Monday, February 12, 2024

My Super Bowl analysis contains no football

Last night I watched the entire Super Bowl from start to finish, the first time I’ve ever done that. My kids (two teens and a tween) are really into football right now, so there I was, sitting on the couch beside my kid, one more mom who's desperate to find a way to connect in spite of the ground constantly shifting beneath our relationship.

Since I certainly don’t have any insights about the actual game play, here instead are my thoughts on the non-football parts.

First, let’s get the worst moment out of the way: Travis Kelce getting screamy, aggressive, and borderline violent with his coach. I was mostly neutral on him before, but this was such bad form. Imagine if you did that to your boss at work, shouting at the side of their face and shoving into them. You’d be fired on the spot. I guess we have different workplace standards for an intense game of football, but should we? Surgeons, airline pilots, and school teachers have intense jobs (with potentially dire, real-life consequences, I might add), and we wouldn't accept them behaving that way. 

This boils down to a big ol' man tantrum. I didn't get what I want, so I'm going to get ugly about it. Not a good look, Trav.

So profesh.

Shortly before the game, one of my boys commented that despite football having a reputation as a sport that men watch, he's seen lots of women at the high school and college games he has attended. We wondered what the male/female ratio is at pro football games. Then in the first ad break, here comes a drug to treat perimenopause symptoms. Then the second ad break had Dove soap talking about body confidence and how it affects girls in sports. That doesn’t answer my question of how many women are attending the games, but there must be plenty of GenX and Millenial women in the TV audience to justify those ad buys.

The commercials for online gambling seemed in particularly poor taste, with their little 800 number in small print at the bottom, ready to help you out as soon as you lose your money, job, family, whatever, to your gambling addiction. Not unexpected, of course, since the Super Bowl was in Las Vegas, and the NFL is fully in bed with the online betting industry. But still disappointing. The slate of celebs pushing it felt like the new version of all those shills for crypto a couple years ago.


Here's my internal monologue during some of the other commercials:

Wicked: Where’s the guy who left his wife for Ariana Grande?...I kinda want to have an Oz movie marathon, but in which order? Original first, then the prequel, or vice versa?

Feet washing: Huh, a commercial for Jesus...Where have I seen a picture like that before? Oh yeah...


(I will always take an opportunity to reference Fred Rogers doing the quiet work of discipleship. "I don't have a towel." "It's ok; you can share mine." Low key radicalism in 1969.)

Lindor truffles: Good reminder; I will grab a bag when I’m at the pharmacy filling my prescription for that perimenopause drug and buying Dove soap.

Jeff Goldblum: Always a delight to see him. What's he promoting again? Eh, whatever, just keep being weirdly appealing.

Dunkin' Donuts: I do appreciate when a celebrity can make fun of himself, so you win, Ben Affleck. A fun and goofy contrast to your put-upon, grouchy persona.

Beyonce: She and Tony Hale make a good buddy comedy! She looks amazing in every iteration. This is a beautiful commercial. 

My son and I had a good chuckle at the Kawasaki ad. Eagle gets a mullet! Turtle gets a mullet! Bear gets a mullet! Doggie gets a mullet! Everyone gets a mullet! (I reserve the right to enjoy this commercial while reiterating my strongly held objection to the current mullet revival among the young people.)

The list of tech services advertised makes an interesting time capsule for 2024.

-Crowdstrike, to fight security breaches

-Guided Frame Google AI, to help partially sighted people use their phones

-Homes, a Zillow competitor. Yay! more ways to browse houses far beyond your price range

-Copilot, "your everyday AI companion" to help you finish college, create a movie, start a business, become a nurse, I guess...etc.

-Temu, at least three times, encouraging me to "shop like a billionaire". As far as I can tell, the business idea behind Temu is "what if we sold the same cheap crap as Amazon/Wish/Alibaba, and threw in more data mining plus multi-level marketing?"

-And the most cynical award goes to Snapchat, which positioned itself as distinct from and better than that pesky "social media" that encourages kids to chase likes and engagement and shallow connections. Oh yes, Snapchat, with its disappearing posts and snap streaks and suggesting randos who happen to be near you is definitely very different from all that. LOL forever.

Ok, enough about the commercials. Moving on to the halftime show. As with Travis Kelce, I was pretty neutral on Usher going into this, but he was so good! I loved the acrobats and other circus performers at the beginning, plus his gorgeous white cape and suit, like a very fancy ringmaster. He gave a shout out to his mama, a marching band came in, and Alicia Keys popped up for a minute, decked out in red sequins, a red cape, and a red swoosh of a piano. Gorgeous. 

