Boomerangst
Maybe it was the three orders of buffalo chicken wings,
or the Lay's sour cream and onion chips and matching dip. Perhaps it was the
glut of commercials from corporate
America, knowing
the country is on the edge of economic chaos. It could even have been the
1,876,368 farewell performance of The
Who, and as much as I love ‘em, I think I've been "Fooled Again" enough for
a lifetime, thank you very much.
Call it Testosterone Sunday, an unofficial national
holiday, and the paid spots said it all--bitch-slapping, beavers (the animals,
that is), men in their underwear, babies talking dirty, Doritos used as deadly
ninja stars, guys mocked for being unmanly, fast cars, violent movies...
everything you'd expect to be sold to the billions watching steroid-addled
athletes pounding each other into the turf. Though it was nice to know someone
could get David Letterman, Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno together in a single room, even if it was photo-shopped.
Oh, yeah, the game. As Super Bowl contests go, this one
was pretty competitive, and even though I picked the Indianapolis Colts to win,
largely on the strength of Peyton Mannings' seemingly indomitable right arm, I
can't say I wasn't happy to see the New Orleans Saints, a cursed team in a
beleaguered city, take home the Vince Lombardi trophy. In fact, I was convinced
after watching Katie Couric's
pre-game feature on how Drew Brees and his impossibly lovely blonde wife Brittany had adopted the city as their
own.
It's hard to believe, with all the Crescent City has gone
through post-Katrina, that a football team could actually make a difference in
the psyche of the populace, but if you had any doubt about the ability of sports
to pull people together, Invictus showed how Nelson Mandela turned to
his country's largely white rugby team to unite South Africa after the abolition
of apartheid.
Toward the end, I have to admit, I was openly pulling for
overtime, and I figured it was a done deal as Manning drove the Colts inexorably
toward a tying touchdown at the end. And it was certainly comforting to know
even a QB who was being anointed the greatest of all-time beforehand is capable
of throwing a pick-six at the most inopportune time, as he did to the Saints' Tracy Porter, a second-round choice out
of Indiana who actually grew up in Port Allen, Louisiana, across the Mississippi
River from Baton Rouge, who returned the interception for the clinching score.
He was the same guy who made the game-saving pick of Bret Favre at the end of the NFC
championship game to force overtime. And the dude had the most amazing haircut,
with the initials SB 44, an outline of the Lombardi Trophy and the Saints' home
field, the Superdome, carved into his head.
Still, the bloated Super Bowl festivities seemed
particularly anti-climactic this year, despite one of the better match-ups in
recent games. Maybe it's the sputtering economy, the aftermath of the
Haiti
earthquake, the threat of a lockout in 2011... Perhaps it's all those commercials
pushing products and services that take our mind off the struggle of daily
survival. Or it could just be my own sour grapes for the Jets getting to the
cusp, and not being able to do what the Saints did--prove that Peyton Manning was
human after all.