he crown jewel of professional football and annually the single hottest (and most expensive) ticket to any event in the United States, is the Superbowl. I've been lucky enough to attend two of these in person, though as an employee, and on this page you can read my comments about how much I hated ever goddamned second of it.

I've also commented several times on the actual Superbowl itself, as a TV viewer or when it's been in the news, and some of those comments are collected on this page as well, if they're about something other than who won or lost.  I don't see much point in archiving my old "Tampa played well." type comments, since they're only of interest at the time.  Click back through the daily archives to the time period immediately after the game if you want to see what I thought about how the actual players played.

This page is sorted by year, with the most recent entries on top.

• 2004 Superbowl
• 2003 Superbowl (I was there! Unhappily.)

2004 Superbowl

January 31, 2004

So the Superbowl is Sunday; the world championship of professional football.  Assuming you overlook the fact that no other country on earth plays football. Somehow calling the winner the "US Champion" sounds a bit less grand though.

Anyway, New England is playing Jacksonville, or possibly Kentucky.  I forget, it's some southern state with a team that has no stars on it.  New England is a 7 point favorite, though since practically every expert seems to think that NE is a far better team, it's a bit of a mystery why the spread is so low.  Probably since while NE is better, they haven't scored very many points, so most of the "experts" are picking New England to win like 24-20.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that while most of the recent superbowls have been close, they've matched up two very good teams.  This year one team is very mediocre and the other is exceptional, though they're not an eye-catching exceptional, winning with defense and no mistakes, rather than blow out scores and superstar players.

I haven't read any of the game break downs, the player match ups, etc, and I don't really care who wins, just so long as the game has some points scored and isn't a run-first, punt a lot, slow and boring dragfest.  But I'm saying NE wins, 30-16, and it's only that close due to a late desperation Carolina score. And I'll probably be entirely wrong, despite my nearly-clairvoyant prediction last year, which was 1 point off (34-20 prediction, 34-21 actual score) with less than two minutes to go, before the Oakland QB started tossing up desperation passes left and right, and had two of them returned for touchdowns. (Final score was 48-20 because of that.)

In fact the only superbowl-related news I've been reading are The Sports Guy's blog entries from Houston, which while below his usual article quality, are still pretty damn entertaining.  

Malaya and I will watch it, and this will probably be the first Superbowl in my life that I've actually watched in its entirety, assuming it's not a total blow out that we get bored with.  She likes football, once the games are important, and she wants to see the commercials, and I'll enjoy watching/snarking on them with her.

I've seen just about every other Superbowl in my life, but almost always on tape where I can fast forward liberally, or watched it while muting the commercials and playing Diablo or something at the same time.  I can also say that I've attended two of them (including blogging about last year's) and worked at three of them, which makes me a sort of VIP, even though I didn't enjoy any of them very much.  Once I'm at work it's pretty much just another event; the Superbowl crowd is just made up of a richer caliber of asshole.

The two that were in San Diego while I worked at the stadium there were both on very hot days in late January, and both times I got stuck selling something other than soda/water, where the real money was, and had a headache most of the day and sore feet due to having to park miles from the stadium.  The third one I worked at was in 1996 (I believe) when San Diego was in the Superbowl and got crushed by the 49ers.  The game was played in Tampa (I believe) but since the local team was in it, they opened up the stadium for free and let people come watch it on the big screens there.

The greatest lesson I took home from that event is that you should never run any popular event for free.  Always have a cover charge, even if it's nominal.  Just a couple of bucks makes an enormous difference in the amount of white trash (of every race) that shows up.  Free = Jerry Springer audience. $2 a head = real people who aren't there just because they have nothing else to do with their time.

February 2, 2004

As for the other big portion of the day's TV, the Superbowl ads... I didn't see anything real memorable. There were way too many Cadillac commercials for their truck like faux-sports car things; vehicles that I can't imagine anyone buying.  I mean what's their target audience?  I assume they still churn out those old, ugly, Buick-like Caddys for rich old people to tool around in and eventually confuse the gas with the break and plow into a crowded sidewalk on their way to get a refill on their glaucoma medicine.  They just don't advertise those on big ticket shows like the Super Bowl, since they know that 1) old people with money will seek them out ads or not, and 2) that young people with money won't buy cars with that styling no matter what their ads are like.

