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It had been 25 years since the Packers played the Washington Redskins in Washington, but regardless of history, my reason for going to this game was because my brother lives in Washington. It was essentially a great excuse for a road trip. I caught a flight from Milwaukee Saturday morning and returned Monday morning, the game being on Sunday. A great story always has a story within the story, and this story will begin on Sunday night, hours after the game...

My brother's roommate owns a home in the Washington area so I was a guest for the weekend. The roommate has an extensive movie collection so Sunday evening found me watching the movie SPIDERMAN as I reflected upon the events of the weekend. It's what you would call a "B" movie, full of the usual cinematic cliches and metaphors, but they strung them together well, didn't go too far over the top in presenting the story, so I found the movie to be entertaining. You could classify it as a dark tragedy, the young Peter Parker virtually spending his entire young life in love with the same woman, and when fate eventually brings her heart to his, he is forced to deny her his love.
Peter Parker is no longer Peter Parker, he is Spiderman, a man possessed with superhuman powers, powers that make him a target for the forces of evil and thus would put any person close to him in danger. Spiderman must turn down the love he has always yearned for because he loves her too much, the movie ending with the lesson that having great power requires great responsibility. The villain had also acquired great power, losing it all and his life, in the end.

Schlock from Hollywood or is it a concept so basic that people overlook it without even knowing it? And what the hell does Spiderman have to do with Packer football for cripes sake?

As the plane was landing at Reagan National late Saturday morning, I could not help but notice that the fall colors were at their peak here. The green and gold colors clashing with the red and yellow, the outlying parks and forests giving a symbolic competition of the competition to come the next day between the Packers and Redskins. I meet with brother at the airport and we decide to do a late lunch at Joe Theisman's restaurant since it's on the way to his house and I'm figuring there might be some football goings-on which would fit right in for a Packer weekend.

What can I say about the restaurant? The food was average. There were a lot of sports-related photographs and posters on the walls, but very little "real" memorabilia. I mean, posters of Norman Rockwell paintings that are sports-related is not exactly something you go out of your way for. I wanted to see real sports stuff, like Joe's old shoes or a football, or anything. People actually drive to Canton, Ohio to see an old pair of shoes at the NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame. If you want to go out of your way to see Joe's restaurant, I can't think of anything to make you want to come here. It sure ain't for the ambience or french fries. As for the crowd, it was the 18-35 group, hanging out to watch the college games on the various monitors. If you're looking for a pre-game hangout for Redskins and visiting team fans, this is the wrong place to be. Maybe in the evening, but not now.

The restaurant is located in "Old Town" of Alexandria, VA., one of those tourist districts where the street is lined with 200 year old buildings filled with an eclectic mix of salons, artwork, gift shops, and maybe a law office or drug store. We walk down to the river and back, taking time to stop at various locations. There's a little mall that is a haven for artists and it's filled with dozens of shops. It's like walking through an art museum. Some of these artists in Old Town are either geniuses, madmen, or both. You look at a work of art and curiosity makes you wonder what the artist was thinking, but in some cases, it may be best to not know. Art can be an exercise of reaching into the mind to see what's there and sometimes wishing you didn't go there.

As we're walking along the street I notice that on the newspaper boxes, someone has scrawled LIES! LIES! LIES! across the front of them. This is not an isolated case but many of the boxes have the same graffiti. LIES! LIES! LIES! I imagine an artist who reached a little too deep into the mind and pulled himself from the genius side into the realm of insanity. LIES! LIES! LIES! The newspapers are full of LIES! LIES! LIES! Can you not see the conspiracy put on by the media? LIES! LIES! LIES! You have to wonder about someone who is on a mission to mark up every newspaper box in town.

My brother, of all things, is dabbling into the realm of stand-up comics. He works one club regularly and a few others here and there when the opportunity comes up. It's not his real job but the extra cash doesn't hurt and so he's a player in the local scene. Well, it's Saturday night and his club has some of the regular comics lined up to work the crowd so he takes me over to see the guys do their stuff. It's a $10 admission and two-drink minimum but I of course get in free. He introduces me to the staff and I hang out while everyone works on preparing the club and eventually the regular crowd shuffles in.

The show begins.

It's been years since I've been to a comedy club and I my brother gives me a little insight into the business and how tough it can be to get up on stage and rock a crowd, but it's an off night. Brother makes comments about the crowd being dead but he also is disappointed with the comics.

They are not very good.

