If you were paying attention, or if you've got a quick trigger finger on the DVR remote's pause button, you might have seen M.I.A. saluting America with an obscene gesture during the Super Bowl halftime show. I suppose it really wouldn't be the Super Bowl without a little bit of controversy, and M.I.A. did it with her middle finger: M.I.A. middle finger upstages Madonna's Super Bowl.
I wasn't really watching the Super Bowl very closely, but here is an incomplete smattering of Asian faces I spotted across the commercial breaks, during American television's biggest broadcast of the year (Michigan viewers, of course, were treated to this racist bullshit from Pete Hoekstra):
Hey! It's our friend Aaron Takahashi in this commercial for the NFL's new fantasy game. Livin' large and sittin' pretty in a bathtub of riches. Rumor has it, Aaron got paid for this commercial in gold coins and 49ers gear.
That's Kenzo Lee, prominently featured while rocking out in this spot for Samsung Mobile. Insert The Darkness into any commercial, and it's a party.
Here we have Hahn Cho happily enjoying a soft serve ice cream cone in this Toyota Camry commercial's vision for a new DMV. If only!
Here's the commercial that truly made me sad. Matthew Broderick re-summons his inner Ferris Bueller for the Honda CR-V, stopping at a Chinatown parade to share a song. That's Nebula Gu as the pretty girl who sings with him on the stage. Somewhere, John Hughes is rolling in his grave.
And finally, my favorite cameo of the broadcast: Voltron, Defender of the Universe, showing up with lots of other cartoon characters in this MetLife commercial. Sorry, couldn't resist. Bonus: see Voltron gettin' down to some dubstep in this outtake. I'm serious.