Christ, what's with the Pats offensive line tonight? They're getting killed.
If it weren't for the whole tapes thing, I'd almost be sympathetic to New England. Almost.
Did the Giants win? A very loud man on the street seems to think New York is the bestest ever. I hope he goes away quietly. It is over, right?
Ugh, now we're stuck with the geriatric Dolphins for all eterntiy. I'm more sympathetic with Gene Upshaw than ever before.
I'm not even watching, but I am now hearing every horn sounding and all neighbors screaming.
Back to back Mannings. There is no god. And no Pterodon.
Wow. Seriously? Belichick walked off the field before the game was over? Nice.
I think this means Obama's going to do well on Tuesday.
Wow. Seriously? Belichick walked off the field before the game was over? Nice.
He went out to shake Coughlin's hand with a second left on the clock, I think.
Could be completely false (not watching), but according to the NYTimes liveblog:
Belichick is already up the tunnel in the locker room. ...Still have not run the final play.
The Pats 4th down play technically ended with 1 second left. They'll usually run off the last second but since it was a turnover the clock stopped at :01. The coaches came out and shook hands but the NFL made the refs clear the field for NY to run the last snap. Belichick figured the game was over the play before, he had shaken hands, he's out of there.
My understanding is that after the Super Bowl ends they get the losers (oh god, that's us) off the field pretty damn quick--not much care about everyone getting to shake hands, just separate the winners and losers and let the confetti fall.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh god, I wanted them to take some more time off the clock before scoring that touchdown, but Jesus--fuck. Fuck. Can't say it was an unjust outcome the way the Pats played most of the game, but still, very hard to take. On the other hand: I didn't have a heart attack, at least not yet--and they gave me reason. I should check on my father, though.
Somehow NE fizzled during their last 6 games or so. Whether the players were exhausted, whether the other teams figured them out, or whether the coaches got overcautious I don't know.
I do wonder whether Brady's foot injury was a factor. He missed Moss on more than one pass.
NE offensive line vs. NY defensive line is the real story, though, I think.
Oh, shit, this means there's going to be a parade through Midtown tomorrow.
I don't even care about football; I just root against New England-based teams on principle. Suck it, Patriots!
NE offensive line vs. NY defensive line is the real story, though, I think.
Abslootly. NE off. line got kille.d For half the game it didn't even look like they had a line out there--it was just four giants charging at brady. motherfuckers.
Wow. Great game. Several drunken teenagers outside my window think it's the greatest upset of all time. I wanted to add that I delurked in the previous thread only to have w-lfs-n's conspiracy nullify the full effect, but it didn't seem appropriate.
i'm flying into NYC tomorrow, staying at a hotel and having dinner in Midtown. I'm totally fucked aren't I?
(Can't do anything with any of the locals--I'm in town for one night only, in meetings the whole time.
I probably should have watched the game.
After that evade-sack-hail-mary-helmet-catch, dude, the Giants deserved it.
A poem I did not write, but which amuses me:
Attention, Massholes!
PATRIOTS LOSE.
WEAR IT LIKE A HAT,
AND SHUT YOUR FUCKING YAPPERS.
(I'm not actually that big of a football fan. I just love it when cocky cheaters get their asses handed to them.)
(Also: w00t! Big Easy representin'.)
33 is right. And it's also right that you absolultey decide to lose by three points any football game in which you go for it on 4TH AND 13! while you are within (admittedly long) field goal range.
The Giants win the pennant! Er, Super Bowl! The Giants win the Super Bowl!
Does anyone know how to get a crisis intervention center in touch with Beefo Meaty?
Un-fucking-believable. Unreal, unreal, unreal. Especially the Manning-evasion play. I can't believe it. This kind of loss awakens all my deep superstitions. I'm half-sure I cost the Pats the game.
Chist. I agree with Tim. I feel like I lost the game by watching it. Every time I got up from my barstool to go to the bathroom, the Pats got another first down. Maybe I should rethink my Super Tuesday plans (but that's probably like washing the car to make it rain).
WOOHOO! PITCHERS AND CATCHERS START SPRING TRAINING IN TWO WEEKS!
Anyhoo, great Super Bowl. This was Brady's karmic payback for wearing a Yankees cap in public.
In 37, "decide" was supposed to be "deserve"--not sure how that happenned.
Every time I got up from my barstool to go to the bathroom, the Pats got another first down.
Exactly! On the Manning-evasion play, I let up on my fear of the other team. I actually thought, "Eh, I'd be OK with either team winning." Because it was like 3rd and fifteen. The Patriots were definitely going to win it. I was just being nice. It was over. Aaaargh!
