Ever gone to a super bowl? A Super Bowl party I mean. Where a bunch of friends get together and eat food and drink beer or liquor while watching the "big game" on the biggest screen available. I can remember my dad being excited because we were going over to his friend’s house who had a color TV, let alone one in HD. My mother didn’t get it.
“Why do I care what color the mud is?” she would say. I think games were messier back then because Astroturf had not been put into wide use yet, and most games were played on grass and dirt fields. It always seemed to rain more often back then for some reason. In any event, most stadiums were not covered like they are now, either.
Anyway, for years, I think the players had a different view of the mud, and getting all dirty. I suppose it was like a badge of honor all that dirt. Maybe it made them identify with warriors of older times.
Looking back now, I realize that my father’s friend had the color on the TV turned way up. Folks did not know any better back then. They probably figured that now that they had color, how could more of it be a bad thing? So people would turn up their color levels as high as they would go. This caused the reds to shimmer and the greens, especially of the grass to sparkle. This phenomenon went on for decades. I can recall how the TV in the local watering hole had the same display characteristics. Color all the way up, and the tint skewed the wrong way so the picture was mostly red or green. It used to drive me crazy because I used to work in the Broadcast Television business and we would take great effort and spend a lot of time making the picture look as good as possible, only to find that most people didn’t care, or know any better.
Well, the advent of flat screen LCD and Plasma TVs put an end to all that. Now most folk’s sets have a decent picture, especially if they have high definition with little or no effort on their part. The epitome of the American Dream, plug it in and play.
So I’m off now to the Super Bowl party, more for social reasons than because I am a eye-bugging, screaming and jumping-up-and-down football fan. I’m going to visit and mingle with friends during one of America’s favorite pastimes. And you know what? I don’t even know which teams are playing. I suppose I'll find out when I get there. Here’s wishing you a happy Super Bowl day, and may your favorite team (whoever they are) win.
