Le Bowl de Super XLI

Well, most of my day was pretty uneventful. I got up, threw on some clothes, and started at the gigantic pile of laundry that had been accumulating for weeks in my closet. It was a Sunday afternoon, so I was competing with a bunch of other students for 3 washers and dryers. There were harsh words, lies, subterfuge, and still-damp dryer loads.

Things got more fun in the evening, when I met up with DJ to go see the SuperBowl. Admittedly, I'm not a big sports fan (soccer being the exception, and even then it's a pretty superficial fandom), but I was intrigued by the notion of watching the SuperBowl in a Parisian bar and I was looking forward to some excellent commercials.

The game was to start at approx. 1h00 Paris time, so we headed out around 23h00 to grab a seat at the bar. We were heading to The Moose (apparently now called the Moosehead), which is a "Canadian" bar near Odéon. Alas, we misjudged the crowds and arrived to a bar that was already PACKED with bodies. After shuffling around and finding absolutely no seating, we grabbed a spot against a wall and in good view of a television screen, ordered our beers (20€ admission, but with 3 pints included) and waited for the game to start.

The opening ceremonies were...um...gay. And I say this as a cheerfully gay man. When I mean gay, I don't mean "style-conscious cosmopolitan" gay, but "puffy poet's blouse with garish patterns" gay. The performance included cirque du soleil tumblers on swings, people running around with brightly-coloured hangliders in the shape of butterflies, and male cheerleaders wearing board shorts. Overall, the colour palette looked like it was taken from the opening credits of Saved By The Bell. Toward the end, there was a "Look! We're in Miami! So here's some brown people dancing all spicy!!" moment.

As the game proceeded (brief: Bears began with an amazing opening touchdown, then fell apart a few minutes later, but the Colts weren't exactly on their game, either), DJ and I wrestled to maintain our spot on against the wall, occasionally elbowing people around and (un)intentionally stepping on their toes. By halftime, people were beginning to filter out (particularly the French ones), but it wasn't until the last few minutes of the game that we succeeded in scoring a spot at the bar.

An odd highlight of the game was Prince's halftime performance. At the time, the sound on the TVs was about 1-2 seconds ahead of the video feed, so it was hard to judge the musical performance. Nonetheless, there was something amusing about seeing the queer-but-hetero Prince do his thing for a stadium full of football fans. In what was most certainly a reference to the Janet Jackson "nipplegate" of a couple of years ago, Prince did something with his guitar that was not entirely wholesome. See the 9 minute mark in the video below for an illustration:

One last comment: The video feed was from a British channel, rather than an American one, so I totally missed out on the usually very amusing SuperBowl commercials. Boo!