Editor's Note: I watch for the commercials

I’m joking. Though I am no football fan, we celebrate Super Bowl Sunday in my house just as people do across America. As I suspect happens in many homes across the country, my husband watches the game while I tune in and out to the game and only really pay attention to the commercials.

Part of the reason I watch the Super Bowl is just to know what everybody’s talking about the next day – like when the game was delayed for more than half an hour because of a power outage in the Superdome. (See? I told you I was paying attention.) The other part is to watch Doritos, Pepsi and Budweiser try to outdo each other with outlandish commercials.

Super Bowl ads have disappointed me in recent years, but this year there were a few really funny ones. Among my personal favorites was the little girl who bribes her father and his friends with Doritos to give up their planned football game and dress up with her for a princess dance party. I also liked the Budweiser commercial in which two guys take their buddy’s “lucky chair” to a witch doctor to be cursed.

There were a couple of funny ads with slightly disturbing or violent undertones, like the red M&M who loves his human girlfriend, except when she tries to eat him. It’s really funny as long as you don’t think too hard on it. And the Kia commercial in which the man “disrespects” the car and is beaten up by a beautiful android made my husband laugh so hard I thought he would wake up the kids upstairs.

While the focus of Super Bowl ads is usually humor and sometimes shock (thanks, GoDaddy.com), you can pretty much count on Budweiser to run at least one tug-at-the-heartstrings Clydesdale ad.

My son asked me Sunday morning what the Super Bowl was, and I said, “It’s just a football game.” He was disappointed. But I think I was wrong; it’s not “just” a football game. It’s a part of American culture; some unifying kind of experience.