Super Bowl Commune Style

Moments before the fateful moment

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.

Turns out you can keep a secret, in some places

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.