On Super Bowl Sunday we're handing over the main page of TeeVee to continuing coverage of the Super Bowl via Station Break weblog entries. We have no idea when our intrepid reporters will file stories, or in fact if they even will.

So let this be the first entry!

In the meantime, feel free to enjoy Philip Michaels' piece from Friday about how he claims he won't be watching the Super Bowl, or read about other stuff you can watch on Super Bowl Sunday.

And here's a trivia note, courtesy Gregg Easterbrook's excellent TMQ column: Super Bowl XXXVIII is the longest name, roman numerally speaking, until Super Bowl LXXXVIII in 2054. I believe that game, between the Tokyo Rising Sun and the Jacksonville Jaguars, will take place in the Atlantis Aquadome.

Letters, we get letters. Letters from people trying to save me from a fate worse than death -- watching Super Bowl XXXVIII.

TeeVee reader Marescas writes:

Why not go see all five Best Picture Nominees? If you live in a major metropolitan area, odds are all five are currently showing on the big screen, since four of them are relatively recent releases, and it's likely they'll throw Seabiscuit out there again just because it's nominated.

Sure, I'm talking about a good, what, 14 hour investment. That's a full day of butt-numbing movie watching. But then your fully prepared to speak with informaed outrage when you write your article about the Oscar ceremony next month.

Good idea, Maresca. Unfortunately, I live in Los Angeles, and it's really not much of a movie town.

Jason Mittell suggets:

Now that you live in L.A., empty streets & a populace drugged into submission by Frito-Lay, Bud Light, and Janet Jackson means only one option: looting time! Please post pictures of your acquired merchandise on TeeVee - and this way you also save yourself buying a prize package!

Jason, Jason, Jason... surely, your familiarity with the greater Los Angeles area has made you aware of the fact that we haven't had an NFL game played within the city limits since 1994. So Super Bowl Sunday is just another weekend 'round these parts. The streets will be as crowded as ever, and the populace will be... well, drugged out on what they're normally drugged out on.Besides, here in L.A., we're just another hung jury away from our next riot, so I think I'll hold off on my looting until then.

Finally, TeeVee reader Ted writes:

I hear that many ladies are quite excited about going shopping without all the crowds. But if you're a man, and I assume you are, even though you're not watching... Here's your chance at almost every woman with no man at their side.

The wife has nixed your suggestion, Ted. Fortunately, Ted has a secondary proposal:

I say, get in your Ferrari and drag race up and down the empty freeways. Go ahead, see what she'll do. Maybe even gas it around the turns on the way to the onramp. Make it look like a Nissan commercial. Smoke the tires, who's gonna know?

Sadly, Ted, I don't have a Ferrari. I do have a '91 Plymouth Acclaim, and I'm perfectly aware of what she'll do -- begin shuddering violently the moment the spedometer hits 70 mph. Oh, and the oil light will come on.

So there you have it. Unless we get an influx of suggestions within the next three hours, I'll have no choice but to watch this year's Super Bowl. I write this post from the living room of Vidiot Emeritus Peter Ko, and if the prospect of sparing me from the tedium of this year's game isn't enough to spur your creative suggestions, the least you can do is spare Pete from the tedium of my company.

I fully intend to watch the Super Bowl. Don't make any mistake about that. However, I seem to be a bit distracted by the discovery that the original Colossal Cave Adventure, the first text adventure ever, is playable inside a browser window. So I think I'm going to have to play that first. I've got a few hours before the game starts, so with any luck I'll have remembered most of the puzzles.

Had a good morning. My daughter shouted me awake at 7:30, but then I made waffles, some turkey bacon, hot tea, and we actually had a proper sunday breakfast. That never happens.

Now as my daughter drifts off to her nap and my damnable DVD of my home movies burns, it's time to fire up the TiVo and get into the football spirit.

You want to know why you don't read much from Pete Ko anymore? You want to know why Pete doesn't hang with the rest of us Vidiots?

Because Pete is evil.

We are sitting here in Pete's vast Southern California estate, and, in lieu of watching CBS's 16-hour pregame show, Pete has tuned into the Real World: San Diego marathon on MTV. For those of you unfamiliar with the way Real World producers make their casting decisions, each season, they aim to make the seven cast members stupider than last year's installment.

