Super Sour Grapes

Well, the Super Bowl commenced about 12 hours ago and I'm relatively satisfied that it was as exciting a game for non-fans as was last year's Giants win. By non-fans I mean people who care little or nothing for the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, which, by virtue of the fact that neither team is (or was last night) very good is a pretty safe conclusion.

However, as far as a random football game, last night's game was pretty solid. It was my first in clean, crisp 1080p, but that didn't do much for me as I have to be somewhat interested in what's happening on screen to be impressed by how well it's being presented. In other words, if it was a 6-hour marathon of Louie Anderson hosting the Family Feud, I wouldn't have cared what the TV's resolution was; I would have turned it off or changed the channel.

But back to the game; while it was exciting and a down-to-the-wire finish, as it was last year, this year I didn't really care much either way who won. I was expecting the Steelers to win big, but the Cardinals made it a game -- and nearly won -- so I give them credit. They didn't follow the script.

The one thing that continued to bother me throughout the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, and continues to bother me today, is that my team, the Giants, should have won back-to-back Super Bowls last night. They should have bounced the Philadelphia Eagles from the playoffs, they should have cleaned out the Cardinals, and they should have dominated the Steelers to go two in a row. But should haves have little place in the professional sports world. We all know this.

And yet I still can't eliminate this "should have" scenario from my overworked, underfed brain. There's no doubt that the bottom line is the final score. Let's face it; if "should have" has any place in the game of football, the Giants would have gone home losers last year. Again, I'm conscious of this ironic dichotomy, and I'm fessin' up. But it still doesn't change the fact that the Giants bounced themselves out of contention for another title.

So in essence, none of this really mattered to me. The game itself was sort of a passing amusement; half of the time we shuffled between the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet and a variety of other quasi-useful programming. All told, I would have preferred watching Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or another film I've not seen in awhile. Put another way, in a year from now, I'll still remember every line to Pulp Fiction, but I won't remember anything about last night's game.

In essence, then, the real reason why I sort of watched the game was for the commercials...except most of them were uninteresting and didn't hold my attention. For millions of dollars a piece, it's sort of sad to say that either a) the commercials were pretty lame this year; and/or b) that my attention span couldn't or didn't stay with a thirty-second spot selling Pepsi or Fedex or female incontinence-necessitated undergarments. I did notice Pepsi spent an inordinate number of minutes on the between-the-whistles entertainment, but they could have sent Jenna Jameson to my house to make sure we were focused on the task at hand and I'd still never buy one of their products.

So that, essentially, leaves the half-time show featuring Bruce Springsteen as the real high point of the evening, other than the company and this bitchin' chipotle dip I prepped. I'm not the biggest of Bruce Springsteen fans, mind you, but I've seen him a few times live and scored a bunch of his albums. His stuff isn't at the top of my Desert Island collection -- maybe a song or two, maybe -- but I could say I'm a more than passive fan. And I thought he and the E Street Band did a great job entertaining a bunch of people who could give a shit about the fact they'd just blown $5000 or more for a ticket to a lame-ass Super Bowl. It always amazes me how they pipe in a bunch of fans that don't belong at a football game to cheer for the half-time entertainment. The worst in recent memory, of course, is the coupling of Britney Spears and Aerosmith; last night was, in recent memory, one of the best.

And don't think I forgot the notion that I still wish I'd had a 1080p monitor for the Janet Jackson nipple-flash.

So overall, like most Super Bowls, I didn't find it all that super. It wasn't awful and it could have been lots worse, but I 'spose next season will be a better gauge of my interest in football. If the Giants play next season like they did for the past six weeks of the 2008-09 regular season, I'll be spending next Super Sunday watching Womens' Coed Naked Badminton.

At least I'll care about the actual game and not just who won.

Or, as they say in France: "Meh."