Bowled Over by Cuteness

I don’t watch much football, and by “much,” I mean any. Come Super Bowl time, I look for alternative programming on the television set. This year, for the third year in a row, I find myself tuned into Animal Planet’s suffocatingly adorable “Puppy Bowl.”

Some programming genius got a big promotion for this brainstorm, I’m sure: Puppy Bowl is three hours of aimless and irresistible lingering over puppies wrestling, jumping over each other, chewing toys, and just being plain ol’ cute inside a miniature football stadium. It’s also disturbingly pornographic — not libido-wise, you sicko, but rather in its plotless, sensationalistic ability to titillate your innate powerlessness before pure, unadulterated adorability. “Puppy Bowl III” runs back-to-back, apparently, throughout the evening, so you can tune in at any point and discover for yourself just how much of a softie you are.