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Not much...

I planted a new rose bush in front of the house, then went over to some friend's to watch the TV coverage on their new big screen HDTV.

Was it worth it today, not really.

A couple of cute commercials (Pepsi & mLife), but no stunners. The only dot.com holdouts were Monster.com and HotJobs.com. Otherwise most of the commercials were yawners.

Santana's preshow concert was great. One of the singers kept getting distracted by Carlos' playing and kept messing up her lip syncing.

Celin Dion singing "God Bless America" [edit] was just wrong on several levels. [I don't know how good or bad a job she did, I left the room. I dislike her angsty style of singing.]

Dixie Chicks doing the National Anthem was great.

Half-Time was good, though we think Shania got stuck on the lifter, so she couldn't join Sting and Steffie for the final sing along.

And Bon Jovi as part of the after events, was just a waste. Though the Tampa Cheerleaders seemed to be having lots of fun just dancing around.

After Penn & Teller had several obvious chances to swap their "prediction", we returned home.

Date: 2003-01-26 09:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] inigomontoya.livejournal.com
I liked marijuana one with the young mother. I thought that was pretty effectivish.

and the football player killing the office workers...

Date: 2003-01-26 09:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ldyicefire.livejournal.com
I liked marijuana one with the young mother. I thought that was pretty effectivish.

I agree, that could have been tactless and tasteless, but I think they actually did a good job with making it too the point without falling into the potential traps.

Date: 2003-01-27 07:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] msmemory.livejournal.com
Celine sang "God Bless America" :)

Date: 2003-01-27 07:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lysana.livejournal.com
I found it enraging myself. It's the sequel to their very tasteless "Marijuana smoking gets you raped" ad, complete with the same girl. Their point is specious and they're getting more and more sensationalist with each passing year.

Re:

Date: 2003-01-27 11:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ldyicefire.livejournal.com
Ahh, I had missed the first one so I didn't know that was the first part. Without the first one it wasn't bad, but I can see that with the first it would be sensationalist and tasteless...

Date: 2003-01-27 01:46 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mizcrank.livejournal.com
I totally agree on the Celine observation.

The Brad

Date: 2003-01-27 04:20 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brunnhilde.livejournal.com
I didn't catch a lot of the early game (nor, needless to say, the pregame) so I may have missed some goodies. However, I found The Brad commercial amusing.

Don't recall what it was trying to sell, me, though...

Anyway, it's where this attractive young woman introduces herself as Alex and asks the cute guy sitting near her at the bar if he's Brad, the guy she's supposed to be having a blind date with. Nope, sorry, and the guy does indeed look to be sorry about that.

So this outrageous car pulls up with chain-enclosed plates that read "The Brad." Then emerges the totally pimped-out Brad, center of the universe, etc, ugh. Alex sees him and wishes she were somewhere else. Brad enters the bar.

But wait!

Our Hero steps around her and approaches The Brad. "Hi, are you Brad? I'm Alex," he says, flirtatiously. The Bradmobile's tires leave tread as he screeches from the bar, and Our Hero has a shot at getting the girl.

I was amused by the way it played on all the homophobic fears and stereotypes to get a laugh -- but in the end, the guy who is willing to be perceived as the queer in a straight bar, however briefly, is the good guy. The homophobe is the jerk. Nice job all around.

---

I'm grateful to have missed Celene Dion massacring anything, and I swear Shania was lipsynching. No Doubt, however, left No Doubt as to their musical chops. I LOVED what they did with Sting, and hope it's released to CD.

Shared opinion on the half-time show

Date: 2003-01-29 09:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brunnhilde.livejournal.com
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/01/29/notes012903.DTL&nl=fix

In which Mark Morford skewers Shania's performance, praises (inasmuch as he ever does) No Doubt and Sting, and has some information on Ms. Twain that may explain a lot about why her performance was so perfect and yet so.....lacking.

An excerpt:

"And then out Shania strutted, all perfectly timed fireworks and perfect
makeup and perfect cutesy head flips and perfect stiff hip flicks and a
perfect toothy smile and perfectly catchy heavily synthesized
completely lip-synched lyrics non-sung to perfectly pointless pop
tunes. And the crowd went, shrug...

"Too harsh? Nah. She lip-synched every word. She completely faked it.
She was a walking mannequin, all hair and teeth and strings pulled from
above. Nothing new there, though as a culture we're probably more
accustomed to such simulated performance from non-singers like Britney
or J.Lo, rather than someone who professes to be an actual crossover
diva "artist," but still.

"But then No Doubt and Sting came onstage, immediately after Shania's
perfect prerecorded fist-pumping lounge act and just after she tossed
around her perfectly shellacked faux sexuality like dimestore confetti,
and from the first note of the other acts, you saw it. You got it. And
you understood.

"They actually sang. They talked to the audience. They were genuinely
into the music they wrote and their movements weren't at all scripted
and their voices weren't perfect and they were breathing hard into the
mics because they were running around the stage, and Gwen was moving
and gyrating spontaneously like a love goddess on ecstasy and therein
lies the biggest difference: They may still be pop confections, but at
least they genuinely taste good...."
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