Sports
Fact is, I've never been a big sports fan my entire life. Played a few when I was a kid; never stuck with anything; really don't push it much on the kids either -- I never want to be one of those fist-pumping, bellowing dads you see on the sidelines -- though the two older ones are both interested in things like Little League baseball and youth soccer, which we're happy to sign them up for.
Never much watched sports either, and I suspect that's an environmental thing -- didn't grow up in a household where televised sports were that big a deal, contrary to my wife's experience, where they were a major social focal point of family and friends gatherings.
Anyway, I've noticed that as I'm getting older I'm enjoying sports on television more and more. Not to the point where I'm tuning into ESPN every day to watch whatever they're showing, but I followed the Pats pretty closely this year, and didn't miss any games after the first three, I think, and that one playoff game we had a local blackout for and missed. Now that the Pats' season is over and they've won the Super Bowl, I'm turning my attention to the Bruins.
So I've been doing some self-analysis to try to figure out *why* I'm finding sports more entertaining than I used to, and I think I've put my finger on it: It's a controlled environment with rules that are fairly easy to understand, but the outcome isn't always predictable, and because of that it's unlike a lot of other forms of entertainment.
Movies and TV, for example, follow a fairly established formula that make it pretty easy to figure out what's going to happen once you know the basic plot and have a handle on the main characters. I find most TV and movies -- even the stuff I like -- to be horribly predictable.
On top of that, sports are just fun to watch. I find the grandstanding of pro football to be a bit much to bear -- the end zone shenanigans and so on -- but I love a good fight at a hockey game. Plus, think about the constant barrage of statistical information that's being thrown at you during the average pro sports game -- player stats, team roster information, game data. Picture-in-picture displays with head shots of players or team formations. Play by play analysis. For someone who thrives on information stimulus to the point of overload, it's a cornucopia.
It's even better when I've got the PowerBook handy; the last few games I've watched I've had the laptop open and turned to the Web page of whatever team I'm watching, and it really helps me get an angle on the team and the players that I've never really had on my own, as I'm not particularly good at memorizing stats and averages.
Bob and Emme are both getting into it now, and I think that's good. If they plan to make any headway in the corporate world, being able to communicate a basic sports vocabulary to coworkers is a good social networking skill, and one that I hope to encourage.