Superbowl Commercials

Every year I am mystified by the marketing genius of Madison Avenue. Yesterday was no exception. We saw a girl sitting on a mountaintop strumming an acoustic guitar and singing a nondescript tune about something or other. What any of it had to do with Doritos is beyond me. We saw the most vicious racial stereotyping ever. God help you if you’re Indian, Chinese, or Mexican. They are coming to steal our women. Apparently Hyundai is now selling a luxury vehicle, which is a fairly comic concept in itself, but which was presented in deadly earnestness in the commercial.

Guys clamped battery cables to their nipples. Young kids picked their noses. A talking baby bought stocks online, and then spit up. Given that, you would have thought that the major problem with the giant carrier pigeons would have been obvious. Inexplicably, it was never mentioned.

On the plus side, the sight of the guy in the giant mouse costume beating the crap out of the guy with the bag of Doritos almost made up for the whole tepid and/or offensive batch of losers. And the sight of Justin Timberlake slamming his crotch into the mailbox was great, and a nice self-deprecating touch on his part. Apparently I am drawn to, ah, physical comedy. On the downside, it was sad that Richard Simmons wasn't actually run over.

The game? Oh yeah, there was a game, although you’d hardly know it by the first three quarters. Until the fourth quarter I would have said that this was the most snoozeworthy Super Bowl ever. But it sure picked up toward the end, didn’t it? Congratulations to the New York Giants and MVP quarterback Eli Manning, who in the last five minutes was even more entertaining than the guy in the giant mouse costume.