Superbowl and Nose Cake

Monday, 08 February 2010 14:52

Been a while since I wrote a blog entry. I deliberately avoided the whole new year thing. Most January blogs are all commentary on a holiday season I don’t care about and wishful thinking about the year ahead. This is 2010, it is already happening, and I’m doing it.

Watched the Superbowl last night. “So what?” I hear you say. So did millions of people. Yeah, but here in England I am in a minority. The Superbowl is the only American football game that is shown on British television in its entirety and it gets the unenviable slot of midnight till 4am. Okay, so the timing is more to do with our time zone than punitive scheduling. Still, it hasn’t helped the popularity of the sport in Britain, and the fact remains I belong to a very small number of fans.

Now, anyone that knows me well might find it surprising that I go to such great sleep-evading lengths to watch a sporting event when 364 days a year I couldn’t care less about overpaid men kicking a bag of wind around a field. It all started when my American friend Corey and my all-sport-obsessed friend John suggested I join their Superbowl party, if not to actually appreciate the game, just to make up the current number of attendees (two) to a number which could at a stretch be rightly called a “party”. This led to an unlikely interest and appreciation of the game.

British people on the whole find American sports ridiculously elaborate and overly concerned with statistics. We try to generate the same kind of interest in sporting statistics in our own games, but they aren’t quite the same......

American Football

“The New Orleans Quarterback - the oldest player in NFL history – scored a record breaking 38 yard field goal equalising with the previous record 21 years ago. This is only the second time the team have reached the Superbowl, the last being 9 years ago.”

British Football

“The overpaid chav kicked the ball into the net. The last time an overpaid chav kicked the ball into a net was 10 minutes ago.”

The other great thing about the Superbowl is the famous half-time show. Typically a has-been classic rock act, this year the NFL broke no moulds by booking ageing British mod band The Who. The two surviving members of the band played a 12 minute medley of hits with a backing band a third of their ages. Not really The Who reformed at all – more like one ageing singer-turned-actor hanging round with a paedophile and covering their own songs to supplement their pensions.

Anyway, I stayed up until 3am watching the game and gorging on specially imported American snacks, and inevitably getting up this morning was not easy or enjoyable. I suspect that I will fall asleep on the sofa later and dream of touchdowns.

The other, slightly less eventful thing that happened to me today was that I got a piece of cake stuck up my nose. Whilst eating some of aforementioned cake I had one of those awful misfired sneezes. You know the ones, where something goes wrong in the whole sneezing process and you end up with an itchy palette for the rest of the day. Yeah, one of those. Anyway, I guess some of the cake found its way into my nasal cavity during the debacle, only to be discovered later. I must admit I thought something was wrong with me when I found a soft, doughy lump in my nostril. Hey, stop thinking what you’re thinking. I warned you in advance that it wasn’t as interesting as the Superbowl. Perhaps some statistics would make it a little more exciting?

The cake, a jam filled sponge with a sweet pastry base, was the second of its kind to be consumed by Darrell today; and stayed in his right nostril for a record breaking 21 minutes before discovery and the inevitable touchdown.