WHO DEY, My Sweet Ass

I am in a quest to decide which team to back in the NFL. I have a passing interest in the Patriots that I inherited from one particular boyfriend (Biff's Note: In the pantheon of STDs, this ranks somewhere between herpes and scabies), but it's not enough to get me excited about the impending NFL season. So I’m trying to be open-minded about which team fits me best, but after Sunday night’s debacle, I will say with great certainty that I can never, ever cheer for the Cincinnati Bengals.

The evening started innocuously enough, with a lovely dinner at a local oyster bar. I then joined a party of my friends at a bar off Dupont Circle. When I walked in, I noticed a huge din coming from the bar area. And there, in all his glory, was the hugest “Who Dey” Bengals fan I have ever seen in the flesh. Dressed in full Bengals regalia from head to foot, including some ersatz cowboy hat in orange and black stripes (Halloween castoff, perchance?) Wait, does anyone remember that wave-doing, Griffey jersey-wearing, glove-in-the-500-section retard at RFK? He was wearing a cowboy hat too. Is there something about Cincinnati and assholes in cowboy hats? Okay, right, back to my story. This in a bar near Dupont Circle, where the demographic looked like this: 50% desperate alcoholics, 50% gay men. The best analogy I can think of is that it is the equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. Needless to say, no one there was paying much attention to the game at all. Even the inveterate sports fans among us (myself included) were watching the game in a slightly passing fashion.

His over-reaction to every single play by the Bengals left me wanting, more than anything, to punch him in his fat, drunken face. Then the coup de grace of douchebaggery: he cheered loudly and for an extended period of time when Clinton Portis was injured. Let me be clear. I am by no means a Redskins fan, but all right-thinking sports fans want Portis in his finest form and cheering for his demise is beyond the pale. Then he drunkenly accosted two unsuspecting Japanese tourists who will now have a great story about big, smelly Americans to tell the folks back home. Soon thereafter he broke a barstool with his fat three-way chili eating-ass and was (mercifully) asked to leave.

So the long and short of it is that I am still in the market for an NFL team. I only know that it can’t be the Bengals, despite an admittedly catchy tune from Bootsy Collins.