Some Thoughts About Super Bowl XLV, 2011

To those pop stars who feel the Nation Anthem deserves a personal interpretation: Just sing the damn song.

Cowboys & Aliens had better not suck.

There should be more movies like the Kia Optima commercial.

Three fantasy commercials in a row: Coke/Dragon, Thor, VW Passat/Kid Vader

Coke makes a good commercial with a nice message. If only world peace and co-operation were as simple as sharing a coke. At least it’s a start. Life must have sucked for lonely 19th-century Latin-American border guards.

Very interesting approach taken by that Detroit car company making a luxury car. They made an extra-long commercial about Detroit that seems designed to get people to sympathize with the American auto industry and the people of that city. Well, it was effective, but made me wonder why they are not advertising an affordable, efficient, quality car that every American can own.

The halftime score, 21-10, is exactly the same as the final score of Super Bowl XII, Cowboys-Broncos, the first one I ever watched.

The Black Eyes Peas halftime show should go down as one of the best ever. It ranked up there with the year that Stevie Wonder played. Kudos to them for actually singing and not lip-synching. The Tron-inspired costumes and production design was appropriately spectacular and over the top. Having Slash enter to play “Sweet Child of Mine” was a nice touch and actually gave me chills. I do wish they had followed up with getting Dick Dale to play “Miserlou” in their song that samples it.

The montage of clips from TV shows about the Big Game was very clever.

The game itself was very exciting, a fast-paced, high scoring affair with lost of turnovers, and exciting offensive plays. Green Bay pulled out ahead early, but Pittsburgh, playing like the underdog they never have been in Super Bowls past, came back and kept the game interesting.

"XLV" stands for "Xtra Large Victory."

I missed the intro to the Pittsburgh Steelers before the game, but Sam Elliot’s into to the Green Bay Packers perfectly set the stage for the victory and return to glory that would ensue. Heck, I would listen to Sam Elliot read the phone book. Or Darwin.

Hurrah for Universal Sports!

When the switchover to digital TV happened, and I finally got my digital converter box to work, it was small pile of "so what? Big deal." to me. So we got "crystal clear digital reception" now. That was only if the antenna was pointing in the right direction. Otherwise you got a perfectly black screen. Art least with analog we could sort of make out the picture through the snow and ghosties.

Sure, it's convenient to have a weather channel on 7-3,but Icould find out that kind of info by a quick look out the window most of the time.

Extra kids channels? That's merely an excuse to put less kids programming on the regular channels.

The Spanish stations seem to be doubled up. What's the point of that?

New York Nonstop and LiveWell, have yet to impress me with their programming (although LiveWell did show Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speches uncut late one night).

And what's with that channel that only shows certain roadways and intersections?

But NBC's Universal Sports ans just given me programming that has me saying "All Is Forgiven!" The Paralympics! Legless hockey! Armless biathlon! Visually-impaired cross-county skiing! Before this channel, I was lucky to stumble upon a few highlight on Wide World of Sports or something, but now I am getting the full games and events!

I can;t wait till the summer games to watch wheelchair rugby!