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Hide Fox, and All After

For the first time you don’t care about five dollar foot longs. The ad before was creepy, you think to yourself. The one with the weird-eyed kid with his mom’s green bed sheet tied round his neck. You think he gave you a weird look, you know, when he was standing outside the office building. That’s when the Subway ad came on. Five dollar footlongs never seemed so irritating. They were an affront to your psyche, you think. Who gives a flying fuck? You tell the TV, as if it’ll listen, to move the hell on. Wait, wait. Faith Hill’s on. She starts singing now. Tell the people in the other room to pipe down. You don’t want to hear plates clinking. Your ears are now hypersensitive. It’s incredible. She starts singing, carrying that first note like high and long like the pigskin in that ad that had Lebron James playing NFL. Daydreams suck. It’s great to be American. Jennifer Hudson! Gosh the marines were beautiful, you think. Is it all right for Marine’s to be beautiful. The national anthem starts. Stand up, boy, stand up. Off your feet man, you yell to the others. Stop clanging the plates, you yell to the kitchen. You start singing in your head. OH SAY CAN YOU SEE! Oh gosh oh lord! But what comes next? Who knows? Why is this song even the anthem and not America the Beautiful? No one knows the words after rockets red glare. No one can hold the note that high for banner yet wave. The crescendo! Oh lord on high the crescendo. God bless America, oh yeah. God Bless! Home of the brave, you know those words. Land of the free, oh yeah yeah yeah. Those are the lines you know. We sing those out the most because we think it’s like makeup over the starkness between those lines and everything else that comes in between. Oh yeah.

Why is there an Avon commercial on. Fuck me with a hot poker I’m not selling that shit, you think, what the fuck, you ask out loud. But, Mickey Dee’s. I could go for that. Where are the chips? Pass the dip, dawg! Wait, no, that was a charity ad. Pass the chips anyway. Is Barack Obama watching this? Put your feet up. Get comfortable. Do you need to pee? Just making sure. This is keeping you on the edge of your seat. It’s pretty obvious. You look so uncomfortable and you realize you really do deserve to be more comfortable. Your foreign neighbor asks what inning this is. Shut the fuck up man, you say, take a beer and watch. You in America now, boy, it’s all good.

What’s the weather like in Tampa, you wonder. You check on your blackberry. Nice weather. Cool. Tell the people in the kitchen to stop talking. I should go to the bathroom, another beer and I’ll be ready to piss. Preempt that shit right now. Then come back. Pull up your feet and make yourself real comfy. Pop open another cold one. Some more of those tortilla chips would hit the spot, you say out loud and a spare arm reaches to pass them over. The coin toss. Shhh. It’s the coin toss now. Pull your feet down, it’s too casual of you to keep them up for the toss. It’s General Petraeus. Fuck MoveOn, you say. It’s a rush of patriotism that you can’t explain. It’s bubbling up to your head from the heart. That’s too feminine though. Who knows. Wait for it. Wait for it! Arizona Cardinals. It’s their toss.

Oh shit. She’s quoting F Scott Fitzgerald. Does she know who she is? Who cares. The unthinkable. Curt Warner has a chance to do the unthinkable. He’s contemplating retirement. Why can’t you live more like that? No, no, you think. I can’t. It’s Curt Warner. It’s Curt fucking Warner. And he’s gonna do the unthinkable—at least he got a chance to do it. Woohoo, boy, put them feet back up, this is gonna be a thing to see. Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers. You used to know someone who explained the history of the Steelers, you know, the name and all that. You tell the boys a bit of it. You remember all of it but you can’t seem to care, that’s not cool boy.

You take another bit of chips and salsa. Why are we eating Mexican food? Is this Mexican food anyway? Turn up the volume. The people in the kitchen ain’t gonna pipe down. Turn it up. Wait, didn’t you have surround sound. Get your ass off the Lazy boy and go to the amp. Get your ass up, this is the forty-third superbowl. Forty fucking three.

You hate how all the players are sort of meandering. The game’s started but it really hasn’t started. It’s the part of the game that Europeans catch and think it’s a dumb game. Fuck do they know? No, this is like a cock tease. It’s like that girl you dated sometime in college. You didn’t fuck her. She turned out real clean. Everyone said she was a skank and boy was she hot. She was a cocktease. It’s that part of the game: the cocktease beginning. It’s foreplay. Where’s Bond and Pussy Galore now? No more foreplay! The defensive line—Antonia Smith and the other dude whose name you don’t remember—they don’t let any penetration. You laugh a little. Immature.

Parker’s in the game. Woo! Pittsburgh’s already six points in. Why is AZ coach challenging? Oh come on! Europeans are judging us. Forget them, but honestly though. Come on!

