Substack, Starry, and the Super Bowl
My week in review.
What a week it’s been. Super Bowl Sunday. Monday morning quarterback Monday (Super Bowl edition). Fat Tuesday, but did anyone notice? Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, both falling on the 14th.
I’m not a Catholic, but my husband took piano lessons from a nun. He taught me everything I know about holy days of obligation:
Q. What are holy days of obligation?
A. They’re the days you have to go to Mass, or the nuns will break your fingers with a ruler.
Q. So you went to Mass.
A. No. I stopped taking piano lessons.
I’m pretty sure Ash Wednesday is a holy day of obligation. I could look it up, but why bother. If you’re going around with a thumb-shaped smear on your forehead, it’s because someone put it there with a thumb. Blush just doesn’t come in charcoal gray! That sounds like obligation to me. Going through motions, even submitting to poor cosmetic choices, because that’s what you do. Not everyone acts out of belief or conviction. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
For dinner on Ash Wednesday/Valentine’s Day, I had an Annie’s frozen entrée. When my husband was in hospice, these were my mainstay. I kept two or three in the family lounge freezer and heated them in the microwave.
As I sat at the dining room table, not with my phone but with a book, I wondered how many people might regard Super Bowl Sunday as a secular day of obligation. What about Valentine’s Day?
Both are performative. Ritualistic. Driven by commerce. Heavily laden with expectations, sugar, and cholesterol. You could say that about any holiday, of course. But how many people choose to opt out, avoiding the sting of the ruler?
Questions arose, framed in the foundational hungers of the tabloids: Are their hearts really in it? Or is it just a game?
“What do you think?” I said aloud.
The light above the table dimmed slightly. Not an answer. Just another thing I need to have fixed.
As I went to throw out the paper bowl with bits of cheddar and broccoli stuck to it, I passed by the black box full of my husband’s remains. I ran my hand across the top, wiping away a thin film of dust.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn't get you a card.”
Silence. Had I expected anything else?
Today is Friday. As I write, I feel the imagined ashes of shame. Even if it’s only a black plastic rectangular box on a desk, what kind of wife doesn’t maintain her husband’s shrine?
I didn’t intend to watch the game. Other than a couple of halftime shows (Prince, the Rolling Stones) we sat out every Super Bowl during the forty-three years we were married. Neither of us could think of a good reason to watch. The rules of American football are opaque and mystifying; the replay effects, gimmicky and weird. What drives this juggernaut? It can't be just weapons-grade rings and billionaire girlfriends. From what I understand, it’s the commercials.
They are important. Seven million dollars per thirty seconds of important. Because I’m more interested in getting rid of stuff than acquiring it, and no one can convince me that one phone carrier or insurance company is less likely to screw me than another, I’m not persuaded. You can’t escape the previews, though. They are all over the Internet. How do I know?
Because, this.
This is a screenshot taken on Super Bowl Sunday. It shows the number of hours, on average, that I spent each day of the previous week in front of my electronic devices.
Eleven hours and eight minutes. Per day.
As you can see, I spent a large part of that time on Substack. Thirty-three hours. That’s just over .75 FTE.
Is that all? was my first thought. I can’t possibly be less than a full-time Substacker. Plus, lots of overtime. I write. Not all of it gets posted here. A big chunk of my Substack hours are spent reading, commenting on, and discovering new Substacks. There are so many great Substacks. But you know that. All of you have great Substacks.
So what accounts for the remaining forty-five hours minus two minutes?
I do important stuff. I write stories. essays, poems, memoir, and novels, hitting several genres. Pay bills. Send and delete emails. Take and edit photos. Write negative reviews on Amazon. Listen to podcasts, read books, The New Yorker, and the New York Times. I won’t tell you how much of my one wild and precious life the New York Times devoured last week.
(Okay, I will. Six hours and twenty minutes. But that number is circling the drain right now, and may be permanently flushed, given the Gray Lady’s recent shameful attacks on Joe Biden’s age).
Scrolling through my other trackers, I found one just as shocking: Health.
My Apple Watch tattles to Health when I fail to reach my Stand goal. Closing that blue ring is the equivalent of brushing one’s teeth. Anyone can do it, even if you were the last one picked in gym. Most days, I close the blue ring.
I brush at bedtime, every night, standing. I may have missed a few mornings; with no one to kiss, it isn’t a priority. As for the other two rings, It’s been so long since I closed all three that I’ve forgotten what green and orange represent. I scrolled some more.
This is orange.
It was alarming.
Apple wants me to log my emotions and moods, track my medications, understand blood glucose, improve my steadiness, learn why hearing matters, and contribute to health research.
Even though they know I’m an invertebrate with poor dental habits, Apple wants more. But what?
Q. Are your eardrums being assaulted? A. Yes, when I listen to anything recently added to Apple Music.
Q. Are you washing your hands properly? A. Yes. I attended kindergarten.
Q. At what stage are you in your menstrual cycle? A. Ha ha ha ha!
I removed my watch and shoved it in a drawer with my phone, then went for a two-hour walk. When I came home, I sat down in front of the TV. After a few minutes, Mini, my 21-year-old Siberian cat, joined me on the sofa.
