The super bonus

By Drew Millard

Another year, another Super Bowl. The game started out excitingly enough; the Bears jumped out to an early lead and proceeded to forget how to play football shortly thereafter, while Peyton Manning, easily the most boring major sports figure of the 21st century, predictably played predictably well, and in the most predictable moment of the night, was named Super Bowl MVP. I think that the issue that spelled the Bears’ demise that everyone in the press corps wrote them off to the point that when Chicago starting playing well, the team was so surprised that they just let the Colts have their way. That, and Rex Grossman threw approximately seventeen interceptions, proving once and for all that the best quarterback on the Chicago Bears is not named Rex Grossman.

But I have a confession to make: I hate football. In fact, the only reason I watch the Super Bowl at all is for the halftime show. I think that the halftime show really shows how much progress our culture has made. For example, in 2004, Kid Rock performed wearing the American Flag as a shirt, showing that America was hyperpatriotic and wanted a Bud Light. Soon after Kid Rock left the stage, Janet Jackson had a wardrobe malfunction, and America realized that it needed to tone things down a bit. So in 2005, the promoters got the benignly entertaining Paul McCartney who probably thinks that “Football” is played with feet kicking a sphere. The next year, we made the transition from one of the members of the greatest band of all time (The Beatles) to all of the surviving members of the greatest Rock N’ Roll band of all time (The Rolling Stones). Unfortunately, our timing was off, and the Stones delivered a geriatric set that reminded everybody—well, me at least—that the Stones could have played at the first Super Bowl in 1969.

So after a mediocre few years of halftime shows, whoever at CBS was in charge of the halftime show said, “To Heck with it, let’s call in Prince.”

And call in Prince they did indeed. The question that endures in my mind is this: Why Prince? I mean, I know the guy’s a genius and everything, but he hasn’t been popular since the early 90s. That, and he wears blouses and head-scarves.

That said, whoever booked him made the right decision. He was amazing. To jog your memory, he first played one of his own songs, and then moved on to a medley of popular songs that included the oft-covered “Proud Mary” and “All Along the Watchtower.” He then played “The Best of You,” which is a song by the Foo Fighters that he vastly improved, if I may say. He then closed the set with a shortened version of his signature song “Purple Rain,” during which he erected a curtain and suggestively played his guitar like it was — both physically and musically — an extension of his own body.

Which brings me to another thought. Prince is one of the best guitarists alive today. He played like it was second nature, fret-tapping and gesticulating wildly as if at any moment, both he and his guitar were going to explode, so he better get all of the notes out as soon as possible. My English teacher said that he thought Prince was doing his best Jimi Hendrix impersonation, but I think that he was only half-right. Prince might have been trying to be Jimi Hendrix, but he was also striving to emulate Elvis. Just look at the way he dressed, in his over-the-top blue and orange suit, and the way he sang Proud Mary, an Elvis live staple.

When it’s all said and done, Prince is undeniably The Man. What other dude could wear a suit like that on national TV and have penned a song called “Purple Rain” and still be considered a pillar of masculinity? Exactly.