Bud Bowl: The Grandaddy (or at least Drunk Uncle) of Them All

In an odd twist of history and / or math this Sunday will mark the 25^th anniversary of Bud Bowl and the 10^th anniversary of nipplegate. I have to admit that I missed the latter because I had changed the channel to, ok to be honest I have no idea what I changed the channel to. It could have been the Puppy Bowl, it could have been some random show on MTV, or I could have just left the room for a while because I had no desire to see Janet Jackson or Justin Timberlake. In fact, it wasn’t until the next day that I knew that anything noteworthy had happened. And let’s face it, there was a lot more flesh on display at the Puppy Bowl that year anyway.

But Bud Bowl, now that is something that I could look back on fondly. Who can forget the yearly battle between Budweiser (the beer of choice when you are out of all other options) and Bud Light (the beer that is best described as having sex in a canoe.) You had the legendary Budway Joe at quarterback, the heroic Budsky as the kicker and the later addition of Bud Dry. If they played today they would also have to include Bud Platinum though I don’t know how you would bring Bud Platinum into the game without making some very off color remark.

(Truth be told, Kim and I actually tried Bud Platinum when it first came out. Between the two of us we were unable to finish a bottle. Remember that we met in a bar, had most of our first conversations in a bar, had our first date in a bar in the French Quarter and combined we have the high score on bar trivia machines in something like seven states. If we can’t finish a bottle that tells you something about the quality.)

There are people who now talk about how horrible that ad campaign was but I was precisely the right age for a beer commercial (fifteen) at the time and it worked perfectly. For years we were always focused on the Bud Bowl. One year I lost money betting on the Bud Bowl. I’m pretty sure that the Bills lost to Bud Light in Bud Bowl IV. There were times when we cared more about the Bud Bowl than we did the actual game. If there was ever an advertising campaign with staying power it is the Bud Bowl, which is up there with the Hamm’s Bear in terms of marketing alcohol to people who are technically not old enough to purchase it.

I can’t say that it turned me into a Budweiser drinker though and I will end with one of my fun bar stories from my past. I was in Lawrence, KS one night sitting in I think Buffalo Wild Wings burning time before heading to a concert. The only reason I was in BW3 was that it was October and I wanted to watch the baseball playoffs. Anyway, I’m sitting at the end of the bar and this woman in a Budweiser jacket starts talking to the bartender about Budweiser products and whatever new beer they were pitching at the time. I’m the only other person at the bar and somehow I got drawn into the conversation and she offers to buy me a beer and I decline. She just stares at me and asks why and I respond. “I don’t drink Budweiser.” That got her all flustered so she went, “Why don’t you drink Budweiser? You’re drinking a Miller Lite and you know they are foreign owned now so why don’t you support an American brand?” My response said it all.

“Because I hate St. Louis.”

Back in the Blogging Game (for good this time, honest)

Sincerity Victory for the Day (or “Reason Why Life Is Better than You Give It Credit For”): You can play fantasy football with the Puppy Bowl this year! The only thing better than watching puppies run around for hours is being able to gamble on puppies running around for hours. I’m going to go with Mandy for my first pick. I think she is going to be a fine girl and what a good puppy she would be if it wasn’t for the fact that my life, my love and my lady was a large body of salt water that covers the majority of the earth’s surface.

http://deadspin.com/you-can-draft-a-fantasy-puppy-bowl-team-1493337187

Sincerity Failure #2: While sitting at the dentist’s office watching The Today Show…

Willard Scott: “Birthday wishes go out to Dolores Smith as she turns 100 years old today. Dolores’ longevity secret?”

Me: “Pure, unadulterated anger.”

Like I said, getting rid of the snark is going to be hard.

So for people who might be new to this I have started blogging again. Consider it part of my New Year’s Resolutions of which there are others that I will discuss over the coming days. Basically I have stopped writing for three years or so after being a five day a week writer for seven years and a novel a year writer for thirteen (novel a year in that I wrote enough words in my journal to equal a novel. Not a novel in the sense that my life either a) had a plot or b) was something worth reading about). The fact is after a lot of reflection I have found that I am happier and just a better person in general when I write regularly. There is just something about having an avenue of expression that I am comfortable with that makes life easier.

The challenge though is that I have roughly twenty eight hours of things I would like to do every day and about thirty hours of things that I have to do every day so finding the twenty or thirty minutes to write these entries has become a lot more challenging than it was when I started this blog. Back then I was just sitting alone in my apartment in Kansas City using a dial up modem still to just vent about my life. Now I am married with responsibilities and a travel schedule that has made me one of Southwest’s favorite customers and it is just that much more challenging to sit down and put some thoughts together. But I’ve decided that this year I need to make time for this even if it means completely changing my schedule around.

What I write about will basically be just whatever is on my mind that day. I don’t write about my job and I try not to write about relationships. I’ve learned over the years that it is really difficult for me to write about those things without making everything worse. It does not help that I will admit that everything I write, fiction, memoir or non-fiction, is all about 75% true, 15% truish, and 10% stuff I thought was funny at the time. It’s the Irish in me. I was raised to never let the truth get in the way of a good story. However that makes writing about real people who know me and actually read this kind of awkward because they can be very public about how much I am lying.

Otherwise everything is pretty straightforward. I’ll write what is on my mind, try to track my progress in the Sincerity Project regularly and anyone reading this is free to comment on any posts as long as they can prove that they are not a robot. There are hundreds of old entries archived and one day, if I can ever find a twenty ninth hour in the day and an editor, I hope to collect the best entries and make it available as a Kindle download. On Sunday nights I’ll post the Best of 120 Minutes video of the week (alternative nation at its finest) and I will continue the Wednesday Night Music Club (video of whomever has caught my attention that week.) I’ll try to keep to my old Sunday to Thursday schedule because I hope you have better things to do on the weekend than to read my blog and I certainly would like to have something better to do than write it.

As always, thanks to everyone who has ever read or commented here over the years. I am sincerely going to try to get back in the habit of writing and just knowing that someone will occasionally come across these words and leave a comment makes it extremely worthwhile.