Where's the Beef?

Super Bowl in the States:
There is one event I have NEVER missed my entire life and that has been the Super Bowl. Growing up, my parents were known for throwing the best Super Bowl parties in town. Neighbors, family and friends would pack the house for this annual festivity of great food, drinks and socializing. Every neighbor from our street would be at the house. The kids participated in halftime games in the street. Being a chef extraordinaire, my dad would always man the grill with creative dishes like a buffalo roast for the NY Buffalos or a Green chile stew for the Greenbay packers. The meals were well planned well in advance by one of the best chefs in the Southwest.

Super Bowl and bets go hand in hand, so it's not surprising that I learned to gamble at a young age. The duties involved were creating betting 'squares' and collecting the money, along with any side bets we could think of. We even bet on the bud bowl, which is bud light vs. budwiser. (Maybe I should see a shrink?) People that were not into the game would look forward to the millions of dollars spent on 30 seconds of marketing. What about the marketing geniuses creating the talking frogs, louie the lizzard, wasssssuuuuup, the doritos girl, the clydesdales playing football, go-daddy's risky commercial, pepsi and Cindy Crawford...etc.

Check the Top 25 Superbowl commercials
My personal favorite is #20 Terry Tate- Office Linebacker. The #3 frogs are also great.

If it's your team in the Super Bowl, then it is another thing all together. When it's game time, you represent wearing a jersey, and the colors will be blaring along with your mouth to anyone who opposes you.

Super Bowl in Switzerland:
The game starts at 12:15am and the bar is surprisingly filled with mostly Americans. I could tell the people at the bar weren't huge Giants or New England fans, but we all are obligated to see the Super Bowl because it is one past time ingrained in our lives. Tonight they have American food like nachos, burgers, and chicken wings. From my experience with American food in Europe is 'just don't do it!'. You may want some comfort food like home, but it hasn't been worth it about 90% of the time. They can't make a decent burger and the nachos are definitely not what I would call nachos. The only thing worth ordering are Freedom fries, which are probably not American anyway.

About the only time I want to see a commercial is during this game. Commercial time is coming up and I'm looking forward to a new advertising slogan to take to the office tomorrow, but instead I get a couple announcers. The game has a different feel when the announcers are British sportscasters using words like brilliant, superb, extravagance...etc. They also had commentary from a couple lads, one wearing a Packers jersey. Aren't we watching the Giants vs. Patriots? An interesting thing about Swiss/German TV is the very limited amount, if any commercials. It is so nice to watch TV and not go to commercial in mid sentence like in the states. Europeans seem to have less tolerance for advertising and they feel it affects the flow of the program. Living over here I suddenly don't have this feeling to ask my doctor about Cialis or Vioxx.

To make the game a little more interesting I found some others with the same betting interests. I had to follow tradition even though I am impartial to both teams and put some money on the game anyway. The game ended up being a nail biting game down to the wire. We cheered until 4:30am bonding with the fellow die hards making a great nite of American Football (with a European twist).