gagablog 66: Football/Religion: Peyton Manning, Champ, Broncos win the Superbowl of Weed for Denver, the REAL Emerald City

Peyton Manning is a football God, Champ Bailey is living up to his destiny and name, the Broncos are awesome with lots of support and it's the Superbowl of Weed, between the first two states to legalize recreational weed as soon as we did it, and everybody's talking about it. But Denver did it a little better and these are all reasons the Broncos will win it tomorrow. The following will explain it from the magical/weed/destiny perspective with some ideas of how football (and many other things) works like religion in our society. "My religion is you" is a verse from Gaga's song "Teeth" that has also become a basis of my religion, and other little monsters: my religion is Gaga also means my religion is you. It is not a unique belief, it is the same belief that comes through in all other beliefs, but from the special perspective of art and magic. Loving and honoring the Gaga witin everyone, everyone's potential to transform through art and bravery into their best selves, is the same thing as honoring the Buddha within everyone, or the idea that everyone is within the grace of the divine or the love of Jesus. Saying "my religion is you" has a special focus, though - it's mostly saying I honor and want to connect with the greatest within you, the creative spirit that makes you holy, but it is also saying my religion is all of you, I look at my encounter with you as the experience of and pathway to the divine. We usually think of religion as the way to connect to the divine, to gods and goddesses. The literal definition of the term religion is like recconnecting. While we do somehow feel disconnected to the divine and need reconnecting, and certainly we have great confusion between us about how different religions seem to do this, and endless variety within them of people's experience of doing it, we do have a common belief that we are each connected to or part of the divine and no matter how we describe it sharing any experience with others makes it religious. Of course church and other religious institutuions are examples of people coming together for "religious" purposes but when seen from the magical perspective that everything is divine, then any time poeple come together, in any fashion, is a religious experience. Everything is really divine so every shared exprience has a religious quality to it, the only experience that is not religious is the mystical experience, where one is face to face with the divine or loses one's identity in association with the divine. But everything that happens between people has that element of religion, of these divine sparks flashing out to each other to make a connection. Religion is a way to connect to the divine through connecting with each other. The things we call religions do this by gathering people for explicitly religious purposes, but any gathering of people, or meeting on the street or lovemaking, has a religious aspects because everything is truly divine and sharing an experience of it is reconecting to it even if we just call it being freindly. It is easy to see this when you look at it from a magical perspective or break it down and look for it. Some people are religious about football. Many people are really religious about football, actually, though I guess relatively few would say that football is their religion. I think that many more people would admit that while they have another religion football is intimately connected to it and God wants the Bulldogs to win. This is especially true in the South but even here in Denver where christian religion doesn't seem that prominant they say "God must be a Bronco fan why else are the sunsets orange and blue?" (which, of course, we get the best sunsets of all different colors here so there are some really awesome orange and blue ones) People who have religions that they don't connect to football, or that don't have any other traditional religion they really believe in, might notice they have religious ideas and feelings about football. Newscasters and people on the street talk about destiny and things being "meant to be" around football. Budweiser has been running commercials for years with the theme of fan superstition affecting football games. It seems like in the first year or two they referred to it more in terms that suggested magic. In the last few years they call it superstition, or I think the line is "it's only superstition if it doesn't work", which implies that superstition is silly but if it works it is "more than that" meaning magic even if they don't want to call it that. I have no problem with superstition, I think it is fascinating and shows a basic, common belief we all have in magic. I also think our religious thought, for all their variety, all have a magical dimension that could help us understand how they are all similar, and also help us understand magic. But a lot of religions have fear built in around thinking about magic, and I think it is easier for some people to understand magic through a different framework than a religious one that might say "magic is evil, no no no." People might not want to think of their religios beliefs as magic, and they might notice how