He tells me it's rare that the comics and the crowd are both this bad. They have 3 comics start the show and then finish with a main headliner, and while I can sympathize with how tough it can be to do something like this, the 3 comics are young and much of their material is about getting drunk, why it's OK to smoke a little weed, and the remaining material is crude sex comments delivered only for shock value. I remember being a 20-something and pushing the limits of societal norms but I also remember making a fool out of myself too when I went too far. Part of being a comic is recognizing when you're not in sync with the crowd and these guys didn't grasp that.

Regardless, brother said this is about as bad as it gets and it's too bad I didn't see better. Maybe it's wrong to criticize them because they're better comics than I'll ever be but you're not going to see any of these guys on the late night talk shows any time soon. It was still an interesting in observing the comic-crowd relationship and listening to my brother's comments and being fascinated with the train wreck that transpired that evening.

Sunday. Game day! Time for Packer football!

The plan is to take the METRO which is the local subway transportation system for the D.C. area. We're up early and are waiting for the train while the sun is still rising. There's a big marathon being run in the neighborhood so a lot of the roads are going to be closed to through traffic. Brother figures taking the Metro will avoid any possible traffic jams. We find the Metro jam packed with marathon runners on their way to the race but after a few stops they all get off, leaving the entire train practically to ourselves. We wanted to get there early in order to meet up with some friends and still have time to look around which is why we're early but there was no way of predicting exactly when we'd arrive so we arrive earlier than expected. We take a taxi from the station where we get off as the shuttles were not yet running but it was only a $6.25 fare.

It's 8:00 AM and we are, perhaps literally, the first people to arrive at the stadium. At least it seemed that way. The parking lots don't open until 9:00 AM and which is when we expect our friends to arrive as they are driving so brother and I kill time by walking around the stadium. There are a lot of workers and staff prepping their areas of responsibilities; one thing to note was stadium employees were being bussed in. At Lambeauf Field you can see them just walking through the neighborhood on their way to work. The parking lots in the immediate area was all reserved parking. Pay lots were off-site somewhere, and those also required shuttles for getting to and from the stadium.

In fact, pedestrian access to FedEx Field is impossible, the only way here is by vehicle. There was a legal battle over this so a walkway will be available for future games but not today. Even so, it was not pedestrian friendly if you wanted to park nearby and walk in. Lambeau Field may not have enough parking spaces to accomodate a full crowd, but you can still park nearby and come and go as you please as long as you can put one foot in front of the other.

We end up walking around the stadium twice. As it got close to 9:00 various groups started off to their respective work stations; several of them were tables where they were giving out pink ribbons to wear and show support for a cure for breast cancer. With the recent news of Favre's wife Deanna having breast cancer, it was more than appropriate for brother and I to each wear a ribbon.

The Redskins Hall of Fame Store opens at 9:00 too so we go in to browse. We have the store completely to ourselves because people are just driving in and they haven't had time yet to get up this far. Since this was the "Hall of Fame Store" it implied they had a Hall of Fame. I inquired to one of the staff if they had a Hall of Fame, I thought it would be fun to go through, but no, the "Hall of Fame STORE" was merely a STORE. They did have a spot on the wall where
there were plaques of Redskin greats but that was it. Vince Lombardi was included as he was a Redskin after he left Green Bay. Had it not been for Lombardi's untimely death, ol' Vince perhaps today would not be so closely aligned with the Green Bay Packers as he is. Everyone will always regard Vince Lombardi and The Green Bay Packers as being a single entity, but you can't blame the Redskins for wanting a piece of him.

Needless to say, the Redskins do not have a Hall of Fame where you can actually walk through and look at old shoes worn by players of yesterday. People would drive miles to look at old shoes; football has a way of taking useless objects and turning them into shrines of history. We've already established that fact and that makes two times now that the folks in Washington are missing out.

After we're done examining the Redskins STORE we call my friend HAUSER but he's still on his way. We call RMAN and he's here. RMAN is a guy I know from one of the Packer Internet forums and this was a game he also circled on his calendar for making a road trip. We get some bearings and brother and I make our way over. RMAN has a group of friends that he knows via the Internet so we visit for a while and take some pictures.

Everyone is doing good and talking about various Packer things but we have more than one person to see so we try HAUSER again and he's arrived; we grab RMAN to come with us in order to make sure he got to meet Hauser. Hauser and his family was there and they had a superb tailgate going. Hauser's wife is a Redskins fan but she's been brainwashed into having real Wisconsin cheese and Wisconsin-made bratwurst as must-have tailgating items so I think she's in denial about being a Packer fan. Just as artists fall into the realm between genius and insanity, Mrs. Hauser is probably slowly coming to grips for being on the dark side. We allow her to wear her Redskins jersey but only because she's not yet fully realized of the LIES! LIES! LIES! perpetuated upon her by a media with an ulterior agenda.

