Does anyone out there watch the Super Bowl for the football anymore?
I sure hope not, because plans are already in motion for an even wilder show with more music, more sex, and more FCC transgressions than ever before!
The halftime event this year raised the bar for tasteless displays and it’ll be hard to beat. Everyone’s still buzzing about the unexpected guest appearance of Janet Jackson’s right breast during a song she performed with Justin “I’m Not a Has-Been Yet, Honest” Timberlake. During a tender, romantic ballad about a stalker in a dance club, Timberlake sang “I’m gonna see you naked by the end of this song” and yanked off part of Jackson’s bustier to expose a nipple adorned with a ten pound andiron. A flurry of investigations and denials and accusations is still whipping back and forth between the companies involved, with the (so far) final word being that CBS and MTV were unaware of the singers’ last-minute plans or even that Jackson possessed breasts at all. This is being disputed, especially after it was pointed out that Jackson’s Super Bowl contract specified separate accommodations for her nipple including costuming, craft services, and its own trailer.
This was the capper for a wild and wooly half-time extravaganza that gave the estimated eleventy-billion viewers the once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch their favorite artists lip synch, abase the American flag, and grab themselves. And the ever-weirder Super Bowl commercials pushed the edge of advertising acumen, revealing that the average Super Bowl viewer is erectile-challenged, alcoholic, and appreciates flaming horse flatulence. You can’t ask for a better demographic than that.
But next year’s halftime will make this look like a church social in the park with dead people. Just look at the great events we have lined up for Super Bowl 2005!
The pre-game show will begin a few weeks before the kickoff with commentators Phil Simms, Jim Nantz, Greg Gumbel, every player who’s currently unemployed but not actually dead yet, and Gary Coleman analyzing in excruciating detail exactly how annoying pre-game shows are.
Next we move to the field, where Aerosmith will enter into armed combat against The Dave Matthews Band, OutKast featuring Shakira, Chingy featuring Ludacris & Snoop Dogg, Ludacris featuring Dave Matthews, and Sting.
For the national anthem, we’ve chosen… well, we can’t pick an artist this far in advance, as most pop superstars have the same shelf life as a banana and next year’s hottest pop star may not have all her adult teeth yet. You have to time it just right so that she does the Super Bowl after her first hit single but before her first felony conviction.
That leads us to the part you’ve all been waiting for, the commercials. Fermented hops will still be the order of the day and we guarantee more amusing gas, more gratuitous nudity, and 43 percent more monkeys than ever before, because you asked for it!
We appreciate our fans, so we’ll even schedule a football play or two every 15 minutes so you can hit the bathroom and grab your snacks before the commercials come back on.
The three-hour halftime show will be bigger than ever, featuring Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, R. Kelly’s parole officer, and the original cast of “The Producers,” all wrestling in Atkins-approved salad dressing.
For the finale, Britney Spears will give birth live on the 50-yard line surrounded by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra performing “Shake Ya Tailfeather.” Set your TiVo, you won’t want to miss the shocking celebrity episiotomy!
And there’ll be a game, time permitting.
But, you know, looking back on all this, I have to wonder if maybe we haven’t gone too far. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to pitch the Super Bowl entertainment to the lowest denominator. Maybe we should respect and honor the families all over the world that watch the Super Bowl together, who long for the days when the hardest question a parent would have to answer during the game was how the Statue of Liberty play worked. Maybe we should leave the sex appeal to the cheerleaders and go back to sports-related entertainment.
So you know what? Forget all that other stuff. Next year we invite you to watch the Studebaker High School “Fighting Squids” Five-Star Marching Band as they perform a thrilling tribute to our boys overseas.
The band will, of course, be naked. This is the Super Bowl, after all.