I’m happy to report that the last one I mentioned is approaching 900 comments from people who think they know best about hypothetical (i.e. It will never happen) battles between comic book characters. Upon checking out the profiles for many of the people starting topics on this forum, I found that many have less than 100 posts under their belt, which more often than not means they recently created their persona for the sole purpose of creating inane topics. These are all grown men, too, I just know it. What got me into the message boards world four years ago was the exchange of information and getting better connected with “students of the game,” so to speak. Unfortunately, as is the case with most internet-based outlets, the message boards all too often give the socially inept and morally impotent too many opportunities to expound on matters that have no business leaving Mom & Dad’s basement. You’d think I’d have more patience for message board geeks considering where I got my start writing, but what can I say? Real geeks bug me.

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SUPER BOWL HIGH & LOWS…

HIGH – THE GAME, STUPID: I readily admit that the first 20 minutes of play was a stinker, but Super Bowl XXXVIII ended up being an instant classic. Anyone who predicted that the last team that had the ball would win nailed it. Unlike Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, I’m not ready to call this the greatest Super Bowl ever (that, in by very biased opinion, was six years ago when John Elway and the Denver Broncos won their first title – but it was a great game anyway), but this was up there. Two quarterbacks that very well may do this again in the future pitch a QB shootout for the ages, and both teams deserved to win. It was definitely a victory for team sports in that both franchises, the Patriots and the Panthers, got to the championship on the merits of team unity and showing solid, competent play in all phases of the game: offense, defense, special teams, and coaching. Though there can only be one victor, both teams really should be proud of what they brought to Houston, Texas.

LOW -- BUT WE DO NEED DOGS CHOMPING BALLS FOR BUD LIGHT: This speaks highly of the major corporations that run the airwaves when we’re subjected to piece after piece of shit in highly anticipated Super Bowl commercials (this year was unprecedented in bottom-feeding), yet CBS refused to air the MoveOn.org-sponsored ad that merely points out the fact that the next generation can expect to foot the bill for the trillion-dollar deficit that the Bush administration created. Apparently this ad was too controversial for the network (but you can see it for yourself at www.moveon.org ), yet a Bud Light commercial showing a horse ripping a fart in the face of a woman and causing her to catch fire in the name of beer sales was perfectly acceptable for American families everywhere. If CBS boss Les Moonves isn’t a kept man, I don’t know who is.

HIGH – ONCE YOU LOOK PAST THE GAME ITSELF… I’m sorry to report not much. Though the Van Helsing movie looks like a lot of fun… LOW – I NEED MY HEAD CHECKED… but here I am about to complain that Janet Jackson “accidentally” showed the gold at the end of her lauded halftime performance. I worship at the temple of Miss Jackson plenty, but there is a time and place for revealing one’s self provocatively in an attempt to trump the Madonna & Britney makeout session last year, and the Super Bowl halftime show is not that place. Save it for the VMAs. I think America, as a whole, is downright cowardly when it comes to artistic expression in a sexual manner, but there still have to be boundaries set for the benefit of the young and impressionable. If I watched this game and the subsequent halftime show with any of my family, I would have been embarrassed by the display put on by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. And any suggestion that this was an unforeseen clothing mishap is lying and they’re going to hear about it from the FCC. For once I have to side with the FCC when I say “Bring it on.”

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MAYBE IT’S THE COLD WEATHER… But I am ready to bludgeon the next wimpy-ass lady who bogs down a revolving door in downtown Chicago because they are pulling behind them a suitcase cart the size of a fucking laptop. It happens to me more than once a week here, I swear to God. If you can’t pick it up, don’t use the revolving door – use the automatic door normally reserved for legitimately disabled people. If there’s any broads reading this column (>snicker<), I may take flak for this, but if you have to use a retractable extended handle to cart a suitcase that’s not much larger than a oversized purse, you deserve the “weaker sex” reputation. Christ, it’s bad enough that this is the fattest country in the world, but the lengths that people will go to make us the physically weakest nation is excruciating. I want to smack some of these wimps in the ass with a shoulder strap. Shoulder straps, remember those?? Where’s my coffee?!?!?

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OSCAR GOLD, MAN: Come Oscar time, I’ll try to give this month’s Academy Awards some more extensive coverage. But I do have to say, without even having seen most of the nominated work, that I am very impressed with this year’s announced contenders. A year without a Russell Crowe movie being nominated would be unheard of, but even the star of Master and Commander was on the outside looking in, as was Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (and I was so looking forward to the awkward reunion to be televised for the whole world to see). In a year that was supposed to see the little movies that could get overlooked due to MPAA chief Jack Valenti’s kiss-ass corporate move to ban DVD screeners for Academy voters, small-budget independent films got some well-regarded nominations. Brazil’s City of God got director Fernando Meirelles a nod over some high profile filmmakers, and the Coppola name is making a return – but this time it’s daughter Sofia for Lost In Translation (and after the unfair roasting she got years ago for Godfather Part III, good for her). I’m always interested in the actress categories, and it’s great to see Keisha Castle-Hughes get a best actress nod for her performance in Whale Rider along with the likes of Diane Keaton, Charlize Theron, and Naomi Watts. And not that it’s an art house film by any means, but Johnny Depp getting an Academy Award nomination for his send-up of Keith Richards in Pirates of the Caribbean??? Wow. This could be a very interesting event, and I don’t even know that my man Michael Moore is going to be there this year.