superstition feels magical and not asssociate it with religion, call it two different things. I think we will be much better off when we bring it all together from both ends of the spectrum, what we feel and believe (supersition)on the one end, and what we think and say we believe (religion) on the other, and football is a good field to do this on. We can try some plays and see what wins, come up with new philosophies. It's not nuetral, there is conflict between teams, kind of superficial like the conflict between sectx and religions, but all fans are football fans and this unites them in a way. The specific superstitions around football can help connect us, too. Different teams have different cultures and phenomena that grow around them. I saw a special on TV about fan superstitions and they mentioned that 40% of female Eagles fans wear the same Jersey for every game and usually don't wash it. This statistic has all sorts of magical information, from the belief that you can wash out luck to the idea that what we wear affects it, to the religion of doing something that connects you to 40% of the other women in the area. Even if that is "their thing", it is not like Eagles fans are the only ones who do this, it just happens to have caught on there to become part of the culture, but I'm sure there are fans of every team who do the same thing or something very similar, displaying the same magical belief, and probably many teams that have the same phenomenon just to a lower percentage. But all of these people, separated by different team affiliations and geaography, share the same belief and kind of belief and it is something that unites them. When I took a cultural geography class they told us that the best, clearest indicator of where someone lived in the country, the most distinct regions, were based on asking people which sports teams they supported. Of course there are fans of some teams all over, but the majority of a teams fans live in the area, so the teams are reflections of the cultures where they play. Sports, especially football in America, is one of the greatest forces for bringing us together and giving us a sense of collective identity. Colorado has a very strong state pride identity that seems really weird to me and I don't think is common among other states, but I still would not feel wrong to say that Bronco Pride is stronger than Colorado Pride. It's always strange to me how the local TV always refers to Coloradans and how things effect us, specifically, like we are the only ones we should care about, and maybe that is peculiar to being kind of culturally isolated in the middle of the country. There is also a consistent emphasis on Broncos things, it's always in the news and you see the iconography everywhere, but now that we are in the SUperbowl you see just how far it can go when all of that kicks into overdrive - FOX has had hours of Bronco/Superbowl coverage every day for weeks, hitting any random angle and broadcasting from "Superbowl Avenue" in NYC. And you just hear people talking about destiny a lot more, from newscasters to my boss at work wearing #24 because it's "Champ Bailey's time" to the guy at the supermarket who said "you know why it's such a nice day?" with a wink in his eye to which I corectly replied "because the broncos beat the patriots and are going to the SUperbowl!" and we nodded and smiled as if to say "the way God wanted it." We all have this sense of destiny around football, because of how it brings us together but also the nature of the drama of the game. Fans on either side believe in their team and have their belief strngthened by a win and tested by a loss, but in big games that is determined by magical, miraculous, fateful plays and we all share that experience, whether it is the one that put us through to the championship and we share the glory of it or kept us out and we share the despair - either way it brings us together as a team, and it deepens and extends our appreciation of football. There are reasons we come up with religious terms and descriptions for these most miraculous plays, and we as fans share the glory of them and it makes us love football even more, but also people who didn't care about football before see them or hear about them and it might bring them into loving football, too. I had a professor, Glen Wallis, for an "Introduction to the Religions of India" class who began class by saying it was too vast a subject to try and do anything like that in a semester and started us off with a group discussion on what religion was. I think we came up with the idea that it was a way of understanding the world we live in and predicting into the future, maybe some others, and he asked what qualified as a religion based on that criteria. I said "football" because I thought about how, within the world of football they sportscasters and analysts are always talking about what is going on and who is doing what and preicting what will hapeen in the future, the outcome of a game or the fate of a player or team, or something going on with the industry or fans. I also was kind of cheating because there was a frat guy in front of me with a T-shirt that had this on the back: "In the northeast it's a (something), in the West it's a (something), in the (somewhere) it's a cultural event, in the (somewhere) it's a pasttime, but in the SOUTH it's a RELIGION" and of course it was a Georgia Bulldogs shirt. We actually do think of it more that way, even if that shirt was kind of a "joke", but coming from that perspective it is easy to see how our feelings about football are religious or magical. Football brings us together and we often come to identify with a team but often the reason why we love, or hate, a team is because of a player. This shows that as passionate as people feel about teams, as much as it becomes like a mass hysteria, it is all essentially a response to things about individuals who make up the teams. It is not a football moment, but Knowshown Moreno's tears before a game this season became a meme for a reason, even people who don't care about football respond to that emotion. The players, who reach cult status in many ways, all have their own personalities and qualities, of course, and people respond to them in different ways. I've personally never been impressed by the super-cocky attitude of some stars but other people like this and say it is part of being a champion. I did not like Peyton Manning for a long time because I had an impression of him as being cocky - completely wrong I realized after some years but the only impression I had was from a cable commercial that had him saying something boastful. Then I saw him in a documentary and he was incredibly humble and just seemed completely awesome. The same documentary had Farve in it and I gained great respect for him to actually hear about him, and also Tom Brady and my dislike for him was confirmed as he presented himself as the real cocky jerk he seemed to be. But Peyton really impressed me when I saw that, when he was still a Colt. It seemed fate that Andrew Luck would take over the Colts and wear that blue horeshoe, facing up for good luck, on his helmet - there is something beautiful and magical about that. And there is definitely something magical about Peyton Manning "growing up" and becoming a Bronco to have the best season ever, breaking records and winning the Superbowl. These things just seem meant to be. One thing Peyton said in that interview that really made me like him was that at one point, playing Tom Brady to go to the Superbowl, he said he had never prayed during a football game, for football, before. This surprised me because I knew he played for Tennessee and had a southen accent and I thought about how many religious southerners would pray for football, but also I knew that some took religion "more seriously" and would not combine the two, and he seemed to be of that type. But he said that during that game he prayed for the first time for something to do with football, praying that since Tom Brady already had two or three Superbowl rings couldn't Peyton have this chance to get this one. And it worked, he got what he wanted. Of course many people pray and we can't really say that some god decides who wins, but the important thing is that we care enough to seek something magical, and magical things happen. I did not like the Broncos when I moved here because I disliked John Elway - I just had a bad impression of him when he played when I was a kid, maybe he didn't deserve it, but I decided I did not like the Broncos back then. When i decided to move here I thought about it and realized that was the reason why, I did not like Elway, but nothing really besides that, and I just decided it would be more fun to become a fan and like the Broncos and it did not take me too long to get into it. I'm a Bulldog for life but the Falcons weren't that great when I was a kid and though I liked them I did not get into them as a favorite team, I was just more into college football as a kid. When I moved here Champ Bailey was already one of their stars and since he was a Bulldog it was easy to cheer for him. Bulldog pride runs deep - in a press conference the other day Manning, Woodyard, and Welker all came out in Broncos gear in front of an orange backdrop but Champ came out in a Georgia jacket. I called my dad to tell him. So I became a Bronco fan when I got here and John Elway was just selling cars at the time so I did not have that "conflict of interest." And if there was anything else I disliked about Denver it was Shanahan and he was gone pretty soon after I got here. WHen Knowshown Moreno came in from Georgia my love for the team deepened based on affection for them as Bulldogs and as people. I was involved with a pagan group and, just for fun, we did magic spells to help the Broncos win and they went undefeated for six games, then we stopped doing it and it didn't go so well, but during that time it was prety exciting. And I had come to really love some things about Denver by that time, especially the mountains and weather. I felt like it was growing in good ways, with more young and liberal people moving here, and deserved to get higher profile, which really comes with sports success. Now I feel that way even more strongly, and especially the situation of being the Superbowl of Weed makes me sure that Denver will win based on magical principles and our attitude. 