On the Road to Forty

Ya gotta hand it to , they've got cojones. They kicked off the 2005/2006 NFL season with a pageant filled with artists that push the envelope of political correctness. If only they weren't owned by Disney, the antichrist.

Kicking off the festivities was the Rolling Stones, dubbed the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band (or did they mean to say the world's oldest rock & roll band?). They performed "Start Me Up" and later "Raw Justice", but skirted the band's contoversial hit "Sweet Neo-Con", which lambasted Bush and his cohorts for their complicity in the bogus reasons for war in Iraq.

Next up was Kanye West, who acheived notoriety last week on the Katrina benefit concert when he went off-script and pronounced that "Bush hates black people". This time he stayed on script, but rapped that poor folks are downtrodden and petitioned to raise the minimum wage.

Also on the menu was Green Day, whose critically acclaimed "American Idiot" also criticizes our foreign policy, who perforned "I Walk Alone".

The preseason special, which was hosted by Freddie Prinz, Jr. (of Scooby Doo fame) at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, also contained some Super Bowl-class commercials, including one that named a Diet Pepsi machine as the game MVP.

The festivities included Carlos Santana, which, without Rob Thomas, did a respectable "Smooth" and was made even better with cheerleaders. Carlos even helped with Michelle Branch's set, which was none too shabby either.

Ozzie Osborne did "Crazy Train" as the Patriots were introduced, and it was made better with cheerleaders also.

Trisha Yearwood sang the National Anthem. Is she getting chunky or what? Not that that's a bad thing. Girth is a sign of prosperity, and it would be nice if our poor looked as prosperous as her. Some of them do, although most of them don't.

All in all, I think this will be an interesting NFL season, on the road to Super Bowl XXXX.

I think I'll open a forty myself to celebrate. But I think it'd be much better with cheerleaders.