And then more ads. It’s a new Dan Brown book turned into a movie. You have a Catholic friend. IS he here, you ask? No. Whoops. You semi-boycotted the movie because he was all flustered, but you did watch it on demand. Paid 4.99 to watch greasy old TH and that French chicks get it one with men in robes in Rome. Speaking of Catholic friends, the game is back on. Funny how that works, it’s 0-0 all of a sudden. 19 yard field-goal attempt failed. Genuflected too damn early. Tomlin and co. had to upturn that goal. Pity, but with the kick in the end zone it’s still Pittsburgh’s. 3-0.

Pepsi’s trying to ride coattails. Obama coattails to be exact. That’s real lame, you think. That’s not even subliminal advertising. The logic to redo the Pepsi logo a la Obama is rank as whoa. SOrta funny, actually. They actually think that ‘cuz it worked for a Pres. campaign it’ll up their sales. That’s sad. Like funny sad. It’s the sad-funny that you won’t explain because somewhere in explaining you have to use the word retarded and that’s not PC anymore. You tell a friend near you between beer sips. He laughs. He knows what you mean. Retarded.

Speaking of retarded and non-PC, why do the refs still wear that really, er, gay uniform thing? You are not a homophobe, so you don’t say anything. You’re just a product of society—and society has heralded the slovenliness of the English language. That’s whack. You know what you mean by gay. And retarded. Whatever.

More of that Steeler history hits your head from the depths of memory. The weather’s nice in Tampa and that’s all that matters. You wonder if the weather being nice there will push the game to AZ. AZ has nice weather. Tucson and all that, real nice; spa towns, too. Pittsburgh’s cold as balls. What if they’re not used to warm weather. It’s like having penguins in the LA zoo outside. Don’t they get hot? They can’t take their tux off.

Speaking of retarded. What about that Swedish Budweiser commercial? At first having a Belgian co. buy AB’s Bud seemed like a good idea. ImBev or something from Belgium. Not a bad idea, at first; Belgian beer’s, like, good. Might have been good for AB’s BW for IB to buy it. But hold up. That ad was just whack. Parody ads are in apparently. The economy can’t be that bad. Jesus Christ. Well, it must be. The Times Square scene really was a mindfuck. Wtf. The economymust really be down. Of course, you remember it is. Did you refinance yet? Good boy. The game’s back on. You tell again to keep it down. Your foreign friend sniffs a Natty Ice. That’s for later, you say; here’s a Sam Adams. You know he’s gonna tell his Eurobuds about how atrocious the game is if he gets drunk and only remembers the first ten minutes. Here’s a SA, it’s from Boston. You know in MA. It’s good, it’s the Winter Ale. Good, huh? Yeah, boy.

Badass. The commentators are badass. You secretly hate them a little. I mean, they are a bit, er, retarded. They’re actually telling you what’s happening before your eyes. Well yes, you think, I do see that he has the ball. Yes, thanks again, I do, as a matter of fact, realize that what just happened was an attempt to score. Obviously. Maybe the economy is that bad. Of course, that was a complete non-sequitur. But it somehow made sense, because somewhere out there, that parody AB Swedish IB BW commercial hit home, and that’s the same people who actively listen to the commentary.

A man just made out with a monkey. That’s, well, don’t say it. It was probably a horny chimp. Watch the game. Have another beer. Forget Castrol. That’s whack.

H Ward like to be physical. If there’s a fight to be fought he’ll fight it. Is he Irish? Is that okay to ask?

Doritos is really stepping it up. Well done, you think. This one makes you laugh. The boy in blue turning into, er, a chimp makes you laugh. It must be the beer.

The ads are over, again. You’ve just noticed that maybe you’ve been paying more attention to the ads. Wow, you think, maybe the ads work. Shit, you’re a petri-dish for a marketing class somewhere. A guinea pig. Holy shit. The ads. They’re working. They’re working. Maybe it’s the insatiable urge to chug a BW. The ads was so, so—what was it—bad that it has to be because of IB. BW isn’t AB’s anymore. They’re ads were all wazzuuuuuuuup. IB is into Swedish parody. That reminds you. IB’s Belgian and that’s good beer. The ads are working.

