Le Bol Formidable and Harvey Weinstein
En France, a
“football” is a slightly shrunken basketball, and is kicked with one's feet and bounced off one's head.
Except in January and
February, and that’s the time when it morphs into an ovoid with pointed ends
and laces.
Huh?
Well, it all starts
with Harvey Weinstein, who came down for New Years and decided that he and his
celebuds needed a pick-me-up after partying all night on New Years Eve.
And as it happens, the
Giants played a do-or-die elimination game against the Cowboys on the New Years
night. An opportunity.
La Bagatelle is a
high-end white tablecloth restaurant on the harbor. Harvey rented the
entire place, installed flat screens around the room, and had a football party
for his 200 closest friends. The report is the menu was a blend of over-the-top French
haute cuisine and Hollywood excess: Kobe beef filet mignon, lobster, foie gras—get the picture? Very successful party: the Giants won.
Happily, Harvey et al, were long gone soon thereafter. Now, nobody here but us chickens. Dull
month---if you don’t count the Super Bowl!
We do. In the London family, a Super Bowl with Big
Blue on the field is a major event. And
Jesse, who is visiting this week, is obsessed.
With the big game
coming up, the first question is where to watch it? Home? Well, football
is more fun when you have lots of others cheering with you or against you, so
we canvassed the local bars and restaurants and found three with a large flat
screen and were planning to show the game. Pinks found and booked La Bagatelle. It was
the only waterfront venue, and having learned from the Weinstein experience,
they hung three or four screens, and promoted a Super Bowl party for the hoi
polloi. No foie gras, no Kobe beef, no escargot. The menu for this Super Bowl
party? Cheeseburgers, hamburgers, and pizza. No Budweiser, we would have
to make do with Caribe.
The place was
jammed. They even put tables and chairs outside on the edge of the quay. I
cannot believe somebody did not end up the water by the end of the evening. By
6:30 local time, (an hour before kick-off), the place was packed and everybody
was getting very relaxed very fast. Our friend Lee joined us and the four
of us scored a table immediately in front of one of the big screens.
This was far from a
typical NY football bar experience:
The ever-present DJ
was on duty, and he cut off the network audio feed and blasted Springsteen,
Queen (“We will Rock You”) and the like during the pre-game, post-game, and
half-time talking heads’ analyses. (Hmm, something for the networks to consider?)
The waiters wore black baseball caps and black tee shirts with white lettering
on front reading, “What the fuck is La Bagatelle?” Waitresses were
dressed in cheerleaders’ costumes and danced and waved pom-poms during
half-time (except, of course, during the 12 minute Madonna show.) By half
time some in the juiced-up crowd were dancing on the table tops.
This is not quite the
way it would have been had we watched the game at home. What a sensational party. The best.
Of course, in
retrospect there is no way this would have been as much fun had Manningham not
kept ces pieds in bounds to start the Giants’ fourth quarter winning drive with
3:57 on the clock and the Giants down by two. Very tense game. Literally
stomach ache inducing. And the Bradshaw “accidental” touchdown was torture.
While much of the crowd, (especially the French) cheered lustily, at our table
we groaned. We knew it was a gaffe of major proportions to give Brady the
ball with a whole minute on the clock, and moaned that Belichick had outsmarted
us. I hate Belichick. Hate him. And I confess I never thought we would beat Brady again. He is just too good. Well, almost. And now the guy has to go home a two-time loser, and to top it off, he's gotta deal with his wife’s
post-game gaffe. Not a good week in the Brady household.
On the other hand, the London household is off to the beach.
On the other hand, the London household is off to the beach.
A bientot.
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