Well, Sunday's the big day, and congratulations you lucky cheese-for-brains. If you're not from the great state of Wisconsin, I'm sure you'll be joining me in my yearly ""my team didn't make it again"" ritual that includes drowning my sorrows in a bowl of Velveeta cheese dip. Sunday night, come 6:30 p.m. hundreds of millions of Americans will be huddled around their television sets (however many inches wide they may be), in time for the Packers-Steelers smack down—a game that is certainly looking to be a real barn burner.
As a Twin Cities native, I was thoroughly disheartened by the pathetic and poorly written soap opera that was the Vikings' 2010-11 season. With Randy Moss dissing our homegrown fried chicken, Brett Favre sending pics of his manhood to rival cheerleaders and the canning of our less-than-adequate head coach, Brad Childress, the Packers' late-season success only rubbed salt into an already festering wound. Although, let's be honest—this isn't the first time the Vikes have let us down.
I've always seen Super Bowl Sunday as a picturesque representation of the many aspects of American culture, particularly the relationship we have with one of our best friends, the friend that never talks back to us when we're sad: food. We're one fat ass country. Keeping this in mind, it's easy to see how such a perfect excuse to go hog wild on tortilla chips, cheesy poofs and seven layer bars in front of your friends and family devoid of shame is so revered in this day and age.
The Super Bowl is like Thanksgiving without all of the forced family pleasantries as well as a higher pizza-to-overall-food ratio. Come Sunday, binge eating will not only be acceptable, it may very well be enforced in some residences. This Sunday is the one day of the year when it's OK to forget about Darfur for a few hours and just plain gorge our selves without guilt. Why? Because we can.
There are reasons besides food that convince viewers who don't really care about the actual game to tune in, the foremost of which is the commercials. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now, the commercials become the main event, with little breaks in between for some football clips. The funny thing is, commercials are usually what many of us hate most about TV. Yet somehow Superbowl Sunday manages to briefly change our moral code to not only bear them, but to look forward to them.
Sadly, the commercials seem to have gone downhill a bit in recent years. I remember the first one that made me laugh. A mosquito bit a guy who had just drank a whole bottle of tabasco sauce with pizza, prompting him to fly off into the woods and explode. Since then, I haven't missed a Super Bowl commercial, though they seem to have slowly devolved in both diversity of products and humor.
Last year, there was definitely an inordinate number of commercials for the same crappy brands of light beer. If you ask me, there are only so many ways to amusingly show your lack of manliness for not drinking Bud Light, and they've all been done before. How light beers became so popular with the football crowd I will never understand (maybe it goes back to that fat problem our country has). I wish companies that sell good beer would show a guy on a treadmill, holding up a bottle of their beer and saying, ""Exercise. Thirty minutes of this every day and you don't have to choke down a case of that piss beer to get drunk.""
Well anyway, the day is nearing its end, and I have a lot of preparing to do for the big game, including a laundry list of salty snacks and beverages to buy. Not to mention I'd better throw in my ""Best of the Black Eyed Peas,"" mix because they'll be playing the halftime show this year and I want to catch up on all of their long-standing hits. Oh—they don't have any? OK. Nevermind then.
Are you unbearably excited for the big game? E-mail Andrew at aplahr@wisc.edu to voice your overwhelming anticipation!
