The Obligatory Super Bowl Review

I am required due to my membership in HA! (Humorists of America) to comment on The Super Bowl.


This is going to show my age but I remember the first Super Bowl. It came on two different channels at the same time. This is important because in that time of American history, there were not the billions of channels that there are today. On top of that, when you wanted to change a channel, you had to get up out of your seat, walk over to the TV and turn the channel yourself. There were only three networks: ABC (which showed awful shows like “The Flying Nun” which was about a Nun that would fly. It came on right after “The Yelling Preacher” and “The Deacon That Smoked Outside”), NBC and CBS.

The teams playing in the First Super Bowl game were The Green Bay Packers and The Kansas City Chiefs. Bart Starr was the quarterback for The Green Bay Packers. He looked like every dad in the subdivision. His coach was Vince Lombardi, who, to be honest, was totally insane. This is a fact: when he an assistant coach for the New York Giants, Lombardi sold life insurance in the off season. How would you like your life insurance agent to be Vince Lombardi?

The Super Bowl really began to mean something in 1969, when Joe Namath said these famous words: “I’m going to kiss you, I guarantee it”. Namath led the New York Jets to victory over The Baltimore Colts which rivaled the moon landing as the most important event in 1969.

In the early days, The Super Bowl was about the game of football. Now, it is a time when our nation comes together as one people to critique commercials. Somewhere, Don Draper is smiling.

I don’t remember much about the entertainment at The Super Bowl back in the old days. There was a singing group called “Up With People” made up of non-hippie youth which seemed to show up at every Super Bowl. These guys made Mitt Romney look like Slash. I remember UWP singing “My Beautiful Balloon” a lot.

Now there is a big hoop-de-do about The Half Time Show, particularly since Janet Jackson had a breast make a special unscripted guest appearance. For the next Super Bowl, the NFL brought out Paul McCartney and since then they have tried to make things as family friendly as possible and still seem hip. This year the star of the Half Time Show was Madonna.

I’m not sure where Madonna has been for the past couple of years. I thought she changed her name to Lady Ga-Ga. I’ve never been a big fan of hers-her music always sounded like warmed over disco music. She was always a brand: she could “sing”, “dance”, “act” and “get nekkid”. She did a lot of that in that in the early 90’s because she wanted to shock us. If she wasn’t flopping around on the floor in a wedding dress, she was wearing cone bras (“The Cone Bras” would be the good name for a band) If she wasn’t nekkid, she was kissing Brittney Spears

The best thing you can say about her Half Time performance is that she didn’t break a hip. However, since this is Madonna, something shocking happened when a rapper named “M.I.A”, who was one of the millions on stage with Madonna, flipped us the bird. The reason for the flip off is unclear; except that is was a shocking thing to do and the wardrobe malfunction had already been done.

In between the Half Time Show and the Commercials, a football game broke out. The New York Playing Football In New Jersey Giants defeated the New England Tom Bradys 21-17. Noted sports commentator Gisele Bundchen (Mrs. Tom Brady) commented: "You catch the bowl when you're supposed to catch the bowl. Mah husband cannot (real bad word) throw the bowl and catch the bowl at the same time. Ah kant believe they dropped the bowl so many times.”

I think Vince Lombardi would agree with that.