“The best Super Bowl Halftime Show ever!” –Jay-Z, Wendy Williams, The World

It was a raucous Sunday night with just a hint of spring in the New Orleans air. The glint of Mardi Gras beads twinkled here and there in the night like stars. The massive slaughter of poultry shot the demand for chicken flesh to an all-time high. The last ounce of chicken blood was reportedly last seen swinging in a vial from Angelina Jolie’s neck. But the spookiness did not end there.

Raven Ray Lewis prophesied to the flock that God would not use the sort of person who would be involved in a double murder for His glory. Really? Has Pastor Lewis ever read the Bible? Moses was a murderer. Next time Ray Lewis opens his mouth, could someone please ask Aaron to speak for him?

Just off Bourbon Street, somewhere around twilight, the ghosts of Sandy Hook made yet another stale and wearying appearance. When a white child dies, whether we want it to or not, his memory lives on and on. And on and on. When an unknown Black child dies, though his number is legion and his blood could fill an ocean, no one asks his name or searches for him beyond the fateful day’s headline. He is utterly forgotten.

Why? Because America the Beautiful is one sick hypocrite witch!

Event planners must have thought it a stroke of genius to have someone who lost a nephew to gun violence share her magnificent spotlight with a bunch of snot-nosed nobodies. No wonder Jennifer Hudson looked bored and perturbed. But like Stevie Wonder who was forced to share the spotlight many moons ago with the Jonas Brothers screeching off-key, she, too, had to sort of grin and bear it.

Speaking of off-key screeches. Like death and calamity, disaster comes in threes. Didn’t we just see the Beyonce / J.Hud / Alicia Keys trio at the Presidential Inauguration of 2013?

It just doesn’t make sense that wherever Beyonce goes, Alicia Keys, lugging a piano, must follow. Beyonce, who has her own demons to contend with, must be feeling like the object of a haunting. An alley cat haunting, a crying and scratching alley cat, desperately moaning like the wind for some of Bey’s kind of shine.

For days, like a mantra, the Ali Kat purred and meowed that she would “bring fire” to the National Anthem. As the world watched, that promise over scant piano playing fell flat.

Most voice coaches warn their students: “You’re in the basement” and, as if chastising a demon, bid them: “Come out!”

Alicia Keys may have a one- or two-octave range. Loud. And louder. By necessity she starts singing not in the basement but, digging rat-deep, at about the water table. Every singer (and teacher) knows that to get high, sometimes you have to start low. Barry White low. It’s just too sad that after all that bragging, after much straining, “The Land of the Freeeee” note still came out predictably falsetto, predictably puny, and the song ended on a low that was lower than the start.

Makes you wonder why Jennifer Hudson was not allowed to sing the National Anthem in the first place while shooing the Calico Ali Kat to the ghostly kid table to pounce and bang loudly on the keyboard there.

Hearts of stone warmed once again!

In struts Beyonce, the performer Alicia Keys longs to be. So Sasha Fierce does her funky two-step and grinds it around in a back-snapping circle, Gladiatrix-at-the-Coliseum-style, to the lustful sinner’s delight.

Destiny’s Child reunites at Super Bowl 2013!

Those other lost children, Destiny’s Child, literally fly in on invisible platinum brooms from God-knows-where, mics off?, and fly away again. Then, with Sasha Fierce’s minions extending their hands toward center stage, sapping all their energy, the halo once again descended upon the one and only golden child.

Yes, Super Bowl 2013 at the New Orleans Superdome was the venue for one spooky ritual after another.  Fans thought that the 34-minute Black Out of the 47th Super Bowl was mere coincidence. Others speculated that the surge was sparked by a Sasha Fierce performance draining the juice, like blood, from stone.

It was far more sinister than that.

Rumor has it that Midnight Blue Ivy Carter (also known as Rosemary’s baby) was being put down for a nap in her cedar crib. When her nanny called for the dimming of the lights, forgetting the child’s dark power, half the lights died in the stadium on the side housing said crib. Equipment monitoring electrical load sensed an “abnormality” in the system.  Indeed. 

Art Modell gets the last laugh…again!

Although the light was eventually resurrected, the change in momentum was so immediate for the San Francisco 49ers, so abrupt for the Baltimore Ravens, it spun the tops of the two-headed Harbaugh coaching beast. The words of Pastor Lewis—“No weapon formed against us shall prosper”—were nearly rendered null and void.  Nearly.

But alas, the spirit of Art Modell, flying on the wings of the Raven (though uninvited to the Hall of Fame alive or in death), once again got the last laugh.

From Baltimore to San Francisco all the way down to the bayou and back up to . . . Cleveland will NEVER learn. Can’t you just hear the laughter?