I know a haze when I see one, but I also know an opportunity for a scam. I asked that, if I go, I be allowed an opportunity to win something of value to me, such as a personal mini-fridge emblazoned with the Eagles logo for my cubicle in the office, retail value: $369.99.
And thus my Super Bowl Scavenger Hunt was born.
The terms of the hunt were thus: From a list of 25 items assembled by mysterious forces (a two-minute conversation with my coworkers), I must find or complete 13, representing one half of the list as well as the number of games the Eagles won during the 2017–2018 season. The only stipulation was that the hunt must take place entirely within the confines of the Super Bowl.
Here was my scavenger hunt list.
Diet Coke product
Bring home a handful of losing team’s confetti
Hot dog three times
A personal story or previously unknown fact about Beyoncé
Cast a spell on the Patriots to lose (procure items on site)
Get an Eagles fan to perform black magic with me
Earn money
Ride on a private plane
Sign someone up for delivery.com using my promo code so we both save $7
Take a selfie with Philadelphia boy Bradley Cooper (automatic scavenger hunt win if I thank him by saying, “Thank you, Mr. McConaughey”)
Get invited into a suite
Cheese steak + lobster roll (double points if consumed simultaneously)
Find Jessica Biel Make people think GQ employee A. J. Gibbson is more famous than Jessica Biel
Picture of someone dressed as Prince
Identify a baby under one month
Meet a person over 80
A stranger’s lanyard
Appear on one TV show (domestic)
Appear on one TV show (foreign)
Receive medical attention
Meet Scientologist
Meet member of a player’s immediate family
Find a Pats fan looking good
Greet a celebrity like I know them
Dead bird
*BONUS* Find lid
Here’s what happened.
Of the 25 items on the list, slightly fewer than half seemed difficult enough to pull off that I felt they warranted a Twitter call asking for assistance.
Caity Weaver @caityweaver
Replying to @caityweaver @chrisgayomali
THIS IS THE MINIFRIDGE ON THE FUCKIN’ LINE. It’s actually a Refrigerated Beverage Center. BUT TO GET MY LITTLE PAWS ON IT I NEED YOUR HELP WITH A COUPLE ITEMS ON THE SCAVENGER HUNT LIST. SEE NEXT TWEET.
Caity Weaver @caityweaver
If you or someone you know is at the Super Bowl and can help a poor writer accomplish the tasks on this list in order to win the minifridge of her dreams, PLEASE TWEET OR DM ME!!! GO BIRDS!!! TOM BRADY, SHOW YOUR FACE LOSER IF U AIN’T SCARED!!!!! (THIS IS REAL, I WANT THE FRIDGE) pic.twitter.com/M5EIHyzTYt
Bring home handful of losing team’s confetti
Ride on a private plane
Take a selfie with Philadelphia boy Bradley Cooper
Get invited into a suite
Appear on TV (domestic)
Appear on TV (foreign)
Get an Eagles fan to perform black magic with me
Meet a person over 80
Find a Pats fan looking good (ULTRA CHALLENGE, hard to find)
For the rest, I was on my own.
Contraband Cola
* * *
I rode to the Super Bowl with three GQ colleagues who’d been assigned to actually cover the game, as well as the NFL Honors award show the night before, on social media. Two of them arrived in the lobby of our Minneapolis hotel wearing the kind of clothes you might to, say, watch a football game; the third, A. J. Gibbson (associate manager, social), entered wearing jeans, a belted suede Fendi trench coat with fur cuffs, a camel-colored Italian cashmere turtleneck, and cherry leather Chelsea boots, which had the immediate combined effect of making the rest of us look like his bumbling assistants. Upon seeing him, I petitioned my editor to modify an item on our scavenger hunt list: “Find Jessica Biel” became “Make people think GQ employee A. J. Gibbson is more famous than Jessica Biel.”
I found the first item on my list even before making it into the stadium, in a service elevator located in the media check-in area: a rogue Coca-Cola Company product at a Pepsi-sponsored event. A man in the elevator was carrying two cases of the brand’s alarmingly flavored new Diet Cokes. Although these beverages were bound for the throats and stomachs of the elites, he allowed me to take a Diet Coke Feisty Cherry, and thank God he did, because I did not see another Coke product the entire time I was in Minneapolis. (An employee in our hotel restaurant explicitly informed me, “Minnesota is a Pepsi state”—a gorgeous state motto.)
Item No. 1: Diet forager product. ACCOMPLISHED. Twelve to go.
The part of the scavenger hunt I was most looking forward to, besides soaring over Minnesota in a private jet and making tons of celebrity friends in Bradley Cooper’s stadium box, was “hot dog three times.” To check this item off the list, I would have to eat a hot dog three times. Not the same hot dog!
I approached the nearest concession stand, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a single menu item called “TWO HOT DOGS.” Although not hinted at in the name, “TWO HOT DOGS” consisted of two hot dogs plus a side of fries, for only $23, a price that included the cost associated with taking part in a living history experience in which customers learned firsthand what life was like during the Great Depression by paying $23 for two hot dogs. I decided to take a breather before my final hot dog, leaving that item temporarily unfinished.
