Blocking Out the Super Bowl

I ain’t watchin’ Super Bowl XXXIV. Nope, no way. Roman numerals, shmumerals. No interest. Not even curious.

The Tennessee Titans versus the St. Louis Rams? And what cosmos are they from? On a clear night, the Titans are visible on your telescope somewhere in the skies just beyond the Little Dipper. George Lucas had some harass Han Solo in the “Star Wars” bar. Remember, slimed skin? One eye in the center of the forehead?

And the Rams? Familiar suits, alien bodies.

What’s to watch?

Great minds can differ on this, of course. Along with defining the Super Bowl as largely a selling event, for example, our good friend and colleague, Brian Lowry, advised Calendar readers to not resist this magnetic force, and instead “give in, find a soft place on the couch and celebrate our TV culture. . . .”

Others contend that Super Bowl Sunday is one of those rare occasions when much of the United States becomes a community that unites cohesively with a single focus.

Peace and calm from sea to shining sea? Past grievances eclipsed by Super Bowl fervor, you melding at TV’s 50-yard line with the next-door neighbor you call Van the Impaler? It’s a comforting thought. Fewer criminals are on the streets, too.

But this artificially induced camaraderie in front of the screen, whether at homes, bars or block parties, is not only fleeting but hollow, a momentary high without substance.

It’s astonishing how the Super Bowl at some point in January becomes nearly everyone’s frame of reference, a common denominator like the booze in hand at a cocktail party even for those who don’t know football from jai alai. All that remains afterward, though, are the drained glasses.

Unlike the World Series, whose long, rich baseball tradition coincides with the nation’s growth and maturity throughout the 20th century, the Super Bowl is never more than the sum of its commercial sponsors. If it’s so essential, so meaningful, so Norman Rockwellian, so much the soul of Americana, then why is it forgotten by all but a relative handful of zealots a few days after being unfurled like Old Glory?

You’d think that television would have Americans gimmick-resistant by now. Instead the opposite has happened. Viewers are now either desensitized by the sheer abundance of TV gimmickry or beaten down by it. Perhaps most know they’re being jobbed, yet no longer have the will to resist.

But here is where the line gets drawn in the sand. No more Mr. quivering, knee-knocking, spineless weakling doing what the Darth Vaders of media and Madison Avenue want me to do. No more being persuaded by them to watch two teams I haven’t heard about play in a game I don’t care about enriched by $73,000-a-second ads for products I don’t wish to own.

This discriminating viewer will immediately zap sportscasters grousing at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome about whipped-up media frenzy, the same gaseous ballyhoo they inflate by their presence there.

“Coming up . . . we’ll promote Super Bowl XXXIV!” smirked ESPN’s “SportsCenter” after Wednesday’s official media day at the Dome where this week every day is media day and even players’ grunts and locker-room flatulence are recorded for the ages.

Zap!

“Let the hype begin!” CNN proclaimed Thursday in advance of Fred Hickman’s ongoing Super Bowl memoir. “It is insane,” Hickman reflected about the annual festivities before noting that “a lot of times the games don’t live up to the hype.” The hype he was extending.

Zap!

I will not be sucked in by the usual galaxy of hucksters in print and on television. I will ignore the mother lode of puffery nourishing this Roman-numeraled gold mine of seductive, stone-chiseled marketing scam.

I will not be among the expected 120 million to 130 million Americans mindlessly groping their way to their TV sets Sunday afternoon like zombies in “Night of the Living Dead.” I will not be manipulated. Do you hear? Not, not, not!

Abstaining will be risky for someone in my line of work. I’ll have no response when I get the “Didja?” questions on Monday.

Didja hear those stupid ABC guys? What were they thinkin’?

Didja see what they missed?

Didja see those blown calls by the striped shirts?

Didja see the ad with the bike rider chasing a cheetah across the African plains, then reaching inside its mouth to retrieve a stolen can of Mountain Dew?

Didja see the ad with Pets.com’s sock puppet?

Didja see all those ABC promos?

Didja see that “Tapestry of Nations” halftime show?

Didja see Elian Gonzales drive up in his new Ferrari?

Look, it could happen.

So let the unhype begin, and here’s the deal. End the days of Bud Lite and roses, try abstinence, and if you, too, are addicted, recite with me the sportsaholic’s prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference between a game I want to watch and one I don’t give a hoot about.

Getting clean may be painful: chills, sweats, cramps, nausea, hallucinations. But definitely no regrets.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached via e-mail at calendar.letters@latimes.com.