The combination of The Who at halftime followed by an onside kick to start the second half could not have been planned any better. While Pete Townsend’s version of a Janet Jackson trick will not have the same newsstand impact and will probably not ban the aging mod guitarist from English pubs anytime soon, and although Roger Daltrey seemed to be lipsynching at times – but that may have been my digital cable system doing its magical leading-edge thing – the act was a reminder of what rock’n'roll used to be: full of passion, full of humor, full of attitude, and the occasional slip… in short, the equivalent of a football onside kick at the completely unexpected and almost shockingly inappropriate time. And because an onside kick is after all the very epitome of surprise, or so it is meant, its execution at the completely unexpected moment is perfect. That for almost ten minutes after the fact a number of separate brawls ensued on the field, while the pile of human bodies had to be scraped off the artificial turf by spectacularly helpless referees with the microphones still turned on, that was a true rock’n'roll moment. I loved it. The confusion! The roughness! The high notes! The high opera! The slang!
So what a downer it was, with a nearly disorienting effect, seeing a commercial for Google’s search functionality (of all things) a short while later, in which some dude is trying to find ways to impress a French girl by searching for ideas online. Now doesn’t that just bring us back down to earth with a big resounding thud. It speaks to us also, in a sense, of other directions in popular culture, which have at least in the rock’n'roll sense gone farther and farther away from the street-smart majesty of The Who and gravitated instead towards the milquetoasty, though somehow still condescending, garble of Radiohead and Wilco and the like, whose message, I believe, is something along the following lines… paraphrasing, please correct if wrong: “I have a headache/the world is grey/I need an Advil®/my sweater has a hole.” [It was impossible to convey in writing, but I took a few minutes off from typing just now in order to suppress a series of yawns and wipe the mist off my eyeglasses. Now I'm back.] Alas… where was I? Yes, but luckily, indie music dude, you can find ways to impress an unsuspecting future girlfriend (poor soul) on Google! At times like these, I tend to sympathize with China.
But kidding aside, at times like these, I tend to sympathize with Apple. Going with the variety of analogies in this article, you have to give credit to Steve Jobs for showing spirit, for opting for the onside kick to start the second half, for taking a risk and doing the unexpected, thinking well beyond convention and taking on many established norms. This, I believe, is the essence of entrepreneurship, and should serve as inspiration for entrepreneurs everywhere, and others. I leave you with a playlist to further illustrate the point.