But as for the new ones with the impotence symbol grills that look like last year's Dodge pick ups, I can't tell you.  I think they all look like ass; like boxes that have been partially streamlined, or futuristic (hard angles) Volvo station wagons. And anyway, it's a Cadillac; it's a big, slow, plodding car for old people, or for poor people who want to appear rich by buying a car that doesn't do anything special but that's priced as though it does.  And all the sexy commercials with Led Zepplin sound tracks and magical Matrix-like waves of air force, or water, or whatever it's supposed to be that's flying off the cars across the desert while the black Cadillacs are driving around won't ever change that.

At least not in my mind.

There weren't any big movie event trailers this year, for a change. Last year the hype pre-game was for a new Hulk trailer, and a new Matrix 2 trailer.  And in retrospect, looking at how well both of those movies turned out, perhaps that's a good thing.  They had a bunch of movie commercials, but none of them had anything new in them, that I saw.  Hidalgo and Van Helsing were 100% from their existing trailers, and so were the others that did nothing to stand out in my memory.  They had one for 50 First Dates, with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, but it was no more entertaining than the trailer, which is simply boring.

There were a bunch of AOL commercials, featuring mechanic guys modifying existing vehicles with AOL 9.0 technology to make them go incredibly fast. I suppose those are useful in that they spread consumer awareness of AOL 9.0 and that it's supposed to be super fast, but there are two problems: 1) The entire concept was ripped off, sort of slick, watered down versions of those Sega video game commercials where guys build a gun or boot or something from one of the videogames, film themselves using it in real life, and blow up their entire neighborhood, or leap over a plane, or something, and 2) It's for AOL; everyone is familiar with their product and has an opinion on it at this point (most people think it's the noob-ernet), and AOL making claims that they're faster than they used to be isn't going to change anyone's mind about their ISP, especially in this day of cable modem ubiquity.

There were a ridiculous amount of "can't get it up" pill commercials, several of which even gave you some chance of guessing what they were commercials for.  There were the usual Levitra ones, which are utterly perplexing in their vagueness.  I saw the one with the guy throwing footballs through a tire swing at least a dozen times during the regular season without ever suspecting it might be an anti-impotence pill.  I figured it was for an arthritis pill, or something like that, since the whole commercial shows a guy who is working in his hard and playing around with an old football, and seeming to feel rusty.

I never had any idea it was for what it's for until I read a Dave Barry column about it, and his jokes at last clued me in to the rather absurdly-metaphorical aspect of an aging man taking a pill that suddenly allows him to repeatedly throw a football through an old tire.  In my defense, I never paid the commercial any attention, other than wondering why the hell this guy was throwing a football around like that, and laughing at how it was yet another idiotic commercial for a prescription drug that at no time made it clear what the drug was for.  I saw Claratin ads for at least two or three years before I eventually found out what they were supposed to do.  Perhaps I'm ignorant, but magazine photos of fields of flowers, and TV commercials of smiling people with excellent facial skin never shouted out "anti allergy medication" to me.

This is as true of arthritis and baldness and indigestion and allergy pills as erection ones, in my viewing experience, and the marketing scheme puzzles me.  They show random images for 30 seconds without ever putting up a single one that directly tips you off to what their expensive new chemical is supposed to do if you take it, and then spend the last 8-10 seconds with their silken-voiced announcer reading off a long list of possible side effects like diarrhea or nose bleeds or headaches. And then they say, "Ask your doctor about it."  What?  Do people just make a doctor appointment to go in and say, "So, I saw this ad with a guy throwing a football through a tire and running around and hugging a woman, and I have no idea at all what the pill does, but I simply must have one, just because their commercial was such a masterpiece of Madison Avenue genius!"

One of the dicker upper pills on the Superbowl sounded interesting, since the ad said that it worked for 36 hours, for when "the romance turns to passion" or something romance novel sounding like that. As best I could tell, you take it, and then if at any point in the next day and half you start to get turned on, you'll get an actual serviceable erection.  I can't see how that works; it's like a lurking instant boner?  How long until they have that in some sort of drug implant, like Norplant under the skin, to release a constant supply of whatever hormone or chemical enables proper penile blood flow?

