By Troy Brownfield

THE POST-GAME SHOW!!

Love Below: It's Groundhog Day! Punxsutawney Phil saw Janet Jackson's breasts, meaning there will be two more weeks of lame controversey.

I'm Sorry, Miss Jackson: By now you've heard about it. Was it planned? Of course it was. This was a halftime produced by MTV, the network that brought you Madonna snogging Britney, Jackass, and Trishelle, who makes whoring look like a respectible vocation. If you watch the tape, which will now be viewed by conservative pundits like the Zapruder film, they set their position before J.T. makes the rip. It's planned, planned, planned. The question is: why?

Well...a couple of reasons. Janet has a new single dropping soon and will be performing at the Grammys on... wait for it... CBS. She gets a boost from the press, and people are talking "Janet's tits" instead of "Michael's trial". As for J.T., he finally gets a "sexy" limelight moment that his ex is constantly one-upping him on. (And if you don't think it's important for J.T. to one-up Britney, you haven't been paying attention; between her faux wedding, "the kiss", and the video for Toxic, she's stomping him flat in the post-teen-idol sweepstakes). And of course, MTV always wants to stir the pot.

However, MTV forgot that lots of old people with phones watch CBS, and that's how backlash gets started. When I was working radio for a local CBS affiliate years ago, I was at the board during the Grammys at which Bono said that U2 would "continue to do our best to fuck up the mainstream." I got a call from an irate old man to complain about it. I pointed out that calling the local AM radio affiliate was the wrong place, and gave him a different number up the food chain. He said, "That's the way the media is; always passing the buck!" I told him to fuck off, and hung up. My point is this: Old People Make Phone Calls to Complain, CBS is the network of Old People.

Frankly, in the grand scheme of things, the little "pop-out" was a blink-and-you-miss-it affair. In close-up photos, you can clearly see that Janet has a silver pasty on. Why put on a pasty unless you know one of your twins will be making a brief appearance? All things considered, even at "full bare", Janet was showing less than Lil' Kim's famous one-boob dress from the MTV Awards, and certainly less than Rose McGowan's "Date with Marilyn Manson" get-up. The whole thing is a tempest in a titpot; it's a bit of overblown theater that bounced the wrong way.

I Like the Way You Move: In all honesty, the bigger crime is that they had Beyonce in the house and didn't put her up there on half time to shake it. Let's face it: she's a Houston native, she's the pop culture equivalent of what Janet used to be, and well, she's hot. Only having her sing The Anthem and not putting her in her natural element of scantily clad production numbers is a travesty of its own.

Gangsta Sh*t: As far as the rest of the entertainers go, I felt sorry for Jessica Simpson. She got ONE LINE (maybe that's all she could remember). It was cool to see P. Diddy and Nelly hit up Mo Money, Mo Problems, although Hot in Herre is just a tad overplayed. It was also nice to see Kid Rock actually go live on his vocals, considering the canned nature of most of the performances.

Snappin' and Trappin': Well, I guess there was a big game to be played. But before Survivor started, we had the Super Bowl. The beginning seemed like a snoozefest, but it actually came alive and became A Game. It's amazing that it's always a surprise when that happens. The Patriots won. Oh well.

Slump: One thing before the game kind of bugged me. When did the Super Bowl suddenly become the National Memorial Service? Nothing against honoring the dead, but ushering the players onto the field, only to stop them cold so that Josh Groban could sing about the space shuttle was a big "Huh?". And on top of that, they made it into a "production number" with the astronaut rising from the moonscape with an American flag. That was insulting for two reasons: 1) The shuttle doesn't go to the moon, and 2) It ended up feeling like a commercial for Bush's new Moon & Mars initiative. Maybe, just maybe, some hearts were in the right place, but we have a whole ton more Americans dying in Iraq and Afghanistan; if we're giving tributes, where was theirs? Why don't we just let a football game be a football game, okay?

Hey Ya: And ANOTHER thing...the big Half-Time surprise guest turned out to be J.T.? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have it be Outkast, who have had the number one album and number one and two singles in the country for the LAST TWO FREAKIN' MONTHS?!?!

Hold On, Be Strong: Survivor returns! The All-Star game is a great idea, albeit surreal. It's interesting to see players recognizing past mistakes or how new alliances form. I liked how Jenna L. took the offensive to oust previous winner Tina, and I enjoyed the senisble team-up of Rupert and Rudy. I look forward to the potential team-up of the two Robs: one fancies himself a grand schemer, and the other IS a grand schemer. Rob M. had the best line of the show: when confronted with a clue that referred to a Man of Flame, he deadpanned, "That must be Richard Hatch."

Art of Storytellin': On a completely different note, this past week's Angel was a tremendous realization of the benefits of embracing continuity. Not only did fans get an update on the whereabouts of the Buffy cast, Andrew put in a hilarious appearance. In terms of the rest of the Scoobies, the idea that they've spread across the globe to find new potentials is a solid concept and has a whiff of the X-Men about it (which is cool, considering Whedon's connections to the property). The interaction between Andrew and Spike was prime, and the jokes were all dead-on. As for the 11th hour revelation that Andrew already had a platoon of slayers at the ready and that Buffy & Company no longer necessarily trust Angel, that was just icing. Great, solid work all around.

For now sports fans, that's game over. See you next time.

Troy Brownfield is the Editor-in-Chief of Shotgun Reviews. Email Troy at psikotyk@aol.com

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