It’s been 11 degrees-below-zero here in Colorado for the last few days.  That’s Fahrenheit of course.  And no, I won’t even try to convert that to Celsius because we saw how well the Roman Numeral thing went earlier in the week.  And everyone knows that Celsius is the Roman Numerals of Temperature.  And please don’t even get me started on the Kelvin scale.  Because you know what that would result in?  An Absolute Zero!  (Hee hee hee – I’m funny even in Kelvin land!  And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should look it up because me and the science-y guys are laughing our a$$e$ off right about now.) 

But on the bright side, there have been some fun learning experiences amidst all this bitterly cold weather. 

For one, everyone has been walking around like they’re in a bad Heart music video from the 80’s …And the full moon that hangs over these dreams in the mist… but only from the ankles down.  Because when the sun starts to warm up the icy ground, a weird six-inch fog boils up and floats across every open space.  Cue dream sequence:  These dreams go on when I close my eyes…Every second of the night I live another life…These dreams that sleep when it’s COLD OUTSIDE…Every moment I’m awake the further I’m away.*

The second fun thing I’ve noticed in this cold weather are the sun dogs.  While it’s not unusual to see sun dogs in Colorado, typically they’re just little patches of colored light waaaaay up in the sky.  But the ones I’ve seen lately look like parentheses-shaped rainbows around the sun.  This atmospheric phenomenon is actually called an ice halo.  (Or parhelion.  And you know how I remember that?  Because there’s a song about it.  From the 80’s, natch.  By Slade.  It goes like this: Hey there, Par-hel-i-on, lying there in the sun.  All things to everyone.  Run, runaway.) Still your momma aren’t I, science-y guys?! 

And the THIRD fun thing about this weather?  You get to discuss what happened to the Donner Party during similar weather 100+ years ago.  I’m not sure why it even came up (I may have had something to do with it, or maybe not, I’m not admitting to anything here), but said conversation veered straight into a mention of cannibalism (nummy, num, num).

Sonny – in a clearly horrified voice – joined the conversation with, “You mean they ATE people?  Like…what did they make?  A STEW?!?”

Hmmmm.  Now why would STEW be the first dish that comes to mind when discussing cannibalism ?  (Or ‘anthropophagy’ – this one’s for you, science-y guys!)  When I picture cannibals from the Donner Party, I don’t picture them sitting around a cozy fire dressed in winter bonnets and wool shawls eating stew off tin plates, all civilized-like.  I picture them wild-eyed and dressed in rags gnawing on a hairy-leg-still-wearing-a-sock.  But STEW??  That’s just weird.  Because really, if they had all the fixin’s for stew, maybe they coulda just added a few more potatoes.  And left the hairy legs where they belonged.

Speaking of hairy legs, this blog should actually have been titled: FOUR Fun Things About The Bitter Cold with the fourth fun thing being ‘no leg-shaving.’  There’s no leg shaving in the bitter cold.  There’s no need because no one sees your bare legs since you wear leggings morning, noon and night.  Also hairy legs conserve body heat AND dissuade the cannibals.  Hopefully.

*”These Dreams” by Heart, released in 1986 from their 1985 self-titled album.  And??  I’m winning.  Still winning.  And?  STILL WINNING in this “80’s song for every moment in life” game that we play.  Of which I am the queen.  And the inventor.  And?  THE WINNER!

Has enough been said about this year’s Super Bowl* commercials yet?  Naw – I didn’t think so either!  We’re so much alike!!  Freaky.

And now?  Now it’s my turn to weigh in on the commercials. 

But before I get started, I need to let you know that I’m a marketer by trade…Wait.  Does ‘marketer’ make me sound like I go to the market a lot?  ‘Cause I don’t want it to.  I mean I DO go to the market a lot, but I don’t want you to think that’s what I do for a living.  Because right now, I don’t do ANYTHING for a living – thanks for bringing it up stink eye, stink eye.  But if I DID do something for a living, it wouldn’t be going to the market.  Rather, it would be MARKETING!  Phew!  Glad we figured that out.  Wait.  Unless ‘marketing’ makes it sound like I go to the market to do quite a bit of marketing.  ‘Cause I do, but…and the Super Bowl commercials are a marketer’s Nirvana. 

In addition to being a marketer at heart…if not by current trade – WILL YOU STOP BRINGING IT UP ALREADY!?  Also, does ‘marketing’ make it sound like a horse might be involved?  Like I gallop on my horse to the market??  ‘Cause I don’t, and I just wanted to clarify.  In case you were confused…me no likey football.  Which means I pay extra SPECIAL attention to the Super Bowl commercials.  And it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that the commercials this year were a little…meh.  Particularly those during the first half.

