The Super Bowl is my fifth favorite holiday (in order: St. Patrick’s Day, Thanksgiving, Bock Fest, Arbor Day, Super Bowl). My first Super Bowl Sunday in California was an upgrade over the only other time I’ve watched the game outside of MN (for that one I was in a hotel room in Cedar Rapids, IA eating crummy take-out Chinese food by myself).
Diana and myself walked over to the Big Blue House on a beautiful, sunny afternoon. Our friend Paul knows the people at the Big Blue House through one of his high school friends, and they are known for throwing a pretty killer party, this one was no different.
Upon arriving, we checked out the Hawaiian pork that our friend Tracie had slaved over for about 15 hours. She had grown up in Hawaii and got the recipe from her mother (A boneless pork butt [not actually from the rump of the hog] slathered in Hawaiian salt and wrapped in tea leaves and banana leaves). She went so far as to buy an electric smoker off of Craigslist to make the 12 pound piece of meat she had purchased. Tracie spent the night at the Big Blue House so she could start the smoker at Midnight, and got up every three hours or so to add more soaked wood chips. That’s some real dedication, right there.
I set to work on making a numbers board for the party, and spent most of the pre-game badgering people to get their names on the board and collecting money for the pot. I even missed the opening kickoff return for touchdown as I was just finishing up getting it taken care of.
I quickly grabbed a plateful of food (pulled Hawaiian pork with sauce, some deep-fried turkey, chicken wings, stuffed mushrooms, chips and guacamole) and headed to one of the three rooms that had televisions set up. The room I was in wasn’t connected to the satellite that the TV in the adjoining room was. As a result, the rabbit-ears on our TV would have the game action about five seconds before the TV in the next room did. It was a great source of amusement the whole game to hear the roars in our room go up during a big play, and then wait for the room next to us follow with a similar reaction.
When I mean roar, I literally mean it. The best estimation was that there was 100 people at the party at any one time, and a total of about 125 showed up, and everybody brought food, beer, or both to share. We made some new friends and had a grand old time.
I need to thank Tony Dungy for not going for the field goal late in the game, as a result my number hit (9 Colts, 7 Bears) on the final and I was up $80. The people at the party quickly accused me of fixing the board, and I reminded them that I would have gone with 7-0 or 7-3 rather than 7-9 if I was truly trying to cheat.
The winnings were spent last night on flesh and cigars. Thanks again, Mr. Dungy.
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1 comment:
Wow. That party sounded awesome. You sure found a great crowd super fast. I was SOL down here until I moved to Venice. And even then I've never been to a Hawaiian pig roast with 125 people.
I agree about the Super Bowl as a party though. I'd rank it about with Memorial Day and Labor Day (which is pretty high on my scale). And above Coelocanth Day and Yoko Ono Day.
My Super Bowl party was pretty interesting though -- a house full of women invited me and my friend George . . . I had just come from a museum where I was teaching a class, so I wasn't dressed like a football fan, I was dressed like . . . a guy who was just teaching a class at a museum. Still I didn't care. I played Beer Pong and Round-The-Table Ping Pong and Beer Cup Balancing and Beer Drinking and Pong Alert and other things involving beer and ping pong tables.
I actually missed the entire third quarter because I play to win and also because I met some other people who are as stupidly competitive about inconsequential shit as I am.
Can't wait to visit you up there again. Hopefully before I skip town.
J.R.
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