The Worst Yet Best Super Bowl of My Life

The lead-up for Super Bowl XXXV was not particularly good for me. The Baltimore Ravens (still fresh enough from the move from Cleveland to feel like The Bizarro Browns) had made it into the Super Bowl. They were facing off against the Giants, and as this was pre-9/11 and the Yankees were dominating the baseball scene, the disgust with New York sports teams around the country was at a height.

I gave the game a shot, and that proved to be a waste of time. The Ravens shut down the Giants offensively and, led by Trent Dilfer, the Ravens did not have much of an offense themselves. The teams lit up the scoreboard for a 10-0 halftime score and I nearly passed out 10 times while watching it.

I figured that the halftime show might save this Super Bowl, but in fact, it only buried it officially as the worst Super Bowl of my life (which is saying something considering the multiple San Francisco blow-outs over the course of that time). The halftime show was produced by MTV and featured Aerosmith, Nelly, Mary J. Blige, *NSYNC (at their height), and Britney Spears (at her height...there's a lot of heights going on in this Super Bowl). The show was just a mash of garbage with each person singing random parts of various songs in their collections. The big mess of a closer of “Walk This Way” officially ended my interest in the entire Super Bowl.

I ended up going on to the computer, which led into a number of AOL Instant Messenger conversations. This was during the rise of AIM (not the height...heights would happen a couple years later). The best conversation was with my friend, Kelly, and we just kept writing the most random things and making ourselves laugh. At one point, I decided it would be hilarious to pull out the White Pages and figure out hypothetical great prank phone calls. I pulled up the name, Wassapan Poolpool, and I wrote to Kelly that I should call him up and ask for his son, “Swimmin'”? Kelly's response was the most hahahahahahhaha's I ever received in my AIM career. So, strangely, Super Bowl XXXV turned out to be a lot of fun, and Swimmin' Poolpool may have opened the door to my future comedy career pursuits.

On a side note, today's Halftime Show is Madonna. I am including the Madonna song that I enjoy the most, “Who's That Girl?” in this post. It is probably my favorite song because I think this is the hottest Madonna looked over her career. You now understand my tastes of women in the 80s. I also find the supporting cast in the video hilarious and that this song was connected to such a terrible movie. Let's have another great Super Bowl with teams I don't care about and what will likely be a mediocre at best Halftime Show!