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| Giants fans cheer the victory. |
Just before 5 am on Monday I stepped through a metal
detector, showed the guards my passport, and was on my way to a posh restaurant
where the game was playing on a projector.
My embassy friend introduced me to Alex, who’s from New York and was cheering for the Giants. An hour earlier Alex, who was in Delhi for three weeks on business, didn’t even know where he’d watch the game. At 4 a.m. that morning he loaded up on money—he had more than $200 in cash on him—got in a taxi and went to two hotels, hoping they were showing the Super Bowl. No go. Then he came to the embassy, ready to bribe his way in, if necessary. But my embassy friend saw him standing there and let him in.
It was a good game, of course, but we had to watch the
version shown to overseas U.S. armed forces. That meant not only did we not get
to see the Super Bowl commercials, but we were overloaded with snippets of
football players thanking us for our service, news bytes delivered by impassive
military members, and commercials aimed at soldiers.
This was actually kind of awesome, since I was sitting next to some of the Marines in charge of security for the compound (“What does ‘FNB’ mean?” I said after one commercial for what looked like a new TV series. “Fucking New Guy,” they said. “Seriously?!!?”). They were not shy about their dislike of these commercials. When I asked one if the plethora of athletes thanking him meant anything, he scoffed and for the rest of the game he and another guy snidely asked each other if the commercials meant anything to them.
For another
commercial, one Marine said sarcastically, “Now I know not to do drugs,” and at
a particularly patriotic commercial, a guy said, “That’s it, I’m re-enlisting.” After
a rare non-armed-forces ad promoting an upcoming UFC match, one Marine
noted that they get all the pay-per-view matches for free, “but I’d pay if we could
just get some regular commercials.”
My embassy friend introduced me to Alex, who’s from New York and was cheering for the Giants. An hour earlier Alex, who was in Delhi for three weeks on business, didn’t even know where he’d watch the game. At 4 a.m. that morning he loaded up on money—he had more than $200 in cash on him—got in a taxi and went to two hotels, hoping they were showing the Super Bowl. No go. Then he came to the embassy, ready to bribe his way in, if necessary. But my embassy friend saw him standing there and let him in.
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| Watching the halftime show. |
This was actually kind of awesome, since I was sitting next to some of the Marines in charge of security for the compound (“What does ‘FNB’ mean?” I said after one commercial for what looked like a new TV series. “Fucking New Guy,” they said. “Seriously?!!?”). They were not shy about their dislike of these commercials. When I asked one if the plethora of athletes thanking him meant anything, he scoffed and for the rest of the game he and another guy snidely asked each other if the commercials meant anything to them.
For another
commercial, one Marine said sarcastically, “Now I know not to do drugs,” and at
a particularly patriotic commercial, a guy said, “That’s it, I’m re-enlisting.” After
a rare non-armed-forces ad promoting an upcoming UFC match, one Marine
noted that they get all the pay-per-view matches for free, “but I’d pay if we could
just get some regular commercials.”Giants won, half the place cheered, and I had a lovely time.
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