Amendments

So I guess you shouldn't believe everything you read on my blog.

I did a little research just now about Shrove Tuesday, because it seemed too similar not to be related to Lent... and of course it's the British equivalent of Mardi Gras. Now it's just a very secularised holiday of pancakes. Similarly you could say Mardi Gras festivals in New Orleans bear little as the day before Ash Wednesday.

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Moving on. Football:

Also today I watched the Super Bowl. Because it was shown on one of the BBC channels, I could stream the entire thing legally, at high quality. As a government-funded institution, BBC channels don't have any commercials ('adverts'). When the US side took a commercial break, they cut back to three sports commentators to explain the game to British viewers. Two were British, and at least one was a rugby commentator; he was the one asking questions like "I don't understand, why did the Giants just do that?" The third was, I believe, once an NFL player himself and he did most of the explaining, though he had the unenviable task of debunking Rugby Guy's babble. I have the distinct feeling he wasn't affiliated with the BBC at all, just some NFL guy they hired for the event.

The explanations the less-confused BBC sports guy gave were pretty bad, but not nearly as confusing as those found on the BBC American Football page.
Highlights include:
-"The attacking team, or offence, needs to move the ball forward in chunks of at least 10 yards, which is why the pitch has yardage markings."
-"[Plays] are the complicated movements involving all 11 players teams use to move the ball downfield."
-"Plays are called by the head coach or quarterback, who is the attacking lynchpin of any team." (The attacking what?)
-I might as well have quoted the whole page. Go read it if you're interested, it's pretty short.

The three BBC sports guys were pretty annoying, I was glad to skip through their talking bits, and the 4.5 hour feed only took me about 2 hours to get through. During the actual gameplay the announcers were the same NFL guys you all had in the States, what a blessing.

I've never been one of those people who watched the Super Bowl just for the commercials, but I must say it was weird not to have them.

It also surprised me that even though I knew the final score, and thus could deduce what would happen for each drive, more or less, I was still pretty emotionally invested in the game. I think it's hard not to be with a game that was close. I knew the Giants would score a touchdown before the end of the game but I was still mentally pushing them through their two-minute drill. Intense.
Also: Tom Petty :)