And now Springsteen has turned his sights on Ticketmaster. Since he performed at the most-watched Super Bowl ever, Bruce Springsteen has seen a surge of demand for his concert tickets.

Trouble is, Ticketmaster has apparently been redirecting Springsteen fans to a ticket auction site rather than its regular face-value site. And now Bruce Springsteen is mad. See that Bruce Springsteen picture there? He’s twice as mad as that. We didn’t even know that such a level of madness was possible.

Give Bruce Springsteen a cause and the man will run with it. Tell him that some Vietnam veterans have been mistreated, and he’ll write a song about it. Tell him that human rights are being violated across the planet and he’ll play a concert to help stop it. Tell him that a dangerous number of people aren’t watching the recommended daily allowance of fairly crappy internet songs about Halloween and he’ll go and make one of his own to redress the balance.

And now that his Super Bowl performance has seen interest in him peak at a level that he hasn’t seen for over 20 years, Bruce Springsteen has decided that it’s time he became the old Bruce Springsteen again. The man of the people Bruce Springsteen. You know, the Bruce Springsteen that isn’t the muttering old curmudgeon Bruce Springsteen who only records bleak songs about depressing bumsex with prostitutes.

And in his new old role, Bruce Springsteen has decided to take issue with Ticketmaster, because it might be forcing fans to pay over the odds for his concert tickets when they don’t have to or something. Reuters will explain this better:

On Monday, fans trying to make face-value purchases for tickets were instead sent to TicketsNow, “even when other seats remained available at face value,” says a letter posted on BruceSpringsteen.net. “We condemn this practice… We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest. The abuse of our fans and our trust by Ticketmaster has made us as furious as it has made many of you.”

This is great news. Not only does it seem as if Bruce Springsteen fans are being charged more than they should be for liking Bruce Springsteen – let’s call it an idiot tax – but it’s also given Bruce himself some of the old fire in the belly that his most recent work has been missing.

Honestly, this kind of righteous anger against faceless corporations is precisely the sort of thing that Bruce Springsteen’s blue collar fans go nuts for. If he’s wise, Bruce Springsteen will quickly channel this fury into a new album. We know that we’d certainly like to hear songs entitled Hey Ticketmaster (Remove Your Unwanted Material From My Website) and the soon to be fan-favourite I Had To Queue Up For 20 Minutes At Tescos On Friday And That Really Isn’t On (Not For A Shop That Size).

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Or perhaps you are American, but one of those weird 600lb ones, in which case you’re unable to produce a molecule of thought which doesn’t just consist of the words “Cookies fries cheese fries cheese fries cheese cookies fries cheese fries cheese fries cheese” in an unending, hypnotic mindchant.

Well you all need to GET interested in gridiron, because each game is now being broadcast with a free porno. Sign us up for ESPN immediately!
American football, like soldiering, is 90% boredom and 10% adrenaline rush. Unlike soldiering, the promise of an upcoming adrenaline bit is the only thing stopping viewers trying to choke themselves on the TV remote in futile suicide attempts during the boredom bits.

The problem up to now has been how to keep those viewers interested in this slow-moving setpiece sport during those long, tedious periods of soul-draining nothingness. Traditionally, the TV stations have been forced to  run lots of ‘amusing’ advertisements to try and stall their viewers from eating their own feet in attempts to relieve the monotony.

Well, no longer. A man who we want to be our new best friend, working at football headquarters, has thought of an even better way to maintain viewers’ attention through prolonged breaks: hardcore porn.

During the final quarter of yesterday’s Super Bowl game, some lucky viewers in Arizona were treated to a 30-second clip from a skinflick. Sadly, we did not witness this brave new world of sportscasting, so let us go to the readers of the Arizona Daily Star to describe the incident:

“Callers said that the clip showed a woman unzipping a man’s pants, followed by a graphic act between the two.”

Oh come on, callers. That’s the best you got? Nobody outside of Arizona saw this thing and, to be honest, we’re all pretty desperate to know exactly what the ‘graphic act’ was. Bumming? A titwank? Axillism? Pfft, forget it, we’ll just use our imagination.

Comcast, the cable company which broadcast this great leap for mankind, tried to pretend that this was something other than an inspired vision of the future:

“It is still unclear how many viewers saw the clip, from a porn movie being shown on Shorteez, an adult cable channel offered by Comcast on a pay-per-view basis. Only Comcast subscribers who received a standard definition signal could see the clip, while those who watched the game on high-definition televisions were not affected.”

Say what? Shame on you, Comcast. This is the first ever union between televised sports and pornography (let it be known as “spornts”) and you deny it to the HI-Def viewers?

