Food, football and fighting in New Jersey

Corey and Stacie sittin' in a tree....

...watching the Giants vs. Dallas game last weekend screamin' like a couple'a buffoons.

This is one of our favorite traditions.  Corey has a wonderful friend who is a season ticket holder and lets us buy his tickets for this game every year.  This year ended up being a super important game and that made it a little extra exciting.

Add some persistent rain and a whole bunch of crazy Dallas fans and you get one good story.

Going into this game, we're usually a lot more prepared than we were this time.  We know who we're going with (we get four tickets), we have a set game time and most importantly we have a tailgate game plan.  This year, however, we had a bunch of people not quite interested in the tickets, the game time changed to 8pm (hellooooo late night three hour drive!), and we did zero tailgating.

Eh.

Although I do enjoy the collective cheering and stuffing of faces with meat, and 8pm did technically put me in a different state waaaaaay past my bedtime, at the end of the day (literally) I was still going to be planting my buns in a seat on the 10 yard line screaming like a 7th grade cheerleader.  And that was pret-ty okay by me.

So there we were, walking into the stadium in a steady drizzle.

And then there we were, watching warm ups in a steady drizzle.

It was raining, is what I'm trying to say.  We got rained on off and on for the entire game, which would have been that side of terrible if it wasn't an unseasonable 50 degrees.  But rain is still rain.  And when you get those towels you're s'posed to wave when good things happen wet you end up launching a lot of water into unsuspecting eyeballs.

Whoopsie daisies.

So far, I haven't mentioned a thing about the game.  Maybe you've noticed.  But that's only because all of the action happened in the stands.  We were surrounded by Dallas fans.

Dallas fans from New Jersey.

Here's something I was unaware of before moving to New York: New Jersey is terrible.

There.

I just became offensive.

Or insulting.

Whichever applies.

My apologies, New Jersey.  But your roads make me turn four times to go straight, and your people are mean and abrasive and scary.

Corey and I were lucky enough to sit in front of father-of-the-year, and I say that with every ounce of sarcasm I can muster from deep within my bones.  Mr. Stereotypical New Jersey himself brought his entire family, children and all, to the game to cheer on their team, the Cowboys.

The following is an excerpt from an overheard conversation within two minutes of the first quarter:

"(playful ribbing from two Giants fans in front of us)"

"I'm here with my f(udging) family!  You want to f(udging) come back here??  I'll kick your f(udging) a(pple).   Yeah, that's right you couple'a qu(esos).  Turn the f(udge) around.  I'm here with my f(udging) family."

Apparently, he was there with his family.

And he doesn't want his 10-year-old to know what it means to be innocently teased.

Did I not mention his 10-year-old was standing to his right?

I wasn't surprised when the drunk two rows ahead of us started throwing around fudge-bombs in Mr. New Jersey's general direction his kid came back with:

"Kiss my a(pple)!"

If only I'd packed a bar of Irish Spring...

Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

In between all the fun there was actually a football game.

A pretty good game!  It's always good when you can walk out of a stadium and say your team is going to the playoffs.

That's what I always say.

It's also good when you can go to bed at 9:30pm, but sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.

They Might Not Actually Be Giants

Sunday was football Sunday. 

A football Sunday with friends and family.

A football Sunday full of snacks.

A football Sunday I, for once, didn't grumble because, as I mentioned Monday, I was in the action, 20 rows from the field, cheering on my team with wild abandon.

I've always wanted to describe my actions in this way.  And Lord know I act "with wild abandon" often enough....but that's neither here nor there.

After a mild (lightly put) Corey situation in the morning, I was on my way to Giants' Stadium with Kimberlie, my dad, our friend Wayne, a urinary tract infection, several pounds of deli meats, and cookies.  The essentials.  We only needed one pit stop on our two-and-a-half hour drive to New Jersey for potty break and corn dogs (this is not code...we really did need corn dogs) before arriving in a nearly full parking lot outside the stadium.

"Um, excuse me, could you pull your truck up?  You're taking up two spots."

"No can do.  See, we hafta put this in there and boobity-doo-doo and other such ramblings so we actually need both spots."

Wayne, shouting across three of us, through the window "You're being ruuuuuuude!"

Finally, after driving up and down aisle after aisle we found a spot taken by only a frat-party pole game.  This time Wayne decides to do the askin':

"Hey.  You need to...."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, I'll just move this."

"Uh, thanks."

And there we had our parking space.  Along a fence giving us about five feet beyond the car to spread out with a set of port-a-potties well within range.

"This is great!  Now let's unpack our deli meats!"

"And let's be sure to position ourselves close enough to the guys grilling 2lb burgers so that we can trick our taste buds into thinking our turkey subs with mayo are actually hamburgers."

I think I mentioned the ridicule in my tailgate meal selection on Monday.  It was brutal.

"Thank goodness we have these organic chips!!"

The one thing I didn't screw up:  the cookies.  We snuck them into the stadium under my sister's jacket.  They helped to nurse our wounds as we watched our team's constant defensive failures.

But would ya just look at that stadium...

It is breathtaking.  And awesome.  It feels like you are surrounded with walls made of people, which is a little weird, but cool.  There are four big-as-my-house TV screens that alternate between the game, replays and abrupt motivational sayings: "Get Up, Get Loud."  That's about as to the point as one can be.

My sister loved it...

My dad reeeeally loved it....

And then this happened...

The lights went out.  All of 'em.  And this is what we saw.

This is what we heard:

"OOOOOoooooYEEEeeeeaaaaaWOOOooooooAHHHhhhhh!!!" times eighty-thousand.

Then we saw this:

These are cell phones.  The dummies were trying to take pictures of the pitch black.  Puh-leez.

(I couldn't get mine out in time)

Do you believe me when I saw all the lights went out?  Because it sounds ridiculous, but fo real.  Eventually the emergency lights came on and we were told to stay in our seats and wait for evacuation instructions.  So we waited.  Then more lights came on.  We waited some more.  The refs decided there was enough light to play so they started the game back up.  Then we heard an announcement to stay in our seats and wait for evacuation instructions. 

"Uh, does he not know the lights and the game are back on??"

We eventually did evacuate, though.  A whole lot of us just got up and left when we realized our team stunk.  My group walked back to our car and drove off into the night.

But this time we skipped the corn dogs.