The story about La Kid and the Springsteen Super Bowl chorus will run pretty shortly on WUSA News.

They do some singing. They sound really, really good.

… UD, Mr UD, and La Kid, were just interviewed by Bruce Johnson of WUSA News, a CBS affiliate in DC. The crew was covering the return of the Springsteen chorus to Washington. I don’t know if we’ll actually show up in the story, but you might want to tune in (or find it on the internet) if the idea of seeing ALL of Les UD’s at the same time is appealing.

… He shook my hand and he thanked me. We had lots of pictures taken with him. I talked with Nils Lofgren too. I told him I’m from Garrett Park. He said that was cool. Then I got my picture taken with him too…. It’s just amazing, Mommy! We’re leaving now – to beat the crowds. I’ll be home in about sixteen hours. See you.”

Whoops in the background. Huge whoops. I can barely hear her.

“It was amazing. The crowd greeted us like celebrities. The audience was enormous! The whole thing was unbelievable. I have to go. I’ll call you back…”

… would you have glimpsed the kid on the far right. Oh well.

Two minutes to go until the halftime show, and it can’t be denied that Les UD‘s, who have been totally calm and okay with all of this, are now nervous.

“I’m nervous,” Mr UD just said.

“I’m nervous,” UD just said in response.

First funny commercial: Chimps make a guy king and kiss his lips.

“Bad choral precedent,” worries Mr UD after the kitschy Faith Hill thing. “The camera barely noticed them.”

“The Springsteen thing will be totally different,” insists UD. “It’ll be like… like a real concert. Stage. Light show. This is just a bunch of people singing on a field. I think Ania’s chorus will get a little more air time.”

“Hm.”

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… you have to be into build-up and aftermath. The event itself — thousands of people racing into the Atlantic Ocean and racing out — takes three seconds.

But there’s the rescue boat doing tight circles and spewing jets of water, and there’s the little boat alongside it blowing its horn, and there’s the man dressed as a polar bear.

As if today weren’t exciting enough, it’s the Polar Bear Plunge out there, thousands of people in bathrobes and Cat in the Hat hats stripping down (though chilly, it’s sunny and pretty comfortable) to jump in the water.

A Lewes Fire Rescue boat floats offshore, and wet-suited divers gather at the waterside, in case anyone needs to be saved. Little airplanes buzz the beach.

“Ten minutes!” someone calls out. The mood’s euphoric, silly, excited. Everyone’s taking everyone else’s picture. The Lieutenant Governor’s somewhere in the crowd.

Les UD‘s lean over their balcony, stoked.

Woke up with these lines from Philip Larkin’s poem “Broadcast” in my head:

… desperate to pick out
Your hands, tiny in all that air …

He’s listening to a radio broadcast of a concert, and he’s trying to pick out the sounds of his lover’s hands amid the thousands of hands clapping after the performance. UD of course will be watching a television broadcast of the Super Bowl, and trying to pick out the face of her daughter, tiny in all that air …

There are many ways to measure the impact of [Arizona] state budget cuts. There’s the obvious dollar amount. There’s the effect on people’s lives. And then there’s the historical perspective.

Members of the House Appropriations Committee were debating the cost of photocopying and whether those costs decline as the semester wears on and students drop classes.

But committee Chairman John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, interrupted to say the conversation was way too twentieth century.

“Since our cuts are going to send [Arizona State University] back to the Middle Ages, the question is how many monks will they need?” he said.

Kavanagh warmed up to the Middle Ages metaphor, noting that the Department of Chemistry should be changed to the Department of Alchemy.

From a Chicago Trib (I once reviewed books for their competitor, the Chicago Sun Times) column by Rick Telander (I met him a few times through an old boyfriend):

• I HAD A NICE CHAT with E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren (He lived in the house next door to mine in Garrett Park, Maryland) about sports and music and, yes, injuries.

The first thing Lofgren, who was born in Chicago and has played with Springsteen (my kid will sing with Springsteen today at the Super Bowl) for a quarter century, brought up were the audibles Bruce will call on stage.

”We’ve all been playing rock for 40 years, so he knows if he calls out a song like by the Animals (I hooked up with… nah.), from the ’60s, at least seven of the 10 of us will know it. We’ll have a huddle there on the stage, and we’ll figure things out. The first thing you have to get is the key, so he can sing it. The breaks and the chorus and that, he’ll just scream ’em out when they come.”

If that isn’t Roethlisberger with the Steelers on a broken play, you could fool me.

• • INJURIES: I ASKED why sax-man Clarence ”Big Man” Clemons was in such obvious pain, why he could barely walk.

”He just had double knee replacement,” Lofgren said. ”That’s why he’s got a cane. He’ll be better.”

Then he added, ”I just got two new hips three months ago. Why? I did a back flip off a trampoline onstage from 1969 to 1985. The point of a tramp is to get as high as you can, you know. I landed on a hard floor every night. The doctor said I had the hips of an 80-year-old man.”

Now that is awesome. I recalled that Lofgren, a short, wiry man, was once a gymnast. A backflip with an electric guitar. Like being a wedge-buster.

• • THE SUPER BOWL halftime set list?

Nils swore he still didn’t know what Bruce would have the gang play in the mere 12 minutes it was allocated, an eyeblink for a band that recently played 3 hours, 35 minutes without a break and, back in the day, sometimes played for five hours at a time.

Two six-minute songs? A bunch of snippets?

”You know, probably three or four songs,” Lofgren said. ”Each three or four minutes. Don’t know.”

Then he shrugged. He didn’t care.

Playing with Bruce was such a rush, such a joy.

”I’m in the best band in rock ‘n’ roll, and every night what we do is a Super Bowl for the hometown crowd,” the musician said. ”And we’re always victorious.”…

At least two people were arrested as Chico police broke up a crowd of several hundred that had gathered around a bonfire on a residential street.

One woman was treated for minor burns after the drunken disturbance early Friday near California State University, Chico.

Authorities say 200 to 300 people gathered around the fire at Sixth Street before midnight Thursday, adding a couch and other items to the blaze.

Police blocked off several streets, but the crowd refused to leave, throwing rocks and bottles into the street. The area was quiet by 1:30 a.m. Friday.

It’s unclear what prompted the gathering. Some witnesses said nearby house parties may have spilled into the street, while others say it was to mark the first week of the new semester.