Stupor Bowl

Show of hands. Who watched the Commercial Bowl this past Sunday night? You know, the show where they introduce a lot of commercials and squeeze a little football in between. I saw about 15 minutes, which is about my tolerance for this sort of thing.

I can accept the fact that Americans have made this day, this so-called "Super Bowl Sunday," a de facto national holiday, replete with parties, booze and food…like a second New Year's Eve. I can accept rabid football fans wanting to see their team win. What I can't accept is that so many people actually tune in to watch COMMERCIALS! Jesus, folks…you are out of your frickin' minds.

It all goes along with my theory that Americans have formed a sick and symbiotic relationship with their television sets. If all television disappeared tomorrow most Americans would probably have to kill themselves for feeling that part of them had died, and from want of something to do.

Television is killing more of your brain cells than alcohol. It is more addictive than cigarettes, and puts you in a worse state of mental discombobulation than LSD.

I have some recommendations for those of you with the TV jones, who need to take a breather from the image orthicon tube…

• Read a book.

• Go out and look at the sunset. Look at the moon. Look in your neighbor's window. Look at your neighbor mooning you.

• Read another book.

• Play with your kids, and I don't mean a video game! Toss a ball around. You do know what a ball is, don't you? You see them on TV all the time when you're plopped in front of the tube watching anything that moves on ESPN.

• Make love. Make war. Make anything but another stab at the remote buttons, hoping in vain to find "something good on."

And what the hell is this fascination on one night of the year with television commercials? I mean, who really cares? These are exactly the same commercials you'll now be skipping in order to go to the bathroom. Unless you're so far gone you wear an adult diaper so you don't have to get up during your TV viewing. What do I care if Budweiser or Coke or Doritos spent $2.6m for 30 seconds? There's a sucker born every minute, and in this case, there's a sucker born every 30 seconds.

Let's have a big whoop for how much money those advertisers spent to reach you.And furthermore with commercials, have you checked the running times of your favorite shows lately? It used to be that without commercials an hour drama on television was about 52 minutes long. When I went into Comcast's On Demand the other night (yes, I was watching TV, so do as I say and not as I do), I saw that shoes like CSI, CSI: Miami, et al, now give you 44 minutes of drama. So that means instead of eight minutes of commercials an hour like we had before, we now have 16 minutes of commercials. It's no wonder I can do my laundry, mow the lawn and read the latest issue of Newsweek before the show comes back on.

Ciao for now.

The panel on top (click on it for full-size image) is from an old Mad comic book and is for my buddy Ed, who has a really great blog called Chicken Fat, and is a major Mad comics fan.