Item No. 3: Hot dog three times. INCOMPLETE. Twelve to go.
Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes but they should call it the Land of 0,000 Lines. I’d go back again just to not wait in the lines they don’t have. The vast majority of the time—at the freaking Super Bowl, with 67,612 people in attendance—there weren’t lines for the food stands, or the women’s restrooms, or the incredible roller coasters at the Mall of America, which I highly, highly, highly recommend. The people really are as friendly and helpful as you’ve been warned about. The airport is filled with spry senior citizens armed with hypotheses about what holographic images printed on paper might do to the X-ray scanners (might “set them off” is the theory; “not worth the risk”).
Here’s the bad thing about Minnesota: the air is so ferociously cold and dry that you are liable to crack open and bleed simply from the strain of being. And so it was, with cuticles ripping violently apart, that I completed a second task from my list: receive medical attention.
While I was receiving my Band-Aid, another woman walked in with the complaint that some part of her body “wouldn’t stop bleeding.” Come to Minnesota, a Pepsi state where you can’t stop bleeding. The first aid station contained a robust supply of ibuprofen, Tums, and syringes.
Item No. 20: Receive medical attention. COMPLETED. Eleven to go.
Interlude: A Lidless Hellscape
* * *
Perhaps the most important task on my list was to cast a bad-luck spell cursing the Patriots with a humiliating defeat, exclusively using items collected on-site at the stadium. A kindly self-identified witch I know tried to dissuade me from performing this stunt, on the grounds that “ethically, curses are tricky,” but at the end of the day I had to follow my black heart.
Prior to my arrival, I pictured myself efficiently gathering my spell ingredients like a lonely old woman from days of yore whom everyone in town suspects of being a witch, but it turns out . . . yes, she is a witch.
Here was the list of necessaries for “Bad Luck,” per the source of my magic text, spellsofmagic.com:
tape
a pen
paper
one piece of mint (optional)
one three-leaf clover
a little bit of water
salt
something dear to their heart
I fi
gured I’d beg a sprig of mint off a bartender making mojitos and swipe some salt packets from a napkin stand. Clover seemed like it might be hard to procure (1) when the city was blanketed under a fresh snowfall, and (2) inside the Vikings’ enclosed stadium—but I thought I might be able to locate a microgreen garnish atop a luscious steak that I also thought I might be able to locate. A tape, pen, and paper, I was sure, would reveal themselves to me quite easily. It was the Super Bowl. Anything was possible.
Turns out most things were not possible. Not only did I not stumble upon a hidden field of clover, or steak garnished with microgreens—I couldn’t find mint anywhere. One after another, bartenders shook their heads. None of the custom cocktails (“Jalapeno Pineapple Margarita,” “Mai Tai,” “Aviation”) contained mint. No item available for purchase at the boldly named “Wild and Fresh Market” contained mint. I couldn’t even find gum containing mint.
After about 30 minutes of searching (what was going on on the field, I have no idea), I came upon a promising lead: shrimp tacos. Mint and shrimp go together like dogs and logs! I ran my wild eyes over the menu description. No mint, but there was cilantro. It would have to do in a pinch. I asked the cashier if I could have a cup of cilantro, and offered to pay for it. She was reluctant to make me pay $11 for a commemorative Super Bowl cup just so I could have something to carry my cilantro in, but she was willing to have me pay $11 for Diet Pepsi in a commemorative Super Bowl cup and give me an employees-only paper cup of cilantro (premixed with chopped red onion) on the side. She filled my commemorative cup up to the brim with icy cold fountain soda—something I would love under normal circumstances, but this cup’s purple holographic design made it extremely slippery to hold, and the cup lacked a lid.
“Could I have a lid?” I asked.
“We don’t have a lid for that,” she said. Odd, but not a big deal. I walked to another stand and asked for a lid.
“We don’t have any lids,” an employee informed me. “People leave them on the ground, so we just don’t have lids anymore. Even with a bottle of water, we’re supposed to keep the lid.”
I had never before encountered a lidless society, and after carefully placing my commemorative cup brimming with unchecked soda on a nearby table, I sent an excited message to my editor: “No lids ANYWHERE. You CAN’T GET A LID.”
“I’ll give you a point if you find a lid,” he wrote back.
But here’s what he didn’t know: I had already procured a 100 percent illegal lid for myself. [Ed. note: Wow.] A young man working behind the counter had discreetly slapped a plastic lid on the paper cup—designated for employee use only—containing my cilantro, to prevent it from spilling all over my bag.
“SICK,” I responded to my editor. [Ed. note: WOW.]
Bonus Item No. 26: Find a lid. COMPLETED. Ten to go.
I am the Devil’s Mistress (Part I)
* * *
Loose salt for my spell proved surprisingly hard to find, until I realized I could buy a soft pretzel and scrape off some of its enormous white crystals.
For water, I requested “the cheapest bottle of water you have” from a woman working at still another concession stand. In a manner that suggested it physically pained her to have to tell me this, she revealed that the cheapest water she could give me was $6.
