The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Thursday, February 7, 2008 - 3B

The Bowl, Tuesday
and our judgement

e reap the fat we pile
on.
Exhibit A: The
Super Bowl
The Super Bowl wasn't anticli-
mactic simply because Tom Petty
barely hangs on anymore and Tom
Brady's Bootgate turned out to be
the greatest foot-in-mouth debacle
in recent sports journalism. No,
what most commentators are gen-
erally agreeing on is how tepid the
ad fare turned
out to be. Ads
are supposed
to be the Super
Bowl'sThanks-
giving turkey.
We put up with
family/frus-
trating football ANDREW
so we can get to SARGUS
the good stuff. KLEIN
But this year
there were few good ones (person-
ally, the Doritos ad with the giant
rat was fine with me); overall, the
reaction was lukewarm at best.
This isn't that surprising.
Let's start with ESPN's
"SportsCenter." Described by
Comcast as a "hip, Emmy-winning
daily scrapbook," the network has
always prided itself in its spoof ads:
LaDainian Tomlinson filing mail,
Greg Oden's mug on cologne post-
ers, etc. But ESPN took it a step
further.
The playoffs had severalhistoric
elements involved: Brett Favre,
TomBrady and the Patriots. Before
major playoff games, "SportsCen-
ter" ran a clutch of spoof segments.
Favre is used to the cold of Lam-
beau Field because he's always
naked outside the stadium. Tom
Brady has had a mysterious shoul-
der injury for the past four years;
Tom Brady is the fourth brother
from "The Brady Bunch." The last
was unbelievably drawn out in
E! True Hollywood-fashion. The
spoof pieces were obviously play-
ing on the fact that most people
become manically frustrated with
masturbatory Super Bowl com-
mentary because there simply isn't
anything to talk about anymore
(Yes, I'm talking about the Boot,
but these pieces were running
before that developed).
The conceit is that we still watch
it. The "we the execs are in on it,
too!" -style is obvious enough in
the "SportsCenter" skits and in
advertisements in general. If we're
laughing, manipulation can't be all
that bad. GEICO's Speed Racer and
FredFlintstoneshorts.Pepsi's Tony
Romo. If Hummer can sample The
Books then it's not an anti-scene
pariah. The ante has been raised
steadily in the past decade: You
have to lay down some deep wit or
sarcasm or something (a la "Bud.

Weis. Er.") in order to stay in.
And the Super Bowl used to be
the Thanksgiving of it all. But it's
not that this year's crop was par-
ticularly bad, it's that ads in gen-
eral are better. Our expectations
are higher, and why not? It means
better television.
Exhibit B: Super Tuesday
The various presidential nomi-
nee campaigns have been nothing
if not entertaining. There's always
a lot at stake in an election year,
but you know the drill: Bush is out,
Democrats in, black man, white
woman, historic. Now, the media
plug: blogs and Internet commen-
tary that drive public debate are
just as susceptible to piranha ten-
dencies as the rest. Put the two
together and we have what we have
right now - equal parts legitimate
enthusiasm and manic gossiping.
(Last week, I swore Anderson Coo-
per was working the "SportsCen-
ter" graveyard shift, talking about
Brady)
Super Tuesday confirmed that
both sides of the fence are witness-
ing seriously contested nomina-
tions. That means the nominations
weren't nailed down after Iowa, or
New Hampshire, or South Caroli-
na. "Delegates" are actually impor-
tant and all of a suddenthe primary
process is important enough to talk
about. If 2000 managed to con-
vince the American people that
something needed to be done with
People suspect
that Tom Brady is
from "The Brady
Bunch"
election reform, then 2008 is flick-
ing them in the head and saying
they need to understand the sys-
tem first.
Think of the above scenario as a
train.
The train running on the same
track in the opposite direction was
the Super Tuesday coverage itself.
The utter lack of decent graphic
layout throughout the night was
staggering - the color schemes,
the Microsoft Paint flourishes,
the unending monitors. Obama
and Clinton traded off states, and
right in the middle of Bar Louie
(tasteless, I know, but the burgers
are a dollar after 5 p.m.) I realized
the graphics (or what tried to be
graphics) were trying to tell too
much at once, and the numbers
were mundane at best until del-
See MEDIA PAGE 4B

