As for who sings the anthem, my view on anthem singing is that there should be a Federal law passed that mandates that all anthems are sung by a Robert Merrill recording. That way, you can insure a consistent performance, free of flourishes and political overtones. No controversy.
If there's a local boys and girls singing group that you want to feature, let them sing 'God Bless America' before the anthem. No sense cutting everyone out of the singing part. They'll always then have something to tell their friends and kids about.
I wandered into the living room during halftime after dessert last night and saw what I guess was the half-time show, someone called Maroon-5. I fully face it, at my age there can be no half-time music by any artists I listen to. They are either dead, have already done a Super Bowl (Springsteen, Mary Chapin Carpenter) or would never in a million years be called on to jump around on a stage. Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' will never make the cut.
Did someone say the commercials can be the best part? No way. A rumpled Harrison Ford yelling at his dog who is portrayed as ordering dog food via Alexa, who gets greeted with a curbside delivery of a pallet of 100 pound bags of the stuff for his pug, to me is sweet justice for anyone who puts Alexa or Siri in their house and talks to it. You deserve the unintended consequences such devices bring to your household.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Jeff Bridges as the Big Lebowski ordering Stella Artois in a restaurant, rather than getting something other than her 'Sex and the City' Cosmopolitan and his White Russian? Weak. Two people who you can't imagine ordering Belgium beer. Well, maybe Jeff.
The only creative one that made me think someone was really earning their ad agency money was the Hyundai one with people in an elevator going down and getting off on floors that spelled discomfort: jury duty, root canal work, the middle seat on a six-hour flight next to someone sneezing, the parental facts of life talk, the surprise vegan dinner party. Car shopping with Hyundai sent the elevator up, presumably from the levels of Hell.
Verizon stuck to tributes to first responders who you can believe were gotten in touch with because the cell phone calls summoning their help were connected by the Verizon wireless network. Budweiser of course reminded us that their beer was once delivered by Clydesdales.
The game? There was one. A tug of war played at mid-field that had an anemic score at halftime, and still ended with an anemic score favoring the New England Patriots who should be called 'America's Team' if the Dallas Cowboys didn't already lay claim to that title.
No one-handed passes caught, no end zone passes caught, no controversial calls. Tom Brady threw three good passes in a row and then a touchdown was rushed in from the 2 yard line. The only touchdown. Only the gamblers were sitting on the edge of their seats, and they might have even been bored.
The good news for the Rams was that they held New England to 13 points. The bad news of course is they were held to 3, tying the 1972 Miami Dolphins for the lowest score by a Super Bow team. Yawn.
You have to believe the Rams defense was worn down by the fourth quarter. And apparently more tired than the Patriot offense was. Yawn, yawn.
As for the continued use of Roman Numerals to designate the edition of the game we're being hyped toward, from an op-ed piece in the WSJ on Friday by Gregg Opelka, a musical theater-lyricist we get the annual plea to stop using them. Of course he has a point, especially when he hauls out how the game for year 2399, which he claims will appear as CDXXXIII. Huh? 2399 is MMCCCXCIX. No matter. The point is made.
I will make no claim I remember all 53 Super Bowls. My claim is I've seen all of them. I remember getting a haircut on the Monday after the first Super Bowl (then not even called that), that saw the NFL Green Bay Packers beat the rival AFL Kansas City Chiefs. League parity was a big thing then, and that the score was 14-10 at halftime was giving oxygen to the claim that the AFC wasn't all that bad, despite losing the game. The talk in the shop was who's still the best.
What I do remember for a lot of them is not so much the winners, and possibly the score, but where I was watching a give year's edition: a friend's house, my house and who was over and who wasn't, a restaurant, who I was with. I remember segments of games, especially involving the Giants.
What I laughed at at the end of last night;s game was the mob scene on the field after the game. THat many media people has passes to be on the field? Poor Tracy Wolfson was going to get trampled to death trying to ask Tom Brady some banal questions on how did he feel? How the fuck do you think he feels?
And then the gauntley the Lombardi passes through before it's taken up the stair to the pressnetation platform, a temporary wooden piece that's somewhat bigger than a scaffold.
Anyway, players and wqhoever get to kiss the trophy; honorary bearers get to hold the trophy and walk it through the gautnlet, passing it off relay style. I laughed out loud when Joe Namath got to be the last person to parade the trophy. Joe of course identified as a Hall-off-Famer who took the Jets to that massive upset in 1969 over the Baltimore Colts.
I don't think there is a single player who can be remembered more for one game 50 years ago than Joe Namath. Jet season ticket holder should remember it's been 50 years since they've been in a Super Bowl. We love you Joe.
A lifetime ago John Updike published a book of his poems. I still have the book, a collection from two of his individual prior books of verse. The compilation cost 75¢ in 1965.
Like any book of poems, there are favorites, and in this case there is one on the use of the work "super." It is titled 'Superman' and the first and last stanzas go:
I drive my car to supermarket.
The way I take is superhigh,
A superlot is where I park it,
And Super Suds are what I buy.
......
Superphosphate-fed foods feed me,
Superservice keeps me new.
Who would dare to supersede me,
Super-super-superwho?
Why Super Bowl LIV of course.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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