Professional Opinion, peeps.  Nothin’ personal.

And admittedly, I didn’t see ALL the commercials this year because at some point we switched to Puppy Bowl TEN.* (Where there were some pretty decent commercials in their own right.  Case in point?  The one for the three-pronged, foldable cane called the HurryCane.  Get it?  HURRYcane?  See – good, right??)

Anywhoooo, what was UP with ALL the car commercials?  The Volkswagen one was fairly cute with the German engineers getting their wings and pooping rainbows.  But the rest of them were very frequent and very annoying.  Especially that one with the Muppets.  I don’t even remember what kind of car was being advertised.  All I remember were the Muppets.  Because WHO is actually still doing stuff with MUPPETS?!?  Who would buy…a car…that was advertised by MUPPETS???  In fact, I posed this very question to my family, and Sissy replied, “Uh, Muppet Lovers?” 

Yes!  But who EXACTLY are the Muppet Lovers?  Who’s left in this world that’s a Muppet Lover?!  Octogenarians?  And are they buying a lot of cars??  I’d love to see the Market Research behind this.  The hard numbers that prove octogenarian Muppet Lovers are this car’s target audience.  Better yet, show me the transcripts from the Focus Group at the Senior Center where people were shouting out Kermit!  and Miss Piggy! when asked who they’re most likely to buy a car from in the near future.

Ok.  I’ll move on now, and stop being so negative because those Muppet-y Marketers HAVE jobs and I don’t.  But alls I’m sayin’ is that the Muppet thing seemed a little risky in terms of a marketing strategy.  That’s it.  Done.  Ok, zipping it.  Zipped!

And then there were those commercials that – to my complete and utter horror – actually made me tear up.  What?!  WHAT??  There’s no crying in football!!  But I gotta say, that “Every soldier deserves a hero’s welcome” commercial got me right here.  In my icy, judgmental, marketing heart.  As did the Honda one where Bruce Willis tells me, personally, to hug everyone in the room.  (Which I did.  Because I do what Bruce Willis tells me to do.  Every time.) 

And hows-about that T-Mobile commercial?  The one with the whistling??  That drove the dog batshit, so you now owe me BIG TIME, T-Mobile. 

And let’s pause right here for a grammar lesson, shall we?  My English Major Mother…did it almost sound like I was trying to break into that “I am the very model of a modern major-general” song from The Pirates of Penzance?  ‘Cause I wasn’t.  It just maybe sounded that way…always told me the rule is, “Less in quantity; Fewer in number.”  (She say’s nem-bah ‘cause she’s from New Hampshire, but you can just say ‘number’ regular-like if you want.)  Which means Soda Stream and spokesgal Scarlet Johansen were a teensy bit off with their slogan, “Less sugar; Less bottles.”  Because the Modern English Major Mother General might say instead, “Less sugar; FEWER bottles.”

Speaking of bottles, can you IMAGINE how much drinking was going on during the Super Bowl??  Which leaves me particularly puzzled as to why Scientology would pay a MINT to air a commercial for…Scientology.  Are drunkards with their faces painted blue really their target market, spiritually speaking??

Finally, a word on that Microsoft commercial about technology: http://youtu.be/qaOvHKG0Tio (#empowering).  Wow.  Just…wow. 

Microsoft, will you hire me?  I’m a marketer…and I’d love do some marketing…but I’m not doing any of that right now.  Thanks for bringing it up!  Stink eye, stink eye.

*Who knew Roman Numerals were so incendiary?  I heard from several people yesterday about how I got it wrong and that it was actually Puppy Bowl TEN, not Puppy Bowl ONE HUNDRED – and Stupid Bowl FORTY-EIGHT, not Stupid Bowl SIXTY-EIGHT as I had originally reported: https://newstayathomemom.com/?p=2555.  But you know what’s particularly funny about that?  No one corrected me on the STUPID Bowl part!  Heh-heh-heh.   But back to Numeral-Gate.  I hate Roman Numerals even more now that they made me look like an a$$.  And who’s calling themselves ‘Numerals’ nowadays anyway?!  The word ‘Numerals’ is just soooo snotty.  Hey, Numerals!  Nellie Olsen called and wants her huge snot-nosed hair bow and frilly pantaloons back, ya snots.  Me?  I’m just a Laura Ingalls Wilder down-home ‘Numbers’ kinda gal.  No hoity-toity ‘Numerals’ for me.  Case closed.

