DeNiro's most famous line actually came from The Boss

Here's an interesting story -- at least I found it interesting. While preparing for his role in Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro attended a Bruce Springsteen concert during which the adoring crowd kept yelling Bruce's name. At one point, as the crowd is yelling "Bruce! Bruce!", Springsteen turned and said "You talkin' to me?"

A year or so later, De Niro is preparing for his role as a saxophone player in New York, New York and seeks out Springsteen's saxophonist Clarence Clemmons to show him the ins and outs of the instrument. While being tutored, De Niro tells The Big Man about his concert experience and confesses he stole what is unquestionably his signature line in Taxi Driver from The Boss that night.

There goes another great idea

I was going to yell, to scream, to stand on the mountaintops and hoist the flags from the valleys down below -- in another words I was prepared to raise the roofbeams with my voice-- to emphatically deny -- put all those vicious rumors to rest -- that I was the heretofore unidentified partner in Carrie Prejean's sex tape. And then I learned she flew solo before the cameras. Oh, well. I would give the former Miss California a hand, but apparently she already gave herself one -- on camera.

Why are some council members afraid to think for themselves?

I spent much of Monday reading, writing and just plain relaxing in my home office. For entertainment I had the Dallas City Council's agenda meeting on the television. I watched them wrangle with the question of "Just how ethical do we want to be?" for much of the morning before they broached the even trickier question of "Just how close to we want our chillun to get to demon likker?"

At issue was an ordinance, supported by state law, that says a store selling beer, wine or other forms of alcohol can't be located within 300 feet of the property line of a school, a church and possibly something else like a hospital. But the main issue is schools or churches. Not the school or church itself, mind you, but its property line. The proposed change offered during Monday's city council meeting would abolish that arbitrary rule and let council members determine these cases individually and perhaps grant variances to the rule if circumstances warrant it. In other words, it would force council members to think, to reason, to study the merits of each application and not hide behind an archaic ordinance.

Here's an example of how ridiculous the current ordinance is. A school could sit at the back of a large campus whose property line is, say, 275 feet from the front door of a proposed grocery store that wants to sell beer and wine. But that grocery store, under the current ordinance, would not be allowed to sell beer and wine even though the distance from its front door to the school's front door is 1,000 feet. Yet a grocery would be allowed to sell beer and wine if the distance from its front door to the school's front door is a third of that 1,000 feet, as long as its property line is more than 300 feet away. Stupid.

For some reason, two council members I always thought wanted to hear and decide issues on their merits, Angela Hunt and Linda Koop, voted against changing this ordinance, both for reasons that had nothing to do with the issue at hand. But Ms. Hunt is a master of dodging the real issue of any question and changing the subject matter to suit her personal agenda. In this case, she tried to change the subject to the square feet of the grocery store in question and not how far it was from the school. Ms. Koop simply expressed a desire to protect children. Fine, Ms. Koop: If a situation comes before the council that endangers children, I would hope you would vote against it. But why deny all applicants just because one of them might pose a danger to school children? Council member Steve Salazar, whom I thought was beginning to show some signs of intelligence that had not been on display during his previous council tenure as well as most of this one, snapped back into his old habits by arguing how the proposed change set "a dangerous precedent," as though it set a rule as arbitrary as the one it changed. The only dangerous precedent it sets, like I said earlier, is forcing council members to reason these cases on their individual merits -- a process, come to think of it, might scare Mr. Salazar.

I've always been taught that every rule has its exceptions. Fortunately, a majority of the city council realized that and the proposed ordinance change passed by, as I recall, an 11-5 vote. So it was a case of all's well that ends well. But while the debate was going on I got to see Hunt, Koop and Salazar do their Three Stooges bit. Talk about Must See TV.

And I thought Texas" criminal courts were corrupt

Texas can't hold a candle to Florida.

Consider the case of Joe Sullivan, a mentally impaired boy convicted of sexual battery, largely on the testimony of two accomplices, both of whom were older than Sullivan, who each were rewarded for their testimony by given light sentences, one of them in a juvenile court. Sullivan, however, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was 13 years old at the time.

Or consider the case of Terrance Graham, a learning disabled teen born to crack-addicted parents. He was on probation in connection with a burglary when he allegedly participated in a home invasion. He was not convicted of the crime, but was sentenced to life in prison without parole for violating his probation. He was 16.

Two teenagers, both mentally challenged, both of whom need stern adult supervision and, yes, some time in prison. But for the Florida courts to decide these two are not capable of rehabilitation is barbarous, violates every standard of human rights known to mankind and is a clear violation of the eighth amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Fortunately, there is hope. The Supreme Court heard the cases of Sullivan and Graham Monday. Hopefully the justices will reason that children who commit non-violent crimes should not be sentenced to life in prison with no hope of parole.

October's Oscar Poll

Last month, I conducted my first poll of the almost 500 Oscar voters representing all the branches who are willing to share with me who plan to cast their nominating votes for in this year's Oscar race. I just finished counting all the returns and here are who the nominees (listed alphabetically within each category) would have been if the Oscar ballots had to be returned to the Academy by the end of October:

Picture
Avatar
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Invictus
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Director
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Lee Daniels, Precious
Clint Eastwood, Invictus
Rob Marshall, Nine
Jason Reitman, Up in the Air

Actor
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine
Colin Firth, A Single Man
Morgan Freeman, Invictus

Actress
Helen Mirren, The Last Station
Cary Mulligan, An Education
Saorise Ronan, The Lovely Bones
Gabourey Sidibe, Precious
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Alfred Molina, An Education
Christopher Plummer, The Last Station
Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo'Nique, Precious
Julianne Moore, A Single Man
Susan Sarandon, The Lovely Bones

Original Screenplay
(500) Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
A Serious Man
Up

Adapted Screenplay
An Education
The Lovely Bones
Precious
A Single Man
Up in the Air

Film Editing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Nine
Precious
Up in the Air

Cinematography
Bright Star
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
The Lovely Bones
Nine

Art Direction
Bright Star
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Inglourious Basterds
Nine
A Serious Man

Sound Mixing
Avatar
Nine
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Sound Editing
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Up

Costume Design
Bright Star
Cheri
Inglourious Basterds
Nine
The Young Victoria

Make-Up
District 9
The Imaginarium of Doctor Paranassus
Star Trek

Visual Effects
Avatar
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Original Score
Avatar
Bright Star
A Christmas Carol
Coco Before Chanel
Up

