Last month, I posted rather heavily on the NFL Playoffs and some of my lovely readers weren't too happy about that, referring to my sports post as "boring" and "yucky". The good news is, football season is now over and there's really no real sport story worth talking about until the World Cup in the summer - which I'm going to cover extensively, like it or not. That is, unless the NBA season suddenly turns interesting or my Tar Heels start using performance enhancing drugs.
Bad news is, I will talk about the Super Bowl. I have to. My Hetero Man Card is up for renewal and I need to bolster my case, what with my fondness for Brokeback and Anthropologie catalogs. Luckily for you non-sports fans, however, Super Bowl is less a sporting event than a multimedia extravaganza. Essentially, it's a heavily sponsored equivalent of your company softball game, which is basically an excuse to get out of work early and you're okay with putting Kerri from HR at shortstop because she looks really good in shorts.
Detroit Rock City |
Ironically enough though, I missed the first few minutes of the game as I had to work for an industry that considers Super Sunday its biggest day of the year, finishing up work for a certain Detroit-based corporation whose name featured prominently in the broadcast from the Motor City, and whose layoffs are probably financing my Chipotle burritos this week.
And I didn't attend a Super Bowl party - after an 80-hour work week, I thought it would be great to stay out past 3 am Sunday morning, then get up at 7 so I could get started early on work, so I wasn't going to be very social or awake. As it were, I dozed off for parts of the game and I missed the most important/exciting play of the night, Antwaan Randle El's pass to Hines Ward, and what sounded like the most satisfying commercial of the night, Mastercard's McGuyver spot.
But enough jibber jabber, disorganized, incomplete thoughts on what I was awake for:
Wow, the Steelers didn't play very well. Seattle played okay, but made some horrible, horrible mistakes. Could it be that the NFC is that bad?I was rooting against the Steelers because it seemed like eeeeverybody was rooting for them, and closet Steelers seemed to pop out of nowhere. But as the game wore on, I realized I didn't really give a shit.Bud Light commercials - they're funny as usual, but also forgettable as usual. I guess when your product has no real benefit or unique selling point, you can't really do much beyond sight gags and constructing a fantasy world where people actually don't compare your products to urine.For the sheer magnitude of the ad, the Burger King Whopperettes ad was a "meh". Great production value and nice finale, but missing was the joie de vivre of The King/NFL spots and the "Oh shit" factor of the Bacon Cheddar Chicken Ranch spot with Hootie. 
Hines Ward will never have to pay for a drink in Pittsburgh's Koreatown again. |
Hines Ward edges ahead of Margaret Cho to become the fourth most famous Korean-American after Jin and Sun on Lost and John Cho aka The M.I.L.F. Guy aka Harold from Harold and Kumar.Speaking of Lost, "Might as well face it, you're addicted to Lost"? Did Robert Palmer's rotting corpse actually approve this?Toyota hybrid Camry ad - We were supposed to give a shit because this was the first-ever bilingual Super Bowl ad? Latino, please. It was just a car commercial that happened to have one line of Spanish in it. The shit made me cringe when I first read about it and I cringed when I watched it.
Seriously, Toyota expected us to get all moist over "Mira qui". Anyone who's had a minimal exposure to Spanish has heard "Mira qui". Though if you play soccer with Hondurans, it's more like "¡Mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira mira! ¡Aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui aqui! ¡Puta madre!", which I initially took to mean, "I am currently covered by a defender and will make no attempt to get open, but simply gesture angrily instead. Don't bother passing to me because it's not like I'll pass to you when a simple through ball would put you 1 vs 1 with the goalkeeper."
I can imagine wingnuts losing their shit over how this commercial is a sign that political correctness is taking over America and multiculturalism is being rammed down their throat, so it's not all bad."But FedEx doesn't exist yet" - best line of the night, but the caveman is so done and FedEx had a much better spot last year.I don't know how long John Madden has lived in America, but I'm sure he's been speaking English long enough to know that it's "If he had caught the ball...", not "If he would have caught the ball". I find it hard to believe there are people who don't get the urge to throw themselves out of windows every time Chris Berman is on TV. I'm guessing those two people who like Chris Berman will also like Disney's Shaggy Dog.Same goes for Diddy and Diet Pepsi commercials in general."Crime Deterrent" in that Sprint commercial - amusing. I liked the Benny Hill one too, simply for the stupidity. I don't see myself running to the Sprint Store though.Mobile ESPN - I like it, but don't love it. It looks lovely, but the idea's a little too predictable.Get this - Rolling Stones opened their performance with - wait for it, wait for it - "Start Me Up"! Bet you didn't see that one coming.Although it was nice to see Mick and the boys reaching out to the younger audience by covering a Britney song, the track's like 6 years old and wasn't that big a hit. Couldn't they do "Toxic"?Speaking of copying, doesn't the tongue-shaped catwalk look suspiciously similar to U2's heart-shaped catwalk from the Elevation tour? Yes, yes it does.Willie Parker goes off on a 75-yard touchdown run. ABC immediately cuts to a shot of the backup running back who wasn't even in the play. Of course, the backup RB happens to be a "great guy" and a Detroit native.Fabio in the Nationwide commercial - there seemed to be fewer celeb-for-the-sake-of-celeb castings this year, so this one didn't bug me as it would have last year. Still, it's dumb as shit, but that's par for the course.I like the Ameriquest commercials again. Interesting take in a boring categoty.Hummers are for assholes, but I like the implied monster/robot fucking.The Jackass spot for Career Builders - such a seemingly obvious joke, surprised it didn't come up last year. Hopefully, we'll see executions of this campaign, but with tools, dildos and assfaces.Taco Bell - apparently, junk food for geeks. Great branding, guys.Players rehearsing "I'm going to Disney World" - I'm a sucker for stuff like this. The NFL Network has put out some bangers recently.Gillette Fusion - Great, the price of razor blades just went up again, but I'll probably get them sooner or later because fancier blades shave better. But say no to "battery-powered" razors. Serioiusly.The girls of Grey's Anatomy sponge bathing each other? Great in theory, but not so much if I don't see the naughty bits. I must see the naughty bits.Wait wait wait, there's another explosive scare next week? Are they allowed to do that two weeks in a row? Did I watch a whole episode of Grey's Anatomy? Again? And wasn't the whole point of this post was to help my case for Hetero Man Card renewal?Beer. Boobies. Nachos. Doggy style. Football. Boobies.tags: Super Bowl XL NFL advertising commercials
