The commercials and halftime show for Super Bowl XLVII certainly were not good enough to take the stench of defeat away; nevertheless they were pretty good.

Car commercials were all good for a change, rather than the frequently bland ones, or those relying on special effects. The Dodge Ram commercial was a nice look at dedication to hard work, back by a Paul Harvey commentary on farmers. I think the winner for cars was the Audi commercial, with the kid going solo to the prom. Toyota was a near tie, with Kaley Cuoco on the roof as a Genie( I also liked the promo for BBT, with Leonard dressed wrong. Kaley looks good even in football gear ). Mercedes was my third place pick. Any company using "Sympathy for the Devil" as a score and Willem DaFoe as the devil, in a Bourbon Street diner setting ala "Angel Heart" is a winner. Dodge at fourth place, only because it was so serious. KIA came in last, because I think KIA's suck after my two experiences driving them, but mostly because Space Babies was not as funny as Audi, they didn't have Kaley in it, and it wasn't as creative as Mercedes.

The top place for food commercials goes to Nabisco. An Oreos battle in the library was just genius, and completely unexpected. The Rock's Milk commercial is a very close second place; way to go Dwayne! Dorito's goat commercial was third. After that would be the two Bud Light Voodoo commercials, then the (tired of it now...) "Crackin' Gungam Style".

The odds and ends had some great stuff; the commercial for Axe having an astronaut beat out the shark-punching lifeguard was great, as was the Speed Stick "I'd fold your panties any day" and the Gildan T-shirt as well. I didn't like the Sketchers ad at all; never deprive a Cheetah of food, you jerks. Also was not awed by the GoDaddy bit; the premise was funny, but it played like a bad SNL sketch. Seth Rogan I rarely find funny at all, so his bit falls off the bottom of my list.

My overall winner was the "Two Broke Girls" pole dance number, with the Budweiser Clydesdale a bare point behind. Teary eyed on both, for totally different reasons of course. I have yet to see anything as good as the FedEx commercial from Super Bowl XL; the cave man with the jerk boss was not only funny, but described my former Materials Manager, Dave Pyne to "T". They folowed that one up with the giant pigeon commercial, equally genius. Top slot ever still belongs to EDS for the cowboys herding cats.

Regarding the halftime show, as usual the speed and efficiency of the stage hands was epic. I loved the use of a video floor, and the synch of video to dancers when the short wall came up was perfect. Pyro was understated for a Super Bowl show, making it that much more effective, as you could see the precision of the opening squib/torch progression forming the outlines, without losing the lighting in the resulting haze. I especially like the wedge lead guitar with showers; gotta love a guitar player holding something shooting a jet of burning potassium chlorate, charcoal and aluminum powder out of both ends.

The elevator lifts for the dancers near the end executed perfectly! And while I am not a huge Beyonce fan musically, she has a lovely voice, a great figure, and she totally owned that crowd. Unlike many performers she also is not afraid of them, performing within easy reach. I only saw one person actually touch her, very gently. I would love to see how those sets are constructed, to roll without damaging the turf; presumably there is ply under them.