WHO'S READY FOR THE FUCKING SUPER BOWL??
2023 EDITION: Today is less about points and all about vibes.
Today is the Super Bowl, and much like the championship match of professional football, drinking and posting about this game is serious business. The top seed from each conference will battle to determine which squad is capable of getting the ball in the end zone more, and instead, I am laser-focused on what superfluous aspects of this sacred pseudo-holiday will amuse me until this entire event spirals into abstraction.
The Chiefs and Eagles both have great quarterbacks, superstar playmakers, and strong defenses; all of this will amount to roughly 12 minutes of actual gameplay, spread out between four hours of commercials stuffed with pop culture references that are five to 20 years late. Songs and shows that are nostalgically popular with Twitter normies are now cobbled together into incoherent, too-meta-for-its-own-good ads that strive for transient virality, which are now supplemented by sneak preview clips that aired last week at the Grammys. We are now in the advertisements for advertisements stage of capitalism, but thankfully they remind us of how our corporate entities will vaguely support a progressive social cause, transforming yet another purchase into a political act.
Amex Black fades to #BLM. Land Rover does a land acknowledgment.
This is why today is less about points and all about vibes.
After Damar Hamiln suffered a cardiac arrest in the middle of a Monday Night Football game, people acted concerned about the health repercussions of a sport that is inherently violent and angry. If the players are so violent and angry, then why are they always running into those big group hugs?
At least this year, we will be treated to a halftime show that doesn’t involve Snoop Dogg dressed like a Hanukkah decoration. I’m still disappointed that Taylor Swift turned down performing at the Super Bowl because I was looking forward to a 10-minute acoustic ballad of her complaining about Jake Gyllenhaal. If Rhianna wants to get the people hype, she should open with “Mr. Brightside” and close with “Mr. Brightside.”
I am too partisan in my Patriots fandom and too bullish on the prospect of an American decline to say that the Philadelphia Eagles winning a championship is “good,” especially when their idiosyncrasies haven’t generated a ton of fun-to-watch football games. When a Philadelphia-based sports team is good, it’s all about the distinctly Philadelphia mania—the whipsawing between wild pessimism and wilder triumphalism and the wilder-still property damage, the avant-garde approach to pronouncing common vowels, the way that America’s sixth most populous city can somehow all achieve the mental state of the “Jeff Garcia Is It, Baby” guy.
Despite all this, I will gawk at this depraved spectacle from an apartment surrounded by more well-adjusted people who aptly view the Super Bowl as just another Sunday that substitutes overpriced brunch for nachos and Coors Light. They will pretend to care about the outcome by shouting “damn dude” and “he got fuckin’ rocked” every few minutes.
I have resigned myself to rooting for Philly to win, mostly so I can troll grieving Chiefs fans with “Patrick Mahomes is a system QB” shitposts.
If the Eagles win, I will drink heavily for two hours and be happy. If the Eagles lose, I will drink heavily and be depressed for several months.
Go Birds!