... Wouldn't it have been great if, as Belichick was headed to the team bus, the Heartbreakers were waiting in the parking lot for him playing "Don't Come Around Here No More"?

- derumi (del-me)
"Bobby Fischer? Man, that guy is crazy!" - Mike Tyson

My first thought was that the arrow-guitar/heart laser effect was pretty gay, but fortunately it was over quickly. My second thought was, 'damn, Tom Petty is old.' (I looked it up: he's 57.)

His voice was a little shaky, but he's got such great material it hardly matters. Seems like his diction has improved with time: I could actually understand all the lyrics of American Girl.

Free Falling seemed like a crowd pleaser, but it's not one of my favorites. I wish he had skipped that one, played Running Down a Dream third and finished the set with Refugee.

I thought the halftime show was great.  Petty and his band sounded great (and that thought was seconded by Petty's biggest fan in the world -- my daughter).  Echoing Ken, I do wish he would have included Refugee in the playlist rather than Free Fallin', but his biggest fan in the world disagrees with me on that.  Just an odd juxtaposition here between this Super Bowl show and the Nipplegate debacle.  Was anyone else amused by the fact that one of the best Super Bowl commercials had Justin Timberlake repeatedly clobbered in the family jewels as if to say "this is your punishment for the wardrobe malfunction?"

I'll have to admit that I rarely used to watch the half time shows for most of the Super Bowls.  The one that sticks in my mind as being among the worst (and perhaps that's because of events that unfolded subsequent to the performance) was the show that had Michael Jackson cavorting at midfield with a cluster of young tots.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

One of the things I'd grown to hate in prior Superbowls was the pointless, gratuitous intro sequences. I mean, Chris Rock walks through the stadium -- who cares? But this year there's a writers' strike, and the NFL solved it by... getting better writers. They should just have people read the Declaration of Independence every year. Or maybe rotate it with selections from the Constitution and Paine's Common Sense. I remarked at the time, "the only way this could get better is if they played "Crazy Train."

And then, the Patriots walked in.