Tom Waits in Minneapolis in 1999 is and likely will remain my favorite show of all time. Great songs, great rapport with the audience, and four curtain calls.

Other favorites have been:

* Gillian Welch's outdoor twilight show at Pittsburgh's Point State Park

* Eleni Mandell at the beautiful Club Cafe

* BB King at the Byham Theater, in a big blue sequined jacket that sparkled like a disco ball when the spotlight hit him

* Cake, also outdoors at the Point, a raucous show where they incited the crowd in the free lawn area to invade and overwhelm the $5 seats near the stage

Good times, good times...

Tha Flaming Lips and Ben Folds?! Both outstanding.

Count me among the masses who consider it a sad mistake to dump Audiofile. Please reconsider!?

...I still miss it.

I did.

To the folks saying that SD should've "let" Pittsburgh score, how exactly is that accomplished? Sure, you might tell your defense to stand up and not block anyone with the assumption that the Steelers would run straight into the endzone, but what is to stop PGH from running up to the 1-yard-line and taking a knee, running down the clock, and then kicking the chip-shot go-ahead field goal with just a few ticks left on the clock? Just because you'd like to get the ball back with as much time on the clock as possible, that doesn't obligate your opponent to cooperate with your clever plan. Doesn't anyone remember Brian Westbrook against Dallas last season, stopping on the 1 instead of scoring, allowing Philly to run out the last two minutes because the Cowboys didn't have any timeouts left?

Besides, we're all missing the most important question to come out of this game: Is there anyone in the NFL these days who's more fun to watch play than Troy Polamalu? I say no.

As a Steelers fan, if Hines Ward flops on the 1 and PGH gives the ball back up by 1 with 5 seconds left, I'm going to be more pleased than if they give the ball back up by 5 with 2 minutes to go. Would this be the Steelers' best strategy in the situation? I believe the fact that an SD fan would hope for the opposite scenario gives us the answer to that question. Thank you, though, for caring about the emotional well-being of our team and its fans. After all, nobody likes to feel "awkward".

Didn't mean to be a smartass (honest) but I did find the 'awkward' argument amusing. What I'm wondering now is does it really happen in a game that a defense deliberately, obviously allows an offense to score in this type of situation, to concede the points in exchange for more time? I can say it happens in baseball in terms of trading runs for outs; in football it may occur but I'm drawing a blank. Anyone remember something like that happening?

You're right, good call.

If it was a show solely about food, then it would reward recipes and not chefs. Top Chef is a show about food as a function of personality, which is why Carla succumbing to her worst habit -- a combined excess of decency and lack of aggression, leading to the fateful inability to tell Casey 'No' -- was so painful to watch.

As for this: "not a single person posting here has actually eaten any of the food presented ... don't act like you know who was the best chef. You don't." I'm guessing that each and every fan of the show understands that he or she is not actually eating the food, but thanks for clearing that up for anyone who might have yet been confused.

It is, however, that very lack of immediate firsthand involvement that is so intriguing, so alluring, what keeps viewers interested. We watch the show and we see remarkable food being prepared, the eating of which is denied to us, so we fall back on using our imaginations. We form notions about the food and the chefs, then we compare and contrast with other viewers' notions, we exchange ideas, we form a dialogue, and all through this process the pleasure centers of our brains are being caressed.

It's a shame that other people's perfectly normal enjoyment of and involvement with the show seems to cause you such distress that you feel the need to try to dictate their behavior. What really are you hoping to accomplish with your post?