SuperbowlTM Mania

Hype. That's the Kosher (meaning Terry Bradshaw approved) word to describe the rabid entertainment blitz surrounding the biggest football contest of the year. Its "two weeks of hype" or "really hyped." But Webster would turn in his grave if he heard the semantic application "hype" gets near the first Sunday in February. Hype comes from the prefix "hyper" from the Greek "huper," meaning "over" or "beyond." Etymology aside, the word is really sporty (notice I didn't say "sexy?") and gets thrown around a lot on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), even though it could be considered pejorative. But I like "mania," because, well, because I like being obstinate (or is it abstinent) and I am incorrigible, or so my mother tells me, which is really sweet.

So the SuperbowlTM is almost upon us. In fact, the outcome will be pasted across America's front pages like McCain's wrinkled mug before the Florida Primary before you next hear from FCN. I know, 72 hours can be a long time, especially when all you got was a Life Tip on Wednesday. Here, have another Kleenex.

It may interest you to know that FCN was not idle on Wednesday. Au contraire my doubting amigo. We took the bus down to scenic Arizona (home of McCain and millions of other retirees) and attended one of the New England Patriot's media availability sessions. We wanted to go the SuperbowlTM, but the ticket prices were exhorbitantly high. It will be a miracle if anyone other than a fat rich white male gets into the game. Once at the press conference, C dressed up like a Latina and asked Tom Brady to marry him ("her" in the context of the proposal). Everyone was really impressed with the accent and feminine voice tones that C was able to put together and with the fact that he was able to fit into a wedding dress. While Tommy turned us down, he did compliment C on his good looks and said he would be a "lucky find."

Yes, that really was us down in Arizona.

If you've been listening to any of the SuperbowlTM mania, you have undoubtedly noticed how desperate the sports media are to get a decent interview. It's a well known fact that athletes are not trained to speak. That's why when they do open their mouths they are either immensely boring, incomprehensible or mind bendingly crazy. In order to compensate for what has been dubbed the "Oral Intellectual Deficit," many anchors resort to interviewing members of their own journalistic entourage and talking heads from other channels just so they can fill air time. If you are a little creative with the channel switching, you can actually follow the "experts" as they make their radio and TV rounds. First Fox Sports, then Westwood One radio and back to ESPN for last segment of the hour. The journalists say the same things over and over again, sometimes getting passionate and calling each other names so that audience members won't follow osmosis to a different station.

There is nothing "over" or "beyond" about this mania, but some folks still call it hype.

Well, no discussion of the SuperbowlTM would be complete without a prediction. Plaxico Burress, a player only two of our eleven readers had heard of before this moment, predicted that NY Giants would win 23-17. I agree with Plax in one regard: The final score will be 23-17, but it will be the New England Patriots who emerge victorious, with some extra weight on their championship ring fingers.

Sorry about the "emerge victorious" and "extra weight on their championship ring fingers" verbiage. Maybe the hype is contagious afterall.

There’s a girl in my language class who scares me

My foreign language teacher is a linguistic anomaly. She was born and raised in the United States, is a huge Red Sox fan and has all the outward physical trappings of an American. That is, she’s overweight. She covers for these deficiencies by using a limited set of carefully coached European facial expressions. When she is confused, she does the Parisian shrug and happiness is expressed with a gesture more common in Bordeaux than the Bronx.

Class is organized in an unorthodox fashion. Instead of sitting in neat rows and columns like so many numbers on a mathematician’s page, all the seats are scattered to the outskirts of the room, the way they would if Nancy Pelosi suddenly appeared in the center. This arrangement, teacher tells her students, allows for better “linguistic interaction,” an unnecessarily large phrase that means “shooting the breeze.” And believe me when I say we students shoot the breeze.

Aside from simply being unorthodox, the arrangement of seats forces me to look at the students sitting across from where I’m sitting. Sometimes this fact allows me to share in a joke and otherwise interact with my fellow classmates or converse with them on a more intimate level, which is fine. Other times, like today, seat placement is a catalyst for horror.

Annie is a freshman from the wrong side of Massachusetts. I know, is there a right side? She is, I am sure, a perfectly pleasant girl in person, but she has a habit which borders on the neurotic and has gone well beyond the distracting.

Many students will ”zone out” during a professor’s lecturious droning and allow their minds to wander to a happier place. This mental voyage is expressed physically with a slanted head, slack jaw and wide open eyes that look but don’t focus. At any point after the first five minutes of a lecture, a speaker can expect to see as much as 60% of her audience performing this “zone out” escape.

Annie zones out. A lot. Except that when she allows her mind to wander, her face gets the most serious and intense expression as if she’s desperate in a persuasive plea. Her eyes remain unfocused, but the small muscles around them tighten so that she is almost squinting. Her lips are slightly parted in a way that is more Spears than Loren. She looks as if she is heavily focused on letting her mind wander.

When most students zone out, the spectacle isn’t so absorbing that I can’t look away. But when Annie zones out, it’s like watching art happen. The face is letting you in on what’s happening in the mind and the viewer is swept along in the drama of the zoning. The whole thing is, quite frankly, very scary.

Maybe Annie needs to take zoning out lessons or maybe I need to learn to pay more attention in class, but regardless, the faithful FCN few can take a pointer from this pour soul: If you’re going to zone, zone! For goodness sakes, zone! Please!