Super Bowl

This year will be my first Super Bowl with a DVR. I am more excited than a normal person should be about that.

Last year the Super Bowl contained a record number of ads, clocking in at 47 minutes of advertising. This year's rate for one :30 spot is a reported $2.6 million dollars. CBS is still pushing to sell the last 25% of available inventory, but it's clear that they should top $100 million on Feb 4th.

Anheuser-Busch has been the exclusive alcohol advertiser in the Super Bowl since 1989, and they will remain such for CBS broadcasts of the Super Bowl from 2007 until 2012. Now THAT'S owning a franchise. They typically buy up at least 5 minutes of ad time to hawk their beers, so they are dropping about $25 million dollars just to buy your EYEBALLS, never mind the money they spend in producing ads that they hope generate some chatter afterwards.

My question for you is - what will you be drinking while watching the game?

**edited to add that I beat eMarketer to the posting, but their data is WAY more acurate**

Straight from the article linked above, the top five SuperBowl advertisers, ranked by ad spending over the past 20 years:
Anheuser-Busch $250.8 million
Pepsico $190.0
General Motors $ 65.7
Time Warner $ 63.4
Walt Disney $ 43.5
Top 5 Total $613.4 MILLION

Storm Preparedness

Winter decided to arrive. And in this area of the country, a 50-60 degree day in the middle of January is almost always followed by a blanket of ice. Yesterday was gorgeous. I am glad that I got to enjoy it a little. Today it is 18 degrees.

In 1996, lots of people lost power. I was at college, in an apt., and managed to escape any damage. In 2002, hundreds of thousands lost power and my wedding was almost cancelled due to "dangerous weather." It wasn't, we celebrated, and promptly ran away to French Polynesia, where ice storms are as foreign as tsunamis are in Kansas. But now we live in a neighborhood with overhead lines and massive trees. I'm not sure we are going to escape this weekend with both heat and light. It seems a lot to ask.


I haven't been to the grocery store, go I guess I will be skating by there on my way home. And stopping by the beer store. Because a weekend like this requires both a porter AND a stout.

Monday, Monday

The new Blogger is ok, but now that we have the ability to tag posts (hey! welcome to 2003!) I am compelled to go back thru my archives and tag content. Ugh. It's like less of a present and more of a to-do list. I know how my evenings this week will be spent.

We had a birthday party to attend this weekend, at The Bulldog. I love The Bulldog for the following reasons:
1) It is across the street from the office.
2) They serve excellent beers on tap.
3) The piano player in the evenings can switch from John Mayer and Snow Patrol-esque tunes to Ice Cube's "Today Was a Good Day."
4) The people watching is fabulous, what with a strip club located right next door.

Anyway, this was a birthday party, and they had reseved the back room. The birthday boy's wife warned the staff that they would need more than one bartender, as they expected a large group. They only supplied one bartender for the party, and while I hope that his tips were good, I bet he wished that he had some help! When I got up to the bar and ordered a Bass & a Harp, he informed me that the group were great drinkers - he hadn't served a domestic beer yet, and the pace was astounding.