Ultimate Geek Fu: The Traditional Postgame Post-Mortem

In lieu of a column, we're conducting the Super Bowl XLV version of Ultimate Geek Fu today. Two questions are on the table:

1. In your opinion, which was the best commercial aired during the game? I laughed at the VW ad with the kid in the Darth Vader costume and against my strong predisposition to dislike found myself really liking both of the ads that featured Eminem. The Kia Optima ad that just kept getting more ridiculous was fun to watch, too, but the more I think about it, the Motorola ad that riffed on Apple's "1984" ad was the most clever.

Your thoughts?

2. Can someone please explain the Black Eyed Peas to me? Are these people KISS for the 21st century, or some weird mutant offshoot of the Village People? Can any of the guys actually *sing*, without a vocoder doing real-time pitch correction? And while they're at it, why *don't* they use a vocoder on that cow in the Xena Warrior Princess costume? I mean, the whole "if you use enough vibrato no one can tell what key you're supposed to be in" thing was old forty years ago when Grace Slick used it to make any Jefferson Airplane track more than three minutes long painfully unlistenable. Is what I heard yesterday what they *normally* sound like?


Let the arguments begin.