From Jet City to Motor City: Super Bowl Sidelights

Red Mill closed early one night last October so the staff could attend the Rolling Stones concert, and they’ll close early again on Super Sunday so the staff can watch the Stones’ halftime show (and the Seahawks). This was called to our attention by Red Mill’s recent Stranger ad (which confidently ran before the Panthers game), an amusingly awesome conflation of the Stones and Seahawks logos...

Like Red Mill, we too love the Rolling Stones, but we hate to see ‘em perform in something so agonizingly lame as the Super Bowl halftime show. Once the domain of marching bands and Up With People, now it's usually big-name musical acts cobbled together into overblown production numbers (at least until that Janet Jackson boob fiasco). After Paul McCartney’s boring set last year, we doubt the Stones will turn Ford Field into Altamont. It’s questionable whether the limey sexagenarians even have any interest in American football, though Mick Jagger did sport an Eagles jersey during the ’81 US tour (the year Philadelphia lost Super Bowl XV)...

To our knowledge there haven’t yet been any ‘Hawk-ified adaptations of Stones songs, though after our recent survey of such novelty tunes, we’ve been tipped off to a few more. Easily the worst thus far is "Vertibowl” (sung to the tune of U2’s “Vertigo”) credited to “Fitz in the Morning,” a DJ on 100.7 FM, “The Wolf"...

Finally, Jimmy Kimmel did a funny bit earlier this season comparing the winning percentages of NFL teams with mustachioed coaches to those without. Mike Holmgren, who looks like an obese Martin Mull, sports a light-colored ‘stache that’s hardly discernable from a distance. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh coach Bill Cowher has this thick, dark, neatly trimmed bush, which gives him that perfect hard-nose, drill-sergeant a-hole quality. We forget Kimmel’s findings, but if there’s any correlation between solid head-coach mustaches and winning, the Seahawks don’t stand a chance.