Did Roethlesberger just say he was—er—nervous? Wow. He’s gonna play the game and what? Have fun? You have money on this game and he’s taking this like it’s fun. That’s whack, you think.
Another beer. The world’s all good. WHAT DID THAT TRAILER JUST SAY? Oh shit. Oh shit. That was a movie trailer that was wha-ack­, you think to yourself; you don’t quite know what the movie was about. You saw a fight, a bar, then spaceships, and Brad Pitt, and an old dude, and guns, and fire, and hot girls—though not necessarily in that order. It was an appeal to your manhood. It was calling out to your loins and to your heterosexuality. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know what the movie was a bout: all you know is that on 8 May The Future will Begin. That’s apocalypto shit right there. That’s trippy. You’re trippin now. It’s scaring you just a little. You look around. No one else seems to notice. You must be gay, you think to yourself. No, no, that’s not it. You can’t be. That movie was an appeal to your manhood—your sexuality—but yet! Your heart did a little weird thing when you saw Brad Pitt. Maybe you want to be him. Maybe you want him. But the hot girl turned you on! Wait, you saw to yourself, what if I’m bi. But, no, you shake your head—you’ve insulted your own sense and sensibility, that’s just taking crazy, you cant be bi, that’s just greedy. You need to make a funny. You look around but no one else seems to notice. But holy shit, holy fucking shit, the future—like, the future—is gonna begin on the 5/8. 5/8/09. That’s creepy. From five to eight is three and from eight to nine is one and from one to three is two and if you add two to five, eight, and nine the subtraction still works out; that’s some Fibonacci shit right there, you remember from college calc, or maybe it’s not, but that’s trippy stuff. Just like the score. 10-7. And then the british dude in the ad who got hit by a bus and then the kid from special Olympics. You’re trippin and when you look around your friends look trippy too, sort of like blobs, but not, because you still see, but if you squint it all changes. And someone’s still giving you alcohol. You scream to the kitchen because you hear another plate clank and this time, you’re completely sure, this time someone broke a plate. Or maybe it was a glass. Fuck you’re drunk. Have another beer though. Pass me a NI, the one you stopped you Eurobud from chugging, you say and you hear the fizz and that sound you don’t know how to describe that only sounds like the metal lip of the aluminum can opening. Strange that Coca Cola hasn’t yet TMed that sound. They use it every ad.

Are you still watching the game?

Of course you are. You’ve seen the slo-mo of the ball-fumble like ten times. The score, you check, is 10-7. Unchanged. Shit. This just started, didn’t it? Trippy shit.

No. 68 has a penalty kick. 68 seems nervous for the PK. Defense, No. 90 is up now. SO much penetration, eh? Darnell Dockett. Hell yeah. DD has dreads. That didn’t work out for the AZC.s. Lot of gang signs and varied arm motions with digital expression where thrown up in the air, all for one meaning: goshdarnit. It’s still 10-7, you take a long look at the score, just to make sure you didn’t miss anything by accident. Personal foul. No 32 is up. You hear the comm.. make a note of something about engagement with another player. There’s been a lot of homoerotic terminology, you think to yourself. It’s like the Superbowl is the woman that all the men want and there’s an odd sort of homosocial triangle. You read about homosocial relationships and the erotic triangles in college. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, you don’t actually remember her middle name though, yours truly just told you, wrote a paper—or was it a book?—about it. Homosocial relationships, that is. More ads. Hyundai is so not PC. You look around again, you’re now to drunk to speak freely among friends and before you say that Hyundai was not PC in making the Japanese and German dudes look really, really fascist—thank God Alfa Romeo isn’t selling here anymore—you want to make sure that other people noticed. But no one has. And you remember that one of your friends actually has one of those Hyundais—rhymes with Sunday—and you decide not to say anything about WWII. It’s all for the best. You probably wont even remember come Monday—after all, it is Sunday. You have an early morning tomorrow, you remember. That’s going to be a problem. Really, you won’t remember the game—that’s why you’re TIVOing it—and you just wanted an excuse to see your friends and drink w/o the women. That’s a little homoerotic, but thank god you’re the only one that notices. That’s just gay. That’s not PC, but maybe you actually meant, er, homo.

Another BW ad. IB is really campaigning to undo AB’s legacy. That’s sorta like BHO with GWB after 8 years of whack. It’s advertising BW’s drinkability. Speaking of slovenliness and the English language, drinkability is a rather elevated improvement on wazzuuup. Well done IB, you think.

The Gatorade halftime report is coming up. It sounds like something CNN is going to carry. The G-HR. That’s what CNN will call it. It’ll work with AC-360 and Fareed Zakaria GPS. Someone over in Atlanta really likes those names. Someone who thinks they’re real clever. Dirnkability is a consummation of the flavor of that beer much to be desired.

