Monday, February 02, 2004
Maybe you had to be there (or at least be watching it on TV) to appreciate the artistic vision behind it, but on AM radio headed back from a spectacular weekend of skiing, Aerosmith singing to the backdrop of Bush talking about space programs was, well, just kind of odd.
We made it back home shortly after the kick-off. Couple of things I would like to note about watching most of Superbowl XXXVIII (I fell asleep during the third quarter and woke up at the end of the fourth):
1) I remain duly impressed by the yellow line they are able to superimpose somehow on the screen to indicate the first-down marker.
2) Is it my imagination, or when they show re-plays do they now color enhance it so that it looks like you are watching a Playstation Football video game?
3) What was UP with that sleazy halftime program and the lame commercials? Was that the best MTV and Madison Avenue could come up with? The 'flirtatious duet' billed by CBS between Justin and Janet? Yeah if you call a dog trying to hump another dog flirtatious -- never mind the breast incident. The supporting dancers all seemed to be dressed up in drag and looked like they had just stepped out of a seedy French burlesque show. Kid Rock dressed up in an American flag poncho looked completely out-of-place except that his cowboy/rock lyrics juxtaposed to lewd rap helped to make the whole thing positively surreal.
4) As far as the commercials go, erectile dysfunction and emasculation (the beer commercial) seem to have been the order of the day. I'm sure a whole psychological study could be done on that... No doubt O'Reilly is chomping at the bit to emasculate a few liberals under the pretext that the Lefties are responsible for the moral decline of the Superbowl halftime show. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I am still dreaming of the giant improvement in skiing I made over the weekend. For the last twenty-plus years, since my days first learning to ski on the Austrian alps with hubby-to-be, I have been hanging out at the same intermediate plateau. But this weekend I just took it to the next level. The fall on Saturday helped. The minus ten degrees on the top of the mountain made for a sheet of ice that no amount of desperate flailing could help halt Anna Bloviation's head-first vertical descent down the mountain. "Well honey," I said to myself, "you might as well just enjoy the ride." In this relaxed state, my body took over the reigns from my terrified brain and then, wow, it wasn't so bad! I landed about twenty feet below hubby, who with classic Austrian encouragement said, "You keep pooting your veight on the back ski. Dhat's why you fell," and proceeded to ski on. I won't bore you with all of the expletives that followed him down the hill but unlike all the other times I got up only to put my 'veight' on my back ski again, I listened. No, not to hubby. To my body that had just offered me up an epiphany. Whereas my mind had been screaming bad advice at me for the last twenty years i.e. "Oh jesus freezing christ, what the hell do you think you're doing way up here California girl!" my body, it turns out, possesses all of the calm, rational skills to keep itself alive in dangerous situations.
I leaned my body down the mountain and hurtled forward. "I have faith in you body!" I yelled. And sure enough it did all of the things that are counter-intuitive to a mind that wasn't introduced to skiing until its twenties and is now going very fast down a double-black-diamond course. I kept my shoulders facing squared to the bottom of the mountain and leaned my weight forward onto the downhill ski (if you've ever hiked, you know that your body naturally leans backwards as you descent a mountain). When I wanted to turn I gently took the weight off the downhill ski and began putting it onto the other ski. And so on and so forth. The conditions were still icy and so I was going faster than I would normally want to go but the laws of physics were proving to hold true even for Anna Bloviation's. Hoola look at me ski...Or, it's never too late to teach an old dog a new trick.
We made it back home shortly after the kick-off. Couple of things I would like to note about watching most of Superbowl XXXVIII (I fell asleep during the third quarter and woke up at the end of the fourth):
1) I remain duly impressed by the yellow line they are able to superimpose somehow on the screen to indicate the first-down marker.
2) Is it my imagination, or when they show re-plays do they now color enhance it so that it looks like you are watching a Playstation Football video game?
3) What was UP with that sleazy halftime program and the lame commercials? Was that the best MTV and Madison Avenue could come up with? The 'flirtatious duet' billed by CBS between Justin and Janet? Yeah if you call a dog trying to hump another dog flirtatious -- never mind the breast incident. The supporting dancers all seemed to be dressed up in drag and looked like they had just stepped out of a seedy French burlesque show. Kid Rock dressed up in an American flag poncho looked completely out-of-place except that his cowboy/rock lyrics juxtaposed to lewd rap helped to make the whole thing positively surreal.
4) As far as the commercials go, erectile dysfunction and emasculation (the beer commercial) seem to have been the order of the day. I'm sure a whole psychological study could be done on that... No doubt O'Reilly is chomping at the bit to emasculate a few liberals under the pretext that the Lefties are responsible for the moral decline of the Superbowl halftime show. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I am still dreaming of the giant improvement in skiing I made over the weekend. For the last twenty-plus years, since my days first learning to ski on the Austrian alps with hubby-to-be, I have been hanging out at the same intermediate plateau. But this weekend I just took it to the next level. The fall on Saturday helped. The minus ten degrees on the top of the mountain made for a sheet of ice that no amount of desperate flailing could help halt Anna Bloviation's head-first vertical descent down the mountain. "Well honey," I said to myself, "you might as well just enjoy the ride." In this relaxed state, my body took over the reigns from my terrified brain and then, wow, it wasn't so bad! I landed about twenty feet below hubby, who with classic Austrian encouragement said, "You keep pooting your veight on the back ski. Dhat's why you fell," and proceeded to ski on. I won't bore you with all of the expletives that followed him down the hill but unlike all the other times I got up only to put my 'veight' on my back ski again, I listened. No, not to hubby. To my body that had just offered me up an epiphany. Whereas my mind had been screaming bad advice at me for the last twenty years i.e. "Oh jesus freezing christ, what the hell do you think you're doing way up here California girl!" my body, it turns out, possesses all of the calm, rational skills to keep itself alive in dangerous situations.
I leaned my body down the mountain and hurtled forward. "I have faith in you body!" I yelled. And sure enough it did all of the things that are counter-intuitive to a mind that wasn't introduced to skiing until its twenties and is now going very fast down a double-black-diamond course. I kept my shoulders facing squared to the bottom of the mountain and leaned my weight forward onto the downhill ski (if you've ever hiked, you know that your body naturally leans backwards as you descent a mountain). When I wanted to turn I gently took the weight off the downhill ski and began putting it onto the other ski. And so on and so forth. The conditions were still icy and so I was going faster than I would normally want to go but the laws of physics were proving to hold true even for Anna Bloviation's. Hoola look at me ski...Or, it's never too late to teach an old dog a new trick.
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