After the Ball Is Over, so to speak

Post Superbowl note: Rich spent most of his time at Cowboy Stadium, and almost all of the actual game, stationed on the Green Bay sideline, at the Green Bay 10 yard line. He did spend a little time in one of the tunnels, where he was almost run over by Jerry Jones. (Jones, not surprisingly under those circumstances, was taking large strides and assuming everyone and everything would simply get out of his way.) Usher passed by him on the sideline, texting while he walked to and from the stage (fortunately, he's got all his People to keep him from running into things…or to get the things out of his way — see Jerry Jones, above). Guy Fieri brushed up against him in a tunnel, which Rich didn't notice, but the fellow standing next to him was a Guy fan and did sort of a manly swoon. Michael Douglas was on the field a few feet away, and Jesse Jackson shook Rich's hand (not for any particular reason except that Jackson was working the crowd and Rich happened to be standing there). And he saw Michael Strahan from a distance (Strahan was in some VIP area).

I really, really wish Rich could have met Strahan. Not because he's particularly in awe of a football player (we're hockey fans, after all), but because at every Dallas Stars game they play the Michael Strahan/Donovan McNabb Dr. Pepper commercial on the JumboTron, and Rich laughs at it every single time. It's just one of those things that happens to tickle him, no matter how many times he's seen it. It would have been cool if they could have met, though I'm not sure how he would have explained why it was such a pleasure to meet Strahan without a rather unwieldy explanation.

He said, too, that the Black Eyed Peas' (who also trooped by him going on and off the stage) performance was very impressive, mostly because of the LEDs on the costumes (which tells you right there that Rich is, at heart, a technogeek).

One other, non-Superbowl note: Our local Albertson's is closing. Besides being very sad about it (I am), I'm joining in the feeding frenzy: they have everything on sale. This includes the contents of their in-store Dallas Cowboys shop. There are some items there that have to have been unearthed from a dark corner of some warehouse somewhere. They include back—way back—issues of the official Dallas Cowboys Star Magazine (they had plenty of copies of March '09 available today).

And they have these:

Yes, that's a ten-foot-tall inflatable Tony Romo. The price when I took the photo a few weeks ago was $39.99. It's now reduced to $29.99. First of all, can anyone tell me why they have this to sell? I mean, seriously, who bought them? For what purpose? What would you do with it? Secondly, and—really—this is the point: If you want to add to your collection of Very Large Inflatables of Sports Figures Who Never Should Have Gotten Involved With Jessica Simpson, you better act fast. At this price, they're not going to be around…oh, never mind!