Smart Things I Have Done While You Were Watching Sportsball

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL BLANN  GETTY
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL BLANN / GETTY

• Composed a funny Facebook post about how I just don’t understand sportsball. “Sportsball” is the clever term I use to denote whatever sport currently occupies the national psyche. See, it’s clever because it sounds self-deprecating at first—as though I’m someone who doesn’t fit in among the sports-loving masses. But it actually conveys my contempt for sports, which I consider not only frivolous but interchangeably so. Hence “sportsball,” an ingenious portmanteau that I can use to dismiss any sport as a pointless distraction. Except for hockey, since they use a puck for that.

• Purchased cardamom.

• Wondered what could possibly make people happy about coming together as communities to behold breathtaking feats of athletic skill.

• Perused the Wikipedia page on science to make sure that everything was in order.

• Sat on a park bench and sketched the landscape with a charcoal pencil. The sketch could have turned out better, but it was just a preliminary drawing for a painting I plan to begin soon. Yes, I also paint.

• Silently congratulated myself in Trader Joe’s after realizing that I didn’t know who won the most recent N.B.A. Finals.

• Considered getting my first tattoo. It has to be something meaningful to me, though, so I want to make sure I put enough thought into it. Maybe a bird, to symbolize how I prize my freedom? Or a dragonfly, for the same reason.

• You know those glass cylinders that make a soothing ringing noise when you rub a wooden stick along the outer rim? Bought twelve of those.

• Went to the gym, but not with the intention of getting larger muscles or improving my stamina for athletic competition. No. My goal was simply to lead a healthier, more complete existence inside this temporary vessel I call my body.

• Sighed heavily while thinking about politics.

• Meditated. (Specifically, meditated about whether the world’s eel population could be saved if we simply did away with Little League.)

• Referred to fruit as dessert.

• Went to the Guggenheim and nodded pensively at the things I saw.

• Wondered what the deal is with soccer. I mean, admittedly, I’m not the biggest sports guy. But at least basketball has stuff like slam dunks.

• Started a fourth Murakami novel to see if this one would do it for me.

• Played chess against myself, which was actually pretty fun. Even though I knew every move I was planning and was therefore able to foil all my own attempts to win, it was fun. Not laborious. Fun.

• Sighed heavily while thinking about N.F.L. concussions.

• Remembered a “Hamlet” quote.

• Tuned out a co-worker’s description of his weekend while running through a mental list of reasons Himalayan salt is better than the regular kind.

• Privately revelled in never having seen an episode of “The Bachelor” or having gained an understanding of golf.

• Thought about the last time I went to a sporting event and enjoyed myself. It was years ago—over a decade now, actually. I must have been seventeen or so. My buddies and I went to the last varsity-basketball game of the season. Even back then I knew sports weren’t really my thing, but I didn’t care. I bought some M&M’s and a giant Coke and got ready to cheer. And we all got really into it, which kind of surprised me. It’s not like we were pals with anyone on the team or anything; if we’d ever talked to the players, we probably would’ve had nothing in common. But for some reason it was still a great night. It was all so natural. When our school won, it really did feel like we’d all won, somehow—like we’d worked together to achieve a common goal. I think about that night a lot, and how stupid I was. That’s how fascism gets started.

• Watched tennis.