XLII

It wasn't actually Christmas, but it felt like it. Tots running amock, dodging and weaving, smaller kids working hard to keep up with bigger kids...

OK, not christmas, but certainly holiday-ish. It was Super Bowl Sunday, of course, and I couldn't really care less. I mean, it's just another sporting event, but it's one that rides such a rediculous wave of hyperbole and hype that is has trully achieved holiday-like stature. Families come together, meals are planned, groceries are purchased in astonishing ammounts.

So the game was on, mostly to provide the appropriately festive background noise for the day. One friend, and frequent reader, brought her children by to play with the Ginlettes, while their dad was away watcing the game with actual SPORTS FANS.

The girls (being roughly similar in age) shrieked for four hours while making a magnificent mess, and the boys, both bracketing the 1-year mark, made grunting noises and chased each other up and down the hall.

Then another Lounge-friendly family, dad sharing my view on the entertainmet value of professional sports, arrived with their brood-of-three, and we had ourselves a splendid tot-fiesta....

I made hot wings and drank beer...

Then, in a lull, I found myself staring transfixed at the flashing blinking colors on the screen. The reminder was everywhere, in case anyone forgot, I suppose, that this was Super Bowl XLII.

"42," for those sports fans who can't read Roman numerals (and really, I have to assume there are a lot of you out there...)

(And no, this isn't going to spin into a discussion about Douglas Adams...)

42. There have been 42 of these fucking monstrosities, and there is no end in sight. It's gone on longer than I've been alive, and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

But the question is, how far can it go? Next year will be XLIII. Then it will be XLIV, and so on... Eight years from now it will be "Super Bowl L," and that will just look stupid on the marketing ads.

But seriously, how far will it go? It's not easy to contemplate a world without the Super Bowl, but like any endeavor pursued by man, there is destined to be an end. Rome ended (although their numers live on...). The British Empire shrunk. Istanbul was Constaninople... Everything comes to an end...

But when you uses a sequential numering system in the title of your thing, whatever your thing is, it suggests that you are counting down to the end, or at least counting up the number of times you were able to skate with your shiny pile of bullshit.

How far will it go?? Will there be a Super Bowl C? CC? Could there possibly be an M? Will it outlast the United States itself? I mean, thanks to the eforts of Cheney, we are well on our way to the nostalgic dung heap of history (but I digress...)

It's the same problem faced with other numerically-titled events. UFC 83, for instance, or the 80th Anual Acadamy Awards. Good lord, 80 years of glad-handing movie stars for doing the easiest job in the world??

When does the relevance run out? The problem with the Super Bowl is this strange holiday aura. I spent the afternoon with 5 adults, not one of whom gave one rat's ass about the game whatsoever. Yet, we celebrated, in a sense of speaking, if gnawing on snacks around the tall table counts as celebrating. We celebrated a holiday we did not believe in, and that demonstrates the reason why the game will go on.

The end of Super Bowl Sunday, if an end shall come, will not be in my life time. Not, that is, unless our alien overlords come down and destroy us during half-time...