33: Yes, the Inconceivable Reception. (Unless that word doesn't mean what I think it means.)
43: Actually, it was semi-working for me with "decide".
I'll mourn for Sifu (and Ari), but I've got to say ... all those Patriot blowhards I've encountered these past few weeks? All the braggadocios on every network, radio station and internet site proclaiming the Patriots champions?
I'm going to enjoy watching them scramble to account for their absolute wrongness tomorrow.
33: that reception was unbelievable. You can't begrudge anything after that.
It wasn't just the NY defensive line, it was the offensive line too. Manning had all day.
The most dramatic quarter of football I've ever seen. Watching it with NE fans made it all the sweeter!
No, Manning got sacked, hurried, etc., a few times. The NE defense played well.
And most of the commercials sucked, too.
47: That's all going down the Memory Hole.
18-1, bitches.
@ 33, that was possibly the greatest play I've ever seen in my life.
I went for a bike ride. Take that, couch potatoes.
33: There was a certain element of luck, not? But in sports you don't talk about that.
And most of the commercials sucked, too.
Very true.
45: I'm thinking we need another saint. A Holy Sebastian maybe?
Un-fucking-believable. Unreal, unreal, unreal.
Seems like the standard script to me. All I ever see of football clips is last-minute wins or disasters, so I figure it happens all the time.
This thread is really hurtful to me.
60: Please tell us about it, ben.
No, no, Ben. It's paying homage to your fiendishly clever post.
Oh come on. That comment thread is hilarious.
After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too. After about 2-3 hours in a big room with several thousand chickens, you start to hear voices too.
An exciting Super Bowl - rarer than hens' teeth.
Between the racial stereotypes, the rodents, the weasels, and the lizards, the commercials were surreal. I just wondered what kind of connection we were supposed to make between the boogeying supermodel and the boogeying reptiles.
Some Unfoggaterian knows the lady who made that commercial, too.
Kind of outcome that only happens in sports movies. I love it. And 23 is right.
It seemed to me that the Patriots have been dogging it over the last half of the season, relying on the come-from-behind drive with 4 minutes left to win the game. The danger in this strategy is probably now apparent to the Patriots players.
Ironically, the only commercial I remember laughing at was the "wheel sucks" commercial.
Also, Superbowl halftime show? Was the point to pacify middle America by boring them to death? I'd take cheesy dancing and wardrobe malfunctions any day.
There sure were a lot of racist commercials. I liked the giant pigeons at least.
And the Will Farrell "Bud Light, suck one."
All I ever see of football clips is last-minute wins or disasters, so I figure it happens all the time.
Selection bias. They only make clips of the exciting parts.
What are you talking about, Gaijin? The most exciting play in football is three yards and a cloud of dust, yet you don't see that in highlight reels.
Yeah, what was up w/the ads for the sales lead company? There was a salesguy from India and I'll guess the pandas were supposed to be Chinese, although the accent seemed a little off. Am I being oversensitive or were those ads offensive?
The giant pigeon commercial cracked me up. The racist ones seemed to have come from a 1958 timewarp. I really hope someone in the government is looking into that incident.
I thought that the Panda ad was offensive, because teh accent was over-the-top fake Chinese, but the person sitting next to me thought that teh ads were just making fun of pandas and their fondness for bamboo.
The Ford truck commercial was really stupid. Who cares if you can swing a car around in a circle without breaking it. You can do the same thing to a boulder; that doesn't mean that it's good for driving.
I liked the ad with the horses and the dalmatian.
78: but the person sitting next to me thought that teh ads were just making fun of pandas and their fondness for bamboo was born yesterday.
There we go.
Selection bias. They only make clips of the exciting parts.
Thanks for clearing that up for me, GB.
The racist ones seemed to have come from a 1958 timewarp. I really hope someone in the government is looking into that incident.
I have to think they were actually somehow trying to target those communities. That strategy seems crazy to me, but I can't make sense of any mean-spiritedness in those commercials, or that people buying time for the Super Bowl are that clueless. We'll find out soon that the company is headed by an Indian and the ad agency by someone who is Chinese.
Super bowl commercials all strain too hard to be Super Bowl Commercials. Way overdone. You can see the flop sweat.
Thanks for clearing that up for me, GB.
Hey, you sounded serious.
The mouse busting through the wall to tackle the dude: funny.
The baby giving stock advice, then vomiting: funny to childless me, probably less funny to the having-raised-children set.
