SUPER BOWL 2024: The Aftermath

The Game:

Taylor Swift arrived at Allegiant Stadium with her mom and friends at 11:22AM, Hawaii Time.

She was wearing Black, so at +550, this color would have resulted in a payoff of $65 if you bet $10. Well, she was carrying a red jacket, but that's secondary.
Game started a shade after 1:30PM Hawaii time. I was standing in line at 15 Craigside to pick up beer, hot dog and boiled peanuts, so missed the kick-off.
The Kansas Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime, 25-22. It was as good as the Super Bowl has ever been, with Patrick Mahomes being the Most Valuable Player. He didn't propose to anyone, as he is already married, so that bet lost (look at my posting of Saturday about what this means).

Proposition results:

National Anthem: Reba McEntire took 95 seconds, longer than average for her. There was chaos because the under/over was 91 or 91.5, but she repeated the ending, which some sportsbooks nullified. Watch the ending, with six jets flying over the stadium to boot. She just repeated "the brave," which should have been honored by all the gambling houses. But most bets were "over," so this was so unfair. Was her rendition under or over? Depends on where you placed your bet. Last year Chris Stapleton completed the song in 121 seconds.
Coin toss: Heads. The Lahainaluna football team was honored, and coach Bobby Watson tossed the coin.
Gatorade: Purple at +100.
Will the Most Valuable Player mention Taylor Swift? Nope, because Patrick Mahomes was the MVP. So the No with -1600 won all of 63 cents for a $10 bet.

Usher's half-time show:

Time liked it.
Deadline said Usher fizzled. To quote the first paragraph.

With Taylor Swift in the 65,000-strong crowd at Sunday’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas, Usher couldn’t have had any illusions about who had the greater star power and the media’s attention as he hit the field for the halftime show.

Worse, Swift did not participate. A good surprise is that Alicia Keys did, and also the expected Lil Jon and Ludacris for Yeah.

What was the best commercial? Depends who you ask, but USA Today has an Ad Meter, and they have been doing this now for 36 years. The ranking? Click on that link to watch the top twenty ads.

#1 Like a Good Neighbaa, State Farm, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito.

#2 The DunKings, for DunKin' Donuts, with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Tom Brady and Jennifer Lopez.
#3 Perfect 10, Kia, no stars, but features the new EV9, which will be assembled in Georgia beginning this summer.

Incidentally, my favorite did not even make the top 20. It was Michelob Ultra's soccer commercial featuring Lionel Messi, Jason Sudeikis and Dan Marino. Why? My Super Bowl meal was as shown below, and his ad came on while I was still enjoying my Ultra.

Michelob Ultra, Margarita, hot dog, boiled peanuts and pizza.

President Joe Biden chose not to provide the usual presidential message at the Super Bowl, but after the game did troll MAGA Republicans by poking fun at the conspiracy theories surrounding the NFL and Taylor Swift, saying on X (formerly Twitter), JUST LIKE WE DREW IT UP, with a Dark Brandon meme shooting lasers out of his eyes.

Watch the after game festivities, for Travis Kelce got kisses from Taylor Swift. Did he propose? Want to know what they said to each other? Read this.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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