Misadventures in Gastronomy

A few weeks ago, the Seattle Seahawks (football/gridiron team!) participated in the Superbowl, the biggest, best, most important, loudest, and most expensive sporting event in the world. Actually, it's all those things only to people living in the USA; the rest of the world really doesn't notice/care.

This was the first time that the Seahawks had made it to the Superbowl in their 30 year history, which of course was the excuse for the inevitable silly behaviour, such as every local newsreader wearing the Seahawks uniform on-air all week, plus every financial institution in Puget Sound announcing a product along the lines of "$100K MORTGAGE $750/MONTH GO HAWKS!".

The game itself was remarkable for the hilariously inept display of refereeing; sports writers had a few things to say, as did a local Seattle DJ:



Like many things in America, however, the ultimate level of silliness is not reached until you include food in some way.

Here's a picture I took down at the supermarket the day before the game:



Question: does it occur to anyone that the best cure for heartburn isn't to devour some industrial-strenth chemicals, but rather to not eat a bunch of deep-fried hog fat in the first place? Most Americans I show this picture to don't notice anything funny; non-Americans tend to dissolve into fits of laughter as soon as they see it.

If that weren't bizarre enough, consider the fact that a hot dog from one of the Seahawks' playoff games was attracting bids of over $10,000 on eBay. Of course, most of these were joke bids placed by people who had no intention of paying, hence the notorious online gambling website GoldenPalace.com was able to acquire this holiest of hot dogs for the "bargain" price of $1,800. They will no doubt preserve this artifact alongside their other priceless treasures such as William Shatner's kidney stone and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich with the picture of the Virgin Mary.

You may remember Golden Palace from the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, where a man adorned with advertisments for them (not to mention wearing a light blue tutu) became an unofficial participant in the springboard diving competition.

I've talked previously about ways of improving Olympic sports, and I thought I'd finally found the best way of making curling and ice dancing exciting: hold them at the same time and place. I didn't count on Golden Palace however, who we have to thank for the latest instance of audience participation in the Olmypics. It isn't every day that we see a news report that contains all of the following phrases:

1. bronze medal curling match
   
2. streaker
   
3. strategically placed rubber chicken
   

...so make sure you don't miss this one.