Every year, my buddy Bill, along with his brother Hal and their dad, host the mother of all Super Bowl parties in Roselle Park, New Jersey. I realize that the title "mother of all Super Bowl parties" is a contentious one, but as someone who is very familiar with both parties and Super Bowls and who this morning had to shit standing up because his toilet seat was too cold, I feel that I am qualified to name a champion in this department. And no, I don’t know what that last part has to do with anything, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

(Seriously, a -2° wind chill this morning when I woke up? Not cool. Not cool at all.)

Previously, I had only attended one such Handstand Family Super Bowl party. I did not go last year, because I was in Seattle bringing bad luck to the Seahawks and their fans. Nor did I attend the year before, because I was in Philly getting my heart broken, smashing unopened champagne bottles on the roofs of cars, and later eating on the beach in my white shorts.

The last time I attended the Handstand Family Super Bowl was in 2004. I won’t get into details, mostly because I don’t remember them. But suffice it to say that the day after the party, I was so hungover and hurting that I checked myself into the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack. Any time you go to a party and the next day think you’re in danger of dying, I mean, that’s usually a pretty good fucking party.

But this year’s Super Bowl party did not have such disastrous or financially damaging repercussions (by the way, if your insurance carrier is Cigna, it will cost you about $450 for an EKG and a referral for a psychiatrist, but a doctor and a handful of nurses who think you are on cocaine, well, that’s free). Despite knowing that I would be drinking and overeating and gambling all day on Sunday, I had no intention of taking it easy on Saturday night. I took the day off on Monday, and expected that day would be filled with some serious couch time and Chinese food (and I was right). On Saturday, I met with my friend Brian (not my old roommate) for a quick afternoon drink at d.b.a. I was only marginally surprised when our "quick drink" turned into a five and a half hour bourbon and microbrew clinic which caused Brian to miss a dinner with friends and left me impotent and starving. Admittedly, these are two adjectives that are regularly used to describe me, but I was even more impotent and more starving than usual after this drinking session.

I made it back to my place around 9:30pm and had some drinks with my friends Brian (the old roommate) and Jeremy. We had big plans for the night, but I wasn’t feeling it…my afternoon of hard boozing sapped me of the little motivation I previously had, what with the frigid temperatures outside making me want crawl into bed with a nice big bowl of clam chowder – preferably in one of those bread bowls. Just before midnight, in a last ditch effort to salvage the night, I pounded two generous vodka red bulls, seeking motivation from chemicals and caffeine, but it was not meant to be. Jeremy and Brian said goodbye and went their separate ways: Jeremy to a co-worker’s party and Brian to his home, since he drank all of my Maker’s Mark in the course of the night. Again.

I hoped to get some sleep to watch up refreshed for the Super Bowl party, but my body had other ideas. I’ve mentioned before that I’m sensitive to caffeine and so grateful to red bull, because typically after one or two of them I’m able to fuck and fight all night (well, the latter, and not even really that one). However, these red bulls couldn’t pep me up enough to go out, the fucking failures. Instead, they kept me awake, tossing and turning in bed, until 5:45am. And the next morning, I was awake at 10am. Not a good way to start Super Bowl Sunday.

Still, like the players in Miami, I realized that I had to "get up" for this game, so I pulled myself together, bathed, and took the train out to lovely Roselle Park. There, I was met by the one and only Site Guy Brendan, who drove down from Boston for this party (told you it was a serious party). We soon arrived at the Handstand Home and from that point forward, it was, as they say, on.

What those of you who haven’t hung out or slept with Site Guy Brendan don’t know about him is that he is a tremendous drunk. Though I’m friends with a lot of drunks, what is unique about Brendan is that he never tires. Ever. I consider myself pretty good at getting drunk and maintaining enough of my poise to make fun of others and talk to the police, but Brendan is a machine. At the end of the party, when everyone else is tiring, passing out, going home, or retiring to bedrooms to make sloppy love, Brendan is up, alert (but drunk), and talking a mile a minute. I’m convinced that he has a serious addiction to methamphetamines, but I can’t prove that. Yet.

(Also, let the record show that I correctly spelled "methamphetamines" on my first try. I wonder if the first through twelfth place finishers in the 1991 Philadelphia City Spelling Bee could do that, suckas.)

