Category: Social Media

The Super Bowl, the Jacksons and Man Boobs

Unless you’ve been totally mesmerized by Mark Zuckerberg’s overnight transition from dorm-room geek to greedy capitalist, you know that this Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday — the game that’s more than just a game.  It’s a time when hyperbole from throughout the land gathers in one spot (this year it’s Indianapolis) to produce the biggest anticlimax of the year.  Personally, I love the Super Bowl.  I watch it religiously.  As a traditionalist, I assemble every, sodium-soaked, sugar-saturated, that-stuff-will-kill-you faux food I can find.  I chill the beverages; I clean the TV screen; I realign my bum groove on the sofa.  Some years I even send out for pizza.  Then I settle in to watch what will always be just an average game because every year the Super Bowl is never as good as the month of playoffs that precede it.  It just never is!  The real drama is over, and all you have left is hype.  Yet, the Super Bowl is still the biggest sporting event in the world.  Sure, piles more people watch World Cup and the Tour de France or even some weird cricket championship in India, but that doesn’t matter.  The Super Bowl is Numero Uno, the Big Kahuna*.  The one everybody talks about.  But it wasn’t always that way.  It took Michael and Janet Jackson to turn a regular winner-take-all championship game into a worldwide phenomenon where over half the people watching don’t even know the rules.

Here’s a quick and dirty history lesson.  Years ago, back when Madonna actually still was a virgin the NFL thought it was the toughest kid on the block.  It wasn’t; it was just the only game in town.  Regardless, the NFL treated everybody like crap, including their players and the fans, and made tons of money doing it.  In America, excess profits breed ruinous competition, so a couple of really rich guys decided to set up their own league and cash in on some of that coin.  They organized the AFL, and for seven years, the two leagues spent millions, duking it out for players, fans and television rights.  Finally, both sides realized that fighting with each other wasn’t the best way to maximize the bottom line, so, in 1966, they decided to settle their differences and merge.  On January 15th, 1967, they held an AFL/NFL championship game which, for want of a better term, they called the Supergame, which almost immediately morphed into the Super Bowl.

In the beginning, the Super Bowl wasn’t actually all that super.  It was a championship game but no big deal beyond the domestic fan base – boys to men.  There was lots of advertising, but mainly for the regular manly stuff like cars and razorblades and aftershave.  The halftime show worked on the college bowl game model: every once in a while a recognizable name, but, in general, Disney kids and marching bands.  That was it and it stayed that way until 1993 when Michael Jackson hove up on the horizon.

The mere anticipation of Michael Jackson performing at halftime during Super Bowl XXVII shot the television ratings through the stratosphere.  Super Bowl ad time was going for six figures and there wasn’t any available.  Everybody and his friend wanted their product front and centre, and they weren’t about to waste that kind of placement on a lame old commercial the audience had seen a thousand times.  Unique Super Bowl ads had been around for a couple of years, but Michael turned them into an art form.  Nor did he disappoint; Super Bowl XXVII was one of the most watched events in television history.

For the next ten years, the Super Bowl halftime show read like a Who’s Who from Billboard magazine.  The actual game shared top billing with the likes of Tony Bennett, Britney Spears, Stevie Wonder, Phil Collins etc. etc.  Even U2 did a solo concert!  Plus, the Super Bowl remained one of the few nationwide television events not fractured by the 500 channel universe.  The domestic TV audience began reaching for 100 million, and worldwide it went off the charts.  Aftershave and razorblades didn’t cut it anymore.  Ads became bolder, flashier and funnier as modern Mad Men went after this captive audience.  Super Bowl ads became an entity unto themselves; a significant part of the Monday morning conversation.  In 2003, The Dixie Chicks sang the National Anthem, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers knocked the snot out of the Raiders 48-21, and Shania Twain and Sting entertained everybody in sight.  Market share and ad revenues were the largest in history.  All was well with the world.

