Superbowl 50

[GeneChing]

I know there's not that many football fans here. Heck, I'm not a football fan myself. But Superbowl 50 is happening right down the street from Kung Fu Tai Chi HQ next week - Carolina Panthers vs. Denver Broncos. What's more, amazingly enough, I was passed the security check and have been approved to volunteer there.

Here's our rather limited past Superbowl threads:
XLIV
XLV
XLVII

[GeneChing]

“Puppy Bowl” Comes to SF
We don’t just get the Super Bowl. Puppy Bowl is coming! Feb 4-7.
By Johnny Funcheap - posted 1/27/2016


Broncos vs. Panthers? Forget that… What about Schnauzers vs. Boxers?

Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” is coming to San Francisco during Super Bowl week and you can watch it live in person from February 4-7, 2016 at Gott’s Roadside in the Ferry Building.

While the actual Puppy Bowl XII broadcast was filmed in New York, the Puppy Bowl Cafe will be in SF. It’s a 24-foot mock football field built at the Ferry Building and run continuously for four days with adorable adoptable puppies from local shelters battling it out for toys in a “scrimmage” – with an Animal Planet referee to make sure everyone plays nice.


Puppy Bowl Live in San Francisco
February 4-7, 2016 | 11am to 8pm (closes Sunday around 3pm)
Gott’s Roadside at the Ferry Building, SF
> Watch Online – Or watch live streaming of all four days online from the San Francisco Puppy Bowl Cafe

The puppies in this San Francisco version are all adoptable dogs that come from the Animal Care & Control San Francisco shelter and the East Bay SPCA.

Want to adopt one of the Puppy Bowl Cafe competitors?

East Bay SPCA – Starting February 7 you’ll be able to adopt the pups that were featured at Puppy Bowl Cafe at the East Bay SPCA in Oakland or Dublin. Adoption fees are $150 which is 10% discount from regular adoption fees. Adoptions are done out of the SPCA facilities (and not on at the Ferry Building) to make the transition easier.
Animal Care and Control SF – Pups will still be playing at Puppy Bowl Cafe on Sunday and then will be available for adoption after the event. Full details and adoption fees will be announced.
Please note that originally we were told the adoptions would be free of charge, but that we have confirmed that adoption fees will be required.



Animal Planet is making donations to the two shelters to help cover the adoption costs and $1 from special menu items at Gott’s will also go toward covering costs.

Hmm, I wonder if I need security clearance to work this too...

[GeneChing]

Aw srsly? Levi's = great pants, lousy stadiums

Stadium End Zone Snafu Suggests Super Bowl 50 Is Just Plain Cursed
BY EVE BATEY IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON JAN 29, 2016 11:10 AM

WWL-TV Sports Verified account Follow
‏@wwltvsports
Oops. Broncos painted on both end zones accidentally http://on.wwltv.com/1VvfwPa
Embedded image permalink

You guys, I'm calling it: Super Bowl 50 is cursed. Some of it is our own doing: We, after all, elected the folks that got us a ****tier financial deal than Santa Clara (of all places), and it's presumably one of us who is defacing the event's signs.
But then there's, like, this horrible apartment for rent, and all the shenanigans around this huge ad, and these execrable balls, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers? These assy Clipper cards?
Events are aligning, my friends. There is too much bad mojo for this thing to hold together, and the universe just gave us one last sign that all is unwell.
No, not locusts or rivers running with blood (though, we do still have over a week to go!). Instead, the celestial signal was sent when NFL ground crews at Levi's Stadium painted both end zones with the Broncos logo, WWLTV reports, basically the Super Bowl equivalent of the two-headed animal born as a harbinger of doom.
That the field was a Broncos-themed Cerebrus is especially auspicious, I'll also note. Despite the Broncos' insanely adorable mascot, everyone (even freakin' basketball players) knows the Panthers have this one in the bag.

Follow
James Martin ✔ @Jamesco
See the faint remains of 'BRONCOS' in the end zone? Grounds crew painted the logo on the wrong side. #SuperBowl50
12:04 PM - 26 Jan 2016 · Santa Clara, CA, United States
125 125 Retweets 102 102 likes

Samuel Lam @SamuelYLam
How come all the end zone pictures are just the Broncos for #SB50? Because someone painted the wrong end zone.
9:45 PM - 26 Jan 2016
177 177 Retweets 127 127 likes

[GeneChing]

Put my money on China....again.

