RV Electricity – Road Signs: Groundhog Day at the Super Bowl

Now, I’m not a real big sports fan. But I was invited to supervise the very first surround-sound broadcast of a Super Bowl game back in the early 2000s. Would have been fun, but no budget was forthcoming so it didn’t happen. But every time I see a Super Bowl game I imagine how much fun (read challenge) it would have been to be the first to do that event in 5.1 Surround Sound.

But today’s Road Signs isn’t about the Super Bowl at all. Nope, it’s about a simultaneous event happening today (Feb. 2, 2020) in Punxsutawney, PA, called Groundhog Day. And more specifically it’s about the rather dark movie comedy “Groundhog Day,” starring Bill Murray as an obnoxious news reporter who gets stuck in an endless loop of living the same day over and over again, which seems like many years of repetition to him, but to everyone else it’s a brand-new day (just the same day) restarting at 6:00 a.m.

Why do I like this movie (that my wife hates, by the way)? Well, I think it gives us the chance to explore how we learn new things. For example, while Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, initially performs pranks on the unsuspecting folks of Punxsutawney, then becomes depressed and kills himself in a variety of ever-more-disturbing suicides, eventually he settles down into a pattern of learning new things over the 10,000 days or so that the movie must loop through.

So he takes piano lessons and learns to play jazz piano quite well, makes incredible ice sculptures, and even seems to have taken a few courses in EMT training when he saves the mayor from choking on a piece of meat. And, of course, he tries to win the heart of his love interest, Andi McDowell, through a series of unsuccessful attempts by reading her French poetry, creating a snow sculpture of her face, and a variety of other creepy things he’s learned about her over the last few hundred attempts at winning her love.

But it’s only in the end when he stops trying too hard that she finally falls in love with him, and he wakes up to the same song on the radio at 6:00 a.m. but discovers that the DJ’s made a mistake with the playlist and it’s now the next day. The circular spell has been broken and he’s free to choose what happens the next day.

So what do I get from this movie? Wow, I would love to have several lifetimes to learn all the things I’m interested in. I’m in constant study mode, all the time, and love to run experiments. But there’s just not enough time to do and learn and read everything I want. So I have to choose carefully not to waste time that I’ll never get back.

And the movie shows me that the one thing you can’t overthink and force to happen is fall in love. Just like making an ice sculpture – if you try too hard you shatter it. But don’t try at all and it won’t happen. I’ve been married for 31 years now to the love of my life, and it wasn’t hard at all to fall in love. And yes, I was analyzing and defining the process all the while it was happening. But one day I decided that love wasn’t a logical thing, it was an emotional thing. And emotions are the one thing I can’t measure with a meter.

I highly recommend you watch “Groundhog Day” at least once and see how learning and love can go hand in hand. And don’t try too hard with falling in love or you’ll break it, but without 10,000 do-overs to try again. Thanks, Phil and Punxsutawney Phil, for a great movie with a lot to think about…

And bringing this full circle, I think there’s an updated scene of the movie “Groundhog Day” in one of the Super Bowl adds. So even if you don’t watch the entire movie, you’ll see some new clips of it anyway.