The Barryfest Chronicles

I’ve had a dog in the fight for four of the last six Super Bowls.  I know there are scores of people out there that would give any number of appendages or offspring to see their favorite NFL team play in a Super Bowl let alone have the luxury of a semi-legitimate reason to root for teams from both Chicago and Boston, but I want to assure you it is not all hand-pounds and reacharounds.

At the risk of sounding like a total ingrate, I think it is worth pointing out that there are actually a few negatives of having more than a passing interest in the outcome of The Big Game:

You have to sweat the small stuff. Anytime that any of my favorite teams in any major sport are involved in a game of any sort or significance, I spend most of the day worrying about how crowded the bar is going to be, or how big of a television my friend has, or whether or not I bought enough booze, etc.  I am growing increasingly neurotic as I get older, so if you combine that nervous energy with any doubts about the actual outcome of the game in question, I am pretty much whipped by the time live coverage starts.

This year, I spent Sunday evening alternately squished on an uncomfortable couch, perched on an armrest and leaning against a doorjamb.  For some reason the game was tuned to the standard-definition feed for the entire first quarter, and even after that problem was rectified, my view was partially obstructed as a result of my bad posture and one of my friend’s huge noggin.  Additionally, there was no room in the refrigerator for the 12-pack of High Life I brought so by about 7:30 I was drinking tepid beer.  But you know what?  I couldn’t care less.

Regardless of the outcome, Monday morning is going to suck. Super Bowl XXXIX fell exactly on my 21st birthday so my friends were gracious enough to organize an enormous viewing party/birthday celebration ostensibly somewhat on my behalf.  Dozens of my closest acquaintances filed in to a cozy off campus apartment and took part in cold beer, Buffalo Joe’s, and a football shaped birthday cake.

I am sure I would have really enjoyed the shindig if I wasn’t boxing out the keg in the corner of the room with the only other Patriots fan in attendance, nervously pounding chicken wings, Camel Lights and pitchers of keg draft at a superhuman clip because I was too locked into the game to enter into any meaningful interpersonal interactions but needed to do something with my piehole to cut the tension.

By the start of the third quarter I was nearly blacked out and had no voice after going apeshit during Paul McCartney’s rendition of “Hey Jude” and, after the game had ending with the Patriots on top, I proceeded to stretch my drunk into the wee hours of the morning celebrating many happy returns.  Even through the sheen of a Super Bowl victory, thought, the heartburn and hangover made Monday morning pretty hard to endure.

I spent the first few hours of last year’s Super Bowl XLII in a similar way.  Although I was in a bar in New Orleans as opposed to an apartment in Evanston and I was pounding Abita Amber instead of Miller Light, all the important details are the same:  the other Patriot fans and I were glued to the set, stuffing our faces with greasy food, soaking ourselves in booze and chain smoking heaters.  When it was all said and done, I still drank until the wee hours of the morning, but this time it was in commiseration, not celebration.  Suffice it to say, Monday morning was rough.

This year I cut myself off before the fourth quarter and made it back home in time for the outrageous hour-long episode of The Office, which I watched perfectly buzzed and from the comfort of my bed.  I still felt like shit on Monday morning, but then again, I always feel like shit on Monday morning.

Gambling loses all its fun. Between pool squares, strip tabs, mulit-spot props and side bets, Super Bowl Sunday is best day for gambling ever.  It is kind of a shame to have such a huge focus on the final score that you are are forced to ignore the outcomes of the dozens of other wagers you may have placed, ranging from the length of the national anthem performance to how the NFC teams’s score compares to LeBron James’ point total from that afternoon’s NBA action.  I mean, how much consolation is hitting the halftime square if your hometown team is on the receiving end of a shellacking?  And what good is winning $100 on the coin toss if you end the night with a tally in the loss column?

As of late, my proclivity towards gambling has been inching closer and closer to “degenerate” territory, so I was pretty excited by the prospect of indiscriminately laying money on any number of lines without even a second thought about how may illicit activities may interfere with the cosmos or tip the karmic scales.

My brother has lived in New York City for almost a year and a half now, and this has given us two or three occasions to engage in the Manhattan version of our favorite shared pastime: walking around a major metropolis without the trappings of a destination or an agenda.

The starting point of our trip is usually determined by where we want to catch lunch and we head out equipped with nothing more than a comfortable pair of shoes and a good sense of direction.  No cabs, no subway, just two dudes who haven’t seen each other for a while running wild on the public thoroughfares of a big city. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2008-2009 NBA season is upon us, and for the first time in 10 years I will be intently watching “NBA Premier Week” on TNT.

See, my relationship with the NBA has been very rocky over the last decade or so.  I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago during the absolute apex of the Jordan years, and his departure and the subsequent decline of the Bulls franchise sent me on a downward spiral that was the equivalent of a spoiled teenager going off to college and suffocating under a pile of dirty laundry that develops a mind of it’s own and starts devouring DVD cases and half-opened packets of ranch dressing to feed it’s insatiable desire to expand beyond the corner of the dorm room.

As a 13 year old who spent his formative professional sport watching years following the greatest basketball player to ever put on a uniform win six titles and then leave the game as his team was being dismantled by an egomaniacal owner, I lacked the cognitive and emotional capacity to continue to support a losing, unglamorous franchise.  And my usual trump card – an allegiance to both Chicago and Boston sports teams springing from the fact that my dad spent the first 43 years of his life in Beantown and I was born at none other than Brigham and Women’s – did me no good as the Celtics were at the crest of a wave of misfortune that was eradicating their place as one of the most storied American sports franchises in the history of man. Read the rest of this entry »