Super Bowl and Chinese New Year to square off Feb. 7 for planet's attention
By Bruce Newmanbnewman@mercurynews.com
POSTED: 01/31/2016 01:21:48 PM PST
UPDATED: ABOUT 4 HOURS AGO

Super Bowl Sunday has become one of America's most cherished -- albeit unofficial -- national holidays, with families and friends gathered around the TV to celebrate the concussive communion of our biggest sporting spectacle. So when Denver and Carolina meet on Sunday at Levi's Stadium, more than 110 million viewers are expected to tune in to see if it's the year of the Panthers or the year of the Broncos.

But no matter which team wins, about a fourth of the planet's population will be too busy celebrating the Year of the Fire Monkey to notice.

On that Sunday in China, 1.4 billion people will conclude the largest annual migration on Earth, rushing home for Chinese New Year. Here in the Bay Area, more than a million and a half ethnic Asians will welcome Lunar New Year's Eve just as the Broncos and Panthers are commencing their rumble in Santa Clara.

Vietnam calls its new year Tet, South Korea calls it Wondan, but like most countries in Asia -- except Japan, which officially observes the holiday on Jan. 1 -- they use the lunar calendar devised millennia ago by the Chinese.

Many Chinese-American families will sit down to the traditional "reunion dinner" -- the most important meal of the year -- just as the NFL's ratings colossus is in the throes of Peyton's and Cam's throws. For recent arrivals, who gather for traditional monkfish and dumpling dinners at restaurants in Cupertino Village and Milpitas Square, even the mammoth pull of the 50th Super Bowl is dwarfed by China's 5,000 years of tradition.

"Both events have a strong culture and a strong fan base," says Mabel Teng, executive director of the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco. "It's like they each have their own country. And this year they are either coinciding on the same day, or colliding."

Take your pick.

"It does seem like a holiday," says Eric Ericson, IT director at a San Jose e-commerce startup, who has religiously attended his friend Pete's Super Bowl party in Willow Glen for the past 15 years. He sees the Super Bowl as "an opportunity to get everyone together, and eat a borderline unconscionable amount of food and drink an inadvisable amount of beer."

Ericson's fiance, Sharlene Alexander, is a second-generation Korean-American whose mother came to this country in the 1970s and quickly assimilated. Alexander is a big Broncos fan and has no plans to celebrate the Lunar New Year. "My fiancee is considerably more passionate about football than I am," Ericson says. "Bordering on addiction."

In Asian-American enclaves throughout the Bay Area, New Year traditions follow a well-worn pattern: Those who came here from somewhere else are deeply observant of the old ways, eating dumplings at midnight because their shape resembles silver ingots, rubbing elbows for luck, eating something sweet before going to school so your words will be sweet. And always there is a feast to hedge against starvation, which has claimed millions of lives in China.


Festival goers watch lion dancers from the Tim Wong Martial Arts Group of Concord perform in San Mateo, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012. San Mateo held their 3rd annual Lion Dance Festival as part of the Lunar New Year celebration of the Year of the Dragon. Festivities included perfomances by the Shaolin Cultural Center and the California Youth Chinese Symphony. (John Green/Staff) ( JOHN GREEN )

"The culture we have is very folk, very peasant," says David Lei, 67, the former director of San Francisco's famous Chinese New Year parade. He is sitting in Chinatown's Portsmouth Square, where elderly men -- speaking Cantonese and Taishanese -- play Chinese chess for money. "As soon as you get an education, you ask yourself, 'What is that culture about?' Some people think it's embarrassing."

The Chinese Zodiac consists of a combination of 12 animals and five elements, but it's the animals that are most often associated with good luck. Parents try to time pregnancies to have Dragon babies, but the elements -- wood, water, fire, metal and earth -- don't play as big a role in determining good fortune. While 2016 is the Year of the Monkey, "most Chinese wouldn't even know it's the year of the Fire Monkey," says Lei.

The day of the Super Bowl will bring a new moon on, meaning only 2 percent of it will be visible. That's also a close approximation of the Chinese diaspora's level of connection to the game's vast red, white and blue beer blast in living rooms across the American heartland. Each culture is insular in its own way, and the two sometimes talk, and look, past each other.

When the tourist hordes descend upon San Francisco and dutifully tramp through trinket and T-shirt shops on Chinatown's Grant Street, the significance of the chickens hanging in the windows of Sun Sang Market and Hing Lung Co. -- with heads and feet still intact -- will likely be lost on most visitors. During the New Year feast, it's customary to eat every bit of the chicken and fish -- feet, fins, eyeballs, the works.

"That's symbolic of having good luck from the beginning of the year to the end," explains Jack Doan, manager of the Mayflower, a wildly popular seafood and dim-sum restaurant in Milpitas Square.

"And if you have a New Year meal with the people you work with, it's OK if the head of the chicken is pointed at the boss," says Lei. "But if it's pointed at you, that means don't come back tomorrow."

