Tim Grobaty: Super ways to meet game day challenges

AN EASY WEEKEND TO PLAN: It is Super Bowl Weekend, so what can we tell you? Turn the TV to KNBC Channel 4 and wait till 3:30 p.m. Sunday for the kickoff. In the intervening hours you might want to smash some avocados, figure out what constitutes a layer in a seven-layer bean dip, grab a case of Tecate and fill a bowl with some pork rinds. That's all you need to know. What could go wrong?

THING NO. 1 THAT CAN GO WRONG: Your TVs all break. Or maybe the cable goes out. At any rate, you find yourself without a TV. You can throw your imagination out the window and go to a sports bar, or try something completely different, like watching the game on a jet.

Our Man in the Airplane Biz says Super Bowl Sunday is a great day to fly, because hardly anybody does. JetBlue, with its seatback TVs (and tons of sports channels, including the NFL Network), is offering $1 drink specials starting at kickoff time (3:30, remember?).

THING NO. 2 THAT CAN GO WRONG: Your TVs all break and you're afraid to fly. Well, your computer still works, right? No? OK, then you have a smartphone. Nobody has broken TVs, fear-of-flying and a computer that doesn't work without at least having a smartphone. Any device you might have that can pick up the Internet can pick up the Super Bowl on NFL.com, which will be streaming the game live.

THING NO. 3 THAT CAN GO WRONG: You don't care about the Super Bowl at all.

Really? That happens? Well, there's always Disneyland. Disney officials never address the ages-old myth/nonmyth of the park being more or less crowded on game day. Snopes.com says the statement that Disneyland is less crowded on Super Bowl Sunday is false, but as every crackpot wacko-backer in Limbaughland will tell you, Snopes is not to be trusted.

Our Woman at Disneyland tells us that the place tends to be marginally less crowded on Super Bowl Sunday, which makes us doubt that we have an American-born president.

OTHER DAYS: Of course there are other days of the weekend besides Sunday. Take today, just to pull one out of a hat. It's yet another First Friday, which seem to come around with a lot more frequency than the other Fridays.

That means it's time for the monthly evening street bash in Bixby Knolls on Atlantic between Bixby Road and San Antonio Drive. It's the Mardi Gras version, so collect your beads at various stores (keep your shirt on!), buy a slab of King Pie, make a mask, check out the Sultans Car Club and an awful lot more.

Also today, but stretching clear into Saturday is the Long Beach Coin, Stamp & Collectibles Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center. It's like what your counting room would look like if you had serious money: Ancient (and latter-day) coins, sheets of paper money, gems, silver and gold! Gold, we tell you!

Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.

Admission is $8 (good for both days).

FRIDAY PLAYLIST: We're going all Black History Month with the Playlist for February. It's sort of problematic, though, because it's difficult to find any good black musicians through history. We did manage to dig up a few, though, after a lot of hard work and research.

1. "On the Sunny Side of the Street," Louis Armstrong

2. "Empire State of Mind," Jay-Z & Alicia Keys

3. "If You Don't Know Me By Now," Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

4. "Freddie's Dead," Curtis Mayfield

5. "What's Going On," Dirty Dozen Brass Band feat. Chuck D

6. "At Last," Etta James

7. "Superstition," Stevie Wonder

8. "Five Long Years," Buddy Guy

9. "Try a Little Tenderness," Otis Redding

10. "I'll Be There," Michael Jackson


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