For an object dear to Tom Brady, I selected a T-shirt commemorating the exciting day, with the names of all his stupid friends on the back.
I bought a commemorative Super Bowl pen (also $6) at a souvenir pop-up shop that spanned two floors of the stadium, and featured ghostly white statues of football players, benched forever in heaven.
The pop-up contained a FedEx booth where customers could pay to have their purchases shipped directly from the game. A FedEx employee allowed me to have a piece of tape for free. (THANK YOU!!!)
I tore a piece off a jumbo paper towel roll left on a table in a women’s restroom and went into a stall to perform my dark deeds.
“Draw a large pentagram on the paper and write their first and last name in the center,” the instructions read. “Sprinkle a little salt on the name.”
“Then, drip some water on to the condiments.”
“Tear up the clover and mint (if mint is present), and sprinkle on to the water.”
“Place the special item on to the name. Lean down to the paper and chant the bad spell.”
Good luck go, Go away. But bring all of the bad to stay. And for this spell, I must pay a price. With something dear, As well as nice. This is my will, So Mote It Be!
“Fold the paper in half hamburger style, and then hot dog style. Repeat until paper is small enough to fit in your pocket.”
“Tape the paper shut and carry it around in your pocket, purse, etc.”
“Remember, how long the spell will last depends not only on the strength of the caster, but on the experience of the caster as well.”
Immediately after I completed this spell, the Patriots scored their first touchdown, which made me think perhaps the cilantro had been a bad idea.
Item No. 5: Cast a spell on the Patriots to lose. COMPLETED. Nine to go.
A Hologram in Real Life
* * *
Can you believe I only saw one person dressed as Prince at the Super Bowl in Minneapolis?
Item No. 14: Take a picture of someone dressed as Prince. COMPLETED. Eight to go.
I had eaten a hot dog for the Father, and the Son, so now it was time to eat one for me, Caity. To inject some color into my life, I decided to try one that was inexplicably enormous.
If you can explain the mysteries of this great and terrible hot dog, please get in touch with me. It had a very bad taste, and every time—every time—I bit into it, scaldingly hot hot dog water flew onto my face and glasses.
Item No. 3: Hot dog three times: COMPLETED. Seven to go.
Lucifer’s Son Reveals Himself
* * *
Justin Timberlake’s halftime show was one of the eeriest events I’ve ever witnessed. For nearly his entire performance, the tens of thousands of people seated in the stadium sat motionless. They did not dance. They did not sing. They did not talk. They simply stared politely forward, the way you might if someone were giving a mildly engaging talk just before lunch at a business conference. All sounds of screaming excitement emanated from a group of people who appeared to have been brought onto the field and clustered around Timberlake’s temporary stage specifically to provide an illusion of screaming excitement. I never knew something so loud could be so quiet. When Justin Timberlake commanded the crowd to hold their phones in the air, no one complied. Before the show, folks in my section had received detailed instructions about what to do with two mini flashlights placed at everyone’s seats; few abided by them. The only song to generate even a moderate crowd response was “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”—a song Timberlake recorded for the soundtrack to the animated film Trolls about which he once said the following:
“I have always envisioned bringing the two worlds of film and music together for one epic event [and] couldn’t be more excited that they will collide in DreamWorks’ Trolls.”
By far the most exciting and visually impressive moment of the performance came at the very end, after Timberlake had left the stage, when the mob of dancers who’d gathered to perform choreography with what appeared to be huge pieces of neon-colored cardboard were forced to run to the exits, to clear the field.
“That’s it?” asked a woman behind me. She was correct.
I Am the Devil’s Mistress (Part II)
* * *
My increasingly frantic Twitter pleas generated very little in terms of material progress, which should serve as an important reminder that the spirit of democracy and camaraderie fostered by the internet is an illusion; people do not care about you that much, and everyone will die alone, probably without ever having been the proud owner of an officially licensed Philadelphia Eagles Refrigerated Beverage Center. However, the internet was somewhat helpful in two ways:
One Twitter user brought my quest to the attention of ESPN host Katie Nolan, who offered to help by submitting a photo of herself as evidence of a Patriots fan “looking good.”
* * *
Caity Weaver @caityweaver
Replying to @katienolan @emilyoestevez
KATIE, #9 IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND. IT DOES NOT EXIST
Katie Nolan @katienolan
But caity,,,, pic.twitter.com/AscaHt24cw
What Katie did not know is that I had requested this item be added to the list as a single impossible task, to keep me humble because only God is perfect. Can a person ever truly “look good” once they have been positively identified as a Patriots fan? I contend the answer is no. Nonetheless, I did appreciate Katie’s effort, so I awarded her photo a half point.
Later, seconds after a Patriots touchdown and subsequent crowd roar, I saw a man in a Tom Brady jersey run out of a men’s room yelling, “What’d I miss?” As I watched him, he craned his neck to an elevated TV screen and unleashed a guttural “FUCK!” his face contorting at his own misfortune. I thought that looked pretty good, so I awarded myself another half point and declared:
Item No. 9: Find a Pats fan looking good. COMPLETE. Six to go.
The Best American Sports Writing 2019 Page 18
