There are two things we know about this Super Bowl: it was a gas and Doc is probably still pissed.
How it came that Lotho found his way to a pair of Super Bowl tickets is lost to history somewhere in the legends of the College Inn, a bar in Clifton in Cincinnati, not without a measure (i.e. a lot) of ill-repute. It was all ol' boy beer drinkers at the bar but there was a whole lot more going on in there than that. The College Inn made an excellent cover for one of the most rip-roaring cocaine snowstorms in the city.
As snowstorms will, eventually they end. The legends may still not yet have fully played-out in some regards so best to leave those to the murky depths. They aren't mine to tell anyway since that was way over my head. Some were in there to drink beer all night, some were there for an alternative buzz, and some were there to do business. Best not to ask the business visitors too much about the trade. That's how you do at the College Inn.
The Super Bowl tickets must have been some type of divine providence at the College Inn since Lotho was willing to give one away. Even then they were expensive and a Super Bowl ticket was one Hot Property, maybe even hotter than a ticket to a Stones concert, maybe. It's unknown how that went as we were throwing concert tickets around like they were baseball cards the whole time. The one who pays for stuff is the one who has money to pay for stuff. Such a simple life ... but so dayum good.
It's also not clear how one of those tickets came to be in my hand since there was a protest from Doc, one hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool Bengals fanboy, who said he had a claim. It's now thirty years later and I don't know if that ever got sorted. This is the sort of stuff families remember, see. We never remember the stuff in which we actually did nice things for each other. Instead we remember ...
YOU ASSHOLE! YOU STOLE MY SUPER BOWL TICKET!!
Now I do see there is the possibility of confusion due to wild abuse of, well, whatever we could find at the time. However, I had committed no foul and I didn't see Lotho commit one so, fuck it, let's go to Pontiac and watch those boys play.
Part of the outrage of my attendance was I never cared beans about football. I know the ball goes from this end of the field to that end and the rules don't matter to me. It's just cool to watch the crazy things they do to get it there. This makes it perfect for stoners so, hey, let's do another line there, bro, and watch the kick-off.
But first we have to get to Pontiac, Michigan, to see the kick-off. This is 1982 for Super Bowl XVI featuring the Cincinnati Bengals going after the big prize against the legendary San Francisco 49'ers, a team with its Hollywood star, Joe Montana. He was teamed with Jerry Rice, a hugely-talented wide-end receiver, to make one of the most powerful duos NFL football ever saw. The Cincinnati Bengals were going heads-up with them so that is not to be missed.
The Cincinnati Bengals have struggled for credibility but now they prove they have class, they are contenders.
There's no intention to be racist but it strikes me a white boy thing to do when you are sitting there in a perfectly nice warm place and get to thinking, man, it is absolutely shitty outside. The temperature is -25F, the ground has been frozen solid for months, and there's snow everywhere. Let's go out to drive around in that egregiously horrible stuff for, say, five or six hundred icy miles. That would be a jam, right?
Sure it's a jam because we were dumb ass white boys, blown to Mars on cocaine, and just about anything will sound like a good idea under those circumstances.
Yes, it really was -25F and it had the added glory of a hard, biting wind out of the North. This wasn't just cold but it was all-out Kathy Bates misery. This was wind vicious enough to peel the skin right off you, in one miserable layer after the other. So, sure, let's go outside to screw around in that.
So, we did that. We got rolling on I-75 as that highway is the guts of America. If you're heading North around here, you follow I-95 for the East and I-75 at the start of the Midwest. These roads are the Interstate pipelines for American narcotics, conveniently delivered by your friendly parcel services. What's on that UPS truck?? La coca, babyyyy!
There's no telling how much cocaine we had with us but that wasn't all. Any kind of buzz needs embellishment so the beloved Mary Jane was there. See, what you do is you smoke yer ganja and that gets you sooooo smooth. Then you decide it's time for a zing so you toot a line. This gets you all stratospheric ... so then you smoke wit' Mary Jane to get .... so smooth. It's da bliz, da bliz, man. As to whether any other drugs were involved, I really don't know. I do know if we had it, we brought it.
It's really not clear how long it took to get from Cincinnati to Pontiac but it's a safe bet it was faster than it legally should have been. It also likely passed by for us quite a bit faster than it did for anyone else as this was blazing down the road, as Hunter Thompson as you can get, because we're going to the fookin' Super Bowl, man. It's the Cincinnati Bengals this time and WHO DEY
WHO DEY
WHO DEY
WHO DEY THINK
GONNA BEAT DEM BENGALS
WHO DEY
With this started over the speakers in the stadium, the entire place would erupt with it. They get the beat, they get the chant and WHO DEY!
