How to Throw a Super Bowl Party

The sky was gray and the wind was howling on Sunday, but it was a beautiful day nonetheless, as we football fans were treated to a pair of immensely entertaining games in the AFC and NFC Championships. While fans of the Jets and Vikings -- plus every idiotic chick who roots for Brett Favre solely because he's so dreamy -- may be disappointed, this past weekend's winners (the Saints and the Colts) are high-scoring and evenly-matched and could potentially put on a Super Bowl for the ages. After waking up at the crack of 2pm, I made my way over to a local bar, where I rendezvoused with a gaggle of friends and, for seven solid hours, drank steadily and made sarcastic and occasionally-inappropriate comments about the players on both sides (a sidenote: I was unable to find any good tickets to this year's State of the Union address on stubhub.com, so I did not attend or watch it on television, but I wouldn't be surprised if President Obama referenced my end-of-the-night tab as evidence that the recession is over). The afternoon lived up to my belief that the Sunday on which the NFC and AFC title games take place is among the best sports days of the year, far better and generally more competitive than the actual Super Bowl, which tends to get drowned in hype and dissected ad nauseam by the painfully-long pregame shows  (although, admittedly, we are currently on a streak of two great Super Bowls in a row). But even if the actual game doesn't live up to its billing, Super Bowl Sunday is unique in that it presents the perfect opportunity to either attend or, even better, host a party.

How does this apply to meeting broads, you ask?

Well, despite what some may believe, the easiest way to meet new and interesting women who might be willing to one day sleep with you does not involve A) going out to a local club, drinking $6 Bud Lights and, over the pounding bass of the goofy techno music, trying to carry on a conversation with a girl who keeps getting distracted by the glowing specks of blacklight-illuminated dandruff on your shoulders. Or B) getting drunk in your studio apartment on a Tuesday night and unsuccessfully skimming the Women Seeking Men section on Craigslist, then jumping over to the Misc Romance category, then finally, out of sheer desperation, moving on to the dark and depraved Casual Encounters listings. Or C) gallantly leading the other members of your World of Warcraft party, one of whom you're pretty sure might even be a girl in real life, into the depths of Gnomeregan and heroically delivering the decisive fatal blow to Mekgineer Thermaplugg yourself.

Without a doubt, the best way to meet women is by building and maintaining a healthy social circle. With a large group of male and female friends and acquaintances, you will rarely find yourself with nothing to do on a weekend, you will never have to go to a bar alone and, if you play your cards right, you will have a constantly-evolving collection of friends-of-friends, a category which will inevitably include a handful of attractive women whom you might be able to sleep with and/or date.

To make a convoluted football analogy, developing a social circle that allows you to meet women is a lot like being the quarterback of a championship-caliber team. First of all, you're going to need to be behind a strong offensive line. This is your core group of friends, the ones whom you can count on to protect your blind side when you're dropping back to pass. Sure, they're probably not much to look at. Sure, they might each be in the neighborhood of 300 pounds. Sure, some of them may be sweaty or oddly hairy or faintly smell like salami at all times. But when push comes to shove, you're nothing without them.

Then you've got your tight end. This is your mildly obese female friend whom you've never considered sleeping with, which they adore you for because, through all of their devastating break-ups with other guys, you've always been there to half-heartedly console them, so if any other female were to inquire about you, they'd emphatically reply, "He's such a great guy." And your fullback, the nerdy guy you enjoy hanging out with despite his obvious flaws. He may have hands of stone, and his 40 time might be up around 4.8, but he too will speak glowingly about you were someone to ask, if only because you take the time to include him in your circle. While they might not get much credit, both of these are vital to any successful team.

Your real weapons, though, are at running back and wide receiver. These are your hot female friends, who make you look better just by being in your vicinity, and your male wingmen extraordinaire, those who fully understand the Male Code and will do everything in their power to help you in your carnal pursuits. The players at these positions may not be perfect -- perhaps the receiver has an over-inflated ego, or maybe the running back isn't a great pass-blocker -- but those imperfections are miniscule in the grand scheme of things, as these individuals are blindingly fast, graceful and devastatingly effective at putting points on the board.

And then there's your team's defense. This is your supporting cast. The people whom you see around frequently, but you probably aren't particularly familiar with. As the quarterback, the inner workings of the defense are mostly a mystery to you. They watch film separately from the offense, they practice separately from the offense... hell, they even sit at the other end of the locker room. Thus, you couldn't adequately describe their blitz packages or coverage schemes, but that's not your fault. It's just how the system works. By no means is your defense unimportant, however. They work diligently to hold the opposing offense's scoring to a minimum and give you a chance to win.

