Great sporting events should not be watched live. Tickets are unavailable or too pricey, and from a stadium seat you see nothing anyway. The way to watch is in a bar. There, you have the best of all worlds: perfect view on the action, food and beverage at hand, mostly enjoyable company, the excitement and the roar of a crowd.
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By “roar”, I mean the vocal consequences of collapsing emotional boundaries in a spectacular moment. The key term here is “moment”, i.e. a short period of time. Roaring happens when a goal is scored, a record set, an improbable save effectuated, perhaps a really mean offense committed. The crowd is not supposed to roar all the time. It roars at the moment, then sits back, drinks beer and eats nachos.
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Unfortunately, such bliss is over. Not any longer is the American sports bar the place to watch a game. The problem is acoustical. In the American sports bar, the roar has been perverted into nasty, deafening, constant noise. Nasty to the point that it is harmful to your ears. Now America is a naturally loud country. People here speak louder than the average European, and even louder when friendly or funny. That’s par for the course. But a sports bar is way worse. From the get-go, everybody yells at each other from the get-go, and because everybody yells, the TV handlers turn the volumes up, which makes everybody yelling louder. The worst part in this evil cycle are the women. It is literally painful when a gaggle of women vocally erupts next to you. At any rate, after watching the Detroit game at the bar, I came home with my head throbbing. And it was not because the Lions lost.
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So I will watch at home, alone. I put beer in the fridge, looked up a recipe for Nachos, bought the ingredients and found a tray to bake them in. I guess it’s baking (I have not yet read the recipe yet). The tray is probably too big, but we shall see. And watch. With a bit of luck, this superbowl comes along with a super tray.
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