Super Duper Bowl

Ah, an entertaining game (after the first quarter, anyway) that finally went the way I wanted it to. As a big Jerome Bettis fan, dating back to his Notre Dame days, it was especially sweet. Notes from Da Big Game:

* As usual, I did not pace myself well at all when it came to the snacks. We don't often get big piles of deep-fried stuff at home, so the plates of Mexican egg rolls and regular faux-Chinese egg rolls disappeared within the first five minutes of the game. Undeterred, we moved on to the buffalo chicken tenders at the start of the second quarter and the chili cheese fries at halftime. I realize now why we thought it would be a good idea to have a veggie platter--nobody eats much of it, so we wouldn't have felt half as close to death as we ended up.

* I balked at the idea of having wine instead of beer, but the part-time housemate doesn't drink beer, so we ended up with a lovely jug (!) of zinfandel. Thank god for red wine's ability to cut right through several layers of deep-fried snacks.

* Commercials? We got 'em:

* The FedEx caveman, the pair from Ameriquest (defibrillators and the lady on the plane), and the streaking sheep at the Clydesdales' annual football game made me laugh out loud. The baby Clyde getting a helping nudge from the big horses was my sentimental favorite.

* The GoDaddy.com ad and the Pizza Hut Jessica Simpson ad were the most nausea-inducing (hey, let's sexualize 13-year-old boys!).

* In retrospect, I guess I'm surprised that there was only one overblown razor ad. Note to Gillette: get over yourselves already. It's a friggin' RAZOR, not a WMD.

I'm really too tired from the weekend to have the energy for political crabbiness. At least not until another cup of coffee goes to work. Nevertheless, I was bothered by something I heard on NPR just as I was pulling into work today. In the little rundown of headlines, Steve Innskeep stated that outrage over the Mohammed cartoon continues to roll. True dat. But the statement was phrased, "Muslims are outraged over a cartoon depicting the prophet Mohammed as violent. So protestors attacked the Belgian consulate and ransacked a Christian neighborhood." SLIGHT editorial problem there, Steve-o. The outrage is not over Mo being depicted as violent, but over him being depicted at all. But if adherence to fact eliminates the opportunity for a pithy ironic comment, well, fact be damned.

**Edited to add: I have close to zero sympathy for the people who decided to go on a rampage over the cartoon. Well, exactly zero. My empathy with your perceived religious insult pretty much ends when you think the insult makes it incumbent upon you to set buildings on fire and stone people to death.