Aside from all of the other dumb commercials, there were two that really stood out to me as amazingly stupid.  And that's saying something, since I hate TV commercials.

The first was for Gillette disposable razors, and it was eye catchingly idiotic.  The commercial featured pleasing and inspirational music and lots of images of random, heart-warming events.  Planes flying, a jogger bursting through a wall, smiling men, beautiful women, hurdlers, etc.  Just on and on, and totally pointless.  It was like some guy's photography demo reel.  And then eventually they mixed in a few shots of instant razors in their packaging, and guys doing that frighteningly-reckless "sweeping across the throat" motion, the razor plowing cleanly and effortlessly through the perfectly-applied shaving cream.  A move that you will only ever see in a commercial, since every man and woman alive who has ever shaved with a cheap disposable plastic razor knows that if you do that over a sharp corner (chin, lip, knee, ankle, etc) you'll look a lot like you just used a potato peeler on yourself. Of course the commercial man is already shaved to bikini wax closeness, and he's just using a plastic razor with no blade to remove the shaving cream, thus simulating a shave, but it still always makes me jump when they do it.

I didn't think that commercial was dreadful for that; every shaving commercial perpetuates that lie.  I thought it was stupid since it had nothing to do with razors, and was just so silly and "film school audition reel" in appearance.  It reminded me a bit of the old movie convention (spoofed in Austin Powers 1) of showing metaphorical things after cutting away from a passionate couple; the train plowing into the tunnel, waves crashing, a volcano erupting, etc.  Since it's a man shaving, shouldn't they show relevant stuff: a carrot being peeled, a building being leveled, those houses in Trinity during the nuke test, etc?

The other super stupid commercial was for Charmin, and it showed extras in bad no-specific team football uniforms lining up for a big play, while announcers babbled on in the voice over.  The quarterback kneels down to place his hands lovingly beneath the center's huge, swollen choad, and gets all hung up feeling the strip of toilet paper dangling down from his waist.  So hung up that there's a delay of game penalty, and then the announcers somehow realize he was distracted by the amazing softness of the towel on the center's ass, then that it's toilet paper, and they go, "Who switched that?" and the scene cuts to the QB and coaches seeing a guy in a bear mascot costume giggling, and they all chase him.  And it then dissolves into a cartoon bear who flies around and lands on the Charmin package of toilet paper.

This is wrong on almost as many levels as the Garfield movie trailer (which I'll discuss some day when I'm in a really foul mood and watching it can't possibly depress me further).

• How do the announcers know what's delaying him?
• How can they tell it's toilet paper?
• How are the QB's hands not all wet or dirty?
• How does a cartoon bear mascot walking around with rolls of toilet paper get onto the sidelines of a football field?
• Since when has Charmin had a bear for a mascot?

And I'm not even going into the idiocy of anyone stopping what they're doing due to being so distracted by the pillowy softness of something made to wipe your ass with.  Or the fact that when you see toilet paper sticking out of the back of someone's pants, your first impulse isn't to touch it.  It's to wonder, with a certain disgusted fascination, where the other end of it is stuck.

I suppose at the pitch meeting they were like, "Look, we want to do a Superbowl ad, and we need a commercial that somehow ties football in with toilet paper. And it's costing us over $2 million to air it, so it's got to be big."  Can't you just picture the stunned looks on the advertising guys' faces at that point?

Look, I'm sympathetic to the plight of toilet paper advertising companies. It's hard to design a commercial for a product that most everyone needs, but that you can't ever show being used for its actual purpose. Imagine if you had to do commercials for a restaurant, but you couldn't show people eating?  So yeah, they've got to have little kids being cute, or kittens, or babies, or cartoon/puppet bears, or whatever.  They can't even do those "soaking up ability" type commercials that tampons and paper towels do, with that mysterious blue water (Blue being the only color they could use that in no way suggestes actual human bodily fluids.) since people really don't want to think about what they're going to do with toilet paper.  They just want to think about buying it when they run out, even if hey use it for other things; wiping up the sink top or something, I don't know.

