Baffoe: The Case For Making Super Bowl Monday A National Holiday
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) Seriously, why are we here? That's not some existential question in which you draw from whatever theological background you come from combined with probably a rudimentary understanding of astrophysics and stuff. I wouldn't make your head hurt like that on a Monday morning.
And your head probably does hurt on this Monday morning because yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and on Super Bowl Sunday you engage in activity not befitting the day before a day we have to be at work. And now we're here. At our cubicles, desks, offices, stations, warehouses and hellscapes that have gradually sucked our will to live via kicks in the teeth like today.
(Disclaimer: I love teaching kids. They bring light into my life every day, and I feel honored to help mold our nation's future in some small way even when they don't raise their hands or they fart audibly during the ending of "Of Mice and Men" or they use all my hand sanitizer or they fart as I walk by them passing back papers or they take each other's books and write bad things on them or they fart on my hand sanitizer.)
Why are we here? We should be at home laying on the couch watching "The Price Is Right" or going down some YouTube wormhole of Philip Seymour Hoffman movie clips. Instead we're at work watching Philip Seymour Hoffman movie clips. That's just not right.
Take the most sociable day of the year in which we celebrate football, shameless decadent advertising, gambling and consuming food and drink against all recommendations of even a doctor jailed for malpractice, and not give us the next day off? To quote Homer Simpson: "Did we lose a war? That's not America! That's not even Mexico."
Why isn't today a national holiday? Getting together with others to gorge ourselves and watch football is followed by a day off of work for most in November. Yet Super Bowl Sunday — which blows Thanksgiving out of the water because we are not obligated by blood relation to spend time with a group of people containing some we just can't stand, and the food is often better — has the constant reminder throughout the day's festivities that a little bit of you is going to die the following day.
And here we are. Dying a little. And being unproductive. (Or at least you are. I'm spending Monday enriching our social fabric and teaching a child to read using this column. Teens find my writing to be "the tops.")
Since when in this country have we been hesitant to declare a national day of digestion and aspirin and getting the story straight for your wife as to why the mortgage payment next month may be in jeopardy? We already use several holidays as excuses to be disgusting:
-- Thanksgiving, a.k.a. National Day of Playing Chicken With Adult Onset Diabetes
-- Christmas, a.k.a. Thanksgiving With Receipts
-- Memorial Day, a.k.a. Hey, We Survived Winter By Using Our Accumulated Fat Cells, So Let's Barbeque And Be Vaguely Patriotic
-- Independence Day, a.k.a. Memorial Day But With More Overt Jingoism And Emergency Room Trips.
It's high time we add Super Bowl Sunday/Monday to that list. Football is our national religion, after all.
I understand the bureaucrats and plutocrats in D.C. might have a hard time giving us working folk another day away from the gerbil wheel. It's not like we want to become a European country with mandatory vacations. That's how Hitler was created. So I'm willing to compromise.
Lose the Fourth of July as a holiday. Now before you attack me with "These Colors Don't Run" bumper stickers, consider that Super Bowl Sunday is far more a celebration of America than Independence Day. No single day is covered ad nauseam by the media the way Super Bowl Sunday is. Even gift-giving holidays pale in celebration of advertising and capitalism. We have red, white, and blue and peace and goodwill and 'Merica and hating people different than us and never forgetting 9/11 jammed down our throats before, during, and after watching large men smash into each other. God shed his grace on thee, damn it.
And Americans don't even know their own history anyway. Nobody stops and considers the Founding Fathers while scarfing four hot dogs and igniting incendiary devices. The Declaration of Independence was approved by them on July 2. The copy displayed at the National Archives was ordered by Congress on July 19, and signed primarily on August 2, so the date of July 4 is fairly arbitrary to begin with.
We already have other patriotic holidays to feed our need for inflating our national pride, and July 4 isn't a fixed day of the week, which sucks. Having a Wednesday off and then having to go back to work Thursday is the worst and throws off the whole groove you had going. Mondays off is the only way to go.
Who is then stopping you from just picking any Saturday in the summer for drinks, BBQ and illegal fireworks? And I live in Mt. Greenwood. Do you have any idea what that is like come late June until August. Every 3 a.m., a half stick of dynamite goes off. On July 6, I'll be driving down a side street and can't pass through because a group of drunks and kids are surrounding a flame fountain in the middle of the street. At noon.
I'm open to other suggestions, but we as a society need Super Bowl Monday off. Or at least you do. I'm fine shaping minds and molding futures and cursing the safety on the first play of the damn game that cost me money while needing more coffee.
Otherwise, call your congressional representative. Gather signatures. Light a candle. Make a Facebook page.
But not until tomorrow because your head hurts right now.
Follow Tim's inappropriate brain droppings on Twitter @Ten_Foot_Midget, but please don't follow him in real life. E-mail him at tenfootmailbag@gmail.com. Read more of Tim's columns here.
