A Whole Lotta Bull Again This Year

Budget battles are well underway already after the Bushies dumped their omni-juggle for '05 on the Congress. Condi's ready to announce diplomatic headway in the Middle East in her first week on the job - a cease-fire between the Israelis and Palestinians is set to be conveniently unfurled tomorrow. And apparently Dubya believes that books are a great escape, particularly when those books feature ridiculously labored descriptions of sex and hard-partying in college. So, so many important stories hit the wires today.

But in our little slice of the BlueStates, the SupaDupa Bowl is still the freshest morsel in our coversational Igloo cooler. We had a party at our apartment, figuring weeks ago that if we made it this close to Sarah's due date, all would be well and we'd be psyched to have invited folks into the fold for one last mixer. So we feel especially lucky to have been blessed with varied and hilarious guests, a great game, piles of delicious grub, and tons of fun asides that had little to do with football. The Patriots are a class act that deserved to win even with one musket tied behind their backs. The Eagles were a damn good bunch of losers, even if Donovan McNabb stunk up the house like a burnt bowl of Cambell's Chunky Sirloin Steak soup. The in-game commericals were toned down somewhat after last year's incessantly-mentioned, rather-shocking nipple sighting. The Bud Light skydiving commercial and surprising dinner ad from AmeriQuest were the faves on this Coast by a healthy margin. But FOX still managed to push the bounds of tastelessness to new, hypocritical extremes. Not more than 5 minutes after the game ended (and one must assume the FCC's spotlighted scrutiny dimmed), they aired here in SF a widely-criticized Carl's Jr. ad from LAST YEAR featuring a cheesily-dressed woman eating a greasy hamburger while grinding out a ride on a mechanical bull. For knee-jerk examples of last year's outrage, look here and here and here. For this year's outrage...good luck finding it. The election's over, McCartney kept his pants on, flag-waving jingoism was everywhere, and freedom is on the march. Except for places like here and here and here. But who pays attention to that sort of stuff when SportsCenter is on.