If the Rapture happens tomorrow, humanity will mark its lowest point as Christina Aguilera’s performance of the national anthem at Super Bowl XLV. People like to talk about how she messed up the words, but usually fail to mention that both of her ear drums fell out and caused her to forget what music sounds like. The greatest victims were the players who had to stand there and be reverent while she growled and shouted her way to a nationally-divisive conclusion.

During an appearance on 540 ESPN Milwaukee with the D-List, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers shared his story of survivial.

During the pregame of Super Bowl XLV did you notice that Christina Aguilera messed up the U.S. National Anthem?

No doubt about it. No doubt about it. First of all the chick from ‘Glee’ killed the first song. She should have sang the anthem too. I knew because it was the Super Bowl … I don’t like standing in the front row because I don’t like being or having that camera right in front of my face. I know I’m on the bazillion foot jumbotron, so I’m going to stand behind some people who maybe aren’t the most TV recognizable names and see if I can blend in. So I kind of went and hid in the back. I don’t know who I was standing next to, but she [Christina Aguilera] starts singing it and in most of the stadiums they have the words up on the board, kind of up-and-above the singer, so she can tell that she screwed up.

She screwed up and I knew it and something was off. I’m looking around going does anyone else realize this? I don’t think they had because I don’t think the people were listening, but I knew something was off, so I kind of tapped … I think it was Diyral Briggs next to me and I said, ‘Hey did you hear that?’ He was like, ‘What?’ I’m like, ‘She just totally screwed it up’, so I look up at the board and see where she is at and I realized she just totally messed that up. I wonder … people have got to know she just screwed that up? I feel kind of bad for her, but at the same time, come on now.

And I was like, Aaron Rodgers just outed himself as a Gleek. I wonder if he turned to Diyral Briggs and asked him what he thought of that snippet of Puck and Artie’s version of “Bella Notte.” Wait, I don’t wonder that at all, sh**

[H/T Weed for Speed]

The latest fiascoes with Super Bowl XLV have perfectly validated my point that there’s absolutely no redeeming aspect of attending live sporting events any more. Consider the plight of the “Founders,” Dallas Cowboys fans who spent $100k on PSLs for their Cowboys season tickets, with the promise of first crack at Super Bowl tickets.

Some of those fans were in temporary seats under overhangs and couldn’t see the giant video board above the field, “which defendant Jones and the Cowboys routinely claim is one of the most unique and best features of Cowboys Stadium,” the lawsuit said. They could see the field, and extra TVs were installed in those areas.

“You were effectively in a bat cave,” Avenatti said. “You don’t take your 400 best customers and treat them like that.” The lawsuit alleges the Cowboys have offered no compensation to their ticket holders for “their obstructed and illegitimate seats.”

The NFL has said the roughly 400 fans without seats have two options. The first is a ticket to next year’s Super Bowl and a cash payment of $2,400, three times the face value of the ticket. The second is a ticket to any future Super Bowl, along with round-trip airfare and hotel accommodations.

–NewsChief.

The stories of displaced NFL fans–Super Bowl patrons that had paid money to travel to the game, book accommodations, visit North Texas and watch the game–are coming almost faster than one could keep up with them. One fan has already launched a class-action lawsuit against the NFL and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

“No one told us anything,” she said. “It was in line where you learned from other (fans) about the seats, that the (original tickets) were temporary seating sections and that we were all in the same boat.

“We all talked to each other about how much money they paid for the tickets and what section their tickets were. But there were no representatives from the stadium, from the NFL, nobody was there while we waited in that line explaining anything to us.”

–Pro Football Weekly.

Serious question here: why does a billion-dollar stadium have obstructed view seats? I don’t blame anyone for suing the league, although there’s one pompous writer that does. When’s the last time that jerk took out a second mortgage to make a Super Bowl trip? Exactly.

Wisconsin’s own Bob Cook–one of the famous four dudes who claimed to have never missed a Super Bowl (not pictured)–missed Sunday’s Super Bowl due to illness.

He was getting ready to go to the airport when he put his foot down and said, ‘I don’t think I can make it,’” said Cook’s daughter Cheryl Cook. “My heart broke for him.”

“We were trying to see if we could get a private jet and a doctor or a nurse to go with him to get him down there if we could,” said Cook.

–WISN.

