I watched the Super Bowl halftime show mostly to see what Madonna was going to do to shock her way back into the public consciousness via the biggest game of the year. The answer: Not much to shock, other than still look so frigging awesome in her 50s. The thing that I noticed the most was that when Madge was on stage, even in her obvious nervousness, that I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, no matter which of her special co-stars – from Nicki Minaj to M.I.A. to even high priest of funky crazy Cee Lo Green – showed up.
So it wasn’t until after the Super Bowl was over and I was fighting with my DVR over what it did with my recording of ”The Voice” (curses!) that I found out that rapper M.I.A. had flipped the bird, presumably to corporate America, traditional ideals, traditional American, corporate ideals and your sweet grandmother. And while NBC and the NFL point fingers trying to blame the foul-up on each other, I say that she who bore the finger bears the blame.
And to her I say: Oh, stop. Really. You’re embarrassing yourself.
I know that it helps one’s cred to be the person that tells the Man what they can do with their corporate acceptance and what not, and that appearing on one of the most American of Americana events hasn’t changed you. I mean, Clint Eastwood did a commercial during it about the American spirit. That’s some traditional stuff right there. And I can see that if you were an artist who built their reputation on being raw, rude and outspoken, then you might want to stand up in front of the largest audience you’re probably ever gonna have and say “I bow to no one, suckers! I am my own voice, and I will use your big corporate American dealie-do to spread that to the masses!” Read the full story
No commercials yet – just Christina Aguilera blowing the mess out of the National Anthem. She got the words wrong, but kept it moving. Love her, love her voice. And it’s proof that it’s live, right? Good start.
- Random McDonald’s commercial with bears, freaking out kids to eat their french fries. Wrong. Yet funny.
- Living Social commercial. So..using Living Social makes you so cultured that you become a woman? Not sure how to feel about that. Homophobic? Not sure.
6:27 p.m.
Michael Douglas has an impressive voice. My dad has cancer, so I’m extra proud of Gordon Gekko for surviving and thriving. And he’s got an amazing presence. That’s what it’s about. I love that he is tying the working class roots of this country to Green Bay and Pittsburgh. I am a Raven fan, so normally, I am not feeling Pittsburgh. But I forgive them tonight and just want a good safe game.
6:30- Ford Focus race. Young kids doing a race of some sort. That’s the Focus Rally I have heard of. Good for them. Game’s starting! Do I have time to get another drink?
6:43 p.m.
Bud Light – A kitchen renovation show where the only change done is putting a six-pack on the counter. Only funny if you like Bud Light. And I don’t. Meh.
- Doritos – A guy messes with his girlfriend’s pug, attempting to make it run through the glass sliding door to get his Doritos. And the jerk gets nailed and toppled. Sit, Puggie, sit. Good dog!
-Audi- Rich people locked in prison break out of the caviar/old money prison to a sure escape. One picks a Mercedes and gets caught, while the other takes the Audi and gets free. A long way to go to get there for that joke. But funny.
- Another Doritos commercial: OK. I don’t know why you’d want your core demographic to identify as creepy dudes who lick Doritos dust off people’s pants. Gross.
- Chevy Cruse Eco- Old people. Love it.
- Pepsi Max – A jealous couple, a hot girl and an angrily-flung Pepsi Max can. First time I laughed! It’s wrong. But funny.
6:56 p.m. Bud Light: Another endless beer spot about a musketeer-esque movie with Bud Light product placement. Hate. It. Bored now.
- Chevy Silverado – A clever take on the “Timmy’s down the well” premise of “Lassie”, with a dad using his truck to conquer wells, volcanoes and hot air balloons. Fabulously funny and nostalgic.
- “Fast Five” – The Rock meets Vin Diesel! Gonna be bad! Gonna be…Awesome!
7:01 p.m.
Pepsi Max: So. Bored.
Doritos: We saw this before the game, with the slacky guy spilling Dorito dust onto his roommate’s granddad’s ashes, reanimating him. Once again- are they conceding that their audience are idiots?