You're telling me solo rap music has such power? Let's try that with fifty thousand people. The ground will shake!
The ground and just about everything else was shaking by the time we got to Pontiac. There was no way to imagine it could get colder than Cincinnati but, in the genius of our thinking, we had gone North and expecting palm trees was not realistic.
This is brutal cold, wind which caresses you like sandpaper, and one huge ice field between you and the door to the stadium. That door is, well, way over there, then over that bridge, and then onto the plaza, and ... dayummmmm is it fuckin' cold.
So we're trudging over to the place and I sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
He sez, shu' da fug up
After a while he sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
So I sez, shu' da fug up.
After a while I sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
We miraculously escaped frostbite, despite all logical prediction, and found our way inside the stadium.
Man, these were incredible seats. In my foggy memory, the seats seem close to the field and close to the fifty-yard line. This is NFL footballer heaven so, yah, play some football.
There may be some expectation of the play-by-play of the game but you may not be fully recognizing just how shit-faced we were by the time we got to it. We were lucky to still be able to read the seat numbers on the tickets. I have no idea what happened in the game except it's exciting like you don't even know; there were all the lights and sounds of a hard-rock circus; there were people all over the place, jazzed to the sky on WHO DEY, WHO DEY. This was one major adrenaline-pumping event and one absolute gas.
Thank you, Lotho! WHO DEY!
As for Doc, this is as much as I can share of it. Doc had already taken up that ghastly clean living by then ... so sad. Same thing happened with Lotho. Two of Cincinnati's Great Freaks lost to sobriety.
I shall continue to hold that freak flag high, albeit without the cocaine.
(Ed: what kind of lesson is this for kids?)
Not a bad one. There's nothing which ever implies there is not a price to be paid for these excesses. What more lesson can there really be. To dwell on the cost is a simple scare tactic and kids are immortal so they will ignore it. If there's anything anyone takes from this it's a price to be paid, it's big fun but it isn't free. Whether it's worth that cost is your call. Choose wisely, young grasshopper.
How it came that Lotho found his way to a pair of Super Bowl tickets is lost to history somewhere in the legends of the College Inn, a bar in Clifton in Cincinnati, not without a measure (i.e. a lot) of ill-repute. It was all ol' boy beer drinkers at the bar but there was a whole lot more going on in there than that. The College Inn made an excellent cover for one of the most rip-roaring cocaine snowstorms in the city.
As snowstorms will, eventually they end. The legends may still not yet have fully played-out in some regards so best to leave those to the murky depths. They aren't mine to tell anyway since that was way over my head. Some were in there to drink beer all night, some were there for an alternative buzz, and some were there to do business. Best not to ask the business visitors too much about the trade. That's how you do at the College Inn.
The Super Bowl tickets must have been some type of divine providence at the College Inn since Lotho was willing to give one away. Even then they were expensive and a Super Bowl ticket was one Hot Property, maybe even hotter than a ticket to a Stones concert, maybe. It's unknown how that went as we were throwing concert tickets around like they were baseball cards the whole time. The one who pays for stuff is the one who has money to pay for stuff. Such a simple life ... but so dayum good.
It's also not clear how one of those tickets came to be in my hand since there was a protest from Doc, one hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool Bengals fanboy, who said he had a claim. It's now thirty years later and I don't know if that ever got sorted. This is the sort of stuff families remember, see. We never remember the stuff in which we actually did nice things for each other. Instead we remember ...
YOU ASSHOLE! YOU STOLE MY SUPER BOWL TICKET!!
Now I do see there is the possibility of confusion due to wild abuse of, well, whatever we could find at the time. However, I had committed no foul and I didn't see Lotho commit one so, fuck it, let's go to Pontiac and watch those boys play.
Part of the outrage of my attendance was I never cared beans about football. I know the ball goes from this end of the field to that end and the rules don't matter to me. It's just cool to watch the crazy things they do to get it there. This makes it perfect for stoners so, hey, let's do another line there, bro, and watch the kick-off.
But first we have to get to Pontiac, Michigan, to see the kick-off. This is 1982 for Super Bowl XVI featuring the Cincinnati Bengals going after the big prize against the legendary San Francisco 49'ers, a team with its Hollywood star, Joe Montana. He was teamed with Jerry Rice, a hugely-talented wide-end receiver, to make one of the most powerful duos NFL football ever saw. The Cincinnati Bengals were going heads-up with them so that is not to be missed.
