“The sad fact is the game has become secondary to the antics and the hype. And I can’t decide whether I’m alright with that.
The first real memory I have of the Super Bowl and its parade of insanity was in the third grade. The Chicago Bears were dancing on television and rapping in one of the most overt trash-talking incidents of all-time. The song was so flashy and spurring (read: disrespectful to the Patriots) that even the backup quarterback, Steve Fuller, had a verse.”
Dexter Manley
dexterslibrary.com
Superbowl Sunday has become one of the two quintessentially American holidays, right up there with Black Friday. Days when the ugliest part of Americana are flaunted in front of the wold. We display what kind of horrible, vicious, mindless consumers that everyone in the world assume we are.
Maybe that’s me. Although the fact that people are regularly trampled to death trying to get in a Walmart in November is at least evidence in my favor.
The Superbowl is worse for me. My lack of participation in Black Friday is viewed as an anomaly. But to not know what happened during the Superbowl? I can feel suspicious rising all around me. To not care about football? Not care about the Superbowl! Someone check this man for signs of terrorism.
‘“This is Super Sunday!” I screamed. “I want every one of you worthless bastards down in the lobby in ten minutes so we can praise God and sing the national anthem!”
Hunter S. Thompson
After being forcefully pulled from his Superbowl Sermon on the Balcony.
I remember the first time I felt this suspicion. It was in college around the table with some drinking buddies. It was the Superbowl of the Wardrobe Malfunction. The date when American was outraged at a titty covered with a pasty, but Laughed Out Loud at a horse farting in a woman’s face. My friends were talking about it at length. I drank and listed, for… i don’t know how long. It was late in the night and I might have been fortified with drink. Had I been sober I might have known just enough to understand that my ignorance on this subject would paint me as, at best, a sort of cultural idiot.
I wasn’t sober, so I asked, “What are you guys talking about?”
It stopped the conversation cold as everyone tried to come to grips with the idea that there was one among them who didn’t Know. They explained it to me, but to this day I think they tolerated my presence in the same way on tolerates a homeless man who always sits on the same street corner, present, but not a participant in any meaningful way.
“I have watched every Superbowl. It’s important for man to have a ritual and the Superbowl occurs once a year, on a Sunday… so at least I’m trying.”
Lewis Black.
Here we are again. Part of me feels like I should bake a pizza, grab a beer and participate. I don’t have to like it but just go. Like a man with no religion who goes to church every Sunday, go and pay lip service. Watch it for the commercials. Lots of people do that, right? If football is not your thing, Corporate America has spent billions to make commercial messages that will dazzle the populous into submission.
But I probably won’t. I just don’t have the will and, besides, there is other crap to do.
I don’t know what that says about me anymore or my relationship with my native land or it’s people that I don’t even feel the urge to pretend anymore. Maybe it’s me and my natural contrariness. Maybe there really is something evil brewing behind the Pop singers doing Pepsi commercials and endless hype around a game that could never live up to that level.
Just do me a favor. Someone let me know how it ends.
Just in case.
