2/10/24

 Saturday, February 10, 2024

In bed by 9:30, awake and up at 3:39 with Lilly in my bedroom.  Let Lilly out.  32°, high of 37°, sunny day ahead, wind WNW at 12 mph, 7-14/23.  Sunrise at 6:56, sunset at 5:15, 10+18.  Solar noon, 12;05, altitude 33°.

Treadmill; pain.  Bad shoulder pain on awakening.  I didn't apply diclofenac before going to bed.  The wrist is still pretty OK.  Ditto back and IC/CPP.   00:00 & 0.00

I'm grateful . . .    

Super Bowl and Las Vegas.  It seems so appropriate that this year's Super Bowl is being staged in Las Vegas, Sin City.  Marx wrote that "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people (das Opium des Volkes)."  A case may be made that for many Americans, especially males, it is sports, especially professional sports, and most especially professional football that is the opiate of the masses, the analgesic that distracts from the painful realities of life.  Ordinary Romans during the Empire were entertained and distracted from the harshness of life by watching dangerous chariot races, or mock battles, or lethal gladiatorial combats, or by watching threats to the Empire devoured by lions in the Coliseum.  Today we have NFL football where every Sunday afternoon and evening, every Monday and Thursday evening, and at occasional other times, tens of millions of spectators watch men throw one another violently to the ground, causing predictable injuries in every contest and for most contestants, long term brain injury from multiple concussions.   Probably more than 100,000,000 Americans will watch tomorrow's Super Bowl.  Some will pay exorbitant prices to see the game live at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.  The price of tickets has quite a range but the average cost per ticket sold is $8,600, according to StubHub. The range is anywhere from around $6,077 to as high as $125,992.  The stadium seats about 65,000, so ticket revenues alone should exceed half a billion dollars.  Most Americans will watch the game and accompanying festivities on television,  at home, in bars, or with friends at Super Bowl parties.   Companies will pay an estimated $6.5M to place a 30-second ad during the game.  That doesn't include the production costs for the commercial.  CBS is expected to realize about $650M from the game.  ViacomCBS agreed to pay $2.1 billion each year for 11 years to the NFL to retain Sunday afternoon games and to air the Super Bowl for three seasons, including Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas.

Am I the only one to think that there is something pagan about all this?  That NFL football is much more important in most Americans' lives than religion is?  How many hours per week does the average American spend (I use the term intentionally) on religion?  How many on football?  How many people are as interested in their spiritual welfare as they are in how their team is doing in the standings? How much does money from religion add to the GDP and how much from football?  

My journal entry from last year's Super Bowl Sunday:  Super Bowl LVII - The Nation Celebrates Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.  How many Super Bowl Sundays have I done something other than watching NFL football?  Work on a painting?  Read a poem?  Watch a movie or a documentary?  Go for a drive in the country? Make some soup or bake some bread?  Take a nap?  Daydream? How much of my life, before 5 or 6 years ago, did I spend watching NFL players bash one another, throw one another to the ground, run into one another reminding us of the sometimes deadly equation Force=MassXVelocity?  Ingfei Chen has an article in today's online New Yorker titled "The Forgotten History of Head Injuries in Sports."  "To a great extent, we collude as consumers of violence for the sake of entertainment. Damar Hamlin’s terrifying cardiac arrest reminded viewers that N.F.L. players aren’t action figures; Tua Tagovailoa’s multiple concussions, and their consequences, have shown that the N.F.L.’s much-touted concussion protocols have left plenty of danger in the game. And yet we keep watching—and, in some cases, signing our children up to play. As Casper sees it, American society is engaging in a self-deception rooted in old attitudes about the punch-drunk syndrome. He notes that the old street slang applied to afflicted boxers—“slug nutty,” “punchy,” “slaphappy”—was largely pejorative; in surveying oral histories, literary works, and other similar sources, he has found that suffering athletes have often been stigmatized as lower-class, semi-deranged malingerers. Getting hit over the head became the stuff of jokes, as in the physical comedy of the Three Stooges." . . . "Casper is writing a book about the history of concussions, to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press. I asked him what he thinks should be done about football and other contact sports. He and his colleagues have called for a broader diversity of views on the expert panels that write clinical concussion guidelines, and for more transparency about industry conflicts of interest. Other advocates have argued for promoting flag football, banning American youth tackle football, or delaying the age when kids start playing it; heading has been eliminated in some age groups of youth soccer in the U.S. and the U.K. Casper is skeptical about reforming the actual practice of football: he thinks the game can probably never be “neurologically viable.” At the same time, he said, “football’s way too woven into the fabric of American culture at this point to talk about something like banning it.” USA, USA, USA!!!

Geri and the Birch bough bonanza.  While Geri and Lilly were out on a passegiatta earlier, she encountered a Mequon neighbor taking down a birch tree.  She uses birch boughs as rustic fencing for her marginal garden walkway that she has been constructing for the last 10 years or so and she got the neighbor's permission to cut and take many of the birch boughs.  Serendipity.  Lilly insisted on waiting in the 37° temperature at her lookout post for Geri's return from her project.  I love my wife.  I love our dog.