So today is the day I talk about the Super Bowl... Probably more about the pop culture of it that the actual football because... well honestly it wasn't that interesting of a game.
First off... Dallas/Arlington... you get a big ass FAIL at hosting the Super Bowl. Ok I know there was a giant snow storm right before it, but it's not like that doesn't ever happen in Dallas... as a matter a fact 12 months ago on Super Bowl Sunday 2010, Dallas got hit by a snow storm. So to be as utter unprepared as you were was unacceptable. Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star wrote a nice column about how that isn't going to happen next year when the Super Bowl is here in Indy. First off, we're prepared for snow. Secondly, even if we're not, Lucas Oil Stadium is downtown, not 30-45 minutes away... Additionally most of the major attractions downtown are all connected by tunnels/skywalks. You can maneuver from your hotel to the mall to the restaurant to the bar to the convention center for all the Super Bowl activities to the actual stadium... all without going outside. Finally... Seriously you couldn't get a whole section of seating ready BEFORE the game? Dallas had to refund a bunch of fans their money (at 3times face value) because the temporary seating wasn't ready and was deemed unsafe by the fire marshal. EPIC FAIL.
Along that same vein... get the fucking song right! You're singing in front of the largest audience anyone will ever have (aside from maybe singing at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics). Maybe if you concentrated on the actual words to the song instead of trying to hit 5 notes in the span of one word you might actually get them right.
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Ok... so some things happened on the field, not many people cared about... Then some ads... Audi had an ad about people trying to escape from a luxury prison... complete with all the typical stereotypes of rich people. Yawn. Chevy had an ad about old people not being able to hear. Yawn. Doritos had an ad about a guy teasing a dog... eh mildly funny but took too long to set it up. Seriously should have had about 1/4 of the "C'mon boy, come get it!" and maybe it would be funnier. Then Doritos had an ad that was just icky... guy so obsessed with Doritos that he was licking other people's fingers and sniffing their pants. Really? FAIL. Pepsi had a typical girlfriend gets mad because horny guy stares at another woman ad, gee never seen THAT before. Some movie I have no interest in had a commercial... then Pepsi had another ad where a guy gets hit in the nuts with a soda can... Another Doritos ad where guy is completely irresponsible but saves the day with Doritos.
Poseidon apparently is so in love with Kia cars that he wants one... and so do maniacal Bond-like supervillians and aliens, but in the end ancient Aztecs get it... huh? Another movie commercial... this one I DO want to see... Cowboys & Aliens! Yes!!! Eminem has officially sold out and made a commercial for ice tea... but says he doesn't do commercials (yea stay tuned for that later...) Of course we have a trashy Go Daddy commercial. Apparently Go Daddy has enough money to buy the integrity of not only Danica Patrick but also Jillian Michaels (Joan Rivers never had any integrity did she?) And finally there was a tire commercial about a guy who accidentally does a "reply all" on his email. I didn't really get what that had to do with tires but whatever. So it's the end of the first quarter and the Packers are up 14-0.
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On to the 2nd quarter... where we have a beer commercial... remember beer? They advertise during the Super Bowl sometimes... anyway it's set in the Old West where a local ruffian is turned into an Elton John singing pussycat by a Budweiser. The best commercial (and of course everything here should be prefaced with "in my not so humble opinion") so far was the Faith Hill flower commercial. Faith is trying to coach a guy in what to write on the card when he's sending flowers to his girl friend... "Just write what's in your heart..."... "Dear Kim, your rack is unreal." Another movie commercial, this time for Transformers... as my daughter said "How many movies can they make about robot cars?" exactly. Apparently Coke will transform a dragon's breath from fire into fireworks... Did not know that. Another movie commercial, for Thor, not particularly excited about that...
The winner of the Super Bowl ads was actually decided before they were even shown. VW smartly released its ad before the Super Bowl and it went viral. The ad featured a little kid, probably about 7 or 8, dressed as Darth Vader going around trying and failing to manipulate things with the Force. He tries the cat, the washing machine, a doll, lunch, etc etc. Finally Dad comes home and he tries Dad's car. Dad is watching from the kitchen window and uses the remote starter to start up the car making the kid think he actually did it. WIN!
Let's see... CareerBuilder had their monkey commercial... yeah it stopped being funny a few years ago guys... Cars.com had a play on "kid in a candy store"... bleh. Ooo.... another car commercial... this one for Chevy... Guy goes on a date with girl and on the way home uses OnStar to check his Facebook. Really? Are we that fucking lazy and obsessed with Facebook that we need our car to read it to us? Really?!?! Then there's another Marvel movie commerical... this one for Captain America... Yeah categorize it with Thor. Just meh. Hey it's halftime and Green Bay is up 21-10.
