I had the good fortune of being in Palo Alto for the Super Bowl, enjoying the game and halftime show from the upper level of a beautiful Spanish home some good friends built in the hills of Portola Valley. If you’re ever looking to visit an area that has everything, head out to San Francisco and then south to the Palo Alto/Menlo Park/Atherton area. The foliage alone is worth the trip, not to mention the Kepler’s Books store.
Stanford University anchors this smart, robust, high-bar region. And, within just a few miles of one another are the headquarters for three of the largest game-changing, cutting-edge corporations on the planet: Google, Facebook, and Apple. This is the legendary Silicon Valley, whose rife waters of opportunity are infested by exploitative venture sharks and all the money, infrastructure, and trappings that follow. But unlike most super-rich regions where wealth only begets the wealthy, the good life of Silicon Valley is there for all to enjoy.
But back to the halftime show: something less than Super and a reminder that older people should stick with what they do best. Inexplicably, Madonna received rave reviews for her show. Frankly, she should have followed Steven Tyler’s lead by sitting in one of those tony suites with team owners rather than making a fool of herself on the stage. Madonna never impressed me as a super talent, though I understand why she became a pop superstar. That truth-or-dare coquette thing she mastered, coupled with a trailer-trash gift for pushing it to the edges of acceptability, made her the huge hit she was in the cheesy ‘80s and ‘90s.
On Super Sunday, though, she looked less like a dare and more like a cow moving amongst calves on the stage, made even worse by thigh-high spiked heels, which impeded her movement to the point of looking as though she were wearing wading boots. There was actually a point in the show when she tried to step up onto a bleacher and almost didn’t make it. You could hear her groin groan all the way from Indianapolis. The few times she did a yoga bend she looked as though she might not make it back up. I imagined her falling backward onto the field, the gasping crowd falling silent as announcer Cris Collinsworth mutters to the stunned face-lift and hair-colored Al Michaels: “Ouch, this doesn’t look good, Al—she hit the turf so hard the buckles flew off her boots like a fat man’s buttons popping off his shirt after a night at the local rib house.”
Luckily nothing catastrophic happened, but her lip synching was so embarrassingly off, one wondered if her eroding memory was grasping unsuccessfully at recalling old song lyrics. I was reminded of watching 80-year-old Little Richard playing “Tutti Frutti” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, thinking, “They should take him back to the home and spoon feed him some oatmeal.”
A recent article in Advertising Age pointed out the difficulties that laid off 50-plus-year-olds are encountering securing work in the advertising business. Frankly, I wondered why anyone 50-plus would be seeking a job in an industry that is absolutely custom made for the rigorous gymnastics only young minds and high energy can sustain.
There’s no doubt, ageism is alive and well. The bias against older people is rampant in our culture. But Ecclesiastes rightly points out, “To everything there is a season.” There are plenty of places to land for those whose capabilities are in a state of cellular diminishment. One thing is for sure, ad agencies and Super Bowl halftime shows aren’t among them.
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