Superbowl XLV

The Sports Aspect:

This was a great game. The Packers were on it at the beginning, holding the Steelers at bay and scoring two touch downs in something like twenty-four seconds -- it was pretty intense. A Packer grabbed the ball/intercepted/whatever and ran with it like a maniac right after the first touchdown.

And then the Steelers began to play. (injuries on the GB side probably didn't help much) They stopped being sloppy and started being dangerous. They started scoring -- at first it was just a field goal, but then there were a few good touchdowns. The gap started closing, and fast. A two point conversion brought it to a six-point game. In other words, if the Steelers scored a touchdown and got the extra point (which is more or less a given), they won. Green Bay'd been on top the whole game, and now, they had two or three minutes to defend themselves from giving it up at the end.

Long story short, they managed to hold out. Green Bay managed to get possession of the ball with about fourty-five seconds left, give or take a few, and that was that.

The Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XLV with a score of 31-25.

The Non-Sports Aspect:

Christina Aguilera opened with the Star-Spangled Banner. I admit, although I respect her voice, I was frankly disappointed with the performance she gave. She embellished the anthem so much that there were points I could barely tell what song she was singing. I'm not talking the way that Jimi Hendrix did the anthem on guitar - THAT was a GOOD way of embellishing. This was a bad way. She slurred words together and everything. It wasn't very good at all.

The half time show was all right. It was the Black Eyed Peas, being very sparkly with lots of lighted costumes (for them and their scads of dancers). Very Tron. The audio work was pretty bad, though. I actually texted someone to ask if my television was going wonky, and they were like, no. What I heard was a lot of leveling issues, such as Fergie's voice being muted out and then coming back...it's like they couldn't balance it right or something. I will say, though, it was an interesting show. Besides, there's one part I HAVE to give them absolute props for. When I heard "Sweet Child of Mine" playing, I was like, is that Guns n' Roses? What? And then Slash came out of the stage!!! I seriously squealed, pretty much. Huge fan. (Slash is the guitarist for GnR). Also, Fergie's voice really goes well with that song. She does a good parallel to Axl Rose.

The commercials this year were pretty good. Some of them were eh, but some of them were great. My favorites were the Pepsi Max commercials, hands down. There were three of them - the first date one, the dieting one (where the girl keeps taking away food from the guy), and the watercooler one (ends up with a jerk getting a Pepsi Max to the nuts). Also, the Sealy commercial that showed a bunch of couples lying next to each other in bed and then going "it's better on springs" or whatever...that was funny. There were sooo many good commercials. And you can find them all here:

http://msn.foxsports.com/video/shows/super-bowl-commercials-2011

Devils @ Rangers

I caught only the last minute or two of this game, and wow, what a heartbreaking ending to catch. The Rangers, in something like the last fifteen seconds of the game, made not one but two rather good shots at the goal. With five seconds left, I remember, something got past the goalie but was juuuuuust wide enough to bounce off the goalpost the wrong way. They were THAT CLOSE to forcing overtime, but it didn't happen, and the Devils won the game, 3-2.