More on Musicals

The second reason that I don't like musicals (and again, for the purposes of this post, "don't like" means "prefer straight plays to") is that they frequently run counter to the things that I believe theatre does best, with a few exceptions.

Generally speaking, musicals rely on massive visual spectacle, large casts, extravagant costuming and lighting, and scenic effects above and beyond all bounds of rational restraint. I cite as evidence once again the famous helicopter landing in Miss Saigon, or, if you prefer, the six billion person chorus I've seen assembled for a recent production of Les Miserables. Don't get me wrong, spectacle can be a lot of fun, but it has two problems: First, it costs a hell of a lot of money, which creates high ticket prices, which causes a wide range of less-than-loaded people to avoid theatre altogether (since to them Theatre = Musicals). Second, I've always believed that theatre should be theatre and film should be film, and film absolutely embarrasses theatre when it comes to effective spectacle. Consider the movie "Chicago," for instance. Although I didn't see the stage version, the movie version did not exactly make me want to do so. The impressive visual spectacle of that movie was such that I feel that something would be lost if it was attempted on the stage. As another example, consider how the incredible visuals of "Moulin Rouge" would have fared if reproduced on the stage. Not so well, I suspect, which is why it was a movie only.

But, you say, isn't the live aspect of theatre enough to compensate for its second-rate (compared to film) ability to create visual spectacle? Isn't watching the dancers and seeing the set pieces shift and change some saving grace? Sure, absolutely, if you can afford $150+ for floor seats. Shell out merely $75 a ticket, and you're going to be pretty far removed from the details of coregraphy. You'll have a nice panoramic view of the amazing set, but again, no detail.

I am going to wrap this topic up tonight, because I suspect that it has a relatively limited appeal (commenters on the previous post, I will reply to you tomorrow). One of the best musicals I ever saw was Assassins at Denison University. It is a surreal and darkly comic tale in which successful and would-be presidential assassins from John Wilkes Booth to present day interact with one another and discuss their lives, stories, and motivations. It is wonderfully silly, insightful, and emotionally gripping. It was performed in the round on an extremely minimal stage, thus making it one of the things that I think theatre should be: about the performers, not the spectacle. And the tickets were cheap.

Five plays that you should see instead of a musical:
Proof, by David Auburn
Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer
Drawer Boy, by Michael Healey
Art, by Yasmina Reza (translated by Christopher Hampton)
Copenhagen, by Michael Frayn

Why? Because they are thought-provoking without being obscure. They are difficult without being dark. They are small, intimate stories with wide-reaching implications. They are aesthetically challenging without being inaccessible. They are what I think of when I think of theatre.

But "Guys and Dolls" is still pretty fantastic. Sit down, you're rockin' the boat.

Coming Attractions

Here's the story:

Starting in about thirty-nine words, I am going off on a week-long bender of ten-minute writings, after which there will be nothing for the three days leading up to March 9, which is a significant date. Just so you know what to expect.

A Policy Clarification: Why I Don't Like Musicals

There have been a number of times in the past when I have found myself saying, with pretty reasonable conviction, "I just don't like musicals." Given that I am about as deep into the theatre as you can get without having to wear tap shoes, this seems pretty ridiculous. I have had a handful of conversations with people who are anywhere from puzzled to downright abusive in reaction to this position. I've been thinking about it more lately, and it is time to clarify the policy.

(Note: Most of the musicals discussed below are movie musicals. These are the ones that most people have seen, so they are the more common points of reference. That they are movies is also relevant to the discussion, but we'll get to that later)

(Also note: If you haven't figured it out yet, there is going to be a bit of theatre talk forthcoming. Uninterested parties have been warned)

It's not that I don't like musicals. I enjoy the hell out of the nostalgic goofiness of "Guys and Dolls" and "Singin' in the Rain," and I thought that "Moulin Rouge" and "Chicago" were tons of fun. I even saw and enjoyed "The Producers" a few weeks ago. It's not that I don't enjoy the musical as a genre, it's that I like straight plays a whole lot more (terminology note: "straight play" = non-musical, a point I make mainly to quell a certain variety of jokes coming from a certain sector of the audience). If you gave me the choice between seeing the hottest drama or musical currently on Broadway, I would choose the drama every time. Here's why:

On the first day of teaching Intro to Theatre for Non-Majors, I ask my class how many of them have seen any theatre at all (this number is depressingly low, around 60%), and if they have, what it was. Of those who have seen theatre, about 95% of them have seen big touring Broadway musicals. This means that when you say theatre, people think of "Miss Saigon" or "Les Miserables." Thus, theatre and musicals have become inseparably linked in the public's mind. The result of this linkage is that the straight play gets pushed even further away from the broader public eye than it already is. There are some amazing plays out there that you will never hear of because they don't have a catchy tune or a damn helicopter landing on the damn stage in an emotionally explosive and musically vomitous moment of damn blah blah blah. The stereotype of Theatre = Musicals also turns off a lot of people who aren't interested in forms of entertainment in which people inexplicably break into sentimental songs. The result, unfortunately, is that non-theatre people pay $125 to see the touring version of "Mamma Mia" when that money would almost buy a season ticket at the local repertory theatre. That repertory theatre is probably producing some interesting and unexpected stuff (not "artsy obscure" unexpected, but "thought-provoking" unexpected) but does not have $5 million to spend on marketing, so they are frequently overlooked.

So that's reason number one. More tomorrow.

The Large Game

(For previous posts leading up to and explaining this one, please click on "Deee Troit" through "Par-Taaaay" in the Previous Posts column to the right.)

Now that Super Bowl XL has slipped from your memory with a speed that only nationally televised entertainment events possess, let me tell you about my Super Bowl.

First off, it snowed about two inches the night before the game. This was actually good, because had it been five degrees colder, it would have snowed seven inches. Instead, the Detroit area received a major slushing, which was pretty easily cleaned up. I see this as God’s warning to the NFL: “Ahem: I located the lower quarter of America closer to the equator so that you could hold Super Bowls there. Please respect my design or next time I will smite you good.” Sorry, Detroit, but I think everything might have been more fun and less stressful in a warm-weather city.

Sunday morning, Jim, Lou and I met up with the ESPN.com guys and drove into the city to get things set up at the photo trailer. We soon discovered that police had set up a security perimeter around the stadium extending roughly to Toledo, and shockingly, we did not have the proper credentials to get through. After badgering three different cops and doing a fair amount of outright lying, we managed to get through to the temporary trailer that would be ESPN.com/The Magazine’s home for the day. As Jim and the ESPN.com guys set up their techno-geek gear, Lou and I momentarily found ourselves bored and useless. And then we remembered that we were at the Super Bowl with passes that would grant us access to probably anywhere in the stadium, so we went into Ford Field and stood on the 50-yard line:

(Click on any photo for larger version) I must compliment the designers of Ford Field, because it is a tremendously beautiful stadium on the inside.

There is an amazing feeling of easy openness, even in the corridors behind the stands. The lighting is pretty spectacular, and there are a number of design features that stand out. For instance, on one side of the stadium where the upper-deck seating would normally be, there are instead suites which have been built into the pre-existing brick wall of a famous Detroit department store which once stood on the site. The result is very aesthetically pleasing:

Also, they have two Jumbotrons which are about the size of Kansas (look at the field-goal uprights for a comparison of scale):

We also saw a gentleman filming one of the end-zone pylons for two or three minutes. This must have been the same guy pictured in the previous post filming a football for several minutes. I have no idea what this is about. However, I did take the opportunity to pick up one of the pylons, whose construction and consistency I have always wondered about, because they are constantly getting smashed and knocked around during games. I now know that they are made of very durable but soft foam, and are weighted in the base by pounds of sand. Cool.

More important than the stadium design or end-zone pylons was the fact that we were standing on the field, walking around aimlessly, and grinning like idiots. Lou and I could not shake the feeling that at any moment an authority figure would demand to know what the hell we were doing on the field, but nobody ever did, because we, being the media, were allowed to be there. We called just about everyone who would pick up the phone and shared our absolute glee. The conversations consisted largely of us saying, “This is so cool,” the inarticulate but absolutely true theme for the whole experience. Because there was nothing else to do, we just hung out on the field for maybe three hours, from about 1 to 4 p.m., wandering around and simply absorbing every moment. This time was one of my favorite parts of the weekend. There was a palatable sense of anticipation and energy yet to come, but at the same time there weren’t very many people on the field or in the stands yet, so the atmosphere was also quite peaceful. Being two of the few people wandering around where the action would soon explode enhanced the sense of coolness. A little bit, we felt like the moments were ours:

After a while, both teams came out onto the field to warm up, at which point we confined ourselves to the sidelines, all the while saying things like, “Hey, that’s Ben Roethlisburger, right over there, warming up for the Super Bowl. This is so COOL!”

