Snow in Philadelphia and the Super Bowl

Wow, a Super Bowl that was exciting, what a treat. The New Orleans Saints win a thrilling game in Miami. I got to watch from my room in Philadelphia after snow disrupted the Dish TV at my room earlier in the day. Apparently a chunk of ice fell into the dish on top of the building almost disrupting the "big game". And what a game. New Orleans came back from a first quarter deficit of 10 point. By kicking an on-side kick to start the second half and playing great pass football the New Orleans Saints won the game. Drew Brees, who won the MVP, was shown talking to his infant son at the end while his son was wearing ear protection against the noise. I don't know what he could have been saying to his infant son with ear phones on in a Super Bowl full of noise but it seemed endearing.

Peyton Manning, whom I like and respect, may have thrown an interception that will knock him from the discussion of "who is the best quarterback of history" at the hands of the Saints, just as Brett Favre threw an interception two weeks ago that may leave him a broken man at the end of his career. The same Saints player made both interceptions. My only concern about the post- game is that Len Dawson of the Kansas City Chiefs, who beat the Vikings in Super Bowl IV, brought out the Vince Lombardi Trophy. As a Vikings fan I had to muster energy to accept this but I have now come to terms with it. Damn him!! Oh, I have zen, yes I do. As an aside, is there no running in the NFL any more? It seems that the game is now a quarterback and receiver's game.

Best commercial goes to the one where Betty White gets tackled in the mud. The Google one where some schmo- googles his way to marriage in Paris wasn't bad.

The Who played the half-time show and did an OK job with the usual montage of hits. The question is whether this was really the Who since John Entwihistle and Keith Moon are dead and Pete Townshend can't hear. Roger Daltery looked like he had some arthritis in his neck but I'll let that go since his voice was there. Peter Townshend was almost boycotted by descendants of the Abolitionsts (alright, different subject, different cause, but the zealotry was there) since he was officially listed as a sex offender in Britain in 2003 but never charged. He said he was doing "research" when he was caught with kiddy porn on his computer. I tried to do a web search on the issue and didn't get very far except to find out that he had a friend from childhood that was abused and he has said on multiple occasions that he has tried to be an activist in pedophilia, against it that is.

In other news, Philadelphia got 28 inches of snow this week-end, and Washington D.C. got more. It has been a helluva winter in this area. I have been concerned about the number of street people that I have to pass on my way to work each day in Philadelphia. So much so that I took the effort to try to help this week-end. A purely selfish move on my part, mind you, since I want to assuage myself of some of the guilt I feel passing up many of these guys on a daily basis. I have traditionally been against giving to people on the street since I don't know if I would be an enabler or not. But the Philadelphia scene seems particularly bad, i.e. I think many on the street guys(and most are guys) are legitimate and not all drug users or crazies that can't find their way to the Salvation Army or a job, so with my extra time, being snowed in, I wanted to help. I searched the web for some food bank sites but found that my research left me going to places that were abandoned. Eventually I just bought a bunch of food, slogged through the blizzard that Philly was experiencing and ended up passing through the train station, where the police had cleared out the street folks, and got on the subway to West Philadelphia, beyond the University of Pennsylvania. I was told of a Salvation Army at 69th and Market but couldn't find it and no one knew what I was talking about when I asked around. I was a tall white guy with a bunch of food and no where to go. Eventually, I was asked to stop taking pictures of birds and headed back to my apartment on the green line, out of a place where I felt rather uncomfortable. At the 15th St. station, my home base, I tried to give away some food in the terminal. I interrupted some gentleman in a dank corner of the station with sparrows and many wet smells around him, reading an old newspaper, and asked him if he wanted some food. He looked at me like I was interrupting him and asked what I had. I said, "I have some cheese and bread". He said, "No thank you...don't you have any money? I said, "No". He said, "What else do you have?" I said, "Do you want some cashews?" He said, "Nope" and went back to reading his paper. So I moved on. Fickle people these guys. Or maybe he wasn't a reasonable representative of who I was looking for. What I did know is that I was cold and I had wet feet and I was lucky enough to have a warm place to stay so I headed back to my room with a boat load of food. As a last effort I tried to pawn some cashews off on someone else and he sincerely admitted that he couldn't eat them since he had no teeth. He was a real guy and took some cheese. I felt good about that and he seemed happy. I'll try to find a food bank in the light of day and with less snow blowing around, this week.