YEAR OF THE BARE BOOB
What a way to remember a sports event?
Millions of TV viewers will recall, years from now, that the 2004 Super Bowl Sunday following Super Bowl Saturday and preceding Super Bowl Monday,-was different from what was expected. It became sort of Judgment Day for television and the entertainment world.
It had been determined well ahead of time that the large audience anticipated - about forty million - would consist of three groups: devout football fans, to whom the day originally belonged, plus a large group of usually younger viewers called, half-time watchers who had been baited for some weeks with promises of a talent circus, and a third rather strange group to which belong there to watch the commercials.
Super Bowl Sunday has become a testing area for TV commercials in recent years when those who do such things make all-new productions from scratch for this platinum-priced project. The spots sell for higher prices each year - this year around two-and-one-half millions of dollars for a thirty-second message. At that price, successful spots are expected to set the pace in the TV market or the year ahead..
I am not a dedicated commercial watcher so I got with the whole thing about twenty-eight minutes late I've been told by some who had who watched a scoreless game to that length. I still do not believe I saw some of the stuff set forth, but the main estimates of the values of the game have been almost entirely on the half-time show which went awry.
Michale Jackson's sister, Janet, has new album coming out this week end and her bro has been hogging the Jackson publicity recently with his childish doings out west, so and her co-singer Timberlake, or whatever his name was, helped her devise a strip for her bosom to be a breakaway when tugged. Today she is saying it was planned to leave a red net covering under the strip he ripped off while singing a song with lyrics reading” “I'll have you naked before this song is ended.” Real art all the way! When Timberhead, or whatever, tugged at the strip, to whole thing came off in his hot little hand and the well endowed girl stood there in all her domed glory. The fans loved it! At that moment, in their view, it might be said that Janet Jackson had been crowned as the titular head of the entire cast of the half-time show. Yesterday they claimed it was an accident. Today they admit it was set up. Some cheating was involved, too. She was wearing a decorative covering on the offending protudeance...some called it a pasty, others said it was a snap-on dome, or a Japanese toy which demands pierced nipples. Perhaps we had best leave this nipple notching business to historians to determine later on. Don't be at all surprised if you get a premium set of them when you buy Janet's new album next week.
CBS and a random collection of other initalized firms, are exuding apologies today to each other, and they have good reason to do so.. The Jackson exposure is the headline item but the commercials were not all purity and light, either. Not since the film ”Blazing Saddles” have I seen any attempt to merchandise the fart. The first commercial I saw Super Bowl Sunday was that of a horse one. More on that street sweeper's nightmare later - maybe.
There was a football game that Sunday,too. They were both in the thirties with New England ahead when they stopped and went home.
A.L.M. February 3, 2004 [c617wds]
