Something that is so close, but still so far out of reach...

Waking up to a thunderstorm sets a weird mood for the day...

Last night, everyone you know was watching the Super Bowl, or, at the very least, they were in a room with a TV tuned to Fox. The game was awesome, though the outcome was not what I had hoped (in a room of fifty people, I was one of two people rooting for the Pats), because I was hoping to witness history and instead saw the Patriots turn into the 1997 Seattle Mariners (120+ wins, out in the divisional round of the playoffs). There are many things to say about the game, and if that's what you want to hear, go listen to ESPN radio, watch ESPN, read one of ten thousand articles on ESPN.com, or simply wait for your copy of ESPN: The Magazine to arrive in the mail. I finally reached my football threshold and am glad that from here on out it'll be basketball and baseball.

I did, however, want to make a comment about that most hyped of rituals: The Halftime Show. Jonny made the point as we watched Tom Petty and Co. play their socks off that in a way, that moment took a redeeming step for American Culture. I think he's right. We live in a world that does not look kindly on the culture we've cultivated here in the U.S. And who can blame the world. We act like global police when our interests could be affected, but subscribe to isolationism when they don't. We lead the way in a Western Culture that prizes the quick fix, the easy out, materialism to the nth degree, instant gratification, disposable celebrities and filtered truth. And, in a way, the Super Bowl is the culmination of so many terrible parts of our culture. Commercials cost a hundred thousand dollars a second, runaway capitalism is on display at every turn, everything has corporate sponsorship and hundreds of millions of dollars are spent for the sake of grown men playing a children's game. Of course, we're all complicit in the spectacle. I love football and wouldn't miss the Super Bowl for anything short of a natural distaster. In a way, that's the most depressing part. I embrace with my actions the culture which I tell you I despise. What a tool am I.

Anyway, back to Jonny's comment about redemption. In a global society which features fewer and fewer true communal moments, when a large portion of the population are intensely focused on one event, occur, it is refreshing to know that in one moment, the entire country and a lot of the world is bobbing along to "Running Down a Dream" and "American Girl." The Super Bowl is the last bastion of real shared experience in this country. At one time, and album or movie release would be so ubiquitous that you literally could not walk down the street without finding someone who had shared in the very same experience you had. Gone With The Wind, Sgt. Pepper, the last episodes of M*A*S*H and even Seinfeld all held real cultural significance. Not even the election of our next leader will resound the way those did, because not even 50%of eligible voters will cast their ballots in November. The internet and 500 DirecTV channels have precipitated this change, for better or worse. We have a million different choices for entertainment and information, and we rarely come close to these grand moments of singular consciousness anymore that we should take them any way we can get them. Knowing that more than a billion people were watching the same (American) musician play the same songs at the same time is comforting, allowing us to forget everything that lurks under the surface of an event like the Super Bowl for just a few moments.

As I only have one reader (and not even the same one each time) I'll tentatively make the call.

Comments? Questions? Arguments? Hate Mail?