Animated Film
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Coraline
Ponyo
The Princess and the Frog
Up

Foreign Language Film
Baaria
A Letter to Father Jacob
A Prophet
Samson and Delilah
White Ribbon

Documentary Feature
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Capitalism: A Love Story
The Cove
Food, Inc.
Long Distance Love

SI's college football playoff bracket after games of Nov. 7

(1) Florida vs. (16) Miami
(8) LSU vs. (9) Ohio State
(5) TCU vs. (12) USC
(4) Cincinnati vs. (13) Iowa
(3) Alabama vs. (14) Houston
(6) Boise State vs. (11) Oregon
(7) Georgia Tech vs. (10) Pittsburgh
(2) Texas vs. (15) Utah

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Ballast (2008) ****½ There isn’t much talk and not a drop of cynicism in this film, Lance Hammer’s austerely elegant, emotionally unadorned riff on life and death in the Mississippi Delta. Shot with a sure hand and a cast of unknowns, the film doesn’t so much tell a story as develop a tone and root around a place that, despite the intimate camerawork, remains shrouded in ambiguity. Mr. Hammer puts in the time, but never asserts that he knows this world and his black characters from the inside out, a wise choice for a white boy playing the blues. Grade: A

The Merry Gentleman (2009) ****½ The first shot in this film, an austere, nearly pitch-perfect character study of two mismatched yet ideally matched souls, is of its director, the actor Michael Keaton, sitting on a park bench. Still as stone, he stares ahead in profile, sphinxlike. He doesn’t say a thing, but the scene overflows with meaning, from the ringing church bells to the somber wintry light and the shallow focus that has turned the world around him into an undifferentiated blur. He seems less lonely than simply and bluntly alone. This man, you learn within minutes, seems entirely at ease shooting another human being to death. He is Frank Logan, who when not wielding a gun is sitting at a sewing table in a men’s custom clothing shop. He’s a question mark of a character, a question that remains as unanswered at the end of this satisfying film as at the start. Much like the straightforward visual style he has adopted for this film, his first as a director, Mr. Keaton plays Frank without any attention-grabbing, important moments. Though he can be an extremely animated performer with a gunning motormouth, he plays the character with such physical reserve that, while Frank might not be dead, you feel he’s almost certainly already buried. Grade: A

Spread (2009) **½ When Nikki (Ashton Kutcher), a lanky, arrogant Hollywood stud, confides his secrets of seduction to the camera early in Spread, you wonder if this might be the breakthrough movie in which a male hustler is not required to pay for his sins. We’re in the 21st century, after all. And Nikki, and the women on whom he preys (he has no home or car) operate on a level playing field where the combatants are buffeted without suffering mortal wounds or moral disgrace. The rules of the game are roughly the same as those in Entourage and Californication. Casual opportunistic sex practiced by beautiful people of both sexes is an easy-come, easy-go transaction. Each month, Nikki estimates, 30,000 hot young things arrive in Hollywood prepared for battle. Mr. Kutcher, who sprawls around half-naked through much of the movie, exudes a goofy, rakish charm, but Spread, directed by David Mackenzie (Young Adam) from a screenplay by Jason Dean Hall, doesn’t attach to him a coherent story. Grade: C

The Ugly Truth (2009) * That tap-tap-tapping sound you hear is another nail being driven into the coffin of the romantic comedy. Over the years this sturdy if supple genre has survived extraordinary cultural and social changes, most notably the suffragist movement in the early part of the last century and women’s rights toward the latter. Liberated women, along with the pill, quickie divorces, swinging couples, blended families and various wars both abroad and at home might have dinged the genre, but it has endured and adapted, even when the story now hinges on boy meets boy meets boy (as in Shortbus) or pops up on the small screen (Sex and the City). When it comes to the old straight-boy-meets-straight-girl configuration with big-studio production values, however, you might as well forget it, at least if you’re a woman. Which leads to The Ugly Truth, a cynical, clumsy, aptly titled attempt to cross the female-oriented romantic comedy with the male-oriented gross-out comedy that is interesting on several levels, none having to do with cinema. Grade: D

Up (2009) ***½ In its opening stretch this Pixar movie flies high, borne aloft by a sense of creative flight and a flawlessly realized love story. Its on-screen and unlikely escape artist is Carl Fredricksen, a widower and former balloon salesman with a square head and a round nose that looks ready for honking. Voiced with appreciable impatience by Ed Asner, Carl isn’t your typical American animated hero. He’s 78, for starters, and the years have taken their toll on his lugubrious body and spirit, both of which seem solidly tethered to the ground. Even the two corners of his mouth point straight down. It’s as if he were sagging into the earth. Eventually a bouquet of balloons sends Carl and his house soaring into the sky, where they go up, up and away and off to an adventure in South America with a portly child, some talking (and snarling and gourmet-cooking) dogs and an unexpected villain. Though the initial images of flight are wonderfully rendered — the house shudders and creaks and splinters and groans as it’s ripped from its foundation by the balloons — the movie remains bound by convention, despite even its modest 3-D depth. This has become the Pixar way. Passages of glorious imagination are invariably matched by stock characters and banal story choices, as each new movie becomes another manifestation of the movie-industry divide between art and the bottom line. Grade: B+

A Woman in Berlin (2009) ***** Somewhere in the middle of this film, the anonymous title character (Nina Hoss) runs into an old friend. It is 1945, the German capital has recently fallen to the Soviet Army, and the two women exchange what is apparently a common greeting at that time and place: "How often?" The unspoken, self-evident meaning of this question is "How many Russian soldiers have raped you?" That such horrific information can be exchanged so matter-of-factly, even with rueful, stoical humor, can stand as a concise summary of the insights offered by Max Färberböck’s sprawling, difficult, powerful film. Grade: A+

Yesterday's elections

A lot of pundits are looking at the results of yesterday's elections in New Jersey and Virginia and calling them a rebuke of President Obama and a shot in the arm for Republican conservatism. Those pundits need to look more closely.

Gov. John Corzine of New Jersey lost because he failed to deliver on the promises he made to New Jersey voters in the previous election. And although Republican Christopher Christie (pictured), who won with just 49 percent of the vote, ran an anti-tax campaign, he did not campaign as a social conservative and, in fact, those responding to exit polls who said they voted for him weren't sure where he stood on any major issue.

Republican Robert McDonnell won in Virginia because he promised to create jobs and fix the state's transportation system. He also ignored trademark social conservative issues like abortion and same-sex marriages.