In 2004, Super Bowl XXXVIII was scheduled to be a complete snorer.  New England was clearly a better team than Carolina ever hoped to be.  And the halftime show featured Janet Jackson, the aging sister of a spooky superstar, and Justin Timberlake, fresh off a stint as the lead singer of the non-threatening boy band ‘N Sync.  However, as Gomer Pyle used to say; “Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!”  Not only did the game turn into one of the best in history, but Janet and Justin put on a bit of a show themselves.  Does the term “wardrobe malfunction” mean anything to you?  Janet and Justin’s halftime presentation of Janet’s 38-year-old breast scared the bejesus out of the NFL, CBS and the federal government.  With one foul swat, those two crazy kids turned the Super Bowl on its ear.  Suddenly, one of the gooses that was laying the golden eggs couldn’t be trusted.  And if you can’t trust Janet and Justin not to muck up a halftime show, who can you trust?  Hip Hop?  Rappers?  The people down at Super Bowl Central were on the horns of a dilemma: how to keep pulling them in for the halftime show without opening the door to contemporary entertainment.  They came up with a brilliant solution – man boobs!  They’d get male singers so old they wouldn’t dare take their clothes off!

For the next six years, Super Bowl fans were subjected to some of the greatest names in Geriatric Rock.  The list is impressive: from Paul McCartney (who was born two years before D Day) to The Who (where half the original band was already dead.)  Even Prince, the youngest of the crowd, was pushing fifty so hard he could see the pension plan from there.  Combine that with Springsteen, The Stones and Tom Petty, and it looks like the criteria for employment was what were the kids singing at Super Bowl I?  But here’s the deal.  It worked!  The audience grew.  It’s amazing how nostalgia and half-naked Go Daddy ads can prop up an average sporting event.

This year, it’s Tom Brady’s Patriots, by two touchdowns, over Eli Manning’s Giants — the old Boston/New York rivalry.  The advertisers are showing previews, just as if their ads were Coming Attractions.  A couple of them look decent, although the Avengers went by too fast to notice.  Then, at halftime, Madonna will be wailing away like a virgin.  Madonna may have been controversial in the past, but chances are good she’ll keep her clothes on.  After all, she’s old enough to be most of the player’s m-m-m older sister.

It’s going to be great.  I can smell the guacamole already.

*Just to show you what a big deal the Super Bowl is, notice I didn’t mention football once.

Seperating the Facts from the Truth

One of the most amazing things about facts is how mutable they can be.  I’m not talking about changing the facts.  That’s impossible.  As John Adams once said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.”  Nor am I talking about this stupid “truthiness” that’s garnered so many headlines since Stephen Colbert coined the word in 2005.  I don’t think many people realize that this is actually a comedic device invented for laughs and regardless of who or how many people take it seriously, it isn’t.  I’m talking about rearranging the facts to create a faux truth which is then widely accepted as not only a reasonable facsimile but an actual alternative, indistinguishable from — and equal to — truth itself.   It’s a sort of mutant truth, accepted and unquestioned, as if it were the real thing.  Here’s how it’s done.

Everybody knows that Britt Reid, the Green Hornet, is the son of Dan Reid.   This is a fact.  Dan Reid was named for his father Dan Reid (Senior, I guess?) who was a Texas Ranger.  Dan Reid pere, and six other Texas Rangers were on the trail of outlaw Barthalamo “Butch” Cavendish when they were ambushed.  In the ensuing battle, the Texas Rangers didn’t have a chance and they were all killed except one: John Reid, Dan Reid’s brother.  Even though he was badly wounded, John Reid survived, clinging to life until, luckily he was discovered by an itinerant Native American, named Tonto, who nursed him back to life.  When John Reid was healthy enough to saddle up again, he made a black mask out of his dead brother’s vest and spent the rest of his life as (It’s getting kind of clear here, isn’t it?) the Lone Ranger.  The Lone Ranger, therefore, is, in fact, the Green Hornet’s great uncle!  This is the indisputable truth.  And it’s why Michel Gondry should be taken out and horsewhipped for making that mockery called a movie, The Green Hornet in 2011.  He juggled the facts unmercifully, and a whole generation now believe his version of the story.  This is how the truth gets waylaid.  However, Gondry’s sins are for another time.  This is just an illustration of how the facts remain, even when sometimes the truth gets lost by sloppy scholarship or undisciplined directors.  Again, let me illustrate.