I'm the on-call this weekend and I had a guy hollering in my ear about the problems he caused with the upgrades he performed on his network today of all motherfucking days. I had to call a colleague for some help on a specific thing about which he has all the knowledge and he is, of course, the only person in the whole fucking company who lives in Boston and was in the middle of hosting a party. Motherfucking A, I am going to buy seventeen goddamn calendars and circle Super Bowl Sunday and write leave the fucking mail server alone, dipshit on that one day on all of them and mail them to him next year.
That said, I am glad the Patriots did not win. I am not happy the Giants won. The ads were all vaguely threatening when not downright racist, with the exception of the dalmation and Clydesdale ad which was cute.
The only good result of the game would have been for the Browns to run onto the field wielding AK-47s and decimate both teams, trophynap the Lombardi, throw down a smoke bomb and disappear in the confusion while making mad, maddening barking noises.
79: However, "Closed centrifuge. Do not attempt." was a pretty funny play on the usual car commercial text.
tell us non-superbowl watching types about the racist ads? can I get a synopsis? also, is sifu dead?
Synposes? You can watch them.
http://www.myspace.com/superbowlads
1st quarter: salesgenie
2nd quarter: Bud Light
3rd quarter: salesgenie
There were probably others.
The baby buying stocks on the internet looked like a bad-taste satire on all the people who lost their shirts day-trading in the late 90s, or perhaps just now with the real estate bust.
The Ford truck commercial was really stupid. Who cares if you can swing a car around in a circle without breaking it. You can do the same thing to a boulder; that doesn't mean that it's good for driving.
I believe the point was that it has a really amazing tow hook, which most boulders lack.
Good lord, that second Salesgenie.com ad is unbelievable in this day and age.
Racist ads: bad. Nursing badgers: good.
And the Bud Light one... jeez. Furrnurz talk all funny and stuff, ah-hyuck!
Which one had the nursing badgers?
I actually enjoyed watching the bits of that I saw. I came in right before the Pats' last touchdown, and saw them march implacably down the field, allowing me to assume my normal "The team I'm rooting for never wins anything" glumness. Then couple of minutes of "Oh, sure, in theory the Giants could come back, but it's not going to happen," with that neat play where Manning skittered away from like four guys who were actually touching him, and then the receiver lengthened his arms a foot to catch it. And then a minute of "Damn, the Pats are going to take it back, aren't they?"
That's pretty much all the sports I need with no one I know playing until next year.
I don't know about all this sore-loser stuff I'm reading from the Patriots camp. Seems like poor sportsmanship to me. If it was just the fans, that would be okay, but those players got paid how much to end their season in defeat?
92: But Emerson, stock traders are just like babies: Constant blubbering on one end and a pile of stinking shite on the other.
Which one had the nursing badgers?
Toyota Corolla, 2nd quarter.
97: 2nd quarter, Toyota Corolla.
Now those are some cute badgers.
The badger is a highly underrated weasel. They really deserve more attention. They are carnivores and have an occasional taste for puppies.
The lower jaw is articulated to the upper by means of a transverse condyle firmly locked into a long cavity of the cranium, so that dislocation of the jaw is all but impossible. This enables the badger to maintain its hold with the utmost tenacity, but limits the jaw movement to hinging open and shut or sliding from side to side; it does not allow yawning as in most other mammals (including humans).
I cannot imagine life without yawning, but the greater tenaciousness might be worth it. Probably badgers are better than most animals in spinning on a centrifuge.
There was an excellent Obama commercial at one point in the interminable pre-game show. It combined hope and criticism of the present regime very nicely.
I seldom watch TV, so my reactions may be exaggerated when I do watch, but the Superbowl commercials always seem an order of magnitude stupider than the everyday commercials (and I do realize the enormity of what I just said). My benchmarks are the truck commercials showing monster trucks crushing non-monster trucks, and the padlock commercial showing that the padlock is resistent to gunfire (but saying nothing about bolt-cutters). It's like the advertisers were reaching directly into the primal swamps of the reptile brain or the unformed id and tweaking people into unloading an extra five thousand dollars or so on a truck pretty much the same as every other truck.
a truck pretty much the same as every other truck
Only a man who doesn't have an enormous industrial centrifuge in his back yard would say this. No wonder you don't understand the average American.
The panda commercial was strange in that it didn't mock the accents strongly, but enough to identify them as Chinese. It's not like its any less offensive.
What strikes me is how obviously it sticks in the craw of car manufacturers to have to advertise environmentally-responsible product. GMC has apparently recruited Sisyphus as the mascot for its hybrid SUV line, for instance. Why torpedo your own wares like that?
OK, having seen the ads, what was up with that? as an american living abroad I'm naturally sensitive to suggestions we're a bunch of boorish racist fuckholes, but, damn, that did not look good.
