Salon.com > super bowl 2013

Beyoncé announces world tour

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:36:00 +0000

Beyoncé is bringing her spirited dancing and her taste for dramatic excess to an arena near you. The pop singer, who ran through her catalog last night at the Super Bowl, has announced her "Mrs. Carter" tour, taking its name from the star's marriage to Jay-Z, né Shawn Carter.

She'll be visiting his stomping grounds as well, with the tour concluding at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets. (Jay-Z's an investor in the team.) The tour is to entirely bypass Madison Square Garden in New York, signaling that the Garden's primacy for top-flight acts may be fading. The tour, whose U.S. leg begins in June, is also going to stop in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Beyoncé's hometown of Houston. No word on whether her all-female backing band, including the guitarist whose instrument shoots fire, will be joining her, but it seems likely.

How the Super Bowl actually saves energy

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 03:00:00 +0000

The energy consulting firm OPower released a report this week revealing that energy use actually dropped throughout the country during the 2012 Super Bowl -- plasma big screens be damned.

As reported by Fast Company:

The company looked at anonymized data from 145,000 households during the last Super Bowl. This is what energy consumption looked like in the Western U.S. (a sample size of 91,000 households) before, during, and after the event compared to a typical Sunday at that time of year. Electricity consumption spiked a bit before the game, presumably as people were preparing food, and then it dropped to 5% below normal levels--and during the half-time show, it dropped even further to 7% below normal.

Twitter suspects Beyoncé fierceness caused Super Bowl blackout

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 01:56:00 +0000

Beyoncé says, "Give me all your power, Superdome!!"

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Super Bowl liveblog

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:30:00 +0000

[liveblog id=56]

Gun control battle goes prime time with Super Bowl ad

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:30:00 +0000

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is slated to air a 30-second Super Bowl ad in the Washington, D.C., area.

The ad, calling for mandatory background checks on all gun sales, uses footage of NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre to make its case.

"We think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show," LaPierre can be seen saying in May of 1999, only a month after the mass shooting at Columbine High School. "No loopholes anywhere for anyone."

LaPierre has since reversed course on background checks, calling them "an unworkable universal federal nightmare bureaucracy" while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

The ad will air during the third-quarter break of the Super Bowl, but is available online for those outside of the D.C. metro area.

Are the Ravens responsible for the fall of the house of Edgar Allan Poe?

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:00:00 +0000

From the look of it, even book nerds are being drawn to this year’s Super Bowl, with the second-time appearance of the Ravens, America’s only football team named after a poem, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” For many in the literary crowd, there may be no better team to root for, because there’s nothing more surprising than an American sports team paying homage to a literary icon.

There are many layers to the Ravens’ literary allusion. There’s the fact that the team’s mascot is a collective of three black ravens respectively named Edgar, Allan and Poe. There’s the fact that the Ravens play less than a mile down the street from where Edgar Allan Poe is buried at Westminster Burial Ground. Then there’s the uncomfortable knowledge that the Ravens’ star player, Ray Lewis, was implicated in a double murder. Not to make light of murder, but on a team named after America’s first star horror writer, in a city where they peddle little Eddie Poe dolls next to Ravens’ jerseys in gift shops, it seems apro-Poe.

“It Gets Better” pulls 49ers’ PSA after players deny their involvement

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:58:00 +0000

Dan Savage has pulled the San Francisco 49ers' "It Gets Better" video from the site that serves as a resource for bullied teens after two of the players involved disavowed the video, in yet another instance of Sunday's Super Bowl serving as a flash point in the ongoing debate over gay rights.

After the Baltimore Ravens' Brendon Ayanbadejo came out as an advocate for gay rights, and the 49ers' Chris Culliver said he would never play with a gay teammate, it became clear that the Ravens vs. 49ers matchup on Super Bowl Sunday had brought to football some of the debate that had swirled for years around the corporate world and the military. The 49ers' video, intended, like all "It Gets Better" videos, to inspire bullied gay teens, was treated as though it had never happened by linebacker Ahmad Brooks and nose tackle Isaac Sopoaga, indicating that even some purported allies are not interested in the debate at all.

2013 Super Bowl ad preview

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:17:00 +0000

The smell of chicken wings and seven-layer dip fills the air. The carbonated whisper of beer cans opening in unison tickles your ears. Somewhere, Jackie Harbaugh is wondering which of her sons she will love more at the end of the night. It is Super Bowl Sunday, and the game is about to begin.

Just kidding! It is only Thursday, and all that we have to satiate our football hunger is a humble grouping of Super Bowl ad previews.

So join me in watching them, and pretending -- if just for a moment -- that it's the big day and the working week is just a distant memory.

The Good (relatively speaking)

Hyundai uses Wes Anderson-esque stylized detachment to sell its 2013 Sonata Turbo. Who's buying?

Pepsi made Super Bowl history with a sexy Cindy Crawford in cut-offs. This ad will not make Super Bowl history, but it gets points for an extended take of a teenager dumping a full gallon of milk on his head and casting a mustachioed Will Forte lookalike as a preternaturally chill, soda-loving dad.

Beyoncé sings National Anthem live in New Orleans

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:47:00 +0000

Beyoncé's had a busy year -- the singer, performing at Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show, delivered a memorable, and memorably less-than-live, rendition of the National Anthem at Barack Obama's inauguration last week. For the first time since the lip-syncing scandal, the singer opened the floor to questions at a pre-Super Bowl press conference in New Orleans -- but not before belting a live rendition of the National Anthem to assembled reporters.

The a cappella anthem didn't stop the questions from a generally reverent press. "Did any sound come out of your vocal chords during the inauguration?" asked the most aggressive of the group.