Possible U2 set list for Cowboys Stadium show

When U2 appears on Oct. 12 at Arlington's Cowboys Stadium (yours truly anad esposa in da crowd), this COULD be the set list:
“Breathe”
“Magnificent”
“Get On Your Boots”
“Mysterious Ways”
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
“She’s The One”/"Desire”
“Elevation”“Your Blue Room”
“Beautiful Day”
“No Line on the Horizon”
“New Year’s Day”
“Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”
“The Unforgettable Fire”
“City Of Blinding Lights”
“Vertigo”
“I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”
“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
“MLK”/”Walk On”
Encores:
“One”
“Amazing Grace”/”Where the Streets Have No Name”
“Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”
“With Or Without You”
“Moment of Surrender”

I do hope they end with "40" as usual for a U2 show, and I wish they'd add "Bad" and many others from older albums ("I Will Follow" as an example).

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees

Up for the class of 2010 are:
Iggy & the Stooges
the Red Hot Chili Peppers
LL Cool J
Kiss
Genesis
Donna Summer
ABBA
Darlene Love
Laura Nyro
the Chantels
the Hollies
Jimmy Cliff

I believe KISS is a natural, as is ABBA (one just cannot discount actual album/singles SALES). I'd also add the late Laura Nyro (as a songwriter, not performer), the Hollies and Jimmy Cliff. The Peppers will make it because they still tour and record.

Protecting our nation’s MVPs (most valuable parks)

The initial sight takes your breath away … literally! It doesn’t appear to be real; more like a master artist’s painting – with multiple layers of colors bombarding your senses. Move a few hundred feet to either side and you see a completely new revelation and many people simply stand there in jaw-dropping awe. Anyone unmoved by the eternal beauty of such a view will never generate reciprocal feelings for anything.
It is how one often reacts when seeing the Grand Canyon for the very first time - I felt that way this past summer. While this particular corner of the country is the crown jewel of the U.S. National Parks System, and the most symbolic natural formation, not every national park site is the Grand Canyon – some tell a different story and preserves a different lesson from our history. But each location is important to the American experience – from Civil War battlefields to the remnants of past occupants before anyone called this land a “nation.”
National Parks cut across the spectrum – they aren’t all mountains, valleys, caves, volcanic formations or forests. Some are made-made spectacles (the Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge, St. Louis Arch); some honor literary giants (Edgar Allen Poe, Eugene O’Neill, Carl Sandburg), American heroes (Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr.) or heroes who helped keep our independence (Jean LaFitte). Some sites spotlight historical events (Little Rock Central High School, Brown v. Board of Education, the Wright Brothers) and some tell of the darker episodes in America (Manzanar, Little Big Horn, Oklahoma City and Flight 93 memorials).
Some parcels are dedicated to family pleasure and fun (national recreation areas), including two in Texas (Lake Amistad near Del Rio and Lake Meredith north of Amarillo) and one in Oklahoma (Chickasaw), just 2 ½ hours from the DFW area.
Texas, for its part, has 15 connections to the national system, and could easily include others. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s birth place, in Denison, should join the six other birth sites to presidents protected by the NPS. And with Texas literally starving its own parks for funding, it might be wise to allow Palo Duro Canyon (the country’s second largest canyon) to be transferred under the NPS umbrella.
I’ve also believed The Alamo, one of the five most recognized American symbols of freedom, should join the other San Antonio missions as a national park site; coming under the peoples’ province and away from the highly secretive control of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. It should belong to ALL of America – not just a select few.
These treasures need our consideration, attention and support, including adequate funding for park expansion, facilities upgrade and maintenance and acquisition. Every individual and family can be several things to help preserve our national parks.
First, you should visit as many as possible – to educate yourselves and your children. Start in Texas with the awe-inspiring Big Bend National Park, within the Chisos Mountain region of west Texas. People say a picture of is worth a thousand words, but one glance at the area known as “The Window on the World,” will inspire a thousand pictures – especially at dawn and dusk.
You can join support groups, such as the National Parks Conservation Association (www.npca.org), dedicated to the preservation of the national parks and increasing public awareness of the need for NPS protection.
Come this Sunday, Sept. 27, you can learn more about our national parks on PBS when acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns premiers his new documentary, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Burns, as he has so expertly done in the past on the Civil War, baseball and America during World War II, will examine the current state of the NPS, as well as tell the story of the people (such as John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt) whose visions led to the eventual preservation of these special sites.
Finally, you can pen a note to your congressman and U.S. Senator, stressing the need to maintain proper funding for the national parks system – because it IS important to pass along these symbols of our heritage and history to our children, grandchildren and future generations.
They deserve the chance to have their jaws drop at the Grand Canyon, too.