In fact, the only person to run on issues dear to the heart of the Republican right-wingnuts lost. That was Douglas Hoffman, the conservative who forced the mainstream Republican, Dede Scozzafava, out of the race for the northernmost congressional district of New York state because she crossed the line on issues like abortion. Democrat Bill Owens won the election giving the seat to Democrats for the first time in just about everyone's memory.

So what did yesterday's elections prove? It proved voters want their political leaders to focus on sound policy making and forget about party orthodoxy. But, above all, it showed the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters right now is still the economy.

As for me, I still think we can.

The Kinky and Medina factors

To me, the surprising result of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll unveiled today is not that Gov. Hair leads Sen. Hutch by 12 percent among Republicans, but that Kinky Friedman has a nine percentage point lead over Tom Schieffer among Democrats. Could Kinky win this primary on name recognition alone?

I doubt it. The primary is still seven-plus months away and although Kinky polled 19 percent to Scheiffer's 10, the actual leader was "undecided" with a whopping 55 percent of Democrats.

The poll also showed that either Hair or Hutch would trounce either Kinky or Scheiffer in a general election, if it were held today, although Hutch would actually fare better than Hair.

It's also time to mention the name -- or perhaps, "introduce the name" of would be more accurate -- of Debra Medina (pictured). Even more than Gov. Hair. Ms. Medina is the darling of Tea Party/Ron-Paul-loving Republican right wing. Even though she is being ignored by the mainstream media, she polled 7 percent among Republicans in this poll. If those numbers hold, she throws the primary into a runoff and opens the door for her to run as a third party candidate, perhaps on the Libertarian ticket. Ms. Medina is a gadfly community activist who shows up at all kinds of political rallies. Her campaign Web page says this about her:

"Born in Beeville and raised on a South Texas farm, Debra Medina is a wife and mother, a registered nurse, a businesswoman, a rancher and a fighter. Debra has always drawn strength from the courage of her convictions. She first got involved in politics in the early 1990s, when she saw that local leaders were not honoring the pro-life principles that guide her beliefs. Now chairing the Republican Party of Wharton County, she took the Republican Party of Texas to court in 2008 over violations in how the state convention was run."

The two main issues on her platform are eliminating property taxes and "using a broader based sales tax" to compensate, and protecting the right of all Texans to carry guns. She also wants term limits for ALL elected officials.

It will be fascinating to see how far these wacky ideas take her and what effect she will have on next year's elections.

The Mavs at 3-1

If anyone told me the Dallas Mavericks would be 3-1, especially after their opening game home loss to the Washington Wizards, which hasn't done a thing since, I would have told them they were crazy. It's not that I was overly concerned about the Wizards game -- it was the first game of the season so it obviously no patterns were developed ... yet. What I was concerned about was the schedule that took the Mavs to two games in Los Angeles, a home game against Utah and road games in New Orleans and San Antonio before the middle of November. I could easily see the Mavericks, if they played as badly as they did against Washington, being 2-6 on Nov. 12.

I did not see the Clippers game on Halloween but in the game against the Lakers and, for three quarters of last night's game against Utah (the home crowd booed the Mavs at the end of the third quarter), the Mavs continued to play at the same level they exhibited against the Wizards. They were fortunate in that the Lakers, especially, played worse.

The main topic of Mavericks discussion this morning is Dirk Nowtizki's record-setting 29 point performance in the fourth quarter of last night's game with the Jazz. Put that in perspective: With eight minutes left in the game, the Mavericks trailed by 16; they won the game by 11. That's a 27-point turnaround in the last eight minutes with Dirk scoring 29 in the last 12 minutes.

Sure, Dirk is grabbing all the headlines, but the entire team on the floor in those last eight minutes contributed to this win with superb defense, passing, rebounding -- the fundamentals to winning basketball games. If Coach Carlisle could find a way to bottle those last eight minutes and then uncork it for a full game, the Mavs would finish this season 81-1.

Of course, that's fantasy. But I am anxious to see what carries over tonight against New Orleans. Was that last eight minutes of last night's game an anomaly or a turning point?

Top 25 Texas High School Football teams

I ran across this nifty Internet set that ranks high school football teams all over the nation and the Texas section offers an option where the teams are ranked regardless of class. Here is its ranking of the 25 best high school football teams in the state (the last number in parenthesis is the team's ranking last week):
1. Austin Lake Travis (4A) 10-0 (1)
2. Southlake Carroll (5A) 8-1 (2)
3. Dallas Skyline (5A) 9-0 (4)
4. Allen (5A) 7-1 (5)
5. The Woodlands (5A) 9-0 (9)
6. Coppell (5A) 8-1 (7)
7. Missouri City L.V. Hightower (5A) 9-0 (10)
8. Abilene (5A) 8-0 (14)
9. Longview (4A) 9-1 (8)
10. Cedar Hill (5A) 9-0 (6)
11. Katy (5A) 8-1 (11)
12. Desoto (5A) 8-1 (12)
13. Tyler John Tyler (5A) 8-1 (3)
14 Spring Klein Collins (5A) 9-0 (20)
15. Euless Trinity (5A) 7-2 (15)
16. Round Rock Stony Point (5A) 8-1 (16)
17. Katy Cinco Ranch (5A) 9-0 (18)
18. Denton John H. Guyer (4A) 9-0 (19)
19. Gilmer (3A) 9-0 (21)
20. Waxahachie (4A) 9-0 (17)
21. Lufkin (5A) 7-2 (13)
22. Dallas Highland Park (4A) 8-1 (23)
23. Angleton (4A) 9-0 (25)
24. Flower Mound Marcus (5A) 5-3 (29)
25. Austin Westlake (5A) 7-2 (24)

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Aliens in the Attic (2009) ** In Aliens in the Attic, basically a tweener cable movie on steroids, a group of intergalactic travelers comes to Earth with plans for widespread massacre and planetary domination. Most of the battling with the four-armed, knee-high green critters is done by a crew of young actors led by Carter Jenkins (the son in Surface) and Austin Robert Butler (Ruby and the Rockits). Ashley Tisdale, of High School Musical, is also on hand. The plot, a children’s adventure larded with some light twaddle about feeling different because you’re good at math, has a gimmick: the aliens possess a mind-control device, but it has been miscalibrated and works only on adults. The quick-thinking young heroes realize that rather than run to their parents for help, they need to keep the old folks out of the way while they figure out how to stop the invasion. This gives the filmmakers the excuse they need to spend most of their time focused on the youngsters and their animated foes, which physically resemble the nastier and much wittier monsters of Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984). Grade: C-

