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Sports

The Super Bowl Halftime Show Needs Weird Al

We can make this happen, people.
Photo via Flickr user Eric Neitzel

The Super Bowl halftime show is traditionally a victory lap for whoever has ascended to the highest heights of the American mainstream: Rock bands that have aged past the point of controversy, big-voiced divas who can dance among holograms and operatic LED displays convincingly, pop groups that embody the principles of inoffensive good times, light beer, and corporate synergy. Football fans use it as an opportunity to refill their drinks; the event is considered a success if it's not too terrible and no one makes a gesture that leads to fines or lawsuits. It is rarely ever fun, except perhaps for that time when Bruce Springsteen slammed his junk into a camera lens.

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In other words, it's fucking boring and it needs Weird NFL. There's a Change.org petition making the internet rounds today asking the NFL to bring the famed accordion-playing parody songster on to play the biggest TV event in America, and we could use his energy after recent performances from the likes of Prince, Bruno Mars, Paul McCartney, the Who, the Black Eyed Peas, and Madonna that have ranged from "Pretty good" to "That was fine, I guess." The league is under no obligation to take that petition seriously (it ignored the 53,000 people who wanted GWAR to play the Super Bowl, though now that Dave Brockie is dead it's a moot point), but you should sign it anyway. You should write NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and tell him to call Weird Al right now and offer him the gig. You should tattoo a "Weird Al 2015 Super Bowl" design on your body. This needs to happen, urgently.

More advice for the NFL: Get rid of special teams. Read more.

Like most of the man's songs, the idea of having Weird Al play the Super Bowl is sort of, but not entirely, a joke. Most Super Bowl halftime acts are either venerable pop veterans or chart-topping superstars, and Weird Al is both: His 14th studio album went to number one on the charts after selling over 100,000 copies its first week, his videos feature comedy celebrities, he's getting thinkpieced by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker. You could make the case that he's both one of the country's most popular singers and its most popular comedian. I mean, this video of him performing "Another One Rides the Bus" in front of Tom Snyder in 1981 has 1.8 million views:

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The only reason I can see for the NFL to not give the halftime show over to one of the greatest performers of his generation is that he mostly does parody songs, and the No Fun League and the brands that partner with it don't like humor very much. (This aversion to jokes explains why football people enjoy Frank Caliendo's impressions). Sure, Weird Al's lyrics skew toward G-rated patter about eating and performing household chores, but it doesn't matter that he's as inoffensive as a milk bath—corporate types who can never quite tell when they're being made fun of have an innate distrust of comedy, and the sports world is constantly reminding you how serious these games are.

Super Bowl media week, for instance, is always chock full of "powerful" narratives—the passion and hard work of the players and coaches, the incredible journeys some of them made from poverty to fame and fortune, their grim determination as they lace up their shoes and prepare to do battle out there on the gridiron. Last year's Super Bowl pregame intros were full of grinding metal riffs and extreme closeups of players staring at the camera and montages of tackles and touchdowns—with Kurt Russell, for some reason, playing the role of hype. It's so over-the-top that it's always teetering on the edge of making everyone realize how goofy the whole affair is. Putting Weird Al onstage with his accordion and his closeted-middle-school-band-teacher antics would just draw attention to the nuttiness of caring about what a bunch of men wearing costumes do with a ball.

Which is, of course, why Weird Al would deliver such a great halftime performance. If there's an unifying theme to his parodies it's that pop hits and the stars who sing them are fundamentally absurd, he just highlights that absurdity by changing the lyrics to reflect the realities of everyday life that the genre would rather ignore. Dance anthems are usually about some vague feeling of empowerment or righteous anger; Weird Al brings it all back to earth. If given the chance he probably wouldn't viciously skewer the NFL—though God knows there's a lot of stuff there to skewer—but rather gently remind everyone that this is just a game and that it is annoying to have to clean up after Super Bowl parties and that foil is really useful for wrapping up leftovers and that everyone basically enjoys polka music as long as it doesn't go on for very long. It would be great to see.

Harry Cheadle is serious about all this. Follow him on Twitter.