Nurse the Hate: Hate The Super Bowl Halftime Show

 
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In what was an evening of disaster for me with the Super Bowl, perhaps the greatest outrage was the Halftime Show Extravaganza Brought To You By Pepsi.  (By the terms of their sponsor agreement, I think I have to mention Pepsi or face a ninja team of bloodthirsty lawyers)  I have now become such a curmudgeon that I can measure the disconnect I have from popular culture by the degree of befuddlement I have while staring at “The Biggest Stars In Music!!!” do whatever it is that they do.  I must have said, “What is this shit?” 17 times during halftime.  I literally have no idea why anyone would find what was presented appealing in any way whatsoever.

I am aware of Coldplay much like I am aware of Imagine Dragons, Country Music Mega Tickets, Chili’s restaurants, the Real Housewives TV shows, and the acting career of Will Smith.  These are things that I can identify from afar but I don’t get close to, as I know that there’s nothing really there.  It’s the cultural equivalent of a Pizza Hut large pizza with cheesy garlic knots.  No good can come of coming in contact with it and you will feel badly about yourself afterwards.  Yet I was totally unprepared for the reality of Coldplay.

Allow me to sit in my rocking chair and tell you about The Good Old Days.  There was once a time when rock stars looked cool.  They were dangerous.  They fucked amazing looking people that would never talk to you under any circumstance.  They did powerful drugs that you don’t even know the name of and did these drugs publicly without remorse.  They were wild and scary and exciting.  And then there is Coldplay.

Coldplay look like four effeminate lads on their way to yoga class.  In their United Colors of Benetton action gear, they looked like four British pansies that had been let outside by their mother for a playdate with their sexually ambiguous friend “Robin”.  I think the bass player stole his top from 1980’s Fleetwood Mac Christine McVie’s dressing room.  The multicolored LA Gear high top aerobic workout shoes that Chris Martin had were probably meant to say, “we are Coldplay and we are inclusionary!” but to me they said “Who is that pussy and how come they didn’t book Iggy Pop?”.

I don’t know what to say about their songs.  Two of them sounded sort of familiar.  They sort of float by like music in a grocery store, meant to fill some space to prevent awkward silence.  They are instantly forgettable.  My understanding is that they have sold 778 kazillion records, yet why don’t I know anyone personally that listens to them?  The extras that ran up to the Disney looking stage sure seemed excited, but I have a nagging feeling that this was something being claimed on resumes by America’s lowest rung actors as a “TV Appearance”.

The producers of the show must have been aware early on that some mopey British anthems weren’t going to cut it during a mega testosterone event like the Super Bowl, so that’s when they went to The Big Guns.  When I say “Big Guns” I mean 5 foot 3 inch Bruno Mars and a bunch of other nameless guys in vinyl jumpsuits.  Yeah, that’s really going to amp things up.  Why do people like this music?  Why does that little fella need 16 other guys in matching black vinyl pajamas hopping around with him while he pretends to sing that shitty song?  How come Chris Martin of Coldplay looked like a Euro NBA power forward when he stood next to Bruno Mars?  Is Chris Martin 6 foot 9?  Is Bruno Mars 5 foot 3?  Are Chris Martin’s LA Gear pussy shoes lifts?  What is this shit?

Uh oh!  Here it comes!  It’s Beyonce everybody!  Whoa!  And she looks mad!  And she’s got 36 black chicks in black leather booty shorts dancing on a football field!  Look at that zipper in the front of her weird high waisted shorts!  Maybe she’s gonna unzip it and show us her fucking snatch!  No?  Oh, she’s just going to lip sync some disco song and try not to fall down while fans blow her hair around.  Well, that’s disappointing…

When all of them started dancing around on the stage and the clips of other legitimate artists from the past were evoked I got the sense that the goal was to try and make me forget about what I had just seen.  It was almost like a hypnotist trying to erase a memory of your family being executed in front of you by terrorists.  “Watch this clip of Prince.  You did not just see a man in green golf pants playing guitar while hopping around with Beyonce and a midget doing disco.  Ease that from your mind.” 

The thing that is startling to me is that this is what the majority of the nation thinks is absolutely top flight entertainment.  I must have taken a horrible cultural off ramp at some point to get to the place where I can’t even wrap my mind around any of that being mildly interesting.  How is it possible that people I walk around amongst daily think “Wow!  What an amazing performance!  What an Age we live in!”.  This must have been what it was like in the late 70s when punk first broke.  There must have been just enough people sitting around looking at crap like this to reach the point where they said, “Fuck this.”.  I hope if nothing else, that Halftime Show encourages a fresh outburst of real creativity from somewhere. 

Anywhere.