Super Bowling

Is Super Bowl Sunday getting too wholesome? It used to be the one day on which we celebrated everything gaudy, overblown and steroidal in the American way of life. Real football fans aren’t supposed to pay much attention to the halftime show but that’s where in years past the zeitgeist was most overtly on display.

This year, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band cut off a few slices of their healthy earnest rock-n-roll. The Boss is of course a national treasure. He connects the whole cultural gamut like almost no one else - from down and out America, through the blue-collar heartland, to the new Obama left and the NPR crowd. He is a wholesome cohesive influence with a sense of humor about himself. On the Super Bowl Sunday, he brought out the raucous party Boss. His energy was a little forced and self-consciously youthful. The way he threw himself around one hoped he had a chiropractor and a team of masseuses waiting in the wings. The performance was uniformly great and there where even a few moments of welcome goofiness, as when the Boss belly flopped onto the stage side camera. But who wants a piece of high quality authentic American pop culture, just when you’re hungering for a big slab of bogus American kitsch?

A few of the recent halftime shows have been almost satisfying. That freakishly talented newt man, formerly known and now know again as “Prince”, added a wonderfully lubricious taint to Super Bowl XLI.

Super Bowl XXXVIII gave us the hilarious Nipplegate. Justin Timberlake pretended to assault Janet Jackson, igniting an amusingly harmless scandal.

But generally, the halftime shows have been getting better and slicker in a professional Las Vegas sort of way, leaving us nostalgic for the truly great dumb spectacles of the past.

Does anyone remember the halftime show in 1988? That was the year some genius realized that there were 88 keys on the piano keyboard and by an amazing coincidence the year was 1988. The show included 88 fake grand pianos, rolled out on to the field. 44 of them were white and 44 of them were black. Dancers in white tuxedos pretended to play the white ones. Dancers in black tuxedos pretended to play the black ones. There was a thrilling moment when the dancers in white pretended to play the black pianos and the dancers in black went at the white pianos.
At the climax of the extravaganza 44 Rockettes high kicked out on to the field with their 88 legs colored black and white to represent a piano keyboard. In case anyone missed it, an announcer announced that the 44 Rockettes and their 88 legs were impersonating a piano keyboard.

1988 was absolutely the best Super Bowl half time show ever. It was so fantastic that in 1989 some suggested that they customize 89 fake grand pianos with an additional key, and then recruit a Rockette with only one leg.

Sadly, American bad taste has become an endangered species. It used to be as common as the housefly and now you have to hunt for it like a very rare bird. Perhaps we should start cultivating opportunities to display great schlock the way we support classical ballet and symphony orchestras.

A huge opportunity was lost the year Levitra hit the market to compete with Viagra. There were Levitra ads all over the stadium, and Levitra and Viagra spots dominated the TV commercial breaks. But what the occasion called for was a Levitra vs. Viagra halftime smack-down, with pole-vaulting, drag racing, gladiators parachuting into stadium and fighting with swords (Insert your favorite phallic potency symbol here.) all accompanied by ZZ Top surrounded by hundreds of nubile dancing girls in bikinis, just to remind folks that really ancient guys can still get really young girls if they can just score the right pills.

Today, so many erectile dysfunction drugs crowd the market. Could we pull off a Viagra vs. Levitra vs. Cialis vs. whatever elimination match in the ten minutes allotted to the halftime show? This is America people. Let’s do it!

This year’s halftime could have been so much better, even with the available ingredients. They already had Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and the Hero Crew of US Air flight #1549 on hand to take a bow before the Star Spangled Banner. They already had General David Petraeus officiating at the coin toss. With a little imagination they could have done so much more.

Imagine this: There’s a huge explosion over the stadium. You hear an announcement: “LaGuardia we have a bird strike. Make that two.” A full size model of the airliner with engines blazing and trailing smoke crash lands on the 50-yard line - fire, explosions and geysers of water. A moment of silence and then the doors fly open. Inflatable red white and blue escape slides unfurl. A choir of “passengers” climbs out onto the wings singing, “This Land is Your Land, This land is My Land.” Pete Seeger sails up “The Hudson” in his schooner Clearwater, to accompany. Then the real Sully and crew come out onto the wings waving surrounded by a few “passengers” who happen to be incredible break-dancers, spinning on their heads. Then, and only then, The Boss and the E Street band steam over from the “New Jersey” side in a ferryboat singing “Baby We Were Born to Run.” They start rescuing the passengers as they segue into “The Rising.” The Statute of Liberty walks over from the end zone with Aretha Franklin up in the statue’s crown. Aretha and Liberty are wearing matching crowns. Aretha sings “Respect” in a duet with Bruce. The song doesn’t really fit but you don’t have time to think about it because General Petraeus starts walking around on the “water” with an honor guard handing out huge medals that look like New York City manhole covers covered in gold. Everybody gets a medal. This makes sense when Bruce dives into his finale song, written just for the occasion: “He’s a Hero, She’s a Hero, You’re a Hero too. In America, We’re all Heroes, We’re all Heroes, Woo!”

Now that’s a halftime show.