I'm pretty sure Super Bowl VI--on Sunday, Jan. 16, 1972--was the first featured on TIME's cover, and there's starting to be quite a bit of mirth-making in the culture around the priorities-out-of-balance spectacle of the game specifically and football generally.
This all reminds me of the handwringing among my ilk (and me, to some extent) in the 1980s about whether R.E.M., U2 or Natalie Merchant had "sold out."
I ultimately sided with the sellers back then, too. Those ads are from the pull-out Super Bowl advertising supplement published in the Jan. 10, 1972, Sports Illustrated, and so is this beautiful thing:
I am rooting for Miami in today's game, but most of the (so-called) "experts" appear to be picking Dallas.
There has been so much great stuff work put out on today's game by the reporters, editors, photographers, illustrators, agate typists and other artists at America's great newspapers. I appreciate all of them and their work, and I want to give a special shout-out for the fine treatment provided by the Toledo (Ohio) Blade.
The Apache Belles obviously put in their work, too, and thank you to those folks, too (spoiler alert, resultwise, in the following video).
Thank you to NFL, TV and Internet for making this full-game video available, and thank you, HP, for giving me a framework for getting to have so much fun!
This Week in Pro Football is a syndicated program that airs at different times in different markets in 1971--Friday nights in Chicago and Saturday afternoons in Salt Like City, for example--so check your local listings. But, by all means, check them, because This Week in Pro Football is outstanding (and has absolutely the best set in all of television history), even when Pat Summerall isn't available to join Tom Brookshier for the fun.
Then Miami beat Kansas City, 27-24, in an AFC game that started at 3 p.m. Central but ended up needing two overtimes to decide.
In the early game on Sunday, Dec. 26, the defending-champion Colts won at Cleveland, 20-3. There were reports out of Baltimore after the Colts lost to the Patriots in Week 16 that the team might've thrown that game in order to play the Browns (and not the Chiefs) in the first round of the playoffs, but the team denied such suggestions.
This whole weekend is going to be huge for football, of course, with New Year's Day 1972 falling on a Saturday. We've got the Sugar, Cotton, Rose bowls all tomorrow afternoon and then, that evening, for the national championship, ...
The NFL conference championships are Sunday, Jan. 2, with the Cowboys and 49ers squaring off for the second year in a row for the NFC title and then the Colts and Dolphins playing for the AFC. I am very nervous about the Miami game, and I might just have to limit myself to only listening on the radio.
From: Eric Date: January 2, 2013 8:59:09 AM CST Subject: i may just spend the rest of 2013 listening to the longines symphonette, ... and you'll have to deal with it.
Have I written previously at the HP about this boxed set? It seems like I have.
No … not that I can find quickly through the site-search box. But this doesn’t seem right at all. I feel certain I have written about these records. The internet really is amazing, but it also really is still so frustrating so much of the time. It is so great already, in fact, that it’s now easy to see how great still it could one day be—and then the backwash of that line of thinking is the not-there-yet frustration.
This is life in the here and now, of course—the unearned blessing of the great moments, the glimpse of the perfect those deliver and the restlessness that gathers as a result. And so here we are, trying to remind each other to wait faithfully, trying to remind each other to not be jerks, trying to remind each other to be thankful, trying to love one another, trying to remind each other to live out our particular callings of commonly sourced creativity and trying to remind each other to share the gifts we have been given.
According to an ornate, square piece of carboard tucked inside the Christmas at the Fireside box, among the four records, the Longines Symphonette Recording Society was “an educational service of The Longines-Wittmauer Watch Company.” It also says, …
For years, Mishel Piastro has wanted to bring togehter in a simple anthology the music that really sets the mood for the holiday season. In America, Christmas is the season of brotherhood and good fellowship, of solemn religious significance, of happiness … and the time of year that uniquely belongs to children.
Only music can capture the many moods of this spirit … and now Maestro Mishal Piastro, the Longines Symphonette and the Holiday Choraliers have created for you this aptly titled Treasury of the complete, nostalgic, emotional music … “CHRISTMAS AT THE FIRESIDE.”
I have a brother who works for an acoustical company. That’s what they call it—“an acoustical company.” He was telling me a couple of days ago about how designing a room for spoken-word stuff and designing a room for music are two different activities. For spoken words, you want very little reverberation; for music, you want a whole bunch of reverberation. So you use different technologies to achieve the different desired effects. It’s amazing to me that people have applied themselves to figure that stuff out over the generations and passed it down. Seriously, it’s a miraculous thing. Anyway, he was saying how challenging it is to set up a theater or whatever where one night you might have somebody talking and the next night you might have some bodies--a symphonette recording society and some choraliers, perhaps--playing music. I can imagine how frustrating that might be, given what he said about the different acoustical technologies.
Now I really do feel like I wrote about these Longines Symphonette records at the HP the more that I think about it. I’m pretty sure I included a picture of an ad for this boxed set. I’m pretty sure that’s true.
I should also note that I just rediscovered that I have two of these boxed sets—a red-trimmed set that my parents-in-law gave me (the square card, pictured below, came with this set, and I think the pencil handwriting is that of my father-in-law) and then a gold-trimmed set that my parents gave me. Has there ever been a being in this world who has been heaped with more undeserved gifts than I have been heaped through not even 50 years yet? I’m not so sure. Thank you, parents and parents-in-law; thank you, Maestro Piastro, Longines Symphonette Recording Society and Holiday Choraliers; thank you, Brother and other participants in acoustical innovation over the years. Thank you, God, and merry Christmas, everyone.
My 2017 wife and daughter thinks this activity has been creepy, but I've been spending a significant amount of time watching various YouTube users Christmas home movies from 1971.
...were the creative hijinks, probably from Christmas71 afternoon and things had settled down from the Santa visits, gift exchanges and main-meal finery.
Well, here's hoping all of the 2017 Christmases are going as merrily as these from 1971.