So the ad guys want to emphasize the softness, but they never want to go into any detail about how nicely it wipes things, or how much liquid it can absorb without soaking through and getting your hands wet, etc.  It's a thankless job, and I never said it was easy.  Plus Charmin costs more than other brands, with the selling point being the imaginary softness bonus.  How much logic do you want consumers using when they're considering that they'll be wiping their ass (or other delicate parts, if they're a girl) with the stuff?  So they've got to try to do something thematic for the big game, and not just their usual kids running in a field of flowers.  I'll give them points for trying.

But Jesus Constipated Christ, a bear mascot?  A quarterback accidentally touching it and being overcome with the softness? Announcers in voice over?  It was just ridiculous.  Fricking ridiculous. I may never shit again.

As for the game itself, my prediction was wrong about everything but the winner, but since I was wrong on the point spread (not that I bet on sports) I was basically wrong there also.  Carolina definitely played better than I thought they would, but in a weird way.  I thought they would get stuffed on the running game, but not so totally as they did, and would have just enough success that they'd keep at their "game plan" and get a few first downs, before failing when they tried to squeeze in short passes on the inevitable 3rd and 4 they'd perpetually face after running on 1st and 2nd down. Instead they ran on first down and inevitably had 2nd and 12, which not even the most hopelessly optimistic supporter of old fashioned "three yards and a cloud of dust" football could face and call another run on second down.  So New England's total success in stuffing the run forced Carolina into passing it a ton, and thus lead them to successful long passes that they'd have never tried otherwise.

I always like it when teams come in with some game plan that fails completely, and how that never seems to in any way effect the "conventional wisdom" of all the old time football coaches and announcers.   It's like for some teams/coaches it's more important to score brownie points with the people who say that teams simply must, "establish a ground game to set up the pass" than it is to win.  And as always, I wish there were a football writer or site that covered actual statistical realities between what they say and what actually happens.  Do teams really do better passing if they set it up with the run?  Is passing on play action fakes more effective than just passing normally?  I want excel spreadsheet analysis, I want tables and charts, I want long term statistical analysis.  I don't want more of the old boy style, "I remember this one game..." type of analysis that's all we get on TV now, and that probably has very little reflection of actual events in the sport.

That's why I find (good, technical) baseball writing so interesting, when they deconstruct the game and the techniques and styles rather than just going on what's always been done, without any actual evidence that it's true or the best way to go about things. And of course the Superbowl play by play guys were Phil Sims and Greg Gumble, two men who have never had an original thought between them. Tacking them on top of the decidedly amateurish game direction certainly didn't do anything to improve the quality of the viewing experience. I pretty much tuned them out, mentally at least, but Malaya spent much off the game (after the early part where she kept trying to flip over to see 30 seconds of Charmed during every break in play.)

I wouldn't say that I enjoyed the game, but it did have its bright spots.  It was close at the end, I'll give it that much. Carolina was closer than they had any right to be; the way they did nothing during the entire first half and kept giving NE great field position could/should easily have had it about 17-0 by the early 2nd quarter, and then they stupidly went for a two-point conversion twice, costing themselves 2 points in the 4th quarter.  Of course they lost by 3, but I wonder how confident and poised New England would have been on that last minute drive if it had been do or die, rather than knowing that they already had at least a tie and overtime in the bag.  Also, Carolina had 2 very long pass plays and one very long run for a touchdown.  They count the same, but such plays are very rare and essentially flukes.  New England didn't have any plays like that, for instance, despite enjoying much all around offensive success. Carolina had a few lucky big plays that almost offset NE's consistent superiority. Despite their offense's very up and down (mostly down) performance, they were in it, and only lost in the end due to their defense.  They couldn't cover and they didn't blitz, letting the NE QB sit back there and look around until he eventually found an open receiver.

They also exercised terrible clock management on their last drive, getting a first down inside the 20 with like 1:48 left, and calling a time out, and then throwing incompletions before scoring with over a minute to go. They had plenty of time outs (not that CBS let you know that, or about NE's time outs on their last drive. The in-game graphics, replays, etc were dreadful.) and could have run the clock down much further and still not been in a rush.  They had to think about NE coming back and moving into field goal range with three time outs and a QB who was picking Carolina apart effortlessly.  I certainly did at home, figuring they were screwed when they tied it up while leaving NE a minute to go.  And then their sir shanksalot kicker boots the KO out of bounds, giving it to NE practically in FG range already.

