Super Bowl XLV

Thank goodness it’s over for another year, the Super Bowl, that is. The game was exciting although not particularly well played, and I’m glad the Packers came through, although I didn’t really care who won. I was rooting against the Steelers simply because of the way they stole the game two years ago from the Cardinals.

Then there’s the problem with the singing of the National Anthem and the over-hyped half-time production featuring the Black Eyed Peas. Whoa, did I ever hate Christina Aguilera’s version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Not just the runs and rills she insisted on putting into each and every phrase, but she didn’t even get the words right, “what so proudly we watched by the twilight’s last reaming”? And then the screech at the end. Yowee, how I hated it. I’ll bet Lea Michele wouldn’t have hoked it up that way.

The Black Eyed Peas might better have been called The Pink Eyed Lemons. I know I’m an old fart and way out of it when it comes to modern groups and singers, but I don’t think the performance by the BEP’s did the Super Bowl and its millions of viewers any favors. The dancing both on stage by the Peas and on the field by the luminescent groups was good, sort of like something you’d see at the opening of an Olympics. But the songs the Peas screamed were indecipherable to me and all of my fellow old farts. Who needs it? I think I heard the title words to the first song, “I Gotta Feeling,” but that was about all I understood. And the second one, “Boom Boom Pow” was exactly that, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We and, I’m sure, nearly all other viewers were much happier with the commercials than with the half-time show, especially the Budweisers, the Snickers, and the Godaddy.com.