"Well, I'm Not Going to Get a Romantic Comedy!"

Recently, The New York Times featured an article on the weirdness that is the "man date" -- two straight guys hanging out. This past Saturday, without realizing it, I stumbled into an unscheduled man date complete with dinner and a movie. When I was in my basement as a teenager, drinking generic orange soda and playing video games, I did not spend much time thinking about the implications of just hanging out with a male friend. Many years later, after having been married and divorced, spending quality time alone with a male friend (that doesn't involve copious amounts of drinking beer or watching sports) leaves me feeling strangely ill at ease, despite the fact that in this case we spent most of the time talking about his interesting dating life (read: too many women, too little time).

After hanging out at my place for a bit, we decided to get something to eat. I asked where he wanted to go: "somewhere manly and greasy," he replied. This points out an important benefit to male/male bonding. Not dining with women allows you to indulge in appalling unhealthy cuisine. I, for example, cannot imagine myself wolfing down a chili dog with a women present -- that would be the food equivalent of dropping the "f-bomb." We ended up a local burger/taco joint, and my friend, feeling he had been underserved foodwise, ordered dessert. Our very cute waitress, Molly, recommended the fried hershey bar with ice cream mega dessert, and he jumped on it. (I had another beer.) The enormous dessert arrived with two spoons, and my friend looked at me and said: "We're not sharing; that would be TOO gay." I disagreed, believing that sharing ice cream in a place that has twenty beers on tap was mildly gay; sharing tiramisu in a French bistro with one fork would have pushed us into the capital city of the kingdom of gaydom. (Am I sounding homophobic now?)

We left dinner and went to Blockbuster to get a movie. Despite the age of video-on-demand, netflix, and video i-phones, the place was packed on a Saturday night. The place was filled with college kids and a few eligible looking single women. As we browsed the videos, I noticed that every movie we picked up had a picture of a guy with a gun on it. Pointing this out, my friend responded, "well, I'm not going to get a romantic comedy!" And so, I discovered a cardinal rule of the man date: you can watch a movie with a dude as long as it's filled with rude humor or gratuitous violence. I was fully on board with that. I became very conscious of what I was looking at because of the two thirty-ish women who were browsing beside me. We did that strange back and forth shuffle where you try not to linger too long in front a particular section. I reached down to the bottom shelf for Blades of Glory and managed to bang my head on the wire rack holding the videos. (The smack on the head reminded me that I have no hair on the top of my head -- I'm sporting "the sunroof" these days, hair on the sides and back but nothing on top.) Having made a spectacle of myself, my browsing was over for the evening. We rented Bruce Willis's Live Free or Die Hard, and there were many explosions, vicious deaths and ridiculous special effects. In the end, we agreed it was a great way to spend a Saturday night even if I didn't get to share the dessert.

Keeping Your Priorities Straight

The New York Giants playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers last night was one of the most exciting games I can remember. I am a huge sucker for all the postgame hooplah -- I loved watching Michael Strahan running around the field high-fiving Giants' fans despite the frigid temperatures. The cameras are always trying to catch the human interest stories at the end of the game. I loved that Eli's Dad, Archie Manning could barely watch as the game wound down and the Giants missed several opportunities to seal the victory. I can, however, only stomach so much of the post-game commentary -- all these football "experts" who killed Eli all year are now willing to elevate him to the level of star. (He was never as bad as when the naysayers suggested he was adopted [?!] and he's not a superstar now. Heck, he didn't even throw a touchdown yesterday; does not throwing an interception qualify you for the Hall of Fame now?) Nevertheless, in the minutes immediately following the game-ending field goal, I watched Eli as the camera zoomed in on him. He was clearly scanning the stands for someone. He muttered, "No, she'd be down here," and then "she's in ... where's section 119?!!" and continued to search as the screen faded out to commercial. I then remembered at the end of the one of the previous playoff games, Eli mentioned that he was looking for his girlfriend, Abby in the stands. So minutes after the biggest victory of his life, the kid from Mississippi who'd always lived in his brother Peyton's shadow had every opportunity to be mugging for the cameras, and instead he wanted to share the moment with Abby. Moments like that make it easy to root for a kid like Eli.

Life Isn't All (Cheap) Beer, Skittles and Laughter

I was reading a heartwarming article today on Sportsline.com about a new program instituted by the Arizona Diamondbacks. Apparently, a woman who had experienced some real tragedy in her life thanked the President of the Diamondbacks profusely for a $150 food voucher that the club had sent to season ticket holders. After that meeting, it occurred to him that the club could start a regular program to help people in extraordinary stories by offering free season tickets to those to whom life had thrown a curve, and they did so.

Well, you might think that I would be warming up to expound on the virtues of this magnanimous gesture -- a example of generosity in the cesspool of greed that is professional sports ... but no, that's not where I'm going. At the bottom of the page, a reader ("Bake1"), commenting on this extraordinarily uplifting story, had this to add: "This is a good story but I wish they would lower the price of beer at Chase Stadium. I bought 3 beers last year and with tax and tip, it was almost $40." The story detailed heart-wrenching stories of personal tragedy and this was Bake1's brilliant contribution. Makes one proud to be an American.

Perhaps the world would be a better place with more cheap beer. Many years ago, I spent a very interesting night in Yankee Stadium. We had pretty good seats down the left field line, and we were ready to settle in for a night enjoying America's pastime. It was not long before we realized that we had come to the stadium on Fireman night. New York's bravest were in fine form that night, and for the first time I realized why the concession stands had to stop selling beer after the 7th inning. The irony of the firefighter's flammable breath was not lost on me. I can only imagine what that night would have been like with less expensive beer. With cheaper beer perhaps we could enjoy more scenes at the stadiums such as the hilarity of spectators running onto the field, the kid who did a swan dive out of the upper deck at Yankee Stadium, or maybe we'd have just have more stadiums equipped with jails for unruly fans. I can only imagine cheap beer would only improve the manners and ingenuity of the men at Giants Stadium in New Jersey who demanded women flash them at the infamous gate D. The first time I was forced to drink beer out of a plastic bottle, I toasted all the chowderhead sports fans who had ever thrown a glass bottle (the way God intended you to drink beer) onto the field during a sporting event.

I encourage all sports fans who demand cheap beer to snuggle up in front of their TV with an eighteen pack of their favorite domestic brew, stow the car keys and enjoy the game in the security of their lazyboy. But if Bake1 really wants to enjoy some cheap beer, I highly recommend the $1 beer night (which I attended last summer) at Las Vegas's Cashman Field, the home of the LA Dodgers' AAA affiliate, where the beertender warned me emphatically: "No beer sold after the 7th inning, so PLAN ACCORDINGLY!"