Our grand coliseums

Fifty years from now the Super Bowl will be sparsely attended. I know because I've been there: in the highest reaches of a stadium I picked up trash at Super Bowl XCI. It was odd, time travel, but the Super Bowl gig was all my temp agency had to offer so I took it.

I was given a big barrel and told to patrol the upper aisles. There wasn't much trash, on account of the sparse attendance and it seemed like people didn't have much money to buy beer. All the fans were stone sober. You could say the same about the gray façade of the concrete stadium whose fireworks silos were empty and whose poles waved no flags.

There wasn't much trash but the mini-football giveaway still turned out to be a problem. Most of the mini-footballs ended up on the field. Delays ensued. During the delays the players stood in their tracks looking up to the heavens with their arms spread and raised. You could see through their face masks that some of them were talking, perhaps addressing the mini-football throwers in the upper reaches, addressing us like players in a Greek amphitheater where the acoustics are so tight. What were they saying? Maybe the players weren't addressing us in the upper reaches at all. Maybe they were just talking to themselves the way a lot of people do in the future when there are no more fireworks in the silos of our grand coliseums and no money for beer.

There was still one mini-football being thrown around in my section during the last quarter. I caught hold of it and then I gave a speech: Always with the throwing the footballs. Guess what? Fun's over. I have a temporary job to do.

Then someone said, in a whisper, Fun's been over a long time, Mac.