15 years is a long career in the NFL, and since the Broncos have not been to the Superbowl in that much time and Champ Bailey has played with them that long, and played spectacularly, there is a great feeling that he is due to win, it is his destiny and his time. There is also a strong feeling that Peyton Manning is one of the greatest quartebacks of all time and that reputation will be enshrined for all time with another Superbowl win with another team, especially with all he has been through. I'm sure there are other great stories on the other side, too, and a great story between the quarteback battle of the young, new quarterback against the veteran, experienced quarterback. From my personal perspective, Denver already deserves to win based on these things, and on the idea that this is a beautiful growing community that deserves even higher profile, prestige and business that come with a Superbowl victory. And I'm sure there are reasons Seattle "should" win that have similar dynamics but I don't live there and I don't know what they are, other than I can support them because Nintendo America is there and my brother told me one of their wide recievers is deaf, and that is really cool. But the real things that will determine who will win are the sill level and play of the teams and luck. I don't know much about football but the statistics are even, they are evenly matched teams according to all the measurable football factors. For one, it is only the 8th time in 46 Superbowls that the two best teams that year are playing, and according to statistician Nate SIlver they are evenly matched, too close to call - I saw him on the Colbert Report. So in this case it comes down to luck. My band director, Mr. McClure, used to tell us about football being a game of luck. He was trying to inspire us, or make us feel good for being in band instead of football in a ulture where football was really valued and of course band has been seen everywhere as geeky. He wanted us to practice, to get it perfect, and said that we can do it, because we did not have to leave anything up to chance. He said football began with a coin toss, it was a game of luck, but music you could just do it right with enough work. Of course both teams have worked hard, that is why they are the two best teams. People who see it from a football perspective might point out ways one team or another has an advantage, but I trust the statistics that it is an even match. So if it comes down to luck, to destiny and magical factors, who will win? The Broncos, and this is why. The most magical thing about this Superbowl is that it is the Superbowl of Weed. Both teams are from the two states that just legalized weed this year and everyone is talking about it, the late night comedians don't stop making jokes about it, that aspect is kind of everywhere. In the mentality that sports outcomes can be meant to be, it seems pretty obvious that the Divine is sending a signal that legalizing weed is a good thing, that good things will happen for your state if you do it. In years of smoking weed I always celebrate Superbowl Sunday with a Super-bowl of weed - celebrating everything with weed really but it was fun to have the irony of it being a Superbowl Sunday, and I celebrated it even in years when I was not really into professional football. Now, this Official SuperBowl of Weed has special and magical significance, and I think it will have a magical outcome based on this. When I first moved to Colorado, to Telluride, in 1996, I think, I was impressed by how they grew really, really good weed here. It was like paradise in the mountains and I knew it would be a good place to live and get better. When I moved back here in 2005 Denver legalized weed that year and when we elected President Obama the 10-or-20-yr-old but nonexistant medical marijuana industry exploded to thousands of stores and a huge shift in the culture, a truning point from which great things have grown. I did not want to get a medical liscence because, coming from the South and being aware of how evil a segregated society is and how long it takes to undo the damage from it, I did not want to participate in what I saw as creating a class structure where some people could have rights that other peoeple did not have. I eventually got one for my own safety and convenience and also because my friend said that supporting that movement was a step towards full legalization, which turned out to be true. The whole process just gets more abundantly useful and easier the more we actually go for the ways we can use cannabis and hemp when we can actually do it openly and cooperating with other aspects of society. It is fantastic to me that the Colorado State Fair will have a Weed Pavilion beside its Beer Pavillion and giving out fair ribbons for all sorts of weed-related competitions this year, including best brownies, plant, and homemade bong. It is also fantastic that Obama has made comments recently debunking the myths of weed being more harmful than alcohol and also taken action towards legalizing hemp at the federal level, another key step. For some states, seeing the benefits and non-risks of medical marijuana are the best course to legalization, for ohers the great advantages of hemp will help persuade them. But we are all moving in that direction because it is a key to the peaceful and abundant future that is our