Buried in all the discussion over the excessive boobage exposure by the esteemed Ms. Jackson is the simple fact:
Super Bowl Halftime Shows historically SUCK.
They are generally memorable only for what goes wrong. They are exercises in massive amounts of activity and effort, combined with pyrotechnics, little talent, and no imagination. (IMHO)
So, here’s your chance.
You have one year to prepare a 15 minute show. You get, oh, say $5 million to spend. You get a football field, in front of 80,000 fans and countless millions watching around the world on TV.
You need to keep those millions of people interested. At least a good percentage of them.
Hire who you want with that $5 mil, what would you do?
Me? I like to criticize, but I got no talent either. I’d hope if I were in the position, I’d be able to come up with something better than the dreck that usually happens.
I mean, jesus!, we can send two or three robots to Mars and they can’t have an open mike work right at a football stadium? Or is it that the singers themselves are afraid?
I’d find a copy of that “let’s go out to the lo-bby” dancing hotdog thing from the movie theater, and pocket the $5mil minus $40 for the film clip rental. Geeze people, it’s a long game. Take a leak, make a sandwich, have a quickie. Can’t folks entertain themselves for twenty minutes?
Yeah, I know, never underestimate the average stupid levels.
Get five bands, arrange stages in a pentagram shape. Bands and songs to perform would be:
Metallica - “Battery”
Slipknot - “Wait and Bleed”
Pantera - “Fucking Hostile” (I know that’d never get aired, but cut me some slack here. Or I’ll take “Walk” or “Suicide Note part II”)
The other two bands haven’t been pinned down yet, but Limp Bizkit has been mentioned, in which case “Faith” would be their song. Number five is still up in the air, possibly Rammstein for their insane pyrotechnics. Or Danzig.
Debate rages about whether the bands should go one after another, no time between or if they should all play at once, producing an incoherent wall of sound.
Dancing girls and pyrotechnics would be at world-record levels. Ideally something upward of 10% of the audience would be offended in some regard.
The only downside? The first play afterwards would result in so many penalties that the refs would all end up nude; throwing flags, socks, hats, shirts, you name it. And about 18 of the 22 men on field would be ejected.
Me, I’d just hold the public execution of a serial killer, peferably by guillotine. The football players could playfully kick the head around afterwards.
Or, assuming that I don’t have the power of life and death at my disposal (Awwww!), I’d just hire a gaggle of circus freaks—like that blue jigsaw tattoo guy—to peform on field, while assistants tossed thousands of loaves of “Roman Meal” bread to the audience.
Or, as an act of revenge for the preempted Saturday Morning Cartoons of my childhood, I’d play the second part of the cliffhanger series finale of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” cartoon, on the jumbotron. And I’d run it just over the 15 minutes allotted.
Maybe you should only have asked people who like football to post in this thread.
That’s right. I liked it. I wouldn’t want to be in charge of it. No matter what you did, evidently the only cool thing to say is “It sucked”. They’ve had some pretty amazing acts over the past few years.
That’s right. I liked it. I wouldn’t want to be in charge of it. No matter what you did, evidently the only cool thing to say is “It sucked”. They’ve had some pretty amazing acts over the past few years.
Bring back marching bands. I’d have rather seen Jessica Simpson leading that drum corps out than a bunch of lip-synched crap with freaky-looking dancers and cheap publicity stunts.
They start with one, singing for a minute, then move to a duet for the second minute and so on. When all five are out, fireworks, brilliant pop single, dancing, etc etc, end with record sales and plenty of buzz.
If the music isn’t good (and it was absolutely awful this year) no amount of dancers or flash bulbs are going to redeem it.
I’d suggest maybe starting with Tom Waits and ending with some walls of sound from Sonic Youth. Classy and eclectic and a good time to be had by all. Now that would be sweet. If I want to see some aging fame whore and her pasty there are about a hundred other channels I can turn to.
Topless Cheerleaders, and a cheep heavy metal band (“The Darkness” would do). No Super Stars though, and hire the ‘Extra Action Martching Band’ as well.
Perhapse run the SB on two networks, one with an Opera and National Anthem style show played at half time, for old fogies.
