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Location: Cheshire, Connecticut, United States

devilishly handsome, screamingly funny, overly modest

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Penultimate Football

This is absolutely the best football Sunday of the year, the one with the games just preceding the Super Bowl. There is no pressure to throw a party or go to one, just the pleasure of watching the best four teams in the game try to decimate each other. If that doesn't sate your latent sadistic instincts, these games will be played in excruciating cold environs (particularly Green Bay at night in sub-zero weather) which will make the crunching bodies sound (and feel) like concrete blocks knocking together. To get an idea of how this feels, put your hand in your sub-zero freezer and leave it there for a couple of hours while whacking it occasionally with a ruler. You say you'd never do that. Of course not . Stupidity that profound is reserved for the NFL, or maybe Jackass movies.

I, myself, am careful never to attend any of these events personally any more. Once, when I was only a few years out of college, my wife and I went with an alumnus friend and his wife to a Yale-Princeton game in November. After too much rum-laced coffee, my friend and I decided that stripping to the waist and screaming about the superiority of Bulldogs was a good idea. Our wives did not elect to join us in this endeavor, although several other alumni around us did. After about 15 minutes of this activity I noticed that my friend's skin was turning Smurf blue, as apparently was mine. Given this development and the fact that our efforts had not inspired the Elis on the field to any great heights, we reshirted and went home to nurse our resulting flus, pneumonia, etc, nevermore to repeat that semi-ecdesiastical display (at least not at football games).

Today I will make a fire in my fireplace, firmly place a beer in one hand and an olive flavored tostita chip in the other near the fake-cheese (really plastic) dip and fondly remember past stupidities. I'll watch multi-millionaire players subject themselves to arctic conditions and consider the Faustian ramifications of that. At no point will I be in temperatures of less than 70 degrees. My wife understands that these hours are sacrosanct, and will protect me from outside disturbances like "urgent" family or business phone calls. I can't imagine a heaven much better than this, except possibly with the presence of Michelle Pfeiffer, but that's a whole other blog.

Later..

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