Super Bowl XL

I've been neglecting this blog. What better way to get back into it than to cheer yesterday's high-def Super Bowl XL telecast by ABC.

The play on the field was suspenseful, if not artful. The team I was rooting for, the Steelers, won.

The announcing by the team of Michaels and Madden was competent and professional.

The picture and sound were excellent in 720p on my 720p-native Samsung DLP.

The commercials were entertaining, a few even memorable. (My problem is that I'll remember the ad but not necessarily the sponsor. Which airline was it that showed a just-fired-by-phone employee taking a last-minute flight to the city where his mealy-mouthed boss was addressing a business convention, so that he might — heh, heh — tackle his ass right off the podium?)

And the Rolling Stones, however aged, were gratifying to see at halftime, to this geezer who was at an early concert of theirs when "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" was a hit. As Mick Jagger said, it could have been performed at Super Bowl I. Also gratifying was that "Start Me Up" and "Rough Justice," the other two songs they performed, were bleeped. Shows you that some things never change ... the Stones had to self-censor "Let's Spend the Night Together" in order to be permitted to do it on Ed Sullivan, back in the day.


I was actually sick in bed, or almost in bed, and I didn't go out or have buddies over. So I appreciated having Comcast's HD DVR cable box to record the game to. I went to bed for real just after Mick and Co. were done, got up in the night to watch the third quarter, went back to bed, and then watched Quarter Number 4 in the A.M. before breakfast.

It's a good feature the DVR box lets you start a recording from a live broadcast already in progress and then lets you edit the recording options on the fly so that you record beyond the ostensible end of the game, which was set for 9:45 in the DVR's onboard program guide. I set the DVR to record an extra hour, until 10:45, and I was glad I did because the game didn't end until after 10:00, if I have that time right.