We watched the Super Bowl. All of it. All the way through, to this:
And it was what I expected. The drone camera was unnerving, and the light cones and video-game effects during the play-by-play, how do they do that, Usher and all these other performers whose names I don’t know, where have I been for the last two decades, now they’re on rollerblades, and these lame commercials —
I longed to go back to 1984, before iPhones, iPods, health trackers, and the incriminating 11 hours and 8 minutes on average, per day. Back before the time when the friendly little Mac SE entered our house, and then invited all of its friends and family to colonize our brains.
Because none of my devices were within reach, I asked pretend-Siri to go back to a time when she did not exist and help me out.
Q: Hey, pretend-Siri. When the Creator brought us the most iconic Super Bowl commercial of all time? The one with the terrifying images of the gray brainwashed proletariat marching in lockstep, the smashing of Big Brother on the enormous screen with one mighty hammer toss by an androgynous runner, revealing the the Apple logo, the original one with the brightly colored stripes, here to save us from Big Brother, what was he thinking?
A: The Creator’s motivations are not accessible to me. But I believe the purpose was to generate pre-orders of the very first Macintosh computer. Does that answer your question?
Now the competition is using that playbook —it’s the Super Bowl, right? — to assist in plagiarizing. Or studying. Whatever you’re up to these days, Microsoft has your back.
Meet the new boss. Not quite the same as the old boss.
On Super Bowl Sunday, I was the old woman sitting with her cat, watching the entire game for the first time. I imagine what the neighbors will say when I’m gone:
She kept to herself. Muttered a lot. Had this thing about squirrels. So kind! Always tending lovingly to her garden. Who knows how many bodies are buried in that yard? She even took a flamethrower to bought a dozen Have-a-Heart traps, upon finding hundreds of dollars’ worth of hybrid bulbs her tulips ravaged and plundered nibbled upon by rabid tree rats charming but pesky co-dwellers in our ecosystem. Crazy. Could’ve burned down the whole neighborhood. How sad. What a terrible shame. She tanked our property values lost her life bringing warmth and comfort to urban wildlife.
Mini is over a hundred, in human years. She will probably outlive me. And if anyone should be so careless as to leave the back door even slightly ajar, she will take care of any urban wildlife foolish enough to venture into her territory.
Last year, on Super Bowl Sunday, I went to Target.
After a round of chemo, followed by immunotherapy, now in a second round of chemo, my husband was spiking fevers and racked by pain. Because I couldn’t anticipate his changing tastes, I shopped frequently. One day, he’d ask for orange Gatorade; the next, he could only tolerate red. He wanted Coke, then Lipton sweetened iced tea. He refused anything but Canada Dry ginger ale, disdaining Schweppes. That day, he wanted Sierra Mist.
I called him from the soft-drinks aisle.
“Hey. There’s no Sierra Mist. And the manager told me” — I mouthed thank you to the manager — “that they changed the name to Starry. And don’t have it. Not much else. The locusts got here first. How about Mountain Dew?”
A long pause. “The kids might drink it.”
When I arrived home, he was in his bathrobe, making dinner. Valentine’s Day, two days early. He was removing a meat thermometer from a beef tenderloin. Chopped shallots and red wine for deglazing were on the counter. He’d puréed parsnips, and drizzled roasted peppers with balsamic vinegar.
“Go sit down,” I said. How had he, with his incapacitated left arm, managed to get the cast iron skillet into the oven? There was no way I was going to let him take it out. He walked slowly to the dining room, where the table had been set, and the candles lit. I kissed his damp forehead.
Two days later, Valentine’s Day, the oncologist told us that the treatments were not working. The next step was hospice.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish it hadn’t worked out like this.”
When he left the exam room, we held each other and cried.
One of the those Super Bowl ads was for Starry. After seeing it, I remembered the liter of Mountain Dew that was still in the pantry, unopened. I never did get around to buying what purported to be rebranded Sierra Mist, but was probably more like Ventura.
All subscribers have access to all content on my site, and can read, comment, and join in all chats. If you value my work and have the means to do so, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, at $35 per year, forever. That’s 30% off the regular price. Thanks to the generosity of those who’ve donated to Writer, interrupted, I am able, for the first time in my life, to call myself a paid writer. It means the world to me.* All subscribers have my undying love and gratitude.
*As a thank-you gift to paid subscribers, I welcome your thoughts. Do you like swag? Here’s my first attempt at a bookmark. What do you think?
Mary, what a beautiful melange of moods and impressions that appear to be about nothing in particular and slowly gather the force of revelation. It takes artistry to do what you’ve done here.
When I read your poignant essays, so riveting and filled with eloquent pride, I ask myself, how long did it take her to write, edit, re-write this thing? (Serious question, I really want to know. 😊)
It feels like conversation. I feel like I know you. 💌
Thank you for letting me glimpse into your world and for simultaneously inspiring me to become a better writer. And thank you for the viduals. 🌷