As a foreigner from the Old World I had never had the privilege of witnessing live one of the biggest annual events in American Culture: the Super Bowl. One telecast in which America’s biggest passions and trademarks culminate in an epic show: Patriotism, Football and Popular Culture. The Star-Spangled Banner hanging over guys with broad shoulders trying to move a ball ten yards, occasionally interrupted by pricey commercials and a half-time show featuring the biggest stars in current popular music. A week ago I finally got a taste of it and after having processed the Super Bowl XLV, i remain…a little underwhelmed, to say the least.

We were off to rough start with Christina Aguilera’s, uhm, very own take on the national anthem. (Actually, Lea Michele kicked off the night, but her shrill Disney-Pop version of “God bless America” was utterly forgettable and, really, the omnipresence of Glee has made me so oblivious to any person or song associated with the fox juggernaut, I merely recognized her presence as inevitable). So, Xtina infamously flubbed a line. I really think we should cut her some slack for that little lyric malfunction – after all, she’s going through a divorce, she’ll have to come to terms with the fact that she’ll never be able to delete Burlesque from here resume. That being said, this should hardly be the first time she sang or let alone heae this song. It’s not really like she had to memorize psalms from the bible and recite them in ancient hebrew. Oh well, moving on…

Then there was the game. Honestly, I can’t really warm up to it, I’m glad I vaguely understand the aim of it at this point. Still, I wonder how people justify making us call real football soccer to call this FOOTball – you see there’s not that much foot involved in it. Anyway, I couldn’t tell if the game was any good either way (two hours into the game I for some reason still believed the team was called Green Bay Hornets much to everyone’s amusement). I can tell you for sure the commercials were quite unimpressive though. Eminem trying to sell me a car, little Darth Vadar, even J.Biebs teaming up with Ozzy Osbourne left me pretty cold.

And then there was the half-time show. WOW. Epic Failure.

I’m not too fond of the Black Eyed Peas to begin with, still I was somewhat convinced they’d put on a solid show. So Fergie’s mic was off in the beginning. Once they turned it on I kinda wished they hadn’t. She sounds okay on record but live she just sounded irritating. Every singer can have a night off, but the night you’re performing in front of 106 million people is the worst possible time. After working through the unavoidable standards of the BEP songbook (I gotta feeling, Let’s get it started) Slash appeared to get his ultimate revenge on Axl Rose by slaughtering one of Guns’n’Roses best song “Sweet Child of Mine”. Note to Fergie: Rock is not your genre. Her vocals were downright unforgivable. After this brief nightmare of Idolesque Karaoke the Peas continued their unremarkable program. At least the dancers were great. Overall it all looked better than it sounded. Finally, Usher appeared to phone in a dull rendition of OMG. After performing their dated message song “Where is the Love” on a stage that formed the word LOVE (not really a feeling this performance invoked in me) we finally we’re put out of our misery.

After this traumatic experience the rest of the game was experienced on my part in a bit of a daze. All in all, it’s fair to say I won’t be staying up all night next year, back home in Germany, to watch this event live again. Congratulations to the winners though! Go Hornets!