The Answer Man (2009) **½ This is a movie about the softening up of a curmudgeon: a familiar premise and not necessarily a terrible one. Jeff Daniels, playing a reclusive author of inspirational literature, is a fine curmudgeon (see The Squid and the Whale, for instance), and Lauren Graham is a perfectly effective curmudgeon softener (see Bad Santa). The cast also includes talented younger performers like Lou Taylor Pucci (Thumbsucker), Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and Olivia Thirlby (Juno). So far so good. The main problem is that the movie, in spite of some nice shots of Philadelphia, just doesn’t work. There are a few interesting ideas and potentially engaging characters, but everything slides around like a plateful of half-set Jello, convincing you of nothing beyond director John Hindman’s earnest intentions and uncertain skills. Grade: C

Food, Inc. (2009) ***½ Forget buckets of blood. Nothing says horror like one of those tubs of artificially buttered, nonorganic popcorn at the concession stand. That, at least, is one of the unappetizing lessons to draw from one of the scariest movies of the year, Food, Inc., an informative, often infuriating activist documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You’ll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch. Grade: B+

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009) ½* This film offers gagging laughs, discount special effects, hoo-ha din and interchangeable action figures. The story here, spun off from the Hasbro-toy world and doubtless many notes from studio suits, follows the contemporary militaristic-movie template. Bad guys square off against good, amid heavy-metal machines, regularly timed explosions, conspicuously planted American flags, B-listers like Dennis Quaid and amusingly slumming indie talent like Sienna Miller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The dialogue is expectedly risible, while the story is at once elemental and incomprehensible. You have to wonder how much longer the studios think they can force-feed such junk to a restless audience that’s only a few clicks away from other distractions. Grade: D-

I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) *½ "It’s O.K. just to have fun sometimes," says a dad (Alan Ruck) to his anxious, nerdy son. So true. And if fun is what you’re looking for, you might want to avoid this film, a drab and incoherent teen comedy in which this nugget of advice appears. Directed by Chris Columbus with barely enough style and cinematic panache to eke out three minutes on YouTube, I Love You, Beth Cooper starts promisingly enough, with that anxious, nerdy son, Denis Cooverman (Paul Rust) delivering the valedictory address at his high school graduation. In a moment of reckless bravery that appears less and less in character as the picture wears on, he blurts out a number of shocking and uncomfortable truths about his classmates, including the five words that give the movie its name. Grade: D+

Lemon Tree (2009) ****½ Salma Zidane (Hiam Abbass), the proud, handsome 45-year-old Palestinian woman at the center of this film, an allegory of Israeli-Palestinian strife, has the misfortune of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Widowed for 10 years, with a son in the United States, Salma earns a meager living from a lemon grove on the Green Line separating Israel from the occupied territories of the West Bank. The grove has been in her family for 50 years. Her solitary life suddenly turns upside down when the Israeli defense minister, Israel Navon (Doron Tavory), moves into a fancy new house that abuts the grove. Overnight a watchtower is constructed, and security guards and soldiers begin patrolling the property. No sooner have Navon and his beautiful, cultured wife, Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael), moved into the new house than Salma receives an official letter informing her that the grove poses a security threat from terrorists hiding among the trees and, as a military necessity, they must be uprooted. The letter, which Salma has translated because she neither speaks nor writes Hebrew, loftily offers to compensate her for her loss while mentioning that because of recent legislation, there is no legal obligation to do so. She weeps at the news. Thus begins an escalating war of words and of wills. Lemon Tree, directed by the Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis, whose 2004 movie, The Syrian Bride, explored Israeli-Arab border tensions, is also a wrenching, richly layered feminist allegory as well as a geopolitical one. Grade: A

Not Forgotten (2009) **½ February 2008: Simon Baker shoots Not Forgotten. March 2008: Simon Baker is cast in a new television series called The Mentalist. September 2009: Not Forgotten, a lurid yet plodding thriller, bobs to the surface in theaters, most likely to the chagrin of the now very hot Simon Baker. Mr. Baker and Paz Vega star as Jack and Amaya, an inordinately attractive couple living in a town near the Mexico border that is part Mayberry, part freak show. The abduction of their daughter (played by Chloe Moretz) sets in motion a plot full of twists that can be seen coming from some distance; the fact that the kidnapped girl is also the narrator doesn’t increase the suspense. Grade: C

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) **** "I left my Rudy Giuliani suit at home," says the mayor of New York City, brushing off an aide’s plea to use an unfolding crisis as an opportunity to make a show of leadership for the cameras. Played by James Gandolfini with a demeanor more fussy than thuggish, this fictional successor to Mr. Giuliani presides over an identifiably post-Rudy, post-9/11 metropolis, a shiny, busy place ruled by money and ambition and shadowed less by fear of crime than by anxious memories of terrorism and perhaps by an intimation of leaner times ahead. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Tony Scott’s canny, energetic updating of the 1974 mass transit thriller, takes account of how much the character — to say nothing of the characters — of New York has changed since that almost mythic decade of decline and default. Like the original film, adapted from John Godey’s novel, this version, with a script by Brian Helgeland, deals with the brazen, borderline-insane hijacking of a local train on the Lexington Avenue line, but the subway system itself serves as an index of how the city and action-movie technology have evolved over the years. Grade: A-

Where God Left His Shoes (2008) **½ A fishy odor of unearned sanctimony clings to this movie, Salvatore Stabile’s queasy-making drama about a homeless New York family seeking shelter on a snowy Christmas Eve. The movie, which stars John Leguizamo as Frank Diaz, an illiterate, washed-up boxer who is the breadwinner for a family of four, including two stepchildren, flaunts irreconcilable ambitions. One moment it pretends to be a sober, neo-realist document; the next it’s a shameless tearjerker in the mode of The Champ. Grade: C

Texas' last hurdle?

A lot of folks believe tomorrow's game against Oklahoma State is Texas' last hurdle on its way to a regular season undefeated season and a berth in the BCS title game against the SEC champion. I'm not so sure after the way Texas A&M brutalized Texas Tech last weekend, but that could have been a fluke.

What is not a fluke is what Texas coordinator Will Muscamp has accomplished in just two years with the team's defense. This is the unit that is winning games for the Longhorns, not the Colt McCoy-led offense. The Longhorns' D has forced 21 turnovers this year, nine more than it had all of last season. Safety Earl Thomas has five interceptions.

