Has the Super Bowl jumped the shark?  Could it be that it’s no longer an American ritual and merely a FOOTBALL GAME?

Appears that way to me.

Everything’s got a lifespan.  Just look at "Monday Night Football".  Nothing goes on forever.  It’s kind of like music videos.  Companies started to wonder, was it WORTH IT to spend all that money on commercials?  Did it end up on the bottom line or was it like setting the money on fire?  Based on yesterday’s lineup of spots, it seems America’s marketers have decided it just doesn’t pay to create a mini-movie that blows people away for a zillion bucks.  Because that’s all it does, blow people away.  It doesn’t sell more product.

The Pepsi spots were decent.  But not in a laugh out loud way.  And anybody who thought up the brownandbubbly.com url should be fired immediately, or made to stew in his own feces.  Sure, cola’s brown, but what did Frank Zappa so famously say?  BROWN SHOES DON’T MAKE IT!

The highlight of course, was the Sprint ad.  Where the two guys were comparing the features of their cell phones.  You’re sitting there thinking, how in the hell is a cell phone a crime deterrent?  You figure it’s a joke, but when the shorter, wimpier guy turns around and throws the phone at the other guy’s head, I burst out laughing.  THAT’S innovation.  And the same kind of irreverence all over television channels kids watch.

Other than that…

Isn’t it interesting that the company that made the MOST famous Super Bowl spot of all time, which many people believe is the BEST commercial spot EVER, didn’t even buy ANY time on the Super Bowl?

Now it was a reasonable game.  Not as good as many of the playoff games that preceded it, but not a typical Super Bowl blowout.  Still, one was watching and asked oneself, I invested five months of my life for THIS?  The World Series ALWAYS delivers more drama.  Or, if it’s a 4-0 blowout, the dominance is palpable.  I mean who really gives a fuck about the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  Isn’t that like a battle of the bands between Gerry & the Pacemakers and Freddy & the Dreamers?  We want the Giants, the Raiders, even the fucking Dolphins.  But that’s what parity will get you.

Oh, there WAS one football highlight.  After the game in fact.  When Jerome Bettis said the bus stops here.  Sports stars NEVER do this.  They say they’re going to take some time, think it over.  But Jerome, whom I’m not a big fan of, enhanced his credibility and his dignity by delivering the answer to the question on everybody’s lips WHEN they wanted to hear it.  Utterly amazing in this publicist-controlled truthiness world of today.

And then there was the music…

John Legend.  All I can say is you’re no Marvin Gaye.

Joss Stone.  Is that the only way you can sing?  In that controlled ORGASM style?  You make Janis Joplin look like Aretha Franklin. And believe me, she wasn’t.

Stevie Wonder…  If he could have seen the proceedings, he wouldn’t have participated.  Then again, he IS from Detroit.  But, if they really wanted to honor someone for putting Detroit on the map, they should have had Berry Gordy throw out the first ball.  He built Motown, along with Henry Ford, they’re the two Motor City giants.

At least Stevie was playing live.  But, he was a bit off too.  Even though he played some great material.

And then there was the aforementioned Aretha singing the national anthem.

Did you catch the parody on SNL the night before?

Talk about a show that’s no longer funny…  Even STEVE MARTIN couldn’t rescue it.  And YES, Prince dazzled on guitar, but why can’t anybody come out and say the material he played was SECOND-RATE, if THAT?  Go back and listen to "Dirty Mind", never mind "I Wanna Be Your Lover" from the album before it, nor the subsequent "Little Red Corvette".  What blew Prince up was his SONGS, and he seems to have lost his touch.  But, there was ONE moment of hilarity on SNL Saturday night, actually deep into Sunday morning, and that was Horatio Sanz doing Aaron Neville.  With the "cocoa butter".  Watch the previous segment with this character on youtube Aaron Neville. If you don’t crack up, you don’t have a funny bone.

