The weekly Daley: The day when time stands still

That would be Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013. From midnight until 3:30 p.m., time stands still or at best, time crawls at a snail’s pace, and you can almost hear the music from “Jaws” playing softly in the background of life. In other words, nothing happens.

The Super Bowl usually starts at an odder time like 3:18 or 3:23, but this year it’s a sensible 3:30. At least that’s what the schedule says. They say that about 50 percent of the people who watch the Super Bowl watch it for the commercials. I’ve been on that side  a little bit over the years when I didn’t really care who won. Although I’ve always rooted for the NFC team unless it was the Raiders in which case I’d go with the Silver and Black. I’m a “homer” for my local teams — unless they’re playing each other in which case I’m a dyed-in-the-wool San Francisco fan.

We were invited to a Super Bowl party at my sister-in-law’s down in Rancho Cordova. But I usually prefer to stay home with my own traditions. Typically, I’ll take a couple of avocados, mash them up real good with a fork, add some hot sauce, ground cumin, maybe a dash of coriander and a drop of lime juice. I like the yellow corn tortilla chips, the brand that says “$2.00″ right on the front of the bag. That way I always know how much I’m paying for them. Avocados, on the other hand will run anywhere from two for a dollar to a dollar each or variations thereof.

I paid $1.48 for one avocado this week. I could have gotten three for $1 apiece but I didn’t need three. And anyway, most of them were so soft and mushy I wouldn’t have wanted them at all. I hope there are better ones later today or tomorrow. Supposedly, more avocados are eaten on Super Bowl weekend than at any other time throughout the year. I’ve heard that, and I’ve also heard that it’s not true. Like one of those urban myths — like the one about more toilets are flushed nationwide during Super Bowl halftime, and it causes an overflow on sewers all over the country. Another is that more women go shopping on Super Bowl afternoon than at any other time during the year. Not sure if that’s true or not, but it makes an interesting statistic if it is true.

Word on the street this week has been that there’s a worldwide shortage of chicken wings (it was described as a wing apocalypse). A couple of guys in Georgia allegedly stole $65,000 worth of wings the other day and purportedly planned to “scalp” them at a hefty profit. Calculations I saw suggested that would be about 26,000 pounds of wings. They got caught.

Chicken wings, hot wings, Buffalo wings or whatever you may call them have never been part of my Super Bowl feast. Not for any particular reason other than I never thought of them. I don’t eat them regularly anyway, so it’s no surprise to me that I never thought about them until now. Now, I think I’d better get some wings, if there are any left.

Long ago, I didn’t have a television for a couple of years. When it looked like the 49ers were going to go to the Super Bowl for the first time back in the 1981 season, I went out and bought a little black and white TV set. I’m glad I did, because they of course won the game in January 1982 and have never lost a Super Bowl — five games, five wins. Naturally, I’m hoping for six.

I don’t bet on sports, so I don’t pay any attention to what the odds-makers are saying this year. The fact that the Harbaugh brothers are squaring off for a history-making first time Super Bowl-Sibling Rivalry makes the event a little more interesting than it might otherwise be, but not all that much for me.

The commercials haven’t lived up to the hype over the last few years, as far as I’m concerned, so I hope that will change Sunday. The halftime show is usually kind of boring to me, though I did like the one when the Blues Brothers were on. The others, not so much. The Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” was way overrated. So halftime for me is a good time to refresh and reload, get another Corona and check the seasoning in the guacamole.

I might actually try my hand at frying up some wings using my mother’s old time southern fried chicken recipe. That would be coating them with flour, salt and pepper and frying them in a combination of bacon grease and lard. When it works, it’s the best, but I’ve had more bad results than good over the years.

Enjoy the day when time stands still and go Niners!

Chris Daley is a staff writer and columnist for the Mountain Democrat. His column appears each Friday. 

Chris Daley

Chris has written a weekly column for the Democrat for more than 20 years and has Master’s Degrees in Russian History, Psychology and Career Counseling. He has been a staff writer for a number of years and enjoys it because he "learns so much about so many things."

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