Superbowl Baby! Superbowl Yeah!
It’s Friday and that means another edition of the Hollywood Outsider. This is twodaymag’s weekly river cruise through the Congo of pop culture as we search for the the Colonel Kurtz of rationality.
This week the nation sat on the edge of its seat as it watched the biggest football game of the year, interrupted by the most expensive commercials of the year, and split by the most expensive 15 minute concert of the year. Yes, the Superbowl has come and gone and the Outsider is here to help break down all the action.
The Game
The central figure of any Superbowl (although admittedly not one of the main reasons people watch it) is the game itself. Despite one’s feelings about the teams involved---the Outsider wished there was a way for them both to lose since his team has not been in a Superbowl since 1994. Every year it gets a little harder not to be bitter about it---the game was actually pretty exciting.
The end result was “candidate for the best QB ever” Tom Brady being out-dueled by “not even a candidate for the best QB in his family” Eli Manning. In case this result wasn’t clear to everybody, some NY fans took the opportunity to personally relay it to Brady’s wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
While Bundchen was leaving the stadium, a group of Giants fans shouted “Eli owns your husband!” Which caused her to respond, “My husband can’t throw AND catch the ball.”
This exchange has cause some controversy for throwing her husbands teammates under the bus and taught us two things. First, Giants fans are typically assholes. Second, Gisele needs to take the Hollywood Outsider’s Class on Celebrity Comebacks. The class would have armed Gisele with all the tactics, taunts and slam-dunk comebacks to battle any hostile situation, and would have helped her stay out of trouble with her husband’s team and fans.
Some things Gisele should have said instead:
- I must by way out of touch, I didn’t realize Eli played defense.
- It’s sad, we now have to go home and cry into our millions of dollars of endorsement money.
- When you go to five Superbowls in 11 years, you’re statistically bound to lose some, know what I mean? Oh wait, you don’t.
- My husband is going to bang a supermodel tonight, what are your plans?
These and many more snappy comebacks for any situation could be yours for just three easy payments of $12,000. That’s the same price as 26 lattes a day for a year! The Outsider’s practically giving it away!
Halftime Is Showtime
Ever since Justin Timberlake sexually molested Janet Jackson in front of the entire world on live TV people have started paying attention to the Superbowl halftime show. Every year when planning the halftime show, the NFL asks itself, “What can we do that will be please everybody, but be completely free of controversy?” The answer of course, is nothing, but you’ve got to love that they try their best, anyway.
Last year the organization went with a newer pop group, the Black Eyed Peas (known as the Nickelback of hip-hop). This year they tried to split the difference by going with someone who at one point was seen as controversial, but who is now seen as pretty old and docile: Madonna.
The Outsider admittedly did not have high hopes for the show, but to be fair, the kinds of things he thinks would make a good concert would probably not play well with a Superbowl crowd. That said, Madonna did a pretty good job. Yes a lot of people are ragging on her for any number of reasons, but very few of those people have ever orchestrated, arranged, engineered and performed in a show that large and frantic. A lot goes into it behind the scenes.
First, the entire thing has to be larger than life or people will say it was boring. It needs huge set pieces, hundreds of performers, set builders, choreographers, props, lights, lighting technicians, sound engineers, the list goes on and on. Second, everything needs to be able to snap together and be taken down in only a few minutes, leaving no trace of its existence.
Third, the venue itself is a beast. Arenas themselves can be OK for rock shows when set up properly, but the halftime show is set up for a football game. This makes performing in that environment an acoustic nightmare. The bigger the show, the worse it gets. The fact that the stadium is covered and not outdoors makes it sound like you are performing in a barn.
The point here is that this is an incredibly difficult thing to pull off, and Madonna did it as well as anybody.
The only real lowlight was British rapper M.I.A. The 36-year-old artist made a cameo appearance during the show in which she gave the middle finger to the camera as it panned past her.
It’s unclear why she would do such a childish and disrespectful thing on the biggest stage of all. The Outsider did a little digging and it appears she’s not what most people would consider a “smart person,” unless of course “smart” means “abandoning your newborn for weeks at a time.”
This is unfortunate because it appears M.I.A. is involved in a lot of different types of activism, and this type of selfish stupidity only hurts your credibility and by association the credibility of those causes. It turns out M.I.A. doesn’t care about that, she only cares about M.I.A.
The Outsider didn’t really know who M.I.A. was before this incident and now his (and many others’) impression of her is one that she is so childish and self absorbed that it would be difficult to take anything she says seriously. Even her activisms appears to be the selfish type that some celebrities do just to alleviate the guilt they feel for being rich.
Commercials
The commercials this year were your standard fare of expensive ways to get you eat chips and drink beer and cola. The only real highlight was a two minute halftime pep talk given to America by Clint Eastwood on how to rebound.
Ironically the $14 million PSA was paid for by an American company (Chrysler) whose majority ownership was recently sold to an Italian company (Fiat). So Eastwood’s meta message is, “If you want to rebound, sell yourself to a foreign nation.”
Good thing our government is way out ahead on that one. Message received.
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twoday magazine wants to know: Did you enjoy the Super Bowl? What was the highlight for you? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.
Did you like this article? Then don't forget to check out these other great articles by John Dupra:
The Hollywood Outsider: Pump Up the Witch Jams
The Hollywood Outsider: Banned Objects
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