DATE: Monday, October 6, 1997               TAG: 9710030045

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ANN SJOERDSMA

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

JUMBOTRON DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: IS ANYONE WATCHING THE GAME?

Have you bought yourself a Jumbotron yet? No? Why not? It's the rave toy of the technological moment.

Install a Jumbotron in your living room and you can watch an instant replay of yourself watching an instant replay on television! Cool. Or better yet, watch an instant replay of yourself watching an instant replay of a football player watching an instant replay of himself on a Jumbotron.

Holy duplicating reality! Holy instant replay within instant replay! Holy Jumbotron within Jumbotron! Holy hall of mirrors! There's no end to the electronic merriment.

Put a Jumbotron in your bedroom, and Victoria has no secrets. Over and over again. . . .

Actually, I don't think personal Jumbotrons (PJs, for short) are available for home consumption, yet. But seeing as how I'm a charter member of the Late 20th Century Luddite Society, I can't be sure. I haven't visited Wal-Mart lately.

But I have recently visited the spanking new 80,000-seat Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in mythical Raljohn, Md., home of the Washington Redskins; and, with a Kleenex pressed to my nostrils to stem the bleeding, I've perched in my seat to behold the new wizard of ooohs and aaahs: Jumbotron. JKC has two, towering over either end zone.

They flash, and the crowd roars.

Jumbotron is a ``rilly, rilly big show.'' The show of the future, which is to say today.

For those of you who haven't met Jumbotron yet - and bless you, my children - it's that monster screen in state-of-the-art stadia that re-broadcasts plays on the field in a mere blink of an eye after the play has occurred. Or half a blink.

With Jumbotron, it's hard to tell which came first: the play or the replay. Or the replay of the replay.

I can already hear the commercial pitch for PJs:

``Let Jumbotron place you on the cutting edge of reality.''

Pause.

``Let Jumbotron place you on the cutting edge of reality.''

Nah, you didn't really hear it twice. Hear it twice.

As a Luddite, I grudgingly accept electric lights and indoor plumbing, but larger-than-life images of athletes doing what I just saw them do (if I was watching the game, which used to be why people went to the stadium, not to drink champagne and cut corporate deals), do not thrill me. Once the play's run, it's over. No matter how spectacular. On to the next. Treasure the memory. Read about it tomorrow. Catch ESPN later.

Despite what the faithful in Texas or Alabama believe, football's a sport, not a religion. Icons, schmicons.

But with Jumbotron, I sort of expect Big Brother to grab a pass, drag his toes across the back of the end zone, and lead the JKC masses to a parallel universe of endless instant replays.

Come to think of it, a parallel universe of instant replays would be another parallel universe of instant replays. Deja vu all over again, as Yogi said.

Seriously, if I wanted to watch the game on TV, I'd stay home. Then I'd only have the problem of muting the inane banter and hero worship of attention-deprived sportscasters. Is anyone watching the game anymore? The real game, I mean. On the first go-round.

Just to exclaim the point, lurking around the corner for a future Late 20th Century Luddite Society emergency session is the already unveiled successor to Jumbotron: the ``smart seat.'' So-named because, of course, anybody who pays thousands-per-season to be zapped by instant info- and image-mania, is smart. Duh, that's right.

The smart seat comes equipped with a personal video screen that allows you, the smart sports fan, to pick your own camera angles, call up your own statistics and replays, even order hot dogs, without once lifting your indulged, little kielbasa. Plans for such seats at Washington Wizards/Capitals owner Abe Pollin's new arena in downtown D.C. fell through. The baseball San Diego Padres are rumored to be testing such a system now.

I assume there's also going to be a game played at the same time. But I can't swear to it.

All I want to know is how much the ``dumb seats'' will cost, 'cause I want the dumbest seat in the house - as dumb as they get. The way things are going, that should guarantee me a heckuva view. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is an editorial columnist and book

editor for The Virginian-Pilot.

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