you know the black-eyed peas' halftime show was amazing, with all those people drenched in led lights and the swirling lasers, a cast of thousands of robo-people and stuff. but looking back on it i just have to say it was excruciatingly tasteless. the music, if any, couldn't have mattered at all no matter what it was, and if 'love' was the logo they etched onto the field in light, it sure looked a lot more like 'money.' will.i.am made some sort of half-assed appeal to obama or something, but it didn't mean anything; he'd have done better to say something about egypt. but tahrir square vs dallas stadium yesterday would have been an exquisite contrast between meaning and meaninglessnes. and it really was meaningless: aesthetically and in every other respect empty. and when you get down to it what the hell was will.i.am wearing? a chrome toupee? and what really is the point of that body-armor thing? it looked like a convention of pudgy armadillos. i actually kind of like the black-eyed peas, but maybe they have no confidence that their own musical or performing abilities can actually keep people watching.

the whole look and sound is very 'post-human': you know, robotic, technological &c. but the post-human is turning out to be all-too-human: at the center of the gargantuan prostheses there's just this flawed little human body furiously working itself like a puppet. all the same glitches are there even more obviously because blown up to giant size: the twinned egomania and self-loathing, the infinite aspirations and the little-bitty actual reality. you know, start with will's little vocoder thing: it's robotic! it's cutting edge! it was ubiquitous in...1975. what fergie has done to make herself sort of seem like a beauty - even vast glowing shoulder-pads - hasn't actually worked. i don't think we should push on to the post-human until we can muster a little more dignity or self-awareness as humans.