blog0204

Superbowl Be Damned

My friends say that inevitably I blame everything on Trump, something like Godwin’s law, an obscure argument promulgated in 1990 by attorney and author Mike Godwin, who said that as online discussions grow longer, the probability increases for an eventual comparison involving Nazis or Hitler.

My friends also say that true to Godwin’s law, that I invariably twist and distort all arguments to Hitler, Nazis or the Holocaust or to Trump, not necessarily in that order. There is some legitimacy to these claims as my friends mock me but in every case, the eventual comparisons to either Trump or Hitler are completely appropriate and relevant.

Take the Super Bowl. Because of Trump and the pandemic, I will not be watching it this year, maybe for the first time since I was glued to the first Superbowl on Jan. 15, 1967, when Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers, led by MVP Bart Starr, walloped the Kansas City Chiefs, 35–10, at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. Trump has unleashed so much badness in the country that even though he is an ex-president, he has drained all the joy out of me and made me feel guilty if I turned my attention to anything as trivial as sports and that is why I also did not watch a single inning of the World Series this year, I have no idea of who played and that blasphemy coming from someone who has worshiped baseball through most of my 71 years on the planet, which not so coincidentally is round just like a baseball, I might note.

In the same way, Hitler has made it hard for me to concentrate on such flights of fancy, especially in these times when fewer survivors are able to tell their stories of life in the concentration camps and white nationalists seem to be proliferating while anti-Semitism is on the rise, in no small thanks to Trump’s refusal to repudiate white nationalists, so thank you Hitler and Trump for ruining this time of year and making it unacceptable to watch either the Superbowl or the World Series.

So call me un-American, call me a communist and a socialist, an antifa, an anarchist or a foreigner but I will be elsewhere while millions of others sit through what all too often has been a boring football game and I cannot wrap my head around watching Superbowl LV and seeing only a smattering of fans in the stands, a constant and relentless reminder of the devastation wrought by COVID19.

In saner times, I often enjoyed the halftime show, with performances by superstars like Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Prince, Michael Jackson, U2, Madonna, The Who, Tom Petty and Stevie Wonder and that was always worth the price of the admission, especially the incredible performance by the Stones.

So this year, the headliner for the game is Abel Makkonen Tesfaye. Who? He is better known to his fans as Canadian artist, The Weeknd, and that is not a typo, and he has sold more than 75 million records worldwide and has won three Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards and nine Billboard Music Awards and I have never heard of him but 75 million people have and that makes him a pretty big deal but not to me.

A lot of people watch the game just so they can see the commercials, and there have been some great ones. At the top of many lists is the one from the Jan. 20, 1980, Superbowl XIV, which always seemed a bit odd to use Roman numerals for such an American event, but be that as it may, it featured a bruised and battered Pittsburgh Steeler Mean Joe Greene hobbling off the field when a kid approaches and offers him a Coke and he takes it and the kid seems sad that Mean Joe Greene didn’t even thank him and then Mean Joe Greene turns to the sad boy and tosses him a terrible towel, making the boy’s day. And there’s my all-time favorite from Jan. 31, 1993 for Superbowl XXVII and starring Larry Bird and Michael Jordan who compete with each shooting successively more ridiculous shots, the winner getting Jordan’s Big Mac and fries and the loser has to watch as the food is consumed. Jordan wins when he sinks a shot off the billboard, through the window, off the wall and in, nothing but net.

I expect there will be some very cool commercials again this year but the thing is that until fairly recently, the commercials weren’t shown in advance of the game and were a surprise. Now you can see them before the game and the thrill is gone by kickoff.

So thank you President Biden and I anxiously look forward to the 2021 World Series, where the Yankees will defeat some team and to Superbowl XVI in January 2022 when the Giants will leave the field victorious.

On second thought, I may tune in to this year’s game, if only because of the beer, the hot wings and the pigs in blankets. So dam you Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.