Tales from the jar side: I get a prediction right, Super Bowl halftime vs Hamilton, and the usual silly toots and skeets

Why do astronauts use linux? Because you can't open Windows in space (rimshot)

Feb 16, 2025

Welcome, fellow jarheads, to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of February 9 - 16, 2025. This week I taught my Latest Features in Java and my Reactive Spring courses on the O’Reilly Learning Platform, as well as my regular courses at Trinity College (Hartford).

Hey, I Got One Right

I gave up predicting Super Bowls long ago. The first Super Bowl I remember was Washington vs Miami, way back in SB VII, which completed the Dolphins perfect season. I was very young, however, so I don’t remember much of the details, other than my family was just happy we beat Dallas to get there. By the time I was in junior high, I would get wrapped up in all the analyses and articles and events, and as a result normally believed whatever the popular wisdom was at the time. These days would be referred to as the “narrative”. Since the media has a lot of incentive to make it sound like the game will be competitive, they would make even likely blow-outs sound like they were going to be close. I tended to go along with that, year after year. I thought all four Buffalo Super Bowls were going to be decent, for example. I never thought any of the Denver teams had a chance. I knew all the New England wins were going to be close, because they always were, except I was sure they were going to dominate the Giants to finish their perfect season (which I’ll get over someday, but that day is not this day).

Over the past few years I’ve become less engaged with the build-up, mostly because it goes on too long, but also because it’s become obvious none of the commentators actually knows anything worth hearing. This year, my wife was still recovering from her recent knee surgery, so we didn’t even have our regular party, giving me even less reason to focus too much on the game.

I should mention that no matter what I thought, I never actually put money on the game. I feel like I understand too much about statistics to do that. The variance surrounding football games can be enormous. One tipped pass, or one bad call, or one twisted ankle can change the entire outcome. Many times the best team doesn’t win.

(Like in that 2007 perfect season. Grr.)

So while I’ve predicted the games in the past, I’ve never actually lost any money on them, mostly because I have no faith at all in my ability to get them right. I don’t have any moral or ethical qualms about gambling whatever you can afford. I just hate feeling like an idiot for throwing away money while trying to predict random numbers.

That brings me to last week, when in this newsletter I decided at the last minute that I would make an actual prediction about the Super Bowl that could be checked later. I said the game felt to me like a blow-out win by Philadelphia, and I basically parlayed that with my assurance that Kendrick Lamar would perform Not Like Us during halftime. Much to my surprise, both predictions turned out to be right.

As the saying goes, even a clock that doesn’t run is right twice a day.

I don’t have much to say about the Eagles. Their defensive line completely dominated Kansas City, which is what happened when Tampa Bay won the game a couple years ago, and also what happened back in that 2007 season (grr, again — it actually shows how good that Patriots team was when they were clobbered up front by the Giants and still had to have everything go wrong in the last 1 minute 30 seconds in order to lose). Congratulations to the Eagles. It’s been a while since I’ve watched a Super Bowl that was over in the first quarter like that.

I have a comment about Kendrick Lamar, however.

Kendrick Lamar vs Hamilton

Let me be clear — I’m an old white guy whose knowledge of rap and/or hip hop probably peaked around U Can’t Touch This. When my son was in his teens he played an Eminem album in the car during a long road trip, and my reaction was to wonder why Eminem kept whining about his life so much in every song.

Also, as halftime shows in the Super Bowl have gone, I’ve gotten increasingly out of touch with their featured artists as well. I just checked the list of halftime performers over the years, and I think the last show where I knew even half the songs was Madonna in 2012, while I enjoyed Springsteen, Prince, and Paul McCartney the decade before that.

So let me be clear: without subtitles, I didn’t understand a word of what Kendrick Lamar was saying, and the only song I recognized (sort of) was Not Like Us, mostly because I was listening for it.

