Beers, Bewbs, and Talking Frogs by @middleagedwoman

before Spandex maded their butts look hawt

It’s coming soon. The biggest television event of every year is about to unfold on plasma screens, LEDs, home theaters, and rabbit-eared 15-inch black-and-white slapboxes (because you have to slap the side of it to get it to stop doing that fuzzy thing) across the US. That’s right, I’m talking about Great Big NFL Championship Game With the Copyrighted Title. Even better? The commercials.

Let’s face it. I live in Detroit, home of the Lions. Since the NFC and the AFC combined 43 years ago, the Lions have won exactly ONE playoff game. In 1991, the Lions won the game against the Rams (in which Guard Mike Utley suffered a neck injury that would leave him partially paralyzed for life) and went on to beat the Dallas Cowboys in the first round of the playoffs. Then they got spanked by the Redskins, 41-10, and the Earth returned to its normal orbit.

Any description of the Lions history since the sixties includes terms like “awful,” “disappointing,” “horrendous,” and “humiliating.” And that’s just from the Detroit sports writers.

the excitement of the game was overwhelming

So, where I live, we thank the baby jeebus for Great Big NFL Championship Game With the Copyrighted
Title commercials. Honestly, unless the game has an incredible last-minute play (isn’t that basketball? Just tune in for the last five minutes?) like Eli Manning managed in January of 2008, nobody really talks about the actual game the next day. Am I right?

There are four possible topics of Monday morning conversation the day after the Great Big NFL Championship Game With the Copyrighted Title (thank heaven for copy and paste):

Topic Number 1: Bad calls by zebras. See how I subtly suggest that I am in-the-know about football by referring to the sports-judgey guys in the striped shirts as “zebras?” I have no idea if anyone calls them zebras, just as I have no idea what a bad call might be. But I’ve heard loud protests, so there must be something.

Topic Number 2: The halftime act. Honestly, America got at least a year of conversation out of Janet Jackson’s (right? left? center?) bewb appearing on national TV. We were all very glad when the Rolling Stones didn’t get naked at Great Big NFL Championship Game With the Copyrighted Title XL here in Detroit. I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

Topic Number 3: Squares. Somebody at the office always has one of those ten-by-ten charts. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice. I have seen people cheer for the opposing team because, “Hey, I could win $250 bucks, here!” Or, “No, no! Go for the two points! The two points! I have 8 and 5, not 7 and 5!” (Are you impressed that I knew there is a two-point play in football?)

Topic Number 4: The commercials. From singing frogs to sexy chicks, and hapless suckers who do pratfalls for the nation’s largest viewing audience, the conversation with the most legs (with the exception of Janet’s bewbs–wait—bewbs with legs?) is easily the commercials.

This year, commercials during the Great Big blah, blah, blah – you get the picture – are selling for $3 million for a 30 second spot. That’s one hundred thousand fine American dollars per second.  Last year, Doritos let fans submit ideas for ads. The guy that hits his boss in the nads with the snow globe? That was thought up by two regular guys. Two regular guys with authority issues, anyway.

This year, look for fan-generated ads from CareerBuilder.com. Probably something hilarious about rampant unemployment. Ha, ha, what a laff riot that is!

My favorite ads are always the movie trailers. Hell, sometimes my favorite part of going to the actual movies is the trailers I see beforehand. This year is no different, and I am likely to be drooling heavily over shots of Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man 2 previews. Tony, who’d care about Pepper Potts when you can have me? But I digress.

Advertisers were complaining that ads shouldn’t cost so much in the time of TiVo and DVRs, because viewers are likely to skip right past. Until TiVo was able to demonstrate that viewers were actually re-running commercials they thought were really good. Why else would you TiVo the football championship? The winner will be unescapable the next morning, spoiling it for anyone who needs to wait to watch. And the damn thing ends so late (it puts the Oscar broadcast to shame), nobody watches a TiVo’d version after the real-time version ends on Sunday night (or Monday morning!).

And now that we have the interwebs? All those great ads will be on YouTube by Monday. So I can go to bed early. Just like the Detroit Lions.

~

Mary Wyatt normally blogs at Unmitigated as middle-aged-woman, a name she chose before it was true and now regrets. She likes baseball, hockey, and support undergarments that keep her bewbs from bruising her knees.

3 Responses to “Beers, Bewbs, and Talking Frogs by @middleagedwoman”

1. AmazingGreis says:

   02/04/2010 at 1:15 pm

   Wow, I’m totally impressed with your football knowledge!!! Go, Mary, Go!!!

   [Reply]
2. middle-aged-woman says:

   02/04/2010 at 2:43 pm

   I also know that their asses look better in Spandex!

   [Reply]
3. Al_Pal says:

   02/05/2010 at 6:26 pm

   Heh. Great post. I am amused. Nice opening photo choice, too.
   Bewbs with legs–all some guys see, y/n?

   [Reply]