College hoops JUST around the corner

And ESPN is going whole hog with a marathon of its own (not involving "Law and Order").
It begins on Monday Nov. 16, technically on Nov. 17 in the Eastern time zone.
Here is the schedule (Dallas time since I'm living here):
11 p.m. (Monday, Nov. 16): Cal State Fullerton at UCLA, ESPN
1 a.m.: San Diego State at St. Mary's, ESPN
3 a.m.: Northern Colorado at Hawaii, ESPN6
5 a.m.: Monmouth at St. Peter's, ESPN
7 a.m.: Drexel at Niagara, ESPN
9 a.m.: Clemson at Liberty, ESPN
11 a.m.: Northeastern at Siena, ESPN
1 p.m: Arkansas Little-Rock at Tulsa, ESPN
3 p.m.: Temple at Georgetown, ESPN
4:30 p.m.: Bin.ghamton at Pittsburgh, ESPN2
5 p.m.: NIT from Durham, N.C., ESPN
6 p.m.: Tennessee vs. Texas Tech (women) in San Antonio, ESPNU
6:30: Arkansas vs. Louisville in St. Louis, ESPN2
7 p.m.: Gonzaga at Michigan State, ESPN
7 p.m.: Northern Illinois at Illinois, ESPN360.com
8 p.m.: Duquesne at Iowa, ESPNU
8:30 p.m.: Connecticut vs. Texas (women) in San Antonio, ESPN2
9 p.m.: Memphis vs. Kansas in St. Louis, ESPN
10:30 p.m.: NIT from Tempe, Ariz, ESPN

Happy hooping, y'all! Hope the World Series is over by then.

Five top Patrick Swayze movies

It's kind shocking to know that the late Patric Swayze, who died earlier this week from pancreatic cancer, was exactly ONE week YOUNGER than me (born Aug. 18, 1952 in Houston).
Ouch!
His five best movies were:
Ghost
The Outsiders (check out the cast in that flick)
Dirty Dancing
Point Break
Red Dawn.
RIP, Patrick.

One more thought...

As the 70th anniversary of WWII has started, which the REAL Adolf Hitler began, which resulted in the deaths of millions upon millions of people (not just exterminated Jews but Russians, English, French, Poles, Italians, etc.), any fool who even utters such a remark should be treated at the parasite that he or she is. Not to mention blindly ignorant.
It is SO sad that this rage is being stoked by certain TV/radio talkers, local people NOT excluded sadly, under the blanket of the First Amendment would make the Founding Fathers roll over in their graves, rise from the dead and shred the Constitution in public - all the while crying for the condition of the country that TRIED to establish.
And behind it all (this MUST be said), IS ... the spectre of blatant racism. Especially in the old Confederacy, which includes ... Texas.
As one commentator said when he asked why certain people still battle the Civil War in their minds, "It didn't end in 1865; it was just intermission."
For all the pride and joy many people felt last November about certain barriers being torn down, others are intent on destroying that person and rebuilding that American Berlin Wall higher than ever. All the proof you need is on any opinion blog today.
And local radio talk show host Mark Davis ain't helping matters with his ridiculous drivel. Of course, easy for him to say "Keep your kids home." No punishment agaisnt the parents; only the students for unexcused absences. Where is the superintendent who will stand up and say that any parent openly keeping their children out of school because of the Obama speech will be prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor?
Seriously. Make these people put their money and butts behind their silly threats!

Only the idiotic would call it indoctrination

To anyone who stupidly thinks teh proposed Sept. 8 address by Prtesident Obama to the nation's schoolchildre, about the virtues of getting a good education, is some form of "Manchurian Candidate" brainwashing or indoctrination or some other "evil" plot to control children:
If you are SO adamant about keeping "politics" out of the classroom, then stand up with ME and DEMAND that religion be kept OUT OF THE CLASSROOM IN ANY FORM! Including prayer, distribution of religious related material and other forms of possible "brainwashing." Because THAT does NOT belong in the public schools, either.You can't have one and NOT the other. Religion belongs in the church and the home - NOT in SCHOOL!
Right???????
I am SOOOOOOOOO ashamed to even be living in such a jelly-fished, spineless, suck-ass administrative-directed school district as Plano, Texas, which is NOT going to show the speech to ITS children. God fucking forbid!
And to think we pay such enormous salaries (a quarter of a million per year for the idiot superintendent) to this sheep-ple who "educate" our children. It is shameful beyond words!!!!!

Texan of the Year

Since it is September and the process for a decision about the Dallas Morning News' Texan of the Year will probably begin, I suggest a nominee:The unemployed professional.
Since January of this year, many of those included in the ever-increasing ranks of Texas' unemployed residents are the so-called SOFT COLLAR workers - the degreed professionals who, after several years at many of Texas' biggest companies (such as Texas Instruments, Bell Helicopter, other tech-computer-telecom companies, etc.) have come to learn the newest three letter addition to the business lexicon - RIF (reduction in force).
In fact, it is now a verb - to be riffed means, "you're fired!"
And those job fairs, with hundreds upon hundreds of people lined up for hours seeking a precious few job openings in their respective professional fields, are being held in the unlikeliest of places - such here in Collin County, the state's wealthiest area and home of many of those companies doing the RIFfing.
As the recession strikes at Texas like a Level 3 hurricane, as the unemployment number climbs to 10 percent, the people standing in the unemployment line are NOT the usual suspects; they are the former professionals who have been purchasing the "homes inthe 300s," driving the cars from the high-end dealers and supporting the "non-Walmart" retail stores where sales are crumbling. It isn't a pretty sight and it isn't business as usual. After the housing buble burst, now it is THEIR homes being foreclosed; their lives being deconstructed; their income missing in the national economy.
When economists state the demand is not matching the supply, this is the sector not doing the demanding.
These people, the backbone and ribs and lifeblood of the American consumer-based economy, are the face of the recession.
And truly are the Texans of the Year 2009.