Of course any discussion of Sir Shanksalot must center on the NE kicker, who was damn lucky they didn't lose due to his foot, and that he got a last second kick to win it, after he missed two gimme kicks earlier in the game.  True, the second one was blocked, but only because he kicked it way too low. It practically hit the lineman in the helmet, FFS, and did hit the inside of his elbow, at least a foot too low to clear the blockers on a normal kicking effort, so all credit for the miss goes to the kicker.

For a while early on I could see the SB being a repeat of the AFC championship game, where NE dominated play against Indy for 3 quarters, but settled for a ton of short field goals and didn't take advantage of their great field position to put the game out of reach, and then had to sweat it out in the last minute when Indy finally managed to throw it more than half a dozen times in a row without an interception.

Which brings me to another question: so is Jake Delhomme really that much better than Payton Manning, or what? Is the air in New England heavier or slower or something?  I mean Manning was having the playoffs of all time, he's on a far better team, and he was horrible against NE, while Delhomme carved them up with big play after big play in the Superbowl.  Is it that NE's pass defense is unbeatable with the short passes and quick flash routes that Indy favored, but vulnerable to long bombs if the QB has time to throw them, as Delhomme did in the second half?

I don't care enough to ponder it further, but at least the game became relatively entertaining late in the 2nd quarter and then the 4th quarter, though to call it "the greatest superbowl ever," as one of the announcers did in the postgame show, is a bit of a stretch.  True, most SBs suck ass and are blow outs, so the competition for that title isn't real steep, but this was a very mediocre game, deadly boring for the first 27 minutes, that fortunately had about 10 really good minutes when the offenses came to life.

There was less talk about another honor, but this one surely had to feature the worst first quarter in Superbowl history. Negative yards for Carolina, numerous punts for both teams, zero good offensive plays, and the only offense at all was one drive by NE, which culminated in a missed field goal. Malaya and I were out grabbing food at Trader Joes and Safeway before the game, and got home with about 10 minutes to spare, causing me to miss some of the first couple of series while I was improving the frozen pizza we splurged (diet-wise) on.

And as we were eating and suffering through 1 yard runs and incomplete passes for the next hour, I kept thinking, "Well, good thing we hurried home in time for kick off."

Some of the most interesting stuff to happen during the Superbowl occurred at halftime. Sadly, I missed all of it.

Well, that's not entirely true; I was watching when they cut to the announcers and a high view of the field, just before kick off, which is what they always do when a streaker gets onto the field.  I always find it amusing how serious and upset the otherwise jovial and idiotic announcers get; treating some naked idiot on the field like it's as blasphemous as someone running up and pissing on the crucifix during a church service.  I suppose that's not far from the truth, given that 99% of the announcers live for nothing but the sport, and lots of them were ex-players as well, but it's still funny to hear them scold and scoff in horror.

Anyway, here's a shot of the guy; he's got the URL for a gambling website on his back, apparently GoldenPalace.com.  I'd never even consider gambling online, but I'm curious if they put hi up to it or he's one of the site owners or what. It's also obvious that he's not naked; he's got some sort of clear plastic thong on, though I have no idea if it's transparent in the front, or he's got a star-shaped ring like Janet had.

I like when streakers run and make the cops chase them.  It's just so comical to see authority figures flailing like that, a comedy goldmine that's been used by everyone from the old Keystone Cops movies to the Bad News Bears.  The cops like it too; it gives their little "we're in charge of everything and you're not" lives some meaning, when they finally get to pounce on the unarmed man, and feel all important as they cart him offstage. It's almost enough to let them forget about their failures that allowed him onto the field in the first place.

¤ The other big halftime story is about Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake.  We had the TV during halftime, but Malaya was in the other room and I was disinterested in the display, and was across the room on my computer, with my back turned to the TV.  I hadn't paid any attention to who was performing, since I didn't care.  I vaguely remembered hearing that Janet Jackson was going to be on it, and wondered how that would work.  I mean she hasn't had a hit in like 15 years; what's the going to sing?

