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Thursday, January 30, 1997

OPINION:

27-minute 'extravaganza' even more boring than Super Bowl

Rob Kariakin

Ladies and gentlemen, something has got to be done.

Like hundreds of millions of other suckers around the world, I sat in front of my television on Sunday, disgusted by what I saw. Nothing had changed from years past. In fact, it was even worse than before.

We all knew it would be a blowout; that's true every year. But this one reached an all-time low as far as holding my interest.

I've had enough! I propose we just do away with the damn thing, once and for all.

I don't think anybody would really mind, do you? I mean, come on. It's only a halftime show. (What, you didn't think I was talking about the Super Bowl itself, did you? That always-exciting, always-close example of sports at it's finest? Never!)

I didn't think organizers could come up with anything worse than the Elvis-inspired extravaganza of the second 49ers-Bengals Super Bowl. Obviously, I underestimated them.

A phony news broadcast. A reincarnated Blues Brother. Leather-clad dancers on Harley's. James Brown in a bright red jump suit. Fireworks. ZZ Top ... ? Could they have possibly fit anything more onto that field?

There was so much going on, halftime took half an hour (27 minutes, actually, not counting commercials), or about 12 minutes longer than usual.

Somehow it felt longer still, so painful was it to watch. Whoever put the thing together must have thought we would be so impressed with how much was going on, we wouldn't notice that all of it sucked (at least I hope that's what they thought, because if they actually thought what they put out there was entertaining, they should seek professional help immediately.)

First off, what was with the whole Blues Brothers thing? Having Jim Belushi in place of dead brother John, that I can understand. But what the hell was John Goodman doing out there? Who was he supposed to be anyway, some long-lost third Blues Brother? Had they all been reunited on a tearful episode of Sally Jesse?

Then there was James Brown. The godfather of soul seemed so odd running around, gyrating and grimacing, he looked like a bad impression of himself. I've seen Eddie Murphy do a more believable James Brown than James Brown was doing. The old guy was so flustered that he couldn't even properly lip-synch his own songs, at one point mouthing "I feel good" while we heard "I feel nice."

But who can blame him for losing track? He was probably just worried about getting enough air. The Einstein who planned this fiasco obviously forgot that the smoke from the fireworks display, the motorcycles and the '50s hot rod couldn't disperse easily in a domed stadium. By the end of the show, the exhaust fumes hung in a thick haze over the field, and the Louisiana Superdome looked like Los Angeles on a summer day.

What's more, it stayed that way. The stadium's air conditioning vents had been covered by drapes (I guess concrete walls were simply too unsightly for such an upscale event), so the haze remained for the rest of the game.

The moral of this story is that it's simply time for whoever is responsible for these horrible things to wise up. Nobody tunes in for the halftime show, and more than a few people tune out because of it (my own party thinned out dramatically at that point). Why not just save the $1.2 million (can you believe that's how much it cost?) and go for a lower-priced, but ultimately less-annoying alternative? Why not give a couple of local Pop Warner teams the thrill of a lifetime and let them play for 20 minutes? Or maybe have something like the GTE Supershot contest they have during halftime at UCLA basketball games? People love watching little kids play or seeing grown-ups make fools out of themselves trying (and failing) to shoot layups or kick field goals.

Whatever the choice, it couldn't be any worse than the current brand of blowout extravaganzas.

Could it?

Rob Kariakian is a Daily Bruin columnist.

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