Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Super Bowl 2005

I watched the Super Bowl this year. More accurately, I looked at the television while it was on; I can't say I watched it because I have no idea what I saw. It was wallpaper that moves.

Our church had a Super Bowl party last week. Since the church is in a converted movie theater and we have these gigantic projection TV screens on either side, they sometimes do things like this. So about a dozen or so guys and a couple of women got together to watch the Super Bowl. A couple of weeks ago, somebody asked me if I was coming. I gave my standard answer:

"That's football, right?"

Then I went on to explain that I had never in my life watched the Super Bowl, and in fact I have never watched any football, basketball, soccer, rugby, or hockey games in my life. (I got roped into taking my kid to a baseball game once when she won tickets in an archery shoot-off, so I've seen a baseball game. Don't ask me to explain what I saw; I was too caught up in absorbing the Disneyfication of Anaheim Stadium with its fake desert decor around the outfield.) Of course, as soon as he heard about this uncalled-for lack in my education, my friend Jason informed me that I had to come and watch the game, that it would be fun, and anyway, there's always the commercials and halftime show to enjoy. So I agreed to go. They said to be there at 2:00 for the pre-game stuff.

At about noon, I got a call from an outfit we'd been talking to abotu some home-repair projects, and they wanted to come over that day to look at the stuff we need to get done. I told them that I was leaving in a couple of hours, and eventually agreed that I could wait for them until 3:00. By 3:45 they hadn't showed up, so finally I went over to the church to see the game.

According to those who speak football, it was in the first quarter, with no score yet. So for the next couple of hours, I watched football. I have no idea at all what I saw. I felt like the guy in Andy Griffith's classic "What it Was, Was Football" routine.

What I saw: endless scenes of guys in helmets standing around, wandering aimlessly, while random numbers and statistics appeared on the bottom part of the screen and two guy yammered on about stuff completely unrelated to either the helmet guys or the numbers. About every ten minutes or so, all of the helmet guys would run at each other until everybody was in a big pile, then the numbers on the bottom of the screen would change. Every so often somebody would kick the ball, which otherwise seemed to have no real purpose. I had to face facts; football is opaque to me. I don't get it at all. Apparently the Patriots won, and since my family is from New England, I'm supposed to be happy about that. I forgot to bring my confetti.

The food was good. My friends were pretty tolerant of my lack of interest, but I think they will understand if I skip the next one.

As promised, there was a halftime show, and Paul McCartney put on a good one. I can't imagine how they put up and took down that stage in the short amount of time they had, but apparently they did. I was a little disappointed that he didn't do anything to mock the NFL over last year's fiasco. And by the way, can we ban the use of the term "wardrobe malfunction"? That wardrobe functioned exactly as it was intended to, and anyone who thinks it was an accident is gullible enough to send money to Nigerians.

I missed all the commercials that ran before or during the first quarter, so I can't give you a full analyis of their merit. I can comment on a few of them. For the others, go Google or something. I'm sure there are a hundred pages up already about some of them. No, I didn't see the one for GoDaddy.com, but I heard about it. The ones I did see and manage to remember:

The commercial for Ford's new convertible would have been funny... if they had run it once. Seeing it twice in three minutes seemed a bit much, especially considering the obscene amount of money they paid to run it.

Careerbuilder's Monkey Business series was clever, but a little hard to follow if there was a lot of hubbub and jibber-jabber in the room, which I expect was the case for just about everybody watching the game.

The one with the Marvel superheroes in it was lame. I think it was for a credit card company. The only good part was Underdog showing up at the end.

The best spots of the day were the two for AmeriQuest Mortgage: in the first, a guy talking on his cell phone in a store is mistaken for a robber and assaulted with a taser by the shopkeepers. The second has a guy's girlfriend thinking he was slaughtering the cat. The point of both was "Don't judge too quickly. We won't." Very funny, and actually made a point that related to the product being peddled. Good job, AmeriQuest.

The one I get asked about is the trailer for "Batman Begins". I get asked about all the geek movies-- Fantastic Four, Superman Returns, War of the Worlds, Constantine, and of course the next Star Wars flick (I'm sure you can find your own link to info about that one).

Next week I'll review all of these and a few others, entirely based on the trailers and advance publicity, but for now I'll just say this: "Batman Begins" looks promising, but the only movie I'm actually looking forward to this year (with equal parts anticipation and dread) is "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I've been eagerly awaiting it for over 21 years, ever since Douglas Adams told me at a book signing that it was in pre-production, "advancing at a glacial pace, barely perceptible to the human eye." Now it's finally coming out, via Disney no less, a few years after Mr. Adams' untimely passing, and if they screw it up, I will personally burn down the Disney building. Okay, I won't really. But I will stick pins in my Michael Eisner voodoo doll with even more ferocity than usual.

Next week: Movies for 2005.

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