- Hyundai Elantra- Meh.
- “Cowboys and Aliens”: Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford fighting evil? I am there!
- Kia Optima: Mayans, aliens and others worship…a Kia. No offense, but…really?
- “Raising Hope”: You can never go wrong with a cute baby.
7:08 pm.
- Brisk: Eminem makes commercialism positively revolutionary. Or tries to. As Steve Zahn said in the commentary of the 10th anniversary of “Reality Bites,” hipsters were never gonna sell out until growing up and discovering that private school is expensive.
7:15 p.m. Bridgestone: The dangers of hitting “reply all,” as a guy runs around in his truck with the good tires, trying to right wrongs before finding he needn’t have worried. Funny.
- Chevy Volt- Does a hybrid compare to the innovation of the Internet and Woodstock? Probably! History is pretty.
- Go Daddy: Was not expecting the disembodied head of Joan Rivers to sit atop the body of a model. And I am sorry I saw that.
7:23 p.m. Budweiser: Cowboys, tension and “Tiny Dancer?” A winning combination.
- Teleflora: Fath Hill tries to give advice to a guy who can’t see past his girl’s rack for romantic poetic inspiration. Funny.
- Transformers 3 : Wish I cared.
- BMW X3: About the resilience and ingenuity of small American towns. Gotta love it.
- Motorola Zoom. Sweet commercial, but it seemed more like a flower commercial. Not sure it resonated.
7:31 p.m.
- Coca Cola: Creepy dragons and other-wordly monster things. Rousing and weird.
- “Thor”: A preview of a Nordic God coming to save the world. Hope he can! And hope he starts with fixing those gas prices.
- Volkswagon” I saw this early – This is the funniest ad to hit both the Xers and the kids watching the animated “Star Wars” series. Cars are magic! But cooler if Lando is involved.
7:39 p.m.
- Snickers: Another “you aren’t yourself without a Snickers” series, with famous comic complainers Richard Lewis and Roseanne Barr in a logging company. Only funny if you are over 40. But I am! So…brilliant.
- Career Builder.com: I don’t love monkeys, so I have no problem with them a a symbol for being in a stagnant job you wanna escape. Sorry, monkeys.
- “Super 8″ – I saw the early preview of this Spielberg/Abrams movie month ago and was intrigued. And now that Kyle “Friday Night Lights” Chandler is involved? So there.
7:49 p.m.
- Chevy Cruze- I wish that, when I was till dating, that I could have electronic confirmation that first dates didn’t suck. Would have saved me lipstick money. Not to mention those discarded wasted pieces of my soul,. But I digress. To cry.
- “Captain America”: OK! I could deal with that,
- Carmax- Was that Randy Savage beating some dude with a chair? AWESOME!
7:58 p.m.
- Mazda: Boring.
- Comcast: I admire the chutzpah of companies who position their companies as the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER! That takes guts. I applaud thee.
- Jaguar: Still can’t afford to buy one.
8:08 p.m.
Chatter,com – Black Eyed Pears get a promo for their half time show! How very meta!
HALFTIME!
The Black Eyed Peas look like intergalactic storm troopers. I love “I Gotta Felling,” but I hear it a lot. I mean… A LOT. But there is nothing as rousing as a clever pop song. “Boom Boom Pow” is as catchy. I met Fergie at SunFest a few years ago, and found her so sweet and gorgeous. Her mic is not working and is not as fierce as her.I love her, and the “Tron” guys dancing on the field. They have Fergie in a very high neck. Avoiding wardrobe malfunctions?
SLASH! Doing the riff form “Sweet Child of Mine.” Love that Fergie is doing the Axl snake/Davy Jones dance. Her nails scare me. In a good way. Do kids in their 20s know who Slash is? They should.
“Pump It” is a great song. Where is Dick Dale when you need him? I am so enjoying this! More than I ever, ever thought.
