My sweetheart (pictured here with a stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to Anna Kendrick) dancing her wee hiney off at The Last Supper Club in Pioneer Square after the Seahawks won Super Bowl XLVIII.
'Twas only three years and one day ago that on the morning after the Super Bowl, my wife bolted out of the hotel bathroom and asked "Where are my contact lenses?! I left them in two water glasses on the side of the sink! I told you!" It took me a few startled seconds to realize that I had stumbled into the bathroom in a fit of alcoholic dry mouth and drank them both.
This was by far the biggest calamity of 2014. Back then, we had no idea that there could even be a 2016. We started the year with the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl. Obama was president. My dad was still living and could still play the squeezebox. The worst thing that could happen is that I could drink my wife's contact lenses. The second worst is that I could still have a job that felt like I was sticking my guts in The Hope Grinder every day.
There was no talk of fascism except when referring to some ranting numbskull somewhere on the other side of the globe.
I watched a recording of Super Bowl XLVIII last night that I've fondly hoarded on my DVR. Last time I watched it was before the 2016 season.
My how things have changed since then.
I made it all the way through the first two quarters and two thirds of the way through halftime (it was Bruno Mars, patron saint of Hawaii, teaming up with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, holders of the Eternal Flame of Youth) before I got all teared up.
I want to keep this blog apolitical. At the same time, there seems to be a big, orange elephant in every room I walk into. That now includes my living room, even if I'm not watching the news -- and I never watch the news. When I see the commercials that ran back in '14 -- the multi-hued family eating Cheerios, "America the Beautiful" being sung in multiple languages -- and remember the racist backlash on Twitter from that, it seems like the writing was on the wall. We thought we had tweet-shamed those people out of existence. Well, one of those racist Twitter monsters now holds the nuclear codes. The Hope Grinder seems like the memory of a paper cut.
I have no moral here. No great lesson to impart. It was just surprising to discover that watching the Seahawks win the Super Bowl again could make me so goddamn sad.
Thanks for listening.
Much love, -G