During the sexy slow jam portion of the show, there were plenty of hip swirls, and a two layer undressing: first the easy snap-off shirt and then the peeling off of the tank top. Then more special guests that were impressive, but honestly my favorite part was when the roller skate crew came in, dancing and doing flips(!), and I thought, what in the Surya Bonaly is going on here? And then Usher himself rolled out, singing, dancing, and skating all at once! That's a triple threat I didn't know I needed to see until I saw it. Do we think he already was a roller skate enthusiast or did he learn it for this show? 
(Scratch that. I just googled it, and apparently he has been an avid skater all his life, is coming out with a skating-inspired fashion line similar to the black and blue costumes worn here, and is passionate about spreading rinks far and wide. Usher contains multitudes.)


The grand finale was, naturally, Yeah, and by the end the stage was packed with dancers and bumping so much I was crossing my fingers that they had double checked the structural integrity of it before the show. Those notes from Yeah (boop-beep, boop-beep) have been in my head all day.

So anyway, the Chiefs won. Apparently Mahomes is a very, very good quarterback. 

The end.




Bonus link: my favorite Super Bowl ad from 1999. 
"When I grow up, I want to file all day."
"I wanna claw my way up to middle management."

When this originally aired in 1999, I was just about to finish college, and I didn't even know yet that my first job would involve a mind-numbing amount of filing.

Monday, January 2, 2023

Books read in 2022

I didn't hit my goal of reading 48 books this year, but I read 36, which is the second most I've read in any year. Here's to setting ambitious goals and celebrating even if you don't do everything perfectly!

Highlights below.


Lots of re-reads this year: The Catcher in the Rye (held up fairly well for me!), the first two books in the Baby-sitters Club series (ditto!), Persuasion (Jane is always a good idea), and two faves from just last year's list, Evvie Drake Starts Over and Circe.

Possibly my last read-aloud series with my kiddo (sniff, sniff): Gregor the Overlander. Good but quite violent. Not a surprise from the author who brought us the Hunger Games series. My nine year old has moved on to reading a dragon series on his own, which is wonderful to witness, but I'm still a little sad at the end of an era.

Sprawling epics
The Poisonwood Bible. Wow! So good.
The Lincoln Highway, by one of my favorite authors, Amor Towles. Sadly, I haaaaated the ending, and will probably never read it again.
Circe. I want her to be my cool, witchy aunt and teach me all her potion-making, spell-casting ways.

Absolute Obsession: The Heartstopper series. I watched the Netflix show (so sweet and charming and good!) and then went back and devoured the graphic novels via Alice Oseman's tumblr, which is how she originally released the story a little at a time.

Nonfiction that made me...
Inspired: Atomic Habits. Small changes add up!
Angry: Know My Name. Our "justice" system is quite terrible.
Nostalgic: The Nineties. I wish there had been more women included, but still fun.

Refreshingly relevant poetry: What Kind of Woman. Kate Baer is awesome.

Thursday, October 20, 2022

13 states in 3 weeks, part 3

My record of our very long road trip has been bugging me with its incompleteness, and I'm old enough to really understand that if I don't write it down, it will soon be a fuzzy memory at best. So even though it's been almost three months (!) since we got back home, here's the final installment.

After visiting friends and family in Louisiana, Tennessee, and North Carolina, we headed up the east coast. We covered a lot of states in one day: through Virginia, through the tiniest corners of West Virginia and Maryland,  through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and finally arrived in Massachusetts.

As we whizzed by state after state, we quoted popular culture references whenever it was relevant. 

Passing a sign for Chesapeake Bay:
"Lafayette is there waiting, in CHESAPEAKE BAY!"
***
Passing a sign for George Washington's office, one of the kids wonders aloud where GW lived: 
"Young man, I'm from Virginia, so watch your mouth."
***
Passing a sign for New Jersey:
"Everything is legal in New Jersey."
***
Passing a sign for Albany:
"Corruption's such an old song that we could sing along in harmony, but nowhere is it stronger than in Albany."
***
Crossing the Hudson River:
"They row him back across the Hudson. I get a drink."

You can see that when I say we quoted popular culture references, I mostly mean we quoted Hamilton. We listened to Hamilton a ton on this part of the trip, and it brought me great joy. I couldn't show too much of that joy, however, because I have two teenagers plus a nine year old who sometimes thinks he's a teenager. If they do something you think is cool, and you mention how much you like it, they will roll their eyes and immediately stop doing the thing.

Anyway, mostly Ham references. But a couple other things, too.

