Stupor Bowl

As I begin to write this, my inaugural blog as Vital Source’s Heartless Bastard, it is less than 24 hours after the latest Super Bowl, in which a bunch of physically overdeveloped, mentally underdeveloped men representing Pittsburgh narrowly defeated a bunch of physically overdeveloped, mentally underdeveloped men representing Arizona.

That’s about as much as I can tell you about the game itself, the 43rd (or, in NFL parlance, the XLIIIrd) in an annual series of Sunday time-wasters. Clearly, the idea of this tedious, grunting spectacle as an Important Event came into the head of an advertising executive who wondered, “Is there some way we can sell more tasteless beer to people who are already drinking it?”

Our media—as ever, focusing on important issues—have given the television commercials a lot of coverage, ensuring not only that Budweiser can get some free advertising on top of its expensive advertising, but also that viewers can enjoy these clever/funny/pointless ads without sitting through endless replays of large, dim men running into each other in flagrant suppression of homoerotic urges.

At least there was the halftime show. After the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction of several years past—up until that fateful moment, no one was really sure Ms. Jackson had breasts, or so I would’ve thought from the “shocked, shocked” response—the Super Bowl organizers have taken great care not to inflame the FCC. Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, Prince: sure, they all have nipples, but not attractive ones.

This year, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band put on a pretty fine, if standard, show. Springsteen himself was in predictably good form—perhaps even better than usual, as he knew he had to run around for less than 15 minutes—and the only potential for trouble came when the Boss slid on his knees until his pelvis bumped into a camera. Fortunately, his pants withstood the impact with nary a popped button: surely a tribute to the strength of American-made trousers.

Springsteen could be said to be one of the few people at the Super Bowl who attempted to earn his fee (by various estimates, two to nine million dollars), although his upbeat attitude didn’t quite match the rather less upbeat mood of the United States. A football game might not be the place to break out downtrodden anthems like “Atlantic City” or his recent title track for the movie The Wrestler, but the 90 million people watching from their decreasingly valuable homes might have appreciated a note of the blue-collar sincerity Springsteen is supposed to represent.

But this was The Boss, and these days that’s not a nickname likely to arouse positive passion in the hearts of the downsized, the laid off, or the evicted. I was reminded of shows I’ve attended at which I found myself disconnected from the crowd, asking basic questions of relevance: Why guitars? Why drums? Why microphones? Why music?

I felt something similar watching Springsteen at the Super Bowl, although of course disconnection was easier and less eerie: it was a televised transmission of a performance taking place in Florida in front of actual paid extras whose evident stage direction was: “Bruce is rocking your world. And…action!”

Yet before the show, I had a phone conversation with my brother-in-law Jose, originally from the Dominican Republic but long since a citizen of the country in which Bruce Springsteen was so famously born. For Jose, Springsteen remains an American icon, and I couldn’t begrudge his excitement. Better an ambiguously angled dose of patriotism from New Jersey, by way of a ridiculous athletic diversion in Tampa, than a direct hit of escapism from Nickelback.

Which shall be the subject next time.