Super Bowl XL

I slept in on Sunday until about 11:00… recharging my batteries…

Desney spent most of the afternoon working on the room in the basement which will eventually become our refurbished gym. Alexandra spent most of the afternoon in her bedroom supposedly reading. I spent most of the time in front of my computer catching up on mail and such. At the end of the afternoon I spent about an hour and a half installing CD-ROMs on to Alexandra’s computer so she can be doing some educational work over the holidays.

At about 19:00 I headed out to Paris, on the métro, for my annual Guys’ Night Out. I arrived at American Dream early. We were supposed to meet at 20:00. About 5 minutes before Jean-Philippe calls me to tell me he’s going to be late but not as late as last year. About 2 minutes later Robbie calls me to tell me he’ll be there in about a half an hour. I strolled around the Opéra area for about 20 minutes, in the cold, but when it started drizzling I decided this was silly and went in to American Dream. I sat at the bar nursing a beer until the guys showed up.

Once a year, every year, for about 10 or 15 years now, we get together for Guys’ Night Out. The match in question is purely an excuse. It’s a night out without our spouses. We used to go to a bar near Montparnasse which had a big screen but they stopped showing the match. We then went somewhere else and eventually settled on American Dream about 5 or 6 years ago. American Dream generally has the match showing on a big screen in their cinema area downstairs and attracts quite a lot of fans of American football. American Dream also added a new attraction to the evening which the other bars didn’t have.

We eat as soon as we get there and stuff our faces with fatty, greasy American food. The waiter generally looks at us funny when we order and actually says “That’s a lot of food…. Are you sure you can eat all of that?” They learn. Especially when we order more after having gone through the first round. Beer is the beverage of choice and we tend to go through quite a few of those by the end of the evening.

This year was no exception. I was able to keep up to a certain extent, eating my burger and tapas without difficulty but leaving behind a mound of chips, and using beer to help me swallow was a quite enjoyable alternative to plain water. My throat is getting more tolerant of the bubbles, although it still doesn't like them, and I found that by slushing the beer around my mouth before swallow I could kill off quite a few bubbles. Beer and food together also helped both go down quite well.

While we’re just about finishing dinner the entertainment starts. There are generally 3 strippers: a girl, a guy and then another girl. We tend to know the strippers on sight as some of them stay for years. The strip show goes on throughout the rest of the night until about 2 or 3 in the morning. We, however, leave the show at midnight for the match.

Just before midnight we head downstairs for the Super Bowl where we spend the rest of the evening screaming in front of a big screen until 4:30 in the morning.

This year was a disaster. Upstairs we were seated at a table which would provide us with an excellent view of the game on the big screen. But we couldn’t see much of the show that we had gone upstairs for and spent a lot of time craning our necks trying to see what was going on on the strip bar. I was quite frustrated as I couldn't yell or scream any form of appreciation during the show and was only capable of very loud clapping. The ambiance was not what is used to be. After a few hours of not being able to see the show things became worse as the time of the match approached. It became apparent that they weren’t going to stop the show for the match and we were going to have to try and watch the match on the screen, without the commentary, while the loud music and guys screaming at the strippers was going on. We therefore headed downstairs to try and get better seats. There weren’t any. People had already crowded up in the few seats available in front of the screen on the first floor. The screen was slanted and the picture was partially blocked by the air conditioner. We ended up at a table which faced the bar. Above the bar is about a dozen small television screens and we watched the match, at a distance, on a screen smaller than the television any of us has at home.

This year the match was on national television rather than on a pay-cable. It started badly when the announcers talked over the national anthem (Star Spangled Banner) which was sung by Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin. We couldn’t hear it at all. If they had done that over La Marseillaise they would have been fired.

The main announcer was ridiculously bad. A receiver would catch the ball, which is a reception, and the announcer would yell “What an interception!”. An interception is when a member of the opposite team catches the ball. Throughout the last quarter (fourth) of the game he would say there are X minutes left in the “third quarter”. We spent most of the game trying to laugh at him as otherwise we would just have been angry.

We still managed to have a good time. But it certainly was a disappointment in comparison to so many other years.

Normally this night was my one smooking night per year. I was never a big smoker (half-pack a day at my biggest stage back in the 80s) and I gave up smoking before we conceived Jessica (15 years ago). But I would break down and smoke one night a year on Guys' Night Out. I would go to the local Tabac and buy myself a pack and smoke about half of it during the night and give the rest to Jean-Philippe afterwards. That part of my life is gone...

I couldn't scream, I certainly wouldn't even contemplate smoking and I couldn't eat as much as usual. But I could drink beer without any difficulty and actually more than some pleasure. And, most importantly, I could have fun with the guys no matter what. It was a wonderful night out. It's something I think all of us look forward to each year and I was especially glad this year that I could make it.

Oh... and the team I was rooting for (Pittsburgh) won the match even though the other team (Seattle) was favourite!

Jean-Philippe was nice enough to drive me home and I crawled in to bed at 04:30 where I spent quite some time. Today is referred to as “Super Bowl Monday” and it’s a basic write off. I don’t get anything done today except for recuperating from the day before…