Yes, Texas has an offense -- it is leading the Big 12 by scoring an average of 41 points a game. If it comes close that number tomorrow it should have no trouble with Oklahoma State which will be without big play receiver, the suspended Dez Bryant, and will only allow it's best running back, Kendell Hunter, to see limited action. OSU has perhaps the best offensive line in the conference, but it has yet to be tested with a defense like Texas.

Texas has won the last 11 meetings between these two teams, but many of those wins were dicey propositions. In fact, in the last two games held in Stillwater, where this one will be played, Texas had to come back from 19 points down in 2005 and 21 points down in the fourth quarter in 2007.

This year I think the game will be lower scoring, more like the Texas-OU game with the Longhorns winning by 10.

The weekend's other big game is being played in the Northwest where Oregon will host Southern California in a game that could decide the Pac 10 championship. Oregon is undefeated in conference (it's only loss this season is that punch-ending game against Boise State) while USC, which has had the habit of late of losing one conference game unexpectedly each year, has already done that this season -- a last second loss to Washington. This, to me, is the weakest USC team I've seen in a long time but it was still strong enough to win at Ohio State and at Notre Dame, so playing in loud loud loud Autzen Stadium should not be that big a handicap for these Trojans.

After that opening loss to Boise, Oregon has been impressive, with convincing wins over Utah and Cal and road victories against UCLA and Washington. The Ducks are solid on both sides of the line, with freshman running back LaMichael James (who has rushed for more than 150 yards three times this season and last week averaged 10.3 yards a carry against Washington) and dual threat quarterback Jeremiah Masoli who has passed for five TDs this season and ran for seven more.

The deciding factor, however, is going to be Oregon's underrated defense, which I consider superior to USC's more heralded one. I think the Ducks D will harass Trojan quarterback Matt Barkley all day -- even sack him a couple of times -- and lead Oregon to the three-point victory and put an end the Trojan's streak of eight straight conference championships.

Usually the Florida-Georgia game is a bigger attraction than it is this year, but Georgia is struggling (it's not even in the Top 25) and Florida, even though ranked No. 1, has not been playing up the level even its most ardent supporters expected. A win in this game and Florida should breeze into the SEC title game undefeated and that win should come fairly easily. Florida by 17.

In other games (listed by how competitive I think they will be):
Mississippi over Auburn by 1
California over Arizona State by 3
Missouri over Colorado by 3
Boston College over Central Michigan by 7
Texas Tech over Kansas by 7
Tennessee over South Carolina by 10
Connecticut over Rutgers by 10
Houston over Southern Mississippi by 10
Miami over Wake Forest by 10
Navy over Temple by 10
Nebraska over Baylor by 14
Cincinnati over Syracuse by 21
Penn State over Northwestern by 21
Georgia Tech over Vanderbilt by 21
Oklahoma over Kansas State by 24
Utah by Wyoming by 24
Iowa over Indiana by 28
Notre Dame over Washington State by 28
Boise State over San Jose State by 28
TCU over UNLV by 35
LSU over Tulane by 38
Ohio State over New Mexico State by 42

Senate should model its health care reform bill on House's version

The House of Representatives has introduced a health care reform bill that accomplishes what this legislation is supposed to do -- greatly reduce the number of uninsured while reducing budget deficits. It includes a public option, but not one as strong as I would like --i.e., the option plan doesn't pay doctors and hospitals based on Medicare rates -- but at least one is in there. The problem with it is the public option probably will cost more than the average private plan because it might only attract the sickest people.

Still, it's far superior to the Senate plan. The bill would generate enough taxes (the chief one being a surcharge on the part of annual income exceeding $1 million for couples and $.5 million for individuals -- after all the tax breaks that benefited the wealthy during the Bush administration it's fitting they pay a heavy share of health care reform) and Medicare savings so that the net effect of the bill would be to reduce the deficit by $104 million over the next 10 years.

It requires employers, except for small businesses, to either offer health care benefits to their employees and pay a large portion of the cost of that care, or face a severe penalty. By the year 2019, it is expected this bill would provide health insurance to 96 percent of all Americans who are not elderly and living here legally. It would allow young people up to the age of 26 to remain on their parents' policies. It would provide immediate help to those who have been denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

The Senate should come up with a bill as fiscally responsible and one that gets as close to universal coverage as this one.

How do you feel about a Michael Douglas-Matt Damon love scene in a hot tub?

Apparently such a scene is supposed to be included in Steven Soderbergh's proposed biopic of flamboyant pianist Wladziu Valentino Liberace with Douglas starring as the diamond-flashing Librace and Damon cast as his companion, Scott Thorson, who was 30 years younger than Librace.

"Everybody is hopeful that there will be a full-on, love-wrestling match between these guys," Soderbergh recently told MTV. "That's not where my mind went. But we have a hot-tub scene in there."

"I don't think it's a comedy," Soderbergh continued, "but it's pretty funny because the environment and the lifestyle are so extreme that even just having these guys carry on a quote-unquote 'normal' conversation in one of these rooms wearing the clothes that they wore, it's hard to look at that and take it at face value. It lands in a really unexpected way. The ending is surprisingly emotional. It will be unexpected. It ends really, really well. I'm really excited about it Those guys (Douglas and Damon) are going to be amazing."

My question is whether enough people remember Librace or care that much about it to see such a film. I have my doubts, but then Soderbergh has never been a director who tied himself to purely commercial successes (Bubble, Full Frontal).

First quarter 2010 may be better than average

Normally the first quarter in any calendar year is a famine period for serious film lovers. That's because producers want to push their quality films to later in the year for awards consideration (figuring Oscar voters, as an example, have extremely short memories).

However, I have three reasons to think that the first quarter of 2010 might offer some good, serious fare. I came to that conclusion after seeing this trailer for Paul Greengrass' Green Zone, which comes across as nothing more than Jason Bourne Goes to Iraq, complete with Jason himself, Matt Damon, in the lead role. I've even heard from sources that this film was originally planned for release late this year, but pushed it to 2010 because it was believed the awards season could handle only one Iraq movie, and that movie was going to be The Hurt Locker.

Then there's Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. Judging from this trailer, I'm not expecting an awards-caliber film here, just a damn good movie-going experience like Scorsese delivered with Cape Fear, After Hours and The Last Waltz. This film also was originally scheduled for this year but pushed back because Paramount felt it would conflict with other films the studio wanted to push for Oscars.