Combined, the players around you make you, the quarterback, look good. They put you in position to be the star. They catch your game-winning passes. They help you get on the cover of Sports Illustrated and rake in endorsement deals. And, when they're at the Pro Bowl, sitting at the hotel pool and sipping Courvoisier with a superstar receiver from another team (in this analogy, they're the hot friend-of-a-friend), they're pointing over at you and saying things like, "Hey, when you're a free agent after next season, you should really sign with us so you can catch passes from that guy. He's the best."

Next thing you know, that star receiver is agreeing to a contract with your team based on your teammate's glowing recommendation. Now you've got another talented weapon in your arsenal, your team continues to compete for championships and maybe, just maybe, you might be able to toss that new receiver a few deep balls or hit them in the slot. If you catch my drift.

Let's review: Do everything you can to build up a large social circle. Be friendly to everyone. Even if the people you meet directly are your type, perhaps one of their friends is your type. Or a friend of that friend. Never stop meeting people. Let your circle of friends continue to expand in concentric circles, like a spider web. Or a diagram of concentric circles.

And do you know what's a great scenario for A) hanging out with your existing friends, and B) meeting new ones?

That's right... a Super Bowl party.

Or, even better, a Super Bowl party at your house, one where you are the star host. And because I love to help, here are a few guidelines for putting together a successful Super Bowl party:

1) Begin inviting people at least a week before the game so that they have time to prepare accordingly. Start with the people you are closest to. Once they confirm their availability, you'll be able to say to others, "We're having a Super Bowl party at my place next weekend. Persons A, B, C and D are all gonna be there. You should come by." That way, you don't sound desperate for folks to show up. It's best to invite people in person, but there's nothing wrong with sending out invites via email or the Facebook as well.

2) Have beer readily available. Most decent people will bring a twelve-pack of whatever they like. Some will not. So have a reserve supply of something cheap, just in case. Bud Light or PBR, for instance. No need to get fancy. For a rough estimate of how much you might need, multiply the number of guests you're expecting by five beers apiece. So, if you think you might have ten people coming to your party, put fifty or so beers on a shelf in the fridge or in a cooler. Like a handgun, it's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

3) The more food, the better. But don't go overboard with this one either. None of your guests have any right to expect fine dining. So if you're thinking you might have ten or fewer people at your party, just buy a few bags of pretzels and maybe some chips and salsa. If you're expecting more than ten, you may need to step it up a bit. Either plan on grabbing a few pizzas or firing up a grill before kickoff and cooking hot dogs and hamburgers during the first quarter. And the thing is, when a grill is easily-accessible, there's a good chance that someone will bring over some chicken or ribs and toss them on as well, which is an obvious benefit to all. And if any of your guests want to be picky (i.e. vegetarian), they can bring their own goddamn cous cous or whatever.

4) You have a television, right? You're definitely gonna want one of those. While, ideally, that television is a 65" 1080p plasma, that's not a necessity. As long as it's not the 13" combination TV-VCR that you've had since 1996, you'll be fine. And perhaps this goes without saying, but if you have multiple televisions, put the game on each one and position them strategically throughout your house so that, hypothetically, a guest could get up from your living room sofa, walk to the kitchen (if you can put a television in the kitchen, do so... the kitchen is the most social room of any house and your guests will inevitably congregate there), stand there for a few minutes eating a handful of cashews, step outside to smoke a cigarette and then return to the living room, all without missing a split second of Peyton Manning sitting on the bench, looking perturbed.

5) Speaking of benches, do everything in your power to make sure you have enough seating. Some people like to stand at parties. Most do not. Prepare to utilize every sofa, chair, ottoman, bar stool and milk crate that you have at your disposal. If the weather permits, put a few outside (along with a TV if possible) for the smokers. What's that? You don't smoke? And you don't particularly like the smell of smoke? And you don't really care about the needs of people who smoke? Guess what... you know who does smoke and would like someplace to sit when they do so? Chicks with oral fixations. So quit your whining and deal with the odor, Tinkerbell.

And that about does it. Enjoy your Super Bowl Sunday, dear readers. Make some new friends. You never know where it could lead. Above all else, have a fun-filled day of football and excessive drinking. I know I will. Especially if the Colts win by more than 5.5 but the total number of points stays under 56.5. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt if the opening coin toss was tails.

Cheers...

