Coke is it

The morning column link: a review of "Rules of Engagement" and a preview of tonight's "HIMYM" (more on that tonight).

Family responsibilities kept me from turning on the Super Bowl until 8:15. And in a classic case of DVR giveth/DVR taketh away, I was able to start watching from the beginning, then horrified to realize that, for reasons unknown, the recording stopped at the end of the third quarter, a fact I didn't discover until "Criminal Minds" had already begun and it was too late to fix. Sigh...

Fortunately, nothing major happened after that point, either game-wise or ad-wise, though I guess I missed K-Fed's pitchman debut. (Either that, or it happened during one of the earlier ad breaks that I skipped through out of a habit I had a hard time breaking.) I'll live. When I've done Ranking The Ads columns the past few years, I've pointed out that the quality of the commercials has been in decline for a while -- at least since the Dot.com bust -- but we're so conditioned to expect another "1984" or Jordan Vs. Bird that we keep watching. (It's like all those people still sticking around for "ER," I suppose.) Far and away my two favorite commercials of the night were Coke's "Grand Theft Auto" spoof and the ad about what happens after you put your quarter in the machine, and I understand both of them have been showing at movie theaters for months.

After those, my fave was probably Dave and Oprah, but there's nothing I'm going to rush to YouTube to watch again. Marian complained about the number of violent ads, and she wasn't the only one, though I don't know that I would tie it to Iraq War anxiety.

What did everybody else think? Were you more wowed by the ads than I was? Is anyone seriously contemplating a beard combover?