Batgrl: Bookish Hooha

The Superbowl for me has always been about nibbling snacks, sort of watching the commercials, and maybe looking at the game if anything interesting happens. Otherwise I tend to forget about it.

I only know about Puppy Bowl from reading news articles - though I'm sure it'll be all over youtube. But I do love behind the scenes stories about television production - so I had to read all of this article:

Plexiglas, poop, and penguins: Life behind the scenes on the Puppy Bowl

By Marah Eakin, AV Club,  Jan 27, 2015

 

"...Now in its 11th year, Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl isn’t so much a sporting event as it is an adorable institution. The sporty homage airs every Super Bowl Sunday—originally only during the game but now on a consistent loop for 12 hours—and drew an astounding 12.4 million viewers in 2013. With a kitten halftime show, furry cheerleaders and commentators, a witty human referee, and a starting lineup of 55 adoptable puppies, the Puppy Bowl has become one of television’s most cherished annual events.

 

..."So we have a lot of volunteers that come in to help push the dogs back onto the field. That’s a really bizarre volunteer position that you can get at Puppy Bowl where you’re just basically forcing the dogs back onto the field. And so there’s this weird thing where they always want to jump off the field because they want to be petted, so volunteers are there for when they’re not doing much or they’re not looking happy, they pick them up and take them back into the other room. So it runs in waves like that."

 

..."I think they’re always trying to come up with new ways to get them to interact with the toys or whatever, but it’s really just at these infant puppies’ will. And they’re untrained. That’s why it’s always kind of a crapshoot. It’s interesting because it’s very, very different every year. I mean, it’s always the same, but the group of dogs makes it feel different because certain ones don’t interact, certain ones interact quite a bit, certain ones are absolutely insane. We had a sheep dog—I think it was last year—that all it did when it was on the field was it kept splashing all of the water out of the water bowl and then shaking it on all the other dogs, which was freaking out all the other dogs. But that was all that dog did. And eventually they were like, “We can’t have this dog out here anymore.” It’s different every year. And it is just because they’re puppies. They just don’t know what they’re doing with their lives yet."