Just Excitedly Busy – Watching The Game
A fellow game watcher referred to it as the Gifted and Talented TV once we observed during a commercial break that the tube under the shady tent was broadcasting the game a couple of seconds earlier than the large, spiffy flat screen that most everybody else who didn’t mind the sun was glued to across the yard of concrete that flanked the side of the house.
If we were a tad more mercenary, we could have cleaned up on some split-second bets with folks drunker than we as we ran from teevee to teevee, but we were glued to this game, full of brew from the keg of Rodeo Lawyer Beer nearby, and content to cheer on the team a couple of seconds before the rest of the crowd assembled knew what was happening. Our small crew of women had its priorities, by God, and we were cheering on the Saints in their victory this weekend between mediating disputes between our kids, getting each other more food and beer, and just being raucous fools with our friends.
It sounds like some kind of bad joke: a Jewish mother and her son go to a pig roast…but, truth of the matter is, we basked in the smell of the beast roasting on the spit the guys from Cochon set up on our neighbors’ rental property as payment for some debris moving and hauling work he did for them, and didn’t partake of any. The kid was too busy running around with all the other kids there, and I was only getting up from my chair to get some beer at the commercials and grab some trail mix, chips, or the divine jambalaya someone had brought. The game was one that kept your eyes glued to the screen, for certain, and I wasn’t planning on missing much.
How do women get into watching these things?
I was never much interested in this as a kid. Sure I’d get into it a little, but not like this. Blame it on some of the Super Bowl parties I began to attend while I was here…or on the University of Tennessee games my mother and her parents spoke of back in the day (at one crucial win for the Vols, Granddaddy had had to shove Grandmother into a mass of bushes to save her from hordes of fans who had descended on the field to carry off the goalposts; my grandparents came home looking like hell, but, aside from some scrapes from the bushes they dove into, they were otherwise uninjured)…or the times I have gone to LSU games and cheered with my husband – for the opposing team (San Jose State, University of Illinois, and Tulane, all of which my husband has some connection to)…or the grade-school interest I had in the Houston Oilers until they made some exploratory trips to Jacksonville over a possible move, held up the city for certain conditions that had to be met for them to stay in Houston (among them ripping out the Astrolite scoreboard in the Astrodome to get more seating installed), then left anyway for Tennessee. Tennessee already had the Vols, dammit, they didn’t need a pro football team…but apparently they did, because the Titans are still there.
But hey, the evidence is there that I have become an avid watcher of these games from a few years before we moved back to New Orleans, when I was the only woman in a sea of men and boys watching the Super Bowl game at the party the men’s club of the synagogue in Queens we attended would throw. It’s photographic evidence on the synagogue’s website for all to see, to boot – all the other women were sitting back at some tables out of range of the TV and concentrating on other things. I think on it now and realize none of them were from the South.
Watching football games is a communal exercise, now more than ever – and I’m not just talking about those who go to the Superdome or their stadium of choice and cheer their team on in a seat while paying out the nose for concessions. One thing I chatted with longtime Saints fans about were the days when tickets to Saints games couldn’t be given away, and since the regular season games were never sold out, the games weren’t shown on Fox Sports on the weekends, and forget Monday Night Football. The only recourses left were snagging one of those empty seats, heading for the nearest bar if you didn’t have cable or satellite TV, or listening to the radio. Having a large block party gathering to watch, say, the teams Ditka coached just wasn’t done.
But hey, there I was with Saints fan families all around me nibbling on grilled oysters while waiting on the pig to finish cooking, dogs running all over the place and dodging feet large and small while scrounging for food dropped to the ground, kids running, laughing, and commandeering the trailer the spit came on in order to pretend they were pirates on a ship with a purple flame job, and people of all ages cheering Lance Moore’s catch in the end zone seconds after we at the G & T teevee screamed for him and his happy dance.
When the game was over, someone pointed out the main difference between the two screens: “The G & T: DirecTV on it. The big flat-screen: Cox.”
Good to know…especially when I saw the time warped Patriots-Oilers…errr…Patriots-Titans game on the flat screen a few moments later. That teevee attached to Cox kept going back, and back, and back…
Update, 10-20: DSB over at bark, bugs, leaves, and lizards gives us something to think about other than the victories when we are watching football.
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How do women get into these things? Who cares! The important thing is that they’re into it. I could never live with a woman who didn’t care about football. Especially NFL football. There’s nothing worse than hanging out with your best buds, drinking beer and watching the game and suddenly hearing your significant other ask, “Why did Brees throw it to the blue guy?”
The only pitfall is when your girl knows more than you. Donna consistently out-picks me every week in our football pool. It is my shame and my pride!
