The Sports Widow’s Super Bowl Highlights
February 2, 2009 11:00 AM | 0 Comments
I hosted my annual Super Bowl party to celebrate the
Staging & Décor
• The game-watching, primarily adult viewing area was in our basement where we crowded chairs, a futon (yes, I still have one) and an 11-year-old fossil TV. The Puppy-Bowl-watching, primarily kids viewing area was in our livingroom on the main floor.
• Thanks to my friend and business partner, Dave Sharp, our dining room table was festooned with a couple of fine gifts he’s presented me with over the years, including an M&M sitting in a recliner and a plastic, hollowed out snack football. The reclining M&M dispensed pistachio nuts when you pressed the kick-back lever. When you pressed the button on the snack football, it magically opened to the tune of the NFL Sports theme song, revealing the snack contents inside. My kids were playing it over & over again at breakfast this morning, got into a fight about whose turn it was to play with it, and I nearly threw it out the back window. This is NOT what I want to hear at 7:30am.
Menu
Our Contributions
• Balsamic chicken wings with bleu cheese dressing with big chunks of bleu cheese – my 11-year-old son Austin, who has chef impulses, insists that they didn’t have enough heat, but you should have seen the 12-alarm, hot pepper-laden recipe he originally proposed
• Carrot & celery sticks with ranch dressing
• Molasses cookies, which were hugely popular and are an old family recipe
• Blonde brownies with chocolate chips that sunk to the bottom, which were largely ignored due to the popularity of the Molasses cookies
• Salt & vinegar chips
• Pretzels
• Assorted soft drinks, beers & wine
Guest Contributions
• Homemade, microwave caramel corn that got devoured immediately
• Taco bar
• Guacamole & chips
• Salsa relish
• Cheese & cracker platter (I'm eating the leftovers for lunch all week)
Self-service
The great thing about this event is that we don’t include any dishes that require fussing, so I can just socialize. We strategically placed soft drinks in a cooler near the food, and kept the wine/beer in a second fridge in our laundry room, which is adjacent to the adult viewing area. I used the dryer as a hospitality station, complete with festive tablecloth, openers, small bag for bottle caps & corks, and plastic cups and markers.
The Actual Game & Half-time Show
I watched a fair amount of the game and even yelled a few times, once when the Cardinals guy ran for a long time and made a touchdown, and once at the very end when the Steelers guy made that amazing touchdown.
I was thrilled that Bruce Springsteen was the half-time entertainment, but a few of the teenagers in our group commented that he was too old to be rocking out like that and that it was gross. Personally, I felt The Boss was characteristically nimble and I never tire of his voice and his lyrics, but then I’m almost as old as he is. But there was one comical shot when The Boss went flying toward the cameraman, sliding on his knees, and it looked like he could have got hit in the crotch with the camera lense. The teenagers thought this was pretty hysterical.
La Fin de Football
Whether you watch the Super Bowl or not, it’s a happy day for football widows everywhere. It’s over: The fat lady sang or, in this case, an aging rocker, and we won’t have to think about football until August. Ah… a reprieve.
How was your Super Bowl??? If you had a party, what did you serve?
The Sports Widow
(aka Nan Hall)
From the all of the Archives
The Definition of a Sports Widow
July 9, 2007 10:04 PM | 0 Comments
Each day, our nation’s television and cable networks, radio stations, newspapers, magazines and Internet devote an astounding amount of time, space and money to reporting about sports to the sports-savvy.
Drive through any major metropolitan area, and sports facilities, shrines to our national obsession, dominate the skyline; sports bars teem with rowdy, beer-swilling fans; politicians regularly debate how much we should invest in sports facilities and franchises; and sports/athletic gear is a wardrobe staple.
In the U.S. alone, there are well over 62 million sports fans and at least 19 million sports addicts, and they are 92% male, ages 18-54. (See more details in my entry entitled The Definition of a Sports Fan.)
If you think about it, conservatively, behind these sports fans at least half -- or 40 million – have a disenfranchised wife, girlfriend, mother, partner or reluctant companion, who is overshadowed or excluded from “The Club.”
These are the Sports Widows.
So, with a constituency this large, I ask you… Where’s the rebuttal? Where’s the foil? Who’s commiserating with, interpreting for, negotiating for and most importantly cheering for the OTHER team?
No one…
Until now.
Enter sportswidow.com, the web site designed for my people, the Sports Widow Nation.
A Sports Widow Sideline Report on Car Racing
May 18, 2007 11:39 AM | 0 Comments
I spent nearly every summer of my childhood in a small town called Brookston, Indiana, which was 20 miles from West Lafayette, home of Purdue University, and 90 miles Northwest of Indianapolis, home of the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. My earliest impressions of car racing came from my proper, southern grandmother, who after marrying my Hoosier grandfather, agreed to leave her native Tennessee to live in a plains town in Indiana. Her sweet-as-honeysuckle drawl never left her nor did her strong religious convictions. Grandma Minnie believed that racing was evil and naturally connected with drinking, betting, carousing and general licentiousness.
