Traffic -- A (Hopefully) Different Slant on "Theme Thursday"

Every winter, when "Super Bowl Sunday" arrives, I drive to the home of my good friend John -- probably the only guy I know personally who's even more indifferent to sports than I generally am -- to watch the commercials that premiere that evening. We rarely pay attention to the game itself. "The ad's the thing," as Shakespeare -- or maybe John Madden -- once said.

(Nowadays, I'm told, a lot of people gather for just this reason, as opposed to viewing the game itself. But John and I have been doing it since the early 1990s, if not before!)

Anyway, I have to admit that the 2004 Super Bowl -- designated as Roman numeral MCXXIIIVIIXD*, or some damned thing -- was of slightly greater-than-normal interest because one of the opposing teams was the New England Patriots, and John and I both live in Southern Massachusetts.

However...

It was during that Super Bowl that I was shocked and outraged by one of the most audacious and profane affronts to my sensibilities that I had ever suffered!

That was, of course, the year that Janet Jackson and Justin Timberwolf (or whatever the f**k his name is) performed during the halftime show, and right after Justin uttered the line "I'm gonna have you naked by the end of this song," he tore off part of Janet's breakaway costume and exposed one of her breasts for a full nine-sixteenths of a second.

What's that? Oh, you thought that was what I referred to when I wrote "one of the most audacious and profane affronts to my sensibilities that I had ever suffered?"

Oh, get real!

No, no, no. By the time that scandalous "wardrobe malfunction" had occurred, John and I had already sat through commercials discussing erectile dysfunction, an ad containing a dog biting a man square in the crotch (and hanging on), and a really objectionable advertisement wherein a horse released an explosive, wet fart in the faces of a pair of young sweethearts.

The incredibly brief flash of what, to me, seemed like a pastie-covered hooter was relatively tame by that point.

So what did I find to be obscene?

During the broadcast, they showed a commercial for -- of all things -- the NFL Network, where the producers of the commercial had dared to use one of my all-time favorite rock'n'roll songs from the early psychedelic era in its soundtrack!

That song was the classic "Dear Mr. Fantasy."

And the version of "Dear Mr. Fantasy" which they used, fellow babies and Theme Thursday fans, was the original version, a version all but sacred to me...

Originally performed by a group called...

Traffic.

Gotcha.

And now, without further ado...

Thanks for your time.

P.S. ~~ Among my labels for this post, I've included the phrase "Janet Jackson's boob." The fact that I've mentioned that here oughtta drive some new readers to this blog! Ya think?

P.P.S. ~~ *And please don't bother telling me that "MCXXIIIVIIXD" is not a real Roman numeral. I know that already. It was a freakin' joke!