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.