The Smiley Smile Message Board

Any comments, observations, reviews, etc? I'm withholding my own for now, just hinting at it. I found it curious how I sampled at least a dozen newspaper and online articles about the performance, and the reporters, reviewers, and journalists seemed to be praising the "energy", "excitement", etc of the performance while the public comments by at least a 20 to 1 margin have been overwhelmingly negative. Some suggested the journalists in question may have been watching a different halftime show than the one which had been broadcast last night.

Personally, I didn't think it was a good idea (or a politically-correct one) for one of the commentators to state beforehand that the performance would be the best half-time show in years; that set it up to be amazing and better than Springsteen, Prince, Tom Petty, the Who, the Stones, etc. What we got was an audio mixing catastrophe. I was listening in 5.1 surround and had to keep turning up the volume to hear the music and vocals. When Fergie began singing, I was nearly blasted out of my seat due to her volume compared to everything else (this after her being inaudible for the first couple of minutes). Slash's guitar dropped out for a good 10 seconds or more as well. It sounded like a real mess and this doesn't take into consideration the use of auto-tune (I know, it was an artistic choice) or the fact that Usher was singing along (barely) with a pre-recorded track.

If you like flashing lights and more elaborate choreography, then it was pleasant enough. I prefer a decent musical performance over everything else and I didn't get that.

I told a friend it was like a japanese game show gone incredibly bad. There were dancers with boxes covering the heads for fricks sake! Between Usher's leg split and the terrible choreography I half expected Justin Beiber to fly in on a jet-pack singing 'Lady Madonna' - about as fitting as Fergie singing 'Sweet Child O Mine'.

I was talking with my father about it, he said Bob Dylan sitting on a stool in the middle of that stadium singing Mr. Tambourine Man would probably be the most popular halftime show yet.

Even the ads sucked last night: flooded with special effects, bad jokes, and MTV-like cuts....It was a perfect example of the glittering spectacle of garbage our culture has turned into.

It was a good game though.

I am so glad to see someone else who got the same feelings about that same comment. I thought it was disrespectful, not to previous performers but to the audience listening to someone whose expertise is *professional football* tell US that we were about to see "the best ever" in halftime performances.

That was the warning sign that we were being told how "good" the performance was before said performance actually took place. Pathetic!

In the same way I think the myriad of journalists, reporters, and commentators who praised the performances had those columns and reviews written before the game.

Paul McCartney and Prince showed what a real musician could do in that setting. It was also insulting to see these bogus journalists stating it was great to see a young artist instead of the old acts.

Good game though!

That's funny!  where was the young artist?  ( I'm thinking I saw a completely different show)

For those of us watching the Super Bowl on Fox television stations in the United States, we should know that their definition of "journalism" is pretty wide, so it's no surprise that they would say that. Joe Buck is the Glenn Beck of sports commentators.

What should we know exactly? It had nothing to do with Joe Buck, or Glenn Beck who has as much to do with this or the NFL on Fox as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has to do with Sunday Night Football on NBC. It was actually Curt Menefee, the halftime show host who said the show would be the "best in years" just before they cut to it at halftime.

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, as a broadcast team, are some of the best in sports as far as I'm concerned. They call a very tight game, are informative and entertaining, and are as close to Summerall and Madden as I've heard in years for quality of the broadcast. All they were doing was promoting the show, neither one told us how good it would be before it actually happened.

You're not from Philadelphia, I can tell.

I am from Philadelphia, actually! The suburbs, but it's all Green in the fall and winter. I'm more of a Phillies fan, actually I'm a die-hard Phillies fan who's still riding the high of a World Series victory. My support for the Eagles has fallen off a bit because I'm tired of Andy Reid's nonsense on and off the field.

So for me to praise Troy Aikman for anything says a lot, since he was on the short list of Eagles enemies that included Erik Williams, Deion Sanders, Michael Irvin, Jay Novacek, Leon Lett, Jimmy Johnson, Barry 'Coach' Switzer...Cowboys who you'd like to see getting an old-fashioned beat-down from the Eagles.

Honestly, I like Aikman as a broadcaster! Wish he had done that when he was 21...maybe we'd have a ring in Philly.

I only watched the black I'd pees for a few seconds and then went out to get a pizza.  Looked like 4 people high steppin and singin to a soundtrack.  Yuk! :p :p :p

By the way....was there a band with these young folks?

I guess the superbowl organizers ran out of famous old farts to feature as halftime acts.

Although it did occur to me that Rush would have been good and loud and could have  included rockets and explosions.

Justin Beaver and Ozzy Ozborne  might have performed together instead of doing a commercial.

No band just digital backing tracks (karaoke in other words); the only live musician on stage that night was Slash for one guitar riff and a solo, and you couldn't hear his guitar all that well anyway.

So there are four folks on stage holding microphones, wearing blinking suits, shouting into their microphones, not doing much of anything actually, and some reviewers are still carrying their water and saying they got the crowd excited and the show was good.

Bullshit! I say.

Why not just bring back Janet Jackson and that boy band guy singing into the nippmic?

I shall now make it my undying mission to work the term "nippmic" into my everyday vocabulary.

That sounds like fun!  I hope you'll be using it in regular discussions too.

I prefer to think of it as a term of endearment, my little nippmic.  :p

 :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

To be honest I don't think I've ever seen a good superbowl Halftime show.  I guess Prince's was pretty good, I've been getting more into Prince lately.  McCartney's I remember as being decent, but I'm a big McCartney fan anyways, a book signing would be exciting to me, lol.  Some of the others like Springsteen I'm not a fan so I wouldn't enjoy it anyways.

For the Black Eyed Peas, really I don't think the problem was the group, it was just that they picked them in the first place.  They're not really a stadium band, they couldn't have possibly have done a good job.  I've always liked the members of the group, they seem pretty level headed and down to earth. 

Down to Earth?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL52a4bp7mM

More like space cadets.

They seem very down to earth to me.  Very approachable in interviews, they make good sense like they actually have an I.Q.    Kind of refreshing compared to many musicians.