Because China's economy was largely agrarian, those who came here as laborers to work on the Transcontinental Railroad, or to pan for gold, were usually uneducated peasants who brought with them a powerful belief in luck. That persists to this day.

Despite being the director of an institution of high culture, Teng observes many of the old New Year superstitions, such as rubbing elbows with others, buying a new pair of long pants, or eating food with names that rhyme with expressions such as "have more sons."

"It's insurance for my happiness," she says. "I've had a good life. I want my children to have a good life. I need to teach them to think of it as frosting on the cake. Why not keep doing it? Why resist?"

Teng plans to watch the Super Bowl on television during her New Year's celebration, but she's not so sure scheduling it for a day sacred to 1 in every 4 people on the planet was a good idea. "I wouldn't play football that day," Teng says. "It's not a good luck thing to do, to be bumping and crashing into people."

Chinese dialects are filled with puns and words that have double-meanings. For example, the Chinese word for "year" is the same as the word for "monster," because for centuries it was so hard to survive that each new year was an obstacle to be surmounted -- and feared. "If you made it through a year, you gathered your family together to count heads," Lei says, "and to wish them good luck in the coming year."

Next Sunday, as Chinese families are tucking "lucky money" into red envelopes, the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos will bring their far-flung families together in Levi's Stadium. Each team suffered a loss in its last Super Bowl appearance, so they, too, will be hoping for a little luck. And trying to get the Fire Monkey off their backs.

Contact Bruce Newman at 408-920-5004. Follow him at Twitter.com/BruceNewmanTwit.

why a 'fire monkey'?
The Chinese Zodiac calendar consists of 12 animals and 5 elements, resulting in a 60-year cycle of different combinations of the two. The animals come from an ancient Buddhist tradition, and are far more widely used today to name the year. Parents try to time pregnancies to have Dragon babies for luck, but the elements -- wood, water, fire, metal and earth -- don't play as big a role in determining good fortune. Thus, 2016 is often called the Year of the Monkey. "Most Chinese wouldn't even know it's the year of the Fire Monkey," says David Lei, former director of the Chinese New Year parade.

[GeneChing]

...remember when China moved undesirables out of Beijing for the Olympics?

MAYOR LEE SAYS HOMELESS DOGS MUST LEAVE STREETS FOR PUPPY BOWL
29 JAN 2016
BROKE-ASS STUART - EDITOR IN CHEAP

[IMG]http://brokeassstuart.com/wp-content/pictsn****/2016/01/homeless-dogs.jpg[/IMG]
Where is Ruffles supposed to sleep now? photo from cspn

GUEST POST BY ADRIAN SPINELLI

San Francisco, CA – Next week, San Francisco will transform itself into the epicenter of the nationally recognized Puppy Bowl Festivities and newly re-elected Mayor Ed Lee has a message for all of San Francisco’s homeless dogs: Get out!

“They’re going to have to leave,” Lee said of his plan on how to handle the slew of homeless dogs who call Market St and other major San Francisco thoroughfares home. “There’s just no room for any dogs who aren’t A) puppies and B) AKC certified pure breds.”

Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl is the largest puppy-related event of the year and and San Francisco’s local economy stands to benefit greatly from the presence of the 4-day event. With over 80 dogs competing on the Puppy Bowl gridiron, there’s just not enough room for all San Francisco’s homeless resident dogs to co-exist during the Big Game and the pop-up location dubbed “Puppy Bowl City.”

Lee cited the slew of prominent sponsors who will be in San Francisco for the Puppy Bowl, like Beggin’ Strips, Kibbles n’ Bits and Bark Bags Eco-Friendly Waste Bags. “We just can’t have homeless dogs around here when Beggin’ Strips is in town. You know that ‘It’s bacon!’ commercial? That’s them. It’s gonna be a really big party,” Lee said.

“A lot of these dogs are just flat out crazy, chase flying objects recklessly and have issues with addiction to leftovers. This is a dangerous place for them,” Lee added.

With celebrity dogs in attendance to watch the Puppy Bowl like the granddog of the 4th Lassie, Doug The Pug and Tuna Melts My Heart look-alikes and Rick Ross’s dog Rufus Ross, Lee knows that the spotlight will be on San Francisco during the Puppy Bowl and he just can’t take any risks with homeless dogs laying around looking all cute and dirty and ****.

Please note: this piece is satire

[GeneChing]

I suspect I'll be feeling it for Chinese New Year next Monday.

If only this were true:

Should the Super Bowl Be a Holiday?
Making the Super Bowl a three-day weekend opens up so many possibilities
By JASON GAY
Updated Feb. 4, 2016 6:52 p.m. ET

Wise people always make the case that Election Day should be a national holiday in the U. S.—the idea being that giving as many people as possible the opportunity to vote and participate in the democratic process is what democracy is about.


