The Stupor Bowl

By Jack Elliott
Contributor

The Stupor Bowl- that pretty well wraps it up. There were some entertaining commercials, enthusiastic fans, and even a decent half-time show- sans a costume malfunction. The colour commentary as usual was pretty inane. Too bad there wasn’t a football game to go with it all.
Like most I was mystified at the absence of Denver in the whole process. Shell-shocked was the best description on those red-coated player’s faces. What happened? Then it struck me.
Seattle comes from an area where BC Bud and Magic Mushrooms are pretty much endemic. That means living in those environs you must build up a tolerance to certain substances either from first or second hand sources. Even the salmon on the west coast are rumoured to be quite mellow.
Denver on the other hand with the recent legalization of recreational pot now has a wide spread ‘Rocky Mountain High’. They simply have a low tolerance threshold for the stuff. Perhaps that gift of ‘brownies’ sent to the Broncos dressing room by the Seahawks was responsible for the stunned look on the faces of Manning et al from the opening snap.
The only bright spot in the whole affair was I won the pool at our Stupor Bowl party here on the Beach. My coffee break for the next week is now fully funded.
Other excitement we’ve had here on the Beach this past week? Let’s see, first there was the ice storm. The Highways Dept. closed all the Bridges for 24 hours and then extended it for another 12 when the temperature refused to rise above freezing. For entertainment we went down to the Welcome Center and watched the locals slide through the main intersection there.
Sanding was undertaken by loading the back of dump trucks with crews in striped jump suits from the local crowbar hotel well armed with shovels to complete the tasks. The three to four inches of sand they spread on the road surface certainly slowed down traffic. You could barely plow your way through it.
The Runt sent me an emergency email offering to ship me down more wool socks, but I declined requesting instead a battery heated jock strap to save me from the fate that was attending brass monkeys in the area. It’s back up to 70F today.
The fire alarm in our condo building has been having a series of nervous breakdowns. The latest was Sunday morning at 2:45. I was getting up to go to church anyways- honestly. We spent a half hour standing on the balcony waiting for the all clear. Ten minutes after the cacophony started announcing we must evacuate the building, the fire trucks rolled up with lights flashing, but no sirens- wouldn’t want to wake anyone inadvertently. They sauntered in non-challantly and 10 minutes later the alarm was silenced.
We had checked the stairwells, the elevators and the both sides of the building for any sign of smoke. There being none we held our ground. Seniors don’t do twelve flights of stairs without a raging inferno or an earthquake. A tidal wave, we stay as high up as we can get.
The alarm only went off once more at 7 am. Time for church.