I Feel Smarter

I am now an official "friend of MIT". It only cost me $85 to be MIT's friend for a month, and I think it will be well worth it. I get an official MIT plastic slider card thingy that lets me swim in their pool and use the gym.

Super Bowl Bonus

Accident or not, the Super Bowl just advanced the case for boobies on TV. I wonder if we will look back on this Super Bowl and say, "That was the day I first saw a boobie on regular TV"?

You may not have heard, but CBS actually banned a few ads from playing during the Super Bowl. One of these ads created by MoveON.org was suggesting that our kids would have to pay for the deficit that Bush's spending is now creating. CBS's reason for the ban was simply that they do not air controversial ads during the Super Bowl.

During halftime at my Super Bowl party we had to flip back and forth to CNN, where the banned ad was being shown. The ad aired a few minutes later than they had stated, but we got to see it and then make it back to CBS in time to see Janet's boobie. I don't even want to comment on the content of this commercial, but just applaud CBS for banning it from the Super Bowl. There is a time and a place for thoughtful political and social commentary, but the Super Bowl is neither the time nor the place. The Super Bowl should be about the football, not the ads. True, the hype about commercials has become a part of the game, but the typical commercials that we have come to expect, do not distract us from the essence of the game. Beer, cars, and male enhancement; these things go with football. We hope the commercials will be funny, but we expect them to at least be appropriate. During the Super Bowl, appropriate is something that won't lead us down any thoughtful path that would distract us from the game. No commercial should kill our football buzz with talk about the deficit, elections, or the plight of helplessly clubbed baby seals!

I don't mind talking about such issues and I really didn't mind watching the ad during the Super Bowl this year. The commercial actually did make me think. It made me think, "What if Super Bowl ads became some big venue for people trying to push their political agendas? What if 1 out of every 3 ads were like this? How much would that suck!?!" In the end, I was glad that this was the year I saw Janet Jackson's boobie during the halftime show, and not the year I missed seeing Janet Jackson's boobie, in order to watch an ad about Bush's economic spending patterns.

I Love the Super Bowl

That was a fun Super Bowl! I didn't think the game could possibly be as exciting as the last Patriots win, but there we were again.. lineing up for a last second field goal. The celebration at our apartment was a little more subdued than two years ago, but on the plus side, even after the party our apartment is much cleaner than before we started cleaning up. That should leave us in good shape for next year's Super Bowl cleaning.

Prediction: The Redskins will win the Super Bowl within the next 3 years.