second season against the one team they definitely can beat, expansion team the Fairbanks Grizzlies (as in Fairbanks, Alaska). In attendance were myself, Brian, Colver, and Nick, as I had managed to capture free tickets from work, and good ones too. Was it a good game? Depends on who you ask.

Ask the AK Wild, hell yes! With 8 minutes left, when we decided to depart, the Wild were up 68 to 12 (!!). Far better than the season opener last year, when the only thing they had 68 of with eight minutes left were fumbles (sadly barely overexaggerating). At times, they resembled what could be a real football team, being very solid defensively and returning no less than three inteceptions for TD's and one kick for a TD.

Ask the Fairbanks Grizzlies, not so much. They have maybe the worst QB ever created. He telegraphs every pass, and when he doesn't, he saves time by simply throwing the ball directly at the opponent. When that isn't bad enough, their defense is picking up penalties on every snap. They are worse right now than the Wild were at the beginning of last year - and the Wild were terrible.

Ask old friend from Hooters Chastity, and I'd say for sure. As per usual the AK Wild cheerleaders were just as, if not more, entertaining than the actual team. Chastity has joined the squad now, and she totally rocked the house. Of course, I was sad to not see old favorite "Edgy" cheerleader this year, but you can't win them all.

Ask AK Wild mascot Striker, and you'd likely get a yawn, followed by a lackadaisacal high five, and then excitement if you were a small child. At one point he picked a small child out of the stands to spin said child around in his arms, but with much glee to go with it. I'm not going to go into detail, but Brian and I definitely noticed his attention to children, and his apathy towards everything else. Needless to say, our discussion definitely involved these words, and you choose to do what you want with them: little kid, van, candy, come here, huffy.

Striker is a sick puppy.

Now ask myself and my crew, and you'll get a resounding...mostly. IFL officials clearly need to make the games speed up a bit, because I left my seat, went to the bathroom (far side from me), came back, and 3 seconds had passed. The last minute of the first half lasted 30 minutes. I wish I was overexaggerating.

But besides that, did I mention the fact we put up 68 points? The Grizzlies made us look like the New England Patriots, if only they were the Washington Redskins. It was ridiculously entertaining to see how amazing they made us look and how truly terrible they were. It remains to be seen if we are good, or if we're just beating up on far inferior competition (to prove a point, we discussed whether or not 8 random men from the stands would do better against the Wild than the Grizzlies would...the answer was clearly not, but the question was asked).

Also, there were a lot of hijinks to be had, such as Brian and I going on and on quoting There Will Be Blood (needless to say, the Wild's cornerbacks were drinking the hell out of the Grizzlies QB's milkshake), Colver announcing that he thinks he could kick the football from one end zone, out the other side of the field and out of bounds (we - by that I mean I - mocked him relentlessly about this), and the weirdo's in the bathroom who were having urine battles. I will not go into detail about that, but I will say this - only at the Sullivan Arena.

Overall, I'd say the first AK Wild game of the season was a success, and I'm looking to attend some more throughout the season. Hopefully we don't play Bartlett High School's JV team next game.

As a fun little inclusion, to continue the love for the drinking of people's milkshakes, I'd like to share with everyone the "I Drink Your Milkshake" skit from SNL two weekends ago. It stars the truly awesome Bill Hader as Daniel Plainview, Daniel Day-Lewis' character from TWBB. It is an uncanny impersonation, and for people who have seen the movie, I'm guessing you will find it hilarious. For those that haven't? Probably less so...no less, enjoy!