So while I was surprised to hear the anthemic sounds of her 1989 hit Rhythm Nation coming from my TV a moment later, I wasn't really shocked.  What was shocking, and unseen by me, was her boobie, which made an appearance a few minutes later. She was singing some sort of flirtatious duet with human punchline Justin Timberlake, and at the climax he reached over the yanked off Janet's faux leather breastplate, revealing... something very odd.

"Every time an artist does something you think they sort of break the barrier, and it keeps getting more and more outrageous," said Tom Poleman, senior vice president of programming at New York City radio station Z100. "I think artists will keep on exploiting every opportunity they can get."

When Timberlake snatched off part of Jackson's bustier, revealing a breast clad only in a sun-shaped "nipple shield," the barrier was not broken, it was shattered before 89 million viewers.

Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell said in a statement, "Like millions of Americans, my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt." He promised an investigation, with potential fines of up to $27,500. If applied to each CBS station, the fine could reach the millions.

Despite the apparent premeditation — the display coincided exactly with Timberlake singing, "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song" — all involved denied that the peep show was planned.

So that's what the thing was.  I looked at the photos on Yahoo, and I was like, "What the hell has she got on her nipple?" Another article says it's a nipple piercing ornament, so in theory at the center of it there is some actual nipple visible, with the rest of the tender flesh nubbin ringed by the metal star-shaped thingie.  Interesting.

Looking at the photos, it's hard to say if Janet is in on the gig.  She looks pretty surprised by things, and covers herself up.  However, the article goes on to quote other things that make it sound pretty much pre-arranged.  Plus, why on earth would she have some weird star-shaped thing over her nipple if said nipple was to remain covered by clothing?

Although Timberlake issued a statement shortly after the show blaming the debacle on a "wardrobe malfunction," in comments to the syndicated show "Access Hollywood" right after the incident, he didn't seem too sorry.

"Hey man, we love giving you all something to talk about," he said, laughing.

Jackson's official Web site was bombarded with angry postings. Her spokeswoman, Jennifer Holiner, said a red lace garment was supposed to remain when Timberlake tore off the outer covering.

She said she was not sure whether Jackson's medieval-looking nipple decoration was meant to be seen, but added that the singer does wear such jewelry.

So she wears this sort of thing all the time, at least according to her spokesperson.  Is this the newest coming fashion trend now, allowing chicks to combine the fetishistic nipple piercing trend, with the ability to flash any time they want to, all without actually being naked?

Here's a series of photos, if you're like me and didn't watch it in the first place.

Earlier in the routine, when they're dancing and flirting and such.

Here he's reaching across, just before the unveiling.

Woot!  Boobie!  On TV! Whatever; it's about 15 years past the date and age when this would shock me.

That booby thing looks big and awkward to me, but I don't have boobies and aren't related to Michael Jackson, so what do I know.  Pretty scary make up Janet's sporting there too.

It looks like Janet's just looking down here and realizing that one of her kids is poking out, assuming she didn't have it all planned from the start.  There's no photo of the moment of shock crossing her face, unfortunately.  Assuming there was such a moment. 

On another topic, god do male entertainers have it easy.  You look at the elaborate thing Janet's got on, fitted, contoured, specially made.  She spent hours getting her hair straightened and layered just right, her make up done (no matter how witch-like she looks in some other shots) etc.

And then there's Justin, his head buzzed like a freshly-shorn sheep, baggy pants, ugly shoes, casual jacket and shirt, unshaven... generally looking like any McD's employee you might see on the weekend in an auto parts store, buying some stick on chrome to rice up his Tercel.

They don't exactly look triumphant and giddy with the success of their antics, do they?

Post rip, and Janet looks far from calm and happy about things to me. She looks downright resentful, which might be her best defense if the "fined $27k per station" thing starts to come down on the guttering flames of her career.

But hey, considering that she hasn't really had a hit album in over a decade, and would be as forgotten as any other pop star of the 80's by now, if not for her blood relations, there's some motivation for you. Superbowl appearance, massive attention, how best to seize it and become famous and hot again?  Public nudity, anyone?