The final reason I think the first quarter of 2010 will be better than average is Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, the trailer of which is available here.

Is "Invictus" really a sports movie?

Up until this morning, I was thinking Clint Eastwood's Invictus was going to be a filmed biography of South Africa's Nelson Mandela. Now, after seeing this trailer, I'm thinking it's going to be a sports movie -- specifically how Mandela recruited one of his country's white rugby players (played by Matt Damon, who gets to show off his specs in the trailer) to form a team that will represent South Africa and win the World Cup. I'm not sure what to make of that. Does it lessen the prestige of the film? Of course, Eastwood could be using the entire rugby theme as a metaphor for Nelson's accomplishments, but if you look at Eastwood's best films -- Outlaw Josie Wells, Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima -- Eastwood doesn't really mess with metaphors. The film is scheduled to hit theaters Dec. 11.

McCoy third in Heisman race, Texas still third in SI's playoff bracket

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy is current running third in the Heisman Trophy race, according to The HeismanPundit.Com., behind Alabama running back Mark Ingram and Notre Dame quarterback Jimmy Clausen. HeismanPundit.Com polls Heisman voters from around the country. Last year, it picked five of the six top finishers correctly including Sam Bradford as the winner. The complete results of the poll announced today are:

1. Mark Ingram, running back, Alabama
2. Jimmy Clausen, quarterback, Notre Dame
3. Colt McCoy, quarterback, Texas
4. Tim Tebow, quarterback, Florida
5. Ndamukong Suh, defensive tackle, Nebraska
6. (tie) Case Keenum, quarterback, Houston; Golden Tate, wide receiver, Notre Dame
8. (tie) Jacquizz Rodgers, running back, Oregon State; Kellen Moore, quarterback, Boise State
10. Eric Berry, defensive back, Tennessee

Sports Illustrated's proposed 16-team college football playoff bracket after last weekend's games:

(1) Florida vs. (16) Houston
(8) Boise State vs. (9) LSU
(5) USC vs. (12) Penn State
(4) Cincinnati vs. (13) Oklahoma State
(3) Texas vs. (14) Virginia Tech
(6) TCU vs. (11) Georgia Tech
(7) Iowa vs. (10) Oregon
(2) Alabama vs. (15) Pittsburgh

My take on the constitutional amendments

Proposition 1: It's not the responsibility of homeowners to subsidize military sprawl and force cities and towns to take on additional debt that could increase property taxes. I'm voting No.

Proposition 2: To be honest, I'm not sure what this proposition will do, but political associates in Austin tell me that it could wind up lowering property taxes bases and for that reason I'm voting No.

Proposition 3: This is a no-brainer. The proposition would remove the enforcement of appraisal standards from counties and put them under statewide supervision, which would shift along with the prevailing political winds. It could also force residents to travel long distances to protest appraisals. A big No on this from me.

Proposition 4: Another no-brainer--a proposition that could positively effect Texas education and the state's economy. It would direct funds towards universities trying to become Tier 1 universities. This could attract leading researchers to our state, especially to institutions like UT-Arlington or UT-El Paso, where they are needed. It will also allow Texas students to reach higher levels of educational achievement. Plus it will come from money the state already has. Gov. Hair is campaigning against this saying the private sector should supply all the innovation Texas needs (and then he rejects clean energy businesses to make sure we never get this innovation). I'm voting a solid YES.

Proposition 5: Allows adjoining counties to form joint appraisal districts. This proposition doesn't really effect me (Dallas County won't be consolidating with a neighbor), but I'm thinking it's important enough in rural areas that I'm going to vote Yes.

Proposition 6: We must keep our promises to our veterans and a proposition that will continue to allow them to buy homes is going to get a Yes vote from me.

Proposition 7: The state constitution prohibits individuals from holding more than one compensated position with the state, but I see no harm in allowing members of the State Guard to hold a civil office so I'm voting Yes on this one.

Proposition 8 would provide much-needed medical care to 1.7 million veterans living in Texas, one-third of whom are denied care because they live too far from a veterans hospital. Another no-brainer. Yes.

Proposition 9 will protect the right of every Texan to spread their towel and relax on a beach. Who could possibly be against this? (OK, some homeowners who are seeing their beachfront properties being reduced by erosion.) Still I'm for open beaches so I'm voting Yes.

Proposition 11: This is another complicated one dealing with eminent domain. But what made me decide to vote No on this one came when Gov. Hair, who strongly supports it, was asked if it would prevent the seizure of land for another Trans-Texas Corridor and he refused to answer the question.

Don't worry about Texas opting out ... yet

The current Senate version of the health care reform package contains a public option as well as a mechanism for states, like Texas, which has a history of denying its citizens adequate health care protections, to opt out of the public option.

There's no question that a majority of Texas political leaders are in bed with the insurance companies. (It should also be noted that many of these same hacks -- I'm trying to discover exactly how many -- are on Medicare, meaning they are denying their constituents the same kind of health insurance they themselves enjoy.) That's one of the reasons Texas leads the nation in the disgraceful category of the most citizens without any health insurance at all -- 24.1 percent.

Yet, polls indicate and overwhelming majority of Texans, like the rest of the country, wants health insurance reforms that will increase competition and provide more quality, affordable options for the middle-class.

So here's the good news: That majority of Texas leaders can't, by themselves, opt Texans out of the public option.

From what I've learned, here's how the reform package will be implemented. The National insurance exchange is phased in and reforms begin taking effect in 2011-2012. The public option begins in 2013. The earliest states can opt out is 2014 and will require a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature to pass an opt-out bill. Thus, to vote in favor of opting out will put legislators in the precarious position of taking away constituents' health insurance, a little dicier proposition than just denying them health care, which they are doing now. Plus, the governor could veto opt-out legislation, but if either Gov. Hair or Sen. Hutch is in the governor's mansion, we know that won't happen.

