Are you ready, people? Time to strap on your aprons!
Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner, and I don’t know about you, but I am having one heck of a time figuring out what all those numbers mean, i.e. Super Bowl “XVI.” Did somebody just make that up or what? For anyone who is as unsure as I am about the significance of these exalted Roman numerals, I think it’s safe to say that in a more comprehensible numbering system, Sunday’s game is approximately Super Bowl 947. Give or take a couple.
As in the past, this Super Bowl has something for everyone. Except for, perhaps, actual football fans. When you check out the final scores accumulated over the last four decades of Super Bowls, the games themselves are oftentimes about as exciting as watching paint dry at a monastery. I mean, compared to the game, we’re likely to see fiercer encounters between Rosie and The Donald this year. This sad fact leaves football devotees grumbling at the water cooler on post-Super-Bowl-Monday because the score was a little lopsided. Like 319 to zip for example. But for the half dozen or so of us occupying space on the planet that could happily skip the game because we’re here for the cool commercials, eye-popping half-time show, and artery-jamming food, we eagerly await Super Sunday.
Speaking of half-time shows, the wardrobe-challenged Janet Jackson presented the liveliest Super Bowl exhibition – and I do mean exhibition – a few years ago when a major part of her anatomy fell out of her costume, tragically resulting in re-wind buttons spontaneously combusting all over America. And when the Rolling Stones and their defibrillators gave us their half-time extravaganza last year, they confirmed what everyone knew all along: that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards officially expired in 1987. But thanks to the modern miracle of science and food preservatives, these bad boys keep turning up in various venues a la’ “Weekend at Bernie’s.” And you thought “Start Me Up” was just the name of one of their songs.
This year’s selection of Prince as half-time entertainer was a stroke of pure genius. With Prince in the house, the coaches have an automatic ace up their sleeves. Say, for example, Team A is being stomped by Team B, which is pretty much a no-brainer because – duh! – this is the Super Bowl. Coach A is required by law or possibly the U.S. Constitution to fire up his men at half time so they can come back and clean the clocks of Team B during the second half, thereby restoring their damaged dignity.
“OK, Tiny,” says Coach A, speaking directly to his smallest player who, at a mere 411 pounds, is routinely ground into the Astroturf by more burly members of the team such as the cheerleaders. “Look alive out there because if you can’t pull it together, I’m bringing in Prince to relieve you in the third quarter. You boys exchange uniforms after the half-time show.”
So Tiny, majorly creeped out at the thought of donning pink spandex tights and purple velvet jacket, morphs into a raging maniac capable of head-butting other players straight out of the earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, Tiny – not the brightest bulb in the chandelier – aims his newly-acquired strength and motivation at the 97-year old guy sweeping out the locker room.
Congregated in the locker room next door is Team B, whose players consist primarily of convicts out on bail. Although his team pretty much mopped the field with Team A in the first half of the game, Coach B nevertheless goads his boys on to stellar new heights by reminding them of the 72-pound Super Bowl rings that await the winners.
As the second half veers still further into disproportionate scoring territory, the winning quarterback moseys off to the sidelines where he spends the duration of the game idly chain smoking with the media while the offensive line busily re-negotiates their contracts.
For the hapless sports fans watching at home, this is when the commercials become much more riveting. I don’t know about you, but I’m waiting to see what’s new with the ubiquitous beer commercials – and let me go on record here by saying that I still miss those frogs. But in lieu of the frogs, who are now retired and living out the remainder of their little green lives in expensive Miami condos, my new favorite beer commercial is the one about the streaker. It features a ball “team” of Clydesdales weighing approximately 12 tons apiece whose game is suddenly interrupted by a shorn sheep, i.e. the “streaker,” that bursts forth from the line-up of shaggy sheep onlookers and runs startlingly amuck around the field before stopping to shake its shorn little backside at the camera. I’m telling you, people – this one was sheer genius. (Sorry about that, friends, it just sort of slipped out.)
But when all else fails, when the game is a total blow out, the commercials uninspired and Prince has pranced his last pirouette, it’s time to bring on the snacks because Super Bowl fare is American junk food at its best.
Estimates of food dollars generated by the Super Bowl come in at about $55 million. That’s a lot of wieners, people! Tummy teasers like nachos, wings, dips, ribs, salsa, chips, chili dogs, pizza, and barbeque abound. And, I daresay, there will be no washing this down with milk. No-siree-bob – the funds depleted for beer on Super Sunday rival the economy of several small nations or possibly Paris Hilton’s annual perfume bill. With all that beer flowing on Sunday, an even larger consumption of antacids will, therefore, be ingested on Monday.
And if that isn’t reason enough to make Super Sunday a three-day weekend, I don’t know what is.
Gale Hammond is a 23-year Morgan Hill resident. Reach her at
Ga*********@ao*.com
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