Disappointment

the super bowl is finally over. thank goodness. living in west michigan and having the game in detroit has been brutal this past week. constant news coverage. blah, blah, blah. talking heads galore.

finally the game is on. first half was pretty dull. i watched a good portion of it and wasn't particularly impressed.

but i really watched the first half so i'd have an indication as to when the rolling stones would take the stage for the halftime show. i'm not a huge fan but thought it would be cool to check them out.

well, i was disappointed. they only sang three songs, two cliche songs and one song i dont' know before. "start me up" and "satisfaction" are so typical that it was either expected they'd sing them or be surprised by something different. well, they sang them and i wished they'd sang something else like "beast of burden," "under my thumb" or "you can't always get what you want." i'd even take "sympathy for the devil."

mick starts singing "start me up" and the volume isnt' all that gret. finally it kicks in. then, when richards goes into his solo, ou can hear it in the background, like it would sound in the stadium but it wasn't coming out of my tv. finally five to ten seconds in, it kicked in.

jagger's voice was not good. i know his voice isn't great but i expected better. sometimes you couldn't understand what he was saying.

i don't know what the halftime show producers are trying to do. i guess surpass the previous year's show. last year's halftime was paul mccartney. great vocals and it was nice to hear the beatles' songs sung, but it was a little bland.

so me the shows are getting worse, more commercial. the game is encapsulated in between a media blitz of hours and hours of pregame stuff, a huge halftime show and postgame stuff that lasts hours. the game itself seems to have lost any real meaning. everything has a sponsor now. it's the sprint halftime show, the gatorade timeout, the fill-in-the-blank someone is inured on the field report or the fill-in-the-blank oops the kicker missed the field goal. so much commercial bullshit. anything for the almighty dollar. that seems to be the way the game (or any big sports game) is run these days. what a shame.