Dang I am torn.  I have decided to pay attention to football this year. By this I mean watching games, having a rough idea what's going on, what the teams I like are doing. Basic stuff, not the stuff of super-fandom. This morning I realized that in doing so, it has helped me through my Sunday blues.  Sunday blues: haven't to get back to school/work, not wanting the weekend to end, etc etc. Plus, watching football gives me a sense of the passage of time and provides me with some kind of a common language with which I can relate to the dominant culture (of course, such relation, communication even, is a fantasy, football is not life.  But really is what we see learn talk about re: football any more "real" than our supposed, various "realities." Really?) So I was excited about watching the Buffalo Bills play Philadelphia today. I live to see Michael Vick sacked, cuz ya know, I feel like every hard hit is a blow against animal cruelty. But then I started to read about the Occupy protests around the country. They have been hovering on the periphery of my consciousness, but I have cut down on my communication with the outside world.  Just too much mayhem, and its too easy for me to get distracted.  Now this might sound strange because I am by constitution, a politically engaged person. But I really need to get through Chemistry, Microbiology and the classes I teach. Besides, I have the NFL to mark my weeks. Besides, how much less real is the NFL? 

Still. Reading about the OCCUPY movements, I felt a swoon.  Dang, this stuff is gonna ruin my perfectly innocent interest in the Buffalo/Philly game. 

But I am going to resist that as well. That sense of guilt. That sense that if I partake of completely ridiculous entertainment that I am somehow not doing my job as an active citizen. As if it matters whether I watch football or wring my hands. As if anyone gives a shit what I do this afternoon. I'm watching football because I like it. The problem is not me watching football because I have a simultaneous critique of football, of the culture in which it takes place, of the bullshit the NFL helps to normalize and propagate. But one more football fan with a critique of the role of football in our culture, with knowledge that this is "entertainment," that it is not real but that it can lead me to questioning whether what happens on the gridiron is any less real than the reporting we actually get about the OCCUPY movement. Seriously, seriously.  At least the dudes calling the football game offer focused, relevant and relatively TRUE critiques of the game they know.  Can we even say that much about any reporter of "real" news? In a socio-political landscape of lies, lies and more lies, is is possible at all that professional football actually hovers closer to some kind of truth? 

Touchdown, Bills. After an interception of Vick, the dog abuser. Yes, that feels like a real feeling. Yes that feels, weirdly like some kind of justice.