Passing a sign for Allentown: 
"I'm sorry Mr. Marsh, show business isn't for me. I'm going back to Allentown!"
"What was that word you just said, Allentown? I'm offering you a chance to star in the biggest musical Broadway's seen in twenty years and you say Allentown?"
***
Passing a sign for Vermont:
"That sounds very Vermonty."

We waved at Washington DC and New York City from the car, had to let an attendant pump our gas in New Jersey, and paid quite a few dollars to drive on New York tollway. Then we settled in for a week in the Berkshires.

The boys' Massachusetts grandparents live just a couple miles from the Hancock Shaker Village. First stop was the woodworking shop.




This is the round barn.



Baby goats!

Baby pigs!

Milking a large plastic cow!

Weaving!

Teenagers, following their natural instincts to connect with their virtual herd.


While touring one of the houses, I was about to remark on the beauty of some of the cloaks on display, when my mother-in-law said under her breath, "It's a real Handmaid's Tale feel over there..." indicating these rooms with red cloaks and blinder bonnets. 

I mean,...she's not wrong.

In one of the rooms, they had an installation in which an artist put a film over the windows that made the sunlight come through in these rainbows. It was weird and beautiful.

Love that vibrant prism light, but also, that project table! I could make a lot of messes and do a lot of puzzles on that thing.


One late afternoon the big kids wanted to stay home and watch Stranger Things while Matt and Theo and I took a walk along Lake Onota. The heat subsided, the light was golden, the clouds were giant, and the world was perfect for a minute.

Did I mention that New England is gorgeous? We weren't even there for leaf peeping season, but there were lovely summer flowers in most yards, including my in-laws'.

Did I mention that we brought a record-breaking heat wave with us to Massachusetts? I got an absolutely massive chocolate soft serve here, and by the time I had taken a couple bites and decided to take a picture of it, the murderous heat had it half melted. Womp womp. 

Matt made better choices when he took Theo here: order the giant cone in a boat, and take the picture immediately.

In New England you can play outside on a plush green lawn, rather than crispy yellow Texas grass.



We drove up Mount Greylock and wandered around a bit. Lots of stairs in that observation tower, plus a beautiful ceiling. (Side note: this is where the American equivalent of Hogwarts is set.)


A lodge for people hiking the Appalachian trail, or people who just want to spend some time up on a mountain.

 
When you realize you are 30 minutes away from the border of another state, you might as well hop over and add it to your "visited" list, even if all you do is eat overpriced ice cream from a food truck.

Vermont. Check!

Tomato basil risotto. Not for the cheese-averse.

I also may have found the nexus of the universe in Pittsfield, MA?


I'm sad to say that I did not visit any thrift or antique stores in New England; it just wasn't in the cards. One day I did find myself near a goodwill, pulled in where my phone directed me, and found this:
Oh, the heartbreak! I never got to see what old stuff people give away in New England. It's the oldest region of our country; I'll bet their old stuff is pretty good.

I still managed to collect (in my heart) a lot of excellent mid-century architecture, like this roadside motel.


And a couple dozen houses that I wanted to live in.






On the return trip, we stopped back at my sister's house for one more night. Check out my brother-in-law's sweet vintage ride.

And one last pet of the kitties before we continued south.

Home again, home again. 

Well, not really. Once you see this sign welcoming you across the Texas border, it's still another six hours before you reach Austin.

Friday, July 29, 2022

13 states in 3 weeks, part 2

Some more fun things:

Thread in my mom's sewing room, arranged in  ROYGBIV order.

Another mid-century church design, this one my parents' congregation.


Theo learning how to use the riding lawnmower, while his grandpa chills in the background and his anxious mother follows him repeating, "not too fast!..."

This horse, which had one eyebrow hair that was like 4" long, was pretty much the only bright spot at an ill-fated Airbnb rental. We left within 17 hours of arrival.

Gorgeous view, though.

Cleverly defaced no smoking sign.


Water park.

Bowling.

Donuts.

Playground.

Fruit shortcakes for 21 people.

Measuring to see who is taller: me or my growing-by-the-hour 14 year old. In this picture, taken 12 days ago, we seemed to be even. But I think he's passed me now.

Giant elephant ears that could easily work as umbrellas.

Finally, the gallery of vintage things I wanted to buy but didn't buy.

Scrabble junior with a beautiful, colorful border.

Amazing rainbow of Pyrex dishes.


Pantyhose with fantastic packaging.

Sooo tempted by this painting. Figured it might get ruined on the trip home in our crowded van.

Love this clock, wish it weren't for a cigarette brand.