Having grown up in Cincinnati in the 1980s, I watched my beloved Bengals make it to the Super Bowl twice, in 1982 and 1989. As you might recall, they lost (very narrowly, mind you) to Joe Montana and his San Francisco 49ers both times. Like most football fans, I am irrationally belligerent toward rivals, so the entire experience left me with decades of bitterness and anger toward the 49ers, the city of San Francisco, the colors scarlet and gold, streetcars, Better Cheddar crackers (with their cursed "sourdough baked right in"), and even—taking a very homonymic view of things—the state of Montana itself.
Keep reading »