The Super Bowl went off as advertised again this year. The New England Patriots were back in the Big Game, after an absence and rebuilding efforts given the departure of Tom Brady after the 2019 season. Patriots fans will have to take what solace they can from the fact of their participation in their first Super Bowl since Brady's departure. They are back to the big stage, though not yet back to victorious form there. I will discuss the game itself tomorrow. Today, the spectacle. There were, as there always are. lots of expensively produced television ads. As usual, these ads mirror American obsessions, especially the obsession as of late with artificial intelligence and whether it is destined to replace the natural human sort. There were a couple of commercials plugging Anthropic's AI system, Claude, and Anthropic's promise to keep Claude ad free. These, for me, were the stand outs of the show. Good nerdy humor, right up my alley, and the humor was pertinent to the pro...
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Yes, Brady kicked butt. The Greatest of All Time in professional football, the Tiger Woods or Ken Jennings of his sport put on a demonstration of what a GOAT looks like in action. Though he is now sailing under the piratical banner of the Tampa Bay Buccs, whenever I hear an announcer calling a Brady pass to Gronkowski I naturally think I'm watching a Patriots game. This was fun. The half time show, less so. Maybe the symbolism of the ranks and files of masked up (bandaged up?) faces escaped me. I fear that, like my contemporaries in general, I'm out of touch with youth culture, so I certainly didn't recognize the music. Some of the ads were clever. I enjoyed the Paramount ads, in which Patrick Stewart, unseen, was urging various pop culture figures to keep climbing a mountain. Beavis and Butthead were involved. Huh huh, nhuh huh. There was also a gig-economy ad for a service that helps you create a website for your own gig-economy business. The ad involved ...
The bettors' line usually fluctuates in the days prior to the Super Bowl, as money comes into the market first from one side then from the other. The line serves as a "price," and responds to the forces of supply and demand. The fluctuation didn't happen this year. The line was 3 pts, with the New England Patriots favored, from the start and it stayed that way right up to kick off. What lesson if any can be derived from that: I don't know. First story: ads. Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost in the Shell," an upcoming movie I had never heard of. Wild footage in the ad, though. Japanese anime thing? See images above. Later, good Buick ad. "If that's a Buick, then my kid is Cam Newton." Near the end of the first half there's a clever ad about how the "half time bathroom break is coming," so it is good to have FEBREZE around. Yuck yuck. Also, T-Mobile has a couple (more?) of spoofs of the FIFTY SHADES movie franchise. Lat...