Cultural Exchange

View from the cheap seats.

For those of you who do not know, Super Bowl XLVI was played this past weekend between the New York Giants and the New England Tom Bradys (at least that is what it seemed to be based on the commentary of the announcers calling the game).  Anyway, for those of you in the United States, you recognize that the game starts at the beginning of prime time (6:30 EST - Eastern Standard Time), following a brief 6-hour pre-game show. However, in Blagoevgrad, kickoff was just after 1:30 am (that's EEST - Eastern Europe Standard Time).  A few hours later, the Giants were awarded the Lombardi Trophy just before the sun rose over the Pirin Mountains.

However, despite this early Monday morning start time, as you can see in the photo above the student body of AUBG was out in force for this cultural experience/ sports holiday.  The AUBG American Football Club (Go Griffins!) arranged a Super Bowl party in the multi-purpose room of the dorms and put the game up on the big screen.

This Super Bowl party was not unlike several others that Mark has attended.  There was at least one person wearing an NFL jersey (granted, it was a jersey of a kicker who was on a team that was not in any way involved in the game, but still....).  There were arguments about the game.  For example, there were arguments about whether Wes Welker should have caught that pass (he should have), whether Ahmad Bradshaw should have gone down before scoring (yes, he should have) and whether the Patriots' defense allowed Bradshaw to score with under a minute remaining.  Although the first two questions were eventually agreed upon, no consensus could be reached on what the Patriots' defense was doing, as the room was evenly split between those who believed they were allowing Bradshaw to score so Brady could get the ball back and try to win and those who believed that they were simply doing their best impression of the parting of the Red Sea.  Also, like most Super Bowl parties in the U.S., there were several people attending who cared more about the advertisements than about the football.  For the record, going strictly based on crowd reaction the biggest hits appeared to be the ad for skechers and the ad for Oikos Yogurt in which John Stamos gets lit up by his girlfriend via headbutt.

Marketing 101: You can not go wrong using a moonwalking bulldog to sell athletic shoes.

Have Mercy.  (If you get that reference, please don't tell anyone that it was made on this blog)

If you are interested in seeing John Stamos getting knocked on his bum, Anne and Mark advise you to check it out ASAP.  Apparently, the ad used music without attribution and someone is going to sue someone over it.  C'est la vie.  However, if this litigation is successful, this valuable John Stamos footage will be removed from the interwebs and we will only have photos like this to remember him by:

Ever miss the 80s?  

As "cultural ambassadors," Anne and Mark often bring small parts of American culture to the AUBG community.  It appears that the Super Bowl has caught on with at least a segment of the population, but that has little to do with anything Anne and Mark may have done.   

It is always nice to see that the people of AUBG have begun to appreciate some of the parts of American culture.  One person at AUBG decided to assemble a collage of photos of Justin Bieber, for example.  Here is a sample of it:

That's a lot of Bieber.

Now, we are not here to nit pick, but we do recognize that Mr. Bieber is actually Canadian, not American.  However, the effort is appreciated, so much so, in fact, that Anne and Mark will include another view of the collage....

Good looking collage.