Fifty seconds left. You’re looking forward to the G-HR and Bruce Springsteen and the E St Band is seeming like a damn good milestone. Though you secretly hate BS’s sould-patch, you wouldn’t mind hearing him croon real soon. You need to pee. Too much beer. Men don’t pee midgame. That’s just not cool. That’s, er, forget it. Holy Shit, you think suddenly, 43 of the PS has long ass hair. Wowee, that seems fascinating to you right now. Ever since the JJ Nipplegate scandal, the halftime shows have become even more USA old-man 80s cool. Maybe Springsteen will do something cool. Maybe he’s wearing ass-less chaps. Another play is being reviewed: for the first half to end like this is simply scandalous. Warner screwed up with Harrison. Unthinkable. Another knee thing. Another genuflecting problem. Why didn’t you invite your Catholic friend? Who cares. Davinci code was enough. And James Harrison scored a goshdarn touchdown. Now that’s how this half should end. The ruling stands. 17-7. PS lead, a technicality, the ball rode a leg.

This is what you miss about the economy. Fuck Madoff. The ads are so desperate. Shh, you say, The G-HR is on. The G-HR is telling you you’ve witnessed history. That’s good to know. Listen so you know what happened.

Those cant be real fans. They’re too good. Springsteen is good, just not not that awesome for the under twenty-two crowd to be all water-breaking excited for him. Is that patriotic feeling still lingering? You ask yourself but really you’re not even sure if that question follows. What a ham. A culmination of hammery; the crotch to the camera took the cake.

Eurochic is apparently in. The stage set up screams Ibiza. That’s un-American. What is that man singing, you ask out loud. No one answers and you realize you haven’t really asked anyone in particular. Ever your Eurobud doesn’t acknowledge your question, he’s on his fourth SA and he’s taking America in like a sponge. He may even be loving football, you think, by now; this, you say to him, pointing at him with your can, is football, this is USA! And then, everyone agrees emphatically. Yeah boy. You’re on your game now. And you cant even hear if there’s anyone in the kitchen, everyone’s watching the halftime show now. After all, that’s what SB43 and the previous 42 have always been about. Yeah boy! You on your game now.

Shit. The cell phones are out and lit for this song. Lighters are out. No one smokes anymore. That’s so passé. Choirs are in. Hell yeah, choirs for sure are in. You cant get the crotch to the cam, the infamous C2C—it’s gonna be all over YouTube, you think—out of your mind. Fireworks and sparklers and screaming crowds, you’d think it were the Fourth of July or something. Sitting back, tryin’ to recapture glory days…Yeah BS, sing it, boy, sing it. Football fanatics…oh yeah, oh baby! And more fire works. Is that for Obama? I’m going to Disneyland! And then he holds up the guitar like MJ’s baby over the balcony. That’s for SB43. It’s for me, you think; it’s all for me.

Creepy eyes with the green cape is back on. That’s even creepier. Your inner hero…is calling. Answer him! The LMAO syndrome, though, now that’s really lol stuff right there. Now, then, what was that about the EL, and, what was the word, slovenliness? Well.

The comm.. are back on. The second half is going to be good. The players looked ok on the way to the locker room. Now that logic, that’s gold. Is Barack watching?

John Madden is still alive. He’s the own that tells you it was the longest play in the NFL history. And that epic play by Harrison, James fucking Harrison is a fucking beast, you think. James Madden is talking right at you. Not enough time to stew in your own juices, says Madden, that’s the problem of locker room talk; not enough time. They could do things to the Pittsburgh Steelers if they wanted to, explains Madden, but they might not, it’s potentially a big risk, he says or something. 3rd Q is going to be saucy. 51 just got manwiched between AZC-81 and someone else from the PS. That’s gotta hurt, you think. Raa! The economy sucks, though. You remember that for some reason. Put your feet back up. You already went to the bathroom. You’ve been waiting all day for this; all month, actually. Tampa has nice weather, you remind yourself, it’s nice and warm. Get comfortable again. You’re fifty-percent in. You’ve got money on this thing, better watch this kettle boil.

Thirty y/o J Harrison has 14 siblings. You can barely keep yours over dinner with your whole fam for Chrissakes, how does he keep his temper with practically seventy people over dinner, all closely related and blood-lines start fucking with each other when too much is too close? But it’s probably like EKS and the homosocial relationship; here it’s one famous guy from the fam, making lots of money. They all rally together for him. It’s just like that homosocial triangulation stuff. In the HST, you’ve got two men going for women and b/c of that they start falling in love; it’s not gay or w/e but it’s homosocial. The ball and the players and the SB43, and the JH fam, it’s all HST.

The ball. The pigskin. The pigskin. It’s called that maybe ‘cuz it was sewn from pig leather. You wonder if that’s exotic, but you remember bacon so obviously not. Not exotic.

