Like everybody else in the whole wide universe I watched the
Super Bowl on Sunday. Well, I didn’t actually watch it—more like glanced at it.
I had it streaming on my computer with the sound off while I really watched on
TV the recap of the weekend games in the English Premier League, enjoying the
sight of true footballers falling to the ground without being touched, trying
to get a penalty called on their opponents. Now that’s sport!
I used to be an enthusiastic watcher of the games of the
National Football League. Two things turned enthusiasm into indifference: the scabbing of players
against their own union when a strike was called in 1987 and the increasing
militaristic posturing and chauvinism associated with the sport. (It amused me
to see on Sunday that the suits of the studio analysts were adorned with flag pins,
assuring the viewers that the opinions being voiced were those of true Amurricans.)
Since I had no emotional baggage attached to either the
Baltimore Ravens or the San Francisco 49’ers, my initial, rather muted, rooting
preference for the latter team rested on the fact that I had visited the Bay
City twice and Baltimore only once. However, soon after the game began, I
noticed that the Frisco quarterback was covered with tattoos, so I resurrected
my love for Maryland crab cakes and switched allegiance. (Do you have to be
some kind of genius to give people money to inject ink into your body?)
After a lot of falling down and getting up
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xus57BaY3hI) came halftime and the Super Bowl
halftime show—which was basically a clone of a beer commercial without the beer.
A stage miraculously appeared, along with a bunch of young stooges who surrounded it jumping up and down with their hands in the air—but empty of beer bottles
with labels facing the camera. And on that stage was someone apparently named
Bouncy, who did what she could to live up to her name. I cannot comment on the
content of her songs (they may very well have matched Schubertian Lieder for
all I know—sound was off, remember), but I can point out something that I have
been aware of for a long time: the triteness of the clichéd wiggles and
twitches that pass for rock choreography. Seen it once, seen it a hundred
times.
The best part of the game was, of course, the blackout. Now
I had something to root for: a hope that the lights would not go back on that
evening and that the buttoned-up and anal National Football League would have
to improvise. Could it marshall the troops and come back the next day (or evening)?
God, I wanted to see the league have to scramble for a solution like after a
loose fumble. Unfortunately, someone found some electrical tape and spliced
together a few wires.
Ruined the rest of my evening.
