Super Bowl LVII – The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles 38 – 35. Yes, Rihanna is pregnant again. And the 14 minute video above is a compilation of the commercials. I must have been out of the room and missed the Tubi ad that got some innocent family members and pets yelled at. The 30 second Super Bowl spot for The Flash has the Batmobile reveal missing from the full trailer, although I have watched both several times. There is a version in the montage but my vote for best commercial from this Super Bowl is this extended T Mobile ad featuring John Travolta.

You can’t make everybody happy. Wise words from Van Til when posting the final score Monday morning. The Super Bowl had a string of classic rockers during the halftime show a few years back; Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen and The Who all did shows between 2005 and 2010. Prince in 2007 is considered by many the best halftime show ever. Then the NFL went in a different direction and tried to pull in a younger audience. Middle aged beer drinkers may be the target demographic for pro football on Sunday afternoons but that’s not the demographic spending the money. More people watched Rihanna perform 12 songs in 13 minutes than actually tuned in for the game, regardless of whether you think they all looked like Oompa Loompas or agree with Howard Stern that 90% of her performance was lip synced.

What I don’t get are the concerns of conservative Christians and mommy bloggers that the halftime show was not family friendly. Have you ever been to an NFL game? Speaking of demographics and target audience, the pre-school to tween crowd is not it. Half the Super Bowl ads are beer commercials. Some of the ads are cute but you have to be 21+ to purchase alcohol and it’s not exactly “family friendly” either. The Super Bowl halftime show has never featured Barney, Elmo nor Bluey so if you tuned in looking for family fare I’m not sure what you were thinking. Having said that: Rihanna was covered from her neck all the way to her ankles. The dancers were not only fully dressed but overdressed for 6:30 PM in Glendale, Arizona. Go to a middle school basketball game that has a dance line routine during halftime. That is supposed to be age appropriate for 10 to 14 year olds but they make Rihanna’s show look like a Sunday School program.

You probably haven’t used Internet Explorer for some time but technically you could, and a few still did, up until now. The latest Windows 10 update permanently disabled Explorer for some users this week. It has been not recommended and unsupported for years but Jake Peterson explains why they finally pulled the plug for good. On a related note, I commented somewhere that my first browsing experience was Netscape Navigator. I learned this week that it’s still around, sort of. That legacy browser serves as the base code for Mozilla Firefox. At one time they had a whole suit but the Firefox browser is all that’s left. Somewhere out there is probably a guy on his last AOL free trial CD that’s gonna have to purchase internet soon; or at least upgrade to something that can connect to a wifi hotspot.

“Seacrest out.” Ryan Seacrest is leaving Live with Kelly and somebody and they’ve already announced his replacement. Mark Consuelos, Ripa’s husband, will become the new permanent co-host; well, permanent in the sense they are not looking for anyone to replace him yet. If you do the math, Regis was on Live from 1988 to 2011 which is 23 years. Kelly Ripa has been on since 2001 and will soon surpass Regis in longevity, at least on that specific program.

In the original Star Trek series, Khan and his band of genetically engineered superhumans left earth on the Botany Bay in 1996. In that timeline we should have already had World War III so it’s not all bad news.

Slim Goodbody made an appearance of sorts on The Goldbergs this week. They didn’t actually invite John Burstein onto the show but instead they showed a clip of his old PBS program and were inspired to do stupid sitcom things. Kids of the 70’s and 80’s all know who Slim Goodbody is but few even realize he’s still around. If you follow him on Facebook he’s not so celebrity that you can’t talk to him. We discussed The Goldbergs show and his upcoming appearance; he did not grow up in the 80’s and has never seen it. His only hope was that they didn’t make him look silly.

I couldn’t tell if he was being tongue in cheek so I didn’t make any jokes then and I’m not going to make any now.

Catalytic converter theft has become so common that you can buy aftermarket anti-theft kits. They usually involve wrapping wire or mesh around the exhaust components and locking them in place somehow. The devices can be defeated but if you make it difficult and time consuming thieves are more likely to move on to another target. In California this week a woman was sleeping in her car when the sound of a would-be thief attempting to cut out her cat startled her awake. She started her Ford Excursion, a very full size SUV, and backed up, running over the suspect in the process. Her actions were not malicious but many in the car enthusiast community have applauded her and said some nasty things about cat thieves that I won’t repeat.

Braves fan are mourning the loss of Chip Caray to the Saint Louis Cardinals. Brandon Gaudin has been named to replace Carey in the broadcast booth but there is speculation that Bally Sports itself might not be around much longer, possibly not for the 2023 MLB season. Financial troubles may bring an end to all Bally Sports regional networks, including Bally Sports South and Bally Sports Southeast that carry the vast majority of Braves games. The Braves are owned by Liberty Media which could theoretically create their own network to broadcast Braves games. Sounds reminiscent of Ted Turner owning the team and showing all regular season games on TBS.

Chip Caray actually signed a contract in January of 1998 to join his grandfather, Harry Caray, in calling Chicago Cubs games. Harry Caray passed away during the off season and most fans thought they brought in Chip to replace him but that was not originally their intentions. When Skip Caray, Harry’s son and Chip’s father, passed away a year later Chip made the move to Atlanta. If the names seem confusing it’s because all three men were in fact named Harry Christopher Caray. The nicknames keep us from saying Harry Caray Jr. and Harry Caray III so at least there’s that. Chip Caray grew up in St. Louis. His parents were divorced and after Skip Caray moved to Atlanta in 1974 he never saw his father very much. St. Louis is home and I can’t blame him for taking the chance to go back. After moving from TBS to Fox Sports networks to Bally, change is again on the horizon and Caray may have read the writing on the wall. Before it sinks is the best time to get off a ship.

Ira Hayes played himself in The Sands of Iwo Jima. A few years later in a live TV broadcast of The American he would be played by WWII Marine veteran Lee Marvin.

You can read that story here via Vox if so interested. I have no balloon jokes at this time.

This week on The Master’s Table I discussed finding a Bible verse that was perfect for the moment then spending the next 25 to 30 years trying to find it again. Maybe I’ll have something to say next week about the Asbury revival, for the time being I’m going to let the talking heads have it. Let’s pray about it, that’s seems like an appropriate response for God’s people. I’m about to cook breakfast for family. Enjoy the weekend, worship the Lord, Van Til will be in bright and early Monday morning.