Opiate of the Masses
A few of us South Enders were over at the Marina’s Pilot House lounge, a hole in the wall tavern claiming “The Best Burgers on the Island.” Maybe when there wasn’t another restaurant…. It was a Monday night Seahawks game and the few sports fanatics who didn’t subscribe to cable and ESPN were hunkered expectantly at our formica tables drinking bottled beer from the cooler next to the cash register and a table selling golf balls and tees.
Must’ve been a total of three tables, the sum total of cable-deprived islanders. Ralph was grumbling that maybe we should’ve driven the extra ten miles to a bar with TV’s bigger than his laptop screen, but the game had started and the rest of us weren’t all that die-hard a fans and weren’t motoring off island in search of some sportsbar with 16 TV’s mounted strategically so every seat was Front Row. We had a front row right here. The beers were cold, the 19th Hole had advertised the ballgame and we’d taken the bait. Even Ralph accepted the finality of the decision and grabbed another bottle from the trap.
What I think we’ve accepted, all of us, is that sports are king in modern America and football is more popular by far than politics or American Idol. Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, but he never imagined 15 cable channels of every sport from soccer to ping pong, bobsledding to skateboarding, rugby to kickboxing. As more and more of us couch potatoes hunker down over our laptops and bigscreens, eschewing any and all physical involvement with the real world, we seem addicted to almost anything that smacks of competition, whether it’s football or ballroom dancing.
One of our buddies here at the 19th Hole, Harold, never misses American Idol. He secretly thinks he’s a crooner and I have no doubt whatsoever he imagines himself under the klieg lights on the neon-lit stage, belting out Sinatra to 30 million crazed viewers who plan to vote for him. He’s elbow down with his Bud Lite watching the halftime show. Our team is losing by a field goal and maybe Jerry at the far table is warming up his kicking leg in his private fantasy.
We’re all lost in those fantasies these days. Doesn’t really hurt, I guess, but I suspect a lot of what we used to call real life is only glimpsed on the crawlers at the bottom of the screen while we’re all dancing with the stars. Way of the world, nowadays, I suppose, just living vicariously, way more losers than winners in the Big Game of Life. Although …. we all imagine ourselves the winners. Harold is singing some jingle from the last commercial as he heads to the cooler, only slightly off-key. I decide to have one more beer too. Might as well make it a duet.
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Tags: Jocks, Sports Addiction in America, Sports Bars