Today is all about football so let’s begin with a certain football team based in the Midwest that’s going to the Super Bowl and I’m not talking about the Colts and their (ironically) horse-faced quarterback!!  While there was no way I would have been able to use my tickets and actually get up there these past two weekends, it was probably for the best since I am recuperating from being sick since Saturday.  Here’s where I begin to question the existence of a God.  What kind of God would allow one of his minions to be so weakened from illness that he couldn’t ingest  a beer in celebration of the football team he roots for making it to the Super Bowl for the first time in two decades?!

By the way, while you all know I love my hockey, there's few things on TV that I like better than seeing a football game played in a blizzard, especially in hi-def!

One more note about the Bears.  When I lived in Chicago from 1995-2000, the Bears were quite bad under Death Spiral Dave Wannstedt's regime and his assclown boss Michael McCaskey.  It was not a fun time to be a Bears fan, although one nice aspect was I moved up rather quickly on the season ticket waiting list and wound up only waiting 8 years.  At the same time, the Packers (Chicago's mortal enemy) were flourishing under Brett Favre.  This enabled the native transplanted cheeseheads to become quite emboldened in our fair city, wearing their green and yellow with not much fear of retribution.  My only hope is they suffer at least half of what we did during the Dark Ages of the 1990s.  Now when they want to see a Packers game, they should have to seek out underground speakeasys in Chicago if they want to band together, as opposed to inhabiting popular bars and denigrating the Bears name in public.   

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While not much in advertising surprises me much more in terms of how much it’s seeped up in our daily lives, the current issue of ESPN Magazine crossed yet another line, at least in terms of magazines that I have subscribed to.  My ESPN subscription was actually free, as I would never knowingly financially support the station responsible for fucking over the National Hockey League (a long rant for a different day).  While having magazines covered in a paper-bound advertisement or having a partial ad that is easily ripped off has been commonplace for quite some time, ESPN really has blurred the line for crass commercialism and taken it one step further.  What they have done with this latest issue (see picture below of the front and back cover) is to create a mock cover of their magazine.  When you first glance at it, you think “OK, Ladanian Tomlinson is on the cover. Cool. Topical, and probably the league’s best running back right now.”  Upon closer glance, you realize it’s a flippin’ advertisement for some kind of vitamin water.  They did the same thing for the back of the magazine with Brian Urlacher.  The actual cover with Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson isn’t revealed until you flip the page and see the same ESPN masthead. 

Tacky.