Bucked by Zebras

Gillette Stadium

I know this is probably a day or two late, but I got caught up in watching the telly on Monday night and I just wasn’t up for posting immediately upon returning home from the game on Sunday night. The good news is this is just a short post. The bad news is the Pats lost the game, but you already knew that.

That there picture was taken by my shiny new Motorola Razr. Yup, that’s the highest setting and resolution, resized down and trimmed to fit here. Looks like crap, no? Well, that’s because it is. I wonder why they even bother with the cameras in the phones. They all suck. My old phone took slightly more crappy photos than this one (remember the shot of the grackle?). I understand that distance shots won’t be great, but c’mon, that is some bad stuff. I guess it will take a couple more years. Not the point though…

I guess the real good news was the rain stopped by game time. We did wait in excessive traffic, but that’s because the lots filled up earlier than usual with it being a Sunday night game. Yup, it was a tent city in those lots. Tons of those white pop tents, which go for $120 or so. Thankfully, I don’t need to tailgate that badly, but for some folks it is all about the tailgating and to them, I say gawd bless ye.

Most are smart enough to remember the essentials like a fire making device, a food flipping or grabbing device and definitely a bottle opening device. You might remember from a post Ed put up some time ago that we were not so smart… okay, it was mostly Ed that wasn’t so smart, and yes, I just threw him under Jerome Bettis.

Many of them aren’t smart enough to take the tailgating in enough moderation that they enjoy the actual game. Seems to me that many are so tanked up by the time they enter the stadium that the game must be like a fuzzy little dream. If they aren’t tanked up enough, then they keep on drinking once they get inside. We had a couple idiots in our row that were getting up to get more beer about every 20 minutes. Lucky for us our seats were on the end so they could pass by us every time since they were in the middle of the section.

Finally, I asked the guy if for the second half he would go the other way. He could pretend like it was part of the game, yeah? What I really wanted to ask was how much money he’d blown on the day so far. Was it up to a week’s pay yet? I was also thinking, “Excuse me? Do you really need to consume that much?”

Well, apparently so and you know what? By the time the second half started, at least one of those idiots was nailed to his chair fighting head bobs until he passed out. Thanks for inconveniencing me for a half before you take a timeout.

His buddy didn’t look much better, but he could keep his eyes open enough to still watch the game. We were waiting for one of them to ralph all over the folks in front of them, but instead, a Bronco’s player did the puking on the field.

The Broncos’ LB #54 has the ill-fated name of Patrick Chukwurah, so we should have seen that coming, right? Did they show this on TV? What did Madden say?

Boom! Did you see that? Chukwurah just coughed up some Gatorade before the play started, played it out and then puked up some more! And then some more! And then again! Boom! Get tough actin Tinactin!

Well, the sideshows were more interesting than the actual game. Brady sucked ass the entire time and when he didn’t, well it was a bad penalty call or call in general. Was that not a Safety? Sure looked like it to everyone in the stadium! How about a couple bad PI calls? Yup, we got them too. Hey, how about one for offense and one for defense!?

I don’t like to call refereeing to task as an excuse for losing, but that’s what I am going to do. I think the Zebras were helping out their Bronco brethren. I don’t know, maybe there was better coverage on TV and I’m sure Madden cleared it all up for you. Why couldn’t they just pipe him in for us to enjoy too?

It felt like NBC asked the Broncos to allow us to score just to keep folks watching a little longer, or maybe it was the Kraft’s so that people would stay in the stadium and drink a little longer. I don’t know, it seemed like it was too much of a moment of sudden clarity that they’d march down and get it done. Of course, that was with that offensive PI call mixed in there. You know, overcome some adversity to get it done.

The last fun fact about the game was watching Gostkowski warm up during the halftime show. He was in the middle of all the flags and booted a couple thru the sticks no problem, but during the game time he gets blocked. Just a funny little thing.

At least we sucked bad enough that we could boot a little early and beat the traffic out.

PS – Sorry I lied about the short post.