Super Crazy

This photo shows just about how much I know about football and the Super Bowl.

I can't tell you a thing about the game, but I can tell you all about Tom Brady's ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan announcing her prenancy after they'd broken up, her giving birth to his baby last fall, and how he took up with Giselle Bunchen during the pregnancy. You know, all the important stuff.

I don't know how I turned out like this. I have an older brother, but we didn't have a dad around while growing up, so we didn't have a dad sitting in a recliner watching sports to influence us. And actually, being more the intellectual type, our dad probably would have either been reading Time or watching Meet The Press instead. So basically, we're I'm a total loser about sports.

My son Ben played football all through high school and his freshman year of college, and even after going to game after game, I never got it. I knew when they shouted his name it was good, and like a moron I just cheered when everyone else did. Basically I was there to make sure he didn't end up on a stretcher, try to stay warm, work the snack bar and see my friends.

So, hearing all of this may make it seem incredulous that I am going to a Super Bowl party, but there's so much more to the Super Bowl than the game - duh! Of course I have to watch!

Here are my all-time top-five favorite things about the Super Bowl:

1. The commercials - everyone will be talking about them the next day, and they can seem quaint years later. Like remember before the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, all those commercials for now-failed companies during the Super Bowl? Kind of makes you nostalgic, doesn't it?

2. For years the Patriots (along with the Red Sox) never quite made it to the big show. We had curses to overcome, players going to other teams and lots of other things I know nothing about. But, over the last several years these teams have become world champions, and like the sappy girl I am, I love a happy ending.

3. You never know what celebrities will show up. There might be Matt Damon (if he can take a break from his busy schedule of f#$&ing Sarah Silverman), his buddy Ben Affleck and his adorable wife, Jennifer Garner, and the aforementioned, Giselle, but probably not Bridget. Yeah, I'd say definitely not Bridget.

4. There's never anything bad about seeing buff men in tight pants.

5. The entertainment - and by entertainment I mean anything other than the game. Alicia Keys will be performing before the game, and Jordan Sparks (winner of last year's American Idol) will sing the national anthem, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (hmm, really? They don't seem like Super Bowl guys) will perform at halftime. It doesn't hold much of a promise of another wardrobe malfinction (I love Tom Petty, but with the clothes on please) but it should be entertaining.

All right, so I'm all set for the big game. Of course I hope the New England Patriots win (hello, I do live on Cape Cod) but mostly I'm just hoping for something excting to happen - off the field, because all that on-the-field stuff is just way too confusing.