Cook watched the game with family from a hospital bed. He says he’s planning to go to next year’s game, but what’s the point? Streak’s over, man.

In the wake of flubbing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, Christina Aguilera has received a great deal of both criticism and sympathy. The Twitterverse was abuzz as the former Mousketeer skipped over a line in the Star-Spangled Banner, with Tweets like the above selection from “Weird” Al Yankovic gaining a great deal of attention. Even 9-year old Gina Marie Incandela, who delivers an incredible performance of the anthem during Orlando Magic playoff games, chimed in on the situation:

”I’m feeling bad for her because people are calling her a little bit of bad names. … Everyone makes mistakes. … She accidentally made just one little mistake.”

But Gina said she has sung the National Anthem more than 100 times and never flubbed the words. When I asked her if she would do a better job as a Super Bowl anthem singer than Aguilera, she replied, “I think so.” (Via Orlando Sentinel)

Uh oh, do I smell a cat fight?

Additionally, the folks at Guyism posted a clip from a local news broadcast in Phoenix, where a reporter asked some Average Joes their opinions on Christina’s mental lapse. Video after the jump (worth watching just for a “brain fart”)…

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s only one rabbit that I’m really interested in hunting after Super Bowl XLV, and that’s the question of who would have won the MVP if the Pittsburgh Steelers had come from behind in the second half to win the game. My money was on the Steelers (and Rashard Mendenhall in the MVP hunt) to prevail.

As the fourth quarter began, the Steelers trailed the Packers, 21-17. Pittsburgh had just taken over on offense on a Packers three-and-out (their third in a row) that gave the Steelers the ball on the Green Bay 41, their best field position of the night.

Roethlisberger, despite having thrown two interceptions, had completed 8 of his last 11 throws, including a touchdown pass to Hines Ward. Mendenhall had 14 carries at that point in the game (he averaged over 20 in the regular season). And the Steelers were gaining momentum. Until…

“I had a good feeling that play was going to come,” Matthews said. “I told my defensive end to spin it for me and wrap it around the outside. … I got to make a play, and I did.”

“I just got hit and the ball came out,” [Mendenhall] said. “It just happened and it should not have happened.”

–NJ Star-Ledger.

It’s not inconceivable to think that the Steelers would have at least scored on that drive to either take the lead or seriously put the Packers on the ropes. Mendenhall certainly could have accumulated 37 more yards (which would have put him at 100), especially if Pittsburgh would have snapped into their four-minute offense.

Instead, Rashard fumbles, Green Bay takes it down the field and scores, and Pittsburgh doesn’t call another rushing play for the balance of the game. But as they say, if the queen had balls, she’d be the king. This is simply an illustration of how close this game was. AND HOW THE STEELERS BLEW IT! WOOOO!! YOU SUCK, PITTSBURGH! But they did win an AFC title. That’s nice.

It was a mixed bag for Super Bowl ads this year. It usually is, but I wonder if we’re just expecting too much from advertising companies on that first weekend in February. Their job isn’t to entertain us, it’s to sell us crap. Some firms managed to do both in the time alloted, and at almost $6 million per minute, that’s worth acknowledging.

There were a couple standouts: obviously the VW ad, and we’ll get to the rest in a bit. Max Pagehasm, the kid in the Darth Vader suit in the Volkswagen ad, appeared on the Today show this morning. Max is closer to Vader than one would have originally expected; he was born with a congenital heart defect and had to be fitted with a pacemaker. That child is more machine now than man…twisted and evil.

As for the others, well, that’s what we’ll attempt to parse out here. For the second year in a row, I’ll be reviewing every ad from Super Bowl XLV. These were my ground rules for eligibility:

• Ads are rated for memorability, scale, and message economy. I’m not necessarily rating the ads by my own personal preference so much as by whether or not the company actually spent the money on the ad, and should have done so.
• Ads for Fox shows are ineligible (Sorry, Glee).
• Ads for films are not reviewed. Movie previews are supposed to be awesome, and all the time. If a quality 30-second synopsis can’t be made out of a 90-minute film, then it’s hardly the fault of the people creating the ad.
• Ads during halftime aren’t counted (Suck it, Chatter).

Brace yourselves for another clickfest. The pages are broken up by every grade or so (A through F), so you can do the math for the most part. Agree or disagree in the comments; you’ve already seen these multiple times by now, anyway. We’re embedding as many as we can (while they’re still up).