I am definitely not a Super-Bowl fan. I do not watch football games during the regular season, considering them mostly a waste of time during which I would rather write or, even better, read. Occasionally I’ll watch the halftime show, if the artist particularly interests me (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, for example). And when the Giants were in the Super-Bowl recently, I half-watched most of the fourth quarter as they beat the Patriots, with my attention drifting between the book I was reading and the game.

We were actually invited to a Super-Bowl party many years ago, and I think the hosts were fairly convinced that I was (a) bored, and (b) anxious to be elsewhere than stuck in front of a television for four hours while the other attendees screamed for their suddenly-favorite team or oohed and aahed over a bunch of insipid commercials.

And the food? Is there any better indication of most Americans’ fattening, non-nutritional diet than what is consumed in vast quantities at a Super-Bowl party? I had a conversation with a friend recently about the frightening growth of children’s allergies in recent decades, and we agreed that one obvious cause is the lack of nutritional food that parents feed their children almost from the moment they exit the womb. If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider what mothers eat during the months they are breast-feeding their babies.

Watching the Super-Bowl is not my only protest against the dumbing down of Americans. I rarely watch television, mostly restricting myself to Jeopardy! and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?. I have never seen a single episode of Seinfeld, Friends, Lost, Heroes, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars or Survivor. In the past 30 years I have only watched 3 prime time programs regularly, Star Trek: The Next Generation (in the late 80s/early 90s), The Simpsons (for about its first decade) and one season of Battlestar Galactica. A year ago, I thought that considering how many acclaimed programs are aired, I should select one show and actually watch it regularly. But it has not happened yet, and is unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future.

So it goes. I think I'll pick out a good book to read this evening.