I don't know about the racism. The one with the South Asian salesperson (Sandeep?) seemed like fairly friendly kidding. The others, less so. There seemed to be some kind of recognition that Asians are now a regular part of American life. The intermediate step on the way to acceptance seems to be ethnic jokes.
I mayn't watch videos at work. Someone summarize the issues, or point me to a text summary?
Now it can be asked: why didn't the Patriots go to Randy Moss more? I understand that Brady didn't have time to go long, but Moss is good on short routes too.
It would seem that if he had faked long and then doubled back he could have left two defenders out there doing nothing.
94, 96, 106 and 109 all get it exactly right.
I really am stunned at how many ads suggested that their product was so incredibly awesome that terrible things get done to anyone who uses them. Toyota? Get your face eaten. Doritos? Get beaten up by a furry.
112: The first salesgenie ad features a South Asian sales associate with seven kids and a stereotypical Hindustani accent trying to rescue his job. By the end he's salesman of the year.
The "foreign accents" Bud Light ad features a bunch of ethnic guys out at the bar trying to score chicks with their wacky accents. This one is offensive mostly on the grounds of involving Carlos Mencia.
The second salesgenie ad features pandas Ching Ching and Ling Ling trying to rescue their home business with sales leads and absurd, offensive Fu Manchu accents. Way more offensive than the other two IMO.
Now it can be asked: why didn't the Patriots go to Randy Moss more? I understand that Brady didn't have time to go long, but Moss is good on short routes too.
So are the rest of his receivers. Give the Giants their due: they just overwhelmed the Patriots O-line. I'm not much of a football fan, so my experience may not be a very good measure, but I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like that. Especially against a line that was justly famous for protecting Brady. Just outrageous.
w-lfs-n anti-sucks. His Super Bowl thread was as great as the best music video ever, "Bastards of Young."
Besides the Sales Genie commercials, I was also really struck by the cars.com ads. It was actually a funny conceit, and pretty well executed except for, oops, the racism: If the buyer hadn't done his ("his" in both cases) research on cars.com, he would have gone to Plan B. In the first ad (2nd quarter), that was having the salesman fight "Glondor," who was coded somewhat ambiguously -- Aztec-ish/Mayan-ish tatooing (maybe, I don't know), language not recognizable to me (could have been just nonsense syllables), but overall some kind of foreign savage.
In the second (3rd quarter), Plan B was a head-shrinking witch doctor, who was your basic ooga booga stereotype.
I found the most offensive ad to be the one for the new Adam Sandler movie.
GMC has apparently recruited Sisyphus as the mascot for its hybrid SUV line, for instance.
YES! I had almost forgotten this. Deeply bizarre.
Not only a foreign savage, but apparently one bound to follow the white car buyer around and foreign-savagely fight people at car-buyer's whim. What the hell.
I.E., blows.
True. Use Firefox.
The career builder.com ad with the beating heart which is ripped out of the unhappy worker was gross.
You're all way overthinking the commercials. Any thought at all is far too much. That said, the Pandas were a little much.
113 is the right question. I think the fault lies with Josh McDaniels, who got a lot of hype this season (as "orchestrator" of what seemed destined to be a perfect season), but it's seemed for a while to me like they've been winning despite McDaniels, not because of him. His plays seem just about evenly split between totally-plain-vanilla and too-clever-by-half. Not even throwing to Moss, for just about the entirety of the post-season, falls into the latter category. "We've got the best wide in the NFL, who just broke the single season-touchdown record. Everyone's expecting us to get him the ball for some big plays. So let's trick them by not doing that."
That said, in the second half and especially the final quarter, Brady actually started throwing a lot of balls toward Moss. They were just all 10+ yards off target because he was being so badly harrassed by the Giants front on every play.
BTW, the old name for the badger is "brock".
Not even throwing to Moss, for just about the entirety of the post-season, falls into the latter category. "We've got the best wide in the NFL, who just broke the single season-touchdown record. Everyone's expecting us to get him the ball for some big plays. So let's trick them by not doing that."
It worked. Decoys work.
The story of the game was, as mentioned earlier, that this was the first defensive line that got past the Patriots offensive line. Some people predicted that this would happen, but then rethought themselves as obviously being too contrarian.
The panda one is the only add which caused me to say out loud, "Not only is this ad strange, but isn't it pretty racist?"
The decoy works up to a point, but they should have pulled Moss in when it became clear that Brady wasn't going to be able to hit him. Their short-pass drive went well.
