Are You Ready for Some... Chicken?

Well it's finally here, the most hyped day of the year (in America, anyway). It's Superbowl Sunday, and that can only mean one thing: chicken wings. That's right, the part of the bird most Americans normally don't eat at all will become the focus of a gorge-fest to the tune of 1.25 billion pieces, or 100 million pounds of chicken wings. Think about that for a moment, and really try to get your head around it. There of about 350 million people in this country, give or take. If my math is correct (it's probably not), that's 3.57 chicken wings for every man, woman, and child in this country. All on the same day. Are you kidding me?! If our civilization should happen to cease right at halftime, future archaeologists are going to have a bugger of a time explaining all those chicken wing bones lying around.

And if you think I'm making this up, I'm not. These stats all come from the Chicken Council's 2012 Wing Report. And I'm not making that up either. There's really an official report on this stuff. According to it, the aforementioned chicken wings laid end-to-end would circle the circumference of the Earth more than twice. And if you consider the fact that about 111 million people in the U.S. will actually watch the game, and therefore be eating said wings, it comes in at more like 11.25 wings each. Why not just make it a clean dozen, and call it dinner? But that's the thing. Apparently wings are not even at the top of the list of items that will be chowed down upon. No that title belongs to chips and dips. Potato chips alone will weigh in at approximately 28-30 million pounds, which if you've held a bag of potato chips, is just unbelievable. And according to the California Avocado Commission, Sunday will see enough guacamole consumed to cover the floor of the stadium from end-to-end to a depth of about 40 inches. Heck, they should skip the game entirely and just do that. I'd totally tune in to see that much guacamole in one place.

Of course the game itself took a backseat to the commercials, half-time show, and other meaningless hoopla a long time ago. So I guess one cannot be blamed for cutting loose, even if you don't really follow football. But maybe they should move it to Saturday or something like that. Consuming that much food - and the 50 million cases of beer that will be sold this weekend - has got to be hurting U.S. productivity come Monday morning, I would think. I am sure the Department of Labor has some special report on that as well, but I am afraid to look it up.

If you didn't manage to score tickets to the big game in Indianapolis (I didn't), you could do the next best thing: watch the game from a timeshare rental in the home city of one of the two teams. This year's game features a classic Northeast rivalry, with the New York Giants squaring off against the New England Patriots. Now these two teams don't often play one another, being in different leagues and all, but the baseball rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox has fueled enough hatred to last a lifetime (and then some). They can't even agree on the clam chowder (chowdah for my Beantown friends), with Manhattan going with a tomato base and New England going with cream. Mixing the two is a bipartite - and delicious - solution to that problem, by the way.

Boston of course is home to Paul Revere's Ride, the Boston Massacre, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Boston Tea Party, Bird vs. Magic, and so much more. You can rent a timeshare at Marriott's Custom House, located on Boston Harbor and within walking/metro distance to everything. You can watch the game from Ye Olde Union Oyster House, the oldest continually operating restaurant in America. They say that Daniel Webster, an Oyster House regular, frequently consumed six brandies and 36 oysters in a single sitting. Are you kidding me?! Talk about a power lunch.

New York City, of course, is the city that never shuts up (I stole that line from Ani DiFranco). I'm just kidding of course. I love the Big Apple, and a timeshare rental at the West 57th Street by Hilton Club will put you in the thick of it all. Tonic Bar in Times Square claims to be the largest sports bar in all of Gotham, with 25 super-sized plasma TVs. If you go, be sure to check out the Naked Cowboy on your way down there. You know about this guy? Yeah, he stands in Times Square playing a guitar wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and his tighty whities. Man he must get cold come winter time. Hope he doesn't break a g-string, if you know what I mean.

Well, I have to go pick my winner in the big office pool. Marbles looks very strong to me, but Penelope could be tough to beat. You are planning to watch Puppy Bowl VIII on Sunday, aren't you? Since 2003, Animal Planet has been airing a mock superbowl featuring puppies "playing football" in a miniature stadium, and it is the cutest darn thing you've ever seen in your life. Plus, all of the puppies are available for adoption. And unlike adopting an NFL player, they won't expect you to lavish them with expensive gifts and wild parties, or ransack your house in a steroid-induced rage. They might chew up your shoes and pee on your carpet of course, but who's to say a linebacker wouldn't do that as well?