Finding acid at Super Bowl Media Day

NEW ORLEANS -- Attending my first Super Bowl media day I did not anticipate that I’d be watching a reporter trip his face off, but that’s what happened on Tuesday when I went to the Super Dome to cover the annual spectacle.

Even though I’ve been in this business for 12 years, I never covered a Super Bowl before. I was there to shoot a feature that will be running later this week, but I had heard through some back channels that there would be a reporter there for VICE Magazine, attending the media day while tripping on acid.

The reporter, however, is using a pseudonym, Hank A. Knightly, for fear of being boycotted by the NFL in the future. But he agreed to let me write about watching him trip on acid. I mean, WHAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN? I knew I wanted to see.

“I don’t know what will happen,” he said. “I could wind up making snow angels in the middle of the field.”

Hank told me he had five tabs of acid and was going to drop all of them, but not until he was in the building and had everything settled. He didn’t want to go to through security or run into any issues while tripping. Smart strategy. We were texting throughout the morning, and the first time I saw him, he was smiling wide, laughing a bit, saying it just was starting to kick in.

“I’m so glad I didn’t do this before,” going through security, he told me.

Had I not known he had just ingested a sheet of acid, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. But I knew I was the only one in this space of thousands of people who knew he had LSD coursing through his veins. Hank also encouraged me to stick around as long as I could because when the Ravens would be coming in later in the day, that’s when the acid should really be hitting its peak.

Hank and I sporadically texted all morning and before I left, I saw him one more time. He was still smiling, saying that everything seemed louder than it had before. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he was happy because he had gotten into an intense conversation with a former player that seemed enlightening.

Or maybe not. Who the hell knows, he was tripping on acid. The rest of the media day experience really doesn’t matter, since it was all experienced through the prism of wondering if Hank was going to start making snow angels, or worse. Yes there were endless waves of media, people dressed like morons, and tons of players, executives and coaches. I got my feature work done, and soon left.

Hank and I texted all throughout the rest of the day. At one point I asked him where he was going after leaving the Super Dome.

“Hopping on my bike and then down to the French Quarter,” he wrote. “What is one supposed to do after tripping balls at super media day?”

“No idea!” is what I texted back.

Hank made it through the day, and on Wednesday he was writing his piece, due out sometime later in the day. Media day from this point forward will never be as entertaining.