2003 Superbowl

September 23, 2002

The Superbowl is here this year, and it'll be the second time I've worked at one of those, which is sort of cool.  I mean people pay $1000+ a ticket from scalpers to be there, so I should be happy being there for free, right?  The last time the Superbowl was here was in 1998, I believe, and my main memories are of blisters.  I had new shoes and due to the enormous traffic crunch I had to park way up a hill from the stadium, and walk down.  It was about 90 degrees that day, and I was stuck selling pizza, rather than soda which guys made a fortune on.  My feet were killing me, the pizza ran totally out by halftime, and I just left, trudging back up the hill with a double-legged limp and going home to take a cold bath and soak my feet.

I hope to improve upon that memory this year...

January 13, 2003

I have to go down to the stadium today and get registered and an ID badge and other such crap for the Superbowl.  It's become a huge security event, and they aren't allowing anyone to park in the stadium lot whatsoever, the day of the event.  Because um, terrorists hate football.

The trolley stop in the parking lot is even going to have cops at it, and they won't let anyone off there who doesn't have a game ticket, or approved ID. I have no idea what I'll be doing at the event.  I would like to sell programs or souvenirs, either of which is far more profitable (at special events, especially the SuperBowl) than vending food, as I usually do.  Ordinarily you can't switch around between departments.  You have to stay doing the same thing, or you change and lose all of your seniority.  However since they are hiring hundreds of brand new people to fill out every department, it seems stupid that I, with over ten years of seniority, couldn't sell programs for one game.  When it's a special event, and we're all getting paid different (higher) amounts than usual, there are hundreds of new employees, etc.

Obviously the thing to sell is anything collectible.  Programs do an unbelievable business, but so do souvenirs, since virtually everyone there takes home a t-shirt or cap or something to commemorate the event.  The souvenir guys in general make a fortune at football games, but not so much at baseball or other events, and they have to work about 3 hours longer (get there earlier, leave much later) than I do selling food, which is why I don't do that all the time.

When the All Star game was here in 1994, the programs were going for I believe $7, and apparently all of the program sellers put their sales into a pool, from which they earn commission back based on the total sales.  They all took home around $650 that day, I heard.  And that was years ago, with lower commission, and I'm sure SuperBowl programs will cost over $10.

I'm not really looking forward to it, despite the fact that scalpers routinely charge thousands of dollars for a ticket.  Just another noisy, crowded football game, IMHO.  I'd watch it on TV if I were home, but being there isn't any different than a normal game, other than the fans being much richer and less interested in who wins, and much more ready to chop off your head if you happen to block their view of a play, given what they paid for their seats.

January 14, 2003

I did not go to the stadium and get my SuperBowl registration stuff, though I suppose I'll have to do so today. I did get a big information packet in the mail, which has about 10 pages of this and that, mostly detailing the ridiculous overkill of security they are going for at this sporting event.

The employee parking for the event is at... the airport!  From where there will be shuttle buses.  If you don't know San Diego's geography, the airport is right on the harbor, about 10 miles from the stadium.  But there is a lot of parking there, so I guess it's the best they could do.  As that's an absurd concept, and I would drive right past the stadium on my way to the airport, which is farther from the stadium than my house is, I suppose I'll be taking the trolley, which has a stop right in the stadium parking lot, and another about a block from my apartment.  There isn't even any pick up or drop off allowed on Friar's road, out in front of the stadium.  I have no idea how they'll be doing that, short of closing off the entire road, which is 3 lanes each way and has dozens of apartment complexes and huge shopping areas just across the street from the stadium. I suspect it's just a preemptive way to try and keep employees from any sort of convenient arrival at work.

The info packet goes on and on about how we must be sure to be there early, and allow plenty of time for security, which will be equivalent to airport security. They don't actually say to expect a full cavity search, but the "eat a light breakfast" suggestion is probably a hint.

There will be metal detectors and enforced emptying of pockets, and we're allowed no electronic devices whatsoever (even cameras).  That's been the policy basically since 9/11, I guess since terrorists busy infiltrating the stadium as an employee would need cell phones to receive their murderous instructions.  You'll note that the fans have no such prohibitions, and most of them bring in cell phones, digital cameras, detonators, plastique, etc.  Well, Raider fans do anyway.

