Crash and Burn (35 page)

That’s when Snoop Dogg arrived and I realized that the coolest thing to do in this situation was ask Snoop Dogg to help me with my sneakers. I didn’t think he’d actually do it, but it would look good if anyone else happened to see. And I already knew he was good with sneakers because on
Stern
he’d told us on the air how he liked to use them to beat his hoes in the head to keep them in line. The guy has millions but says he still keeps hoes—and beats them with sneakers. I think that’s what they mean when they talk about “keeping it real.”

In the end I zeroed in on David Arquette because Snoop spent every free minute promoting whatever his new project was—the guy is seriously the greatest businessman I’ve ever seen. Anyway, I’d given David my extra jersey, so technically he owed me one, but that wasn’t the real reason. He’s also just such a nice guy, but you know what, he should be after all the money I would guess he got from Courteney Cox. So in the end David Arquette got my shoes on and tied them for me and God bless him for it. We had Joe Manganiello from
True Blood
on our team, and I don’t watch that show, so
I didn’t know who he was but since he was six foot nine, really fit, good-looking, and wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers hat, I figured he was a pro player. We also had a black guy who I thought was a player, but it turned out that he was the night correspondent on ESPN or wherever. There were a couple of smoking-hot chicks on our team too: Erin Andrews, the ESPN correspondent who got videoed naked through the peephole of her hotel room door by some creep, and my good friend Maria Menounos.

Before we get to the game, I need to take a moment to tell you what happened when Neil Patrick Harris came into the locker room. He did that thing that gay guys sometimes do when they hang out with a bunch of straight guys: he tried to adjust for the occasion. It’s just the worst when gay guys do that, and I’m not being biased—it’s equally horrible when straight guys try to adjust to the gay thing. But that’s what he did. There were people handing out bags with our jerseys and sneakers in them, but they weren’t right there to meet us, so when Joe Manganiello walked in he asked, out loud to no one at all, where he had to go to get his gear. And here’s what Neil Patrick Harris said: “There’s a gaggle of people back there handing out stuff.” A gaggle. A gaggle? That word means a noisy, disorderly crowd, and as much as it’s an accurate way to describe a busy locker room, I’m pretty fucking sure that this was the first time the word “gaggle” was ever uttered in a football locker room by a player. I’d never heard a human being say the word in a sports setting until then, but who knows, maybe gaggle is trending right now in Super Bowl tweets.

Maybe Neil thought it was tough talk, or maybe he forgot where he was and thought this was an all-gay football-themed cocktail party. Maybe he was texting Beyoncé and got confused and spoke out loud. I don’t know. I do know that it turned heads. Deion Sanders looked up from his phone when he heard that and just shook his head, confused, before looking down again. It made me think of Siegfried and Roy and their white tigers. I mean white tigers are tigers, one of the toughest motherfuckers out there, and those white ones
are rare, so they’ve got to be even tougher, right? They’re like the Jim Browns and Archie Bunkers of the jungle. What do you think it was like for them to go from being the king of the jungle, where they can fuck any female tiger they want, eat any antelope, or just kill the shit out of some animal for the fuck of it, to working in a circus? They’re walking around like champs, the rulers of the jungle, one day, and the next they’re captured and taken someplace where they don’t get fed until they sit on blocks like poodles. Plus they have to live with two gay guys! It’s no wonder someone got hurt. I just can’t believe it didn’t happen sooner.

Anyway, the field we played on looked like your average arena football field, about the size of a hockey rink, just enormous and filled with sand. The crowd was pretty much all people just like me—frustrated athletes, drunks, and others who wish they could play, most of them thinking that if they could play they’d do it better. Whoever they were there to see, enough of them started chanting my name as we walked out. There I was taking the field alongside Joe Montana, one of the winningest quarterbacks in the Hall of Fame, but all you could hear was a mob of drunken fools shouting, “ART-AY!” Montana looked over at me like he didn’t even know I was Artie or that they were even saying Artie (this suspicion would be confirmed a little later). I could barely breathe, my shirt was so tight, so there was no way I could start or even play much. Chris Long and the DirecTV guys told me they’d be sure I got in on defense in a little while. Fine. I sat down on the bench next to the legendary running back Jim Brown, who was eighty-two and definitely there for show, though he could have given a few of us a run for our money. Jim was great; he was waving to everyone and the fans loved him. I was more impressed by Jim than I had been before meeting him, and I was already a fanboy, not just for his athletic career but for his acting. Not many people know how great his film work was for a sports star, which is usually passable at best. If you don’t believe me, watch
The Dirty Dozen
, which is a classic and one of my favorite movies of all time.

