Episode 56: How to Tailgate

There are two deep dark secrets I have (hahahaha, no, there are like a hundred and seven) that seem to surprise people: I like to go camping (more about that later) and also I love NFL football. I don't know why those things are so surprising; I guess people think I'm just sitting at home obsessively polishing my Fabergé eggs and combing out kitty wigs. But no, I'm not doing either of those things, at least not on weekends - those are more like Tuesday-ish activities. The football thing seems to surprise people the most. I can't imagine what they'd do if they knew that I was also a fierce Fantasy Football participant (team name: Awesome Thunder, though it used to be Mincing Prisspots and before that, Beaver Patrol).

Over the last four years, I have been the beneficiary of free tickets to Tennessee Titans home games, and over the last decade, I have supported them through better and worse, richer and poorer, cheaper beer and not cheaper beer. NFL games are not really a place for liberal-leaning Democrats. There's lots of standing and praying and heart-covering and anthem singing and military plane flyovers and GINORMOUS waving American flags and, oh, I don't know, slitting of fingertips and mixing up all the white people blood. It's a lot of American rah-rah, and you have to mean it, or you get the hairy eyeball from every Klan member this side of Pulaski, TN - birthplace of the KKK - which is almost all of the people in my section, as far as I can tell, except for the delightful Catholic family I tailgate and attend with...and we all take a nap during the third quarter anyway, which is when all the white power snake charmers get up to their recruitment mischief, I'm sure.

It's super stressful right now to go to a game and endure all the enforced patriotism because of the upcoming Revolution or possible not-Revolution, where they just might sell us all into oil-company slavery but that's okay because Jesus wants us to drill offshore and ruin everything his supposed father spent all those seven days making all pretty and shit and... wait, what was I talking about? SEE? That's what happens at football games: you go to drink seven dollar beer and root for some two-digit-IQ-having-quarterback and a bunch of hulking guys who never wrote one single college paper and you end up signed up for a no-sex-before-marriage promise ring and you're singing backup for the motherfucking Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But! At least there are nachos.