Last Week's Column: The Boss Hurts His Boss

Here's my column from last week. You can view it online, with all the snippity user comments HERE. 

SHANFIELD: The super suggestive bowl

Published: Wednesday, February 4, 2009

I don’t know Bruce Springsteen at all, but I can imagine how his day began on Sunday. He woke up, removed his silk pajamas, wiggled his toes on his tiger rug and then fed a Snausage to his pet tiger. He looked in a gold-rimmed mirror and massaged the Botox injection puncture holes on his temples. He blew a kiss to a black and white photo of Courtney Cox Arquette, and then opened his walk-in closet full of tight pants and plaid shirts with the sleeves cut off and said, “I think I’ll wear a vest today.”

Bruce had to be well aware of the repercussions of the 2004 Super Bowl’s spill onstage with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s unexplained hand spasm. Bruce knew the Super Bowl halftime show is now a place for non-sexual females like Faith Hill and asexual males like Prince. He knew all this and still tried to push the envelope. Bruce did what most Super Bowl performers do: he acted like a 12- to 28-year-old boy and tried to give us as many sexual innuendos as possible.

The E Street Band was barely a minute into their first song when Bruce held the microphone stand between his legs and threw his head back in ecstasy. We’re unsure if this was an homage to Flashdance, a creative stretch that only rich people with Pilates machines can do or just Bruce’s way of getting America hyped. Regardless, the microphone pole took on the role of Bruce’s wiener, and young men everywhere rejoiced in giggles while the Federal Communications Commission went to the books to measure the move’s offensiveness.

If that wasn’t enough, Bruce then ran to a camera on the side of the stage, hoping to slide toward it on his knees. He misjudged the slipperiness of his leather pants and rammed his crotch into the unsuspecting lens. He quickly got up on his feet and giggled about his suggestive display of pelvic muscle, and then danced away, leaving us mesmerized that he could still walk after such a collision.

In the grand tradition of using the Super Bowl halftime show as an outlet for immaturity, Bruce wanted to show us that he’s still got it. But why? Has it always been like this, or did Janet set a trend of naughtiness? Her sagging behavior was so deplorable that the Super Bowl performance planners vowed to have uncontroversial musicians from then on. The problem is that these noncontroversial musicians know they are being asked to perform because they are old, safe and boring, and so they find the need to prove their controversy. Take Prince, for instance. He spent a good minute behind a giant sheet placing his guitar in a certain erect position so that the light would catch it just right. Then again, this is the same Prince who wore pants with butt cheek cutouts to the MTV Video Music Awards.

Perhaps it’s us. No performer ever comes out and says that a certain gesture or dance move was meant to be sexually suggestive, but at this point, I think we’re looking for it. You have to give Janet credit for cutting out the middleman and just showing us the sun –– literally.

I saw a Madonna concert recently and she spent the majority of the three hours struggling to strum a black Fender Stratocaster. I really thought someone had given her the guitar and not plugged it in, sort of like how as a child my older brother would give me a detached Super Nintendo controller and tell me I was Bowser. But halfway through the concert she followed the cord from her guitar to the amp and proceeded to hump the speaker with short pelvic thrusts, sort of like a shih tzu puppy.

At the time, I ignored it, but now I see that she was just doing what we were all asking for: make a reference to sex so we could giggle and pretend we’re more mature than Madonna. But we’re not more mature than Madonna, Prince and definitely not Bruce. As a society, we search for references to our private parts, bodily functions and other illicit behavior. Is it wrong? It can’t be if we all do it, but it’s definitely something that should be considered at the next FCC meeting. Perhaps Jenna Jameson should perform, or Ron Jeremy can sing Louis Armstrong covers next year. Why beat around the bush, literally?

I don’t think I’ll ever watch a Super Bowl performance again without the 12-year-old boy in me acting up and looking for phallic symbols. It’s simply un-American to deny the immaturity of the audience that watches the Super Bowl and those who talk about it for months after. Perhaps the FCC is a commission trying to get us to grow up and have more refined senses of humor, but come on –– that’s un-American. What? Do they expect us to laugh at British stuff? Have some loyalty.

Therefore, I commend Bruce on his attention to detail and zest for youthful, immature phallic symbols. He’s just working on a dream, people. I hope he enjoyed himself at Disneyland.