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LOVE IT: I rarely address rumors in this column, but I just had to comment on the hints that Johnny Depp could be offered a role in the Superman movie Warner Bros. is slowly developing. The first hint recently was that Depp would play Lex Luthor. I am a big fan of Depp, so this could work for me on many levels. Depp’s 40 right now, which I think should be the age they go for with Luthor, while a grown up Kal-El should be around twenty-five (Hey! Tom Welling will be 27 this year! How about that?). But another report suggested that Johnny Depp was being considered for another part, that of Jor-El. I see nothing wrong with this either. Brett Ratner’s idea to go with Sir Anthony Hopkins sucked in my book anyway. Jor-El should be portrayed by a mature adult in his 30s or 40s, not a grandfather in his late-60s. Stay tuned…

HATE IT: This is pretty much a dead issue as it sees print, but it reminded me of rumors some months ago when the role of Jimmy Olsen was rumored to be going to Justin Timberlake. Like was the case back then, ultimately, I don’t believe for a minute that this is going to pan out, but it can at least be addressed in a bigger picture sense. Beyonce Knowles should not be in the running for Lois Lane, and it has nothing to do with the color of her skin. I’m all for diverse casting (creatively, within reason), but I’m also into professional actors with lots of experience getting assigned plum roles like the most famous girlfriend of the Man of Steel. Just pick up Mark Waid and Francis Leinil Yu’s Superman: Birthright, and you tell me if Beyonce, a girl with two movies under her belt (one of them as the Bond Girl equivalent of Austin Powers eye candy), handling the role of Lois Lane. Didn’t think so…

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PICKY, OR PRACTICAL? ”I read the script and decided the substance of the script and the character was not up to what I expected.” That was a reported quote from Chris Cooper as it was revealed that he passed on the role of Commissioner James Gordon in Batman: Intimidation, about to go into production this month. Hopefully we’ll get some finalized casting news later this month, as the new Warner Bros. film is supposed to start shooting, like, now. Also I’m hoping that Cooper’s comments, if he actually made them, are just a reflection of his personal tastes and not that of what we’re getting in 2005. All of the other early buzz has been glowing about this revival of the Batman movie franchise.

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FINAL STATEMENT ON THE JANET JACKSON HALTIME SHOW: My mom was with my stepfather in Colorado watching Super Bowl XXXVIII with an older crowd at a neighborhood party (my mom, in her mid-50s, was apparently the “teeny bopper” of this gathering). I don’t think there’s any question that this particular household was one of millions that couldn’t have been less impressed with what CBS and MTV provided for halftime entertainment (kind of funny, since these are all otherwise faithful CBS viewers, when you think of the Tiffany Network’s leading demographic). We happened to talk the very next night, and she asked me, as a 31-year-old who heavily follows pop culture, if the MTV-produced halftime show did anything for me as a music fan. I replied that aside from the closing shot of Janet (which I missed anyway as it happened live), I thought the show sucked because it was a pathetic assembly of “talent” that was supposedly organized to appeal to the football-loving masses.

The NFL got it right two years ago when they got U2 to perform on their own at the half. At the time, U2 captured an audience who was heavy-hearted over the then-recent September 11th tragedies. Even if that wasn’t on the minds of everyone then, U2 was still an excellent choice to do a show of that magnitude, because they are the masters of stadium-sized performances. They didn’t need to lip-sync squat, they didn’t need weak-ass distracting choreography, and they certainly didn’t need to be accompanied by the likes of Good Charlotte, Christina Aguilera, and Jay Z to make the show a little bit of something to everybody (thought Jay Z with U2 would be downright interesting. I reasoned to my mom that when you put together Janet Jackson, P Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock, and Justin Timberlake for this kind of performance, you’re only truly appealing to five to ten percent of the audience who’s actually watching the show. Over 100 million people at one point or another watched the Super Bowl the other night, and MTV, on their best night of the year by far, attracts 20 million viewers, and that’s for their annual Video Music Awards. Nipple shields notwithstanding, a Super Bowl halftime is too good for that spectacle, but the VMAs are just about right. I have nothing against pushing the envelope here and there, but you really have to pick your battles better.

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YUP, IT’S JUST THAT… Speaking of envelope-pushing, I had a chance to check out Mark Millar’s creator-owned contribution to Avatar Press, The Unfunnies. Offensive material is nothing new to the writer of Marvel Comics’ The Ultimates, but this book is so thoroughly devoid of quality humor, that the only thing funny about the book is that very lack of laughs. I’ve always preached about the infallible rule that cartoony animal mascots plus violence equals comedy gold, but something got left out of that equation when Millar put this book together. To be sure, The Unfunnies is offensive for the sake of being offensive, but Millar forgot to make this book funny along the way. I don’t know if Millar thought that making all of the characters into Hanna Barbera-style animals would make situations like child pornography and prostitution automatically humorous, but the lack of cleverness, wit, and perhaps irony merely trivialize the taboos Millar & Co. attempt to lampoon. Replace all the characters in The Unfunnies with real-life human beings, and you’d almost have the comic book equivalent of a snuff film, or at the very least something that could be ruled obscene in the appropriate Bible Belt county. If that was the sort of literary statement that Millar (a parent himself, God help us) was going for, mission accomplished. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can recommend about this book to even the most depraved acquaintance of mine, and that’s saying a lot, I’m afraid.