COLUMN: Superbowl

The Diary of a Sunday that can only be described as fairly Super: A story in which our hero faces 5 hours of wall-to-wall hi-definition football coverage and lives to tell about it.

4:30 p.m. Friend Chris beats the snow and arrives at my apartment armed with a metric ton of chicken wings, a box of Coke, and nacho fixins aplenty. We brown some hamburger, throw on some cheese and salsa and sour cream, and dump it all atop an armada of tortilla chips. It is, by all definable measurements, an unquestionably super bowl of nachos. We are focused, primed, and football-ready.

4:50 p.m. The precise moment when the month-long pre-game show apparantly runs out of things to say about the game. This is the only acceptable answer as to why football legends are currently on my screen reading the Declaration of Independence. Something tells me that "the freedom to watch awesome, bone-crunching action" was NOT atop the Founding Fathers' pros and cons list for revolution. Still, these historic words have never carried such weight as when they're read by great orators like, oh, Peyton Manning.

5:30 p.m. Kick-off.

5:36 p.m. Bud Light claims their product can make people breathe fire. Friend Chris and I have a quick con-fab before pronouncing the idea "pretty cool."

5:46 p.m. Internet start-up SalesGenie.com decides that the best way to spend $2.5 million dollars is to make condescending racial stereotypes of Indian workers. Later their next ad involves crudely animated panda bears and stale jokes. Each second of these two spots costs around $83,000. I could do a lot with $83,000. They could have simply given me $83,000 and I could have walked around telling people, "Hey, visit SalesGenie.com," and it would have been a better thought-out ad campaign.

5:47 p.m. An announcer informs us that 30 minutes of the pre-game show was powered by a roomful of ridiculously muscle-clad people on exercise bikes. I laugh snarkily, and that laugh was powered by one dude sitting on a couch eating nachos.

6:03 p.m. Derek Jeter is the new face of Gatorade G2. Now, there's no one on Earth more diametrically opposite myself than a professional athlete. That said, I recently discovered that I quite like Derek Jeter's new cologne (men, ask your Avon reps!) If I like his cologne, perhaps there's hope for his low-calorie electrolyte beverage as well.

6:24 p.m. Sobe Life Water decides that their product is best represented by lizards dancing to "Thriller" with Naomi Campbell. They are VERY wrong.

6:32 p.m. New England QB Tom Brady starts to look less than perfect. I celebrate by running to the kitchen for a tasty beverage when I distinctly hear the announcer from the other room. "Oh, say," he says. "Human urine helped break up that play." Hrrrm. A myriad of thoughts course through my brain. I'm not exactly Mr. Sports, but I at least thought I knew the basics of football. That said, I must admit that I was unfamiliar with the human urine section of the playbook. In fact, I feel that human urine should count towards pass interference at the very least. Then I walked back in and discovered that "Oh, say, human urine" is, in fact, Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora.

6:40 p.m. Pepsi gives me a highlight of the night: watching Justin Timberlake get tortured for 30 seconds. But the question DOES exist: Why does Pepsi even need to advertise? Is there somebody out there going, "Hmm... Pepsi or Coke. Well, which one would Justin drink?" Why would you want to spend 2.5 mil on 30 seconds of airtime if you were Pepsi? There's only one logical answer: people are willing to put up absurd amounts of money for the joy of seeing Justin Timberlake get tortured.

7:08 p.m. Someone needs to alert the authorities: Tom Petty has been kidnapped and replaced by someone's very, very ugly grandfather. Happily, no wardrobe malfunctions occur and a grateful nation breathes a sigh of relief. Yes, nothing says hip, exciting entertainment like a geriatric rocker and his mid-tempo anthems o' blandness. Congrats, NFL, you've managed to suck almost ALL the life out of halftime. Maybe next year you can seal the deal by simply re-animating the corpse of Glenn Miller for the most rip-roarin', rootin'-tootin', swing-tastic bathroom break of them all.

7:36 p.m. Bridgestone wants to prove the durability of their tires by showing a car deftly swerving and NOT running over exercise guru Richard Simmons. Dear Bridgestone, I would be a far bigger supporter of your company had you proven the durability of your tires by repeatedly running over exercise guru Richard Simmons.

And then somewhere around here it all goes a bit grey, as my charming stroll through the world of advertising keeps getting interrupted by a pesky good game of football. New York wins while New England coach Bill Belichick storms off the field like a pouty baby. Either that or he wanted to be the first to log on to SalesGenie.com.

All told, a good night out without ever having to leave the apartment.

The winners: The Giants, Justin Timberlake, the E-Trade baby, and Chris' nachos.

The losers: The Patriots, SalesGenie.com, anyone who likes Tom Petty, and my nacho-ravaged GI tract. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go. I think the 2009 Super Bowl pre-game show starts in like 20 minutes.