After weeks of anticipation and painstaking preparation, the most holy day of the US calendar is finally upon us. Countless avocados have been mashed to a cheery green pulp, numerous buffalo have sacrificed their wings, and scores of bowls have been filled with highly salted carbohydrates.
The faithful take their places on comfy couches and squashy armchairs, arranged around the warm glow of the television to watch grown men crash into each other and fall down. The less faithful anticipate the stream of talking babies, horses with large feet, and shiny automobile antics.
For those whose sole reason for watching the Bowl known as Super is the advertising, disappointment has become the regular feature. How can the gift of a clever advertisement be enjoyed if it’s been previewed on the morning news media weeks before the big day? This is like opening your Christmas presents on Thanksgiving. By the time you get to Christmas, all the paint has dulled under thousands of greasy fingerprints, and the initial delight has been replaced by a “seen-it-all cynicism.” There’s no longer anything special about it at all.
It’s sad that companies have lost the true meaning of the holiday. The one day when people watch a show live and don’t fast-forward through the commercials, and they take it all away from us. Why should we bother paying attention on the breaks if they’re only going to be running commercials we’ve all seen before? There’s simply no respect for the audience.
And despite the increasing disdain for their viewers, they still expect us to eat the required allotment of junk food. I have learned that the USDA has proclaimed that their normal dietary guidelines are suspended for this day*, and in their place, there is a strict, enforceable, snack food intake requirement. This is to insure that the purveyors of all things crunchy and of dubious nutritional value sell enough to put the industry into the black for the year.
Each person must eat a minimum of three servings from the fried food group, two from the salty group, five from the heavily seasoned, bite-sized meat group, three from the sugary and sticky group, four from the fermented and carbonated beverage group, and six from the dip group. I’ve had to pay expensive fines for not complying with the requirements, and this year I’m taking no chances. Now, not only am I going to be feeling exceptionally queasy on game day, I’m going to be eating leftover chips for months.
*This is not actually true, even if all the components of common party recipes mysteriously go on sale the week before the game, as do sugary beverages and macrobrew beers. The nation’s strategic snack reserve is perilously low around the first weeks of February, and, I’m certain it puts us in considerable danger on the world snack stage.