The Cincinnati Bengals have struggled for credibility but now they prove they have class, they are contenders.
There's no intention to be racist but it strikes me a white boy thing to do when you are sitting there in a perfectly nice warm place and get to thinking, man, it is absolutely shitty outside. The temperature is -25F, the ground has been frozen solid for months, and there's snow everywhere. Let's go out to drive around in that egregiously horrible stuff for, say, five or six hundred icy miles. That would be a jam, right?
Sure it's a jam because we were dumb ass white boys, blown to Mars on cocaine, and just about anything will sound like a good idea under those circumstances.
Yes, it really was -25F and it had the added glory of a hard, biting wind out of the North. This wasn't just cold but it was all-out Kathy Bates misery. This was wind vicious enough to peel the skin right off you, in one miserable layer after the other. So, sure, let's go outside to screw around in that.
So, we did that. We got rolling on I-75 as that highway is the guts of America. If you're heading North around here, you follow I-95 for the East and I-75 at the start of the Midwest. These roads are the Interstate pipelines for American narcotics, conveniently delivered by your friendly parcel services. What's on that UPS truck?? La coca, babyyyy!
There's no telling how much cocaine we had with us but that wasn't all. Any kind of buzz needs embellishment so the beloved Mary Jane was there. See, what you do is you smoke yer ganja and that gets you sooooo smooth. Then you decide it's time for a zing so you toot a line. This gets you all stratospheric ... so then you smoke wit' Mary Jane to get .... so smooth. It's da bliz, da bliz, man. As to whether any other drugs were involved, I really don't know. I do know if we had it, we brought it.
It's really not clear how long it took to get from Cincinnati to Pontiac but it's a safe bet it was faster than it legally should have been. It also likely passed by for us quite a bit faster than it did for anyone else as this was blazing down the road, as Hunter Thompson as you can get, because we're going to the fookin' Super Bowl, man. It's the Cincinnati Bengals this time and WHO DEY
WHO DEY
WHO DEY
WHO DEY THINK
GONNA BEAT DEM BENGALS
WHO DEY
With this started over the speakers in the stadium, the entire place would erupt with it. They get the beat, they get the chant and WHO DEY!
You're telling me solo rap music has such power? Let's try that with fifty thousand people. The ground will shake!
The ground and just about everything else was shaking by the time we got to Pontiac. There was no way to imagine it could get colder than Cincinnati but, in the genius of our thinking, we had gone North and expecting palm trees was not realistic.
This is brutal cold, wind which caresses you like sandpaper, and one huge ice field between you and the door to the stadium. That door is, well, way over there, then over that bridge, and then onto the plaza, and ... dayummmmm is it fuckin' cold.
So we're trudging over to the place and I sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
He sez, shu' da fug up
After a while he sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
So I sez, shu' da fug up.
After a while I sez, it's fookin' cold, bro.
And that's how it went for one long trudge to the stadium, all to the chorus of misery from all the others who are enduring it as well. You can dress for cold and we did but this wind was something which usually goes to the North Pole ... and stays there to wipe out Arctic explorers.
We miraculously escaped frostbite, despite all logical prediction, and found our way inside the stadium.
Man, these were incredible seats. In my foggy memory, the seats seem close to the field and close to the fifty-yard line. This is NFL footballer heaven so, yah, play some football.
There may be some expectation of the play-by-play of the game but you may not be fully recognizing just how shit-faced we were by the time we got to it. We were lucky to still be able to read the seat numbers on the tickets. I have no idea what happened in the game except it's exciting like you don't even know; there were all the lights and sounds of a hard-rock circus; there were people all over the place, jazzed to the sky on WHO DEY, WHO DEY. This was one major adrenaline-pumping event and one absolute gas.
Thank you, Lotho! WHO DEY!
As for Doc, this is as much as I can share of it. Doc had already taken up that ghastly clean living by then ... so sad. Same thing happened with Lotho. Two of Cincinnati's Great Freaks lost to sobriety.
I shall continue to hold that freak flag high, albeit without the cocaine.
(Ed: what kind of lesson is this for kids?)
Not a bad one. There's nothing which ever implies there is not a price to be paid for these excesses. What more lesson can there really be. To dwell on the cost is a simple scare tactic and kids are immortal so they will ignore it. If there's anything anyone takes from this it's a price to be paid, it's big fun but it isn't free. Whether it's worth that cost is your call. Choose wisely, young grasshopper.
2 comments:
Those tickets were I think $40. I paid $75 for them.
Barbies husband called me to arrange the deal
Back then, $75 was serious money
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