And Thus Begins Our Feud with Patton Oswalt

The other night, I spent the evening at the home of a lovely young lady with shoulder-length blonde hair and an adorable smile. After a delicious dinner, we settled in for some prime-time television, then eventually headed to bed. After she dozed off, most likely from sheer sexual exhaustion, I slid over to her computer to find something to watch on Netflix.com.

I scanned my instant queue for a moment before finally settling on Big Fan, a film that was released last year starring comedian Patton Oswalt as a die-hard New York Giants fan, the type that paints his face and religiously calls in to sports talk shows.

I like Patton Oswalt. I think he's funny and intelligent and brings a likable "nerdish everyman"-type quality to his performances. And, back in September or so, when Oswalt appeared on the podcasts of both Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla to promote the film, each discussed in length how good Big Fan was and what great reviews it was receiving. Needless to say, I've been looking forward to seeing it for a while. And, just this past week, it was added to Netflix's instant play section. Which is how I found myself watching it last night.

All in all, the movie was enjoyable. Right up until the end. Patton Oswalt's character and a friend are looking at the Giants' schedule for the following season. They both enthusiastically agree that it looks like a piece of cake. "Thirteen and three," the friend says.

"What are your three losses?" Oswalt asks.

"Green Bay, New England and the Chargers," the friend says.

I stopped to rewind it and make sure I heard him correctly. Yep, he definitely said New England and the Chargers. Do you see any inaccuracy there? Like how, say, an NFC East team wouldn't ever play both the Patriots and the Chargers in the same regular season? How the Giants would either play the entire AFC East or the entire AFC West, but not some teams from each?

This baffled me. How could a movie that was obviously written by a sports fan and made for sports fans take such care to make sure all of the details are true-to-life, to the point that all of the players discussed in the film -- with one exception -- are real players, and then blow it at the last second like that? Even if the screenwriter didn't know the particulars of the NFL schedule, wasn't there one straight male involved in the production of the film who could have pointed out the flaw?

Apparently not, because upon further inspection (me rewatching the scene the following morning and pausing it on the frame where the friend holds up the clearly-visible schedule), the newspaper clipping they're looking at only lists fourteen regular season games. How hard would it have been to make a fake schedule that was, you know, similar in appearance to every NFL schedule published in every goddamn newspaper in the country?

So, essentially, Big Fan was good for eighty-three minutes. Then, like Joe Pisarcik, it fumbled the game away when it mattered most and Herman Edwards ran the ball in for a touchdown.

Well, that's the way it goes sometimes, right? Wrong. I needed to know how such a glaring oversight could occur in an otherwise good movie. Which is why I became a fan of Patton Oswalt on the Facebook this morning, and sent him the following message:

"Hey Patton... watched Big Fan last night. Liked it up until the 1 hour, 24 minute mark. Was there not one red-blooded, football-watching American male who saw that movie during the writing, shooting or editing phase and said, "You know, the Giants wouldn't play both the Chargers and the Patriots the following season. They'd only play teams from one division from the AFC..."? Also, at the risk of sounding nitpicky, the schedule that is shown on-screen only includes 14 regular season games. Perhaps these are minute details to some, but they kinda throw off the whole movie."

Patton Oswalt himself responded about an hour later. He said, "Huh, that's a very astutezzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZ."

I was a little taken aback. How could this little twerp, who prides himself on his encyclopedic knowledge of comic books, resort to inferring that I was some boring loser for wondering why his movie contained an idiotic error? In addition, I also found there to be a hint of irony in the fact that, in the movie, Oswalt follows his favorite athlete into a club solely out of admiration, and gets senselessly beaten by that athlete and his posse, who clearly want nothing to do with Oswalt's common fan. But had real-life Patton Oswalt become the bully, the one who is too sensitive and indifferent to address the factual inaccuracies of his films?

It didn't end there. A few members of his legion of dweebs went on the attack...

Cody Evjen: "ROFL"

Paul Vermeersch: "And you know, in ET, bicycles can't really fly. The aerodynamics are all wrong. Ruined the whole movie for me."

Rob Nickerson: "I'm sure they'll fix it with CGI for the upcoming Laserdisc re-release."

Then someone named Myra chimed in. I'd copy and paste her comment verbatim, but she has since blocked me for reasons that may become apparent shortly. Either way, she said something along the lines of: "Repeat after me: It's not a documentary. Then get the stick out of your ass."

I was gonna let it slide, figuring that perhaps I'm the only person on the planet who falls into both the "Fan of Patton Oswalt" camp and "Knows Shit about Football" camp...

...But Myra's comment simply rubbed me the wrong way.

