I’ve had afternoon naps more exciting. One time, I accidentally took a Microsoft Excel course that had more keenly felt drama.
Look, it wasn’t my idea to write about the Super Bowl. They asked me. They’ve been asking for years, so I finally mumbled “yes.” The Super Bowl is like an infectious disease – there is a long, hard battle to defend against it, and no matter your resources, you can succumb.
No, I did not have a Super Bowl party to mark the occasion. I figured I could get a pile of ironing done. Just keep an eye on the game while an assortment of pillowcases, cotton sheets and shirts got a damn good straightening.
It’s true the NFL is not my thing. It’s all just concussions and baffling rules, far as I know. It stops, it starts, it stops, over and over.
This puts me in a minority, I know. Mockable, even. But listen, my myriad eccentricities are nobody’s business until I write them. If I’m not sure who Tom Brady is, go ahead and shoot me. After Sunday evening’s experience, the sooner the better. Of all the mad things I’ve ever done for this great newspaper, this might be the maddest. It went on for hours and hours. Then some more hours. I might not be certain about the rules of NFL football, but this I know as a fact: They don’t pay me enough to write about television this soul-destroying.
Yet I’m glad I did it. The Super Bowl is part of a neck of the woods of the TV landscape that I have never visited. Now I have, and it’s a neck that needs to be wrung. All sporting events have cultural meaning. But this, the Super Bowl, has the same meaning as a bag of potato chips: It’s junk food. Sure, the NFL has meaning week to week, what with U.S. President Donald Trump demeaning players and the murk of the mess of race, patriotism and gross capitalism arising from it with a terrible stench. And yet, as the mega-event of North American sports, this climax to the season had an emptiness so deep it cannot be plumbed.
Anyway, I started ironing. Two pillowcases in, I had an insight. The guys on the field were lined up in their tight leggings, all focus and no frisk, for the umpteenth time already, and I thought it would be brilliant if they all started doing the dance routine to Beyonce’s Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It). As insights go, it wasn’t much. Then I realized I was fantasizing about an episode of Glee in which football players did exactly that. Damn, that was a good episode.
Time passed. The Patriots moved the ball, and it was in play for about four seconds. Then everything stopped so there could be a commercial for a superhero movie I will never see. Or for floor-liners for cars that are made by people “doing it right in America.” After that, usually, some guy on TV named Tony talked about Tom Brady with a delicacy and an intimacy that was noble to behold. In certain U.S. cities, it could easily get him elected. In others, not so much. Then the Rams moved the ball, and it was in play for about four seconds. It seemed odd to me that nobody shouted “butterfingers!” Next, I remember, a creepy commercial for a car that involved a guy almost dying and his last thoughts being about reuniting with his dad and dad giving him this car. Then somebody did a Heimlich manoeuvre on him and he came back to life, but he was bummed about not getting the car. That was super-weird.
The halftime show came and went. The singer for Maroon 5 showed off his tats. Some other people sang, and there were fireworks. Tony the TV guy talked to some other guys who tried and failed to convince themselves and a vast TV audience that the game was more than a crock of boring nothingness.
By this time, I’d ironed everything. I was ready to iron dish cloths to pass the time. Heck, I was ready to iron my own hair. So I started singing to myself and the cat: “All the single ladies! (All the single ladies)/ Now put your hands up/ Oh, oh, oh!” After about four more hours, when the score was still Patriots 3, Rams 3, I had the dance routine down. Well, close.
Something happened about seven minutes from the end of the game. I was stone-cold sober and yet too stupefied to understand or care. There was a commercial for the Washington Post that involved Tom Hanks declaring, “Democracy dies in darkness.” I told the cat, “Tom doesn’t know what darkness is. He hasn’t been through this.”
The Patriots won. Those of us who watched, well, we all lost. Me, I’m sure I’m a better man for the experience. I have been to the World Cup multiple times. I know what a great sporting event means, in a visceral way. And so, with age, I know what the Super Bowl means: At least the ironing’s done. Now put your hands up/ Oh, oh, oh!