The trip is over. I fly home this afternoon. A long, but fruitful week in the Midwest.

Super Bowl weekend; food, fun, gluttony, inebriation, corporate whoring and uniquely American vulgarity. I'll be a part of it all.

The Rolling Stones at halftime, how lame. Months of Rolling Stones/Credit Card/Win a Trip to the SuperBowl commercials. The Rolling Stones, anachronistic, irrelevant self parodies of themselves. Yaaaaawn.

Forget Lombardi and the Packers, Montana, the Giants and Roger Staubach.

Some other memorable Super Bowl moments

-January 1986, Bears vs. Patriots - Jim Riley of Oakville, IL makes a 25 gallon vat of his famous chili. After overheating the vat explodes, spreading meat, cheese, onions and red sauce everywhere. Starved and drunk, the guests scape it up, eats it and declare it Jim's best chili ever. Demonstrating the never give up spirit of the Super Bowl and America.

-January 1966, Superbowl I. Darnell Pittsnoggle of Green Bay Wisconsin buys tickets to go to California to see his beloved Packers play in the first ever Superbowl. Two days before the trip, while repairing his shed, Darnell slams a hammer down on his pointer finger. It swells hideously and turns bright red. Inspired, Darnell goes to the shed and starts to carve and cut and glue and solder. The big foam "We're #1" hand is born.

-January 1980 Steelers vs. Rams - Amy Guttierez of Shanesville, AL stands up after the first quarter and declares to her husband Ed "This sucks, I'm going shopping." A milestone in women's liberation.

-January 1987 Giants vs. Broncos - William Shaftswood of Livingston, NJ decorates his entire house in Giants Blue and White, his wife who has been in labor for three days is in the bedroom with a midwife (as she was not allowed to go to the hospital during the "Big Game."

As the two minute warning sounds in the 4th quarter and the Giants have secured victory, the wailing of a newborn child is heard from the bedroom. On that day "Victoria Meadowlands Lawrence Taylor Shaftswood is born and named.