In all honesty, Buffalo may be the greatest city on the face of the planet.

For what it lacks in flash and flair, it makes up tenfold in heart and soul, and nowhere is this displayed more prominently than at Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park.

Yes, the home of the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

No one will ever confuse the city of Buffalo, it’s inhabitants, or the Bills themselves for being the most beautiful things on the planet, but in the end, that stuff is overrated anyway. They matter not in the land of blue cheese and hot sauce.

And to top it all off, there is absolutely no doubt that this city and stadium are the Zubaz Capital of the world. Nowhere will you find such an abundance of the beautiful pants. What can I say, Buffalonians just love Zubaz.

My favorite thing to do IN LIFE is to go to Buffalo Bills games with friends and family up in Buffalo. Nothing beats getting up at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday after a night of drinking, slipping on some Bills Zubaz and my Alex Van Pelt jersey, throwing the keg, grill and deep fryer in the car and heading to the Ralph. NOTHING, GOD DAMMIT, NOTHING.

In light of this, we here at ZubazPants.com thought it would be a good idea to venture up to Buffalo for one of our little outings. Seeing as how many of us attended the University at Buffalo, it was an easy task to round up the troops for a little reunion. So, back in September, we hit up E-bay, snagged 15 Bills-Dolphins tickets and prepared for “ZubazPants.com Goes to Ralph Wilson Stadium.”

And one more thing before I get started. Seeing as how fun it is to go to Bills-Dolphins games up in Buffalo with the B-lo squad of ZubazPants.com, we decided to also grab some tickets for the Bills-Dolphins down in Miami for December’s contest between the two AFC East rivals. But, in a twist, the Yorktown unit of Zubaz Soldiers will be heading down for that Zubaz mission. Should be a grand old time just like the Flintstones theme song says, and we will bring you all the Zubaz antics when that time comes.

But for now, onto the Buffalo adventure …

After a night where you end up passed out in a hallway closet … like this …

… you would imagine that it would be quite difficult to get your hungover self up at the crack-ass of dawn the following morning. This is not the case however, because for whatever reason, the mere thought of being in the presence of “The Ralph” could raise a paralyzed man up from the ground like Lazarus. As soon as myself, Roosta Da Neezy, Ian Valentine and Pauly Feuer heard that alarm at 7:30, we shot out of bed like the Undertaker gets up in the ring. I even did that classic head turn he does, except instead of looking at an opponent like Kamala, I looked straight at our keg of Molson Canadian.

We had a date with madness at The Ralph, and there would be no tardiness.

Once our crew assembled at la casa de Pauly Feuer, packed up the essentials (the keg, turkey fryer, grill, chicken wings, blue cheese, mozzarella sticks and the rest of our feast), and got geared up for the day of reckoning, we were ready to depart.

From left to right: Zubazkateers Paul Feuer, Ian Valentine and Jim Byrne; the forum’s Swankywires and Jbrums (Pumpkin Pauly's girlfriend)

Thankfully, the stadium was only 20 minutes away, and upon arrival at 9:00 a.m., it was about that time to begin the festivities.

Now, one of the best things about going to an NFL game, or any sporting event if done correctly, is this. There will be four chapters to your day, two great long ones, one amazing short one and one sad, tired one. The first, and one of the long ones, is the tailgate. Shit man, I could be happy just going to tailgate. It is really the best time you can imagine. Friends, food, beers and all around drunken jubilation. What more can you ask for?

Once that is done however, your days isn’t even close to being over. Next, you have the drunken flock to the stadium. This is another of my favorite parts, but hell, they are all my favorite parts except for the last part. Making your way to the gates in a drunken stupor is really what life is all about. Never will you see the sights that you do when you make this trek to your seats inside the stadium. All the freaks are out, and they are all shit-faced and totally cocked off of whatever means of inebriation they decided to go with that day. Don’t listen to Michael Kay folks, because first off A) the guy is a stiff and B) he thinks fans that get wasted before games are morons. Yeah, well you know what, fuck you Michael Kay. Why don’t you go give Steinbrenner a rimmer.

I’m sorry, where was I again? Ah yes, the drunken cattle drive. I’m telling you, it’s a great time. People are chanting, screaming, talking shit to the opposition’s fans, it’s just an event like no other.

Third, of course, is the game itself. In the end, this is what you bought the tickets for, so enjoy the closest thing we have to the days of Roman Gladiators.

Finally, there is the walk back to the parking lot and car, and then the drive home. Either you are happy-sad or sad-sad during this. Happy-sad if your team wins, sad-sad if your team loses. No matter what though, you are sad because this great day has come to a close and you feel like you have been broken in half because you drank 12 beers and ate a foot long meatball sub before 10 a.m. What the hell are you complaining about though, you live in America and just destroyed half of your brain. Smile, why don’t ya.

All of this brings me to part one of this tale … the tailgate. Seeing as how it is only part one, I am pretty much going to let the pictures tell the tale. I know you have already spent five precious minutes of your time watching this, and need to get back to your “Angel” re-runs starring David Boreanz. Trust me, I’ve been there.

Commence the tailgating action …

Firing up the grill …

Ian Valentine and Roosta Da “Wolvie” do a lil’ praying before the …

10 o’clock keg stands …

And flip-cup

Needless to say, my outfit got many a reaction all day. One person thought I was autistic, while another said, “I approve of your outfit man!” in about as enthusiastic a voice as you can imagine. He wasn’t done there though, as he went on to say, “I’d let you fuck my sister! Her husband might get pissed, but I don’t give a shit!” This was all happening as I was waiting in line to use the port-a-potty. Yes, I know, I never should have used the porta-potty in the first place. But I promise you I pissed in the parking lot the next ten times before the game. I wanted to class it up that first time. After the guy who was talking to me lost interest in my attire, he and his friends focused their attention on a group of three people, two of which had apparently just found their “Uncle Jim” at the game. The Zubaz lovers from before proceeded to chant “Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim! Uncle Jim!” until the group decided to depart that particular scene. You have to love the game-day interaction between fans united by Zubaz.

Back to the slide show …

Someone tried to do the old smack the top of the bottle with another bottle trick to Feuer, except they used a marinara jar and it exploded all over Paul’s hand.

While Valentine and Roosta laughed it up at Paul’s expense—as usual—Paul plotted his revenge …

And dishes out a chair shot to Valentine

And in case you were wondering, that 40 oz. Paul was drinking is called “Silver Thunder.” It is actually brewed in a kiddie pool out in the back of a Buffalo bodega. Good stuff indeed.

Besides all the drunken action that took place in our cozy little piece of the parking lot, there was also a damn fine feast.

And you can mostly thank this man—The Senator—for that. The Senator—a very good Zubaz friend and former roommate to Roosta, Feuer, Valentine and myself—brought the heavy artillery in for this game. He brought the turkey fryer and all of its glory

The chicken wings we cooked up in the fryer and tasted amazing. Pontillo’s hot sauce and Rootie’s blue cheese took it to the next level

Roosta enjoys the chicken wing feast

And so does this fucking nun that tried “Snoop Dogging” our shit

One last photo-op before the trek to the stadium … my balls needed some grabbing, what can I say?

12:45 came and it was about that time to start flocking towards the stadium. At this time we were all pretty good and shitfaced, and it really makes me sad thinking about how fun all of this was. I want to be there right now! Ah well, what are you going to do. Some of the last moments before the great migration were pretty vintage, like when we asked pretty much everyone that passed by if they wanted to do a keg stand. About 25 percent of those asked obliged, and good times were had all around. It’s hard to pass up free beer.

The crowd began heading towards the stadium and, as usual, there were many sites to be seen. There were two guys dressed as Ricky Williams complete with the jerseys, dreads and ALWAYS questionable blackface paint on, but I don’t have those photos as of press time. I know someone in my crew had them, I’ll just have to track them down and add them later on.

But, what I do have is even better than the two schlubs in Ricky Williams gear. Words cannot even describe, so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking for me.

The torch is lit …

The fish is lifted …

The shirtless Zubaz man prepares to light the fish …

The fish is dropped and the crowd boos wildly

Thanks to a Zubaz-homing device implanted in my cranium, my eyes were drawn to this scene as soon as it was in vision. Not surprisingly though, so was everyone else’s. How could they not be? Here we had a shirtless man in Zubaz (clearly “the crazy friend” of this group) along with his cronies on top of a souped-up Buffalo Bills vehicle attempting to light a giant fish on fire. For those not aware, the fish represents the Miami Dolphins, and the popular saying goes “squish the fish” prior to these contests. Yes, we know that a Dolphin is not a fish, it’s just that that rhyme works so damn well.

This little spectacle was priming up to be the highlight of the day, but unfortunately these buffoons dropped the fish and the crowd went into a booing frenzy.

Our attention was lost and we headed inside Ralph Wilson Stadium.

I won’t bore you with the details of the game, but I will have you know that we consumed more beer inside the stadium at $6 a clip, which is exactly how much each of us put in for the keg. Bogus. Whatever though, we were hammered and loving every second of the action …

Notice the man to the upper right of me

The funniest part of the game had to be the guy in the picture above. He and his friends were from South Africa, and were the epitome of the basketball scene in Coming to America with Eddie Murphy. You know the part of the movie where Eddie (who is foreign to America as he hails from Africa in the film) is shouting things that don’t make sense like “In the face!” Well, the guy in the picture was Eddie. He was shouting non-sequiturs like (imagine this in the voice of Rob Schneider from The Waterboy, it’s the closest thing I can think of) “They can’t play without their knee-caps!” and “Bills are the champions!” (during halftime nonetheless) all game long. I started chatting him up about what he thought of our country, and his response was “I LOVE AMERICA!” in the typical foreigner voice. Of course he did, he was at a Bills game.

In case you were wondering, the Bills did win the game, by a score of 20-14. Here are some more pictures from inside …

Some guy jumps onto the field, runs around, and proceeds to get his ass kicked by security. Always a hilarious occasion

Eric Moulds scores a touchdown

Paul has had three too many Silver Thunders and goes down

A crowd shot

Billy Buffalo makes an appearance

Paul has recovered!

But succumbs once again …

Kelly Holcomb and the Bills look for a score against Zach Thomas and the ‘Phins

After the game, which was close until the end, we scraped ourselves up and made it back to the parking lot for a sober-up session. We tossed the ball around for a bit, and then decided to head on back home, thus ending “ZubazPants.com Goes to Ralph Wilson Stadium.”

Stay tuned for the second part of this series coming in December …

Closing time at “The Ralph”

Questions or comments? E-mail us at zubazfiles@yahoo.com