My response: "Thank you, Myra. I am aware that Big Fan is not a documentary. But, let's say there was a movie about something that you were knowledgeable about: being an obnoxious cunt, for instance. And let's say that movie meticulously recreated the little details about being a cunt: the real-life names of actors in shows a cunt might watch, places that a cunt might hang out, the types of radio shows a cunt might listen to. And as you're watching it, you're thinking, 'Wow, these people have really put in a lot of effort to make sure this movie captures what it's like to be a cunt.' And then, right at the end, they include some bizarre inaccuracy that makes you wonder how they could have been so conscious of the minutiae in the rest of the movie but overlook something so simple. Wouldn't that make you curious how such an oversight could occur, Myra?"

Too harsh?

Because she responded with something just as self-righteous and pompous as her first comment, then evidently blocked me.

The lesson? As always, women really, really don't like the word "cunt."

And Patton Oswalt is a douche.

Happy Holidays & Girlwithnoname

Hello, everybody! We here at How to Meet Broads would like to wish you a belated happy holidays and a happy New Year and all of that stuff. We hope that the holidays treated you well, your respective families weren't too annoying and your travels went smoothly. At the very least, we hope that, unlike us, you didn't get stranded in a blizzard in Northern Virginia, one that left you sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-95 for fourteen freakin' hours.

Anyhoo, here's a little story for you: One evening a few weeks back, I was sitting on a plush leather sofa here at How to Meet Broads Manor, watching college basketball in my bathrobe, plowing through a box of red wine and making sarcastic comments, most of them sports- and food-related, on the Twitter. That was how I became acquainted with Girlwithnoname, as she took a few moments to dispute the merits of Meatball 'N Mozzarella-flavored Hot Pockets with yours truly.

As it turns out, the lovely Girlwithnoname is a personal trainer, and she kindly agreed to an interview, which went something like this...

Where are you from?
Vancouver, Canada.

What does your daily fitness routine entail?
Depends on the day. I alternate various weights routines with various cardio every second day. So one day I might do some supersets with my weightstack (I'm not afraid to go heavy like so many women are, the heavier you get, the more "toned" you're gonna look) and then the next day I might go for a long endurance run or run to my favourite hill and crank out some HIIT (high-intensity interval training) in the form of hillsprints. I do something every day, usually with one day off per week.

Of the following randomly-selected celebrities -- Tom Cruise, Mick Jagger, Dr. Phil, Derek Jeter and David Letterman -- who do you think you could beat in an arm wrestling competition?
Dr. Phil. He doesn't look to me like he's in shape at all. While Mick Jagger might be a more obvious answer I bet that cat is tough (and wiry)... that being said though, I don't think I'd REALLY want to wrestle with any of them.... that's a bit too close for comfort... for those dudes anyway.

Physically-speaking, what do you find attractive in a male? Arms? Chest? Abs?
O. M. G. Chest, Arms, Shoulders and Back. Give me a well built man with a great set of shoulders and I'm yours (that being said, I'm not into steroid monkeys, just nicely and naturally built guys that work hard on themselves, as I work hard on myself).

Some of our readers are the healthy-living type. Undoubtedly, many of them probably have crushes on girls at their gym, but are unsure of how to approach them in that sort of environment. Any advice?
ooooo, that's a bone of contention for ME, because I HATE it when some guy approaches me when I'm in the zone and trying to get a good workout in. I'm counting my reps, I'm concentrating on getting the weight up, etc. I'd have to say if there's someone you absolutely gotta meet, approach them during their stretching or get on the treadmill beside them... times when you aren't interrupting their workout. Or better yet, time your departure at the same time as theirs and suggest a post-workout smoothie as you both walk out the door at the same time.

In your opinion, where do most men fail when attempting to meet and/or impress women?
That's an easy one. Cheesy, overconfident or creepy pick up lines will get me traveling in the opposite direction almost every time. Try being real or just saying 'hi' ... its simple really. We want to talk to real guys, not 'players'...

One last question... Better pizza topping: bacon or Italian sausage?
I don't eat pizza very often. You can't hang on to a set of abs when you indulge in that stuff very often, but when I do have a little cheat meal and pizza is on the menu, neither of those is at the top of my toppings list. Pepperoni, howeverrrrrrrr......

Girlwithnoname is a Registered Personal Trainer, lives in the city of Vancouver, BC Canada in the downtown area and is a self-professed fitness junkie. Learn more about her here: Girlwithnoname - Achieving Fitness At Home. And check out her thoughts on abs at Truth about Six Pack Abs.