The increasing number of people on the field and in the stands quickly spelled the beginning of the end of the peaceful atmosphere. The growing momentum of energy and anticipation was taking over.

At some point we determined the route that we would take from the field back to the photo trailer. Unlike most stadiums, Ford Field has only one access tunnel to the field. Unfortunately for us, the tunnel exit was on the exact diagonal opposite side of the building from the photo trailer. As a result, fastest route to the trailer took us up a three-story ramp, out into the freezing cold, and down two streets running the length and width of Ford Field. Alternately, we could stay inside the stadium for most of the trip, but the crowd and winding passages nearly doubled the transit time. After a close examination on Google Satellite, I gage the outdoor route distance at a little less than a half-mile, one way. As a photo runner, I was assigned to the two ESPN photographers on the Steelers’ sideline. It was my job to collect photo cards from them at the beginning, middle, and end of each quarter, take the photo cards back to the trailer, collect new, blank cards, return to the sidelines, distribute the blank cards, and wait for the next departure time. If you think this sounds like a lot of running, you are correct.

At about two hours before game time, we returned to the trailer, met up with the photographers, and walked with them back down to the field, where they calibrated their enormous cameras:

Lou and I took in the much-changed atmosphere. Any semblance of peace had evaporated into a growing storm of Terrible Towels, pre-game activities, and bustling media crowding the sidelines.

Our reaction to the rising fervor, par for the course, was pretty much, “This is so cool, this is so cool, this is so cool.” I would love to find some more lyric and insightful way to restate that sentiment, but there just isn’t one.

There were some semi-entertaining pre-game festivities, including a celebration involving appearances by all of the previous Super Bowl MVPs. Here is the blurry photo that I managed to snap of about twenty-six of the most famous football players ever and Dion Branch (football geek joke):

After the predictably uninteresting pre-game musical entertainment (Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and others, all of whom were largely ignored by the people in the stands), the coin toss, and all of the other formalities, it was finally, at long last, time to get the show on the road. At the moment of kickoff, all I can remember is the deafening roar of the crowd, the speed of the players flying down the field, and the utter glee inside my head: “Thisissocoolthisissocoolthisissocool.”

And then it was time to work. I was given my first set of memory cards immediately after the kickoff, cruised off to the trailer, received fresh cards, and ran back to the sidelines, only to discover that I had about ninety seconds on the game clock before I had to turn around and head back to the trailer. It was at this point that I discovered the greatest possible motivation for a jogger: the faster you run, the more time you will get to spend standing ten feet away from the Super Bowl. As in:

And:

If I could find a way to market this motivation in purchasable fitness-DVD form, I would soon have enough money to buy Bolivia. Long story short, I ran about seven miles that night, making a total of ten round trips from the field to the trailer. Yes, really, seven miles, and most of it outside, in the lung-tearing chill of February in Detroit. But I’m not complaining. Every step was worth it. My efforts were rewarded with several absolutely spectacular moments. The first Roethlisburger interception happened right in front of me, as did the near-TD catch by Seattle’s D.J. Hackett. Both were perfect displays of the beautiful athleticism, physics, and timing of football, and those moments will never leave my memory. My eyes could not have been open wider, and the grin on my face could not have been larger.

This. Is. So. Cool.

In total, I would say that I spent about fifteen of the sixty game-clock minutes on the sidelines watching the action (maybe forty minutes, real-time), and the rest running to and from the trailer. As such, I had little feel for the story of the game which, I hear, wasn’t terribly interesting anyway. After a three and a half hour blur of running back and forth and catching moments of the game while on the sidelines, I suddenly found myself walking exhausted up the ramp with the last batch of memory cards while the final few seconds of the game ticked away behind me. I limped into the trailer, delivered the cards to Jim, and collapsed on a large camera box. After sitting there for about an hour eating everything within reach, I realized, just as Lou and I had earlier, that there was no reason for me to be sitting in a photo trailer when I could be sitting on the sidelines at Ford Field. I dragged myself back inside and soaked up what was left of the celebration:

There was quite a bit of confetti:

