While I am writing this, the Super Bowl is happening. My wife is in California. We spoke on the phone & I mentioned that the dogwalk tonight was peaceful because everyone was at home, or at a party, & she was confused. She didn't know it was Super Bowl Sunday.
Frankly I only know because Bill Maher mentioned it on Friday, although I'm sure with all the hype around it - mentions on Tumblr, Twitter, & Facebook - I would've sussed it out sooner than later. It occurred to me that I probably haven't watched a Super Bowl - or even an entire ball game - since I was a kid, & even that last time I probably was too impatient to sit through the entire thing. Whenever the Cowboys were last at the Super Bowl in the 1970s is around that time, although I have a vague memory of angering my brothers, for whom football is the closest thing they have to a hobby, by leaving to go out & play on a grey winter day.
Please don't get me wrong - I understand why people enjoy such things. But they hold very little interest for me, be they Super Bowls or college bowls or world cups or world serieses. I'm just not the sports kind of guy. It goes a little further than that, of course. I have very little interest in the halftime show, about which some people on Facebook are tonight celebrating or lambasting. You can probably understand why I don't care for it: it's mostly people from commercial radio, not the sort of music I like to listen to. I don't remember halftime shows being a very big deal when I was a kid, so the fact that some people tune in to watch them is a triumph of the sports/entertainment industry.
& the commercials! Someone on Facebook said he didn't like the sports but he'd watch the commercials on the internet tomorrow. I can barely watch commercials even if they're clever, so expensive commercials designed for a sports match seem a weird thing to want to look forward to.
By the way, I am doing something I don't really like to do. There are people who feel they need to inject their opinion into everything. I for the most part don't feel the need to comment on things I don't like. Or when a musician/actor/whatever I have either a negative opinion or no opinion about, I don't feel the need to advertise that. There are many artists who died last year, but if I didn't write about them on the blog, you may assume I didn't feel their loss was something I should note. Again, that didn't mean they had no affect on music or movies or whatever, just that they had no affect on me. I don't believe there's an objective good or bad out there when it comes to opinions.
Anyway, sorry about doing something I don't normally do.
But I'm doing it because I was trying to think of "shared experiences" that I do enjoy that are on or near the level of a Super Bowl. & the only thing I could think of is awards shows. But not all of them.
The awards shows I watch are the Emmys, the Oscars, & the Golden Globes. In general, commercial movies tend to have a better chance of having some excellence in them than commercial music. I don't watch the Grammys, the People's Choice Awards, or the Tonys, the latter because I pay very little attention to Broadway. The Grammys & the other one I don't watch because, like Super Bowl halftime shows, they feature commercial artists which I pay no attention to. (You can read why I don't watch the Grammys here.)
But that's all I can think of - I watch a fair amount of television, & I see a fair amount of movies, some of which win awards. I find awards shows nice because I like when people win, & I occasionally find the stuff the hosts/writers do to be funny. (I don't generally like Jimmy Kimmel, for example, but I did find his Emmys Bill Cosby prank quite funny.)
Oh, & yeah, I know there are a lot more awards shows, I just thought of the ones that are bigger. I think MTV still gives awards for the music videos they no longer play on MTV, for example, but, again, those awards are full of commercial artists winning because they are successful, not because their videos feature actual innovation of any kind. Though I guess people who like the commercial artists would differ. Really, it's fascinating they make music videos at all anymore.
Have I missed something? Are there shared American experiences not based around sports or awards shows (or television) that I do take part it? Am I not really much of an outsider after all?
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