Okay, yeah. The Panda ad is kinda lame. The ad with the Indian guy isn't, though--it's obviously somewhat Simpsons-inspired. I suspect that whoever said the *intent* was to appeal to the Asians in the audience is right, though--catch the "grizzly bears at the zoo" thing at the end of the Panda ad.
ad, obviously. Post Super Bowl Monday morning is a valid excuse, I think.
Their short-pass drive went well.
Sure, at the end of the game, when the Giants' defensive line was tired. Instead of depending on some sort of alchemy from Moss, the Pats should have followed LT's lead and sent hookers and coke to the Giants' D-line the night before.
The [...] truck commercial was really stupid.
Isn't this statement redundant? I dunno, not really keeping up with teevee; but every truck commercial I've ever seen was really stupid. Same with most car commercials. They're trapped in a genre of inanity.
John Emerson has apparently never heard of the concept of "double coverage".
Moss was in double coverage most of the year.
WWTDD's take on the sales genie ads:
Here's how I assume the marketing department at sales genie works. STEP 1. Take 3 million dollars. STEP 2. Pile it up. STEP 3. Throw it in the trash. Once again they had ads they were just woefully inept and awful, but this year they added scathing racism. I can't even put my finger on why this one is so racist, but I just know that it is. I assume it's the accent. Because here's the thing, pandas don't talk, so when you give one a chopsticky accent, it just looks like you're making fun of Asians. It would be like you drew a bundle of dynamite with an Arab accent or a had a gay guy masturbating at a basketball game. I'm not sure what those last two would be products for, (maybe bullets and serious dicking) but I don't know what the fuck panda bears have to do with sales leads either, so suck on that.
In the second (3rd quarter), Plan B was a head-shrinking witch doctor, who was your basic ooga booga stereotype.
Don't think the writer's strike is hurting anyone? The actor in that commercial is one of the principle characters on one of Fox's highest rated shows. (Probably didn't invest wisely.)
115: Harold and Kumar should have beat them all up. With pot!
IIRC, the touchdown pass happened when Moss only had one defender on him. I'm not sure it's so much the Patriots deciding to mix things up as it is the Patriots having to mix things up.
137: "Hi Hodges!" says the room at my gamewatch.
138: Not only Moss having one defender, but also that one defender getting wrong-footed off the line and tripping over himself. Not something you should be doing as a professional defensive back.
I can't blame the Giants too much on the single-coverage call, since they were dealing with a very short yardage play and instead double-teamed Welker, who's been reeling in those sorts of passes (more than Moss!) all year.
as an american living abroad I'm naturally sensitive to suggestions we're a bunch of boorish racist fuckholes
Whenever I go abroad I come away with the feeling that human beings in general are pretty racist/tribal and Americans are if anything less racist than most other countries. Our political class does start more stupid wars, but that's a different issue.
141: I find the US about par for UK & France, perhaps a bit more than Canada (but not much). Which puts it at less than most other places I've been.
I think that the US & Canada are more hypocritical about racism than a lot of places, in that they pretend that there is a lot less than there actually is. This is quite different than the absolute impact though.
Americans are if anything less racist than most other countries.
Gawd, yes. But I wonder if you are (as I suspect I am) over-influenced by the places you've lived, given that you may have chosen (whe possible) such places because you found there a certain amount of broad tolerance.
We're not more racist, but we can be more boorish. Some Americans have an ingrained sense of being awesome, shining individuals from the best country in the world. In social interactions, this tends to grate.
Some Americans have an ingrained sense of being awesome, shining individuals from the best country in the world.
oh, shit, that's my attitude!
I actually agree that everybody in other countries is racist, too. asian people are often wicked prejudiced against black people, for example.
asian people are often wicked prejudiced against black people, for example.
Heck, Asian people are often wicked prejudiced against other Asian people.
Re. the Superbowl ads, I think this might just beat Tweety's most disturbing porn ever. Which I can't find the link to now, dammit.
Except that I suspect that stupid eTrade is pretending to spoof their own ads, in some kind of sick viral marketing thing. But anyhoo, it's funny.
Some Americans have an ingrained sense of being awesome, shining individuals from the best country in the world.
Some? Some?!
Well, jeez, ttaM, can you blame us??
#149: Yeah, you have a point. But we should at least try to tone it down a bit in front of the locals.
Heck, Asian people are often wicked prejudiced against other Asian people.
I'm sure I've told this before, but I do so love it: I was watching Better Off Dead once in college with a couple of friends and commented that I thought the guy who did the Howard Cosell voice was hot. A Korean friend turned to me with a shocked look on his face and said, "A Chinese guy? The dogs of my race?!"
Yes, the Inconceivable Reception.
Kissing Suzy Kolber suggests The Giant Snatch.