Brendan and I immediately started on the keg beer, early as we were for the party. Soon however, fellow partygoers arrived and the shindig was in full swing. Though many of us came from different places and different backgrounds and there was even a black guy and some guy who had to be gay there, we could all agree on two things: we didn’t care much about the game and we wanted to get fucked up.

Well, in my case, the former is not exactly true. I don’t want to get into specifics, but let’s just say that per his post on Sunday, Uncle Jason went pretty heavy on the Bears. I bet on the Bears because I was (mistakenly) under the impression that Rex Grossman is a man. Obviously, his performance in the Super Bowl proved otherwise. A real man – if everyone in America had been saying that he stinks, looking at him and nodding disapprovingly, and offering apologies to his teammates for having to play with him – would have dug deep down in himself, pulled his shit together, and played the game of his life, so that even if his team didn’t win, he could walk off the field knowing it wasn’t his fault. Instead, Rex Grossman proved his is not a man but something much simpler: a terrible fucking football player. Nay, a terrible fucking football player who owes me a lot of money. Also, I’m pretty sure he cries when he fucks. The asshole.

I also went with the Bears because, as I have written in this space, I have had the gambling season of my life. And from the moment the Colts beat the Pats, I thought, "The Colts will give 8, and I will take the Bears." I have been operating on my gut all season long like this and had been so successful it was almost scary. It’s kinda like after you have sex with a girl and she’s all quietly crying afterwards and you’re like "What’s wrong?" and she’s like "I just know I’m pregnant now" and you say, "Jesus, you’re drunk – be quiet or I’m going to call your p.o." and then, sure enough, seven weeks later you’re shelling out $650 to get that problem solved. That’s kinda like how I’ve been gambling this season.

So I was watching the game with a very vested interest. Fortunately, I was also drinking pretty heavily, which helped ease the pain and make me (occasionally) forget how much the Bears were just killing me. So much for my great gambling season.

But the real attraction of the Handstand Family Super Bowl Party is not the game or the beer or the seven televisions, but the food. Your standard party fare was present – chips, dips, salsa, pretzels (yours truly brought six different kinds of Pringles) – but the main course is over 30 pizzas made during the game by the Handstand family. There are your standards like pepperoni and sausage, but also unique offerings. In particular, there were three pizzas that blew my mind.

Host Hal with the Mozzarella Stick Pizza

The mozzarella stick pizza. Why, for the love of God, has it taken America so long to combine the fried cheese of the mozzarella stick with the baked cheese of the people? I don’t know, but I’m ashamed. The mozzarella stick pizza was incredible. Greatest country in the world, my ass.

Breakfast meats. Mmm…

- The breakfast meat pizza. Bacon, breakfast sausage, and pork roll. When the pie was introduced, I thought, "What about ham and scrapple?" Then I tried a slice. And then I took the pizza cutter and cut myself. The pie was perfect. I am a pig.

This is what God looks like

- And lastly, my favorite pizza: the White Castle slider pizza. GOOD GOD. Five-holed White Castle beef patties, taken straight off the bun, with cheese and fried onions, on top of a piping hot pizza. While writing this, I think I just peed a little. But it’s not yellow and is more sticky than pee. And it smells like bleach. Someone please help me.

By the time the game was ending, we were all full of beer and pizza and having a great time. Sure, I had lost money, but I was happy. And sure, we went to a strip club afterward and I spent a little too much money to get a little too friendly with a girl that I normally wouldn’t make out with – let alone pay, say, $65 to make out with – but whatever. That’s why Super Bowl Sunday is only one day a year.

I can’t wait for next year.

[Oh, one other thing – by the time I checked my voicemail the next day, I had a message from my manager. Of course, this scared the shit out of me – I took off on Monday to recover and thought he was calling to tell me to come into work. But that was not why he was calling. He called to congratulate me on winning the office box pool, which I did not realize. I had participated in so many box pools (I had bought 15 boxes in all) and was so drunk, miserable, and looking forward to the strip club after the game that I didn't bother to check all my boxes. Well, I won one. And the biggest one, to the tune of four times what I had lost on the Bears during the game. So, basically: yeah, mother fuckers. Before, I was just a gambling god. Now, I may be The Gambling God. You'd better hope that you run into me in a bar in NYC this weekend, because I will totally buy you a drink.*]

(*As long as it’s under $4. Thank you for your understanding.)