Super Bowl (Alternatives) Edition
If football isn't your thing, you can skip the Maroon 5 halftime show, Carrie Bradshaw commercial appearance and oh yeah, the game, and enjoy one of the suggestions below! Here are five alternatives to keep you busy on Super Bowl Sunday:
Check out an Academy Award-nominated film: You only have a few weeks to catch up on the latest crop of award nominees before the Oscars on February 24. You can go out and see Vice, The Wife, A Star is Born, The Favourite, If Beale Street Could Talk and more in theaters or stay on your couch and watch Roma via Netflix.
(Start to) binge a new show: Football games are notoriously long and the Super Bowl can last forever! So you'll definitely have enough time to at least start binging a new show. This weekend I started watching Schitt's Creek on Netflix. My brother and his girlfriend just started Good Girls. My parents finally wrapped season one of The Good Place. I convinced one of my coworkers to start watching Instant Hotel (which she proceeded to finish days later -- I told you, this show is great!). Or you can take a themed approach and find football adjacent TV episodes: the Harvard v. Yale game in Gilmore Girls, the season three football episode of Friends, the Monday Night Football episode of How I Met Your Mother or just watch Friday Night Lights.
Turn on the Curling World Championship & bake something: I didn't know the Curling World Championship was a thing either, but I think everyone should tune in to NBCSN and watch! Let's be honest, you don't need to pay super close attention to this sport. Turn it on, yell about how easy curling looks and dig out your go-to muffin tin and bake something delicious. There's nothing more satisfying than eating food while watching others exercise.
Get lost watching celebrity interviews on YouTube: The danger of this option is you might end up stuck on your computer for hours. Last week, I went down a rabbit hole of John Mulaney talk show appearances (and this one and this one and this one). Sometimes I'll randomly rewatch this video of The Avengers cast playing Family Feud on Jimmy Kimmel, because it still makes me laugh every time. You can explore the Wired Autocomplete interview series, where celebrities sit down and answer questions that are Googled about them. You can watch Chris Evans and his brother demonstrate how well they know each other on both Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon or Amy Schumer playing Truth or Truth back in a 2014 appearance on The Tonight Show. The possibilities are literally endless!
Read something: If you want to avoid screens altogether, you can curl up with a blanket and enjoy a book. I'm currently alternating between Jane Eyre, which I've never read before, and Andrew Sean Green's Less. If tackling a book feels like too much effort on a Sunday night, I've got some article suggestions as well. The Huffington Post published a really interesting interview with The Good Place's William Jackson Harper, where he talks about acting and the complex character of Chidi and Vanity Fair has a look at the 25 most influential film scenes of the last 25 years, along with interviews with the actors or directors who helped make the scenes so iconic. Or you can take some time to read about Marsha Howard, a Wisconsin Badgers player, who is working to raise awareness about racial inequality after being inspired by Colin Kaepernick.
