If the pains of the past three seasons are still too much, don’t continue reading. Just skip ahead to watching Michael Jackson’s Halftime Spectacuganza. I’m watching it with fresh eyes – I was eight when it first aired – and it’s glorious. Multiple Michaels, a lightshow during daylight, James Earl Jones, everything.
As for the game, a few reminders:
-Â 52-17
- Troy Aikman was 22 of 30, for 273 yards and four touchdowns
- Emmitt Smith ran for 108 yards and a touchdown
- Michael Irvin caught six passes for 114 yards and two touchdowns
Dry your eyes, mates.
From ESPN’s Marc Stein:
Iverson has likewise resisted the Legends’ overtures so far this season — as well as a similar offer last season — but sources say that the Legends are trying again now because they’ve moved back to the top of the list in the D-League’s waiver line, meaning they’d have an unobstructed path to signing Iverson if he could be convinced to put his name in the D-League’s player pool.
The Legends’ pitch to Iverson centers around the fact they’ve just convinced NBA veterans Delonte West and Rashad McCants to join their team with similar intentions, after the Legends signed another 37-year-old earlier this month — point guard Mike James – and wound up putting James in position to earn a 10-day callup to the Mavericks that turned into a guaranteed contract after James completed his second 10-day deal Sunday.
Just imagine Delonte and Iverson playing on the same team. Quick list of things that would be better than that: ______. Nothing. Nothing would be better than that. This random Twitter user channels similar excitement:
OH MY GOD IF ALLEN IVERSON COMES BACK IM GOING TO KILL SOMETHING OUT OF SHEER EXCITEMENT
— perrin moore (@perrinmoore96) January 28, 2013
Here is a recap of what went down. Or what didn’t, actually.
An alert FBvian points to the news on TMZ that a woman is apparently shopping around some pics of Terrell Owens handling up on his business. The two were having fun on Skype when she snapped the action shots.
Mike Mooney got a lot of praise for his recent story about Owens on Grantland. But where were the sex pics, Mooney?! A better reporter would have had em.
Speaking of D Magazine contributors who do interesting work outside our pages, Brendan McNally sends along his most recent story for the Defense Media Network. It’s about how much trouble the Navy has trying to avoid getting blown up by mines. Because:
A war starts and U.S. ships find themselves on the wrong end of enemy mines. Ships get sunk and sailors die, but even more importantly, the Navy loses control of the sea. The reason is that during peacetime, the Navy’s mine countermeasures force was allowed to deteriorate. Quickly, the Navy builds up a mine countermeasures force that is second to none and it performs brilliantly. But once the war ends, the minemen who don’t become civilians seek more career-enhancing billets elsewhere in the service. Within a few years, all but a few of the minesweepers have been scrapped or sold and the hard-earned institutional knowledge forgotten. But then another war starts, and the Navy again lacks a viable mine countermeasures capability and the cycle starts all over again.
You want an example? Brendan has one for you:
In October 1950, an American-led, 250-ship United Nations task force tried to send an invasion force ashore at Wonsan. But then they discovered there were more than 3,000 mines floating between them and the beach. Minesweepers were sent in but they proved unequal to the task. After three minesweepers were sunk and more than a hundred lives lost, the invasion was called off. … [T]he task force commander, Rear Adm. Allen E. Smith, famously lamented: “We have lost control of the seas to a nation without a navy, using pre-World War I weapons, laid by vessels that were utilized at the time of the birth of Christ.”
If you’re one of those people (I’m one) who can’t flip past the History channel without getting sucked in to whatever they’re broadcasting about WWII, you’ll find the whole story fascinating. Recommended.
The delightful Ada Brown, who is the Dallas board member on the Public Safety Commission, invited me to lunch after I ran this post on the incompetence and mismanagement of its DMV. We had a wonderful chat because she is a wonderful person. Unfortunately, I came away with the impression that the Commission members have no idea what is going on under their noses.