There is a widely held belief, purported by William S. Baring-Gould, that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had a love affair which produced a son who became, in later life, the great detective Nero Wolfe.  Stuff and nonsense!  Baring-Gould has taken a few isolated facts and woven them into a fiction that has gained enormous credibility.  However, even though many accept this as the truth, including many reputable writers, nothing could be further from it.  Let’s look at the facts — objectively.

It is well known that Irene Adler was the love (or as close as he could get) of Sherlock Holmes’ life.  He kept a portrait of her on his desk, and she was the only woman he ever spoke about with grudging admiration.  It is also well known that in May, 1891, Holmes and Professor Moriarty fought a life-and-death struggle on a ledge over the Reichenbach Falls, in Switzerland.  It was reported at the time that, locked in mortal combat, both adversaries slipped from the dizzying heights and plunged to their deaths.  Of course, we now know that, in fact, Holmes defeated Professor Moriarty but was unable to return to Watson because he was set upon by Moriarty’s henchmen.  However, for three years, Holmes was presumed dead; his whereabouts, unknown.

This is all factual information.  From it, we can conclude that Holmes must have been severely injured.  Otherwise, he would have simply rejoined Watson in the nearby town of Meiringen.  Therefore, we can also conclude that, because of his injuries, Holmes would have needed assistance to descend the mountain.  These are two reasonable deductions, worthy of Holmes himself.  The tricky part, however, is after recovering from his injuries, what would make Sherlock Holmes abandon his career as a detective for three years?  Nothing else had ever captured the soul of Sherlock Holmes – except, perhaps Irene Adler whom, we know, was living on the continent with her husband.  Therefore, it is more than reasonable to assume that it could only be Irene Adler, out hiking on a late spring vacation, who found Holmes and rescued him (not unlike Tonto.)  We can further make the case that (given their history) in his weakened state, Holmes succumbed to Ms. Adler’s considerable charms.  In short, as she nursed Sherlock Holmes back to health Irene Adler seduced him.  No other explanation is possible.

The result was a child; however, not, as some would claim, a boy, but a girl whom they named Monica (from the Greek monos which means “solitary or alone.”)  Obviously, in the early 1890s, this was a very delicate situation.  Clearly, a love affair and an illegitimate child would have folded up Irene Adler’s marriage like a cheap lawn chair.  Furthermore, Holmes was not really daddy material.  The child was given to a local Swiss couple named Delacroix, who changed her name to “Monique,” and raised her as their own.  Eventually, consumed by guilt, Holmes and Adler parted, never to see the child — or each other — again.

Monique Delacroix grew up totally unaware of her biological parents.  During the First World War, she met Andrew, a dashing British military officer.  They married in 1919, when he left the service and took employment as a Vickers’ armaments representative.  They had one child, born November 11th, 1920, whom they named “James,” after his paternal grandfather.  Unfortunately, Monique and her husband, in a weird stroke of irony, were both killed in a climbing accident, in the early 1930s.  Eleven year old James went to live with his father’s sister, Miss Charmian Bond.  James Bond completed his education in England and went on to a brilliant career in British government service.  Thus, when we examine the facts objectively, we find that Sherlock Holmes is not, in fact, the father of orchid detective Nero Wolfe, but, indeed, the maternal grandfather of James Bond, 007!

As we can see, it is easy to fall into the trap of alternative truth.  Even though the facts remain the same, sometimes they can be mismanaged, or perhaps unwittingly manipulated to produce, not a deliberate lie, but an untruth, all the same.  Michel Gondry and William S. Baring-Gould were not maliciously trying to deceive us; yet deceive us they did.  Therefore, it is always best, when faced with an acceptable truth, no matter how plausible, to return to the facts to make your own judgement call.

Oscar is a Grouch!

I love bitchin’ about the Oscar nominations.  It’s like the Super Bowl; an annual event that everybody takes way too seriously.  Folks, it’s going to happen again next year!  Besides, movie people are so full of hot air they tend to bounce when you boot them.  To say they’re smug is like saying Segovia played the guitar.  They could give lessons.  And that’s not even the problem.  The problem is for every ego-inflated actor, director or clipboard holder, there are forty-three other people drinking overpriced plonk, munching thinly disguised Velveeta on toast and discussing it all as if it were real.  It’s entertainment, people!  Make believe!  The difference between Woody in Toy Story and Chuck in Cast Away is minimal.  Yet, year after year, movie people polish up their arrogance and head on down to the Kodak Theatre to tell each other how wonderful they are.  But they’ve got nothing to be arrogant about.  The Academy Awards have been running since 1929, and in that time, they have made so many monumental mistakes it’s a wonder everybody south of Ventura Highway isn’t wandering around with a brown bag over their heads.