While we're there I start talking to the lady next to us who's tailgating with her family. FedEx Field holds about 91,000 people and it took her husband 20 years to come up on the Waiting List for tickets. She was a college student at U-Pittsburgh and she talked about how her boyfriend (at the time) who was in the band and had to march at games when it was freezing out. She goes way back and is a huge football fan.

For as impressive as the fans are here in regards to the wait for Season Tickets, there's virtually no one around tailgating. An occasional car pulls up now and then, but we're talking one every few minutes. It's a virtual ghost town here. You can hear crickets chirping. Tumbleweeds bounce along. Sand dunes slowly move by as as the wind pushes them along. We're talking EMPTY. Where are the Redskins fans?

All I can say is the HAUSERs can put out some good eats. And it was great having time to visit with them. It was good to spend time with them.

We head back to RMan's tailgate to say hi one more time and then we go into the stadium. This side of the stadium is full of cars and the tailgating is in full swing. OK, Redskin fans will show up but they sure don't seem to be in a hurry. At Lambeau Field they're lined up waiting to get in when it's time. Heck, the K-Mart lot is full by 9:00 for some games.

As we're going in we run into "G Man," one of those fans who wear a costume and practically becomes an icon. G Man is a Packer fan and physically is a huge guy. He wears a Packer uniform and on his head he wears a big Packer "G." He was sitting near me at the last Lambeau Field game so I ask him if he has Season Tickets and he says no. I don't ask him how he gets tickets but I hope he's not going broke going to all these games like this.

Our seats are not that great, upper deck, corner end zone, but there's no hurry to go to our seats now. We hang out in the lower level watching the players go through warm ups and walking around the bowl taking pictures. After a while we decide it's time so we make our way through the concourse to find a ramp to the upper deck. As we're doing this we walk by the Redskin cheerleaders who are making an appearance in the concourse. All I can say is they all looked like little kids. That's not a slam, it's a reflection of me getting older. Regardless, those "kids" are welcome to help keep me warm on a cold winter night......

While going up the ramp we can see that the parking lots out by Hauser has finally filled up. I guess tailgating is just not a hard core thing around here. The Redskins band is out playing their "Hail To The Redskins" tune and are marching around the stadium. The band would play at appropriate moments during the game which gave it the atmosphere of a college game. We also spied the "Hogettes," a well known group of fans who dress up as ladies with pig noses. Only football fans will understand.

The upper concourse is open; there's no roof or cover overhead and there's no wall to the outside. I like the openess but it's windy and it must be gruesome during cold weather games to be out here. Regardless, it's turning into a beautiful day, a high haze of clouds blocking the full force of the sun yet providing plenty of light to give you that sunny day feeling. We had dressed for the cool morning but now you could do just fine in a t-shirt and shorts.

We find a guest relations station, sign up for the designated driver program (good for one coupon of free soda), and we find our seats.

The lowest level is very flat, not much of an angle from the front seats to the back. What this does is it means the outer seats are farther away from the field but it allows the upper decks to be down that much lower. The decks are more steep so that the outer seats can be closer to the field. There's a lot of compromises for each level so that on average seats can be as close as possible. Like most stadiums, they have chairs here which is unlike the bench seating at Lambeau Field. There's not much leg room, I end up having a big Packer fan sit next to me on one side, and he's big enough to spill over into my
space. He's not obese, he's just got a big shoulders and arms and when there's only one armrest in between two chairs the little guy loses. It's nice having backs on the seats but otherwise the comfort is no better than Lambeau Field. Lambeau Field benches are far from being comfortable and I thought it's be nice to sit in chairs but I was cramped just the same.

Considering the access and closeness to the field from an average seat, I am beginning to really appreciate Lambeau Field.

I don't know about other parts of the stadium, but once the game was on the fans of both teams conducted themselves with about as much class as you could hope for. There was a ton of Packer fans everywhere in the stadium. One thing I couldn't figure out was all the empty seats. Probably a good 10% were empty; you'd think that a stadium with a 20 year Waiting List would have tickets that would be more coveted.

As for the game itself, all I can say is it was a lot of fun and a good win. The Packers did get lazy toward the end and then they got lucky. When the Redskins came back to score the winning touchdown, only to have it called back on what many think is a questionable call, all I can say is it didn't matter. The flag was out and on the ground before the ball was thrown. Had the play resulted in a meaningless gain, there would be no controversy. Of course, the play runs down partisan lines. LIES! LIES! LIES! LIES! What are the refs trying to pull here? The Redskin fans just could not get a break, at least in their eyes. For us Packer fans, it was a great win and breathed new life into a season that was slipping away and is still in doubt.

