Compiled here are the miniature versions of Object Lessons, a series on the secret lives of ordinary things, edited by Atlantic contributing editor Ian Bogost. Read longer Object Lessons and books at objectsobjectsobjects.com.
“Put that to music,” intoned NBC analyst Chris Collinsworth, after wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr.’s one-handed catch for a touchdown last November. Video of the play went viral, and soon fans young and old tried to emulate Beckham’s ballet-like catch in playgrounds and backyards everywhere.
It was a beautiful feat. A dazzling one. Some called it poetic. And although it has been heralded as a one-of-a-kind catch, it joins a list of other one-of-a-kind catches and all-time great plays collected on highlight reels. But besides oohing and aahing over such moments, what more is there to say?
As a literature professor, I find myself watching football in poetic terms.
And by that, I don’t mean generalized notions of “beauty” or “grace under pressure.” The enjoyment I find in a poem is in the words, sounds, and structures that repeat, connect, or hang together in specific ways—its patterns—and especially in those moments that deviate and surprise—its variations. For me, football is most beautiful in the interplay of such pattern and variation.
Take the back-shoulder throw that many quarterbacks have now mastered. The quarterback throws the ball to the receiver’s “back” or “outside” shoulder—usually before the receiver (and the defender) has turned around to see it. It’s a modification of the in-stride, over-the-shoulder pass, and it’s extremely difficult to defend. The poetry of this play is found in its timing variation, not in its elegance. In its innovation on an established pattern.
On any given Sunday, you will hear commentators allude to variation. The quarterback “reads” the defense, sets up in the “read-option,” or recognizes a “hot read.” These “reads” are all about identifying formations (patterns) and using options (variations) to defeat the defense’s expectation. Likewise, defenses show different “looks” and make modifications often at the last second before the ball is snapped.
One hallmark of a great quarterback is his ability to audible: to modify verbally the set-play at the line. Conventional thinking says that an audible is beautiful when the variation results in a successful play. But even if the play fails, I often find beauty in the language of the audible. In Peyton Manning’s “Omaha, Omaha, Omaha” or “Bags Montana Fat Man,” where the “poetry” lies in strange variation where one doesn’t expect it.
So back to Beckham Jr. The beauty of the play comes from its high degree of variation: to catch a 43-yard pass at the goalline, after being fouled, bent over backwards, with only two fingers and a thumb. It’s unexpected and stunning. And then: it’s a new pattern in your mind, for watching the next game.
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Fishing shirts are not just for fishing anymore. Or perhaps they never were. They are a modification of the travel shirt, a many-pocketed button-down shirt that looks vaguely like a Oxford-cloth business casual staple, until you get up close—then you see the details: vents, mesh underlayers, patch pockets with accordion folds and pleats, key loops, utility tabs, expandable collars for sun protection … the list goes on.
What do these shirts offer, whence their popularity, beyond the conceit of actual fishing?
Look around next time you travel, and observe the drab drapings of these high-tech shirts as they make contact with plastic seats and press against plate glass windows. And then consider how these shirts are robustly described by their purveyors:
The Columbia PFG (Performance Fishing Gear) “Tamiami II,” perhaps the most ubiquitous and eerily identifiable fishing shirt, offers a “Modern Classic fit” and is “designed for cool comfort and functionality over the long haul.” The “cool” does double duty here, assuring us that we will look fashionable while also evincing the functional venting technology of this shirt. No wonder it is called a “performance button up,” as it must skate an awkward path between the noble pursuits of modernity and the banal realities of endless office work.
Patagonia’s “Island Hopper II” promises “a superlight long-sleeved shirt in an easy-care, organic cotton, recycled polyester blend.” Consider here the tension between “easy-care” and the implied responsibilities of organic cotton and recycling: environmental consciousness dances on a razor’s edge between calm and crisis.
Meanwhile, ExOfficio’s “Air StripTM Shirt” is marketed as “the ultimate in technical apparel.” At the same time, it assures a “comfortable yet modern silhouette”—by now a familiar formula, this vow to balance utility with elegance.
And isn’t this what is so attractive—and so galling—about the fishing shirt? It pledges to spirit us through the world with foresight, durability, and protection; but it also nestles blandly into the consumerscape numbly taking place all around. It beckons at trout unlimited and adventures untold; and it seamlessly facilitates herds of shuffling travelers and routine labor.
It’s everything about modernity we’d wanted—packaged in all sizes and colors, and made for every occasion. Why teach anyone to fish, when everyone can just wear a fishing shirt?
Refrigerator magnets are small, cheap, durable, colorful and come in a limitless variety of shapes and sizes. All these qualities make them incredibly easy to horde. Thanks to our incredibly large refrigerators, Americans have ample space to display even the biggest collections.
Art museums drove me into the ranks of refrigerator magnet hoarders. I used to buy postcards of paintings that I liked, but most of them sat in a desk drawer. Because magnets are smaller than postcards I can now fit more art onto the fridge and there’s still room for a magnetic message board!
You can tell from this approach that I pay more attention to refrigerator magnets than to whatever they happen to be holding up. The kinds of magnets you get at art museums are so striking that it seems a shame to relegate them to the corners of anything else that you might want to display. The Andy Warhol magnet currently supporting a recipe for roasted red pepper spread on the side of my refrigerator is much prettier than the paper upon which that recipe is printed.
What refrigerator magnets do best is to make a boring, mass-produced appliance seem more individualized than it otherwise would be. They give us a chance to fill the largest blank space in our houses other than our walls with whatever we decide defines us at any particular moment. And should we ever find better magnets to fill that space, we don’t have to deal with tape marks or holes in the wall in order to update our status.
(Jonathan Rees’s Object Lessons book Refrigerator was just published by Bloomsbury.)
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