Dog Days of Summer

Russian Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn(One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), Actor/Comedian Bernie Mac(The Kings of Comedy, The Bernie Mac Show), Dave Matthews Band Saxophonist LeRoi Moore, NFL Player's Union President Gene Upshaw, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) and legendary Soul Musician Isaac Hayes(Theme from "Shaft"). Not too mention the suicide bombings in Pakistan and Airline crash in Spain. I've been overwhelmed at the idea of posting something recently in light of all the tragic deaths the world has seen in recent weeks. I don't what else to say except that my prayers are will all of those affected by the loss of their loved ones and that I hope we are given a reprieve from so much sadness, at least for a little while, even though I know death is an unavoidable constant in this world.

Moving onto lighter fare. I might the one of the few people in the world who is kind of underwhelmed by the Michael Phelps mania. I have done my best to get interested in the Olympics. I found the U.S. women's gymnastics to be a compelling story both for the team competition where they faltered and then in the individual all-around rebounding to a triumphant one-two punch of winning gold and silver for Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson respectively. I've seen several great volleyball matches both indoor and beach and was not surprised to May-Treanor/Wash win gold yet again. My biggest gripe with NBC has been the odd scheduling of the basketball games. I've yet to catch even one of Team USA's games and they have been living up to LeBron's "Redeem Team" catchphrase by absolutely dominating their opponents. Hopefully I'll be able to catch the medal round and see them bring back the Gold to where B-Ball was invented.

Of course outside of the Olympics, it's still baseball season and we're getting down to crunch time. The Rangers recently had a disastrous road-trip where they were beat-up on by the likes of Boston and Tampa Bay. Now they are hovering at .500 with Ian Kinsler lost for the season to a hernia injury that needs surgery. It was a valiant effort and I feel good about next year, but 2008 is over.

This all just makes my mouth water for football to start. College games kick-off Labor-Day weekend! The Longhorns first opponent is Florida International or is it Florida Atlantic? Hell, who cares?! They're nobody, even if former Oklahoma and Miami Head Coach Howard Schellenberger is there. Anyway, apparently they are talking trash about UT. Really? I know Mack Brown has a bunch of new skill players to work into the offense in the backfield and at wide receiver but I'm sure Colt can run up the score enough to go along with new Defensive coordinator Will Muschamp's aggressive attack, not to mention the magic of having Vince Young on hand at the game as there will be a ceremony to retire his #10 jersey. Final score : Texas - 63, Florida Atlantic - 0. Hell yeah, shut-out, blow-out and gross out to start the year. It's going to be a tough year but these Sunshine state chumps got nothing on us for week one.

I have to also comment on filmmaker Michael Moore's open letter to Caroline Kennedy, who is heading up the search team for Barack Obama's VP candidate. In the letter, Moore states that he thinks Ms. Kennedy should follow the lead of our current Vice President Dick Cheney, who back in 2000 was on the team vetting VP choices for President Bush when he threw his own hat in the ring and eventually got the nod. Moore believes that Caroline, former first daughter(her father was President John F. Kennedy, in case you are from Mars) who has been a vocal supporter of Obama and has been involved in politics her entire life from grassroots level without ever becoming a career politician like so many others in her family would be an ideal choice for Obama's running mate. I think it's a bold and unlikely choice, but if it were to happen by some chance I'd be absolutely exhilarated and would probably leave my job to join their campaign full-time, doing whatever I could to help on the election trail and prevent a John McCain presidency.