destiny - read all about it in my book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Smoking Weed" - and the two states blazing the trail are rewarded by their teams being in the SUperbowl, and Denver doing it a little bit better will be rewarded by the roncos winning. When I lived those few heavenly months in Telluride I used to go to the library to read. I found a book called "The Meaning of the Flowers" or something like that and it was just pages and pages, lists of flowers and plants and what each one signified. So a red rose meant romantic love and a dandelion meant friendship or whatever. I looked and it had an entry for cannabis or marijuana, I forget what it called it, but the meaning was "fate." I think about how weed is a magical plant, probably the oldest most widely used magical plant in history and around the world and with the most uses, most of which we are yet to discover or rediscover. I think about how it has been repressed and how much can be achieved by bringing it into the light, and how that will coincide with a change in our society so that we become more appreciative of nature and more careful with our environment. I think about it as being our fate in a very meaningful way, as a culture and nation and species, but I also think it means fate for individuals, that smoking it can help people understand themselves from teh perspective of fate, of magic. So the things we do around weed are especially fateful, the reason why it teaches us to be generous and kind and appreciative of it. I decided to get a medical card because my friend said it would help liberate the weed more fully in time. But I heard about debates going on in other states that had medical marijuana and were considering legalizing weed, but the medical marijuana community were aligned with the assholes who wanted to oppose it just because they already liked the way they had things set up,for themselves. I think this is a selfish attitude and against the spirit of weed itself, which teaches us there is plenty to go around once we stop the restrictions. Weed is so abundant, and valuable, it can completely revolutionize our whole idea of economy - it's in my book. My friend lived in Seattle and he said that many people in the medical marijuana community there were opposing legalizing weed on these grounds, that it was good enough for them as it was, they didn't want prices to rise, etc. He said an ounce of really good weed still cost almost 400 dollars there, the same price as a decent deal in other states where it is completely illegal,if you are lucky enough to find it at all. The weed laws are so oppressive it makes sense that people would want to keep a purely medical situation if they are finally assured of their supply and freedom from persecution for smoking ut fear wider legalization would bring a crackdown from the federal government and ruin it for everyone. I think we are certainly discovering in Colorado that there are so many benefits to legalizing it, and so many different kinds of people moving here for different reasons o take advantage of those benefits, that it will produce a whole new culture, a renaisaance of productivity and creativity. Both Washington and Colorado should be proud of legalizing recreational marijuana. I don't know if we did it by a wider margin, I don't know if they don't have the same thing in Seattle that we have here, news stories every night about weed and the newscasters making lighthearted jokes about it, but I do get the impression that Colorado is more fully behind legalizing weed than Washington is, and I know both states have areas that oppose it, too, and maybe it is just demographics. I certainly would not suggest that Washintonions are more snobby than Coloradoans, maybe they are, I don't know, but Coloradoans can seem pretty snobby in some ways. But in this case I got the imprssion that Washington was just not quite as cool about legalizing weed as Colorado has been, and I think that is why we will recieve the greatest reward, luck, magic and destiny by winning the Superbowl tomorrow. We already have the best weed in the country, partly thanks to our climate and alititude but of course also to the expertise and strains that have been cultivated in the state or brought here, more and more as we attract more of the best. And we have the best prices, almost half of what people pay elsewhere at best, with many paying much more or can't get this quality at all. These are the natural rewards of people here being cool about weed, organizing and voting for it, and the magical reward of getting in the Superbowl can magically promote it, and more by winning, but of course all of that is the result of hard work by the Broncos. Still, magic helps us both for many reasons and helps it all come together, to promote this city that is doing great tings and about to do many more. In the world of deserving to win the Superbowl Denver deserves it in many ways, and being the coolest and best about legalizing weed is just the icing on the cake that is orange and blue. I don't live there so if Seattle is somehow way more progressive about weed than Denver I'm sorry for assuming otherwise, it is just the impression I got, and it makes sense because we still seem to be more in the