Thoughts on the Super Bowl

I managed to do something exceedingly rare yesterday. I watched an entire football game, including every second of the halftime show, for probably the first time in ten years. I’m not even sure why, since I’m not a huge pro football fan and I didn’t even have a rooting interest in either of the teams. But the Super Bowl is a cultural moment in America and a great excuse to eat delicious food with no discernible nutritional value—always a bonus. Plus, we had a house guest for several days leading up to Sunday, which although enjoyable, tends to tire you out. Once he left Pam and I both were in need of some mindless down time on the sofa, and there is nothing quite as mindless as watching the Super Bowl.

Pam put together all of my favorites for the spread…

Reuben dip

Pigs in a blanket

Veggies with spicy cheese

Mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce.

Of course, since I am surrounded by teachers, there had to be some sort of football bingo game played via texting with my teacher sister and her husband. The stakes were high, the loser having to buy Sunday lunch for the winner next Sunday. When I finally got five in a row and exclaimed BINGO!!!

At that point, Ron casually says, “Paula already got two bingos”

How are you supposed to respond to such a statement? Have these people never played BINGO before? It does nobody any good to simply get a bingo. Without shouting out BINGO!!!, or in this case, typing BINGO!!! In a text—you don’t got Jack, am I right? Since I was the first one to declare my BINGO!!!, I was the clear winner. To which, my clueless brother-in-law says, “We’ll call it a draw.”

The actual game was pretty good. Before kickoff I had told Pam that I thought that the Eagles were the better team, but that the Chiefs had the best player and since that player was their Quarterback, I thought that the Chiefs would win. Since that was exactly what happened you can make of that what you will.

As far as the commercials were concerned, I found them disappointing. None of them made me laugh. Many of them I found confusing. Not a single one of them made me more or less likely to purchase anything. Sitting here this morning I honestly can’t remember any of them very well. And yet, companies still eagerly shell out millions for their chance at thirty seconds of our attention.

Then there was the halftime show featuring the singer, Rihanna. It featured a very cool floating stage concept that thrusted the singers high above the field to dizzying heights. It was something to see, a true visual spectacle. As far as the performance was concerned, I was hampered by the fact that I didn’t know any of her songs, so for me they all melded together and sounded like one long song using the same four of five notes over and over again. Other than the spectacular floating stage thing, the rest of it seemed like a female singer dressed in a fire engine red balloon-y costume being chased by over a hundred amazingly coordinated dancing men in identical white balloon-y costumes, looking for all the world like sperm trying to hit an illusive target. Trouble was, she was already pregnant. Anyway, for the marketing colossus that it is the National Football League, I am not the target audience. This halftime show, in fact, the entire night wasn’t designed with 64 year old men in mind. So, basically my opinion doesn’t matter. But I imagine that if you were already a Rihanna fan you loved it. If you were unfamiliar with her or her work you were probably blown away by the stage levitation thing and confused by the rest of it, like me.

But, I made it through all four and a half hours of the thing, so I’m feeling a bit more American this morning.

…and just a little dazed and confused.