5. M.I.A. at the Superbowl Some of us had a good year, some of us had a bad year, and some of us got upstaged at the Super Bowl when M.I.A. flipped the bird in the middle of our set. Madonna falls solidly into that last category. In the endless string of calculations that Madge’s career has become, her secret cadre of Kabbalah oracles couldn’t possibly have predicted that M.I.A. of all people would take the opportunity to make a statement on the world’s largest stage. Except, there she is in ... [Read more]

(or A Superbowl/Grammy Post-Mortem on How Nicki Minaj Managed to Sidestep America’s Parochial Sensibilities to Grab the Freak Baton from Madonna) In the midst of Madonna’s Super Bowl Halftime performance which at different times honored the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the pagan deity Baphomet, football, America, gospel and of course L-U-V Madonna herself, Nicki Minaj stood off to the side shaking her ass and her pom-poms, doing “The Bump” with Madonna when appropriate and generally following the... [Read more]

THIS WEEK: Bird is the word...paws up...let's get ramblin'... • The plot thickened when news surfaced that Super Bowl bird-flipper M.I.A. has been estranged from her fiancé, heir to the Seagram’s fortune Benjamin Bronfman, and her two-year-old son Ikhyd for six months. • Steve Carrell and Keira Knightley star in this new movie about the end of the world, a comedy version of Children of Men: • Apple, which at different points in its history borrowed money from Intel and Bill Gates, is no... [Read more]

THIS WEEK: Material girlz...Homerleaks...prison rules... • Madonna took the whole Super Bowl thing quite literally in this video for the first single from her new album. Doing things like using her Super Bowl money to hire two of the biggest hype women in the game is why Madonna is still relevant. • Lizzie Grant a.k.a. Lana Del Rey put all the haters to rest by topping the iTunes charts with her debut album Born to Die. • All in the same week reports came in that future Hall of Fame q... [Read more]

There are few things are as ridiculous as the phrase "I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials." It's like saying I only go to Disneyland for the lines, I only fly for the crying babies, I only go to concerts to step in vomit. [Read more]

Have you seen those clever Direct TV commercials? The ones where a chain of events leads to miserable circumstances (such as waking up in a roadside ditch) as a result of not subscribing to Direct TV? Well, a similar-ish chain of events led to the New York Giants killing my cat. True story. Here's how it went down: The night of Super Bowl XLII, February 3, 2008, found me avidly caulking the baseboards of the house we'd moved into a couple of months earlier. I had a caulking gun, a rag, and a ... [Read more]

The NFL's Championship weekend is nearly here and with just four teams left the football action is really starting to heat up. The New York Giants stunned the defending champion Green Bay Packers and are now facing the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park for the chance to be the NFC's representative in Super Bowl XLVI. San Francisco 49ers have fans who are as passionate as anyone, and you can imagine they are doing a great job selling San Francisco 49ers vs New York Giants NFC Championship t... [Read more]