by So, the NFL’s big game happened last Sunday, which concluded the 2019 NFL season. I watched it, and I have some thoughts. I’m hard at work on the next novel, which is why things have been quiet around here lately, so I thought it’d be fun to share.
🏈 Football in General
This was the first full game of football this season that I watched in its entirety. Which is A) a bit weird for me and B) served as a reminder of what I gained by not watching. In past years, on a typical week, I’d watch—at the very least—the Seattle Seahawks play, and usually Sunday Night Football. With pregame coverage and post-game reporting that came to about eight hours of football-related stuff per week. Multiply that across the season and being conservative, that’s 17 eight-hour workdays in total not counting playoffs and such. That’s a lot of time to give up. This year, after cutting cable, I spent that time writing Gleam Upon the Waves and working on some of my map projects. Funny enough, I never felt like I missed out on anything. I still followed the Seahawks. I still saw the big plays. I had my best season in my fantasy football league at work. But I never missed watching football. Funny that.
🙆♂️ The Game
These weren’t my teams, and I don’t harbor any animosity toward the Niners despite them being one of the Hawks’ rivals. I like Kittle and Sherman a lot and would have loved to see Sherm get a second ring. That said, I also like Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes, and Travis Kelce, and it was great to see Reid, in particular, finally get his championship. Plus, the game was excellent. Lots of back and forth. Plenty of scoring. Close the whole time. It was the best part of the entire event, which hasn’t been the case for some years.
💃 Halftime
Meh. Kari-Lise and I both were disappointed in the halftime show. It was too long, and it felt incredibly disjointed. The song cuts came so fast one wasn’t allowed time to get into a rhythm before it was cutting to something else. Remember this song? Remember this one? How about this one? Much of the backup dancer costuming was terrible, as was that weird knock-off Pitbull whom I am too lazy to research. (I’m decidedly not a Pitbull fan, but I’m even less of a knock-off Pitbull fan, apparently.)
📺 The Commercials
Eesh. These were awful. Almost all of them. Outside of a few gems that seemed to bring something new—namely Amazon’s Alexa ad—everything came across as awkward and forced. They were brands trying to be genuine while decidedly being the opposite of that. This isn’t surprising in an era when marketing strategy runs along the lines of “Sunny-D is depressed” and “Steak-umm reflects on society.” These were focused grouped into oblivion, and it showed. Most had an incredible lack of self-awareness and a misunderstanding of whatever culture they were targeting. To paraphrase my pal, Peter, most came across as the dying gasp of an industry format that wants to move towards the organic viral-ness of TikTok but doesn’t understand how to get there. He’s not wrong. (Also, now that I have seen celebrities and brands infiltrate TikTok, TikTok is dead to me. The fun weirdness is gone. Like Instagram, it’s becoming a wasteland of ads.)
🥨 The Snacks
I made a decent spread of food that is terrible for you (Frito Pie! Pigs-in-a-blanket! Jalapeño Poppers!) but are a joy to eat. So the snacks were great. A+ snacks. Will snack on again, just not on the reg.
Want to stay in touch with me? Sign up for Dead Drop, my rare and elusive newsletter. Subscribers get news, previews, and notices on my books before anyone else delivered directly to their inbox. I work hard to make sure it’s not spammy and full of interesting and relevant information. SIGN UP TODAY →
K. M. Alexander 