Of course, as alluded to given my happy family-man lifestyle shift, the overindulgence last night for me consisted of drinking two whole beers and eating lots of chicken wings and various other snacks. I actually felt more fryer-fat-hungover than alcohol-hungover this morning. Neither one makes it easy to roll out of bed at 5 a.m., though. Thank goodness for my mindless daily routines which allowed me to autopilot through one step at a time and get to the office in approximate normalcy. But again, that’s pretty much all I can say work-related, though hopefully you won’t blame me because come on GIANTS WOOOHOOOOOO!
The game was good, although I was slow to warm up to it, as I had a tough time shaking off the feeling that the Giants’ hot streak would finally fall apart and the Patriots would mercilessly dismantle everything that had previously been working for them. I completely missed the coin toss and the kickoff, as I was still circulating through the kitchen and grazing, but once the Giants started showing evidence of some gas still being left in the tank, I got progressively more and more into it – at least as much as juggling the little guy and littler girl allowed. My wife actually did a huge amount of the kid-wrangling, and I can only hope to repay her by running myself ragged during next year’s Super Bowl party which I am simply going to assume will feature the Steelers in the title game because that’s the way it seems to go around here. I do wholeheartedly believe that my wife’s bandwaggoning for the G-Men was a crucial element of their winning formula, and I hope I’ve been sufficiently expressive of my thanks for that. At any rate, the four members of my nuclear family cheering section made it all the way to the end of the party (which, apparently, means not just the end of regulation but the MVP award, although our consensus was that the defensive corps deserved it more than Eli, but you know, drop in a bucket); the little girl fought sleep with all her miniature might and didn’t pass out until the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, whereas the little guy seemed ready to talk to me for the entire car ride home until he finally conked out maybe fifteen minutes shy of pulling into the garage. As an added bonus, both kids stayed asleep going from car seats to respective bed/crib. I walked the dogs, turned on SportsCenter to watch the highlights of the game I had just finished watching live, and tried to go to sleep at about 11:45 (although I was so wired that when the baby started crying at about 12:30 a.m. I had only barely dozed off). See above re: alarm clock pain.
I understand from the online chatter today that it was not the best of years for Super Bowl commercials, which was the distracted impression that I got as well. I did spot one trend which no one else seems to be talking about: urban zip lines? Was it just me who noticed that not only was an urban zip line the piece de resistance in Seinfeld’s Acura ad, but also that there was a random zip line running through the street party in the “I Believe In a Thing Called Love” Samsung spot? Is this a thing the kids who live in the hipster neighborhoods are actually setting up, which I would know about if I didn’t live in the boonies subordinate to a notoriously unhip city?
I go back and forth between loving it when people take the piss out of Apple and feeling that it is (pun unavoidable) pretty low-hanging fruit. Just the fact that Apple managed to run a tv campaign for years which was supposed to highlight all the awesome ways in which Macs were superior to PCs and which will always be fondly remembered for how much people loved the guy who played PC and wanted to punch the kid who played Mac, that tells you something right there about how insufferable Apple is. But the Samsung-users-passively-rub-their-gadgets-in-the-faces-of-hipsters-waiting-in-line-for-iPhones ads were getting played out, too … until last night when they brought in not just The Darkness but The New and Improved Darkness With Waxed Curlicue Handlebar Moustache. There is nothing in that overall concept I am not a sucker for.
Also I would be remiss if I did not point out that I was at a party populated by folks who were well-disposed to geek out over the Avengers movie trailer. Which is probably not a huge surprise, but I point it out because it was personally heartening. These friendships of mine go back to my early 20’s, some even earlier, and now that we all have jobs and families and have spread out a bit more geographically, we don’t all see each other as often as we used to, the occasional Holy Day of Football Obligation notwithstanding. So it was gratifying that, once the Avengers trailer had run, the reactions were not simply variants on “looks rad” but more in the vein of “we are all going to need to go see that TOGETHER and we have exactly three months to figure out how to make that work” which is arguably within even our meager event-planning capabilities. But as I say, sometimes it’s just nice to know that everyone still cares about getting together and hanging out and experiencing things communally instead of in our own overstressed little silos.
And now we must enter into that darkest time of the year between the NFL season and the beginning of spring training for the MLB. But at least there’s a world championship to ease the pain.
I think they won b/c of my fantastic Victor Cruz dance! CRUUUUZ!!!
ReplyDelete