For example, Ms. Brown had no idea that Governor Mitch Daniels had reduced average wait times at the Indiana DMV to 6 minutes and 20 seconds. She had no idea what the wait times at Texas DMV locations is. She asked me for a list of other states where DMVs had improved performance. I replied that if Director Steve McCaw had not provided the Commission with a best practices survey and benchmarks for measuring the Texas DMV against them, he should be fired. She told me she hoped the new Garland Super Center would relieve wait times in Dallas. I asked her on what evidence her hopes were based. She replied that the DPS had done a study. If the DPS had done a study, I asked, why didn’t she know the average wait times. She replied that they had reported the average wait times to get to the information desk, but not how long it took after that to be served. I raised my eyebrows.
This is not rocket science. The problem has already been solved. All the Commission has to do is adapt the solutions to Texas. What makes this so hard?
I’ll tell you what makes this so hard. Steve McCay, the director foisted on the Commission by Rick Perry, is a lifetime law enforcement careerist. He likes chasing bad guys. He doesn’t know anything about bad systems or how to fix them. The Commission itself is at fault. As far as I can tell, its members are nothing more than wallpaper decorating the director’s office.
Some day, I think, voters will suddenly get very tired of theatrics in their county commissioners, and will instead want to vote for people who want to conduct business without, I dunno, calling people bobos.
And yet, today’s Dallas County Commissioner’s Court outburst is brought to you by Maurine Dickey, who was upset about a county redistricting plan. And listen, maybe it was a bunch of hooey and she was right not to like it. But bobos? And this:
“If you would like to drag me out, please do,” she said. “Do you want to haul me out? I’m ready to go to jail.”
So yes, sigh. For one thing, what does that even mean? Is she referring to an ethnic group from Burkina Faso? A boogyman from Egypt? A Chinese boy band? Or, uh, any of these meanings? And secondly, seriously? There wasn’t a more professional way to register her displeasure? Or for that matter, for any of them to voice their displeasure?
With the news that Trader Joe’s has decided to bring its peculiar brand of grocery stores to Texas, I expect that the company will be hearing from Half Price Books about a possible spot to set up a first shop in these parts.
A few weeks back, I had occasion to be chatting with Sharon Anderson Wright, the CEO of the Dallas-based bookseller. We got to talking about all the land around its Northwest Highway corporate headquarters (and flagship store) that her company has come to control. They’ve owned the bookstore building, and a few adjacent acres, since moving there in 1999. When construction began on the massive Park Lane development several years ago, Wright decided that Half Price needed to buy more of the adjacent property if it wanted to have a say in how the neighborhood would develop around it.
They immediately moved to purchase their former store location, right across Shady Brook Lane, which has sat vacant since they left it more than a decade ago. Then last year they bought the spot that’s currently home to a Starbucks. All told, they’ve assembled 12 acres, about six on either side of Shady Brook at Northwest Highway.
And when I asked her what she plans to do with all that property?
I read it. Twice (just like I read “Fed Up” twice). The takeaway? Rick Perry named his boots (Freedom and Liberty). That I get – I named my flip flops Tequila and Cherry Limeade. Other takeaway? The word crotchety is still so funny.
From City Hall comes word that it’s Redistricting Commission time again. Has it been 10 years since the last decennial figures were released? Time flies, friends. Time flies.
If you have some definite opinions on precinct boundaries, click here for a list of meetings. See you there. At all of them. Bring cookies.
Seriously. This is billed as “Dirk Nowitzki’s Top 10 Plays of the 2011 Season,” but jeez, you guys. FOUR of the plays are just Dirk shooting a three-pointer. An open three-pointer. Granted, the last one tied a game, but that’s still pretty lazy. Step yo game up, NBA.
Apparently, the erstwhile Mayor of Handtown is now all like, “It’s cool, whatever, bro” on his quitting his job early to apply for another one. Why? Because he’s already “completed” NAY “exceeded” all of the “specific objectives and priorities” he’d laid out. And you know what? He’s right. At least he appears to be, based on a note we retrieved from an open records request we filed recently — on a hunch — looking into his first few months in office. A copy is available after the jump.
Five bottles of dark, foamy beer were found by divers searching a 19th century shipwreck near Finland’s Aland Islands. Scientists are breaking it down to determine the recipe so they can brew it again. We want YOU to name it.