Yes, you knew I was gonna go there.  But before we even get started on that, I have to state for the record that I hate Roman Numerals.  If football is an AMERICAN sport, why are we using ROMAN numerals to tell us where we’re at here??  Because I don’t get Roman Numerals.  Not now, not ever.  They’re too much like math.  In fact, if you put pi-to-the-tenth-decimal-place after the words ‘Super Bowl,’  I’d like it slightly better.  Metric conversions after the word ‘Super Bowl?’  Yep, still better than Roman Numerals.  Because making me translate numbers – in the form of letters – back into numbers – so that I can add them up in my native language?!  Utterly stupid.  And that’s why I secretly refer to this event as the Stupid Bowl. 

So…where were we headed until I did my Roman Numeral diatribe?  Oh, that’s right.  We were talking about yesterday’s Stupid Bowl.  Stupid Bowl Sixty-Eight* to be exact.

First off, what the BLEEP was Joe Namath wearing??  Hey Joe!  Liberace called from beyond-the-grave where he just rolled over, and he wants his coat back!  You shoulda just stuck with the pantyhose and the Noxzema face cream, because now PETA is gunnin’ for your cross-dressing a$$!

And that part – pretty much right there at the very beginning??  Well, Fur Coat McGee’s SECOND coin toss would be the very beginning.  So right after THAT.  Where Peyton Manning watches the ball go sailing off to his right, while he rolls his eye like a big Doberhuahua?  That part was totally awful to witness.  Totally.  Awful.  Uh…Omaha!, Omaha!, we have a problem.

Now you have to understand that I only used the Stupid Bowl this year as an excuse to crochet a bunch of orange-and-blue crap.  (Because when do you ever have an excuse to crochet orange-and-blue scarves?  Boot cuffs??  Never.  Good excuse, see?)  And I don’t really care about the football end of it.  But even I was p.o.’d about that ball-sailing-off-into-space move.

But perhaps it wasn’t the bad football playing that did the Broncos in?  ‘Cause I saw some bad ref-ing, so maybe that was the problem?  In fact, at one point, I saw the ref call the Broncos for “traveling.”  Admittedly, I don’t know much about football, but trust me when I say I’ve spent all winter watching 6th grade girls play basketball.  And I’ve seen a LOT of traveling.  And I know the international ref symbol for traveling when I see it.  And I coulda sworn the Broncos weren’t traveling.

But enough about football during the football game.  ‘Cause we have GOT to discuss the half-time show.  Because when the football game isn’t about the commercials, it’s about the half-time show, right? 

It’s my personal opinion that Bruno Mars was a class act with an olde timey Ricci Ricardo nightclub vibe.   But the Red Hot Chili Peppers?  Wack.  And what was on Head Pepper’s legs?  It looked like support hose, but with cartoon panels.  It reminded me of those tat sleeves you can get at Halloween – that make your arms look like you have tattoos all up and down them.  Except Head Pepper’s leg thingies weren’t as sheer as tat sleeves.  And they were on his legs, not his arms.  Ok, so nothing like Halloween faux tat sleeves, but puzzling-as-a-fashion-choice nonetheless.

And that’s pretty much it.  That’s all I got for Stupid Bowl Sixty-Eight.  Because right about point 36 for the Seahawks, Hubby was so disgusted that he took his Broncos shirt off, put his Eagles shirt on, and we switched to Puppy Bowl X**.  (THEY do Roman Numerals too.  I’m so MAD!  LEAVE THE POOR PUPPIES OUT OF IT!)

But speaking of the Eagles…did anyone catch that part where the camera kept panning to that eagle on the sidelines?  That was weird.  Since PETA was there checking on Joe’s jacket, they shoulda checked into that eagle thing as well.  That didn’t seem right. 

*See?  I have to do the math for you TOO, don’t I??  In Roman Numeral Land we all know that X = 10, L = 50, V=5, and I = 1.  Does the sick feeling in my stomach mean that there should be some subtraction in this problem…or that I have the value for X wrong?  Does X really equal 100 and you’re supposed to subtract all the letters listed after X?!  Hmmmm.  No.  No, I’m pretty sure X only equals 100 when it’s listed all by itself; and X equals 10 when it’s listed WITH other letters.  So, ignoring all subtraction and just working on the sunny side of the street, the problem looks something like this: 10+50+5+1+1+1 = 68.  Stupid Bowl 68.  Have I mentioned that I HATE Roman Numerals?!  Gah!  In English next time, please.

**The X here refers to 100.  Because you need to remember that arcane rule: when X is by itself, it equals 100.  So we’re talking about Puppy Bowl 100.  And while on the surface it would seem puzzling that they would have MORE Puppy Bowls than Stupid Bowls, it’s important to note that they actually got the idea for Stupid Bowl FROM Puppy Bowl.  Also?  The Puppy Bowl is so cute they sometimes play it twice a year.  So Puppy Bowl 100 makes perfect sense.  On a more personal note, I still DETEST Roman Numerals but I think I’m finally getting the hang of them.