We’re less than a week away from my annual tradition of DVRing Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” with a “Save Until Manually Deleted” tag and keeping it until the next year’s Puppy Bowl airs, but I just received a press release email about the event that makes a really strong case for watching the Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl.
Reason #1: Puns
If a Super Bowl broadcaster makes a lame, forced pun, everyone in the room boos and whips beer bottles at the tv, especially if their team is losing, thus shattering the host’s expensive television and leaving everyone to spitefully finish the rest of the homemade dips in awkward silence. The Puppy Bowl, by contrast, is nothing but wall-to-wall dog puns, and they never stop being awesome:
Reason #2: Pepper The Parrot Will Sing The National Anthem
Would you rather watch “Please welcome, internationally renowned recording artist, biggest person name could get” sing a predictably diva-ized version of the Star Spangled Banner, or would you rather be introduced to Pepper The Parrot? Even Jennifer Hudson’s fans would vote ‘parrot’.
Reason #3: An All-New Kitty Halftime Show
Another easy question — would you rather watch Bruce Springsteen degrade himself by shelling “Working On a Dream” to a deliberately-assembled field crowd of robotically jubilant twentysomething females, or watch two dozen kitties pawing at each other in a strobe-lit chew toy obstacle course? I don’t believe an easier question has ever been befallen humankind.
Reason #4: All The Dogs Were Rescued From Local Shelters
You wanna tell these pound puppies to their faces that you won’t be watching them Sunday? If the Puppy Bowl ratings don’t score highly enough, these two get put to sleep at 10:00.*
*Unconfirmed
Reason #5: Nudity
I copied the following line straight from the press release -
This year, the Puppy Bowl will be crashed by a PUPPY STREAKER! Animal Planet truly did think of everything.
Ultimately, I’m sure I’ll end up watching the Super Bowl with a contingent of my Pittsburgh friends, receiving by-the-minute angry friend-texts when the Steelers run Willie Parker into a pile for no gain on every first down without exception, but the millisecond that game ends, I’m clicking on the DVR Menu, playing the Puppy Bowl from the beginning, and drunkenly celebrating regardless of the outcome of the game.
And if the Super Bowl had been Ravens/Cardinals, you better believe I’d be watching these puppies live.