[story by Gibbo]

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9 – The world’s funniest customer complaint letter, according to someone who obviously hasn’t seen C J Davies hammer out page after page of relentless fury to BT before – Telegraph

8 – A man in a truck with a duck. Heartwarming, and real – Best Week Ever

7 - All the Super Bowl adverts you could possibly stomach – Adweek

6 - Our very own Matthew Laidlow also writes for Virgin Music now. Get him – Virgin

5 - Are you a pervert? Good, because here’s an interactive game about a girl in a jacuzzi - I Am Bored

4 - Google Ocean coming next week. Think of something less interesting, we dare you – PCPro

3 - How Many 90-Year-Olds Could You Take In A Fight. Our score? 22 – howmany90yearoldscouldyoutakeinafight

2 – Forget all those other stupid lists, here’s the daddy: the 100 greatest TV shows of the last 20 years – BuddyTV

1 - Wikipedia might be about to change, so go crazy while you still can – make as many bullshit changes as possible and post the links below in the comments section. Possibly a small prize for the best one – BBC

And next year’s Super Bowl will be even more special than most, because if you see anyone’s accidentally-exposed barely-covered breast at all, it’ll be Bruce Springsteen’s. Bruce Springsteen is playing the Super Bowl! Finally! Some good old-fashioned, all-American heartfelt stadium rock is coming to the Super Bowl at last!

At least that’s what the Super Bowl organisers must be hoping. There’s still every chance that Bruce Springsteen will want to play some of his newer songs at the Super Bowl, in which case 148 million Americans are in for six minutes of an old man mumbling about putting his penis up an old prostitute’s bum. Either way – woo.

Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to let the world that you’ve made it. Actually, that’s a lie. Playing the Super Bowl halftime show is the most impressive way to tell the world that you made it a couple of decades ago, then took a few unfortunate career choices and lost your appeal but have since decided to put out a Greatest Hits album reminding people of your glory days.

Which, we think, sums Bruce Spingsteen up perfectly. It must do, because he’s playing next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, as E! Online reports:

New Jersey is going to the Super Bowl. The Garden State’s own Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band has been announced as the entertainment during the Super Bowl XLIII Halftime at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. The big game will air Feb. 1 on NBC.

Bruce Springsteen playing the Super Bowl is bound to be an improvement on some of the more recent halftime acts, like the perfunctory set that Tom Petty spunked out this year, or the Tim Burton stop-motion animation that passes for a Rolling Stones live appearance these days.

That’s so long as Bruce Springsteen sticks to the plan and plays Born To Run, Born In The USA, Dancing In The Dark and nothing else. He might not, though – give him a chance and Bruce Springsteen might do the one about taking a whore up the arse and the one about how AIDS makes him sad and the second half of the match will be played out in silent introverted despondency. Which actually, we’re secretly hoping he does.

Still, Bruce Springsteen isn’t an idiot – he knows what a Super Bowl halftime show requires. A couple of the hits, a bit of a punchy song and dance and then go off and get upstaged by Kevin Federline. Any idiot could do it.

OK, any idiot except for Janet Jackson…

For example, duetting with cartoon cats is no longer in fashion, drum sounds no longer have to echo for 30 seconds and also the popularity of the internet means that people can discover how bad your new songs are before they've even paid for them. But that hasn't stopped Paula Abdul from recording a brand new album.

Paula Abdul hasn't had a UK top 20 since 1992. We get the feeling it'll stay that way.

It may come as no surprise that Paula Abdul is a woman with several fingers in a lot of pies. What may be surprising is that none of the pies are filled with psychotropic drugs that can be absorbed through the fingers. They're filled with, um, multimedia opportunities. Or something.

Obviously Paula Abdul is a fixture on American Idol, where she gets to dole out all kinds of advice to singers – some that may or may not be delivered sexually – in the form of a confused old lady who can't stop giggling for long enough to work out where she is. Then there's Hey Paula, the reality TV show which proves that, actually, Paula Abdul is like that all the time.

And then there's also film work – Paula Abdul choreographed that Bratz movie that nobody watched – and occasional appearances on the internet which mainly seem to involve gigantic sobbing breakdowns. But what about music? Yes, Paula Abdul may have been a pop sensation 20 years ago, but she's given all of that up now, surely.

No way! Paula Abdul's musical career is back! Whether you like it or not.

You may have noticed yesterday – between the commercials and the Tom Petty snoozefest and the actual sport – that Paula Abdul performed at the Super Bowl. Well, OK, maybe 'performed' is an overstatement. Paula Abdul mimed a song that sounded like a Britney Spears B-side demo at the Super Bowl and staggered around a bit. Have a look…

But that wasn't actually a Paula Abdul song – it's from Randy Jackson's new album. But the experience was so much fun for Paula Abdul that she's decided to to a full album herself. Access Hollywood reports:

After releasing her first single in ten years, the dance techno tune, “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow”, former pop star and “American Idol” judge Paula Abdul announced on her official Web site that an entire album is coming this summer. The album will reportedly be titled, “Abdulmatic.” The collaboration on the single was a mutual decision according to Paula, who told Access Hollywood, "I didn't have to twist his arm and I didn't have to pay him and I didn't have to do the old kick-ball change, kick-ball change, back flip."

Not. A. Clue.

Whether Paula Abdul's new album will mean she has to leave to American Idol is unknown, but if Dance Like There's No Tomorrow is any indication she might have to. After all, it's going to be hard to take musical criticism from someone whose singing voice has been processed so much that she's ended up sounding like Stephen Hawking's robot wife being goosed by a toaster. 

