THE SB33 PROBLEM: IT'S THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The End is near. The Interruption, anyway. And this has nothing to do with Y2K.

Sunday at 3:25 p.m. - prophecy doesn't get more specific than this - restaurant dishes will stop clattering, amusement park turnstiles will grind to a halt, movie reels will uncoil before empty houses and anybody who absolutely has to be out and about will feel like the last survivor of the apocalypse.

For the time it takes the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons to play a Super Bowl, the planet might as well stop spinning for all 40 million television households care.

Ski slopes will be open but uncrowded. In anticipation of which, Colorado resorts have been advertising themselves as the cool alternative to an afternoon of Broncos madness.

Shopping malls will be as empty as the Linda Tripp Defense Fund.

Even criminals will be shut away safely - watching the game.

``Overall, it's a pretty good day,'' said Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Isaac Gonzalez.

Which makes it a good afternoon to venture outside if you can stand the echo. (At least until the bar-goers get back on the roads.)

Rob Lowman, the Daily News' entertainment editor, read that Super Bowl Sunday is a good time to buy a car. So after watching the Cowboys beat the Steelers in 1996, Rob and his wife Sarah sped to a Santa Clarita Ford dealership.

``It was a mob scene, the way the (salesmen) were coming at us,'' he said. ``There were probably more salesmen than customers.''

Not only were the salesmen lonely because of the Super Bowl, but January is the slowest month of the year in the car market, and it was the end of the month, time to fill quotas.

``We tried to get up and leave, and they were blocking the door,'' Lowman said. ``I got a pretty good deal.''

And when the Lowmans needed another new car in 1998, they did their shopping on Super Bowl Sunday again. They got another pretty good deal.

Maybe movie theater owners should follow the car dealers and cut their prices on Super Bowl Sunday. Movie attendance usually is way down.

``The flip side is that there are some people who aren't interested in the Super Bowl, and going to the movies might be a nice alternative,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Co., a box-office tracking firm in Los Angeles.

But that doesn't make up for the millions whose day revolves around football.

In 1998, movie attendance on Super Bowl weekend was 5 percent lower than the following weekend, even though the numbers for Super Bowl weekend were higher than ever because of ``Titanic'' fever.

And in 1997, Super Bowl weekend movie-going was 46 percent lower than the following weekend, when ``Star Wars'' was rereleased.

Dergarabedian said the Super Bowl's impact rivals that of the winter holidays, Fourth of July fireworks and national elections.

How about impeachment hearings?

``I don't think that's had much of an impact,'' Dergarabedian said.

He said he'll be watching the Super Bowl at his mom and dad's house.

The Super Bowl empties Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, where Sunday will look more like a Monday, a spokesman said.

Elsewhere in Orange County, a Disneyland spokesman claimed the Super Bowl ``doesn't affect our attendance at all. Never has.''

That's hard to believe. Unless they've put TV sets on the Matterhorn.

``I guess there's a lot of people who aren't football fans,'' said Joe Aguirre, a park publicist.

Joe Aguirre is a football fan. ``I'll be watching the game,'' he said.

Even Denny's might as well close during the Super Bowl. Raul Rodriguez, manager of the franchise in West Hills, said business drops to holiday levels.

And Santa Anita Park, which used to try to go head-and-head with the Super Bowl, has learned from that mistake and will hold Sunday's first horse race at 11 a.m., 90 minutes earlier than usual on a weekend. The last race is scheduled for 3 p.m.

That leaves plenty of time to get a bet down on the game.

Of course, some things the Super Bowl just can't stop.

Which was the subject of a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power study a couple of years ago. The department found that water use shot up 25 to 30 percent at halftime of the Super Bowl. The increase was similar at the end of last year's final ``Seinfeld'' episode.

``It takes many people doing the same activity at the same time for that kind of detection to take place,'' said Walter Zeisl, the DWP's manager of public affairs.

E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

``You have to watch how you word this when you're talking about people going to the bathroom,'' Zeisl said. ``But the last time we measured it there weren't any related service outages.''

What a relief, pardon the expression.

If this national obsession with the Super Bowl seems unhealthy, don't worry. Churches say their Super Bowl Sunday evening services have attracted as many worshippers as any other Sunday evening.

Besides, what's wrong with anything that brings families and friends together, at home and out of the local galleria? It's a welcome timeout. Real life takes a holiday.

It's Christmas without the shopping.