There's a couple of election cycles between now and 2014. It is incumbent on every editorial board of every newspaper in Texas to include in its interviews with legislative candidates whether they would vote to opt out of a public health care option and report that information to its readers. That question must be posed to any legislative candidate in any public forum. As for me -- and I'm betting many other middle-income and lower-income Texans feel the same way -- a candidate's position on that issue will determine whether he or she will receive my vote. By going to the polls and voting for those candidates who care about the health and well-being of their constituents, we can make sure the legislature never comes close to having the two-thirds majority needed to pass opt-out legislation.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) **½ I am not someone who insists that cartoons obey the laws of physics or stick to the historical record. The Acme Corporation will not deliver a home catapult kit to an unmarked mesa in the desert Southwest, and, Up notwithstanding, even a modest bungalow is unlikely to make an intercontinental flight propelled solely by helium balloons. Everyone is aware of these fundamental truths, and no one is likely to complain when they are flouted for purposes of entertainment. But the idea that a hot, verdant land, populated by giant lizards and carnivorous plants, might have lain hidden beneath the glacial, prehistoric ice — I’m sorry, but that’s just idiotic. I don’t mean to sound like a 9-year-old or a dogmatic Darwinian, but really. Come on. T. rexes chasing woolly mammoths? Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs? What? Dawn of the dinosaurs? In the Ice Age? You’ve got to be kidding. I know. This kind of anachronism is trendy at the moment, what with Year One and Land of the Lost and Star Trek. But weren’t underground dinosaurs in 3-D already tried last summer in the abysmal Journey to the Center of the Earth? Couldn’t the creative minds at the 20th Century Fox animation studios, hoping to wring a few hundred million dollars more out of their prized family-animation franchise, have come up with something more original? Dumb question. Grade: C

Il Divo (2009) **** "I don’t believe in chance, I believe in the will of God." That credo, spoken in a dry, dispassionate voice, drops more than once from the mouth of Giulio Andreotti (Toni Servillo), the scandal-ridden seven-time Italian prime minister, in Paolo Sorrentino’s flamboyant biographical fantasy, Il Divo. A label once applied to Julius Caesar, Il Divo is only one of several popular nicknames for Mr. Andreotti, who entered the Italian political arena in the late 1940s and is now 90. As the right-leaning leader of the country’s centrist Christian Democratic party, Mr. Andreotti, elected to his first term as prime minister in 1972, has been called the Sphinx, the Hunchback, the Black Pope and Beelzebub. He was appointed a senator for life in 1991. In exploring Mr. Andreotti’s possible connections to a stream of political assassinations and to other killings made to look like suicides, which began in the late 1970s and continued into the early ’90s, Il Divo has the tone and style of a blood-soaked comic opera. Grade: A-

Medicine for Melancholy (2009) ****½ "Everything about being indie is tied to not being black," says Micah (Wyatt Cenac), half of the accidental kind-of couple whose one-day romance is chronicled in Medicine for Melancholy. He is making an observation — and also registering a complaint — about the quasi-bohemian way of life he shares with Jo’ (Tracey Heggins), his temporary other half. It bothers Micah that their embrace of the folkways of urban hipsterism seems to require the suppression of their African-American identity. But his words, which Jo’ doesn’t quite agree with, also suggest a degree of self-awareness, and self-questioning, on the part of Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed this small, incisive film. Most recent movies about culturally savvy, affectless 20-somethings hooking up and being cool are very much tied to not being black. They are about diffident, underemployed white boys and the women who (sometimes inexplicably) go to bed with them. It wouldn’t be entirely fair to say that Mr. Jenkins, a 29-year-old director whose immersion in movie history is both ardent and understated, is making a black version of a Joe Swanberg or Andrew Bujalski film, or even, to stretch the comparisons a bit further back, a mash-up of Before Sunrise and She’s Gotta Have It. But it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate, either, because the tricky questions that govern Medicine for Melancholy are how, why and to what extent race should matter in relationships between black men and women. Grade: A

Nothing Like the Holidays (2008) **½ The gnarly dead tree in front of the Rodriguez house in Humboldt Park, a working-class Latino neighborhood of Chicago, will not be processed into kindling. As the Rodriguez menfolk, gathered for Christmas, attack it with chain saws, their incompetence with power tools makes them look like fools. Even when they try to drag it out of the earth with ropes and chains attached to a car, it refuses to budge. That old dead tree is an unwieldy metaphor for family solidarity in Nothing Like the Holidays, an efficient home-for-Christmas ensemble comedy trimmed with plastic teardrops. But the tree might also stand for a wooden holiday genre in which uplift follows tumult as surely as Christmas morning follows Christmas Eve. Grade: C

Orphan (2009) **Actors have to eat like the rest of us, if evidently not as much, but you still have to wonder how the independent film mainstays Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard ended up wading through Orphan and, for the most part, not laughing. He plays the father, John, an architect, and she plays the mother, Kate, who doesn’t do much of anything. Together they watch over Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) and a younger girl, Max (Aryana Engineer), in one of those sprawling houses that always looks spotless even if no one ever drags a mop across its polished floors, which makes you wonder who will swab up the inevitable pooling blood. And the blood it does spill, though not nearly fast enough. Grade: C-

Whatever Works (2009) ** Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A guy walks into a meaningless universe. He sees this gorgeous blonde sitting at the bar. It’s obvious she’s never read a word of Dostoevsky, much less Kierkegaard. So he says to her, "Is it meaningless in here, or is it just me?," and she says, "My place or yours?" I know, I know. It’s an old joke, and I didn’t tell it quite right. But that’s just my point. With material like this — a Jewish intellectual type shrugging his shoulders, looking into the camera, spitting out fancy Latinate words as if he’d just swallowed a thesaurus, while an eager young actress of the moment flits around looks sultry and clueless — execution is everything. So my problem with Whatever Works, the latest movie from, duh, Woody Allen, is not that the premise, more or less summed up in the paragraph above, is a wee bit familiar. Rather, it’s that the delivery is off. Grade: C-

Council committees to be briefed on one-day-a-week garbage pickup, Katy Trail extension

Monday is usually the busy day for Dallas City Council committee meetings and, I gotta tell ya, I really feel sorry for council members Jerry Allen, Ann Margolin, Vonciel Jones Hill, Angela Hunt, Delia Jasso, Ron Natinsky and Dave Neumann, who, as members of Budget, Finance and Audit Committee, must sit through the following briefings:

• Property Appraisal Process Overview


• Real Property Acquisition Procedures and Requirements


• Annual Investment Policy Review and Discussion of Investment Strategies


• Quarterly Investment Report


• August 2009 Financial Forecast Report

OK, that first one could be interesting because it will feature Ken Nolan, chief appraiser/executive director of the Dallas Central Appraisal District trying to explain how DCAD values our homes and places of business -- all 815,689 of them (I thought there would be more) -- for property tax purposes. Ms. Hunt ought to have fun with this one, especially since she was loudly critical of the way in DCAD appraised the land on which the convention center hotel will be constructed.