national spotlight for it. I also have a personal reason for hoping Denver beats Seattle, one that probably no one else in the world cares about, in this world. Years ago i started claiming that Denver was the Emerald City, from Oz, because I figured as America lived up to and transformed into its idealized version, Oz, Denver would be in the center, corresponding to the Emerald City, and if we legalized weed and were on the forefront of that movement, as I predicted and is so essential to becoming Oz, we would be especially "green", and everything would be colored by the greeness in the same way the Emerald City is bathed in emerald light. And of course with weed stores on almost every block you do see a lot more green around, that part has started coming true. But when I told someone I thought Denver was really the Emerald City she said Seattle was already officially the Emerald City, by choice of the voters, even if they commonly called it something else. I think they chose that because it is really mossy and green? And of course they could still have the same claim to be emerald based on moss AND weed, and no one else is even asking to call Denver that, but in my own mind we are in a better place for it, right in the middle, with the country divided roughly into quadrants of culture in each cardinal direction, so it would make sense. And Oz can, and will, be worldwide in my view, all of humanity will live in a world without war or money eventully, but it was originally envisioned in America based on American experience and I believe there is a mystical way it will come true here, including Denver becoming more prominent in the "green" sense than Seattle, even though both should be proud and ewarded for blazing he trail. There is just a lot of prominence and attention that goes with winning the Superbowl, that is the reason I am associating it with us having a better attitude toward weed, or a name only I care about. I realize this only matters in my Gaga fantasy that we will become Oz, and though I believe in it and think it will make sense in the future, I really don't expect anyone else to understand it. But I'll write it anyway, just in case, or for the future. I have no idea if Gaga is as intentional about Oz as I am, but this is the only connection to her, the green/emerald city connection, which is pretty obscure, maybe "just for me". But when I responded to her tweet about Tim Tebow and it got the most views of my blogs for a while, I realized I had to write one for Peyton Manning because he is way better. Of course everything I say about football in this can be applied to other sports, or really any other activity - everything is connected in subtle ways and there is magic in looking for those connections and comparisons. But football is a huge phenomenon in America so it provides such powerful, massive examples of belief and how people connect around the activity and relate to it. It's just a really big deal and even though it's also "just a game" the outcome has major repercussions for the city and the fans - it effects the economy of money and of emotion and attention and prestige within the nation. Players don't think about those things, they don't effect the game that way, from the skill side, the activity, but only in terms of destiny - it was this city's year. And this year it is Denver's year, it's our year. It's the year of the Horse, Happy Chinese New Year as of yesterday, so there is that, too. All of this is very loosely connected, but magically it all comes together. Peyton Manning did not move here for the weed, it has "nothing to do with him" he is such a traditional "good guy, clean American boy", but legal weed does end up affecting the culture in so many ways so that what was already a great place to live and raise a family gets better and better. I think his success here will increase the likelihood he will stay here and continue to give Denver that image as well, for people who are put off by the idea of it being a weed paradise, they can think "Well, Peyton Manning likes living there and if it doesn't bother him it probably won't bother me." I know it is going to be a great game, I hope the weather doesn't make it uncomfortable, and I just know the Broncos will win, but I'm really excited to see it, more than any Superbowl ever before, I think. This has all been about the wierd magical luck that can affect the outcome, is it Denver's destiny to win, have we done enough of the right things right and will the spotlight spurn us to fix some other things? These are questions of destiny, and spirit, and these will play a factor in tomorrow's game even if there will be no way to measure them. But everyone will be able to see and enjoy a great display of skill and sport and we will collectively form powerful memories from this game. I just hope and expect all of those will contribute to everyone thinking it was the year Denver legalized weed and won the Superbowl, that Champ Bailey and others got their rewards for their love and work for the game and that Peyton Manning crystalizes his place as one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, and his place in Denver. Thanks to everyone whose hard work got them this far and will win it, you've got this! Go Broncos!