A very strange woman just dying to be photographed:

And a drunken Steelers fan who had fallen or jumped over the railing and onto the field (he’s the pair of legs underneath the red-jacketed security guy):

Most of all, however, there was a pervasive sense of ending. Great accomplishments had been wrought, amazing deeds done, champions crowned, and hundreds of millions of people entertained. But the spectacle had passed, the hour was late, and it was time to go:


I trudged back to the trailer, where I found Lou slumped on a pile of coats, wheezing and loudly demanding vicodin. After realizing that Jim still had a lot of work to do, we decided to go back into the stadium, just to sit in the stands and take it all in one last time. Life, however, has a way of reminding you of what’s what, and nudging you gently back into your place. Fifteen minutes after sitting down in the stands, we were asked to leave. The seating area was closed. I suppose we could have flashed our press passes and gotten our way, but when something is over, it is best to let it be over and love it for what it was. Lou and I had enjoyed several days of utter heaven, blessed with the paramount gift of access and the occasion of one of the greatest sporting events in the world. It had essentially been a vacation from reality. Now we were being kicked out. Two hours later, we were accosted by some drunken Steelers fans in an all-night diner, and the next day I got stuck in traffic for an hour and a half on the drive back home. No amount of displaying my press pass would get the cars moving. Real life rules were being enforced again.

I’ve been trying to come up with some grand life lesson to be gleaned from my four days at the Super Bowl, but I keep returning to two small truths. One, which I try never to forget, is that I am an incredibly lucky human being. The other is that amazing experiences aren’t required to have soul-stretching personal impact. Sometimes they’re just simply amazing, and that’s all that they need to be. If the memory of my Super Bowl is a blur of incredible images and moments accompanied by the simple but true repetition of “This is so cool,” then the experience was exactly what I wanted it to be.

[If you’d like to see all of the photos that I took on the day of the game, go here for the first gallery and here for the second one.]

Par-Taaaay

After a long day of credentialed gawking on Friday, we retreated to the lovely Detroit Marriot à la Livonia to relax for a bit and get all hooched out for the ESPN party. The folks at ESPN, ever-expansive in their generosity, had rented out not one, but two buildings for their Friday night whomping-ass shindig throw-ya-hands-up extravaganza. Building one, site of the actual party was a pretty standard nightclub affair with a stage, big dance floor, and balcony overlooking the whole thing:

Building two, the “I’m tired of the spotlight, let’s go chill somewhere” locale, was an eight-floor exercise in indulgent weirdness. We had visited building two earlier in the day and had come across a very strange place. The first two floors were pretty standard fashionable bar and the third floor was a closed media work room, but from there up it got odd: The fourth floor was sponsored by Gillette’s new “Fusion” razor (which has roughly seventeen blades) and featured attractive waitresses wearing bizarre silver space-suity costumes and offering to, no kidding, shave you in one of the six barber chair/sink combinations set up along the back wall. Rrrrright. Floor five was done out in a black and orange theme and featured a tattoo parlor as well as attractive waitresses wearing black outfits, white angel wings, and roller skates. Seriously, I could not possibly invent that. The sixth floor may have had some theme that I didn’t pick up on, or it may just have featured lots of brushed chrome and blue lighting for a sort of spaceship effect. Floor seven was pretty much your rich friend’s well-furnished basement, except a lot more so:

Arcade games, foosball, a hockey goal complete with sticks and pucks, big cushy chairs, and poker tables. Oh, and of course the requisite attractive waitresses just dying to bring you free alcohol. This was the only remotely normal floor, and by far the best one. The eighth floor was reserved for VIP-types, so its theme remains a mystery. Probably all-nude. Wouldn’t surprise me. In any event, it was an absolute showcase of the bizarrely indulgent power of show business money. Extremely entertaining.

In any event, the evening started at building one, the main party spot, where, after standing in the cold for about fifteen minutes, we finally found someone who would honor our credentials and let us in even though we were little more than social toejam. Once inside, it was pretty much like any given night at a hip nightclub, with a few notable exceptions:

1. Free drinks, naturally. Sponsored by Absolut, no less. All flavors of Absolut. Peppar, Mandarin, Citron, Kurant, Vanilla, and possibly Cheesburger. You name it, they were pouring it, and liberally.

