Bread and Circuses
(We'll be right back to our commercials after this brief game!)
Picture it: Thundering noise erupts and bubbles in the Coliseum. Thudding, unseen drums pound out a hypnotic heartbeat as rank after rank of bronze-girded warrior slaves slog into the arena, bearing a mighty flaxen-haired Queen, masked by a screen of giant feathers fetched from some monstrous mythical raptor. The eager, madding congregation pulses with anticipation, hungering for the long-awaited Queen. Suddenly, she rises above her captive coterie and unleashes her…
…polyester pompoms.
And that was just the Patriots' backup quarterback.
Super Bowl XLVI. In case you missed it, it was actually a pretty good commercial, if you could stand all the game interruptions. And with an obscene price tag like seven million dollars per commercial minute, I'm surprised they bothered to show the actual game at all.
According to this year's Super Bowl pre-game show, which began approximately XII minutes after last year's Super Bowl, Madonna was slated to perform, but only at halftime. Fans could hardly wait to see the superstar singer at Super Bowl XLVI, even though she's now VII years older than the Super Bowl itself. However, she's still Madonna and guys are still guys. So, before the game, to keep the athletes and fans focused on the game, she agreed to be dipped in saltpeter.
As for the commercials, all the usual suspects were there – the beer Clydesdales, the cola Polar Bears in red scarves, Elton John in his street clothes.
But the Super Bowl commercials have gotten so complex, so over-produced, so…well, so Hollywood, we don't know what they're selling. They're not very clever ads anymore – they're just very short movies. They're just high-budget, star-studded, non-feature-length films. Now I'm watching a movie, not making a shopping list.
Other than the occasional familiar face (see "Clydesdales"), I can no longer remember what product(s) they're pushing. And even then, I don't know. I don't know if the horses are hauling Bud, or Bud Lite, or Bud Light Platinum, Bud Super-Extra-Light, Bud Flashlight, Bud Light Saber, Bud Extra Premium Ultralite Acolyte, Bud Disguised As Michelob, or Buddy Ebsen. Are those mute, nearly-naked, ice-skating polar bears strung out on Coke? Or New Coke? Original Coke? Coke Zero? Coke Too Low For Zero? Bud Disguised As Coke? Meth? (see "ice-skating naked")
Here, I'll let you decide. Here are a few actual Super Bowl commercials — the plot and then the pitch. You tell me who's selling what:
The Plot: Polar bears that wear scarves and watch television sometimes have to walk away and yell in the night to relieve their angst.
The Pitch: Drink our cola!
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The Plot: Due a some unnamed disaster that apparently involved Ford trucks, everyone in the world is dead, except for nine nondescript rednecks.
The Pitch: Buy a Chevy!
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The Plot: Sometimes our employees run around in a warehouse and throw paint balloons at a wall, perpetually grinning as if they had some kind of mandible disorder.
The Pitch: Fly our airline!
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The Plot: A grandmother launches a small child from a slingshot, in order to steal food from an obnoxious brat in a tree house.
The Pitch: Eat our corn chips!
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Then we watched a commercial starring naked M&Ms in a disco.
Naked candy.
We should've known. We should've seen it coming. If pole-dancing chocolate managed to make it past the censors, halftime was gonna be a full-on Caligula moment.
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And then, Halftime. Sic infit. We should've known.
After Madonna flashed her polyester pompoms from atop her bare beer bier (see "Bud Light"), she walked across a bridge of bronzed centurion-ish extras to the stage, where she proceeded to not really sing and not really dance, while only tripping once. (Which still impressed me. Madonna and I are the same age and I tripped more than that just walking to the fridge for more queso. And nobody paid me to sing; in fact, like Madonna, I'm often paid not to.)
Overall, the halftime show was a non-threatening event. We did have to put up with some infantile Brit twit named AWOL, who showed her appreciation for being invited to perform at the world's most-watched TV show by flipping off 111 million viewers. If that's her attitude, she might as well move here and run for Congress.
And all the costume changes confused me. Romans, Brits, Pharaohs, choirs. I wasn't sure if Madonna was invading the Vatican, annexing Egypt, or channeling Hannibal.
In one particularly obscure segue, this Richard Simmons-type character began crotch-bouncing on some kind of semi-tightrope thing (I've since learned that it's called a Slack Wire). Every time I think about it, I still wince and want to assume the fetal position. Had that been me on the Slack Wire, the bidding for my remains would've been a battle between the Vienna Boys Choir and Tyson's Deluxe Chicken Parts (Lite). Sans nuggets.
For the record, the looming threat of a "Wardrobe Malfunction" never materialized. This was fortunate, particularly for NBC's defense attorneys, though it was unfortunate for fifteen-year-olds, or those in charge of America's foreign policy with Iran, which is the same thing, except fifteen-year-olds have more common sense.
We all recall that infamous event during Super Bowl XLVI minus VIII, when Janet Jackson only displayed a breast for IX-XVIths of a second, forcing men everywhere to rush out and buy a TiVo so they could auto-loop.
It was the ultimate instant replay, not to mention history's most monitored mammogram.
Not to worry. This year, we didn't have to collectively blush when someone's yay slipped out of her boostie. This year, we were treated to a much more elegant act.
Right.
This year, we just stared at SNAFU's one-finger salute, waited for somebody somewhere to sing a decipherable syllable or two, and watched a stageful of prone, nearly-clad women repeatedly thrusting their navels in the air, as if they'd just laid back on a rogue heating pad or an overcooked Hot Pocket.
But all unholy spectacles must come to an end…especially when seven million blings are at stake.
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The Plot: A mutant two-headed black man argues with his other head, which then sings in falsetto.
The Pitch: Buy our dependable German car!
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The Plot: Youngish vampires are at a campfire party in the woods, waiting for an undead pusher to show up with some blood. Dead Dude arrives and pulls a bag of plasma out of the glove box. Suddenly, all the vampires explode.
The Pitch: Buy our luxury Japanese car!
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The Plot: An incontinent kid relieves himself in a swimming pool.
The Pitch: Use our tax software!
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The Plot: A sultry foreigner dresses herself in public, then mumbles something unintelligible in an accent so thick it could stop ants.
The Pitch: Order our flowers!
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The Plot: Jaded young people standing in line on a city street suddenly erupt into song and dance and are joined by emaciated rock guitarists, chunky gospel choirs, and stuntmen, as if the Occupy Wall Street scab warriors had mated with the cast of Glee during an audition for a movie by Quentin Tarantino.
The Pitch: Switch to our phone plan!
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Did Arby's, those "roast beef" guys, really just spend 3.5 million bucks to promote a fried fish sandwich?
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And so it ended. Football season is now officially over. Now, sports fans eagerly move on to that action-packed, Olympian crowd-pleaser…
Bowling.
Moriituri semi Brunswickia liga te salutant. (We who are about to face a VII-X split salute you.)
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By the way – before this year's game, one sponsor proudly announced that "aerial coverage of tonight's Super Bowl" would be brought to you by Bud Light.
Aerial coverage.
Aerial coverage of a game that was being played in an enclosed building. An enclosed building with a roof. That doesn't retract.
Thanks a lot, Bud.
