It's the best day of the year!

New England at Tennessee 1:00pm

xo kate

“Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”

So, my team lost the Superbowl.  To New York.  To a Manning. (And you know how I feel about that family.) Again.

Currently I'm about 22 hours into my self-allowed one week of misery after every tough loss.  In other words, I'm in the thick of it and my students can tell you, it isn't pretty.  Also, I slept for about an hour and a half last night and had to teach second grade for nine hours today.  So, it was not. a. good. day.

This afternoon, though, it got a little bit better when I saw this photo.  These are the crowds of people standing in the cold at Gillette to welcome the team home from the Superbowl today.  I'm proud to be part of a fan base that welcomes their team home, win or lose.  No matter how far away I live, I'll always be a New England girl.

xo kate

afc champs.

xo kate

happy football!

There will be football this year.  Thank heavens.

xo kate

I am whatever you say I am...

There were four things that I really enjoyed about the Superbowl, and two of them were Eminem.

If you haven't gotten a chance to watch Eminem's ads I've conveniently posted them here. We're all about customer service here at W&W.

It's not a secret that I'm a big fan of Mr. Mathers.  My love goes back a long time (since back when it was controversial to be an Em fan) and has ranged from run-of-the-mill fan to borderline Fatal Attraction status.  But don't worry, this isn't going to be a post about boiling bunny rabbits.  I've written about Em's music here before, but not a lot about why I think he's so fantastic, other than, you know, the talent.  The juxtaposition between the two Superbowl ads is a great examples of why I love Eminem.  In one, Em is a silly, animated caricature peddling ice tea to the masses and in the other, a stoic, gritty jingoist almost begging for the resurgence of the city he loves.  

Imported from Detroit.

The pairing of these opposites really emphasizes the duality of Eminem that makes him so interesting to me.  Since his national debut with My Name Is, Eminem has seemed to simultaneously inhabit so many worlds -- often times in direct contradiction to each other.  He's the shy, deeply-scarred artist and the class clown; the pill-popping, controversy-baiting celebrity and the fiercely loyal friend; the high school drop out and the lyrical genius; the mother-hating, misogynist wife killer and the devoted father raising three daughters. Even his beats have always volleyed between hyperbole and subtly.  Figuring out who the real Eminem is has become the national past-time of music journalists, but I think what fans love about him is that he's all these things.  In a world that longs to classify everything, he defies the pigeonhole, and, in doing so, makes it okay for us to defy it as well.  It, therefore, seemed appropriate that his Superbowl ads were so different.


First, the Chrysler ad, which is total perfection.  You knew it was going to be good just based on the fact that it was directed by Samuel Bayer, of Smells Like Teen Spirit fame, but I didn't know how good.  I'm so into this ad that I'm thinking of actually buying a Chrysler. (Which I guess is the point of an ad, huh?)  The direction, cinematography and narration were pitch-perfect for setting the tone.  The insider's tour of the city, which most Americans probably wouldn't even recognize, was visually interesting and fun.  The glimpses of Eminem in the rear-view mirror and the fade in of Lose Yourself built suspense and excitement before the powerful, dramatic ending with the choir.  I loved the ad's depiction of Detroit as the Mickey Rourke of American cities.  Everyone likes an underdog overcoming obstacles, and Detroit has certainly been the classic down-and-out story.  Eminem brings grit, loyalty and integrity to this metaphor and I'm sure I'm not the only one who got chills.  I almost want to be imported from Detroit.  After all, it's the hottest fires that make the hardest steel.  Man, I just got goose-bumps typing it.

I don't understand how this is NOT scary.

The Brisk ad was a little more difficult for me to get behind. You see, I have a life-long fear of claymation. 


Yep, you read that correctly, I'm petrified of childhood classics like Gumby and the Rudolph movie.  And don't even mention Thomas the Tank Engine. It's not really something that I can explain, it really freaks me out - it's creepy and unnatural and I just don't like it at all.  To see my boy Eminem as claymation was confusing to say the least.  I was going to get all Juliet "my only love sprung from my only hate" about it, but I realized that may have been the tiniest bit overdramatic.  Sometimes my flair for the theatrical gets the best of me.  At any rate, I've decided to embrace the Emination as a form of therapy -- maybe seeing someone that I love depicted in clay can help me learn to love the form? Or at least not want to cry and hide when I see it?  Here's hoping.