2. For some unknown reason, ESPN had hired actors (I assume they were actors) to dress in various athletic garb and wander about the party. There were five guys in soccer uniforms, carrying soccer balls. Three female runners in jogging attire would, with no notice, jog into a given room and start stretching in the corner. I also spotted a gymnast and a fencer - in full gear, of course - roaming about. They didn’t talk to anyone or serve any purpose other than to create atmosphere, but I’m not sure what atmosphere is produced by awkward pretend athletes. I felt like I was in the court of one of those 18th century European monarchs who forced their servants to be the pieces in life-sized chess games.

3. A generally higher level of attractive people of both sexes. Are these people paid to attend these types of things? Not that I’m complaining...

4. Celebrities. We had seen so many sports figures earlier in the day that we weren't too disappointed at the relatively small number of famous persons in attendance. We got some solid proximity, however, when I talked my way up into the VIP area, which was the balcony overlooking the dance floor, using the following clever method:

Tyler (speaking to bouncer guarding the stairway up to the balcony, trying to find out whether or not that was the VIP area): VIP?
Bouncer (stepping aside to let us pass): Yes sir, go right ahead.

So apparently the way to talk yourself past someone is to have no idea that you’re trying to do it. Excellent. There were a few extremely random famous persons of note upstairs, most notably actor Dylan McDermott and singer Joss Stone. Later, we saw Eli Manning chatting with Tom Brady, and Chad was intoxicated enough to take a shameless photo:

Also, we bumped into, almost literally, Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, who is nothing short of terrifyingly enormous. The guy is just unspeakably huge. I would have taken a photo of him, but I did not wish to risk being killed and eaten right there in the VIP lounge.

After a while, we realized that it was pretty much like any other big nightclub, so we fled for venue two, only to find that all of the floors but the first two were closed to non-VIP types, so we could not return to the seventh-floor cushy-chaired paradise. It was a semi-crushing blow, but one that was soon eased by lots and lots of free Absolut. There are worse ways that I can think of to spend an evening, and worse people that I can think of to spend it with:

We got up much too early on Saturday (sometime before noon) and decided quite rightly that it would be a good day to do nothing. There were plenty of accessible events going on downtown, but I think we’d all gotten sufficient coolness proximity on Friday, and it was now time to rest up for the Very Large Game on Sunday.

Stay tuned for:
Snowstorms!
Parking Lot Fiascos!
Ford Field Wanderings!
Sideline Close Encounters!
The Photo Runner’s Marathon!
The Hugely Massive Large-Sized Wowness of the Super Bowl Up Close!

All this and more, coming your way, just as soon as someone (AHEM!) uploads the nine hundred photos I took on game day.

Just a tease...

There are two posts forthcoming: One about the ESPN party Friday night and one about the game itself which was, well, just completely fantastic. I am a very lucky individual. Wow.

Until then, check out the ESPN.com Zoom gallery, which was the entire reason that I was there. The four photographers took approximately 3500 frames total, and these are the fifteen that were used. In picture #4, the Boulware interception, I was standing approximately one foot behind the photographer as he took that shot. Just....amazing.

Day of Game

Woooooo Hooooooooo!

(I'm a little jacked up for the game, which starts in, oh, nine hours and forty six minutes. If you know me, you know that this level of excitement, let alone consciousness, is absolutely unheard of at 8:44 a.m. on Sunday.)

It snowed about two inches here last night, and if it had been six degrees cooler, the accumulation would have been more like six inches. It's quite pretty, and I'm sure the Michigan highway people will have things cleaned up by this afternoon, but this does demonstrate one of the risks of having the game in a cold-weather city: What if it gets snowed out? Can you imagine a 100 bazillion-dollar TV event postponed by a sudden blizzard? Not that I'm complaining.

Okay, a few predictions:

1. Number of times that whoever calls the game uses the word "homecoming" to describe Detroit native Jerome Bettis during the telecast (pre-game not included): 8

2. Odds that anyone I know actually sees me and my blinding yellow fleece on the telecast: 35-1

3. Final score: Pittsburgh 30, Seattle 17.

4. Odds that my head explodes at any point during the game: 2-5

5. Odds that an electrical malfunction during the halftime show reveals that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are actually out-of-warranty animatronic robots built in the early 90s: 2-3

6. Over/Under for the number of times John Madden says the word "guy" while calling the game: 126 (and I'll take the over)

7. Some possibilities for random celebrities that I will see on the sidelines:
Peyton Manning: 40-1
Zach Braff: 22-1
Any members of the cast of "Lost" (except Walt, who has been taken by the Others):9-1
Kanye West: 7-1
Aretha Franklin: 4-1
The ghost of Britney Spears' career: 2-3

That's it for now. I may have some postings later in the day if the nice people at the ESPN trailer will allow me on to their computer, but this is unlikely (23-1 against). Hopefully you'll enjoy the game at least 1/73rd as much as I will.