With Real World: San Diego, they have succeeded admirably.

Anyhow, we are watching the episode which features the first ever arrest in the 14-year history of The Real World and -- five minutes after that -- the second ever arrest in the 14-year history of The Real World.

(In case you were wondering, the Real World cast member arrested on a drunk-and-disorderly used his one phone call to leave this message with his fellow cast members: "I'm in jail. Come pick me up, bitch.")

"We must watch this show from now on," my wife says. "Thank you, Pete, for opening our eyes to this."

Yeah, thanks, Pete. Thanks a lot.

I think it's nice that CBS has ditched those oversized microphone headsets that make the pregame show panelists look like drive-thru attendants at your local fast-food restaurant. ("Coming up: an up-close-and-personal look at the New England Patriots Tom Brady... thank you and drive through to the first window.") But Jim Nantz looks like they've implanted his headset into his right cheek.

(And yes... this item would suggest that I'm giving up my plan to boycott this year's Super Bowl. Because at the end of the day, I'm a big, fat fraud.)

Dick Enberg making a "football Frankenstein" by assembling the best body parts of individual NFL players while wearing a doctor's coat and laughing maniacally? So cliche, so degrading for Enberg. And so typical for Super Bowl pre-game shows.

But CBS actually devoted a few minutes of the Super Bowl Today pre-game show to a sketch from Comedy Central's (Viacom synergy!) Crank Yankers featuring Jimmy Kimmel (unsynergistic confusion!) placing a crank call to the Giants' Michael Strahan, offering him a lucrative endorsement deal for a product targeted at "fatties like you, Michael." (The next bit, with a fake Teen People editor asking Trent Dilfer a series of stupid questions and ignoring his answers, was funny too.)

As synergy goes, that's not bad. It was funny. Which is more than I can say for poor Dick Enberg.

The mind reels at the spirited discussions pregame performers Toby Keith and Willie Nelson must have been having in the green room.

Nelson: Yeah, I'm a Dennis Kucinich supporter myself.

Keith: Go back to Commieland, you un-American hippie.

So up comes young fresh-faced singer Josh Groban, singing "You Raise Me Up" in honor of NASA and the fallen Columbia astronauts. Which is nice and all, but I'm not interested in hearing whatever musical confection young Josh has to offer.

So I callously hit the fast-forward button on my TiVo, only to realize that for all its engineering brilliance, TiVo is still unable to take me into the future, past all the annoying musical numbers in the Super Bowl pre-game festivities.

Damn you for following the laws of space-time, TiVo!

I don't know what Cialis is, but anything that encourages old people to sit outside naked scares the crap out of me.

Question of the day: what is the purpose of having a military flyover... at a game being played indoors? (I think the roof was open for the flyover. -ed.)

Question of the day, part two: Who do you suppose was the most intelligent person on the set of that Pizza Hut commercial -- Jessica Simpson or the sock puppets?

I love how CBS' presentation of the starting lineups for the Panthers and Patriots features each player appearing in a shimmering flash of light, complete with Star Trek transporter-style sound effects.

Let's hope there hasn't been a terrible malfunction, and each player has been split into a good half and a bad half. Although that might be a nice twist to make things interesting.

If you see Bill Belichick with a goatee, you know he's the Evil Belichick, and not to be trusted.

It took all of one ad for us to get our first crotch-trauma ad of the game, in an advertisement for Bud Light. (Dog bite on crotch, if you're scoring at home.)

I figured it would take at least four ads before we got one.

I don't know which announcerbot said it, but "It's not exciting... but it's a lot of fun to watch" does not constitute a ringing endorsement of the Super Bowl's entertainment value.

I don't want to give away the ending to that new "Alamo" movie, but here's my advice to you: don't get too attached to any of the American characters.

Bud Light drinkers, cast off your chains and toss your beer in the river.

Following up the classy dog-on-crotch ad, we got a horse flatulence ad. Which would be fine if they were funny.

A 12-year-old might find these ads funny, but Bud Light's not supposed to be marketing to them. Unless the next step in this clever marketing campaign is the slogan, "Drink Bud Light -- It's What You'd Drink If You Were a 12-Year-Old Moron."

Never a good sign when the announcers are going to the ol' "This is like a boxing match, with the fighters jockeying for position" metaphor.