Movies are subjective.  I understand that.  I love tons of movies that most people wouldn’t bother to click the remote for.  Everybody’s list of Top Ten Films of All Time is different and open to discussion.  However, in cinematic entertainment there are standards of excellence and regardless of where your tastes lie, be it high drama or low comedy, certain movies are generally accepted to be microphone and camera above the rest.  These are the ones that are supposed to be honoured by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences every year.  However, the Academy (in its infinite ego) has chosen to ignore some of the greatest films and film makers of all time.  That’s why I like to kick them around so much and why — here in 2012 — they have the credibility of Richard Nixon with a dog story.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Richard Burton, Montgomery Clift and Peter O’Toole are all pretty good actors.  Yet none of them has ever won an Academy Award.  You can make a case that Paul Scofield might have been better in A Man for all Seasons than Burton was in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  But Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou over Burton in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold?  Pih-leeze!  Meanwhile, Peter O’Toole played Henry II twice, first in Becket and then in The Lion in Winter and that was after he was Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, for God’s sake!  All in all, he’s been nominated eight times and never laid his mitts on Oscar once.  But then again, neither has Montgomery Clift, despite From Here to Eternity and The Young Lions nor James Dean, Robert Mitchum or Steve MeQueen.  These are not judgement calls, by the way; they’re careers that have lasted for decades and included such films as Giant, Cape Fear and The Sand Pebbles.  Oscar has a way of picking and choosing who gets to grab a statue and who doesn’t.

It’s the same for Best Picture.  In 1979, Kramer vs Kramer, was Numero Uno whereas Apocalypse Now got Oscars for cinematography and sound.  In ’76, Rocky beat out Taxi Driver.  In 1955 — in what can only be called temporary insanity — Marty won for Best Picture, while East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause each got a pat on the ass.  But for complete and utter WTF, you have to go to 1941 when How Green Was My Valley was given the Academy Award for Best Picture over The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane.  Citizen Kane?  I can understand The Maltese Falcon; Oscar never really liked Bogart that much anyway, but Citizen Kane?  Orson Welles did win an Oscar that year, but not for Best Picture, Actor or Director; he won for Best Original Screenplay but had to share it with Herman J. Mankiewicz.  Wasn’t that a kick in the teeth?   What many consider the best film ever made … sorry, my sarcasm indicator has gone off the dial.

However, Welles isn’t the only director who’s been rear-ended at the Oscars.  There’s Ridley Scott who directed Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator; Stanley Kubrick who directed Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey; and, of course, another guy named Alfred Hitchcock.  Alfred Hitchcock never rated an Oscar?  He is arguably, over his entire career, the most influential director of the 20th century.  Even if he isn’t, remember this is the guy who directed Rear Window, Vertigo, Notorious, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds and the list goes on and on – and on.  What kind of an idiot outfit doesn’t include Alfred Hitchcock when they’re handing out hardware?  Every other film organization on this planet gave him so many awards he could have filled a mansion in Bel Air, but somehow he wasn’t good enough to get an Oscar?   Not once in over fifty years of film making?  If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ever had any credibility, they lost it long before Hitchcock quit making movies.

These are not nerdy arguments about how many actors can dance on the head of a pin or why this camera angle is better than that one.  These are huge errors in judgement that have occurred often enough to be habitual.  The Oscars have always been subjective, but these days they’re downright suggestible.  And that brings us back to 2012 and this year’s nominations.  If you’ve got an extra twenty bucks, put it on The Artist to win Best Picture.  It’s a good film.  However, the real reason it’s going to win is Scorsese and Spielberg have already won Best Picture and Woody Allen won’t bother to drop by for the ceremony.  Most importantly, though, The Artist looks artsy and the Academy’s super-heated ego is going to bubble all over it.