Access

I should warn you that this post will contain some celebrity name-dropping. Please recall that I have been raised in the Midwest, a place where we steadfastly try to shrug our shoulders in the presence of celebrity (“Yeah, that’s Brad Pitt eating lunch over there, so what? You think he doesn’t get hungry too?”). As such, I am not typically a name-dropper, a celebrity-fawner, an autograph-beggar, or a photo-op-moocher. That said, I saw an awfully lot of famous people on Friday, enough to stretch the dropping of names into a regular carpet bombing. [For those of you who don’t follow sports, I apologize, as most of these people are sports figures. But hey, this is the Super Bowl, not the Oscars.]

Friday morning, we drove from our Livonian hotel down into the heart of Detroit. You may be aware that Detroit has a slightly un-stellar reputation as a major American city, thus making it a questionable choice to host a sporting event that subjects roughly seven gazillion tourists to that reputation. As it turns out, however, years of revitalization and weeks of frantic cleanup have made downtown Detroit a nice place walk around. I’m not saying you should plan for a Motor City Valentine’s trip or anything, but the downtown area is pretty nice. A few photos from around the town:

This is Detroit, so cars are sort of a focus. Add that fact to Cadillac’s sponsorship of the game, and there are concept cars littered about town, such as this sixteen-cylinder four door beast with 24-inch wheels and a thousand horsepower. Nifty:

Cars Theme + Wintry Weather Theme + Maybe Trying Too Hard =

Ethnic food note: Detroiters love their sausage:

Well, not all of the sketchy elements of downtown have been cleaned up. Probably this one was allowed to remain because of its unbelievable name:

I originally thought that the decay of the building had removed the “a” from “China,” but the yellow sign seems to confirm that this establishment was indeed called Chin Tiki.


We arrived at the Renaissance Center, the massive downtown convention center/office complex/hotel where all of the media aspects of the Super Bowl are housed, and it was there that we picked up possibly the most important element of the weekend: press credentials. Yes, the Von Maur pillow is extra cool, but credentials grant the thing that an outsider such as myself gets a big kick out of: access. Lots and lots of access.

There were very few doors that these fantastic plastic necklaces would not open, and while ESPN employee Jim went up to the temporary ESPN offices to do some actual work, Lou, Chad and I made the most of our access. We went directly to the press lounge and picked up some additional swag (a free pair of fleece mittens with hand warmers – apparently Detroit is aware of its un-Miaminess), and then proceeded down to the press-only radio and tv production area. The design of this area of the Renaissance Center creates the perfect division between those with and without access:

The open-air setup allows the unwashed and uncredentialed masses to peer down on the various productions going on below, cheer when prompted by a producer, and lavish uncomfortable praise on their sports heroes. For those of us in the privileged class, the view from the comfy leather chairs at ground level looked like this:

While Jim slaved away upstairs, we pretty much just hung out in the media area, strolling around to see who had shown up for an interview with NFL Network or Sirius Satellite Radio or Sports Psycho Bob on AM 1340 Tulsa. This was surprisingly entertaining, and yielded the following photos:


Pats QB Tom Brady and Notre Dame coach Charlie Weiss catch up on old times. Charlie looks like he has lost some weight.



Former Lions coach Steve Mariucci and NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen. I think maybe Rich noticed that we were taking a picture of him, as he is looking straight at the camera. Also, the Lions fans, who are no big fan of their former coach, hurled a few choice heckles his way, such as “Hey Steve, where’s your life partner Jeff Garcia?” Nice. Way to represent your city with dignity.



USC QB Matt Leinart being interviewed for a radio talk show and sporting a curiously “lazy-eyed psycho” expression. I think the interviewers are laughing just so that he doesn’t snap and kill them.



Talk radio host Jim Rome, who is such an amazing jerk that his jerkiness caused the image to blur.



