The honest answer is ... I have no idea why that vehicle was covered in shrimp, other than to say, why WOULDN'T it be?

There were three orders of business at the Meadowlands last Sunday, an unseasonably warm day: follow the Patriots-Bills game at 1 p.m., enjoy our final tailgate of the year, and hope the Jets could beat the Dolphins. Personally, I was also looking forward to a delightful afternoon with my brother, who was making his second appearance of the season...
















The first task was made much easier when the tailgaters next to us opened the back of their SUV to reveal they brought a television...














Interest in the game ran high for a while, as the Bills kept it close for the first half...














But eventually, everyone realized the Bills were not going to pull it out, meaning no matter what happened in the Jets-Dolphins and Ravens-Jaguars games, there would be no home playoff game for us this season.

And I think that realization is what led to the events of the next two hours...out and out drunken, boisterous nuttiness. It was like a fire sale, where everyone felt the need to eat and drink everything we had and enjoy every waning moment of Tailgating 2008.

Before you knew it, people were dancing on cars...














Pops sat back and watched the mayhem while enjoying a cigar and listening to the Giants lose their season finale...














Jeff Bridges was discussed, albeit briefly and at my prompting, yet again...














My cousin's roommate showed up very late, but still managed to get involved in the proceedings (which probably had something to do with the bottle in his hand)...












I'll post another photo of that quartet here, instead of the other one I could post, of one of our group's elderstatesmen napping in his car. He never made it into the game which, as it turned out, might have been for the best...













And then it was time to enter the stadium for the final time this season...

Sometime during the first half, the sun began to set, which was a fitting statement on the Jets' hopes. But while the sunset was breathtaking and beautiful, the Jets' play was not.














But, savvy Jets fans that we are, we didn't allow the goings-on on the field to ruin what was otherwise a terrific day.














I made sure to take time to really enjoy His Holiness' time on the field. I'll post more about this later, but I lingered to watch what may well have been the last snaps of his career...

There was one source of aggravation on the way out of the stadium, as the Jets saw fit to shoot off fireworks after the game. If anyone can tell me why we should have been celebrating a team that was 8-3 and completely crapped the bed with losses in four of their last five (and quite frankly, it would have been 0-5 if not for that incredible luck against Buffalo two weeks prior), I'd appreciate it.

And it was then that we passed the shrimp-covered vehicle. I have no idea why. But at that point, with the Jets' season, once so full of promise, officially dead, it just seemed to make sense...