The other BW ad is playing on your emotions. What does it mean to be American? Is it being a BW Clydesdale? Surely not. From Scotland, looking for a better life, and then to America satisfying odd-jobs. That’s a serious ad, you think, and then it’s really got your mind. You ignore Cuba Gooding Jr. on TV and the next play and that’s when IB has gone too damn far. You ignore the 15 yd penalty for the personal foul. When did ads stop appealing, you ask yourself, to your gluttonous inner self and start appealing to your identity. Shit, man, that’s some heavy stuff.

It’s still 17-7. It’s obviously going to the PS. You put your feet back down. They’re a little numb. You want another beer. Tell the people in the other room nearby who went to get some more chips and salsa to get you a cold one from the fridge. Fridge is a funny word. You remember that it came from the company Frigidaire, shortened to Fridge, rather than the word refrigerator; sort of like Kleenex. Or Durex, for that matter. Or Pigskin. No, that’s not right. That’s just what it is. Like calling the TV the tube; though that doesn’t work for LCD screens anymore. Language is changing, apparently. Pigskin. It must feel really awkward being handled by all those men, you think to yourself uncomfortably because you’re not quite sure why you’re thinking about men handling an amygdaloidal leather ball. That’s wrong. It’s whack.

Are you watching the game?

Are your feet still numb? You poor dear, stand up. Take a bathroom break. Number 24 ran someone over, though, personal foul: unnecessary roughness. That’s grand. Especially with that uniform, you think.

Another trailer screws with your patriotism. First shot shows a destroyer being bombed. Troops. Shia LaBeouf. Tanks. An alien swimming in the water like Free Willy. And then the CareerBuilder (dot) com ad reminds you of how shit the economy is. Rich people are vilified. Dumbed out. Of course, Madoff had to be dumb. The Hiltons are clearly in the business of drinking gold out of crystal goblets whilst wearing silk robes de chambers. Of course, what were you thinking?

God Bless. America.

Kellogg’s building fields where your children can play. That ad blows your mind. You wonder, again to yourself and only to yourself, if you would have noticed that Kellogg’s was a big evil corp. had they not put out that ad. Now, those frosted flakes are no longer coming from a cute source but rather from a cold—frosty—BEC.

20-7. how did that happen? Madden’s talking about how Warner’s going to be put out to pasture. He wears gloves. His thumbs are screwy. That’s when it all starts going downhill.

Put your feet back up. They can’t still be numb.

There’s another ad: he dreamed of playing for the NFL and he did. If I work hard enough…Keep dreaming kids! That’s right. Even if they did. The economy’s shit.

Warner’s finished for good. It’s sad, you think to yourself, very sad. You put your feet back down. The rings they give must be expensive. Bud Light Lime looks like an affront to your palate. Don’t even think about it. It’s Mexican. It’s still 20-7. It’s in the bag now, you think. Everyone might as well go home. 20-13. Larry Fitzgerald told Newton to reconsider just for a second with that jump. The defender can’t jump that high. Then its Alec Baldwin being himself in front of a camera. Of course, LF has 6 record TDs this season alone. 20-14. You missed that one point. It sneaked right by you like a Harry Potter quiditch flying winged mini ball.

(Dockett is a beast.)

Nevertheless, it looks like the AZC have lost before the the 4th Q is over. 20-14. As the game officially remains with only three minutes, you notice how long the seconds seem to take. Real time seems to have stopped for a little. 20-16. Maybe it isn’t in the bag, you think to yourself. And then it’s not. At 2:37 Larry Fitzgeral takes the ball and sprints for all life. AZC: 22. PC: 20. Then it’s 23-22. The coach has him close. Holding him tight. How homoerotic, you think to yourself. Are they kissing?

1:09. 20-23.

Holmes fumbles the first time. The second time, both feet in the end zone. He gets it. You think, holy shit, that’s suicide. Pittsburgh-26. The refs call it. Touchdown.27-23. Thirty-five seconds left. Is Obama watching? For sure he is. Antonio Holmes. Touchdown. Touch fucking down. This redefines AE’s Theory of Relativity. This is now the longest :29 ever. Warner is finished. Roethlisberger has it.

With a final fumble, it’s done; and the Pittsburgh Steelers become the first franchise to win six SBs in history. Roethlisberger made it; Holmes did, too. It’s like the Fourth of July, you think to yourself. It really is. Like the inauguration. Holy shit.

Is Barack Obama watching, you ask. Of course he is, someone confirms. He wanted the Steelers to win. That’s what Rooney said when he thanked the Pres. What did he think? You ask yourself. He’s happy. All of America is happy. At least, the America that wanted the Steelers to win.

God bless America, if for nothing else.

-t

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