The two of us were benched for most of the game. Jim’s excuse was that he was in his eighties, and mine was being too obese for my jersey. There was an upside to being benched that I wouldn’t trade for the world, and there is a generation of young men that I’m sure will agree. Since we were on the bench and since she didn’t play much, Jim Brown and I enjoyed an eye-level view of Kate Upton’s bouncing ass, mere feet in front of us, for nearly two hours. She was our teammate and was wearing bicycle pants so tight that they were literally painted on. Once I noticed that I didn’t even know the game was happening. I certainly didn’t give a fuck about the score, that’s for sure. I kept looking over at Jim because I didn’t want any warm-blooded heterosexual male within range to miss the show, but I didn’t need to worry, he was right there with me. Anyone who thinks we’re pigs can shut up because the girl was nineteen and perfect, just cheering her team on, jumping around, being free. Not appreciating that would have been a crime against humanity.

Jim and I were on the same page about this, but I couldn’t think of a way to start a conversation with him, because there was a lot I wanted to ask. I couldn’t think of a natural way to launch into asking him if Lee Marvin was as big of an asshole on set as his character was on camera in
The Dirty Dozen
. I was still debating my opening line when Jim waved me into a huddle and leaned in as if he intended to educate me on the finer points of the last play. When I got close enough, he acted as if we were talking then casually pointed at Kate Upton’s ass and said, “I’d like some of that, huh?” Then he gave me a high five! It was amazing. That was the only interaction we had, and frankly I don’t think it could have been any better.

By the second half of the game my team was down by seven points and that’s when Chris Crane, Chris Long, and Jim Crittenden from DirecTV came over and told me that I had to play because the whole point of them paying to have me there was to promote the
Nick and Artie Show
as much as possible, so obviously they wanted
both Nick and Artie to play in the game. I had to get over the jersey issue just as our coach, Cam Newton, had to get over the fact that he hadn’t thought he had to play me. I can’t say for sure, but I got the feeling he took me for disabled.

“All right, Artie, we’ll get you in,” Cam said. “You’re going to go out there and you’ll hike the ball to Joe Montana, okay?”

“I don’t want to play center,” I said. “I want to play quarterback. If I’m gonna play, I’m gonna play quarterback.”

“Well, you can’t do that,” Cam said, “because Joe Montana is quarterback.”

“I know that, but I want to play quarterback. And that’s what I’m going to play.”

We were at a crucial turning point in the game; we were driving and needed to score and time wasn’t on our side. Cam didn’t get what the fuck I was thinking, which was very simple: I wanted to see just how much arrogance I could get away with.

“Listen, I don’t understand,” Cam said, turning around, looking for help, from anyone.

“The DirecTV guys told you to put me in, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re all getting paid here.”

“And they’re paying you. And I’m not playing unless I can play quarterback, which means you have a problem.”

At that point the publicist girl from the locker room came over to try to fix the situation. “Artie, we really want you to get in there—everyone does! Look at all these people rooting for you! And we know you want to play quarterback, but I don’t know if that’s possible, because Joe Montana—”

I can’t tell you how much joy it gave me to be able to say the next words that came out of my mouth, because they were the same words that had pissed me off so badly earlier in the day: “Yeah, I know that. But you know what? That’s kind of not my problem.”

Payback time, bitch! Whatever. I’m sure that broad will become
a show runner on
Modern Family
or some sitcom I’ll have my sights set on in the future and she’ll take even greater joy in turning me down than I did in getting her back.

The guys on my team all started laughing when they heard that. “You motherfucker,” one of them said, laughing.

After the girl had a brief conference with Chris and Jim from DirecTV one of them walked over to Joe Montana and told him that Artie was going to come in as quarterback for a few plays.

