When I Invited All of You Over to Watch the “The Big Game,” I Assumed You Knew I Was Talking about Human Chess

I don’t know why you’re all so upset. I’m sorry if there’s some “other event” that you were all more excited about that’s apparently also happening at the exact same time as this party, on the second Sunday in February at 6:30 p.m. But if you were confused by my invitation, that’s on you. I said that I was throwing a party to watch “the big game,” and I think any reasonable person would have understood that I was talking about watching a game of human chess.

That’s right, human chess: thirty-two actors in elaborate, historically authentic costumes as the chess pieces, and two chess grandmasters controlling the action, all of which plays out on the giant chessboard I built in my backyard. Yes, if there’s something other than human chess that people call “the big game,” I’m simply not familiar with it.

Fine, I’ll address your questions and complaints one by one:

• First of all, I don’t see any issue with my choice of words. Human chess is quite literally a big game. Not only that, I can’t think of ANY game that is bigger than human chess. Were you expecting to show up and watch a human-scale version of Chutes and Ladders or maybe Hungry Hungry Hippos played with real hippos? Don’t be ridiculous, you would never want to have to deal with hippos—believe me, it’s enough trouble wrangling the real horses ridden by the human chess knights. No, there’s no game that comes even close to being as big as human chess; therefore, human chess is THE big game.

• Please stop asking if we can turn on a TV. I can’t imagine what TV show or live event you’d want to watch when you could be watching the big game. And anyway, because of the cost of building the giant chessboard, feeding and stabling the horses, and paying the chess-piece actors (who are all in SAG and are not working for scale), I can’t afford a television.

• There WILL be a halftime show. Admittedly, it’s almost never clear when the halfway point of human chess is, but we usually just decide to have halftime at around the four-hour mark (we like to let the grandmasters take their time). Entertainment will be a lute player and a falconer.

• It’s true, in the lead-up to this party, I have been talking a lot about how excited I am for the big game’s ads. The “ads” are the advisors who make sure the actors playing the chess pieces speak in period-accurate ways, stay in character, and don’t spook the horses. The ads ARE very funny, and I DO often quote their jokes (which are about human chess) at the office water cooler the day after the big game.

• NFL is an abbreviation that stands for “Nice, Fun, Large.” After all, human chess is all three of those things.

• Many of you seem to be particularly hung up on the fact that I repeatedly talked to you about whether or not tailor Swift would be attending the big game this year. My tailor, Stephen Swift, comes over to watch the big game whenever I organize one, but he was feeling a little under the weather this year and wasn’t sure he could make it. I don’t know who this singer is that you’re all talking about, but tailor Swift calls his clients “Swifties” and he is engaged to a player who’s played in the big game the past two years—that handsome pawn over there on d4. Stephen also sewed all the costumes worn by the human chess pieces.

• Chips and Dip are the two falcons who will be performing with the falconer at the halftime show. The falconer comes from Upstate New York, which is why his act is called “Buffalo Wings.” You better believe we got Chips and Dip and Buffalo Wings for the big game!

• When I said we’d be “cracking open some cold ones,” I was, of course, referring to what happens when one of the knights gets removed from the board. Knights’ armor stiffens in the chilly February weather, and to be taken off, it has to be “cracked open” with a special tool made for removing knights’ armor in games of human chess. If you didn’t understand that, then why did you all insist on high-fiving me every time I referenced “cracking open some cold ones”? If you want a beverage, I’m more than happy to pour you a flagon of mead.

• Finally, you can all stop shouting at me that today is a Super Sunday. I agree! ANY day of the week is a super day when you get to watch the big game (which, again, is obviously human chess).

Fine, leave if you want, but you’re all still invited back next month for my Oscar watch party. I promise, it’s exactly what it sounds like.