Super Bowl commercial interlude

I hate to give advertisers more attention, but this was easily the best commercial I've seen in a while.

Send my money...to Pittsburgh!?

ELITE acting skills.

ESPN running out of stories for the Super Bowl, now inventing debates between President Obama and 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh

Full credit to ESPN for choosing extremely captionable photos.

I would say that they could have chosen a better photo of Jim Harbaugh, but the available images don't really offer a lot of options that make him look better.  I sometimes worry about 49ers players and if they're getting the love and support they need, because it would appear that Jim doesn't really know emotions other than angry (not to be confused with noted walrus Andy Reid, who only knows hungry).  Here's a collection of some of Jim's professional work, a portfolio, if you will, for no particular reason.

Joe Flacco's father has no misconceptions about his son's charisma

Joe responded, "Alright, Dad, but my new stache is cool.  As cool as people say it is, it's that cool.  It is cool."

Highlights from the Pro Bowl!

Just kidding, the Pro Bowl has no highlights.  There were some fun moments, like when Eli threw a pick six and forgot that he doesn't have to make his disappointed interception face in a meaningless game:

Also, there was this onside kick attempt, which the audience responded to with a hearty, "oh, that was kinda cool, I guess."  It's the Pro Bowl, so expectations have to be set pretty low.

 Pictured here: the best moment of individual play by a Cleveland Brown in the 2012-13 season.

 .gifs courtesy of KSK

It's almost time for the Super Bowl! Do you know how to watch a football?

Do you meet the following criteria?

• Live in the United States
• Work in a place where other people work also
• Have $50
• Don't know how football works

If so, there is now an allegedly useful class you can take to rectify the last two items!

The course is taught by a Diane Darling, so I decided to research (read: google) what else she does when she's not teaching people how to watch football.  Unfortunately, obstacles!

Fucking robots!

Going to the site itself yielded similar results:

Reading this aloud with the ellipses causes you to sound like Christopher Walken.

This exhausted my patience for research, so I gave up at this time.  Returning to our original topic (how to watch football games), here's what Diane has to say about her class.

DISCLOSURE - This event was filmed in front of a live audience at the British Consulate in Boston, MA on January 8, 2013 at the chapter meeting of the Greater Boston ASTD .

With Super Bowl  is around the corner, I decided to upload the class so you can enjoy right away rather than spend hours perfecting the video.

Diane, while we're on the topic of oddly specific how-to classes, would you be interested in my course on "How to use grammatically correct sentences in articles describing courses on how to watch American football games"?  [editor's note: that sentence might be grammatically incorrect.  If so, it's supposed to be ironic or something.]

Welcome to Water Cooler Football - where football and networking meet to have fun!
"To have fun" is a bizarre addendum to that particular sentence, because subjects, objects and verbs are things that matter.

You’re at a party with a football game on, people cheer and you have no idea what happened – do you feel left out? 

Here's a free tip from me--if people are cheering, you can do one of two things to fit in.  Either just cheer whenever they do, or remain silent and if anyone asks just say you're a Cleveland fan.  They'll nod their head in a knowing and sympathetic manner and be none the wiser as to your football ignorance.

At a meeting someone says, “let’s do an end run” – do you feel lost?  

Not as lost as mayor Rob Ford of Toronto feels when he tries to actually do an end run!

This is a pretty good approximation of how  pretty much everything Rob Ford does in public goes.

When you hear “football” do you think people mean soccer?

That is an extremely odd question.  If the answer to the question is yes, the question will make no sense.  If the answer is no, it's such a mind-numbingly silly question that it still makes no sense.  It's like a zen koan, if the word koan means what I currently believe it means, which I'd say is about a 50/50 proposition.

If you don't know how to watch a football, you maybe left out.

This is pretty much my favorite sentence of ever.  Am I doing it right?

Fuck!  So close.

This can have a negative impact on your career and perhaps social life.

Forgetting to watch a football has certainly had a negative impact on Jermichael Finley's career!  ZING

You'll also learn some best practices for networking. How to pick your events (aka "whether report")

Frankly, I have no idea what a "whether report" is, so I'm not even sure we're talking about football anymore.

how to get into a conversation, and .... how to get out of one.

That is the most ominous way possible to write that sentence.  It suggests that any beginner can get into a conversation about football, but only the experts will be able to extricate themselves later.  I can't tell you how many times I've seen a group of football novices start chatting, only to realize that they are stuck in the conversation forever.

Learn how to be a part of the game with tips and from Gene and Diane. (And wait until you hear how they met!)

Do I care how they met?  No.  No, I do not.