Hey NOBGF, Screw Your Parade

NOBGF: New Outer Borough Giants Fan.

In case you were wondering who would win the pool of when the bloom would come off the bitter, thorny rose that is a Giants Super Bowl win, it came for me at 7:15am this morning at my morning train station.

Admittedly, this was probably My Fault for voting, and getting lost on the way to the polling booth, which made me miss my earlier train... but what do I see on the platform but over a dozen different Giants fans, all in those suspiciously new Manning and Burress jerseys (the Eli jerserys were especially mint). They are all taking the train, don'tcha know, to get into Manhattan to see The Parade. (Mind you, I live in the more or less midpoint of Philadelphia and New York, and the area was showing a lot more Eagle Green a few months ago. Are you getting my Bandwagon Drift yet?)

Now, a quick word about parades. I don't get the thrill. You stand. They walk or drive by. You clap or yell. They point their fingers at you and wave. At no point does anyone tackle anyone. There is no sport here.

So unless you're there to try to hook up -- and hey, if that's the case, knock yourself out, I understand Eli really likes it on top when he pees on you while calling you Tiki -- what, exactly, is the point? Do you need to compound the vice / timewaste that is watching sports with the even more dubious vice / timewaste of staring at people who play sports?

And if the answer is "We just wanted to thank them for all they did", um, fine and all, but don't they already get a paycheck that's probably at least 16 times what average NOBGF makes, along with the adoration at their home games?

Oh, right, these are the Giants, a team you could only beat at home. My bad. And no, to answer the inevitable hater question, if the Eagles/Sixers/A's were holding a parade, I wouldn't go either. I've been to one parade, for the Philadelphia Stars when I was 12. It's fine if you're 12, I suppose. Or a groupie, or a groupie wannabe.

So my train is now filled not with the politely semi-conscious drones, but with grunty men and their appalling women discussing their kitchens and basements and who saw who at the mall and for heaven's sake it's a public place and you're not even drunk, along with an awful hour of the morning in the fog and drizzle that has been, for the most part, Weather for the past three months. I understand that you mongoloids need to congregate to make the experience seem real to you, since you were all a first-round loss to Tampa away from firing everyone involved with the Blue Snow G Men... but can't you please, pretty please, accept this one with the small good grace, that, to be fair, most of the actual team displayed?

With the grace of an occasionally kind Supreme Being, the train is not delayed, and we pull into Newark, which is where I disembark... and now NOBGF has to deal with the automated ticket turnstiles. With the PATH train, you have to buy a ticket from a machine, and periodically recharge it, to get through... but NOBGF doesn't know that, and is convinced that if he just jams in a buck or his drivers license or, I don't know, his new Giants SuperBowl MasterCard, he'll get through.

Over 1,000 people go from that train to the PATH, and most of us are trying to get to work on time; if you dick around with the machine, other people are going to try to get by, seeing as there are maybe 20 turnstiles for the entire length of the train. But oh, no no no, not with NOBGF on the case! "What are you, SOME KIND OF TOOL? IT'S BROKEN!" he screams, followed by the inevitable F-bombs. He's bellowing, oblivious to (a) the fact that people are cutting around him like he's a glob of rancid fat in an artery, or that (b) the guy that he wanted to throw down with for daring to, um, get on with his freaking day is already through the turnstile and on the PATH train.

Now, I'm sure that this will all go away soon, along with the vague sense that I've entered Bizarro World when the Citizen watch ad comes on and talks about Unstoppable Eli Manning. But until then, I think I need to work from home. Before I start carrying razor blades...