A series of blogs from our experience winning two tickets to the 2010 Superbowl in Miami

West Palm Beach, FL - I'm pretty sure there's a football game taking place on Sunday, and a pretty big one. As a matter of fact it's arguably the biggest sporting event on the American calendar. Yet it seems that all anyone wants to talk about is what celebrities will be on hand (Saints & Colts & Kardashians, oh my) and what party can you get in to, and not who has the better o-line, but who's o-line can sing better at Media Day's none-too subtle tie-in with "American Idol."

So rather than provide another insider report on whether Peyton Manning will root for the team he plays for or the one he rooted for as a child, we've decided to provide the complete outsider's perspective to Super Bowl madness. Throughout our week in Florida we'll make our way to a few of the coveted activities, but overall, let us be your eyes and ears at Society Ground Zero.

Notes from the Almost Front lines...

As noted above, we are not the media elite, we don't have a reality show on E! (yet) and have no discernible ties to the cash-heavy Mafia, so rather than a shimmering ocean view from a South Beach hotel, we're staying in nearby West Palm Beach. I say this not as a complaint, but as statement of fact. The takeaway from this is that we were fortunate to win two tickets to the hottest event and plan on taking full advantage of that - which means spending a week in intermittently sunny Florida during the worst weather month of the year in Chicago. If that wasn't good enough we were handed the keys to a shiny new silver Mustang as our official wheels of the Gregg & Elise adventure. A Super Bowl miracle.

Other things:

- Perhaps the two most coveted parties to attend before the Superbowl are put on by Playboy and Maxim magazines. Remember magazines? Those were the paper things that have all but been replaced by the Internet. If I were a more suspicious person I might surmise that these publications have stayed in business past their relevancy just to host the yearly bout of bacchanalia.

- The stories not involving the parties and celebrities are all about the advertisements during the game. Are these not the very same 30- and 60-second bits of cleverness that we go out of our way to DVR right past the other 364 days a year? The Superbowl spot seems to be the Betamax in a Blu Ray world. Do these ads bring a return anywhere near what it costs to air them?

- Why does politics ruin EVERYTHING? The Superbowl and its sideshow are beloved for the unnecessary excess, over the top half time and anything else that amounts to no actual substance. Now we have to tread out the abortion debate in between quarters of the Bud Bowl? What a downer!

Stay with us as the game approaches and we take you to all the places that you want to be.... when you couldn't afford the places you actually wanted to be.