La Super Bowl

I started crying with the stupid Walter Payton mention and was teary-eyed through the national anthem, which, frankly, I loved.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard it done as defiant hymn, but I’ll take it.  This means, I guess, that the flourishy national anthem singers have finally won.

Granted, we’re barely into it, but the only commercial so far that’s made me go “Ooooo” is the G.I. Joe one.  Dare I say that the Puppy Bowl has better commercials?  Who ever does the Pedigree commercials seems to get that dogs and David Duchovny are an unstoppable combination.

My dad likes to tell people that he’s never forgiven the Cardinals for leaving Chicago.  He has issues, clearly.

How many commercials in a row can possibly contain people crashing through windows?  And I thought the Bud Light commercial was a little yucky, but I don’t know why.

Pepsi got Bob Dylan?!

More breaking glass?  That’s four commercials with breaking glass.

Yet another not so great Bud Light commercial.  WTF, Bud Light?  Your ad agency has done you wrong.

Bridgestone with the grossest ad.

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.  Vin Diesel.

I think Castrol Edge just had a commercial about pot.  And monkeys, but pot monkeys, obviously.

More monkeys?

See?  Is this Pedigree commercial not better than the Pepsi crap that preceded it?

Bud cannot go wrong with the horses, though, can it?  I just hope he did get a treat.

Well, you knew if he’d go after a twig, he’d go after a woman.

I can’t decide how I feel about the new Star Trek.  It looks like the kind of thing you want to see on the big screen, though.

I feel bad for the Cardinals.  I don’t feel like I’m watching the two best teams in football battling over who is best.

Is it just me or are a bunch of these commercials kind of sad and mean-spirited?

Oh god, did NBC just admit that they’re counting on Jay Leno to rescue them?!

And does anybody else think that Ben looks a lot like Jesse James?

Be careful jumping around like that, Bruce!

But I kind of love that Bruce is here.  Between him and the Payton reference, I feel like I’m reliving a pleasant part of my youth–a belief I had about America.  I don’t know.  It’s corny.  Don’t mind me.

Ha, first the phallic mic stand and then the crotch first into the camera.  I love me some Bruce.  I also love how all his music is supposed to be so quintessentially American and everyone’s cheering like he’s singing joy incarnate, and yet, his songs are always so incredibly sad, but with catchy choruses.  Ha, well I guess that is an American song, there.

I wonder if that chorus is the same chorus Faith used earlier?

I wonder if I could get a gospel choir to follow me around.

But see!  Glory Days is not a happy song.  I mean, it sounds happy, but it’ll bruise you if you listen too closely.

Still, I like something about Springsteen.  I feel like music is in good hands with him.

Why doesn’t the guy in the “Tennessee Millionaire’s Club” speak with a Southern accent?

I didn’t understand that Bridgestone ad with the Jump Around astronauts.  Did someone really pay money for that?

Ha, but I did like the Monster.com ad with the elk butt.  Moose butt.  I don’t actually know the difference between an elk and a moose, though I suppose they’re substantial.

A.) Are Clydesdales Scottish?  B.) Even if they are, why would a Scottish horse’s great grandson speak with a Scottish accent?

And the Rock!  If Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel ever do a movie together… I don’t even know.  I’ll probably fall over.

Ha, this is the summer of movies of things from my childhood.  GI Joe, Transformers.

More broken glass in the Jack in the Box commercial.  And poor guy got hit by a bus.

I’m just kind of icked out by the commercials.  They’re all kind of mean and depressing.  And they don’t make me want to buy those things; they make me want to flee those things.  I mean, my god, Hardee’s has one of the better ads.  If that’s not a sign of a problem, I don’t know what is.

Bridgett, I hear you and I can only say, do not let your daughter watch that bee story movie with Jerry Seinfeld.  I think watching that has put me in a slow feminist rage all day.  I can’t believe that piece of shit wasn’t firebombed at theaters.

Also, Chuck, if you were in 1-D, you’d be invisible and I would be glad.

Okay, I had to pause it to answer the phone.  For those of you waiting breathlessly to find out what’s going on with my family, my dad served communion today, a young mother I don’t know died, and my mom is still slowly going blind. Oh, and my grandma doesn’t want to try on underwear in front of my folks.  Me neither, Grandma, me neither.

Where were we?  Ah, the Apprentice.  Speak of Jesse James and he appears, apparently.

I’m suckered in by the Coke Zero commercials.

But I don’t understand the Cash4Gold idea.  If I put gold in the mail, doesn’t that just make it easier for unscrupulous postal workers to steal it?

I do, however, love watching Patricia Arquette dance around.  I wish there were more of that in Medium.

I like the wind commercial.  It’s old, though.  But dang, you know, after the depressing, mean-spirited stuff, I’ll take it.

Oh, god, an unfunny SNL skit has become an unfunny commercial.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how cool it is that so many languages have the same basic word for “cat” and that that word is so damn old.  I’m thinking about that now, because I just cannot bring myself to care about this game.  That may make me unAmerican.

What?!  Arizona took the lead?  What?!

The Bud Light Lime commercial was nice.

Shut up!  The Steelers got a touchdown?!

All right, this game has redeemed itself.

Why The Dog and I May Need to Get Out More

It’s so beautiful here that I decided to take the dog for a walk down Lloyd road.  We got just about to the school and called the Butcher to come pick us up.  He surruptitiously set the trip odometer to see how far we’d gone.  Not even 8/10ths of a mile.  In my defense, I could have continued to walk forward, downhill, for a long while more, but there was no way I was going to be able to climb the hill to get back to Clarksville Pike without dying in some humiliating fashion on the side of the road or in somebody’s front lawn.

The Butcher could not even look at me on the car ride home and he kept taking sharp breaths like he was trying to stifle a laugh.

But, even though I am humiliated beyond belief, it’s okay and I’m going to tell you why–because my walking partner fell asleep in the back seat in the time it took us to get from the school to our house and she was so solidly asleep against the car door that when I opened it, she had to catch herself to keep from falling out.

My Bluebird Theory

Bluebirds are not-quite-endangered, but rare.  And yet our back yard is teeming with them.  You can sit out there and count six or seven without trying.  So I wonder, why, in a time when bluebirds are struggling to get by (thanks to non-native species that kill them and use their nests) do we have what might rightly be called a shit-ton of bluebirds?

After yesterday, I’m convinced the answer is, because our bluebirds do not take shit from anyone.  You sit in the back yard?  They send a guy to sit in the tree near you.  You get in a fight with your brother because he’s arguing that it must be a girl bluebird because it’s so fat, and he goes and gets some of his buddies.  The dog strays a little too close to something they like?  They’re divebombing her.

Until this, my experience with bluebirds has been limited to Disney movies, but I seem to recall them sitting on shoulders or resting on fingers or helping make dresses.

I do not recall any acting like tiny mafia members.

But, clearly, times have changed.