The
making
ofart
By BEN VANWAGONER
Daily Arts Writer
There's something to be said
for iron girders. Apart from sat-
isfying our psychological need to
erect phallic monuments, they're
powerful, commanding pieces of
architecture. Straight lines; sim-
ple, unadorned shape; one color
- a little bit like the latest Mac
products if they were forged to
withstand tons of pressure. They
form the outline for the Statue of
Liberty and the base for the Mack-
inac Bridge and comprise many of
the world's modern marvels.
So why is it that every time I
walk past the University of Michi-
gan Museum of Modern Art con-
struction site or the pit that will
be the new Business School, I feel
a shred of irritation? It's hard to
listen to the harsh sounds of ham-
mers and the welding torches
without wanting to plug my ears.
It's not onlyunpleasant -the noise
is just too abrasive. In fact, I don't
think I'd be too far off the mark
saying that no one on campus is
particularly fond of the construc-
tion sites. After all, why should
we be? We curse the ground of
the UMMA site every time we're
forced to walk around the sinis-
ter fence that stands between us
and our 8:30 a.m. classes in Angell
Hall.
Sometimes it seems like there's
nothing not under construc-
tion: The Frieze Building/North
Quad, B-School, UMMA, Kelsey
Museum, a new part of University
Hospital and even the Big House
are seeing much-resented renova-
tions. And when you least expect
it, something new will pop up just
to prove the construction invasion
is not complete. This could mean a
long span of construction-related
misery ahead if we don't do some-
thing about it.
But it doesn't have to. Perhaps
there is a better way to look at all
the construction. After all, Frank
Lloyd Wright considered architec-
ture to be the highest form of art,
the "mother art." Obviously, the
UMMA is not Falling Water, but
that doesn't mean there can't be
something beautiful about it. Con-

The UMMA is undergoing massive construction.

sider it modern art.
Modern art - at least to me
- has never been particularly
impressive at first glance. And
yet there's an entire museum for
it - in New York City, of all plac-
es - aptly called the Museum of
Modern Art (maybe you've heard
of it). At MoMA, the typeface Hel-
vetica, some particularly cubic
Picasso pieces and even art made
from trash are exhibited. And yet
all of these things are called art,
although they would never have
been considered so even half a cen-
tury ago. This isn't hard to under-
stand. None of it really looks like
"art" as we might imagine it. Con-
sider modern paintings: Impres-
sionism, Cubism, Surrealism
and all those works at which we
rail, "I could paint that!" To the
uninitiated, these works might
seemboringat best and distaste-
ful at worst. Such an impression
is not far from how I feel look-
ing at a construction site.
Is construction modernism
simply because I don't always
like it? Certainly not. If that
were true, a lot of economics
problem sets would be modern
art too. But in the same way that
a cubist Picasso can surprise us
after a little consideration, so
too, perhaps, can the mess of
iron and concrete in construc-
tion.
If you ever walk by the hole
in the ground that used to be the
Frieze building, you'll see what I
mean. The free-standing fagade
sits on the edge of the immense
pit, all the ornamentation still
intact and impressive. It pro-
duces an almost otherworldly

effectx
it, peek
windov
be. An

C

when the sun is just above an ever-changing work. One day
:ing its rays of light through four or five I-beams poke straight
ws where a building should into the sky like iron towers, while
d the construction at the the next day they've formed a sim-
ple cube with a few added pieces.
Against a cloudy backdrop, they
)mparing the may as well be painted, but with
mpar g far more detail than any canvas
M oM A to could display.
Comparisons aside, none of this
,onstruction will stop me from being a little bit-
ter when I have to take the long
since 2008 way around UMMA, but it might
give me a moment's pause. Con-
struction doesn't have to be the
ugly blight on campus. It is an art
:1, just now taking shape all its own, and one that's worth
is skeleton of girders, is a considering before we so quickly
tudy in lines and angles. It's condemn it.

hospita
from it
primes



jump
on the opportunity to see the
world from a unique perspective
If you're curious and adventurous
then pack your bags and say
goodby:e to the status quo.
Study abroad to earn college credit
experience a different culture, learn
a foreign language, discover who
you are and much more.
USAC, your gateway to the world.'< .

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