I always love that the rousing “Let’s Get It Started” was originally called “Let’s Get Retarded,” which is offensive and not family friendly. Good ducking, Will.I.AM.
Here is Usher in a white outfit and a bajillion dancers. I care less about this, but it’s well done. He is super skinny. The dancing is all amazing.
“Where Is The Love” is funny, considering that it features Justin Timberlake, who is partly responsible for the wardrobe malfunction of yesteryear. Don’t blame Janet alone. He pulled the fabric. But we’re not talking about that, are we. Well, I am.
“The Time of My Life?” Do the dance! Pull a Swayze! Do it! OK…so it’s some intergalactic “Tron” thing. No Baby and Johnny? No love. We bring it all back to “I Gotta Feeling.” That was a great, mostly relevant halftime show! As the song says, Mazel Tov!
8:53 p.m.
Stella Artois – Adrian Brody croons in a dark bar and takes a smitten fan’s beer. He could have mine!
CarMax: A very telling comment on society that we are more likely to believe that we are being carjacked than to believe that we are getting good service. Wow.
9:02 p.m.:
Chrysler: More Eminem, this time proclaiming the proud purpose of his native Detroit. Unexpectedly civic-minded and patriotic, even. One of my favorites.
9:21 p.m.
Nostalgic NFL Fans commercial with Seinfeld, Fonzie, Urkel, Marcia Brady et al with the “Dallas” theme playing proudly. Adore that! Oh, her nose!
9:32 p.m.
“Bud Light”: I still hate the “Here We Go” ads and regret that the Budweiser dalmatians are now involved in this madness. Something about a pool party featuring hipster dogs. Hideous.
— Pepsi Max: Another dating spot, this one with a woman running through her head with the possible future of her and her date, as her date thinks “I wanna sleep with her.” And she can’t read his mind unless he is distracted by a cold soda. I’d dump him too!
9:47 p.m.:
— Mercedes-Benz: All of the past models converge to usher in the new era, with Diddy wondering where his car went. It’s nostalgic, but Diddy ruins the moment for me. You want him to stop getting in the way of all the history.
— “House M.D.”: The world’s crankiest doctor replays the Mean Joe Green Coke moment by nailing a cute moppet in the skull with his cane. Whoops!
9:56 p.m.
Chevy Camaro: Perhaps the first muscle car ever to feature a hot teacher AND hay bales. Clever.
9:59 p.m.
- Chevy Cruze: Sue Sylvester plots against the “glee” kids in an ode to dastardly deeds and product placement! And the outcome is to be continued. I’m hooked.
10:01 p.m.
— Sketchers: Kim Kardashian kisses her trainer goodbye because her shoes help her work out better. You know you can’t look that way without genetic blessing and the hard work that often comes with A TRAINER, right? She is hot, though. Still…come on.
10:06 p.m.
And we’re done! Congrats, Green Bay Packers and their fans! Thanks, all of you, for sticking with me and commenting, and making this another memorable Super Bowl! Trying to get home from this party I am at in time to see “Glee!” Drive safe and tip your waitresses!
To see and rate more commercials, check out http://www.youtube.com/adblitz and feel the incredibly expensive promotional love!
6 p.m.
So this isn’t a commercial, but the Jay-Z intro is pretty impressive, because drum beats = drama, and have that lovely orchestral backing that scream “Important sports documentary moment.” And it doesn’t involve Diddy, which everything seemed to about five years ago, so all the better.
You know what’s not a Super Bowl commercial but that I love anyway? Those surreally cheesy Bedding Barn ads with the weird dude in the cape and the women in the costumes playing drums and the big red barn they’ve been using since 1987. It’s the most consistent “What that higgity was that?” moment in advertising, and it’s so awful you gotta love it. Read the full story
Here’s Slate V’s look at how it’d look if the annual NFL Films footage of the big game was directed by some of the more idiosyncratic auteurs of our time:
Thursday might go down in history as the day that a Viking roamed Clematis Street, when the city was built on rock and roll, and when a bunch of juiced up little kids hugged T.D. The Dolphin so enthusiastically that he wavered a little bit on his feet.