The story thus far:

* Carolina punt
* New England missed field goal
* Carolina punt
* New England punt
* Carolina punt
* New England punt
* Carolina punt

At this rate, CBS is going to run out of commercials by halftime.

I'm not sure what the Levitra Challenge is, but if the commercials are anything to go by, it apparently involves going to your doctor's office and throwing footballs through a tire. Miss the tire, and you've got erectile dysfunction.

Aiee! Creepy Linux Kid sighting!

Mike Ditka's Levitra ad compares erect manly-men to football, able to play in any weather conditions... as opposed to baseball, with pansy players who can't even play when it's sprinkling. "Baseball needs Levitra," says Ditka.

You know, I'm just going to say it -- impotent jackasses need to lay off the National Pastime.

PHIL SIMMS (real): "Greg, it's an ugly football game."

GREG GUMBEL (in my head): "You're right, Phil. Screw this. Everyone turn over to 'Queer Eye.' Except our advertisers! Suckers."

I'm really liking these goofy, low-budget ads from "America On-Line," apparently some sort of Internet site or dot-com or something. They're obviously up-and-coming, since they could afford advertising on the Super Bowl, but clearly they don't have that much money, since their ads are so cheap and cheesy.

Anyway, if I were an investor, I'd look into this American Airline or whatever it's called. They're spunky.

So let's see here. Nelly informed us that it was getting "Hot in Herre," which I'm pretty sure is a song that's a couple years old. Kid Rock came out and did both "Bawitdaba" and "Cowboy." And in the absence of a better idea, P. Diddy did Toni Basil's "Mickey." And if I'm not mistaken, Janet Jackson appears to be doing "Rhythm Nation."

This is how the NFL gets the young, hip viewers? By putting on a halftime show composed of the hits of yesteryear? The hippest part of the show was the marching band.

Up until that flurry of scoring at the end of the half, I was going to say that the only thing more limp and listless than the Panthers' offense was the quality of the ads for this year's Super Bowl. Then again, nothing has been as limp and listless as this year's Super Bowl ads.

I like the FedEx ad featuring the creature from "Alien." And I like... um... well... um...

I like the chicken wings we have here at Pete's house. That counts for something, right?

Bland movie ads. That lackluster Pepsi-Apple effort. Bud Light's continuing fascination with anuses (guess that explains the beer's taste). These are the sorts of things you would expect from a preseason Jaguars-Saints came, not for the showcase event of the year. I can only hope the advertisers step up their game for the second half.

Maybe they should pop some of that Levitra I keep hearing about.

(Update: OK, that NFL Network ad with everyone singing "Tomorrow" was pretty funny. Then again, I'm a sucker for show tunes.)

So was the "surprise half-time guest" Janet Jackson's boob?

With it and Kid Rock, that makes two.

I understand I'm not the heppest hep-cat in the room, but could somebody please explain to me what exactly a bunch of cheerleaders surrounding P. Diddy and chanting "Oh, Diddy you're so fine" has to do with exercising your right to vote?

Unless there's some Ban-P.-Diddy-from-the-Halftime-Show ballot initiative that I don't know about.

With Janet Jackson's hair in her face like that, how do we know that's not really LaToya Jackson trying to hog the spotlight?

So if I'm Jessica Simpson -- the supposed top-secret super-surprise addition to the halftime show -- I think I'd be a upset that Janet Jackson's boob got more camera time than I did.

Two words: Donkey show.

We're actually watching the big Poker game on the TiVo. Talk about excitement! Jose didn't know Ron only had Jacks, and he folded. Ron just made $675,000. Can the Carolina Panthers say the same?

You know, I started to feel old when I watched the halftime show. An old, old man who can't appreciate the entertainment that the Kids must love.

Then I realized -- the Super Bowl halftime show sucked when I was a kid, too. It has always sucked. It will always suck. Now it sucks with new faces and people whose music I wouldn't listen to on a bet, but sucking by any name is still sucking.

I'm trying to recall how many good ads there have been during the Super Bowl this year, and I'm with Phil: not many. The FedEx ad with the alien was good, the NFL Network ad with NFL luminaries singing "Tomorrow" from Annie is the current leader in the clubhouse, and I somewhat enjoyed the Staples ad with the godfather-like office supplies guy.

