The Super Bowl Is The Worst

Monday, February 13th, 2012 6:00 AM

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By John Hubbuch

Is there anything worse than the Super Bowl? Okay. Maybe AIDS, world hunger and the Republican primary campaign. But the Super Bowl is pretty bad.                         

This annual celebration of American greed and materialism begins with two weeks of discussion about the trivial and mundane. This year it was about the status of the ankle of some 23-year-old behemoth's ankle. Don't really care.                                  

Then corporate America jets in the day of the game to sit in $100,000 suites while deranged sports nuts deplete their IRA's to secure seats so far away the players look like microbes. And only 200 bucks a pop. The rest of us watch on our big screens at home eating salty snacks, sugary colas and booze in perfect symmetry with the endless commercials selling us salty snacks, sugary colas and booze.                                                             

The commercials are interrupted by the actual game, which is actually pretty good. Then on comes 53 year old Madonna desperately seeking to roll back the clock to the last century when she had a hit song. Entering as some kind of Egyptian princess she sang some songs that half the audience is either too old or too young to remember before a writhing mass of her subjects. The only thing worse would have been Betty White doing a cameo as the queen mother and harmonizing on "Like A Virgin". So lame. And yet so bad it's almost watchable.                                    

And yet 120 million of us watched this bloated extravaganza. Including me. I did win some money betting the Giants. And it was fun to see my family. Three year old Lily was for the Patriots because she said she was afraid of giants.                       

Maybe I got a little carried away. At least no body got killed. Unlike the Christians in the Colloseum in ancient Rome.