Notes on the Evening of a Super Bowl

First of all, Hoorah Colts. Okay, got that over with.

Did anyone else notice that this evening's Super Bowl commercials were A) not up to snuff with previous Super Bowl commercials, and B) especially moribund? There was the heart-disease-awareness commercial which depicted a fairly scrawny, gray-haired guy dressed in a heart-shaped costume getting fairly ominously beaten-up by a variety of nasty-looking characters who represent various heart-related maladies (high blood presure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and the like). In another commercial, a GM car assembly-line machine contemplates and then daydreams of its suicide by jumping off a bridge. I'm not eight years old, but I found these (and the other questionably macabre) advertisemens to be a bit unnecessary. I could sense thousands of overprotective parents of small children staring, outraged at these commercials, and it was disconcerting. I guess the years of the Coca-Cola-Kid-Mean-Joe-Green-like exchanges in commercials are over, and pure sensuality is here to say.

Another Super Bowl-related revelation, what I am about to say will probably shock you, dear readers. I belive that Janet Jackson's right breast saved the institution of the Super Bowl Halftime Show from utter creative squalor. After the Wardrobe Malfunction, the people who organize the Halftime Show decided that recent "artists" (not necessarily musicians, remember) should not be trusted to give a properly entertaining show. As a result, we are allowed to hear actual music during Halftime of the Super Bowl. I (and most other sensible viewers) have enjoyed the Rolling Stones and Prince as the las couple Halftime Show acts. Just think, if it weren't for that bit of "accidental" exhibitionism, we would have had to suffer through a Halftime Show involving, the Pussycat Dolls, the Black Eyed Peas, and Panic! At The Disco.

Phew!

Tonight's lyrical selection:

Phil Ochs, "When I'm Gone" (I'm not depressed; it's just a neat song), last three verses:

"Won't see the golden of the sun when I'm gone,
And the evenings and the mornings will be one when I'm gone,
Can't be singing louder than the guns when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here.

All my days won't be dances of delight when I'm gone,
And the sands will be shifting from my sight when I'm gone,
Can't add my name into the fight while I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here.

And I won't be laughing at the lies when I'm gone,
And I can't question how or when or why when I'm gone,
Can't live proud enough to die when I'm gone,
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here."