Miscellaneous observations: The beer guys would come out of the breezeway and hold up a beer and then scan the crowd. I never saw this before. Everywhere else they walk up and down the stairs and/or they yell out ICE COLD BEER! Just holding up a beer gives the same effect as shouting "Yoo hoo!" They didn't give out any free stuff when you went into the stadium. You always get a free item when you go into Lambeau Field. Sometimes the item is, well, a piece of crap, but it's the thought that counts. The traffic around FedEx Field is horrible.

We took our time leaving after the game; we were walking around the stadium at the point where players come out and they have to walk through the crowd to get to their vehicles. They have security there to handle everything, but Redskin fans will hang out and get autographs. I thought that was cool. We catch a shuttle back to the train station and it's a quiet ride back. The crowd was pretty much gone by then. We went out to eat at a restaurant that my brother likes and that was our day, me finishing the evening by watching Spiderman.

Brother took me to the airport Monday morning. The passions of election day on Tuesday, November 2, 2004 were evident. Signs were everywhere along the roadways and people were on street corners giving their time for their guy. The demographics of the neighborhood here favored one side in particular, and very few signs from the opponent survive for having been vandalized. For those who take their cause seriously, tomorrow was the day in which the campaigning came to a climax. And somehow, a meaningless football game between two teams with little hope of making the playoffs was a focal point of a season of hard fought campaigning.

When I was going through the security at the airport, I had to take off my shoes. I've never had to take these shoes off before in an airport, they're a type that is supposedly not a security risk. Guy next to me in line kidded me about wearing all my Packer gear, I was going to be a target for the workers running the check point. As I was putting on my shoes, another security guy sees me wearing my colors and says "That was a game for the books!" I look at him with a blank face because I had no idea what he was talking about. I respond with a generic "Time will tell" and walk off toward the departure gate.

Why was this game "One for the books?" Is it because of that silly piece of trivia where the Redskins winning or losing will predict the outcome of the presidential race? What else could it be? The game was hardly one to remember for anything else other than a questionable call by the refs but that is nothing new. Are there people out there who actually give merit to such folk tales?

Football is intermingled within our culture so perhaps the game is sometimes bigger than it should be. The coming election has been raucous and everyone is doing anything they can to  promote their agenda. Tuesday is a day of power, the power of the people being wielded in the voting booth and granting power of the United States to a single individual. Both the people and the president have responsibility in how they use that power.

Thus the irony of watching a random movie with the ending proclaiming that great power requires great responsibility. Yet, the ringing cry of LIES! LIES! LIES! resounds in the background. The political ads on TV, news people with great power in the media attempting to conduct smear campaigns with forged documents, the point counter-point around the water cooler at work. LIES! LIES! LIES! The genius and the madness mixing together to where it all seemed the same.

All I know is I had a great time and was fortunate to spend time with good people. That's why you go to Packer games. The LIES! LIES! LIES! of the campaign elevated this Packer game to something it shouldn't have. Perhaps that's just the way it is with American politics, the candidates and their allies selling whatever it is they can sell to the public in order to gain power and the Packers got sucked into the hype. What exactly is the truth? Somewhere within the lies and half-truths and innuendos and confusion there is an answer but no single person is able to find the right answers to everything all the time.

Whatever happens tomorrow, there's no way of knowing if the voters, as a whole, has tendencies toward genius or madness. That's not a function of whether your guy wins or not. Sometimes you make the wrong choice and you have to hope the majority makes the right choice.

Somewhere in Washington there's a crackpot running around in the night scrawling LIES! LIES! LIES! on the newspaper boxes. As the campaign winds down and I reflect on the events of the weekend as they played out, I can only wonder if this person is the only genius among us and the majority are the madmen.

As my plane lands in Milwaukee on Monday, it's cold, raining, and gloomy.

EPILOGUE

This trip report was, of course, written after the election, but ending it on the day before is appropriate for the mood of the weekend. For those who voted, it was with deep passion that they did so with this election. It doesn't matter who you voted for.

When I returned home I heard that the talking heads on TV made some hay out of the trivia of who would win the election depending on whether the Redskins won or lost. Even Dan Rather announced the final score of the game. I just find it odd that people look to football to find an answer to the seriousness of the times, and people twist it into something beyond rational thought.

I doubt if many people bought into the hype, but when you have icons in the news media needing to report on this game as if it were a factor for who would be president and the common guy calling this a "game for the books," you just have to wonder.

You just have to wonder.