“Who’s Artie?” Joe asked. Then he looked at me. “This guy?” He was dumbfounded. “Can you even play? . . . Can you throw?”

I knew what he was thinking, because I looked like a Make-A-Wish guy in my too-tight jersey. “Yeah, man, I can play,” I said.

So I replaced Joe Montana, and to make matters worse, since we had no one on the sidelines, Joe had to hike the ball to me. By then he had a real attitude about me and the look on his face said it all. He said he didn’t remember me, which is good because I’d started tallying up all the times in ten years I’d called him either gay or an asshole on the
Stern Show
, and it wasn’t pretty.

I started calling out the numbers: “Blue forty-two!”

And before I got any further, Joe Montana threw me the ball in disgust and jogged out to the sidelines. It didn’t matter, because I was in the pocket and I might not have been mobile, but I could get my arm up high enough to throw. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Joe Montana be right about me—that guy had made a fool of me too many times for nearly twenty years. I had to put an end to that shit.

I looked to Terrell Owens because as the only open receiver with actual professional football instincts he was my only real choice. T.O. was being covered by the one and only Nick DiPaolo, so this was a shoo-in, but for the fact that Deion Sanders was helping Nick out. When T.O. cut to the middle I threw a spiral as hard as I could, which looked to be over his head. And this is where seeing a pro athlete, retired or otherwise, perform up close is just awesome, because T.O. took off past Deion like he had a rocket up his ass and caught up
to the pass. The ball hit him between the numbers and he got a few more yards before Deion grabbed his flag, but it was a great play, so the whole place went nuts and started cheering my name. Joe Montana came out and gave me a high five, and I could not believe any of it was happening; I was having this great moment and finally, for once, Joe Montana wasn’t—because of me! It was a victory I’d been waiting for for a long, long time.

Cam kept me in for the next play, with Joe Manganiello substituted for T.O. I didn’t know this, but Joe had played ball all his life and if he hadn’t taken up acting he would have gone on to the NFL. He’s built like a player, so I thought we could just repeat the same play and get on the board. I told him to run the same pattern and we got set up and hiked the ball. Maria Menounos was in and she put heavy pressure on me but I was able to get a pass off. The only problem was that Joe Manganiello must have forgotten all of his ball knowledge when he started memorizing lines for a living because he cut the wrong way. He’s come on the
Nick and Artie Show
since then and we talked it over and he insists that he knows a post pattern from a down-and-out, but I’m not so sure. Whatever happened, I ended up throwing the ball right into the arms of a player on the other team—Snoop Dogg. I looked over to the sidelines and saw Montana shaking his head. And I couldn’t have been picked off by a worse person because Snoop is such a natural entertainer that he showboated the hell out of it. The network had told us to keep things PG, and considering Snoop’s body of work I guess this was PG for him, but he looked into the camera, drew an imaginary spliff in the air, and took a hit. Then he set the ball down the way you would before a kickoff, slowly got to his knees, and began doggy fucking it until the producers ran on the field and made him stop.

We lost the game, and I was so bitter. I blamed Joe Manganiello, which was bullshit—it wasn’t his fault at all. I’ll say that officially: Joe did the right thing and I didn’t. I did my best to stay away from Snoop in the press room and at the after-party but he kept following
me, saying shit like, “Hey, man, you throw good, you put that football right at my head!” He said that between quips about his new sneaker line, which he joked features steel in the heels so that pimps can properly keep their hoes in line.

I asked him why pimps didn’t just slap their women around with their hands the way other men do.

“A pimp got to keep his hands clean, Artie,” he said. “He don’t want to ruin his nails educating a ho.”

————

As I mentioned earlier, thanks to my amazing employers, the great Chris Long and his team at DirecTV, I got to enjoy the game from the third row on the fifty-yard line, with a bird’s-eye view of the Giants beating the Patriots. And since my cohost, Nick DiPaolo, is from Boston, this afforded me endless opportunities for ball breaking, which is the greatest gift you can give a guy like me. The whole thing even inspired me to write a song about how much Boston sucks, called “Boston State of Mind,” to the tune of Jay-Z’s “New York State of Mind.” It was my first attempt at a rap song, and I’m proud of it because it features lines like these: