Not so "Super" Bowl 50

I have to wonder...

I'm sitting there passively watching yet another Super Bowl unfold while I busy myself with more important things like watching paint dry or folding socks.  It's a Sunday so this is the most exciting entertainment option available (which isn't saying much) and at least in this country it's something of a big deal to see the last football game of the season. 

I could care less about who's winning, I'm here in the hope that perhaps I'll find some entertainment value in the halftime show or a few clever commercials that always seem to crop up this time of year.

So let's take a look at the halftime show...

Unless you're a big fan of Beyonce's thighs in hot pants, a U2 cover band and an also ran pop star the halftime show was in a word, half-assed.

The performances forgettable, the manufactured message of unity obvious and the choreography on par with a bunch of pre-pubescent majorettes marching in a Thanksgiving Day parade.

In short...WTF?

Nothing memorable here.  I don't even like Katy Perry's music but she knocked it out of the park last year.  I can appreciate talent and effort even if I'm not a fan of the artist.  Maturity allows for that.  It also allows me to come up with brutally honest analogies.   This year's halftime show looked like a hip-hop cheerleader review at a high school football game.

I won't even talk about the game.  Who cares?  The Broncos were celebrating victory with 10 minutes left on the clock for god's sake.

Take the NFC championship, put the Panthers in Cardinals uniforms and you pretty much have the same game.  It was over in the first quarter.  OK, to be fair,  at least the Panthers  pretended to play a football game.

Don't even get me started on the commercials.  Boring, lackluster and devoid of creativity.  Toyota tried to convince America that bank robbery was best accomplished in a Prius.  Anthony Hopkins was hocking free Tax software, 

Christopher Walken was trying to convince you that a dowdy Korean Sedan was a testosterone therapy replacement and Alec Baldwin was... I don't know what he was doing.  He must have needed the cash. 

No tear jerking Budweiser puppies, just Helen Mirren making you feel bad about yourself.  And what the hell? Pokemon and PuppyMonkeyBaby?

I get the feeling this whole game and everything surrounding it was nothing more than a Peyton Manning retirement party.  It was almost like they hired a bunch of people off of Craigslist to pull it off.

This is what you get when the Half-time show is based on Internet memes.

At least there was Colbert when it was over...

Sunday's Super large Sportsball Ubergame (updated for 2014)

A non-sports fan's guide to Sunday's Super large Sportsball Ubergame

I'm not much of a sports fan.  In fact for many professional sports I only have a passing interest in seeing their respective seasons end.  That stems primarily from a desire to see the end of the propaganda that accompanies said professional sports when their season is over.

I don't hate sports, I just don't buy into the glorification of them.  Hey, these guys get to play a game for a living.  Yes it requires training, skill and intelligence to participate but in the end it's just a game.  We should all be so lucky, but we aren't.

And so it was with Sunday's major sporting event which shall remain unnamed because last year they sued a bunch of people just for saying its name without permission from the council of elderly rich people who own it.  

It had a lot to do with large men repeatedly assaulting each other usually in pursuit of another large man in possession of an oblong shaped object.  Possession of said object is paramount in this sporting contest by the way.

As I understand it, the game is divided into 4, 15 minute quarters that for some reason take 3 hours to complete.  There is also a lavish performance event in the middle of it where they stop the game and a popular entertainer sings songs with accompanying fanfare.  After which they resume the running and assaulting of each other. 

(The 2014 version featured a matchup between a group of large individuals representing angry equines versus another group representing seafaring birds of prey.)

The 2013 version of the Super large Sportsball Ubergame took place on February 2nd and involved 2 teams.  One team represented a group of black scavenging birds and the other a group of 19th century freelance laborers with pick axes.

During low spots during the game a small group of middle aged men wearing headsets would have heated discussions about what just happened.  It's not uncommon for discussions of 30 seconds of the game's proceedings to be discussed for 15 minutes, for example.   

Some of these men could also be heard during play of the game when something of interest to them occurs.  These men are known as Sportscasters.  They're much like the players in that they get paid to talk about professional recreational events without having to take part.  Some of their membership includes former game players who have "retired" from participating in these professional recreational activities. 

For most of the game it appeared that the team representing birds were very agitated while the team representing the laborers were largely disinterested.  Except during the early part of the game after the popular entertainer was done singing or the "second half" as they call it. Perhaps they were motivated by the performance of popular entertainer.

During an opportunity for the laborer team to best the bird team's score, one of the playfield judges dressed in a prison shirt appeared to have a lapse in their judgment.  It seems that the decision of the judge in the prison garb disheartened the laborer's team.  The effect of which was for the laborer team to stop trying to best the bird team's score. Apparently the effect of the popular entertainer's performance had worn off.

(For the 2014 game it appeared the team representing the angry equines shared the same motivational psychology as 2013's team representing laborers. Throughout the event the equine team's leader was shown many times with a concerned, unfulfilled demeanor.  In the end the seafaring birds of prey triumphed over the angry equines by apparently just showing up.  Proving once and for all after 2 examples that you never want to go up against a sportsball team representing angry birds. )

 (During the weeks leading up to 2014 edition of this annual sports event many late night comedic hosting personalities made note of how both teams apparently heralded from areas of the country where the consumption of exotic flora was deemed acceptable.  With some proclaiming the sporting event the "Bowl Bowl")

Now admittedly, I could care less and was actually flipping between coverage of this sporting event and reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Still, I saw enough to know that my time was better spent on the reruns.  Although even with my limited knowledge I surmised 30 minutes before the game ended that the birds were going to leave the laborer's with excrement on their pick axes. 

Luckily, the Star Trek reruns were presented marathon fashion by BBC America proving to be a far better use of the majority of my time.  I was also able to gain the most minimal of knowledge so as not to bring harm to myself should devotees of this sport find irritation with my lack of interest. 

In short, I can fake it.  If you know the score and a few highlighted moments you can keep this sport's  devotees postulating on individual player performance for days without fear of having to interject anything except for the occasional head nod.

Mission accomplished.