Super Bowl… Is About Food!

So I’m supposed to have this post off. Walter Bego is supposed to be writing this post! I’m supposed to be lying back on a friend’s couch, eating whatever I can find from his cupboards, and wishing he’d get satellite, or cable, or something that gets more than 2 channels on his TV.

But Walter tells me he doesn’t want to write this post. 

 He says that he’s a Patriot’s fan and he feels deflated – then he laughs. I ask him what that’s supposed to mean, and he tells me a sports fan would get it.

So now I’m supposed to pick the Super Bowl?

“No,” he says, “a deal is a deal - 

Patriots 37

Sea Hawks 25

Well that was anti-climatic. I guess I could end the post here.

Can’t do it. So I asked Nick, my co-worker at Amalgamated Monster what he liked best about the Super Bowl.

“The food,” he answered.

“Oh,” I said with relief. I would have been completely lost if he talked about the half-back toggle post wiggle with a twist,

 but food I could relate to.

“My grandmother goes to town,” he said. “She makes all kinds of stuff – chicken wings, cheese cubes, salsa, cheese cake brownies, little funny things with pretzels and M&Ms.”

“Doesn’t she do that other times as well?”

Nick scratched his head and then stopped. It looked too much like he was thinking. Frederick the Bloody and the management of Amalgamated Monster fine all employees caught thinking on the job.

“There is one thing,” said Nick with as thoughtless an expression on his face as he could manage, “that she makes only during the Super Bowl.”

“What’s that?”

“Little smokies.”

My mouth started watering at the utterance of those two magic words. Little smokies were the ying and yang of snack food – a treat that tastes the ultimate good while looking the ultimate disgusting.

“Yeah,” I said to Nick, looking stupid without even having to make an effort. “You’re right – I never see little smokies unless I get invited to a Super Bowl party.”

“And they’re always gone before kick-off,” Nick added.

“So why don’t they show up the rest of the year?” I asked.

“Because they’re always gone before kick-off.” Nick repeated. “It doesn’t matter how many packages of little smokies my grandmother buys – everybody always eats them first while she’s busy putting everything out. I don’t think Grandma’s ever eaten a little smokie.”

I wanted to make some erudite reference to Dante’s Inferno, but my mind went blank – which was a good thing because Frederick the Bloody was staring right at me.

“That’s not fair,” I said as stupidly as possible.

“Uh-huh,” Nick agreed sounding a bit like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade.

We must have passed the stupid test because Frederick the Bloody moved on to lower the IQ in another part of the plant.

“Little smokies,” I mused. “I have to get myself invited to a Super Bowl party.”

Nick was conspicuously silent the rest of the day.

So, how do you keep people from eating all the little smokies before kickoff? I asked that question of a select panel of readers. Sally Q. Broqenbuttom of Hackensack New Jersey responded:

“I just put my plate of little smokies in my cat, Oscar’s litter box.”

Thank you for the visual, Sally.

Maybe I won’t miss being invited to a party so much this year - as long a Walter Bego doesn't get invited either.

I guess there are more disgusting eating themes.  Squeamish Alert!

Professional Football Analysis for the Uninformed Part One

Ohio State 42 – Oregon 20

(my prediction Oregon 47 – Ohio State 28)

I was worried in the third quarter when the score was exactly what I wrote up for half-time (Ohio State 21 – Oregon 20.) Thank goodness the rest of the game didn’t go as I predicted. The pressure is off. You see, I made a side bet. Walter Bego, the head screw-up at Go Figure Reads told me that picking Oregon was a sure thing. I said, if you’re such an expert, why don’t you put your pixels where your mouth is. If Ohio State beats Oregon, you have to do the pro picks.

He agreed! (sucker)

Now be prepared to go 0-2 for the NFL conference championships (or just bet against this guy.) So – Here’s Walter (Jockstrap) Bego!

I'm not saying he's old, but...

There isn’t much on the line here. Winning a conference championship is like buying a Powerball ticket – there’s no reason to celebrate getting there unless you win the next one. Ask the Vikings, the Bills, the Eagles, the Chargers, the Panthers and the Bengals. Still, the victors this weekend have a much better shot at taking the Super bowl than I had at winning 176 million on last night’s drawing.

So – how should we pick them? Let’s go by the last game.

AFC

The New England Patriots were pretty much dead, smothered by a cloud of large carrion-eating birds. Unfortunately for the Ravens, Bill Belichick snuck the UMass Minutemen onto the sideline and they added their firepower to pick off the Baltimore Birds.

Why is it that teams from Massachusetts (Patriots, Minutemen, Revolution) get to carry fire arms? I never thought of Massachusetts as a big 2^nd Amendment state (excuse me, Commonwealth.)

The Indianapolis Colts had much less trouble with the Denver Broncos. Colts are just younger and friskier Broncos that haven’t been regularly abused in rodeos. It showed on Sunday. It might have been Peyton Manning’s last rodeo.

So… men armed with muskets against a bunch of young horses. That doesn’t sound too tough to predict – the Patriots win in a shoot-out (see what I did there?)

New England 41 – Indianapolis 35

NFC

The whole fire-arm thing didn't work out for the pistol-packing Cowboys. Maybe because Lambeau Field is a gun-free zone. They ended up with empty holsters in a frozen locker fighting against meat packers with those nasty hooks they use to make your steak look like it died in a horror movie. In the end, the third team on the field (the guys in the old fashioned prison uniforms,) decided the game. These zebra-striped felons are guilty of stealing outcomes too often in recent weeks. Ask the Lions whether they, or the refs belong in a cage.

The Seattle Seahawks watched their opponent blow the game without any help from the officials, and little help from the Seahawks. Had the Panthers not made so many mental and physical errors early on, might they have made a better showing in the second half? We’ll never know. But we do know that the Seahawks have learned how to straighten up and fly right. They don’t seem to make mistakes anymore. Is this the same Pete Carroll that coached the circuses in New York and New England back in the 90s?

If this game was in Wisconsin, the Seahawks might find the weather and the cheddar too much for them, but as it’s in a stadium intentionally designed to amplify sound, I expect that the Packer line won’t hear a thing Rogers says in the second half.

Seattle 24 – Green Bay 17

Thank you, Walter Bego

And now you know why no-one has asked Walter to write a blog. To wrap up, Walter picks the Patriots and the Sea Hawks. Now where can I lay down a bet on the Colts and Packers?

Let's see, a football video?  The best one will ALWAYS be...