All in all, I loved the ads and the Superbowl XLV chapter of the Eminem chronicles gets my seal of approval.  Well done, Marshall.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the other things I liked about the Superbowl were Fergie's sparkly shoulder pads and Ben Roethlisberger's cumulative Superbowl passer rating of 66.4.  Honorable mention goes to that NFL apparel commercial that had all the clips from old TV shows.  I love anything that works 90210 clips back into the modern subconscious. 


Biggest XLV disappointment? The missed opportunity to bring Justin Timberlake back to the scene of the malfunction during Where's the Love. I mean, seriously, who wouldn't have immediately started recording if Justin had been on that moving platform instead of Slash?  Coulda, woulda, shoulda.


xo kate

Don't Talk to Me.

I love football.  I love the flow of a game, the sound of the quarterback barking plays over the roar of a crowd, tailgate parties, when the entire stadium is on its feet on third and short, crunching pads, crazy mascots, overpriced paraphernalia, the feeling you get on the brink of a win, and especially, the way a football game can bring two complete strangers, or an entire city, together.

Seriously, who likes these people?

There's one thing that I don't like about football: Mannings.

I can't stand the Manning family.  I hate them all.  Peyton, Eli, Cooper, Archie -- even Olivia.  It's completely inexplicable, but I hate everything about them: the accents, the records, the endorsements (cut that meat, anyone?), the Chargers trade, the way Olivia and Archie refuse to cheer when their sons play each other -- just root for both offenses, how hard is that!?  But most of all, I hate Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.  

All of this begs the question: With 53 seconds on the clock, the Colts losing to the Jets 13-14, why was I suddenly rooting for Indy?  Because I, like every other football fan in America, knew what was going to happen next: Adam Vinatieri was going to kick a field goal.  Perhaps the only thing that that could overcome my hatred of Peyton is my love of Adam.

XXXIX

As a girl born and raised in New England, there's a million reasons to love number 4.  Besides being the all-time leading Patriots scorer, the greatest clutch kicker in history and a guaranteed future Hall of Famer, there's the small matter of this.  And this.  Or maybe this.  And, oh yeah, this too.  Even Adam beating New England with that 52-yarder can't quell my affection for him.  

Although each of these moments is its own reasons that Mr. Clutch deserves a place in my wolfpack, my favorite thing about him, and the reason I'm electing him today, isn't a play, but a speech to the crowd at the Patriots Victory Rally in 2002. (I was a senior in high school and wasn't allowed to drive down from New Hampshire -- but we did have quite a victory party on the Etna green the night of the game.)  But if I, or you, had made it to Boston that day, here is what we would have witnessed.

"I got a little story," Vinatieri said. "In the beginning of the season we started off a little slow. Some of the reporters didn't think we had much of a chance, and we kind of adopted a little motto. And basically the reporters would say something, and if they didn't believe in us, we'd just say, 'Don't talk to me.' "

The laughter in the crowd turned to cheers. "And as the season went along, some of the people said, 'Yeah, they're doing a little bit better, but I don't think they got what it takes,' and all we said is ..."

You never forget your first.

Vinatieri pointed the microphone at the masses.


"Don't ... talk ... to ... me," they screamed.


"That's right," he said. "We kept going, we won more games, the Oakland Raiders came in to us and a lot of people didn't think we could win. But what?"


"Don't talk to me!" thousands roared as one.


"That's right," Vinatieri said. "We got to Pittsburgh, and we were 9 1/2-point underdogs. They were already printing Super Bowl tickets. And what did we say?"


"DON'T TALK TO ME!"


You could feel the force of the words. Vinatieri was screaming: "We go down to New Orleans, and ain't anybody give us a chance? Nobody! And what did we say to them?"


"DON'T TALK TO ME!!!"


"Hey," Vinatieri said. "We're world champions." The choir, thousands upon thousands strong, responded with the force of their approval at the words that still seem hard to believe.
New England's placekicking hero for the ages stopped yelling.


"Don't talk to me," he said.

Adam Vinatieri is in my wolfpack.  Don't talk to me.

xo

kate