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The show was all flashy and everyone was wearing clothes that lit up as if they were on the set of Tron. Seriously Fergie, you don't need your boobs to light up, we know they're there. They did mediocre renditions of their hits. Then Slash appeared off to the side and Fergie slaughtered "Sweet Child O' Mine"... just painful to listen to... And Slash... really rhine-stoning your hat? So sad.Even the halftime show stage had problems at Cowboys Stadium... During "Where Is The Love?" the stage was supposed to light up to spell out LOVE but a section of the stage didn't light up so it just look like LOl'E. LOL indeed, quite fitting.
Usher sang a song too but the most impressive thing about that was him jumping over someone and landing in the splits.
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Ok on to the 3rd quarter... Cars.com has another ad, this time about how it's really not good to go "first" but rather to have other people get hurt testing things for you. E-Trade has another talking baby commercial. Dear E-Trade: See what I said about the CareerBuilder ad and multiple by 10.
Another favorite of mine of the evening was the Best Buy ad featuring Ozzy supposedly hawking cell phones... "How many bloody G's are there?" Then Justin Beiber comes in to sell the latest and greatest 6G phone and they show Ozzy and Sharon off to the side... Sharon: "What's a 6G?" Ozzy: "What's a bieber?" Bieber in bad roadie disguise: "I dunno, kinda looks like a girl..." Well I thought it was funny at least. Ozzy is always funny IMNSHO.
Anyway there was some commercial from Homeaway.com about something... I still don't know what the hell it was about, which if you didn't know is a BAD thing. Mini has a new car called the Countryman and did the sexual double entendre... "Josh, have you ever crammed it in the boot before?" yeah... subtle. Oh and there's a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie... Coke has a commercial about enemy soldiers bonding over a pop... Hyundai tries to convince us their cars are interesting when they're really not...
The Groupon ad has caused a little controversy. Timothy Hutton (who BTW, I love in Leverage) narrates about how we're going to lose the Tibetan culture blah blah blah and then morphs it into but I got a great deal with Groupon at a Tibetan restaurant. People this it's rather exploitative. Yeah whatever. They have another ad with someone else famous doing the same thing with the Amazon deforestation.
Adrien Brody sings a song for Stella Artois (hey more beer!)... A commercial for Simon's new talent show X-Factor... Acura tries to convince us a station wagon is sporty (FAIL)... and then the NFL shows us all classic TV stars as NFL fans... Nicely done I think. Carmax has a guy who thinks he's being carjacked when he gets old-style service at a gas station.
Final ad of the 3rd quarter I'll talk about is the Chrysler ad. This one was actually pretty slick. It's a 2 minute ad and starts with a voice-over about how hard Detroit's has had it, but how all those hardships have just made Detroit better and how they really know how to make great cars. Then they start to show Eminem driving around Detroit. "Now we're from America, but this isn't New York City. Or the Windy City. Or Sin City. And we're certainly no one's Emerald City." He stops and goes into a theatre with a gospel choir, steps up on stage and turns to the camera. "This is the Motor City. This is what we do." As someone from Michigan and lived just south of Detroit... I thought the ad was awesome.
Oh btw... Packers are still leading 21-17.
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On to the 4th quarter... Some animated movie called Rango... Cars.com has a commercial with talking cars a la Cars... Bud Light has a guy with dogs that can do anything, including serve beer, cook and wash dishes... so of course he hosts a party. Another animated movie about parrots in Rio... and another Pepsi commercial, this time with "What she thinks/What he thinks" and of course hits all the stereotypes. Hyundai has another commercial, this time saying that it's better when things evolve... Not sure what they're saying... VW has a commercial about a fast beetle...
Fox has a commercial for House that emulates the classic Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial... except instead of tossing the kid a jersey House tosses his cane at a kid and bonks him in the head. I laughed, which in my scoring scheme is an A+.
Ok... honestly this is getting long and I'm bored... so I'll just hit a few more highlights (or lowlights)...
Skechers has whored-out Kim Kardashian for their shoes... and yes I used that phrase appropriately.
New TV show "Terra Nova" is about how in the future we've destroyed Earth so much that we have to send people back to the dinosaur time. Seriously is this not Avatar II? They even got the same evil colonel to say "Welcome to Terra Nova!" instead of "Welcome to Pandora!"
ok... that's all I got...
5 comments:
Im glad I am not the only one that wasn't impressed. I thought some of the commercials were funny but not as good as previous years. I could take it or leave it with both teams. Half time I agree sucked, the lights were kind of cool but that was it.
I'm totally with you on the part about Christina needing to cut all that warbling mess out! I can't even stand it! I don't even care that she messed up the words. The warbling. Oh, the warbling.
The Black Eyed Peas did fine until she sang GNR. She ruined that. Usher made the show though. I love him!
I think people need to lay off Christina. Professional singers are allowed to make mistakes. She still sounded better than 75% of the people they get to sing.
Showing off like an overly painted peacock---that was my favorite part about this post.
Christina and the Black Eyed Peas are WAY overrated.
I'm with you Kelley Christina's warbling was awful, why can't people just sing the song.
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