I’ve never been a fan.  Not of the ever-morphing, suddenly British-accented bad girl of the last century.  Nor have I ever before watched a Super Bowl in its entirety, unless my hometown team was representing.  I watched past years for the commercials and the half-time show , but not even that if I happened to be attending a Super Bowl party.

Tonight has been different.

I set out to write a post about the Super Bowl commercials, usually guaranteed for at least a few 30-to-90-second spurts of brilliant entertainment.  I also set out to watch every single down of the game. It was just me and the dog.  No party, no company.  Just me and the dog.

I confess to having been completely underwhelmed by the prospect of seeing an aging Madonna try to recapture her pop persona in front of the world.  I anticipated not so much a wardrobe malfunction, a la Janet Jackson with Justin Timberlake, but a full-body malfunction from a 53 year-old who needs to move gracefully into her golden years.

So the first half of the game proved to be highly entertaining, with its lopsided, Giant-ruled first quarter, followed by a brilliant 98-yard march to the goal line by the Patriots in the second.  I had eaten my allotted guacamole and nine tortilla chips, and devoured my eight hot wings by half-time.  Thus far, I found myself laughing during only two of the dozens of commercials during the breaks, so my interest in posting about them had all but vanished.

I hated TaxAct's preposterously irrelevant depiction of a young boy who has a sudden onset of the need to relieve himself and winds up doing so in the family pool.  Really?  Don’t parents have enough trouble breaking their youngsters of that rude habit?

I loved the Volkswagen spot.  A dog who wants to get outside to chase cars is stopped abruptly by his too-generous girth in the doggie door.  He goes on a marathon boot-camp regimen to slim down, walking on the treadmill, running up and down stairs, and swimming.  When a gorgeous red VW comes down his street, the dog easily dashes through the doggie door in time to chase it.  You had to be there.

My favorite was once again offered by Doritos this year.  When his older brother sat in a tree house taunting a baby with Doritos, their grandma used the spring-mounted swing he sat in to launch the baby as if on bungee cord, far enough to snatch the bag of chips from his brothers naughty hands.

Again.  You had to be there.

Then it was time for the half-time extravaganza.  My attention had drifted to other things when I heard the announcer dramatically start the show.  I sat, mouth agape for every awesome second of it. 

Madonna killed it, people!  If she was lip-synching it was as convincing a job as I have ever seen.  Starting with her old hit “Vogue” she strutted and posed through, I don’t know, three or four costume amendments.  The production was elaborate, exciting and almost flawless.  Who knew that Madonna, in her dotage, could upstage and out dance young Niki Minaj, and have the ubiquitous Cee Lo Green playing second banana with her onstage?

The Material Girl Woman made it all the way through with only one, unfortunate snafu.  When she made her last onstage costume change, she unknowingly caught one of her curly blonde locks into the zipper of her choir-type robe, making it appear she had sprouted some very strange looking chest hair.

Add to all this the fact that she pulled off lifted summersaults and assisted cartwheels, marching, running and dancing in what appeared to be 5-inch stilettos and, damned if I haven’t come away in absolute awe of a mother of four who still gets around like a virgin.

P.S.  I’ve missed the entire third quarter while writing this post.  Oh well, maybe next year the Bears will make it to the Super Bowl. Yeah.