Super Bowl 45- The Day Live Music Died?

If you follow me on Twitter and/or haven't hidden my status updates on Facebook (yet), you probably already know what I'm gonna say in this post. Last night was the Super Bowl, and when the football game wasn't interrupting, we all were hoping to be entertained by commercials and music. In preparation for live-blogging the Academy Awards at the end of the month, I thought I'd provide some commentary about last night. Step two for preparing will be figuring out to actually update a live blog entry. Without further ado:

The Judging Life's Superbowl Commentary

• Lea Michele sings "America The Beautiful." This is probably one of the most boring patriotic songs we have. Everyone knows the girl can sing, so therefore any aspect of the performance that was lackluster can be blamed on the song, right?
• Christina Aguilera sings the National Anthem. People, she messed up like three words. Hate on her if you want, at least she sounded decent while doing it! If you would like examples of how the National Anthem SHOULD sound, though, I'd invite you to listen to Jennifer Hudson, or the gold standard version by Whitney Houston. If those don't get your diva hand going, I don't know what will.
• The Commercials. I was incredibly underwhelmed by the commercials this year. The only ones that I remember enough to say I enjoyed are the Doritos commercial where he brings the grandfather back to life, the Pepsi Max commercial where the dude's wife knocks the female runner out with a full can of soda, and the VW/Darth Vader commercial (this link is for the minute-long commercial... a lot better than the 30 second version). The rest were either really bad, or only minimally funny.
• Snickers was on point last year with its Betty White and Aretha Franklin commercials, but they missed the mark this year by trying to do the same thing in a less funny way. Proof positive that you can't just stick with something because it worked once (or twice).
• Go Daddy also sucks.
• Halftime Show. I'm a fan of the Black Eyed Peas. Their music is incredibly catchy, and tops my list of fun songs that are great to sing along with/dance to at clubs. Plus, my apartment number last year was 3008, so "Boom Boom Pow" was my anthem. Having said that...
• The BEP are not good live. Feel free to blame it on microphone problems, but I don't think a correctly-functioning microphone could have saved us from Fergie's... "singing."
• I want Taboo's light-up suit. I have no idea when I'd wear it, though.
• Oh, who am I kidding? I'd rock that ish at all times.
• I was really confused when "Sweet Child of Mine" started playing.
• Then I was happy when Slash appeared.
• Then I was sad when Fergie started singing.
• When "O.M.G" started, my first thought was "did they seriously hide the fact that Usher was going to be performing with them?" Then he appeared, and I was impressed with the secrecy
• Then Usher DIDN'T SING. They brought in Usher to be a background dancer for a minute and a half!
• The commercial for the movie Rio makes it look an awful lot like "Happy Feet 2: Fiesta en México."
• I missed Cameron Diaz feeding A-Rod. Luckily, the internets know entertainment, and it's already on YouTube! Hopefully this link doesn't get taken down too soon.

That's all I have! Did I miss any good commercials, or other excellent moments in judgement? Feel free to provide your own commentary in the comments section below.

Jingle Jingle!

I don't think any working experience is truly complete without stories of a coworker that just doesn't seem to be "all there." I'm lucky with my current job... My desk is situated next to one of the most absent-minded people I've ever met.

My coworker doesn't make it into the office until 10. At the earliest. His presence is always announced by the jingling of keys when he's about 20 feet away from his office door. That's about how long it takes him to fish out the right key. I'm thinking he played the part of Filch in a previous job.

He seems to be paranoid, too... it's rare for him to keep his door unlocked. Or open. Even when he's in his office. I'm not quite sure what he thinks he has to hide from the rest of our division, but it must be something pretty good.

He is rarely in his office for more than an hour. I have no idea what sends him on his merry way so often... it's probably a mixture of meetings, catching up with scientists in other areas, or looking for more keys to add to his key ring. Oh, and going to the cafeteria to get food. This is one of his favorite daily activties. Both breakfast and lunch come from the cafeteria. Getting the food into his office, though, is still a very challenging task.

Then, there's the printing. The printer in my area is shared by 13 people. 99.99999% of all printing jobs are from this one coworker. And it isn't that everyone else rarely prints... it's mostly that he is printing documents at all times. Our printer runs out of paper daily, and ink weekly. He also has a tendency to print stuff and leave it on the printer for hours before going to pick it up. The skill I'm most impressed with is his ability to print when he's not in the office. I've heard the printer going at 9:30, and then half an hour later, he rolls into the office, grabs the stuff off the printer, and jingle-jingles into his office.



An accurate interpretation of his office thanks to all of his printing.

My favorite part comes at the ends of some work days. The door opens, he saunters out and closes the door behind him, making sure it's locked. After taking five steps away from his door, he remembers that he forgot something in his office. He returns to his office, checks the door again only to find that (surprise!) it's locked. He sighs (something that he does more often than regular breathing), reaches into his pocket, jingle-jingles his keys to find the right one, and re-enters his office to grab whatever is is that he forgot.

The moral of the story? Locking your office door during the day does nothing but cause problems.