Superbowls Are Played on Reasonably Temperatured September Sundays

My father never allowed me to have a gaming system while I was growing up, meaning that I grew up with a Commodore 64 in the house, an inferior product when it comes to video games with joysticks that broke down often, and the reason I was allowed to use the Commodore 64 was simply this, with a NES or Sega, you put a cartridge into the console and press it on, but with the 64, in order to load your game, you had to type: load"*",8,1 <return> into the prompt before the drive would kick into motion and whirl its magnets and smoke over the face of a floppy disk. I did spent some major hours on the 64, and once kept a notebook of statistics while I played an entire season of a computer game called 'Hardball', a baseball game with a total of two teams, and that year those two teams played each other a total of 162 times. I hate to say it, but all of the math involved with figuring ERAs and batting averages was a victory for my father.

So when last fall, when roommate Jimmy brought home an original NES, I felt like I was somehow striking a victory for my inner, bitter child. I played NES with Rory Hunt when I was growing up, but only when he felt like playing and, because he owned the NES, he was generally pretty bored with it. Now, I was in charge of when I got to play the damn thing, and when one of the roommate's friends brought of a cartridge of Super Techmo Bowl, I knew that there were going to be weekends that I couldn't get back again.

After playing a few warm up games, I started a season determined to give the Minnesota Vikings their first Superbowl victory. I made it to the big game where I was to play against the Cincinnati Bengals. One afternoon, roommate Jimmy came out of his room. I was in the kitchen. "How is your season going?" Jimmy asked.

"I'm in the Superbowl," I said.
"Really? When are you going to play it? Can you wait until I can watch?"
Bashfully, I kicked at the floor and said, "Um, I was going to, um, wait until Sunday to play it..."
"Really? Can I watch? We should make a party out of it!"

And with this brilliant suggestion, I set to making a whole-stinking-bunch of vegan spinach and artichoke dip along with a bread bowl to put it in to be ready on Superbowl Sunday in early September!

The Bowl

Filled to the brim. Stick a chip in it son, that shit is done!

You know when you order a milkshake, and they bring out the metal cup of extra milkshake along with your milkshake? This is the metal cup.

If there's a rule of Superbowl food, this is it, nothing is fresh. Here's what I put into it: 

4 bricks of spinach (thawed)

2 jars of marinated artichoke hearts

about 1/4 cup of vegannaise

several cloves of garlic

lemon juice

1 container of Tofutti cream cheese

Salt 

Pepper

Cooked at 400 until bubbling and brown at the edges. Then I topped it with Daiya Mozzerella style cheese, broiled it until browned.

Was it delicious? I think the greatest compliment the chef could have asked for in this case was waking up in the middle of the night, looking for it in the fridge and not finding it; finding out the next day that Roommate Jimmy had taken it into his room with him for drunken shame food. This is basically the equivalent of a 28/30 on the Zagat rating system.

For anyone concerned about the game, I played a half and was up 7-0. I received the kickoff in the second half and started a methodical, precise and deadly drive, when all of the sudden  the NES froze and the game had to be started over. This new game, the Cincinnati Bengals walloped me and my promise to bring the city of Minnesota its first Superbowl victory. Such was the conclusion of the three-half Superbowl.

But with this a football dynasty had begun! Angrier and more determined, the Vikings went back to the Superbowl the very next year and won.

Defense wins digital ball games.

And the repeat came at the end of a perfect season. I'll point out that my perfect season was a much bigger accomplishment than that of the 72 dolphins, as their season was much shorter.

And the first ever Superbowl 3peat