Super Bowl Commune Style
One of my favorite commune “out of it” stories comes from the Super Bowl of 2004. Since you have likely forgotten, this was the year of the famous “Wardrobe Malfunction” which apparently helped spawn YouTube. I was in Morningstar kitchen and there were a dozen people there. It was two days after the Super Bowl in question and i said “If i were to say to you Janet Jackson’s left breast, how many of you would know what i was talking about?” No one could answer (i did not know if it was left or right, but i knew it would not matter). This year, like every year, there is a Super Bowl. Apparently the teams are quite close as far as the bookies are concerned. And supposedly they are some of the best teams in the game. I dont care that much, but i still hear these things. What i also know from indirect experience is that almost everyone thinks sports needs to be watched live. When i asked my sports fan friends about re-watching old games, even very exciting or close ones, they are nearly universally dismissive of this idea. Often saying strange things like they would prefer to watch a terrible live game than a brilliant one which was recorded even very recently. Often it is explained to me that i simply dont understand sports if i cant understand why this is true. Perhaps my ignorance is contagious. A whole collection of Oakers are planning on watching the game tomorrow. They have recorded it (probably without the $4.5 million dollar 30 second ad spots) and are going to show it on the digital projector with a bunch of people watching and pop corn and beer. But wont it spoil the game if they already know who has won? This is the lovely part, they are not going to know. Or at least they are going to try not to know, with a voluntary media and internet black out for about 24 hours. In the mainstream, it would not even make sense to try it. In the commune context, with a few strategically placed notes and requests to some of our more opinionated members who will have seen the game at the “proper” time this is actually possible.
Maybe i will watch the big game tomorrow in a place where time does not matter.
Update: There was a grand event in Degania (which i missed) with pizza and happy communards, until 3 minutes before the end of the cliffhanger game when the video failed and no one knew how it turned out. Yikes.
I love this =) Thanks for sharing, Pax!
you should hit the “like” button Ken – it actually does matter
I still don’t know who won the Superbowl a few days ago. I may well never know. At the natural food store tonight i ran into a neighbor who’d just returned from a vacation in Phoenix, from what he said i gather the game was held there, tho he did not attend. I know what city one of the teams is from, and i know there was some recent accusation of cheating about ball inflation against one or the other team. That’s about it.
I guess when it comes to media knowledge, i live in some earlier era, and i have to say, i really like it there.
I did, however, hear about the “wardrobe malfunction” years ago, within days or weeks of it taking place. For whatever reason or happenstance.
Fun post. When I lived at Twin Oaks I watched one or two Super Bowls in Louisa and one while on vacation. I still live in a household without a TV set, so still have to go out to watch anything live on a screen larger than 15″, but for the most part I get my sports fix watching recorded highlights online on my laptop.
I was in rehearsal at the theater from 2pm-12:30am that day, and still don’t know who one. The theater is its own kind of commune, I guess!