My Favorite Bloggers Avoid My Least Favorite Topic:

The frigging Super Bowl. The commercials. The half-time show.

Checked out Danny Miller, Richard Cohen, Rabbi Karsh, Tamar Jacobson, my True Ann-Sister, and my old man: all blissfully engaged in blogging on far more important matters.

(I would have included my brother in this list, but he couldn't refrain from ragging on Paul McCartney and bemoaning our wretched materialism.)

No jokes about whether we were going to see Paul McCartney's left nipple. No smarmy commentary on the commercials. Or the point spread. Or how cute Tom Brady is. Or all the food they ate during the game.

(By the way, the kitchen here at the office is full of half-eaten remnants from the Super Bowl vomitoria. We're expected, like a bunch of jackals, to eat the remnants of other people's parties. We will. It'll all be gone before noon.)

There was one interesting Super Bowl-related development (off the field, of course): advertisers were forced to pull an ad for the Lincoln Navigator. It showed a priest caressing the car and breathing heavily, then posting a sign outside his church that he was going to preach on Lust.

It's pretty obvious to me that this commercial was made explicitly to be pulled. It is in such poor taste and so badly timed that its creators simply had to be on to something.

Of course, the commercial never aired -- but boy, did it get shown. It got lots of airtime and discussion on MSNBC, among others, and the coverage surrounding the commercial got the product (and the crafty ad agency) more attention and notoriety than just showing the damn commercial ever could have.

So we now have a new phenomenon to look forward to: the raft of commercials that will be made just to be banned from the game-time airwaves. Their wretchedness will appall and entrance us all, generating a pre-game film festival-cum-gabfest of commercials in poor taste but with high production values. The two weeks between the last playoff game and the Super Bowl will be divided between endless interviews and game commentary, and exegesis of commercials that everyone must see but the networks can't show.

I have now blogged on my least favorite topic. Please forgive me.

--T.A.

Comments

[Tamar]

David,
I have to say that some of my blogging was more painful than "blissful" this weekend, but I know what you mean and I a) love the way you describe us and b) love being one of your favorites!

My problem with the SuperBowl is that I genuinely don't know what's going on. I was not brought up on the culture of American football so that most of the jargon, "plays," analysis of the game etc. just fly way over my head. I sit in the room and after a short while I hear only a mild sort of humming in the background, and the bodies running and tumbling up and down the field make no sense to me.

Sometimes I like to watch the commercials but they really were not that great yesterday - even to laugh at!

And yes, I did turn to blogging, rather, on more important matters! And yes, I enjoyed your "take" on it today - very much!

[Danny]

I loathe the Super Bowl. Can you imagine what could be done with the money used to purchase one thirty-second spot on that show? Leah and I spent Super Bowl Sunday at a special screening of "Fiddler on the Roof" at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood where we got to meet the gifted Art Director. (Soon to be a posting on my blog!) I'm sure there are some analogies to be drawn between the goings-on in Anatevka and on the football field but I'll leave that to more ambitious Jewish sports writers! I can identify more with pasty-faced Mottel the Tailor than I can with a New England Patriot!