XLIII, Um, Also

In well over a thousand posts here, I have never been as tempted to retract an entry as I am for the one just down the page, in which I intimated that this year's Super Bowl would be a slaughter and, as so many before them, a snooze.

Instead, it proved to be the most watchable game I've seen in years, from start to finish. And this is the Super Bowl, mind you, where usually the results are obvious before the end of the first quarter and those of you with picture-in-picture channel surf during the game, coming back only for the commercials (if that).

All my hopes and fears about the Steelers, emotions I thought in abeyance, came back in full force as I watched them dominate in the first quarter and completely evaporate in the early fourth. The great moves were there, in amazing play after amazing play on both sides, along with the amazing bonehead move (Ah - the Steeler center is named Justin Hartwig, though he probably would have had to change his name after that holding penalty in the end zone that gave Arizona the safety.

Even the halftime show of Bruce Springsteen and the Half-of-Jersey band was brilliant, as if the NFL has once and for all shaken the curse of the obviously-sucky-half-time-show.

Oh, and the commercials? A lot of people got pushed in front of buses this year. The Budweiser Clydesdales should get their own show on NBC, and Pepsi will never be the choice of a new generation if they keep insisting on claiming that it was the choice of every previous generation. Just saying. There were even movies I will want to watch this year. Oh, and the worst of the lot was a tie between the GoDaddy hey-we're-still-around commercials and the Cash4Gold people who reminded us that MCHammer was still alive.

Though I liked the Ivar's commercial on the local. So, why a duck?

The game was officiated well, if a little over-officiated, but some of those calls you just have to make (come on, punching out an opponent?). Yeah, I can't argue with the calls (OK, there was that one Arizona TD, but...)

More later,