Super Bowl Debriefing

According to the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter the fan favorite in the commercial competition (you didn't think the game was about football, did you?) was the "Free Doritos" commercial depicted above.

Teaching Anthropology in no way implies an endorsement of Doritos through the posting of the commercial on this blog. In fact, your blogger has a healthy fear of said, tasty chip. The father of her college roommate told her many years ago that, as a thoracic surgeon, he saw many patients who had insufficiently chewed their Doritos, thereby, causing scratches in their throat which then became infected and had to be operated on. This operation, alone, in one patient, was sufficient to pay his daughter's entire semester at school (state college tuition). That is what he told me. Honest. I have, however, no knowledge of the veracity of this statement. Although, she did drive a new Olds Delta 88 when the rest of us were holding open the butterfly choke of a 1973 Ford Torino and praying enough air would get sucked into the carburetor to start the sucker.

Anyway, other than the rather adolescent joys of fun with breaking glass and fun hitting the boss in the crotch with crystal balls--or better yet, the fun of the dumb guy in the office hitting the boss in the crotch with a ball, I became intrigued with the choice of object to be hurled.

Why a "crystal ball" (which, actually, looked a tad "snow-glob-by"). A statement of real, live force over mystical powers? Did we all secretly delight in seeing an object which channels "magical properties" showing us the future hurled into a machine? After all, the future is no longer looking so bright we gotta wear shades. Nor do things look quite so magical when our national dialogue seems to be centered on the issues of waking up to a cold reality after years of legerdemain and slights of hand?

Forgot to add: Please chew your Doritos, thoroughly.