Talk about conspiracies!
The first LVIII Super Bowl commercial I saw, days before that glorious pageant of sport and commerce, was the “Don’t Forget Uber Eats” spot pinballing around social media.
It begins on a movie backlot with a young assistant handing Jennifer Aniston a green bag filled with flowers.
”I didn’t know you could get all this stuff on Uber Eats,” the gofer enthuses. “Gotta remember that.”
”You know what they say,” Aniston sermonizes. “In order to remember something, you’ve got to forget something else. Make a little room.”
Then we’re off to the races, in a series of celebrity vignettes about forgetting. David and Victoria Beckham, in their kitchen, trying to put their finger on a certain 1990s pop group.
“Remember when you used to be a Pepper Lady?” David asks, waving a jar of pepper.
“Wasn’t it the Cinnamon Sisters?” former Spice Girl replies.
Has to be a plot, right? Can’t be a coincidence. President Joe Biden is mercilessly grilled for being a forgetful octogenarian. And boom, the Super Bowl, already rigged to highlight Taylor Swift and thereby increase the impact of her eventual endorsement of Sleepy Joe, immediately unloads a highly effective ad that is basically a valentine to forgetfulness.
None of the actors in the commercial are particularly old. Though David Schwimmer (who, for those just joining us, starred with Aniston in “Friends,”) does have a certain, ah, weariness in the best vignette, as he makes a beeline to his former co-star.
“Jenn!” he says, arms spread for the hug. “Hey!”
“Have we met?” Aniston replies, dipping her head dubiously, artfully using the flowers to block his embrace.
Who hasn’t experienced that? It happened to me exiting the train at Union Station Friday evening.
”Neil!” someone exclaimed.
”Hey!” I said, smiling and pointing. “Good to see ya!”
”Who was that?” my wife asked, taking my arm as we headed toward Madison Street.
”Damned if I know,” I said.
Everyone forgets information, sometimes well-known information. It’s universal and one of the best uses of smartphones. Can’t retrieve the name of the steel sculpture at the center of Daley Plaza? Type “big rusty Chicago baboon sculpture” into Google and up pops photos of the Picasso.
We correctly try not to put too much significance on these occasional lapses. (“Where are those keys?”) They don’t have to mean anything. Except to the big East Coast media, having another “But her emails!” moment with the special counsel report dancing a jig around Biden’s forgetting stuff during questioning.
Yes, he’s old. And selfishness is an American folk ailment that knows no party. We see it in Biden risking the Ruth Bader Ginsburg effect (clinging to your seat so long it gets handed to those opposing everything you stand for). We see it in all those politicians who know what’s right and support a traitor anyway.
Bringing us to the bottom line: You could surgically remove half of Biden’s brain, and he wouldn’t become a liar, bully, fraud and traitor in thrall to America’s enemies. You can’t say that about everyone.
”People forget,” the Who sing in “Eminence Front.” Last week, I moderated a panel at the University of Chicago on the risk of armageddon. To prepare, I read the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists press release about their Doomsday Clock, now at 90 seconds to midnight, checked the Metra Electric schedule to Hyde Park (4 p.m. or 4:11), dusted off my blue blazer and wrote four words in my black Moleskine notebook.
For an hour, I moderated the two speakers — the CEO of the Bulletin and a professor from the University of Chicago physics department. I believe I kept the conversation rolling, interjecting relevant thoughts of my own.
For a half an hour we fielded questions from the large audience (thank you all for coming) including the very trenchant query from a doctoral student: “What would 10 p.m. look like?”
As we wrapped up, I slyly pulled the notebook out and consulted the four words I’d written —”Rachel Bronson” and “Daniel Holz,” the first and last names of my two panelists.
It isn’t that I didn’t know their names — I’d been calling them by name all evening. But slips happen, and I didn’t want to end the evening by bidding farewell, to, oh, “Rebecca” instead of “Rachel,” or “David” instead of “Daniel.” People forget. We should remember that.
