Beelzeboob

Blood, guts, viagra, and breasts. Such was the Superbowl. Fuck the Superbowl, and fuck MTV. Nelly's tribute to the midwestern vocalic r and Kid Rock doing a song from back when Kid Rock was big. Fucking au courant. And then, as a main event, Janet Fucking Jackson. Truly, MTV is hep and cutting edge. It's a fine tradition they're upholding, a tradition of boldly breaking new ground, a tradition which goes way back to when they wouldn't put black artists on their airwaves. Now they deserve to get their asses fined. And let's have Mike Powell especially nail Janet Jackson. Figuratively, of course.

Before I get too far, let me make one thing clear. I am a fan of the boob. I like the breasts. They're great. Wish mine were smaller, but I would be overfilled with joyousness to see them spilling out all over the place, and even on TV. Janet Jackson's tit, though, is another matter.

It was completely intentional. Had to be. Nobody wears snap off clothing - that's the first thing. That boy band fag was intentionally denuding her - that's the second thing. MTV and everybody were saying before the show that there was a shock at the end of Janet's performance, so they knew - that's the third thing. The flaccid, nasty, pale thing that flopped over the bustier - that's the last thing.

Janet Jackson is fucking nasty. It's gross enough that she looks like a female Michael Jackson, whatever the gender identity fuck that means, but now she's old and fucking grotesque. Much like Michael, though to a lesser degree, Janet has slowly morphed into an inhuman robot. Now, some women age quite gracefully, the years adding layers of cool, mature confidence which only enhance their beauty and make them all the more desireable. I often think of Isabella Rosellini as one of these cases. I remember thinking "Eh, awright" in Blue Velvet, and then becoming more and more entranced with each successive appearance on David Letterman. Ah, how Dave would elaborately enunciate those blessed syllables...eeeeesuh BELLuh...

Janet Jackson, on the other hand, now looks like a Transformer. Browsing this fine archive of screenshots from the original Transformer cartoons, I couldn't decide whom she most resembles. Perhaps Optimus Prime?

Or Megatron?

No, I think that she most resembles the ever-petulant Starscream...

I have never wanted to see a Transformer naked. It was so repulsive to see that sickly white sack slip free of her dress to flop around. And then there was that freaky pasty.

The pasty, though, turns out to be a nipple shield. I got this link from Metafilter, and if you scroll down the page you'll see an array of nipple shields. These are things designed to be worn between a nipple piercing and the areola of a pierced nipple. They sort of force an extension of the part of the nipple that isn't the areola and therefore deserves a better name than part of the nipple that isn't the areola. The nipple shield is fucking ugly, and it's further evidence that the incident was planned. Whatever that device is, I know that if you breathe heavily on it, it will reveal Janet's alignment as either Autobot or Decepticon.

Judging by the trowel-applied purple blush on her cheek, I'm guessing Decepticon.

But the awfulness doesn't stop there. So Justin Timberlake, a reasonably hep guy and reasonably attractive at that, is forced to cavort around the stage, feigning sexual interest in the battleship-assed Jackson. And then the little shithead rips off her top in a staged movement designed to simulate the humiliation of Janet Jackson, not unlike David and that one fucking cunt from Real World Los Angeles. Using the display as an act of humiliation just lacks taste.

But no, it's just a bit of playful eroticism, no? I mean, Jackson was clearly in on the whole act, wasn't she? So therefore, it's just a little bit of teasing fantasy, just getting a wee bit of kink on. To those who would call it an erotic fantasy, I only say that this

is about as far from erotic as the lint accumulating in Bea Arthur's crotch.

And so I'm torn. Should the FCC levy fines against CBS for the display? On the one hand, I like the exposure of tit, but on the other hand I have the dislike, though not necessarily punitive dislike, of the context. But then it's MTV. And it's Janet Jackson. And it's nasty. And they fined Howard Stern for far, far less than this.

So I say fuck em. We live under the rule of law, and even though I find these regulations ridiculous, it's worse to be inconsistent in their application. Fuck those bastards. And while we're at it, let's fine those fucking viagra commercials that show aged football players throwing balls through tires, a symbol about as juvenile as the train entering the tunnel at the end of North by Northwest. Except instead of thinking about the extremely handsome Cary Grant fucking the extremely hot Eva Marie Saint, we have to think of some old, bepaunched ex-footballer laying track in some dried up old hag of a woman with a black eye and a crooked arm from a spousal abuse fracture that never healed quite right.

And so in closing, I would like to observe that as I was preparing this blog entry, I wrote down a few notes, then took a short break to have some delicious Indian food at a nearby restaurant. As I munched on a spicy butter chicken dish that pushed me one curry closer to an eventual cardiac arrest and the blissful release of death, I completely lost track of what this joke was going to be, but I feel that it nonetheless sums up my feelings on this awful incident and its place in the grand tragedy of human existence:

I like to think of Michael Jackson as a Fresca drinker.

Posted by mattb at February 03, 2004 06:37 PM