A Modest Proposal: Please, please, please do away with the "[Insert Corporate Sponsor Here] Superbowl Halftime Show, presented by [Insert Secondary Corporate Sponsor Here], featuring [insert over-the-hill, disinterested vanilla Brit rocker here]."
We went from a non-sensical, briefly titillating, but mostly smoke-and-mirrors halftime show with Janet and Justin in 2004, to Macka (or was that just a Fidelity Investments commercial??) in ought-five, to now, the Creaking Stones. They were just awful. From the I-could-have-predicted-it-last-week playlist (Satisfaction, Start Me Up and second single from new album [which, after that performance, is just a SURE THING to rocket up the charts!]), to the awful sound, to the complete lack of cohesion and any sign of genuine interest, it was a debacle from jump street. The only fun part is seeing whether Keith is still breathing.
No more halftime shows that don't feature marching bands and drumlines (they have proven adept at getting on and off the field in the supposedly alotted 15 minutes). I mean, I know ABC wants to justify selling airtime during halftime, but really, isn't eighteen million a second enough during the rest of the game? No one cares about halftime -- that's when you get seconds on chili and hit the "turlet" (sometimes at the same time). At my Superbowl watching venue, only one person was interested that the Stones were on, and she's from Austria -- a place not known for its discerning taste (well, not since the 1700s).
I thought Dr. John, Ms. Aretha and Mr. Neville did a decent job with the National Anthem, as even though Aretha appears to have eaten a couple of The Supremes on her visit to Detroit, she can still belt out the notes. I didn't think the Star Spangled Banner was particularly well adapted to Aaaron's warbling, but all-in-all, a fine job, and since sporting events are for some reason required to start with the Anthem, that's a fine a place as any to "showcase" yesterday's hottest stars.
Halftime should not be an event -- it's an intermission. I think talking hotdogs and popcorn boxes would do just fine really.
1 comment:
Is that who those tone deaf, wheezing gas bags were? I thought they just grabbed a couple bums off nine mile, slapped on some pancake makeup, and rolled trash cans down the street with microphones attached and played that over the loudspeakers.
Nobody at our Super Bowl/food consumption extravaganza watched, except the preganant woman who couldn't stand up to walk away, a couple guys who had hit the beer a little early, and a few playing poker in an adjoining room. All spent the entire set trying to invent new ways to use the word "suck."
Why, with the game in Motown, did Stevie and Aretha get the "back-of-the-bus" billings while four white, European males get the featured slot? Somebody get Jesse Jackson on the phone!
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