Superbowl For The Female Eye
Celia Farber
We had the time of our lives last night. We were all part of a wave that picked up in the late afternoon and put us down around 1 am. My father, me, and my son--3 generations--had money on the Giants. My father is recovering from a very serious surgery at a hospital a few blocks away--I dropped my son off in his recovery room with 3 oranges, a bottle of water, a bagel, and a pack of depraved cupcakes from a bodega. I stayed through kickoff, then went my own way. My father said that the way they prolonged kickoff to accomodate commercials made him "ashamed to be an American."
I told V. I wanted to be at a very packed bar, any bar, and we found one within half a block. I enjoy the Superbowl the way a rat might enjoy the melted butter spraying over his head near the traveling amusement park's concession stand. I don't understand the game in the slightest but I take any opportunity to be around men acting like men without feminine interference: The way they all become a single vast organism, reacting in the same instant, the same way, leaping from their barstools and hollering and pumping their arms into the air, and high fiving. I hollered right along with them, in ignorance, and felt happy.
Everything about it kills me: The way they know what they're doing every second, they way they play so utterly together and the way they weave and spin this fantastic drama in front of our eyes--the unquestioned drama of the ball which may be the last American story. To my eye, it all looks like a crazy pile of men in helmets never really getting anywhere, but I follow the roars and when they catch the ball or drop it or run with it, I feel the thrill and I begin to grasp, little by little.
It's a story, football, told in a few hours, that picks you up, tosses you around, suspends you, slams you down, and finally gives you true catharsis.
We walked up Broadway and people were just screaming straight out. Leaning out of windows screaming and running up and down the street screaming. I screamed too. I didn't stop smiling all night. For once in my life I was "on" the winning team.
Vincent almost knocked my tooth out from flailing in laughter over the Doritos mouse commercial.
The Victoria's Secret commercial struck me as a bummer; It insinuated an end to the world of all men acting like men, and that was the very thing that I was having such a good time with. I have become convinced that women should have their worlds and men should have theirs. It all gets boring when it mixes too much. I was once at a neo-Orthodox Jewish wedding and they separated the men and women for dancing and I was in heaven. A few women complained and I told them they were crazy wrong. I pulled up a chair and watched as the charismatic young Rabbi started dancing right in front of me, for the men, not for me.
The world of men is a place of great beauty, clarity, conviction.
I am well aware that I can't touch it, can't join it, can't understand its laws or partake in them.
But I can watch, under cover of caring about the Superbowl, per se. I can love the sight and sound of all those thundering hooves across the plains, the dust, the hunt, the importance of the kill. I can know, once in a while, that I am utterly insignificant, that it is time to stand back and just watch a group of creatures acting natural. There will always be beauty in that, as there was last night.
Tomorrow I am actually getting on the 1 train and going all the way downtown to join the Victory parade--pretending to be a very advanced Giants fan.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Superbowl For The Female Eye
- The Catch
- Any Given Sunday
- Oh my. The Giants!
- New York Giants: Super Bowl Champions
I do believe, Celia, you'll be a looking for a hunk or at least unpromised wishes one's son becomes one.
The Mannings are not quite ready for Esquire.
On the other hand, Tom Brady is to die for ?
I mean for femmes.
I can't win with you, can I?
I was not really writing about jock straps, smelly jerseys or "hunks."
I was writing an ode to men from a...distance.
Tom Brady does nothing for me and I have never heard any woman mention him. I thought his facial expression all night was off-putting.
Men are wrong 100% of the time when the speculate about what women find attractive.
You enjoyed watching men be men, without worrying about how women watching them would see them.
I do not have the writing skills which you consistently display and I applaud.
Your father, be he forgiven, proly didn't read that most major newspapers announced precisely the time of kick-off (with the understanding that pre-game commercials pre-dominate live game action because once it starts other factors intrude on commercial announcements).
I never speculate on femmes. I only have to live with them according to my obviously erroneous and semi-valid understandings.
Your post was well received, from my perspective.
At first I thought you said, "single vast orgasm" and then thought, that can't be right. No orgasms are allowed during Superbowl.
clearly you are not a Giants fan!
it wasn't about men
or hunks
or organisms
or orgasms
so cool it.
You made me laugh--and I think you got me good.
It was about men. (But not "hunks...")
... Celia over your lasts few posts you've somehow become my favorite. Didn't I intensely dislike your writings when you first came aboard? Weird. So, anyway, GREAT post(s)!
Thank you, Celia.
Well, no, on second thought, let me explain: it's a rare and touching pleasure to read something about men that contains nothing about how they need to shape up and get cracking in some area or another -- something that does not at all whatsoever posit or claim anything about men's failures as men per se, or what is wrong with them, or how they're otherwise just not good enough.
Are you sure about that???
(The "world of men" also involves a lot of crude and simple jokes along those lines.)
I too, while not in a bar, was a part of that organism - and screamed so loudly when Tyree and Plaxico made those catches ... it felt like every part of me was with Eli and that team.
This column is a breath of fresh air that should immediately be syndicated in every newspaper that dares to challenge PC.
My grandmother and mother were great NFL fans, always watching the Sunday games with “the men”. My grandmother and grandfather both liked the same team. But my mother is a Redskins fan and my father an Eagles fan, so that always added to the fun.
And then when I ended up at Penn State, well, I guess I don’t need to tell you that football is close to a religion there. And many a female who entered the University unskilled in the ways of the game graduated with a thorough understanding and appreciation.
A few years later, after I moved to North Carolina, some of the most fun and memorable dates I had were going out to watch Penn State games at a local bar with another Penn State grad. Good times….
So football has always been a co-ed experience for me. And I like it that way!
Go Celia!
Hank B
Who's crying? Your damn perfume got in my eye, that's all!
(thank you)
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.