Sunday and Tuesday -- One Super, One Puzzling

First of all, is this the first time a Super Tuesday has ever directly followed a Super Sunday? If so, does that mean the next day is Super Monday? It certainly wasn't for me, but maybe that's because I had too much on Super Sunday. What does that make Wednesday, Super Hump Day? Speaking of which, can Janet Jackson ever appear again on anything Super, or would it always have to be with someone else who used to go out with Cameron Diaz? Why not put on Janet and Cameron together, then, just the two of them, and skip the middle man? (Sounds like a pay-per-view hit to me.)

By the way, I worked with Janet on Nutty Professor II: The Quickening, and she was very sweet and had a nice laugh, but I never ripped any clothes off her. Thought about it, though.

Enough. I think I need a Super Happy Hour.

First: Super Tuesday

I didn't know exactly what it was, so I looked it up. I kind of knew what it was, the same way we all kind of know how a hybrid works -- which is to say, not at all -- so I checked Wikipedia. (Actually, I checked Google and picked Wikipedia while I was there, because the entry just after it -- seriously -- was a band in Madison, Wisconsin, named Super Tuesday that describes itself as "Originally based on a dare..." Which, I'm pretty sure, is how our country got started in the first place.) And that, of course, brings us back to Super Tuesday.

Why does each state have to be so complicated and impenetrable? It makes Kafka look like a limerick. You know how it goes: The Florida primary had fifty-seven delegates for Republicans but none for Democrats, because... Well, I don't know why, come to think of it. Michigan changed its date, so the national party de-certified it, or something, and no one campaigned, but someone still won? Iowa isn't even a primary anyway, it's a caucus, and the difference between a primary and a caucus, of course, is that for the caucus you have to, uh, you know. I mean, they... Well, it's certainly not a straw poll, is it? No, sirree, because a straw poll, as any schoolchild knows, is what James Bond and Pussy Galore made out on after they taught each other Ju-Jitsu. Or is it the other way around? And you can debate for years with all the other candidates, or never debate at all, or not get invited; or just not enter this primary or that one if you don't think you can pay for it or win (which is much the same thing). And some states are winner-take-all, and some are proportional, because... Aw, hell, I don't know that one, either.

I'll give a shiny new fifty-cent piece and a big Bugs Bunny kiss on the nose right now to anyone who knows the difference between a delegate and a super-delegate. (Hey, there's that word "Super" again! Fantasic! I was beginning to miss it.)

By the way, is there anyone left in the entire country who isn't either working for one of these campaigns or covering it? Is that actually the point of the whole thing: full employment?

Good Lord, folks, how is it even possible that dozens and hundreds and thousands of professional and volunteer people on both sides do nothing but discuss these arcane rules for decades, and still can't come up with a system that doesn't look like the inside of Russell Crowe's head in A Beautiful Mind?

Anyway, near as I can come to it after three printer-friendly pages of history and analysis is -- Ready? -- Super Tuesday is:

All of this madness... times 24.

Enough. On to Super Sunday.

I may not be the biggest football fan in the world. I like it okay, and will always catch a quarter or two during the season while flipping around the dial as long as it doesn't bleed over into Heidi. (That's where I put my foot down.)

Wait a minute: "Flipping around the dial"? Do TV's even have dials anymore? Can we still call it that, or does it cease being a dial once the total number of channels on your box exceeds the highest SAT score in your house? Troubling questions...

That game, though, the Giants and the Patriots, Super Bowl XLII (forty-two, which also corresponds to the IQ of that fan in Green Bay with his shirt off), was just plain great, and I hope you saw it; and I hope you dug it. Sometimes, every human pursuit -- theater, movies, TV, literature, sports, everything -- can take us away with the sheer achievement of it all, and this one did. That is, both of these teams are at the top of their games, both work as hard as anyone can work, both focus as hard as anyone can focus... and one just did it clearly better on a given day, right down to the wire, and deserved to win.

Hell, I even liked the commercials this year.

Well, that's going too far. I didn't like the commercials at all. I just didn't hate them as much as usual. I kind of liked that Victoria's Secret one, and my only complaint is that the model they chose, the models they always choose, is, to me, well, a kid. She's probably twenty, and is pretty and all, but has no character and wisdom on her face. What I wouldn't give to see them hire Rosanna Arquette one of these years. Give me a woman on TV who's not only gorgeous but has a few years of life in her eyes.

I know everyone looks forward to the commercials, and a lot are made just for that game; and believe me, I'm thrilled every time an actor gets work. But if I have to hear one more heavily muscled commentator say, "You know, Jim, that was a really funny commercial," when it clearly wasn't, I'm going to start using steroids myself (but only the lotions).

The commercial breaks are longer and longer all season, but Super Bowls usually seem like they run a play or two and then break for enough time to read an op-ed page or make love six times, whichever comes first. So to speak.

But not this year. This year it felt solid and cool the whole way along.

There's one issue about professional football, though, that cries out to be raised, and this is probably the right time to do it:

Whatever happened to all the butt slapping? Wasn't that big for about ten years? I can't think of any other job in life that uses it, can you? "Congratulations, Doctor, you saved the kidney. (WHACK.)" But it seems football players all did it and then just stopped, didn't they? One day they were all slapping each other left and right, then comedians started ragging on it, and then boom, gone. It just vanished, like babies named "Adolf" after 1945.

THERE IS ONE sobering note, and I don't feel like a wet blanket bringing it up: If you're going to sell air time for God knows how much and everyone's going to make a fortune, and all the folks in those glassed in boxes in their blue button-down shirts and ties, and the players and owners and network folks and merchandisers each come out of this game with printing machines for their basements that spit out sheets of twenties all day...

How about paying for the knee operations and emotional therapies and medical bills of the former players who never made any money, and can't walk or wipe their own bottoms even though they're only forty-three, and have left parts of themselves on Astroturf all over the country? Gene Upshaw makes 6.7 million dollars a year as head of the players' union (no kidding: L.A. Times.), and he and all these people are always saying things like, "Oh, no, the injured players are always on our minds, and we just raised the medical fund money four hundred percent."

Yeah? From 10 dollars to fifty dollars? That's four hundred percent.

Come on, guys, help out your own people. It could be you needing a walker one day just to watch your kids graduate from kindergarten. How about throwing them a couple of bucks?

To me, that would really make the day Super.

Read more Larry Miller at www.larrymillerhumor.com.

Comments

[thebassguy]

why do we have a few individual primaries/caucuses, then 20-something all at ONCE? Who decided this? Seems quite wacky.

why not have all on the same day, or break up the country into a few groups of Super-days?

too bad there's no way to change our silly election system....

[RoseMerry]

Of course, it is Super Monday. The Grateful Dead survivors are back together and playing tonight! I can't wait for the mp3 to come out!

[DuQuesne]

Thanks, Larry! Was that a stream of conscience on a stream of Johnny Walker?
Cheers!