As for the gameday wormhole. I know it well.
I was at a friends for the last Superbowl. The shrimp were fat and juicy, the beer was flowing and the Cardinals were about to tie up the game against my Steelers in the closing minutes of the first half. Nervousness dictated pacing so I hauled myself up from the comfortable folds of the couch and walked down the hall and back again. No need to worry about missing a play as there was a TV in every room linked via TIVO or DirecTV or some other miracle of modern time frittering. (Yes, even one in the batroom!)
As I passed by the master bedroom I saw a flurry of activity in the end zone and thought for a moment the Cardinals had scored but then the scene switched and I realized it was a replay. It must have been from a previous game. I checked back in the living room and the Cardinals were still advancing to the Steelers goal line.
More pacing.
I passed the master bedroom once more and there was a flurry of activity in the other end zone. What the hell… I looked at the stat bar: somehow the Steelers had scored!
I ran back to the living room. The Cardinals were still moving toward the Steelers goal line. Back to the bedroom – the Steelers were still celebrating a score. They showed the replay again as my unbelieving eyes exploded from their sockets. I had somehow found a gameday wormhole!
I went back to the living room in an agitated state, head in hands repeating “Oh my gawd! Oh my gawd!!” Everyone just took that to be a panic attack at the thought of my beloved Steelers being scored on. They attempted to assuage me with all the best football platitudes: “There’s still a lot of football to play,” “Don’t worry, it’s only halftime,” and “It’s the Steelers D, they’ll come through.”
“No, you don’t understand…” I said “…wait!”
And then it happened. Again.
James Harrison picked off Kurt Warner and ran 100 grueling yards for an NFL Record score. I fell to my knees. It wasn’t just the beer. It wasn’t a dream or hallucination. It was real and I saw it ten minutes before anyone! This was no mere five-second satellite delay. It was full-blown, honest-to-gawd time travel!
Or so I thought. After the screaming was over and I managed to crawl back to the couch to rest, my host figured it out. We had been TIVOing back to re-watch the funnier commercials and a few really good plays and all the TVs were about ten minutes behind real-time except the one in the master bedroom which was on a local feed. Simple answer but that feeling of time travel is something I will never forget, especially since it came at such a crucial juncture in the game.
Regarding yesterdays Saints game, Donna and I watched it at our respective homes and spent most of the game on the phone. She had to put the phone down or hang up every time the teams lined up because I was time traveling again. She was on DirecTV and I was a local feed boy just a scant few seconds ahead screaming my head off. It was sublime.
The Giants had so far managed to crush Washington, Tampa Bay, Kansas City, Oakland and Dallas; a combined 6-19 recdord, (3-17 if you don’t count Dallas.) Was there any doubt the Saints would win? While the “experts” were talking up the Giants I was just shaking my head. Yeah, they’re undefeated, but they’ve played nothing but chump teams so far. Wait ’til Sunday and then let’s hear you all backtrack. Dinks.
Sure, we played some creampuffs too, Buffalo and Detroit, but we manhandled Philly and the Jets. Going into this game our opponents combined record was 8-11. Clearly, we’re playing tougher teams. And we’re beating them. Up next: the Miami Dolphins, a 2-3 team but watch out for that scary “wildcat” offense!! It’s been all the rage at the high school level since 1934!!
We’ll see what happens…
And then, the whole time warp thing could be stretched even further…
http://www.videodetective.com/TitleDetails.aspx?publishedid=667745
And let’s not forget “The Strange Case Of Frank Cash And The Morning Paper” by T-Bone Burnett. Listen to a clip here: http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Case-Frank-Morning-Paper/dp/B001QLHQYU
Read the lyrics here: http://www.lyricstime.com/burnett-t-bone-the-strange-case-of-frank-cash-and-the-morning-pap-lyrics.html
I became an avid Saints fan back in 2001, during the very brief experiment wherein my husband, a native New Orleanian, decided it might be fun for us to move to my hometown–a small coastal town in Georgia. He was, of course, miserable there, and the only way to cheer him up was to get up bright and early on Sunday mornings, go to the bar section of a local restaurant, and stake out their satellite dish.
We’d get to the bar around 10:00 a.m. and make sure that the channel was tuned to whatever channel was playing the Saints game–then we’d make sure it stayed that was for the duration. We got a lot of grief from the other customers, as no one was at all interested in the Saints back then. But those were some of the funnest times of my life, sitting with my husband in a bar on a Sunday afternoon (long before we had our daughter), drinking beer, cheering on the Saints–and being the only ones in the bar doing so–and learning that I actually liked football. Good times. We moved back to New Orleans about 16 months later, and I still can’t wait for Sundays during football season. Who dat!