In the SNL skit, Kenan Thompson played Aretha kind of poorly.  But in real life, the roles were reversed.  I’d say Aretha eclipsed Aaron, but SHE BLEW HIM OFF THE STAGE!  (Wait a minute, there was no stage…she blew him off the field?)  THAT’S a star.  THAT’S a woman with talent.  That’s why we laugh at you Mariah Carey, never mind your Jessica, etc. clones.  It’s not about constant melisma, reaching the sky, it’s about painting over the ENTIRE range, both low and high, with varying tones of emotion.  Aretha Franklin was the musical highlight of last night’s show, and if you think otherwise, you’ve got no ears.

And, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards must NOT have any.  Because if they could still hear themselves play, they never would have done this gig.

Oh, for a minute there you got the excitement, you wanted to see them live yourself.  But by time they hit "Rough Justice", it occurred to you, they were AWFUL!

Now maybe you’ve seen the Stones.  At their best they always weren’t their best.  Maybe a third of the show they totally clicked.  Last night was an average performance.  It’s just that nobody gets to SEE this performance unless they’re actually in attendance at a gig.  So, the legend grows, DISPROPORTIONATE to reality.  The Stones haven’t been good since 1975.  And even listen to the live albums.  Jagger lost the ability to sing EONS ago.  And Keith Richards would work if there were two other stellar guitarists, but he’s so rough and untogether…  And Ronnie Wood.  He LOOKS the part, but he’s playing as if he’s still working with Rod Stewart.  With a spiky flash that worked in the context of Rod’s early down-home stuff.  But added into the Stones’ mix, it’s just not right.  The Stones are all about FEEL, locking into the groove, and Ronnie Wood has never found a groove he could fit into.  He adds accents.  And, what accents he lays down are pretty damn similar to what KEITH plays.  Utterly ridiculous.  Bring back Mick Taylor.

And the screaming meemees.  Shit, has Don Mischer ever been to a REAL concert?  NOBODY’S got that kind of energy.  To jump up and down for twelve minutes.  (Except maybe in the heyday of the Beatles, when the fans barely sported pubic hair and the band only PLAYED for twenty minutes.)  Totally fake.

I mean I give the Stones props for playing a new track.

But the fact that they performed "Satisfaction" shows how out of touch they are.  The partying song, the SUPER BOWL song, is "Brown Sugar".  You’re supposed to get 100,000 people to throw their arms into the air and go WHOO!   Which they would have done…  Hell, for years the Stones wouldn’t even PLAY "Satisfaction" live.  Before the show became about greatest hits and giving the people what they want.  But the worst part, the dirty little secret, which now the whole WORLD knows is…they just can’t PLAY IT!  Yup, YOU know "Satisfaction" is a groove.  A sexual one.  Maybe Keith Richards needed some musical Viagra, because he couldn’t find the groove of his OWN SONG!  He played the lick, the riff, with no SOUL!  The whole song came off flat.  It appeared to be a bunch of old men looking to rip off people nostalgic for their youth one more time.

All I can say is Charlie was good last night.  And they played live.

Didn’t MTV teach us?  That television KILLS music?  Eliminates all the magic?  If you want to put your career on the line, perform live on TV when everybody’s watching.  Then they’ll see you’re just another guy or gal, sans charisma, trying to earn a buck.  We used to BELIEVE in the Rolling Stones.  After last night, we know John Lennon was right, we can only believe in ourselves.

It’s the end of an era.  The sixties are done.  Both its game, football, and its music, British Invasion rock.  Just ask the kids.  They’d rather play extreme sports.  And they want the stuff that came AFTER the sixties, like Zeppelin, the experimental, darker music.

Oh, don’t tell me kids play football and listen to the Beatles.  That’s not the point.  The point is there’s no EDGE!  And people, especially young people, NEED an edge.  They need something different, that they can believe in.

The usual purveyors are lost.  Because they think the sixties gravy train will last forever.  That the era they grew up in will rule.

But Hula-Hoops are dead.  We need more companies like Sprint.  Which survived because it realized its long distance business was going to crater and therefore invested in a wholly-owned wireless system of high caliber.

You’ve got to take a risk.

There was no risk yesterday.

Are you ready for some football?

Thank god the season is over.