Tough to watch the football Giants parade this morning.

It was hard to like the Super Bowl too much if your “team” isn’t there. True, the Super Bowl isn’t like any other game because it is for ALL the marbles. But I saw better and more enjoyable games prior to the BIG ONE. And let’s face it, the San Francisco 49ers should have been there. Both Manning and Brady were playing in the style of Alex Smith. How else do you have a 10-9 halftime score? (Hey, that’s my birthday!) They were game managers, protecting the ball. Nothing stupendous. But Manning and the Giants were a little better when it mattered. If you were watching and who wasn’t among the 111.3 million viewers of SB XLVI?

As it was, I saw just a bit of the game as I was at a wake for a dear family friend, Rosie Vitin, a Filipino American activist in Northern California, who since the 1950s supported immigrant families and fought for social justice and changes in things like discriminatory housing covenants.

That put the game in perspective.

I did catch the last quarter and I saw everything I needed to see: The Manning to Manningham sideline catch, and the last play, Brady’s not so-Hail Mary. That would have been a great game ender and would have catapulted this one into the storied ranks. Just think, if Brady didn’t have that first quarter safety, he would have just needed a field goal to tie the game and send it into OT. But alas…

MADONNA’S MENAGERIE

The one thing the Super Bowl does have that other games don’t are better commercials and a better half-time show.

If you were looking for a wardrobe malfunction, there wasn’t one. Madonna’s slip on the bleachers, and the exposure of her black bikini don’t count. I admit when she flipped over to show her underwear, I thought that might have been a good opportunity for a legit W.M., but no.

As it turns out, there was a “digital malfunction,” M.I.A.’s middle finger, but that made the ordeal of finding it a bit like “Where’s Waldo?” I didn’t see it. I wasn’t offended. Did it really happen? Are people really upset about MIA? Who is MIA? What war was she in? Did the finger make everyone find her?

In general, I was a bit underwhelmed by Madonna, personally. She used to be so shocking in a way. But now she’s all garbed up with nary a sign of cleavage. She was middle-aged, though fighting it all the way.

I mean, isn’t it great that a 53-year-old can do cartwheels and “sing,” (if in fact she didn’t lip-synch), isn’t it?

How’d she pull it off? Augmentation.

And it worked.

I mean when you see the Boss, or Roger Daltrey or the Stones, or Steven Tyler, these don’t you wonder what fun they’d would all have at the senior center?

But I kept looking at Madonna on Sunday.  And she sure didn’t look like the senior center entertainment.

I had feared people would wonder aloud,”What’s Lady Gaga doing singing those old songs?”

Or maybe they’d wonder why Madonna isn’t singing “Danny Boy”?

But then I figured Madonna would know how to re-invent herself yet again.

I also knew that if she didn’t sing “Like a Virgin” the very first song, we wouldn’t hear it. You just don’t go backwards on virginity. Not credibly.

So she started in her Cleopatra meets the USC marching band get up, with “Vogue” and just kept on going. And all along it was never really just Madonna. She was the focal point, yes, but it was all a massive ensemble on a huge multi-media stage that featured one by one Nicki Minaj, LMAO, the aforementioned M.I.A., and Cee Lo Green.

That’s how you stay young, folks. You surround yourself with younger, hipper folks, and try not to show your tree rings.

And then you put on the razzle dazzle with lights, dry ice, smoke and then grasp at significance by leaving with an an appeal for world peace. Or did she mean “whirled peas?”

So I liked this incarnation of Madonna. Any 53-year old who can show her panties while doing a cartwheel and not have it considered a wardrobe malfunction is a great talent. That’s an ageless pop culture icon for you. And I’d rather see her than Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger or Keith Richards recreate their hits, that’s for sure.

Madonna will be reinventing herself throughout life.

I want to see again her when she’s Jane Fonda’s age.

THOSE SUPER DOG COMMERCIALS

I thought for a second I was watching a dog show.

Every commercial seemed to have a dog, including the Doritos commercial people seemed to say was the No.1 ad of the lot.

Nah. The VW dog and the Skechers’ racing bulldog,Mr. Quigley were my favorite dog commercials.

Overall, I preferred the apocalyptic Chevy commercial best. No dogs. Just frogs falling from the sky. Nice amphibious touch.

But the ads did seem a tad retro. A lot of eye candy to go around. David Beckham’s underwear?  Tele-flora’s strip-tease?  Despite the “doggie style” theme, those two commercials made it clear, more than dogs, sex still sells.

But is it effective if all I want after the commercial is the sex and not the product?