Former 49ers QB and Superbowl MVP Steve Young chats with Mariucci, possibly trying to convert him to Mormonism.



This picture illustrates one of the funny things about athletes and their celebrity: you don’t always recognize the face, but you get the sneaky feeling that you should. So, from left to right we’ve got Ray Lewis, Mariucci, Mystery Athlete #1, Mystery Athlete #2, and former Super Bowl MVP Terrell Davis. Bonus prizes for anyone who can ID the two gentlemen in the middle.


The above represents the handful of photos that we actually took. There were a number of other opportunities that were lost because either a) the famous person walked by too fast or b) they were right there but our Midwestern sense of dignity prevented us from poking a camera right in their face. Celebrities encountered at close range but not photographed include Reggie Bush, Vince Young (very tall), Joe Montana (wearing a bizarre green hyper-paisley shirt), William “The Refrigerator” Perry (staggeringly huge), Rod Woodson, Tom Jackson, Mike Ditka, Shannon Sharpe and Barry Sanders. See? I told you there was going to be some completely shameless name-dropping.

There were also several non-celebrity moments of note, the first being this gentleman who was filming a football:

I have a new respect for cameramen, because this highly trained professional went on filming this football for a full four minutes without moving a muscle. The football, camera, and lighting never moved. Perhaps NFL Network is getting into postmodern avant-garde stationary video performance art. Mysteries abound.

And because this is football, there must be cheerleaders. Two representatives from the Arizona Cardinals squad were on hand to help promote the fact that Arizona will be hosting the 2008 Super Bowl. Chad was talked into posing for a photo with one of them, but I don’t think he enjoyed it at all:


After a while, we wandered upstairs to the ESPN offices to see how Jim was getting along with doing actual, real work. Sitting at the table next to him, dictating a column shortly to be posted on ESPN.com, was none other than Joe Theismann, the very same individual whose leg I predicted I would re-break in my previous post:

Well, sometimes fate shouts at you through the megaphone of apparent coincidence, and it is clear that destiny cannot be denied, so I promptly tackled him in his chair and started beating on him at the femur with his laptop. Also, possibly, I didn’t. It was, in any case, pretty humorous to sit and listen to a guy who will be the color commentator for Monday Night Football next year, who spent his entire life in and around the game of football, and who is supposed to be an expert on the subject, struggle to create any kind of coherent thought in his column. At one point, he had to ask for a Super Bowl roster to remind himself who was on Seattle’s defensive line. Joe: This is your job. You should know these things. This would be like a doctor checking the skeleton hanging in his office to remember how many elbows his patient is supposed to have.

On the other hand, we found out that Joe Theismann is a pretty nice guy. As Chad, Lou, and I were boarding the elevator to ride back down to the media area, Joe jumped on and participated happily and with what seemed like genuine interest in a conversation about the Detroit Lions. What he had to say didn’t make much sense, but he was extremely pleasant and not stand-offish in any way.

So he’s got that going for him.

There is definitely some overarching lesson here regarding the joys of access, but I haven’t settled on exactly what it is. On one hand, talking football in an elevator with Joe Theismann or seeing Tom Brady from six feet away isn’t really life altering. These people are important for relatively arbitrary reasons, and it is important to keep things in perspective, or else you quickly become the sort of person who TIVOs “Access Hollywood.”

On the other hand, there is some degree of undeniable electricity that revolves around celebrity. When Joe Montana walks by you in a hallway, your brain unavoidably goes “Hey, that was Joe Montana!” and that is empirically, categorically, cool. It just is. That’s why they’re celebrities. It’s cool to have access, flashing your credentials to get past the line of drooling fans and into the restricted area, it is cool spending a whole day in close proximity with famous sports persons of various import, and it is cool to watch a live tv program being filmed and consider calling a friend to say, “Hey, TIVO whatever’s on the NFL Network right now. I’m going to tackle Rich Eisen in about two minutes.” I’m having an absolute ball.

That’s it for me for now. Later on Friday evening we attended the ESPN party, which I’ll blather on about later. I probably won’t have time to post again until Monday, so enjoy the game. I am, for the record, rooting for the Steelers, because a) they have several likeable individuals (smilin’ Hines Ward, IU grad Antwan Randle-El, quintessential football coach and chin-model Bill Cowher, jolly Santa-esque Jerome Bettis) and because b) it will mean that the Colts have been eliminated by the future Super Bowl champs three years in a row. Yes, okay, fine, b) is a terrible reason, but the wounds are still fresh.

