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It's A Punderful Life

 


It's over. The Holiday Season is complete. We are now into 2021, and anticipation of a better time is running around like a puppy dog looking for the ball that's rolled under the bushes.

Now, except for an expected couple of million deaths due to  COVID and no one knows what the mad king will do in the next couple of weeks, we should be okay to get together in groups by, shall we say, next fall. In between now and next fall, we'll have more time to contemplate our navels and dive into Introspection 5.0.

Introspection 5.0 allows those who have completed introspection 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, et al. until 4.9 to proceed. At this point, some of us navel-gazers will be seeing the face of Jesus, or maybe George Carlin. A lot of this will depend on your navel, is it an inny or outy.

I anticipate more certified master bakers in the US and a thriving black market in sourdough starters. Because they will try to avoid complying with the FDA guidelines on this product, convictions for selling sourdough starter will exceed convictions for marijuana possession.

Watch for pop up movie showings as people, who really only go movies for the popcorn, are lured into vacant warehouses and abandoned churches to watch bootleg copies of the latest releases from Hollywood, Bollywood, and The EU.

The fan in the stands will become part of the historical myth that we built around romancing sports fan participation. We are finding we don't need them. Even though the effect of having a stadium filled with full-throated fans is debatable, the idea that sports producers did get the crowd to pay big money to be bit actors in the drama was unique.

However, COVID has allowed professional sports experts to figure out that the revenue stream for pay-for-view exceeds ticket sales. They get the added benefit of not losing 80% of the final price for tickets because of scalping. The teams don't have to worry about fans becoming plaintiffs in legal filings because of alleged injuries. 

And then there are all of those expensive stadiums. We have in our homes TV screens that literally make the players appear bigger than life. How much would the owners of teams save if we didn't have stadiums?

Where would they play? They could build a regional TV studio, especially for broadcasting sports.  Rain delays, wind conditions, and dehydrating heat would all be problems in the past. They could build them in small remote communities because they wouldn't have to worry about fans. They could revive the economy in hard-hit rural America, similar to building a prison. The players would live in dormitories on-site and get conjugal visits just like the convicts.




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