MR WRONG: Another dip in the Super Bowl

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: A Nation Dedicated to the Proposition Bet

IF YOU DON’T like the NFL or football or Super Bowl, you are excused from this week’s column. Thank you for reading, this won’t count against your grade for the semester and I won’t be mad at you and it won’t hurt my feelings. Go do something nice for yourself, take a walk, or hey, take a nap, that’s some nice Self Care, sleep! Go on, enjoy.

OK, Here we go, ARROOO!!! Super Bowl! I love Super Bowl! I don’t care who the teams are or what channel it’s on, it’s Super Bowl. I am gonna eat a lot, probably, definitely some pizza, and maybe chicken wings, and I will make my famous deviled eggs, and we will have crudites and tortilla chips to dip into guacamole, we might have chips and dip, we will not have Watergate Salad, and if there’s any alco-nog left in the fridge, today is the day I will either kill it or dump it!

This year’s Super Bowl is Super Bowl LVIII, and I support the use of Roman Numerals, because it makes me feel smart. I know Roman Numerals! Super Bowl! LVIII! 53!

I live in Baltimore, MD, and the Baltimore Ravens got very close to getting into the Super Bowl, but they lost, and people are sad and not very much into the idea of Super Bowl because their team didn’t make it, but I don’t give a shit, I like Super Bowl!

I have used this space to write about Super Bowl lotsa times, and I don’t care if I repeat myself or self-plagiarize. Allow me to quote myself:

Last year I was disappointed that Colin Kaepernick didn’t sneak into the game for halftime, and I still think he should do it this time, but they paid him off, right, for not letting him play football because he might make another statement about America? Maybe he signed papers and can’t be part of Football anymore? It’s weird what you can’t do sometimes, after you sign some Legal Papers, in terms of expressing yourself. I mean, it’s great if he got a pile of money and he’s happy about it, and Ben & Jerry’s got his back, and that’s nice, but I think it would be good if Mr. Kaepernick showed up, but only if he can express himself, you know?

I would still like to see Colin Kaepernick show up and express himself!

Errbody makes a big deal about the TV commercials during Super Bowl, and I used to get caught up in it, but not so much anymore, since they started to put the commercials up for people to look at in advance. I guess it makes sense, somehow, to get more people to look at the commercial, but it doesn’t feel fun anymore to me, watching a rerun of a fucking commercial?

Also, there’s always gambling, that’s fun, that’s a big reason Sport is popular, because you can bet on stuff! Remember to Bet With Your Head and Not Over It. I always think about this thing I saw one time when I was in Vegas, which is where they are playing Super Bowl this year, the Ground Zero of Wagering, it was a brochure for people who might have A Problem. I am an Optimist, a glass half-full person, but I look at the image and that’s a sunset, not a sunrise, you know? Be careful about Gambling, please.

I always try and get some money down on something, to feel more connected to the game, it’s weird, it’s kinda like listening to a band’s music when you’re on the way to see them play a concert, like, somehow you need to get psyched to do a thing that you already really wanted to do? I don’t know. Super Bowl! This year my gambling portion of Super Bowl is my favorite way to gamble, completely random. I bought some squares in one of those squares-things, I don’t know what you call them, I don’t think anybody can agree, a Grid? A Pool? Anyway, the one I have, uh, invested in, isn’t full yet, so they haven’t drawn the numbers to randomly assign to the X and Y axes, but I think the easiest way to explain the boxes-thing is just show a picture of one. The number-one reason I like the boxes scheme is all you care about is the intersection of the numbers, you are not invested in who’s winning, you want to be the one who wins, so you will find yourself rooting for each team at different times! Super Bowl!

There’s a whole other betting angle called “Prop Bets.” “Prop” means “proposition,” I guess, but like, aren’t all bets Propositions? A classic Prop Bet is betting on the Coin Toss at the beginning of the game, or betting on how long it will take for the singing of the National Anthem. Right now there’s so much heat on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, they are inspiring some Prop Bets. Hey, does anybody call them “T and T,” or like, “T’n'T,” as in the famous explosive Trinitrotoluene? TNT? There’s def gonna be a Prop Bet on how many times Taylor Swift is shown on camera if she makes it to the game. OK, I looked it up on Gambing dot Com and right off the rip, there’s 30 bets based on song titles, har! “Shake It Off: SF 49ers to Score First, KC Chiefs to Win +350,” and “Karma: T. Kelce 0 Receptions, SF 49ers to Win +3000.” That “Karma” one is kinda mean to Travis Kelce, what did he do to warrant the Bad Karma?

In addition to these themed Taylor Swift Super Bowl prop bets, a handful of sports betting apps have been offering Taylor Swift specific odds. It’s important to note that these types of odds are primarily being offered in Canada and Europe, but they are fun to think about. Examples include things like “How many times will Taylor Swift be mentioned on the broadcast?” and “Will Taylor Swift be mentioned during the MVP speech?” There was also a prop at FanDuel Ontario as to whether there will be a marriage proposal on the field. You will not find them at any of the top US Super Bowl betting sites.

Please to tolerate one more self-quote from a previous Bowl-centeric episode of the Mr. Wrong column:

OK, so, Super Bowl! This is a very American moment, every year, it is a moment when the top Musical Performers do stuff at Half Time, and when famous people sing the National Anthem and when the military might of The United States of America is hinted at, typically with a fly-over of Military jet planes, screaming overhead with Military precision! The Commies like to have parades with missiles and stuff, but we do the jet planes thing, to remind everybody we have a bigger Bomb, it’s more artistic! The Commies have their giant missiles, we have Super Bowl!

So yeah, I am def going to have a coupla beers and I will think, as I always think, every Super Bowl, about how a giant part of the United States of America is looking at the teevee, all at the same time, we’re all watching Super Bowl, and so it would be the perfect moment for The Enemy to attack, because that’s our world, and we live in the Military Industrial Complex, and right now we (The U.S.) are shipping all kinds weapons and bullets and missiles and stuff to our Allies, and they (the Allies of the United States of America) are killing people and flattening cities and we (the U.S.) are getting a good Economy out of it, and jobs, making weapons that we sell to other countries, or sell to ourselves, and lots and lots of people are getting killed on our dime, and we are minting lots of new Enemies.

I am gonna see if I can forget about all that for a minute and enjoy a game of Super Bowl. I’m probably gonna get drunk. Super Bowl!

The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.

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