In other news, Budweiser and Bud Light have cut open the bottom of the barrel and escaped into the sewers below.

Faithful reader and sometime TeeVee contributor Doug Sheppard writes:

So, Canada has different ads than the U.S. broadcast of the Super Bowl. How different? This year, very different...

The blonde says "Wow, I love your lip gloss."

The brunette says "Here, I'll put some on for you."

The three guys watch the hot girl-on-girl makeout action in the middle of the dance floor.

And the world gets out the red marker and notes on its calendar that February 1, 2004, was the day that onscreen hot girl-on-girl makeout action officially became a way to sell Labatt Blue.

Well, that ad would certainly make my top five. All our American beer companies give us is flatulent horses and creepy talking chimps.

"Erections lasting longer than four hours, though rare, require immediate medical attention. Preferably from naughty candy-stripers."

Phil Simms on tonight's Survivor: All Stars premiere:

"The minute one of those guys starts taking off his clothes, I say vote him out of there. I'm not looking at those nasty bodies."

Squeaky wheel wants the grease, Phil.

Sometimes, it saddens me how America has lost its way.

Today Arsenal returned to the top of the Premiership thanks to a wonder strike from Thierry Henry on 83 minutes to beat Man City, 2-1, at Highbury.

Well, they call it football.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- those Truth.com ads make me want to drive down to the local elementary schools and hand out carton of smokes to first-graders.

Gotta disagree with my pal Phil; I thought the Shards O' Glass ad was one of the funnier, less strident Truth ads I've seen.

(I like this one because it's parodying those ridiculous "hey kids, don't smoke" ads that we've seen on the broadcast today. Rather than just saying the tobacco companies are bad, it's pointing out how ridiculous it is for cigarette companies to run no-smoking ads -- or beer companies to run no-drinking ads, come to think of it.)

These thetruth ads all have the theme of "Those damn cigarette companies!" instead of something more logical, like "Hey, kid! Don't smoke, okay?" I guess it's supposed to look like activism or something, like the kids at thetruth are out raging against the machine of big tobacco. But instead, it's all so self-congratulatory. They go out and annoy random passersby with street theater and air horns and then videotape it and show it to me. What did I do? I don't even smoke!

I do find it odd that so many of the commercials on the Super Bowl are either anti-smoking (or anti-drugs or anti-drinking) or explicitly pro-beer. Make up your mind, Super Bowl! I need to know whether I should be getting tore up or not.

With a tying touchdown with 1:08 to go, let me just say that my friend Phil was deeply wrong about this game being a loser.

You just never know. This has been a pretty good game, first quarter excepted.

The game is tied with 1:08 to go. This has turned into a pretty good game.

The (second) greatest field goal of all time.

So New England wins on a last-second field goal in a thrilling fourth quarter. Just as I predicted.

What? You're saying I didn't predict that. Quick, Jason, change what I posted!

Not only does Jason not change what I wrote, he points out my failures for all to see.

Thanks, Jason. Thanks a lot.

You've now replaced Ko at the head of the shit list.

Straight from NFL Executive Vice President Joe Browne:

"We were extremely disappointed by elements of the MTV-produced Halftime show. They were totally inconsistent with assurances our office was given about the show. It's unlikely that MTV will produce another Super Bowl halftime."

Think maybe Jessica Simpson's "Choose to Party!" line -- thereby invalidating everything previously said about encouraging people to participate in our democratic process -- had something to do with it?

"We at the NFL thought the singers would perform a song that was recorded within the last year. Also, we specifically asked Janet Jackson to show both boobs, not just one. And who fucking invited Justin Timberlake? Not Paul Tagliabue, that's for goodamn sure." (Made-up NFL quote by Philip Michaels.)

Approximately two and a half minutes after the end of the halftime show, I received my first Janet Jackson boobie spam. Since then, I have received one every five minutes, with subjects ranging from "janett's (sic) boobs at superbowl", "niple (sic) slip at the superbowl", and "janet jackson's tits." The ad within suggests that I should let lenders compete for my business, which seems like a bit of a leap from Janet Jackson's bazooms, but it probably makes some kind of sense to marketing weenies.

Incidentally, I'm receiving the messages on an account that I created specifically to enter a sweepstakes at the Spike TV web site. Talk about directed advertising.