In light of these silly rules, it's not surprising that 2/3 of the employees have cell phones with them at work, so obviously they just nod and smile and walk past the security guys with their phones in their pockets.  I imagine I'd do the same if I had a cell phone.  I would smuggle in my camera some time, but there's nothing of any interest to take a picture of there.  And anyway, it's not like smuggling is required when fans can bring in anything they want; just give something to a friend and get it back once they are inside.

If I, at any point, begin to become excited about having to, I mean "getting to" work at the biggest sporting event in the US, I'll let you know.

So I finally went down and began my SuperBowl employee registration process.  It was less than thrilling, I just filled out a sheet of paper with my personal info (name, DoB, SS#, race, gender, driver's license number, felony convictions, etc) and then went into a trailer where they checked my driver's license again, and there I waited a bit. When it was my turn I went into the side room where they had two PCs set up with digicams on tripods on a desk, aimed at the two chairs.  They checked my driver's license again (yes, that's 3x in 10 minutes) and took my picture.  As usual when I get an ID photo taken, my eyes were half closed.  I'm glad it's all done with digicams now, where they can easily take another one before they print it out.  The alternative would be me looking narcoleptic on every form of ID I hold.

Anyway, today she took a second one, I think more for the purposes of letting the FBI get a good look when they scanned me into the database, rather than so I'd have a pretty photo on my badge. And that was that.  I did not get a badge or any sort of ID though.  I assume they run background checks on things, look up criminal records, frequency of travel to Afghanistan, any recent purchases of metric tons of ammonium nitrate, that sort of thing.  And assuming that checks out I'll get my real ID at some later date, but before the SuperBowl.

There was no line to enter any frequently-subversive websites you run, so I didn't have to lie about that.  If they do check into it though... hi, Mr. gun-toting mindless authoritarian government drone FBI person.

I'd love to make some joke about the sort of thing they tell you not to joke about when going through airport security, but just on the outside chance that someone with a typically lacking government type of sense of humor is somehow reading this at some point... I won't.

I have, however, been thinking of the humor in talking football while in the security check line.  Terms like "long bomb" and "explosive running game" and "there's four pounds of plastique taped to my left leg and a timer set for halftime" would use common terms in a football discussion, and you're supposed to be talking football before the Superbowl. But somehow I think they would get the security all jumpy due to the curious double meanings.

Just driving in to the stadium parking lot today, there were security guards writing down everyone's name and their car's license plate number.  I have no idea what good that could possibly do, but that goes for 99% of security measures I see.  Like the Israeli security consultant about US airport security, paraphrasing, "They are selling the illusion of security, rather than the actuality."

January 27, 2003

In theory I'd have a lot to write about, having attended the Superbowl yesterday, even if I was just there in a menial/working mode.  However there is really nothing interesting to talk about, even with my first hand knowledge. It was like any other football game, one of well over one hundred I've worked at there over the years. Just a slightly larger but much less enthusiastic crowd.  The biggest difference was the ridiculous glut of security people.  Every aisle had two ushers, there were hundreds of rent a cops walking around, and hundreds more in uniform cops, and I'm sure that many more plain clothes cops and soldiers and god knows what else.

I'm not sure at what point I began to more than subconsciously wish for a terrorist strike of some non-lethal nature.  It wasn't when I had to get off the trolley a stop before the stadium since they weren't allowing employees to disembark at the actual stadium stop.  It wasn't when I had to wait around for 20 minutes to take a shuttle bus (glorified mini-van) into the stadium to get to my work check in.  It wasn't when I had to wait there for almost two hours to get my badge, since the computerized badge/photo processing operation was running like a Russian bread line.  It wasn't when I was still two hours early, due to the ridiculously early check in time, and had nothing to do but sit around inside the rather small vending stand I was working out of, since we weren't allowed to walk around freely.  And it wasn't the fifteenth time I had some security guy stop me to check my ID, while I was in the middle of selling laughably-overpriced soda in crappy plastic souvenir cups.

So I can't pick out any particular annoyance that pushed me over the edge, but with the very hot weather, the pushing/milling crowds, and the ridiculously omni-present security, by the time famously semi-talented Canadian Shania Twain, or possibly Celine Dion, emerged to sing the US National Anthem, I was quite hopeful that some high explosives would make the cement run with the blood of the infidels.

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