by Lore Sjöberg

Magic Pencils
My favorite part of the game is when the announcers make all these circles and lines on the screen the better to illustrate their subtle and intricate point that the two teams are attempting to move in opposite directions. My big thought this week is that all TVs should come with built-in magic pencil attachments, to that you can provide your own running commentary on TV shows. "Okay, Jerry [draws a circle] is going to try for the mouse hole [draws an arrow] in hopes that Tom, [circle] chasing him at full speed [arrow] will run straight into the wall [stars and asterisks], causing his head to become comically flat." A

Beer Commercials
You'll notice that beer commercials -- those not featuring lizards and bikini girls -- often show the whirling rapids and golden fields of barley that supply ingredients for their watery swill, but they never show the hops, even when they talk about them. Do you know why? Because hops are flowers. The advertisers know that if the Joe Six-Packs and Ed Pony-Kegs of the nation find out that their beloved man-brew is made out of millions of tiny, delicate dried flowers, there's going to be a massive migration to bourbon. D+

Referees
These guys have my respect. There they are, normal guys in their stripey pajamas, surrounded by charging hulks with muscles the size of prizewinning melons, communicating through the magic of interpretive dance. It's one thing to run with the bulls at Pamplona; it's another thing entirely to call a fifteen-yard penalty on the bulls at Pamplona for unsportsmanlike conduct and live to tell about it. B+

Guys Who Paint Themselves
This has actually been adequately judged in a recent Good or Bad, but I just wanted to add it here to point out that all the people who go to Burning Man to run around covered in paint as some sort of primal tribute to the tribal nature of humanity obviously got the idea from football. That's right, football! Replace "combustible effigy" with "halftime show" and you've got a mainstream sporting event! Take that, hipsters! D-

Actual Football
Whatever. C-