Best part of the pre-game festivites:

Eugene Robinson soliciting an undercover cop for a $40 blowjob. Why not pay for the good sluts, Gene? Bad time to skimp out on your hooker budget.

Kiss My Pre-game Special

To justify seven thousand hours of pre-game coverage, Fox sprinkled live performances from various pop music acts into their otherwise boring collection of predictions, interviews and wacky banter between Howie, Cris, Terry and of course J.B., the other James Brown. Kiss wrapped up the pre-game segment, performing a bloated rendition of a bloated song, "Rock 'N Roll All Night." The most surreal moment came when a platoon of Kiss cheerleaders took the field carrying huge pictures of key players in the Super Bowl. The crowd seemed oddly unresponsive, perhaps because they doubted Kiss's ability to rock 'n' roll much past ten p.m., let alone "all night."

Cher's the Real Ho

Everyone hates Cher. That's a given. But you might be surprised to learn that most of the laughs from this massacre of our anthem came from a band of sign-language "interpreters" who gestured wildly and at times graphically, offering more of a weird dance choreography than anything recognizable as a "language." To the deaf, they might have been singing with their bodies, but to those who could hear, it looked like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Coin Toss: An Underrated Pageant

This really has to be the most neglected moment in the Super Bowl pomp. You've got both teams lined up, the expectation is so thick you can cut it with a knife, and it all comes down to blind luck. The flip of a coin. Absolute random chance. And not only that, but there's this neato commemorative coin they use, which you can probably order from the Franklin Mint immediately after the game. But is there a Fox Sports Coin Toss Pre-Game Spectacular? I don't think so. Where's the love?

The Amazing Mechanical Erecting Scoreboard

So cool. They had this CG machine contraption that would make this crunching, clicking noise and then rise up from the endzone, with lineups broadcast onto it. The graphics were so seamless that it actually looked like the machine had been built into the field and was lifting out from beneath it. I don't know if I like the whole sci-fi mechanized approach to the graphics on Fox Sports, but this incarnation of it was awesome. Jaw-dropping stuff, if you're a geek, I guess.

Guest Star: Calista Flockheart

She's nothing if not a team player. In classic network tradition, Fox trotted out two stars of Ally McBeal to attend the Super Bowl and look cute for occasional cutaways from the TV coverage. Then Pat Summeraal and John Madden (the football commentator, not the director of Shakespeare in Love) read some lame scripted dialogue about what "Ally McBeal is thinking about what the Falcons should do right now." Fox's flagship Monday night comedy probably needs the ratings help, after scathing reviews in recent issues of Entertainment Weekly and this very webzine. The backlash has begun.

John Madden: Sensitive Nineties Male

Madden's comment as an injured Falcon was driven back to the locker room: "When you get on the cart, good things don't usually happen when you get off." Could've been a Hallmark card, John. Beautiful.

The Halftime Spectacle, starring Stevie Wonder, Gloria Estefan and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

No lip synching in sight, which is a huge improvement over the usual crappy lip synched fare. Even though Estefan is a second-tier music superstar in her best moments--and gave a typical second-rate performance--Wonder's vocal improvs brought some real grit to the show. He's still got some way-serious chops as a singer, even though we know he has no real business behind the wheel of a vintage roadster. He also brought back a bit of his "Little" Stevie schtick by slamming a few tap grooves down to close out his segment. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was a big bad disappointment in their brief appearance, basically a cheap excuse for some swing dancers to come out and pay homage to the trend of the month. Quote to remember: Stevie Wonder screaming, "Get down, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy!" For my money, they could bring Stevie Wonder back every year for the halftime show.

Snoozefest

Am I the only viewer who lost interest in the football game, the commercials, Madden and Summeraal, and life itself about halfway through the third quarter? What a boring match-up. They should have a rule that if the refs think the Super Bowl is getting too boring, they lower a steel cage onto the field and the quarterbacks have a no-holds-barred matchup to determine the winner of the whole game. What with all the fighting on-field, you could have mistaken this game for a Monday night edition of Raw.

Bring on Family Guy!

In the end, it's always the same after the Super Bowl: wacky guys getting drunk and screaming into a microphone. Who needs that? Cut the post-game and go straight to the comical cartoons. Elway can play until he's wrinkled and grey, for all I care. When Homer Simpson retires from Sunday nights, then we'll see a true legend bowing out.