There’s an old story about a woman (gender isn’t really relevant, but that’s how I heard it) who saw a snake on the path. He was nearly frozen, hungry, etc., and begged her to rescue him and take him home. “I can’t do that,” she said, “you are a snake, and you’ll bite me.” But he begged and pleaded and promised to be a good snake, so she took him home. She fed him and made him a little warm bed, and he bit her. Before she died, she cried out, “but you promised! … Why?” “Well, dearie,” the snake replied,”you knew I was a snake before you picked me up.”

And now we have Price, facing criticism for his crude phallic shadow dance during the halftime of the Superbowl. Oh my, imagine that. The morons hire one of the most freakish, squealing, untalented sideshow acts of vestigial 1980s erotic androginotainment, and they’re surprised when he pulls another Janet on them? I mean, did they watch his act before they booked him? Because when I think of football, I don’t think of Prince. He’s a has-been, and was never somebody that men wanted to watch. Guys like Prince do for music what McDonalds and Gummie Bears do for nutrition; what George Bush does for global fuzzy feelings about America.

I’m not saying they should give us something I might like, such as a big American marching band. But maybe a nice, family-friendly country-western singer? What have they got lined up for next year? Maybe the ladies of Girls Gone Wild, skinning pigs alive while blowing the referees’

whistles.

I don’t know why it pisses me off so much. I didn’t watch the halftime; I went for a walk with my iPod, which has 800 songs, none of them by the “artist” formerly known as the “artist” formerly known as Prince.