But I also knew one important fact: that show was not intended for me. I seriously doubt Lamar cared one way or the other whether I “got” what he was trying to say. He had a lot to say, but he was talking to his own community, as well as the people who put in the extra effort necessary to understand him. He rewarded his fans, and they clearly loved him for it.

Kendrick Lamar's Picture-Perfect 'Say Drake' Moment From The Super Bowl ...

After the game I watched a good explainer video that kindly broke it down for those of us who needed help:

Everything made a lot more sense after that, though again, it’s not like Kendrick cared if I understood or not. I could be reading too much into this, but I have to contrast his performance with another one with exactly the opposite approach: Lin Manuel Miranda and Hamilton.

Like so many people, I didn’t see Hamilton on Broadway. I would have liked to, but I knew it was a very expensive ticket to get and you had to arrange to do so months in advance. So the first time I saw the show was when the video version appeared on Disney+ back in July of 2020 during the heart of the pandemic.

I’m sure everyone reading this knows, but just for the record, Hamilton re-tells the founding myths of America as a rap musical, performed by a cast of underrepresented minorities. It was written by Miranda, who also played the title role.

The difference in feel is amazing. I watched it over and over, and every time the sense I got was Miranda saying, “Here is a world you don’t know, told using a story you think you do. Welcome! Come in and see how we would like to imagine ourselves.”

It’s warm and friendly, but in a style I would never encounter without an invitation. Sure, it is rap and sung at about high speeds (particularly by Leslie Odom Jr, who peaks around Warp 8.5), but it’s understandable and clear, especially on repeated viewings with the subtitles turned on.

Some people objected because the cast is so far from historical reality, and they took a lot of liberties with the history as well. The truth, however, is that the American myths really are myths even the way they are traditionally told. I suspect that George Washington did, at some point, tell a lie, even about that equally mythical cherry tree. I think it’s unlikely the was standing up in the boat that crossed the Delaware.

George Washington's Crossing of the Delaware River

I also imagine that Jefferson et al were painfully aware that he owned slaves while he was writing “all men are created equal,” and probably would not have been surprised to hear it would take a war nearly a century later to even begin to resolve that contradiction.

No, the part of the musical I enjoy is how they all perform they way they want to perform, without trying to accommodate our existing images of what the actual people or times were like, and it’s a celebration of a culture I don’t often see or hear. I really enjoyed it.

I did eventually get tired of the movie. That’s mostly because in the second act it all turns into a tragedy, as Hamilton’s life is destroyed by his own obsessions, ambition, and arrogance. That’s hard to watch, even with catchy music. The second act drags a lot, too. Also, no matter how many times I watch, he keeps winding up fighting that same stupid duel, even after his son died in a similar one. The ending with his wife helps, but after a while I decided I’d had enough and haven’t seen it since.

(I won’t even talk about how Hamilton was the perfect show for the Obama years as opposed to now. Ugh. Maybe Cabaret needs a revival soon. The Nazis are already in place.)

No, the big difference that struck me this week is that Lin Manuel Miranda wrote a show that shared his culture with everybody. Kendrick Lamar said: This is who I am, whether you get it or not.

Honestly, I respect both approaches. The defining flaw of the people who voted for the current administration is that they get physically offended by any art that isn’t made explicitly for them, which is basically how they define the word “woke”. The least I can do is not be that way. I’ll go further and try to appreciate art that was not created with me in mind, and try to let it expand my own boundaries if possible. I’m also okay with the fact that the artist doesn’t have to care how I feel about it.

I’ll conclude this entire Super Bowl discussion by saying there’s one other prediction I made a few years ago. When he retired (for real) in 2022, I predicted Tom Brady would come back at age 50 and win one more title for the Patriots. He’s 47 now, so I’ve still got a couple of years to wait. Honestly, though, I’ll settle for getting him out of the broadcast booth. His call of the Super Bowl was his best game of the season, which means he finally achieved the level of mediocre to bad NFL analyst. I didn’t think he’d ever get there. Please, Tom, quit while you’re way, way behind.