This prejudice made it a bit awkward, when my father wound up marrying (his second marriage) a woman who was either employed or volunteered for the Dade County Race Track in Dade County, Wisconsin. It was never quite clear what her role was. Picture Karen Black wearing a hypnotizing black & white dress that was patterned after racing flags. Sue's role was simple: Hypnotize the crowd, look svelt and enchanting, hand out trophies and dole out kisses to the winners. It was clearly a hardship post.
Yet, in sharp contrast to my Grandma Minnie's opinions and my experiences with Sue, who was less gracious with those of us who were not race car drivers, I was swooned by movies that romanticized racing and the automobile in general. As I've mentioned, I love movies, and have belonged to a Movie Club for 15 years now. I have a special fondness for old, classic movies. This may not be racing, but who can forget Grace Kelly sitting beside Cary Grant in a roadster in To Catch a Thief
While working as a PR intern at the Wisconsin State Fair one summer, I was posted at one of three Information Booths, the one right next to the race track. During the races, my booth buddies and I could barely hear ourselves speak, but fortunately we could read lips and grew accustomed to the most popular question and easiest one to answer. Nine times out of 10, these hearty, farm-fed Wisconsinites would inquire: "Where are the cream puffs?" to which we'd reply "Down this road, past the bubbler (drinking fountain in Midwestern speak) and right at the pig barn."
When I was 20 years old, my Uncle Lee, then a minister in Nashville, TN, took me to a church conference in Talladega, Alabama. An equal opportunity sports enthusiast, he used to show me sports sites on every trip. This time, we stopped by the Talladega Super Speedway and the groundskeeper gave us a tour, which included driving us around the embankment.
So, what interests me about car racing is how NASCAR has become such a popular sport among women and families. How did this evolve? Check out a copy of The Female Fan Guide to Motorsports (Female Fan Guide Series)
Horse Racing: The Sports Widow Revels in her Great Equestrian Moments
May 7, 2007 10:53 AM | 0 Comments
The victory of Street Sense in the 133rd Kentucky Derby, with Queen Elizabeth II as an esteemed spectator, reminds me of my personal history in the equestrian realm and prompts me to establish my baseline credentials (or perhaps, more descriptively, my lack of credentials) in this area of sports. Put succinctly, when it comes to horses, I do not have any street sense.
Clubhouse Notes: How to Make or Get an Arnold Palmer
April 27, 2007 10:33 AM | 0 Comments
Everyone who ever dines out with me knows that ever since the infamous job interview several years ago, my non-adult beverage of choice is hands-down an Arnold Palmer. I have a dream/delusion that one day Arnold Palmer and I will sit down in a sun-drenched clubhouse and sip Arnold Palmers together. We will avoid the subject of golf, since I know so little about it and instead discuss politics or ailments or religion - uncontentious issues. But, back to the point: Recipes.
What Does Arnold Palmer Mean to the Sports Widow?
April 26, 2007 10:17 AM | 0 Comments
I have since learned from a quick check on www.pga.com that by the end of 1993, Arnold Palmer amassed 92 championships in professional competitions of national or international stature. He won seven majors between 1958 and 1964, including one U.S. Open, four Masters and two British Opens. His back-to-back triumphs in the 1961 and ’62 British Opens, brought this competition back into vogue for Americans. The only victory that eluded Palmer was the PGA Championship. In 1980, nearly two decades after his last major victory, he won the PGA Senior Championship, the first Senior Tour event he ever entered.
Iced Tee: My First Encounter with Arnold Palmer
April 25, 2007 1:44 PM | 0 Comments
While in Wapato Point in Lake Chelan, Washington, during Spring Break, I was reminded of one of many times in my life when it was clear that there is NO escape from sports, no safe haven for the Sports Widow. It was one of my more memorable job interviews several years ago, which began on a precarious footing.
I was being interviewed for a job over lunch at a seafood restaurant on Lake Union in Seattle. The job was way out of my league: Corporate, relatively high salary, generally reputable. I was convinced they would never hire a lunatic like me, but then, no guts, no glory. Furthermore, my prospective boss and interviewer is everything that I am not as a professional. She speaks in bullet points. I speak in tongues. She has unnaturally blond hair, but it is clearly a salon versus a drugstore creation. Her makeup is carefully applied (with no visible lines indicating where the foundation ends and her real face begins), and she is wearing an outfit that reminds me of one of the members of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Uniforms like this with epaulettes say, “I’m in charge.”
The Bike Lesson
January 27, 2007 11:03 PM | 0 Comments
Growing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1960s, I was oblivious to sports. This is incomprehensible to most men I know, who can’t believe I wasn’t avidly tracking the tragic exit of the Milwaukee Braves or the promising debut of the Milwaukee Bucks or the incredible feats of the Green Bay Packers. In fact, the Pack is the source of a recurring nightmare I have had throughout my life.