ILLUSTRATION: ZOHAR LAZAR

Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff. But what about a less important holiday—making a holiday out of the Super Bowl?

Let me explain. The idea isn't to turn Super Bowl Sunday itself into a holiday, because a lot of people have Sunday off—though not the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers, who will play, sources say, at 6:30 p.m. ET in the parking lot of the Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif. (Some football prognosticators think Denver’s offense will have Sunday off, but we shall see.)

Now don’t do that pretentious thing where you loudly announce you’re not going to watch the Super Bowl this year and instead will go to the museum to see the French porcelain exhibit. You and I both know you’re watching the Super Bowl. The whole thing. Besides, neither one of us can tell French porcelain from Peyton Manning’s helmet.

Last year’s Super Bowl between New England and Seattle attracted 114 million viewers—a record total. It’s as close as this country has to a full community event, surpassed only by rolling our eyes at each other on Facebook.

But Super Bowl Sunday is always an endurance contest. The pregame shows begin at dawn. Before the game, there’s a Star-Spangled Banner performance (this year, from Lady Gaga.) There’s the first quarter, the second quarter, and then a halftime show by Coldplay, a jug band from Wales. There will be at least five instant replay delays that last longer than a marriage ceremony. There are post-game shows and analysis. All in, the whole thing takes about 17 hours.

There’s also the matter of food and drink. I don’t know about you, but when I attend a Super Bowl party, I eat between two and four Thanksgivings. There are the chips, the dips, the pretzels and the fries. Someone brings doughnuts just to bring doughnuts. There are the Oreos, the chicken fingers, the mild salsa, the hot salsa and the Dazzling Waterfall of Melted Cheeses. Oh, you don’t have a Dazzling Waterfall of Melted Cheeses? You are going to the wrong Super Bowl parties.

For entrees there are the buffalo wings, the pizzas, the burgers, the surf, the turf, and a frosted brownie cake the size of a Mazda. There is probably beer. By the end of the game, you have changed your shirt twice, and can barely get off the couch, much less go to work in a few hours.

So why not make Monday a federal day off?

“It kind of is already,” Carolina Panthers defensive tackle Dwan Edwards said this week. “Everyone is probably not going to work the next day, anyway.”

I like Dwan Edwards’s confidence, but mostly everyone I know has to be at work on Monday.

Making the Super Bowl a three-day weekend opens up so many possibilities. You could relax a little on Sunday. You could consume to your heart’s content (or probably not your heart’s content). You could travel out of town—maybe book a flight someplace warm with the idea of watching the Super Bowl poolside sitting in one of those sumptuous poolside bars, then watch helplessly as a blizzard traps you in the airport all weekend. You could watch the Super Bowl with a bunch of random strangers at the airport.

More time also means there could be more creativity with the Super Bowl menu. You know your work colleague who corners you in the office every few weeks and tells you a 45-minute story about how he slow cooks a pig for the Fourth of July? Well, he’s going to slow cook another pig for the Super Bowl, which means another 45 minute story. More time probably also means less junk food snagged from the supermarket, and making healthier homemade snacks, like replacing the deep fried jalapeño poppers with baked kale chips. Everybody loves a Super Bowl party with delicious baked kale chips.

I know there’s an argument to start the season later and push it another week to Presidents Weekend, but now I wonder if making Super Bowl Monday a day off is just a terrible idea. (Forget Super Bowl Saturday, too—networks think that only plants and house pets watch TV on Saturday). Maybe it shouldn’t be a holiday.

“I just don’t think it should be,” said Broncos tight end Virgil Green.

Virgil Green’s onto something. I’m also scared what the TV networks would do with the extra time. A Monday holiday might tempt the league and its TV partners to push the broadcast later into the evening. It is, after all, the dream of every sports league to have every sporting event end at 2:20 a.m. ET and for every child under the age of 12 to miss it entirely. A later game could mean more pregame programming, an extended longer Star-Spangled Banner performance, and, perhaps even two halftime shows. To please the college kids, Coldplay, a seasoned group, could be followed by one of today’s hipper acts, like Foghat.

Yes, there is also the bigger picture: that to bequeath a national holiday upon the Super Bowl is to surrender the American calendar to the over-prioritized ritual of sports worship.

Eh, who’s kidding whom? We’re already there.

See you Sunday beneath the Dazzling Waterfall of Melted Cheeses. Maybe Monday, too.

—Matthew Futterman contributed to this article.

[GeneChing]

I didn't even know this was on my bucket list. But now, it's checked off.