Super Bowl XLIV doesn’t happen until February this year, but it already registers on the household radar screen. My husband, an old school Cowboys fan, entertains the dare-I-hope possibility that this really might be Dallas’ year. My thoughts center on more practical matters, such as not touching the lucky team logo mug. Someone else can transfer it from dishwasher to cupboard until after February 7. Should I drop this symbolic item (and my track record is not good), Dallas will lose, and I’ll feel responsible.
Several volumes and websites could store what I haven’t learned about football, yet I am not deterred from enjoying the game. Done correctly, Super Bowl spectatorship represents equal parts of sport, food, and advertising; I’m at least more conversant on the latter two.
Enlightenment about all three abounds in the library. John Eisenberg’s Cotton Bowl Days: Growing Up with Dallas and the Cowboys in the 1960s, published a few years back, will delight Cowboys aficionados, particularly those who recall the team’s inception and who miss seeing the gentleman in the trademark hat and suit. Viewers who relish creating, consuming, or thinking about game day cuisine might appreciate these: Fan Fare: A Playbook of Great Recipes for Tailgating or Watching the Game at Home, The Tailgater’s Cookbook, and (for the adventurous) The World of Street Food: Easy Quick Meals to Cook at Home. In New Nonfiction I spotted Alton Brown’s Good Eats: The Early Years. Its large, colorful, graphically quirky format tempted me, but I resisted checking it out so you can.
As for advertising–don’t you sometimes feel that the game is being sandwiched in among all the high-priced commercials? Of course, some of us find that innovative promotions rival the game for entertainment value. For the like-minded, I suggest James B. Twichell’s Twenty Ads That Shook the World: The Century’s Most Groundbreaking Advertising and How it Changed Us All. James P. Othmer’s Adland: Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet provides an insider view of that strangely fascinating world; it’s currently on the New Nonfiction shelf.
One last advertising-themed treat: the library has Season One of Mad Men on DVD; Season Two is on order.