Perks

Today consisted of very little of interest (mainly driving to Detroit) but there are two items of note:

1. Swag.

Here in the fantastic Marriot Detroit (located, naturally, in Livonia, Michigan, whose main industry appears to be hotels), there appear to be a number of rooms reserved specifically for Super Bowl media types. Being that my room was booked by the good folks at ESPN the Magazine, I happen to be in one of those rooms. How lovely. Extra lovely, because somebody thought it would be a good idea to welcome us to the room with some weird but no doubt well-meaning free merchandise. As in:

An inventory:
Von Maur fleece blanket.
Von Maur beany fleece pillow.
Strange plastic cloggy shoe things, size 7, women's.
Shoehorn, plastic.
Spanx brand "advanced athletic socks." No, seriously, I couldn't possibly make that up.
A sample of DKNY's "Be Delicious" cologne. Or perfume. I'm not willing to open it and find out.
Wooden paperweight designed to resemble a Von Maur shopping bag.
Von Maur cloth bag (in which to store all of your loot)

Apparent moral of the story: At the Super Bowl, the media are taken care of. Again, how lovely.
Apparent secondary moral of the story: There is a Von Maur around the corner from our hotel.

2. Somebody Else's Expense Account:

My very fine friend Jim, who is responsible for hiring me on for all of this fantastic absurdity, saw it in the kindness of his ESPN the Magazine-funded heart to take his photography crew out to dinner. I would at this point like to express my deepest gratitude to the accountants at the aforementioned Magazine for the excellent meal and several desserts. It is great fun to spend someone else's money.

Tomorrow: Tyler gets his media pass and is promptly banished from Detroit for getting close enough to Joe Theismann to re-break his leg. Sorry, Joe, but you deserved it for your performance as color commentator on ESPN's "Sunday Night Football."

Deee Troit.

If you haven't recently spoken to me, received e-mail from me, exchanged faxes, IM's or text messages with me, been in the same room with me for more that six seconds, or driven past me going the other direction and not heeded my attempts to get you to stop and listen to what I have to say, then I probably haven't mentioned that I'm going to be on the sidelines of the Super Bowl on Sunday. So:

I'm going to be on the sidelines of the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Long story short, a good friend of mine works for ESPN the Magazine, and he needed assistants for his sideline photographers. My qualifications for this position are that I have arms and legs, so I was an obvious choice. In any event, my friend Lou and I will each be on a sideline at the Super Bowl, following the guys with the nine foot zoom lenses and they cruise up and down the field. Oh, and as temporary employees of ESPN the Magazine, we will be compensated for our services (financially, in addition to the BEING ON THE SIDELINES AT THE SUPER DAMN BOWL).

Life: Hey, Tyler's lap, I'm going to drop a Super Bowl sideline experience right into you. Is that going to work?

Tyler's Lap: Ummm, say what?

Life: Oh, and you're getting paid for it, too.

Tyler's Lap: Now you just get right out of town.

Life: No, really. And mileage. And per diem.

Tyler's Lap: Oh, man, just wait until I tell Tyler. His head is going to explode.

So, and I really have to wrap this up because I've got to finish fine-tuning the forty pages worth of dissertation that I promised I'd turn in tomorrow, I will be headed to Detroit tomorrow afternoon. On Friday, there is the ESPN party, at which I hope to be kicking back Hennessy with Sportscenter anchor Stuart Scott. Saturday is open, as far as I know, but I am going to use the free time to see how close my press credentials will get me to Steelers coach Bill Cowher's chin. The over/under is nine feet, and the betting windows are open. On Sunday, there is some sort of football game thingy which I must attend. If you happen to be watching said contest, look in the background for a guy wearing either bright red or bright yellow and sporting a blown-fuse expression of football glee. That will be me. Pay careful attention, because at some point my head actually might explode.

I am taking my computer with me and hope to update the blog as the weekend progresses, but in the very likely event that "NFL Primetime" anchor Chris Berman talks me into playing golf with him all weekend, I will at the least post everything when I get back on Monday.

In the meantime, if you'd like to read the Super Bowl blog of a real journalist-type person, ESPN.com's Chuck Klosterman is doing a very nice job. Go here.