Stupor Blow Funday

* I am very happy for my 85+ year-old uncle because back in the mists of time he was a steadfast Chicago Cardinals fan, but not as much as he is a White Sox fan. Chicago sports loyalties being what they are (in that generation especially) he never fully embraced the Bears when the Cardinals moved. In fact he used to say "I'm still a Cardinal fan, they just play their games in St. Louis." He is a throwback to the day in this town when if you were a Bears fan you were a Cubs fan, and if you were a Cardinals fan you were a White Sox fan. Nowadays that seems unreal to most people living here now, but it's true. So I'm sure he'll be rooting for the Cardinals, even if they are in Phoenix now.

* I have seen every quarter of every Super Bowl ever played. The more glitzy and acceptable to the general culture and media-centered the event has become the less I have liked it. I like football much better when, like barber shops used to be, it was a refuge for guys. I don't really care how that sounds. Football was better when it was only a guy thing.

* I don't care if you swept his stage and he was nice to you, Bruce Springsteen is the most over-rated music act in the world. He can't sing, his lyrics are forced and disingenuous and did I mention he sounds like a fat cat getting run over by grandma's rocking chair? I remember a bunch of us sitting around the lounge at Columbia Chicago when he was just showing up on the radio and us looking at one another in disbelief. One of the crew repeated the lyrics we'd been hearing over and over...

But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back you wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks. You said, Here's your mirror and your ball and jacks But they're not what I came for, and I'm sure you see that too I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency and your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free...

then she deadpanned it and said "if I write that people would say it's the stupidest collection of syllables ever strung together. This guy sings it, and not very well, and he's the next big thing. What record company guy is he blowing behind the bar and will he loan me his phone number too?"

Can't be said better.

* I haven't watched a half-time show. Ever. If you're looking for a lock to bet put your money on that streak continuing.

* I have two $20 squares, one each in separate games. One is 7-7 and the other is 7-0. I stand to win $200 each time the score ends with those numbers in the first three quarters, and $400 if those numbers finish the final score. Football scores are mostly calculated in 7's and 3's, so 7's and 0's tend to be prominent. I have never won a football square in my entire life. Not ever. With my luck the score will have little to do with 7's and 0's.

* I come from the era when if a guy scored a touchdown and pranced around the end zone like a thin-legged prima donna ballerina he'd be talking out his ear hole the next time he touched the ball. It is not true that "celebration is a cultural thing" given to our sports by black people. It is not in black culture to lord over people you have just fooled like a taunting weakling goofball who only scores once every ten years and has never been there before. Walter Payton used to hand the ball to a lineman to spike and go to the sidelines. His mantra? "Act like you've been here before." And he was black.

* In conclusion I suppose it can be said that what I yearn for are the days when football was a guy's refuge, people who taunted other people had their necks broken for being assholes, and the half time show was a marching band making designs (and not the Stanford Marching Band that was once reputed to have marched out a rising penis right there at midfield... I think that's an urban legend anyhow). But I guess I'll have to wait to move through a black hole so I can go back in time.