The ads for the first half of this year’s Superbowl game featured Viagra pumping up a Fiat, Budweiser taking on craft beers, Walter White as “Almost Greg” in a pharmacy for Esurance, and Jeff Bridges wearing a Dudelike sweater and Om-ing for Square Space. Katy Perry played the “Pepsi Halftime Show” but it was Coke that the Internet server technician spilled into the Matrix in an ad, making love from hate in a kind of LSD-in-the-water fantasy fulfilled (with the wrong substance).
Perry was seen smoking pot out of an apple on the Warped Tour circa 2008, and gave a "thumbs up" to California's cannabis legalization ballot measure in 2010, but replied when asked by Rolling Stone about marijuana in 2014: "I can't do that stuff. I'd be like in the corner: 'Are you trying to kill me?!'" Can’t blame her in this violent society she’s bombarded with, starting with football itself. The program advertised appearing after the game is “Blacklist” with pyrotechnics as violent as they come; a Nascar bad-boy ad also had a firey crash; action star Danny Trejo played Marcia Brady sans her Snickers; and the ultra creepy "Shades of Grey" was advertised as inciting "countless" fantasies.
Perry’s a talented enough singer (she got me singing "Firework" with the autistic girl). But she had to turn her boobs into whipped cream canisters and her nipples into nozzles to get attention. For today’s show, she did up her life-giving breasts with nuclear symbols at Bikini Beach (pictured). She had good line at the press conference about her performance not being “deflating” (I suspect Bruce Vilanch’s hand). Perry is only the fourth woman to headline a Halftime show, counting Janet Jackson (with the famous “Wardrobe Malfunction”), Beyoncé, and Madonna (who reached to Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra).
Perry's show was augmented with pothead Lenny Kravitz, whose “Stand By My Woman Now” was the most respectful song even written to the female sex. While on tour in Croatia in 2005, Kravitz told Gloria magazine that he had smoked pot with Mick Jagger, calling it a "great privilege."
Missy Elliott, the first female Hip-Hop artist to appear at a Superbowl, brought the energy to a higher level than Perry did riding a monster mechanical tiger. Elliott reportedly confessed that she tried “a Jamaica brownie” on her trip in Jamaica in 2005 and told journalists at the press conference that she was high.
When Kurt Warner walked the Lombardi trophy in after the game, all the Patriots copped a feel on the metal ball. Meanwhile, our formerly macho cars are indeed getting a Viagra boost with fake engine noise (and no spare tires); and Rachel Maddow had the best bit ever on boys' fascination with balls, deflated and otherwise.
Perry's Firework Finale was stellar and for what was spent on it, we could probably have fed every hungry child in the world Superbowl Suppers for a month. Not to mention, the $9 million-per-spot ads, the $44 million Roger Goodell makes yearly for "a job a 2-year-old could do" and all the dollars down the drain on political "speech." When will we ever grow up?
