Super Bowl Party Guide

The fully comprehensive guide to enjoying Super Bowl Sunday.

Beer

Super Bowl Sunday festivities tend to start early in the afternoon, and the game doesn't end until 6:15 PM and change (and doesn't finish until 4 or 5 hours after that), you need to set a marathon pace. For this reason, it's best to choose a light beer. I like the American light beers for Super Bowl for a couple reasons:

1) They usually don't have a particularly strong flavour which is great for washing down hot wings and chili.

2) They're cheaper than imports, and I'm a student. Busch light, is pretty cheap and made the top 10 for Consumer Reports light beer suggestions.

3) The American beers have all the cool commercials that you'll be seeing during the Super Bowl.

Food

I'm not a huge fan of the breaded chicken wings, which is good because wings are way easier to make without breading. Buffalo wings are a pretty good Super Bowl staple and they're not hard to make at all. Heat some oil, dump in some wings and cook them until they're goldenish and crispy. Heat up some butter in a pan, add some Frank's Red Hot and some vinegar and toss the wings in the sauce. Traditionally served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing but no one eats that rabbit food. If I wanted to chew on a roll of dental floss I'd choose a bubble gum flavour.

Chili - I've never made this before, since my old man prefers to keep his recipe a secret. However, Stagg's makes a great canned chili that you can pick up at most grocery stores and your friends won't know the difference.

Pizza - The busiest day of the year for pizza delivery companies, but it's way easier than making your own.

Avoiding the Pre-Game

This might be a bit late, since the pre-game analysis started a week and a half ago, but do not watch the stupid pre-game show. Play some poker, re-watch a cable TV classic, or play some video games (pre-playing the game on Madden is a corny choice). Spike TV has a "When Animals Attack" marathon going on that afternoon, so...

I hate the Patriots. F U Ryan "Mrs. Tom Brady" Eastriver.

Miscellaneous Ramblings and Updates

Hello faithful reader! How's London? I'm kidding, I hope a couple of others have left this link on their RSS feed reader in hopes that I might update this masterpiece. By the way, if you don't use one, get an RSS reader. I suggest Google Reader since it runs conveniently in a web browser, allows you to share items, and makes it super easy to find cool new blogs. And we all know that anything Google has ever made is spun gold.

Alright, it's been about 5 months since I updated so here's a personal update:

I'm single, it's sweet. The downside is that of my three best friends, one is in a serious long-term relationship, one is engaged, and one is in England. My roommates are all single but make terrible wingmen as they are in school (read: have fag practice every morning and have to wake up early to get there) and our schedules are clashing right now since I'm on a workterm.

Oh yeah, I moved out of my parents house. I've been having a great time living in a student house for the first time and lucked out with cool roommates. It's hurt the finances, but I had a lot more fun last term than I ever have. It was also my most successful academic term, with arguably the toughest course load I've ever taken.

I started working out again this month. The rugby season starts up soon and I want to be in shape. I'm about 80% sure that I'm not going to grow anymore barring some kind of terrific thyroid gland issue so I've resigned myself to playing some of the positions that require speed more than strength. Since I'm pretty low on both that puts me in rough shape. The workouts have taken on a new intensity level thanks to NaNoVapor which is basically caffeine, taurine, and creatine and a bunch of other crazy stuff. You mix a scoop in like 3 oz of water and you better hope you're near a gym because it makes you want to hurt something. After a week of taking it my lifts increased by about 20%. The only issue is that you have a pretty serious crash after your workouts from the caffeine and the intensified workout. I've also dropped about 6 lbs of fat since I've been doing lots of cardio and sprint training at the track.

Some things I like right now:

Banana Protein Shakes - mmmmm.


Adam Carolla Radio Show - Funny and smart podcast.

Audiobooks - I'm on Harry Potter 4 right now, makes it really easy to kill 30 minutes on a treadmill or waiting for a bus. Just throw a couple on your iPod.

Delicous giant Samsung LCD - I picked up a mini-DVI to DVI adapter for my MacBook for like $20 and gained some significant screen real estate - THANKS DAD!

Stone Hammer Pilsener - Do yourself a favor and order a pint of this, Kick Off in Waterloo usually has it on tap.

Funniest video ever.

The Giants to upset the Pats on Sunday! I doubt I'll remember the actual game as the festivities tend to start around 1 pm, but I'm sure someone will let me know the score...likely with a Sharpie...likely on my face.

Stuff I don't like right now:

My iPod. The stupid headphone jack went awry. I took the iPod apart but the housing of the jack is pretty custom and secured to a piece of flex that would just melt if I tried to solder anything. I ordered the piece of flex from an iPod parts dealer for $50 including tax and shipping. Hopefully I can install it without breaking my iPod though. I got a 4 GB microSD card for my BlackBerry and I'm currently using it as a media player - it's doing the trick.

Wide-grip pull ups. I just can't do them, I don't know why. I can do 8-10 regular pull ups and not even 1 wide grip. Damn you Will Smith in I Am Legend.

Winter. I hate winter. Especially when I don't have the money or transportation to go snowboarding. And I think I'm probably the only Canadian guy that's never played organized ice hockey. At least I'll be in Cuba in a couple weeks. Hell to the YES!

Something to chew on (inspired by Adam Carolla):

How often do you hear of stories where people nearly die but are saved by someone arriving with a background in first aid? Or what about people that bleed out, drown, or choke because an ambulance doesn't arrive in time to treat them? Why don't we offer first aid certification in high school? Why do students instead take Home Ec. or "health class". Puh-leeze, you can learn all that on the internet these days. First aid could easily be worked in to the Phys-ed curriculum and about 5-10 years from now we would have an army of fully certified first aiders and we would save a lot more people.