On Monday, Esquire ran a piece by author Mick Stingley called “The Straight Man’s Guide to HBO’s Looking,” which gave helpful advice to the men who were too spent from finding Lena Dunham disgusting to change the channel after the credits rolled on Girls and accidentally discovered the new series about gay men living in San Francisco. It’s a fun and very thoughtful piece that warns audiences that the guys on this show are boring because they do not mince around or get a lot of satisfaction from sleeping with strangers. Oh, and the one lady keeps her shirt on! Ugh! It was such an inventive, clever piece that it inspired me to give a quick guide, designed for my homosexual brethren, to the Super Bowl, arguably the straightest event on television. Because, you know, no gay guys like sports! Gross!
1. The Super Bowl is about football. I know what you’re thinking: “Hey, this should be fun! A bunch of huge beefy guys in tights running around! Boner alert!” Yeah, well, the problem is that these guys keep the tights on for four hours, and instead of taking them off and blowing each other, they just throw around a leather ball for a long time. Occasionally old men in suits will appear to show GIFs of what just happened on the field and give some commentary about it, but not, like, the sassy commentary on Drag Race, but, like, boring commentary, like watching special features on your Moulin Rouge! DVD. Who cares!
2. The Denver Broncos are playing the Seattle Seahawks. This is not very good, because the only person on either of these teams who anyone knows is Peyton Manning, who is NOT cute. I was rooting for whatever team Tom Brady is on, because he is the hottest football player ever. He has really nice hair, wears UGG boots, and is married to Gisele. The NFL really should have organized this better if they expected anyone to pay attention.
3. An opera singer will be there! The only reason to pay attention to the Super Bowl is the songs. This year, opera singer Renee Fleming will be performing the National Anthem. This is a great coup for gay men, but as we all know, only old gay men go to the opera because they are too old to go to concerts and want to sit down. Opera is boring! There were, like, so many famous pop stars who could have sung this. As if Lady Gaga is doing anything that night! (Can you imagine if she sang it?? YAAAAASSSS.)
4. Even halftime will suck this year. Usually the halftime show is when gay guys finally get to watch something fun. Remember last year, when the QUEEN herself, Beyoncé, came on stage and was all, “Hey, football players, this is how it’s done,” and then she basically shot Michelle Williams and Kelly Rowland out of cannons and jumped and danced all over the place without breaking a sweat? She was like, “What’s so hard about this? Bye.” Well, this year Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers are performing, so get ready to have to listen to straight dudes talk about how cool it was to hear “Californication” on TV again. Snoooooooze. If we’re lucky, Justin Timberlake will show up, and we can wonder what he’s doing to straighten his hair.
5. There will be commercials to talk about on Monday morning. But don’t get too excited. All of the commercials will be about how hard it is for guys to deal with their stupid wives. Look, if there’s anything I have learned about straight people, it’s that straight women are a lotttt worse than straight guys. Yeah, there are a few tolerable ones, like Bethenny Frankel, Lisa Rinna, and Goldie Hawn, but that’s because they are rich and pretty. Most straight women are like, “Ugh, HUSBANDS, can’t they do anythinnnnngggggg right?” Maybe if they worried more about their hair and makeup and less about wearing cardigans and making their husbands shop for groceries, it’d be a lot easier, right? God, drink a pale Cosmo and chill out, ladies.
[Author’s Note: If you made it this far, and I don’t blame those who did not, let’s take the time to be serious for a second and admit that these kind of cultural stereotypes are the worst and barely even barrel-bottom-scraping amusing. Why do it? Well, in the case of the Esquire piece that inspired this one, for one reason: it’s a cheap, easy piece of click-bait that deserved a dose of satire. With that in mind, take everything above this message with a giant grain of salt, because the only things in it that are remotely true are the facts that Beyoncé is great and Tom Brady is, indeed, sexy as hell.]