Mukilteo Musings

More Seahawks!

I am loving this. Everyday the newspaper is full of more Super Bowl preparations. For an amateur like me when it comes to all things cultural, I feel like I have discovered some large gold nuggets in the bottom of my gold pan. (And yes, being from Montana, I have actually panned for gold, thank you very much.)

1. Slowly, it is beginning to dawn on us that the Seahawks are going to play in that game---you know the one where Janet Jackson....Yuck!

2. Still, the grocery store displays of Budweiser beer up to the ceiling with giant inflatable footballs seem to be generic. Come on QFC! Quit thinking corporately and make your display specific to the SEAHAWKS.

3. The Pittsburgh Steeler fans are positively frightening. Evidently, football is their religion and everything--homes and bodies are draped with black and gold. And get this: they drink beer called Iron City out of a metal bottle and eat sandwiches made with sausage, beef, scrambled eggs, American cheese and mayo. OH MY! I didn't even know you could buy American cheese anymore. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/football/257287_pittsburgh27.html

4. And what do we do? We send one of our best chefs, John Howie of "Seastar Restaurant and Raw Bar" and "Sport", to Detroit to cook Sizzling Dungeness Crab Cakes. Come on--shouldn't that be served over steak or something? After the big game last Sunday, Seahawks owner, Paul Allen of Microsoft fame, showed up with 20 people without a reservation at a local restaurant and ate crab-stuffed salmon like a good Seattleite. Mike Holmgren, the coach and not a native, went to a steak house with reservations and ordered a steak. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002765040_nancybowl27.html

Let me add here that Homgren's wife fits right into Seattle. We love her. She is going to miss the Super Bowl because her coach husband gave her a trip to the Congo for Christmas. The trip conflicts with the Super Bowl but the Coach insists she go.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/football/257278_hbok27.html

And what is she going to do?

She will travel to the Congo on an aid mission from Northwest Medical Teams, and her husband wouldn't have it any other way....She will leave for the Congo on Thursday. Kathy will be going along with their daughter Calla, who is a doctor. Kathy is a board member for Northwest Medical Teams, a non-profit organization that helps coordinate international aid and relief. She previously went to Romania to help at an orphanage.

I'd bet money she did not approve of that steak he ordered!

5. John Howie, the chef, also happens to be a big Apolo Anton Ohno fan (Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist in Short Track Speedskating from Seattle). Whoa! And the Olympics are coming up right after the Super Bowl so the national sports coverage will again be mentioning Seattle every other sentence. Need we be worried about all of this publicity?


Apolo in Seattle during the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Olympics announcement. (Yes, we were there--took this terrible photo myself.)

6. No, we do not need to be worried about the publicity! I'll answer my own question because we are coming off as being gigantic weenies who do not know what to do with a Super Bowl if it hits us in our collective rain-covered faces. Who would want to move to a place where you dare not disagree politically; where everyone is depressed; where the sun never shines; where you better know how to order at an Ivar's Fish Bar; where you are afraid to admit you've watched a football game on a TV that you are afraid to admit you own; and where you are scoffed at if you eat steak but if you do--it better be organic?

7. I mean seriously, folks, if the Steeler fans find out about this: In the Seattle Times today, you can cut out a Seahawks newspaper hat to wear on your head. PLEASE! First of all, it will last about 30 seconds in our humidity inside or out and will droop in an obscene way. Second, it has "weenie" written all over it. Thank God, Seattle Times, you did not put this in your online newspaper.

8. This was the front page headlines of the Seattle Times today "Dinner and Dancing on Super Sunday" and this is the article and a quote:

Super Bowl obsession is seeping into places you might assume it would skip, such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB). Professional ballet and professional football seem like diametric opposites on the cultural brow. One is white wine poured gently into crystal glasses. The other is watered-down domestic beers sloshing in 32-ounce plastic cups.
Toe shoes vs. face paint.
Yet during a class Monday among PNB's company dancers, Casey Herd and James Moore turned their choices in wardrobe into a mini-spectacle. Herd wore a Seahawks hooded sweatshirt to class, while Moore, a native San Franciscan who danced four years with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, donned a gold headband and wiped the sweat from his brow with his Pittsburgh Steelers "Terrible Towel."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002765032_ballet27m.html

I love ballet and I would pick a ballet over a football game any day to see in person. I have argued with my husband over who are superior athletes--ballet dancers or basketball players.
But did this need to be on the front page? Evidently, Pittsburgh Steeler fans eat nails and we go to the ballet and drink white wine. Do we really want them to know this?

9. And more fodder for the can crunching, nail eating Steeler fans: Here are our choices besides home for Super Bowl Sunday.

Back in Seattle, some well-heeled football fanatics will be enjoying the game in style in the Grand Reserve Room at Joeys on South Lake Union. It's already booked, to parties that can handle a wine list that starts at $140 and includes a $475 vintage Dom Perignon — just the thing to toast the Seahawks' first trip to the Super Bowl.

OR

While the rest of Seattle is glued to the game, Jacqueline Roberts, owner of The Pink Door at Pike Place Market, will be celebrating with a party of her own. She's calling it Super Belle Sunday, and says it's a "girls-only" affair — although gents in drag are welcome. The party kicks off at 3 p.m., a half-hour before they'll be kicking off in Detroit, and $20 buys the belles of this ball a chance to nibble antipasti at the buffet table and hang out in the bar watching chick flicks.
That's right: This is an anti-Super Bowl affair, and the game won't be seen on a single screen.
Roberts also promises a passel of adorable busboys willing to fetch wine and cocktails while ladies and their look-alikes indulge in a manicure, have their tarot cards read (all for a price, of course) and watch trapeze artist "Trapecia of the Cabrini" swing from the restaurant's rafters.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002765040_nancybowl27.html

Oh gosh, does this stuff have to be in the paper. Well, maybe it is a good thing. Pittsburgh and Detroit need to learn about us. Let them think that the Steelers will walk all over our team. Let them think it!

10. And finally, the view from Detroit where "They just don't know Hawks fans"

All over town, they're predicting that intellectual, liberal, nice Seattle fans just won't have the juice when faced-down with the gritty, hard-core black-and-yellow fans from Pittsburgh.

"Pittsburgh's a blue-collar team. Seattle's a white-collar team," said Robert Dunlap, who's selling Super Bowl XL merchandise at one of 38 NFL insta-shops set up around the city.
Added Dunlap: "Seattle fans are going to be outnumbered 15-1. There's going to be a sea of black-and-yellow here by Monday."

Still, he welcomes any Seattleites who wander in to buy a $70 Super Bowl jacket or $29 T-shirt. "The Seattle fans -- those are the people who are going to bring the money in," he said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/football/257276_postcards27.html

Yep, I gladly taught my son to run away from people like the Steeler fans. All of this reminds me of our rivalry in Montana in high school of Helena v. Butte. Helena is a white collar city full of lawyers, business people and politicians and the girls have a reputation for being pretty. Butte is blue collar and used to be full of miners and hard core drinkers and scary people who chew on nails instead of toothpicks. Let's just say we had an incident where the Butte girls beat up our drill team and cheerleaders once. But guess what? Our basketball team took the state championship the year I graduated.

Yes, indeed. I have a feeling. Weenie Seattle where you'd hate to live unless you fit a rather severe high minded stereotype that includes our coach's wife...well, our Seahawks are going to....going to.... outsmart those Steelers.

Yes, we are.