Kingdom

I'm partially inspired to review things sort of like our beloved user, Browntown, does with his blog. But I am too lazy to create a blog and, well, I'll just use the Baseball Slant blog feature. I'm all about simple. As with any review I may do, I encourage you the audience to post your thoughts as well. Democracy! Free speech! Keyboard and touch screens that work!


Super Bowls tend to be one of two things for me: vested interest (i.e. the Steelers are there, or I really like a team for some specific reason, or there's a wager) or complete indifference bordering on disinterest (i.e. Bears vs Colts, Patriots vs Eagles, etc.). For the Patriots vs. Giants Redux, I was neither actually. I decided to cheer for the Giants after the Steelers were Tebow'ed and the if I had to go with a back up team, well, Tebow was Brady'ed again. Therefore, I had no reason to cheer for the Patriots. So, I can live with the Giants. Players I can like. Especially the king of Salsa, one Victor Cruz (OH BY THE WAY, how's it feel the rest of you NFL teams to not only pass on drafting the kid but also signing the kid following the draft, OOPS). I would not say that I hate the Patriots, though. They just no longer intrigue me. I did not find them fun to watch, but I did prefer them over Baltimore (I can never cheer for Baltimore, ever). Ultimately, I was happy to see the teams with good passing offenses make it to the Super Bowl. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the BCS Championship of Snoozes. So I got my wish. And now I'll recap the Super Bowl in 3 important parts:



The Half Time Show:
I jumped on Wikipedia to check the list of acts to see when the last time I enjoyed the half time show. I do remember I was excited for The Who, until they played.... I found myself asking Who killed them off? So, the last enjoyable half time show for me was back in 2002 when U2 performed for the Patriots and Rams, which unfortunately started the whole New England ...craze. At the same time, you have to remember and if you don't remember, I will REMIND you..that it was U2 and it was honoring the 9/11 victims. Jumping into the now, I honestly did not expect anything just because they tapped another ancient musician and most people probably don't care about anymore. Sprinkle in some of the current trendy yet lame acts going on now and you just get a bunch of moving pieces with bright lights and a smoke machine. Much like last year's with the Black Eyed Peas. The only PERSON that could have truly liked this show would be Alex Rodriguez. Like how I threw in a baseball reference. I had to. I wonder out loud if Green Day has ever been approached to perform. Popular. Rock music so it might be more invigorating. They're old. Anyways. Fail for the half time show.

The Commercials:
I do look forward to the commercials and the movie trailers for up coming blockbusters. Trailers were few and far between, and a couple were for movies that have already been advertised quite often. But of course, I was giddy for The Avengers. Naturally, it was pretty watered down compared to the online trailer they posted at the same time. The trailer for the G.I. Joe sequel was absurd yet fantastic. Anytime you start off a commercial by quoting Jay-Z and end with ninja fighting on the side of a rock cliff, sandwich in shots of Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis, it screams of amazing popcorn movie potential. This trailer is already infinitely better than the first G.I. Joe movie. Plus there was no Channing Tatum. Victory for us all. As for the commercials, well, you've seen 'em. What am I going to remember most? Batman talking about Detroit and America making a comeback. Sorry, I meant Clint Eastwood. I will remember Adriana Lima being.. well, let's just move on. There were a lot of dogs. And cars. And polar bears. And most importantly, a commercial that was mocking "Twilight". And vampires in general. The Audi commercial was the only one I found myself laughing out loud to. Beyond that, I just didn't care.

The Game:
Outside of when the Steelers are playing, do I rarely watch the game in its entirety. I actually did with this game. I found it very interesting and appealing because you had two quarterbacks capable of doing crazy assed stuff at any moment. And they both have receivers that could do the same. Granted, you very seriously have to wonder if Bernard Pollard didn't have it out for killing Patriots, what this game would have been like with a healthy Gronkowski. He was a frequent, unstoppable target the entire season. But he was a non factor in the biggest game. He had over 200 yards receiving in the postseason going into this game. You're aware of his unreal, video game like numbers from the regular season. The injury mattered. The game would have been different if he had been healthy. But how different? Even after the Giants lost 2/3 tight ends to ACL injuries, they still had the 3 best receivers from that specific game. Cruz was huge in the first half, so the Pats adjusted to him, and then they were burned by Manningham. And Nicks was active the entire game. Cruz was the hottest receiver in the entire league outside of Megatron. Nicks is one of the most physically hard to guard receivers..outside of Megatron. And then you have Manningham and his speed as the third option, and he didn't drop any big catches. How do you even begin to try to stop that? It's been happening for months. The game was close the entire way. It was filled with costly mistakes and almost coulda shoulda been mistakes (the Giants fumbled like a dozen times and recovered them all) that kept both teams in the game until the very end. Every Super Bowl should be mandated to have at least one amazing play. Sure, we'll remember Ahmad Bradshaw's "OOPS" touchdown as one of the strangest touchdowns ever. But for me, the Giants had two game defining moments: the Manningham catch that was reviewed but was clearly a catch, the play was as perfect as you could ever get thanks to both Manning and..um..Manning...ham? Weird. And the other being Justin Tuck's relentless pursuit on the final sack of the game that pretty much took out 99% of the confidence for a comeback on the final drive. Keep eating Subway, Mr. Tuck. It's working. It was a memorable game. IT was a good game. Everything else, well, I mostly forget.