"Super Bowl Blues" Part III

Here is part III and the final snippet of this mini-series of blogs. You can read, yup you guessed it, part II and part I at: stevemcdevitt.blogspot.com

And now to the write up...

Feb 13^th- 27^th

Carnival of the Deer Man

Castelnuovo del Volturno, Isernia County, Italy

This epic saga between a grown man dressed up in a deer outfit and a holy man acting as a saint is probably more than enough to make Bambi’s ancestors shutter in their thickets. The regular man, morphed into an impervious, antlered brute, comes down from the hills to wreak havoc among herds of cattle until confronted by a saintly figure wearing a fairy hat. The holy man succeeds where the cattle could not, by summoning a nearby hunter who blows softly into the antlered beast’s ear that in turn destroys the sins and evils of the past year. It makes perfect sense. Check your TV guide for times and channel, but if anyone on the show asks you to drink the kool-aid, please refrain, at least until your neighbor Pablo blows softly in your ear while wearing only a sock over his privates.

By this point of the lackluster sports month, most of you will be having visions of bracketology dancing in your heads, but before you completely slip back into the normal sports routine, there is one more event that you should start thinking about. It requires preparation.

July 11th

Wife Carrying Championships

Sonkajärvi, Finland

With roots dating back to the early 1800’s, when men actually did sneak into neighboring towns and carry fellow mates’ wives off into the night, instead of present day when they just sneak into strip joints and hand over their debit cards, and pretend their cell phone lost reception, this humorous yet competitive event, which grossed 500 million viewers last year, is entering its 16th year in Finland. Men must carry their wives a tumultuous 253.5 meters over sand, grass, gravel and water hazards, stopping only to throw back the “wife carrying drink,” at special checkpoints. Before the barbarian in you tries to pull a fast one and buy that sixteen year old, sixty-five pound exchange student from down the street a one-way ticket to Finland to claim your victory, you should know these two simple rules.

1. “The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbour’s or you may have found her farther afield; (no idea what this means, I’m guessing this just trumps the aforementioned rules, exchange student ahoy!) She must, however, be over 17 years of age (drats, there goes that idea). The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilos.”

I will not pretend to know how skinny one’s wife would have to be to break the 49 kilo threshold, however according to Johnny Depp in the movie, “Blow,” 49 kilos would make for one hellavua good time, so I’m assuming it’s a lot…

2. “If a contestant drops his wife that couple will be fined 15 seconds per drop.” (After a swift kick in the groin from your angry wife, a 15 second penalty won’t seem so bad.)

If you follow this simple program I’ve created, the names Jordy Nelson, Hines Ward, and Aaron Rodgers will soon only be a figment of your imagination. On the other hand, you may wake up in a cold sweat after antlered deer men, fighting camels and bare-bottomed Japanese dudes visit you in your dreams…

Se e you on the other side…

Check out all my blogs at http://stevemcdevitt.blogspot.com/