Not since Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction has one Super Bowl yielded so many silly controversies. Three days after the big game ended in stunning fashion, tidbits continue to trickle out, some significant and others less so.
Four, however, stand out and are worth mentioning.
Incident! Tucson viewers get a little full-frontal male nudity: This one is making the rounds, and it's just too weird. After the Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald streaked into the end zone, fans in the southern Arizona city saw a little more streaking, so to speak. On the Comcast broadcast of the game, viewers "enjoyed" between 10-30 seconds of full-frontal male nudity, courtesy of porn star Evan Stone (who, strangely, looks a lot like Packers linebacker A.J. Hawk). "KVOA will continue to investigate what happened to our clean signal and make sure our viewers get answers," said a station rep. A link to the extremely NSFW video clip is here, if that's your thing.
Upside: We'll never have to hear about Janet Jackson's nipple again.
Downside: Lots of little kids will never think of the "ol' pigskin" the same.
Incident! Milwaukee Journal Sentinel declares Cardinals the winner: Memo to JSOnline, "Dewey Defeats Truman" called and wants its headline back. For a brief time, our local paper declared on its site's front page that "Fitzgerald rallies Arizona past Pittsburgh in thriller." That kind of sloppy gaffe was semi-excusable during the days of print deadlines. In 2009, it appears the reporter was spending the remaining 2:33 making a nacho run instead of watching the end of the game.
Upside: Probably not that many people saw the mistake, since if you're relying on a Milwaukee newspaper for your Super Bowl news, you probably don't know how to use the Web.
Downside: Sites like Deadspin.com archive these flubs to reinforce the downward spiral of quality at our local paper.
Incident! Vizio ad crashes Web site: Toward the end of the game, budget HDTV manufacturer ran an ad extolling the virtues of its products. The ad was good enough to get me to click over to its site. Apparently, lots of other people were intrigued, too, as the site promptly crashed. I checked back an hour later and vizio.com was still down. I haven't been back.
Upside: Apparently, Super Bowl advertising works.
Downside: If you're spending $3 million on a 30-second ad, you probably should make sure your Web site can handle the traffic.
Incident! 3-D promotion looks 2D, blurry: A sales associate at Target on Sunday handed me a pair of 3-D glasses so I could watch an ad for a Dreamworks movie, Sobe juice and a show on NBC pop out of the screen. Indeed, I gave it a whirl. And indeed, it sucked. Maybe a few scenes jumped toward me a little bit, but most of the action just looked blurry, off-register and weird. I wasn't left craving more 3-D. I was just left with a headache.
Upside: The gimmick made me watch the commercials twice on my DVR.
Downside: I was so focused on trying to see something 3-D that I can't remember the name of the movie, though I think it has something to do with monsters. I'm still never gonna watch "Chuck," either.
Andy is the president, publisher and founder of OnMilwaukee. He returned to Milwaukee in 1996 after living on the East Coast for nine years, where he wrote for The Dallas Morning News Washington Bureau and worked in the White House Office of Communications. He was also Associate Editor of The GW Hatchet, his college newspaper at The George Washington University.
Before launching OnMilwaukee.com in 1998 at age 23, he worked in public relations for two Milwaukee firms, most of the time daydreaming about starting his own publication.
Hobbies include running when he finds the time, fixing the rust on his '75 MGB, mowing the lawn at his cottage in the Northwoods, and making an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Brewers Spring Training.
