For the second straight year I sat down on a late January afternoon to watch a few commercials and a football game broke out. Granted, as a born-and-bred Browns fan, it felt a bit treasonous rooting for my rust belt rival Steelers. But I just couldn’t get behind the Little Red Bird Heads. Football is meant to be played on the banks of frozen bodies of water with names like Cuyahoga and Monongahela. The Glendale Cards play in a desert where they compete with Cactus League baseball for the local resident’s retirement funds. Kurt Warner was probably living in a Dell Webb community outside of Flagstaff when they called him up. And I don’t think they won a game all year in a climate where they could see their breath. So, in the end, I was glad to see The Burgers stretch out and hang on for the fingertip victory. Cold weather fans in town’s like Pittsburgh earn their wins and deserve heroes.

But, enough about the game. Let’s fast forward to the commercials.

Now, plenty of ink has already been spilled about this year’s Super Bowl ads. More so, as seems to be the trend, than the actual game. It’s like somewhere in the mid-XXV’s Super Sunday evolved from a football game into America’s Official National Television Holiday. A celebration centered entirely around the TV set. A high holy day for the influence industry’s most ineffective media buy. The one day a year when we all get to sit around and play Clio judge. I’d say the whole thing has gone off the rails, but here I am adding yet another layer to the endless cycle of absurdity by editorializing about the over-editorialization of the non-newsworthiness of the whole shebang.

So let’s take it from the top.

Hyundai bought the Kick-Off Show to assure us of a couple of things. First , if they sell me a car I can’t afford they won’t call in the lawyers and come confiscate my only way to get to a job interview. #2: Hyundai Genesis (I assume Gabriel era) won North American Best Car Of The Year. I can understand why all the big foreign automakers are up in arms. Hyundai is Korean. Not North American. Plus, who got Best Car for All The Americas? Some new sub compact from Uruguay? Think about it.

The Budweiser Clydesdales trotted out next with yet another cheesy anthropomorphic heart string tugger. So I trotted out to grab a beer I could actually taste. It’s way past time to put those old workhouses out to pasture.

Then there was this really weird spot where Lebron James signs with the Cleveland Browns. He was scoring from everywhere and there was this hot cheerleader, and Al Sharpton was there. Then, all of a sudden, we both woke up. And I still have no idea who sponsored that commercial.

Turns out, not only is the Hyundai Genesis the best car north of the Rio Grande. I can go to a web site and edit commercials of it driving around. Great. Can I then go to the client’s Marketing Review Panel meetings where it gets second-guessed into yet another parody of the Wally-like junk heap of bad car ads? Just to make it more like a real advertising experience?

From the Explain This To Me Category: Pepsi buys Dylan and will.i.am to define yet another generation while Conan doing a commercial is some kind of artistic sell-out. I don’t get it.

I do get the Cheetos spot, though. Throwing your day glow orange puffed chemical crisps to the pigeons is a way better idea than actually eating them.

Castrol wins this year’s I’ll Have What They’re Smoking Award with their Grease Monkeys spot. They got their client to spend $3 million to air some dolt with an air filter on his head kissing a chimp. Strange days indeed.

At halftime I was one of the unfortunate 95.3 million (out of 95.4) without 3D glasses. So all I saw just before Bruce rocked my jeans off was a few forgettable commercials with an odd blue blur in the background. Like seeing someone’s aura or the faint photographic proof of a ghost in the room.

But in the second half the commercials came back. Denny’s made its case as a better place to plan a murder. Monster.com reminded me that, in my current position under the Giant Moose’s Ass of American Capitalism, I may want to consider another job. (This preferred over CareerBuilder’s take it out on your steering wheel and helpless marsupial approach.) And Coke showed just how beautiful it is when you pass out in a diabetic coma, knock over you soda pop, and the bugs get it.

Kellogg’s got flagged for intentional disingenuousness when Tony the Tiger tried to convince me that rebuilding ball fields somehow makes up for selling caramel coated corn to kids. For breakfast.

But, in the end, Hulu.com pulled it out with a spot so funny I actually went online to see what the heck it is they do. The TV turns your brain to mush as part of a sinister alien plot to destroy the world idea was spot on. I only wish more people got it. But then, what would we talk about on Super Monday?