Eat it, Paul McCartney

So I walk into the Electric Earth this afternoon, and what's on the stereo? "Purple Rain."

For good measure, here's something I don't say every day: If you missed the Super Bowl Halftime Show, you missed out. I'm not even sure how to describe Prince's performance; just like his symbol, his power cannot be spoken by human tongue. From the initial pyrrotechnics, which made me afraid that he and the band had been obliterated, to the cresendo howling, it restored my faith in arena rock, or quite possibly, the entertainment industry. They used to call these things 'spectaluars,' and aptly stopped when they realized they couldn't live up to the moniker. Well, Prince is back, and all other stadium shows have now been rendered obsolete.

Given this, I made the right decision to watch the game. For all the elitist glee of living outside mainstream culture, I made the choice to work with people who don't, and it'd be a shame to not be able to talk to them. The usual big-game pomp and dreck started to make me wish I'd gone for a drive, but it's really much too cold for that. And then there was Prince.

Speaking of such, it is damn cold. So much so that despite there being no snow on the roads, Madison Schools closed down, and because OFS is technically a school, I didn't have to go to work. I suppose they didn't want the kiddos to wait for the bus out in the double-digit negative wind chills. And another thing about this soft younger generation...(in crotchety old miser voice)

Speaking of old misers, I totally agree with Chris' (xanga.com/regulargoy) recent take on the Isthmus column saying American Idol was teaching work ethic to the spoiled youngsters of America who have everything handed to them. I'm hoping you, dear reader, can see through such simplistic logically fallacy; personally I just want to make a stand against generational statements. I hate them so. Used broadly, I suppose they have a sociological function: generation of people are different. But like Americans don't know how to talk about race, they don't know how to talk about this, either, so they somehow morph from demagraphic trends to entrenched stereotypes. Enough of this. Certainly it's nice sport to look down on your juniors, and perhaps we ought to let this go for older people as a reward for surviving this life so long. I hate them, though, and I just thought you should know.

If you're post-cool, it doesn't matter anyway. And you know who invented post-coolness? Prince. All I can say is this -- you'd be hard pressed to pay me enough to perform next year's halftime and follow that up.

EDIT: Upon browsing, there seems to be a lot in the old blogshere about Prince, or the other thing I noticed, the particularly homophobic ads this year. Forget red-blue, the real American ideological split is between people who loved Prince and felt insulted by Bud Light advertising, or vice versa. Somewhere, there are people who liked both, and they are the truly happy.