We watched with disbelief as Prince stepped onstage to the music of Queen, (King, princess, anyone?) wearing an Aunt Jemina headwrap.

Someone called out, “It’s okay, he just got done cleaning his house!” Someone else added, “I think he still has his curlers in.” It was raining, maybe it was a backwards do-rag. Maybe he meant to wear it with his blue suit and yellow shirt. Maybe he was channelling Little Richard.

We liked how he kept changing guitars, wondered about the effect of rain on all those electrical instruments and then figured if Prince had not been able to come up with a way to make sexy girls hold parasols or beach umbrellas over his “do” formerly known as as hair, then who were we to be concerned? By the time the symbol of his former self emerged in guitar form, we were ready for Prince to reveal himself more than in 1999 and funny thing was, it took a sheet to do it.

In a room of 40-somethings, we all knew what we were looking at- a shadow scene from any of the Austin Powers movies. Had Prince called in Mike Myers to choreograph?

Who could forget Mini-Me and Austin behind the screen getting their henchmen physical in Goldmember? Apples never looked as unappetizing. Of course, there was the tent shadow scene from Austin Powers 2, Man of Mystery. All we were missing was Felicity and her bag of tricks.

We brayed with laughter as Prince maneuvered his guitar into a phallic symbol any man would be proud to play, then giggled to think what Fox network would say about this- how Janet Nipplegate Jackson would be forgotten in the literal shadow of Prince’s symbolic Johnson.

Or was it merely our beer tweaked minds- turning a musical display, a stage performance into something else? It certainly took the focus off the game and let our two warring Midwestern teams cheer together for the first time that night and unlike 2/3 of the commercials, Prince amused us all, especially when the sheet dropped and he was laughing and grinning broader than any of the spectators.

We love that talented little man from Minneso-ter.