For once, the game was the star.  Not the ads, not the music, but the game.  Bob Costas says sports are a metaphor for life, today’s Super Bowl evidenced this.  With all the drama, all the heartbreak and a goddamn correction factor.

Have you followed the Formula One scandal?  I’ll leave the details out other than to say one team got another’s manual, and the cheating team was penalized 100 MILLION DOLLARS!  AND, they were banned from winning the team championship.  Imagine if the Patriots had been fined $100 million for cheating.  And weren’t able to go to the Super Bowl.  There’d be no cheating in football FOREVER!  But we live in a country of pussy penalties, everyone must be given multiple chances, because otherwise the ECONOMY might suffer!  It’s all about the money…

And I don’t want to say today’s game had nothing to do with bread, but I felt a righting of the solar system, a giant correction factor.  Reverse the curse?  After Bill Clinton lied, the truth was for losers.  Mr. Smith got kicked out of not only Washington, but the courtroom, everywhere in America.  We live in a nation of lying, cheating scumbags.  Especially those with power.  There’s no honor, just spacious houses and expensive automobiles.  Did you believe it when Belichick bitched about the Giants having twelve men on the field?  They had to go to the tape, where they found that although the twelfth guy was in the air, running off the field, technically he was in-bounds when the Patriots snapped the ball.  This was unsportsmanlike conduct on Belichick’s part.  But, FINALLY, that old axiom held true…  CHEATERS NEVER PROSPER!  The Patriots lost.  Couldn’t happen to a more smug crew.  I can’t say that I love the Giants, not since Y.A. Tittle and Ally Sherman, but I think you play the game with all you’ve got, you don’t fight for an illegal edge, and if you happen to lose, well NOBODY ALWAYS WINS!

But the Patriots did, for eighteen games.  And we had to hear about it constantly, how they were the best team ever.  Putting the ’72 Dolphins to shame.  But we won’t hear that story anymore, not since they LOST!

So Tom Petty’s appearance has been forgotten.  Except for the management and concert promoter.  Which put tickets on sale in conjunction with his appearance.  They call that synergy.  People are high-fiving each other on private jets as we speak.  But does Tom Petty belong at the Super Bowl?  Do you think Tom Petty was a guy who played varsity ball in high school?  Did you live through the sixties?  People like Petty were outcasts, not BMOCs, never mind athletic heroes.

But marketing triumphs.  Soul is irrelevant.  Who could turn down such an OPPORTUNITY!  Can ANYBODY say no anymore?  I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, but if I was President, and infidelity was my issue, I would keep my dick in my pants during my term.  I’ve got that much self-control.  But today everybody feels entitled to their heart’s desire, INSTANTLY!  NOW!

Maybe no more, now that Eli Manning, the less popular, less talented brother, the homebody, has beaten the playboy with the model girlfriend, who fathered a child out of wedlock.  It’s all right to be a square, to be honest.  Don’t let television tell you otherwise.

And most of the commercials were pretty stupid.

But we wanted to see Petty.

Isn’t Petty a bit old for this crowd?  Certainly the idiots who were allowed to storm the field?

Now I’m gonna give the band big props.  At least they played live.  And they were very good.  But did they belong HERE?

"American Girl" is a classic.  But not a beer-drinking, raise hell anthem.  It’s something more introspective.  Petty appeals more to your head than your balls.  It fell flat.

"I Won’t Back Down" was appropriate.  Certainly in light of the Giants’ performance.

But the one true winner was "Free Fallin’".  It was inappropriate, too slow for such a raucous event.  But being a classic song, the audience stayed with the band, they sang along.  It was magical.  As magical as Prince?  I won’t dignify that question with an answer.

The final number, "Runnin’ Down A Dream", made one wonder why it was billed as Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, since three of the four numbers were from Tom’s solo record "Full Moon Fever".  But Mike Campbell killed.

Which way do you want to have it?  Do you want me to say Tom sucked, so you can throw rocks, tell me what an idiot I am?  Or that he was FANTASTIC!  And there’s no bigger star in America, and you should log on to TicketMaster to buy ducats right now!

You know neither of the above are true.  Tom and the band acquitted themselves, but it was like an episode of "Beauty & the Geek".  A mismatch, that in this case, wasn’t even that entertaining.

Football was never cool.  But music was.  Music was that sound that Harry Chapin heard in his head as he drove his taxi.  He could be a star in his own mind, even though his life was positively second-rate, at least economically.  Music is the elixir of life, it gets you through.  I’ll be high on this Super Bowl victory till…TUESDAY?  Shit, I’ve already come a long way down.  But I still tingle when I think of seeing Petty at the Whisky back in ’77.

So I’m gonna break down, go ahead and give it to you.

We’re running on fumes.  Established acts can’t sell records, and they’re doing whatever they can to generate megadollars on the road.  And if you say anything negative, the naysayers will just trot out the grosses.  As if money EVER triumphed over art.

I’d go to a Tom Petty show any day rather than go to the Super Bowl.  Even in the back row, I’d feel something, that touched my soul.  I’d say there would be less commercialism than at the game, but now even that’s not true.  Sponsorship runs rampant.

I’d say the lunatics have taken over the asylum, but Syd Barrett is dead.  The capitalists have taken over the music world.  Not that artists shouldn’t be paid.  But, despite Gene Simmons’ protestations, we always thought the acts and the music were more than that.  Maybe they will be again.  When the custodians are squeezed out, and a new generation of players come in.