Mickey Thomas and Starship perform during Super Clematis by Night on Thursday in downtown West Palm Beach. Damon Higgins / The Post)
Then again, dolphins don’t usually have feet, so that may have happened anyway.
Welcome to Super Clematis By Night, the football charged version of West Palm Beach’s weekly downtown street party, and an official event of this weekend’s Super Bowl game in Miami, pitting the New Orleans Saints against the Indianapolis Colts.
In 2007, the last time the Super Bowl was played in South Florida, the Clematis event attracted more than 20,000 fans flocking downtown to meet players, enjoy bands, throw a ball and catch that football fever. The even-larger crowd Thursday night was estimated at 25,000 to 30,000 people, said Chase Scott of Mayor Lois Frankel’s office.
“The economic impact is always important, and we’re encouraged by this event,” said Scott, standing by the stage at the Meyer Amphitheatre, where Starship starring Mickey Thomas was about to take the stage and take the crowd back to the ’80s with ‘We Built This City,” “Sarah,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and “No Way Out.”
“This always helps us fill our hotel rooms and restaurants, and it’s what the city needs,” Scott said.
Up on Clematis Street, the economic impact was being translated in hot dogs and cups of beer, and businesses and organizations hung out a banner and gave stuff away to draw the football crazy crowds to them. Several kid-related sports activities abounded, including a wee obstacle course and a pick-up football game overseen by members of the Palm Beach Makos, the county’s semi-pro football team.
“We’re here to do a lot of interactive things with the kids, but they all want to play football,” said Makos head coach Michael Rock. “With the (Super Bowl) being played, everybody’s just buzzing. Once the build-up starts to happen, everyone here is really excited.”
The excitement started early in the evening, with a parade by several high school and middle school marching bands, who strutted down to the Meyer for the Drumline Spirit Competition. David Sanchez, 15, a sophomore clarinet player at Suncoast High School, said the band was taking its role extra seriously.
“I think we are all excited,” David said, as he and his fellow band members watched the competition after their performance. “Obviously, it’s a big thing to get people pumped up. That’s our job.”
In front of Dr. Feelgood’s, several former NFL players did their jobs signing autographs for kids like 6-year-old Saints fan Jayden Odom and his 10-year-old brother Dejuan, who stood patiently and peacefully in line, despite the fact that Dejuan is a Colts fan.
At the front of the line, former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Reggie Givens explained why being at Super Clematis By Night was a part of his job he loved.
“Everybody’s great, and (South Florida) is a great locale for a Super Bowl,” Givens said. “The weather’s great, and you don’t have to worry about wearing a jacket. And you can feel the Super Bowl fever here. You can’t explain it.”
Whether you’re rooting for the Saints or the Colts, we’ll bet chips and dip, chicken wings or chili is on the menu, too. It’s logical to expect beer served alongside them. But how about guests who prefer grapes to hops? With the help of Dry and Earthy, here’s some help in that area.
Comeon and kick it up a notch – match what you’re eating below to our wine suggestions. We guarantee you’ll win “best host!”
In trying to match wine to traditional dips, such as salsa, guacamole and bean, the pairings can be wide ranging. The one constant to keep in mind, however, is the spiciness of the dip.
Salsa:
It has the acidity of the tomatoes to contend with and the level of heat you prefer. For a hot salsa, your best best would be a slightly sweet wine, such as a spatlese Riesling. The residual sugar and lower alcohol level helps tame a spicy dish.
For mild salsa, try a Chianti (or sangiovese) to pair with the tomatoes; or if it’s got a heavy dose of cilantro, try sauvignon blance or vinho verde with the herbs and acidity. Read the full story
With dozens of sports bars in our area, the choice is never easy. Are you looking for a place with TVs galore? Or one with the best wings in town?
