Imbolc New Valentine Moon
It’s here! It’s here! Superbowl Sunday. Christmas for a certain swath of the population. Chips, cheese, beer, groans and cheers.
Superbowl L. Oh, wait. They’re going with Superbowl 50. Abandoning the pretentious Roman numerals. Why? I imagine, too confusing. Superbowl L what? La de da? Laredo? Last?
The fan base is doing their predictably silly things. Yesterday in the Denver Post there was a guy with an orange Darth Vader mask. There will be, too, shirtless pot-bellied men slathered with team colors and shouting incoherently. What’s not to love about American football?
Smart money says Colorado weeps this evening as Cam Newton spirals over the Denver D and into Superbowl history. As the football equivalent of a Cubs fan, I still root for the Vikings. Sort of. So I don’t have the emotional investment that, say, grandson Gabe does. As Gabe says, “The Vikings suck! Broncos rule!”
We’ll be at Jon and Jen’s today, couched and snacked, watching CBS collect the fat rolls as the Superbowl commercial competition heats up again. Then, there’ll be the half-time show. With Coldplay? I thought nobody liked Coldplay. And in between all this fun grown, very large men will push each other around, run and jump, pirouette and smash.
And sneaking up on me occasionally will be this notion of professional football as slow motion human sacrifice. As one commentator on the article that used this phrase said about us Americans, “We love violence.”
