I got word that Paul was having a party for the Chargers game. I looked for my Green Bay Packers shirt but couldn’t find it. I settled for wearing a Chargers cap.

I brought cupcakes that had Charger helmets and ones that had footballs. I wondered why Ralph’s didn’t have a batch with the other teams’ logos. Maybe they feared that they’d end up smashed.

Of course, the store was packed. I made it to the Bay Park party just minutes before kick-off.

The table with desserts had about 50 blue-and-yellow cupcakes, a few cheesecakes, three different kinds of brownies, and chocolate chip cookies. After viewing the selection, I didn’t care if the Chargers won or lost.

I saw a lot of smokers hanging out in the back yard, which went up a hill of stairs. I went up there, ate peanuts, and argued football with some of the guys. I noticed the volume on the TV set was low. I grabbed two different remotes trying to turn it up before someone suggested I use the knob on the stereo. That worked.

A few of them were smoking cigars, and the smoke bothered my girlfriend. By the time we made it back into the house, there were no seats left. We stood for the entire first quarter.

At least we had easy access to the desserts. I grabbed a brownie that was filled with chocolate chips and had chocolate frosting on the top. I said, “This might be the best brownie I’ve ever had.” Someone nearby said, “It’s the best brownie I’ve ever had...that didn’t have pot in it.”

I went outside to grab a soda and heard someone complain, “Paul, don’t you have any bigger cups?” He said, “Well, yeah, but they aren’t blue.” The guy said, “I don’t care! I just want to be able to put more than four ounces of booze in it!”

The two youngest people at the party were running the betting slips. I said, “Nothing like learning about gambling at such a young age.” They asked me if I wanted to buy any squares. I glanced at it and said no.

As I spoke with Nicole about it, the guy never looked up. He was counting a huge wad of dollar bills.

I heard someone yell at the TV, “Jammer sucks! Why do we still have him? He gets burned deep and has penalties on short plays.”

I nodded my head in agreement. Neither of us said anything when, late in the game, Jammer got an interception.

When I walked over to try a cupcake, I saw a woman in her late 50s bent over a small TV. I said, “There are too many big TVs around here for you to bother with that one.” She explained that she wore the wrong glasses.

When a large selection of Chinese food was brought in and put outside, a line formed. I heard one guy say about a friend, “The more time he spends in Mexico, the more he’s starting to look like a beaner.” Since my girlfriend is Middle Eastern, I wondered if it didn’t occur to him, since she was standing nearby, that she might be Mexican. I thought about calling him on that and telling him that my girlfriend is Mexican, just to put him on the spot and teach him a lesson. But, he’d had a few beers. I’ve found that alcohol consumption makes it difficult for anyone to learn a lesson.

When we saw Michael Turner playing in place of LT, a few people commented on it. One guy next to me yelled in my ear with each carry, “Turn it up, Turner. Turn it up!”

In another room, there was a few seconds of delay on the TV. It was funny to have us all cheer a play and then, a second later, hear them cheer. Someone said, “That’s the room with all the slow people. They took the short yellow bus to get here.”

The Chargers lost the game, and we all spent 30 minutes saying what we would’ve done differently. I said Volek should’ve been playing QB. Someone else didn’t like all the field goals. Another person didn’t like the punt in the fourth quarter, when the Chargers were already losing. He added, “Does this mean we’ll have a new coach next year?” I said, “Hey, he won two playoff games more than Marty. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”

One guy said, “I say we go to Seau’s restaurant and throw a brick through the window.”

Someone came in from the smoking area, saying that he tried to switch the TV to the other game, but all he got was snow. Someone responded, “Yeah, I think it’s supposed to snow there today.” He said, “Not that kind of snow. We can’t see anything on the screen.”

We switched to the Packers/Giants game and someone made a comment about a player with the name Atari. He wondered if he has a teammate named Donkey Kong.

I talked with an SDSU student who told me a story about sharing a dorm room with a rugby player. “After practice, he’d just leave his dirty clothes in the middle of the floor. These are tiny rooms. He’d then go out for the night. It was so gross. I ended up just kicking them into his closet and spraying the pile so it wouldn’t stink. It took the whole bottle, though.”

Later, he asked if anyone had ever been in the Peace Corps. Someone said, “Talk about smelly clothes.” An older guy said, “I know one guy who joined, and we haven’t seen him since.”

Paul walked over and said something to me, slurring his words. I said “Are you drunk?” He said, “I’ve been drunk for hours. And you can quote me on that.”

I talked to a guy who was president of a computer company. He brought up a situation at a Super Bowl a few years ago. “It was a banquet, and Kellen Winslow was a guest speaker. There were all kinds of football stars walking around. Fred Taylor was there. I went up and shook Marcus Allen’s hand. But, at one point, Winslow looked down at his watch. He was in the middle of a sentence, and he looked at his agent and said, ‘It’s 10, and I’m only scheduled to be here until 10.’ He walked out. It was so unprofessional. He couldn’t even finish what he was saying. Yet, Billy Ray Smith was there, and when he found out you were from San Diego, he’d talk about the city and be cool with you.”

I told him about a time that I met Winslow, and he wasn’t friendly.

The guy said, “It’s funny...the people who are nice. My plane was once delayed, and James Brown was in the airport. He was talking to everyone and being funny.”

I told him that when James Brown played 4th&B, right before he passed away, the sound guy asked him to sign a few items. His manager said, “Put them in an envelope, and we’ll mail them to you. It sounded weird, but a few weeks later, he got the picture and CD signed with the inscription, ‘I feel good.’”

Someone nearby said, “He must not have felt that good if he died a few months later.”