Read more:

Paula Abdul Set To Release Brand New Album – Access Hollywood 

Which one happened at yesterday's Super Bowl? Well, none. Tom Petty performed you see.

Tom Petty. You know. From Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Oh, come on, you know who Tom Petty is – he did that song that was on for about 20 seconds during that one episode of Scrubs once. At least we think that was Tom Petty.

Even though it ended with the shock result of the New York Dolphins beating the New England Billygoats by over two points, nobody watches the Super Bowl for the sport. They watch it for two things – one is to gawp at adverts for stuff and the other is to shuffle to the edge of their seats during the Super Bowl halftime show and hope to hell that someone exposes their knockers again.

Of course, that hasn't for a few years, so to make up for it the Super Bowl organisers lined up some of the biggest names in music to play tome of their most-loved hits – The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Prince. Of course, these didn't pass off without controversy of their own – Prince made his guitar look a bit like a penis, the Rolling Stones said "cum" and Paul McCartney's doughy face sent 14 viewers blind – but it's still a huge trio to top. 

So which almighty megastar did the Super Bowl halftime show organisers decide to book for yesterday's show? Tom Petty, that's who.

That's right, Tom Petty – the man with a solid UK chart history of one top-30 song from 19 years ago. The man who can look himself in the eye and know that the most extreme reaction he's ever provoked in anyone at all was that time when Free Fallin' made a Mojo reader tap his fingers on his corduroy trousers for 12 seconds. The man whose band is called The Heartbreakers even though they don't so much break hearts as occasionally cause some superficial rusting. 

But was Tom Petty any good at the Super Bowl halftime show? The Associated Press seems to think he was. A bit. If you like that sort of thing. Which, to be fair, you most likely don't:

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' surprisingly subdued Super Bowl halftime show was as uncomplicated in person as it looked on television. There were no wardrobe — or any other kind — of malfunctions. Moments before the performance, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers calmly waited on the Patriots' side of the field. Once given the go signal, the musicians quickly took the stage, picked up their instruments and started performing. They made playing a concert for about 100 million people look almost effortless.

And when the most exciting thing a report can mention is the way that the band walked to the stage, that can't be a great sign.

But, still, nobody was offended, nobody showed anyone their breast and nobody said any bad words, so in that respect the performance was a success. But if Tom Petty was the most famous name that the Super Bowl organisers could convince to perform at this year's halftime show, who does that leave for next year?

We don't know. But we hear that Kevin Federline is polishing his microphone already.

Read more:

Tom Petty Plays It Cool at Super Bowl - AP 

No, we're just kidding. In fact Michael Jackson will be doing what he does third-best for Sunday's Super Bowl – music. But Michael Jackson won't be performing during the Super Bowl halftime show, probably because a gaunt middle-aged man muttering three lines of Stranger In Moscow before wandering off doesn't cut it as entertainment any more.

Instead, Michael Jackson will be on an advert broadcast during the Super Bowl halftime show. Actually, that's not true either – some of Thriller will be played on an advert broadcast during the Super Bowl halftime show.

Not much of a story, this, is it?

When it comes to making hopelessly-doomed comebacks, Britney Spears is nothing but a young pretender compared to the master that is Michael Jackson. In the last couple of years he's aborted more comebacks than we could ever recall. Remember when Michael Jackson was recording that album in Bahrain that never happened? And remember the big comeback in London that just turned out to be Michael Jackson standing behind a children's choir singing We Are The World for four seconds?

Mangled messes the lot of them. But now Michael Jackson has decided to make a proper, full-on, foolproof comeback that's foolproof primarily because Michael Jackson really won't have much to do with it.

The 2008 Super Bowl will take place on Sunday, and Michael Jackson is being lined up for a starring role. Not for the main Super Bowl halftime performance itself, you understand – organisers have already lined up the mind-blistering white-hot electropunk juggerpop of, um, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers for that – but instead Michael Jackson will be on an advert played in between all the fun parts. Sort of. Metro reports:

Michael Jackson hopes to stage a Thriller comeback at American football's Super Bowl next weekend. As part of marketing for the 25th anniversary of the classic album, a TV advert for a vitamin-enhanced drink from Pepsi will be broadcast with a Thriller theme during the big game next Sunday.

Pepsi? But won't that infringe on Michael Jackson's exclusive Jesus Juice endorsement? 

Anyway, Michael Jackson plans to follow up this – admit it – slightly rubbish comeback with something a bit more substantial. According to reports, Michael Jackson will perform a medley of his hits at the Grammys next month. Or rather he'll just halfheartedly jig around while Fergie, will.i.am and Akon do all the actual legwork.

It's not the most convincing comeback you'll ever hear about, but perhaps it's for the best. After all, what other Super Bowl options did Michael Jackson have? A self-deprecating Kevin Federline-style advert about what a loser he is? A deliberately controversial Snickers-style advert about Michael Jackson kissing a lot of men? No, this is best.

And let's just be thankful that Michael Jackson didn't follow his sister Janet into performing at the halftime show. God knows how the world would react to Michael whapping a booby out.

Read more:

Jacko set for Super Bowl return - Metro