Three things from over the weekend:

- The Super Bowl really didn't live up to the hype this year. The game was dull, the officiating was terrible (and every bad call went against Seattle) and even the commercials were lackluster for the most part. Pittsburgh really played poorly in the first half, and won the game on the strength of a few big plays. The 75 yard run (a Super Bowl record) by Willie Parker and the gadget pass play from wide receiver Antwaan Randle El to Hines Ward really pulled out the game for the Steelers. Seattle couldn't put the ball in the end zone when they had opportunities, and that was their downfall.

- I took the kids to see the movie Nanny McPhee. It was a sort of twisted version of Mary Poppins and was quite entertaining. I liked the fact that as the children in Nanny McPhee's charge became better behaved, the nanny became better looking, with her moles, oddly shaped nose and snaggletooth disappearing. After we left the theater I asked the kids if I would get better looking if they behaved better, to which they both protested, "We're not as bad as those kids!".

- I saw Billy Joel at the Gahden on Saturday night with some friends. I have been a fan of his since the '70s, as evidenced by the 236 Billy Joel tracks I have on my iPod. It was a great show, with Joel singing not only most of his big hits, but also some of the more obscure stuff as well. He had a lot of energy and you can see how comfortable he is being a rock star.

We had great seats, too, right behind the stage. When we first got the seats we were a bit nervous about the location, but they turned out to be outstanding. Joel even turned around to us near the start of the concert and said, "I bet you thought those seats were gonna suck, didn't you."

The one slightly odd thing was that there was a fair number of pretty young people there - people who weren't even alive when some of these songs were hits. But don't worry; there were plenty of old fogies like me there, too.

The only negative to the evening was that A. wasn't able to go, but she gets her cast off on Thursday and hopefully things will start to get back to normal around here.