With that in mind, I surveyed some new or noteworthy places on the sports bar map, noting what makes each special in its own way. I also asked about each bar’s plans for Super Bowl Sunday.
Super Bowl XLIV is coming to Miami on Sunday, and, well, OK, the Divas won’t be there — but we’ll be near a big-screen TV with an excuse to create some attention-grabbing noshes.
While cold brews and hot wings are top picks for the guys, this sippy sweet will keep the kids happy, a yummy concoction from our pals at the Dairy Council of Florida, who are rolling out a new healthy kids initiative in schools with the NFL.
Just 200 calories a serving and cinch to throw in the blender so you can get back to checking out those cute football players. Read the full story
Beans may be good for you, but that doesn’t mean every bowl of bean-rich chili is good for your diet.
If you take a look under the hood of many chili recipes, you’ll often find less-than-lean meat. Vegetarian versions fix that, but it’s not impossible to keep the meat and keep it healthy.
If your recipe calls for ground meat, use lean, ground turkey, chicken or even 93-percent lean ground beef.
If you make your chili with chunks of beef, stick to leaner cuts, such as sirloin or bottom round.
Pork loin also works well. Just keep in mind that lean chunked meat dries out easily, so you might want to brown it and add it to the other ingredients just before the chili is finished.
Diced chicken and turkey also can be great in chili, but again, precook it and add it in at the end so it doesn’t dry out and toughen up.
Another way to keep things healthy is to make sure your ratio of meat to beans and vegetables leans more toward the latter ingredients.
It’s always good to load chili up with lots of onions, peppers and tomatoes, or whatever vegetables you like.
This smoky white chili sports plenty of healthy beans, diced green chilies and onions. It gets a smoky taste from ground chipotle chili powder and the charred flavor of grilled boneless, skinless chicken breast.
Top the chili with small amounts of low-fat cheese and reduced-fat sour cream or shredded lettuce and a heap of diced fresh tomatoes.
Smoky White Chili with Grilled Chicken
Time: Start to finish 1 hour (30 minutes active)
Servings: 12
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups chopped yellow onion (2 large)
Two 7-ounce cans diced green chilies
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon chipotle chili powder, or to taste
Six 15-ounce cans great northern beans or white cannellini beans, rinsed
8 cups (2 quarts) reduced-sodium chicken broth
3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/4 cup lime juice
Heat a grill to medium-high.
In a Dutch oven or other large pot over medium-high, heat the oil. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chilies, cumin, oregano and chipotle chili powder. Cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes. Stir in the beans and broth and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, grill the chicken until well-browned and an instant-read thermometer registers 165° when inserted at the thickest part of the breast, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Transfer to a cutting board and cool for 10 minutes. Cut the grilled chicken into 3/4-inch dice, then set aside.
Using a ladle, transfer 2 cups of the beans and cooking liquid to a bowl and mash with a fork. Stir the mashed beans back into the simmering pot. Add the chicken and lime juice, then cook for 10 minutes more.
If you’re looking to feed a Super Bowl crowd fast and cheap, giant subs are the way to go. Depending on how much other food you plan to serve, one 24-inch sub can make as many as 12 servings. And it takes just minutes to assemble.
Alternatively, and for even less effort, set up a sub buffet — a variety of rolls, deli sliced meats and cheeses, roasted and fresh vegetables, and a bunch of condiments — then let your guests assemble their own. You even could turn on the oven for guests who want their subs heated.
Consider these easy recipes for giant Italian and pastrami subs just a jumping off point. Head to the deli, buy whatever meats and cheeses inspire, then head home and create. Read the full story
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Super Bowl XLIV is coming to Miami on Sunday, and, well, OK, the Divas won’t be there — but we’ll be near a big-screen TV with an excuse to create some attention-grabbing noshes. 
If you’re looking to feed a Super Bowl crowd fast and cheap, giant subs are the way to go. Depending on how much other food you plan to serve, one 24-inch sub can make as many as 12 servings. And it takes just minutes to assemble.