Things pick up at noon, however, when the Quality of Life Committee will (after plodding through a briefing on "Urban Foresty Inventory Using Concurrent Airborne LiDAR & Hyperspectral Remote Sensing"-- a topic that sparks heated debates between me and my granddaughter on a regular basis) hear about when the Katy Trail will be expanded to the White Rock Rail Station and next March's rollout of "OneDAYDallas," once-a-week, same-day garbage/recycling pickup.

OneDAY was instituted in far North Dallas in March 2008. Northwest Dallas followed in Feb. 2009. This year the City said to hell with this piecemeal approach, let's go all-hog, so all the rest of the city -- about 180,000 households, according to this briefing -- will be switched over March 1.

The briefing outlines how Sanitation Services plans to switch, where households will have different pickup days from what they have now, and, most importantly, how it plans to notify those 180,000 households about the switch to once-a-week garbage pickup. Although the topic was addressed at every budget townhall meeting I attended throughout the city, I'm betting, at the most, less than 10 percent of those households are aware of what's coming. My entire neighborhood doesn't know about about it, nor does it know that the switch (thankfully/finally) means we will be switching from black and blue bags to the city-issued roll carts.

The Katy Trail briefing features some sexy pictures of a pedestrian bridge over Mockingbird Ave., but I'll save you some time and give away the punchline. The trail is expected to reach Skillman by March 2011 and to White Rock Station, where, presumably, it will link with the White Rock Trail, by September 2011. That means I could ride my bike from my Northeast Dallas hood all the way to the American Airlines Center for home Maverick games. Now ask me how often I plan to do that.

And then there were 12

Now that "Amelia" has (pardon the pun) crashed, the 10 Oscar nominated films for best picture will come from this list of 12 films:
Avatar
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Invictus
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
The Road
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Orrin needs to close his hatch

I've been thinking a lot recently about Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and some of his latest outbursts. He doesn't think government should get involved in protecting the health care of its citizens but he does think the feds should interfere in deciding college football's national champion and inflating the population of his home state.

Although the federal census is supposed to be a tally of how many folks we have living in this land of ours, Hatch has submitted a stupid amendment to the legislation calling for next year's population count that would force census takers to include all those Mormons off on missionary duties in far-flung lands. He's obviously hoping there's enough overseas Mormons out there to land Utah at least one more representative in Congress. But what he's actually doing is nullifying the purpose of the census.

He also thinks the Justice Department should file antitrust actions against the BCS. He's upset because Utah wasn't named National Champions last year and he blames it on the BCS which, he claims, limits competition by excluding teams from non BCS conferences from consideration. Look. Utah should have been named National Champions last year. The Utes were the only undefeated team in the upper division in 2008. Not only that, in its final game of the season, Utah handed Alabama, which had been No. 1 for most the year, its worst loss of the year.

The problem is not the BCS alone, however. The final AP Poll, which has no connection to the BCS, also failed to name Utah No. 1. And no amount of federal intervention is going to alter the prejudices of those out-of-touch sportswriters who vote in that poll.

I bring all this up right now because this year there are two teams, Boise State and TCU, who are challenging to be the Utah of 2009 and one of them, TCU, plays BYU, home to all those current and future Mormon missionaries, in what is unquestionably the spotlight game of this weekend's college football schedule.

TCU needs this win badly to remain BCS-bowl eligible with a possible shot at a national title (although if Boise State goes undefeated, TCU probably will be denied that shot). The game will pit TCU's superb defense, led by defensive ends Jerry Hughes (who sacked BYU quarterback Max Hall four times in last year's game and already has eight sacks this season) and Wayne Daniels. If BYU hopes to come away with a win, its offensive line must give Hall more time to find his receivers. I don't think it will and that's why I'm picking TCU to barely squeak by. TCU by 2 points.

Iowa's game at Michigan State has all the signs of an upset (Iowa has never--ever--been 8-0 in a college football season) but the Hawkeyes seemed to be focused this year and quarterback Ricky Stanzi is 15-3 as a starter. Iowa by 5.

LSU knows it still has a shot at the national title and if it defeats Alabama in two weeks and Florida in the SEC championship game, it has a shot for playing for one again. That's just one of the reasons I don't think it will be derailed Saturday by Auburn. LSU by 6.

Penn State hasn't defeated Michigan in Ann Arbor since 1996, but Penn State wants to play in the Rose Bowl and its defense usually does well against offenses as poor as Michigan's. It will be a nail-biter, but I'm going with Penn State by 1.

In this week's other games of note, I'm picking (no real upsets):
Kansas State over Colorado by 3
Georgia Tech over Virginia by 5
Miami over Clemson by 5
West Virginia over Connecticut by 5
Pittsburgh over South Florida by 6
Utah over Air Force by 6
Oklahoma over Kansas by 7
Oregon over Washington by 8
Oklahoma State over Baylor by 10
Texas over Missouri by 11
Houston over SMU by 12
Florida over Mississippi State by 16
Alabama over Tennessee by 17
Ohio State over Minnesota by 17
Southern California over Oregon State by 19
Nebraska over Iowa State by 21
South Carolina over Vanderbilt by 21
Boise State over Hawaii by 22
Texas Tech over Texas A&M by 23
Cincinnati over Louisville by 25

This week's SI college playoff bracket

(1) Alabama vs. (16) BYU
(8) Miami vs. (9) LSU
(5) Cincinnati vs. (12) Georgia Tech
(4) USC vs. (13) Penn State
(3) Texas vs. (14) Oklahoma State
(6) Boise State vs. (11) Oregon
(7) Iowa vs. (10) TCU
(2) Florida vs. (15) Virginia Tech

New movies released today on DVD

Blood: The Last Vampire (2009) *½ Set primarily on an American military base near Tokyo (the action takes place in 1970, but Vietnam references are conspicuously absent), Blood suffers from abusive close-ups, repetitive fight sequences and uninspired demon design. The French director Chris Nahon (adapting Hiroyuki Kitakubo’s animated short film of the same name) strains to connect low budget and high ambition, but his talent for atmosphere is repeatedly undermined by Chris Chow’s incoherent script. Grade: D+

Cheri (2009) **½ It’s perhaps inevitable that the film becomes something of a story about what happens to beautiful Hollywood stars. Michelle Pfeiffer is now 51, and her success has largely rested on a combination of extraordinary looks and an underlying fragility that dilutes the threat that great beauty can bring with it. No matter the role, with her watery eyes and slender limbs, she often seems on the verge of breaking. She can seem as brittle as a twig and just as easy to snap. At other times, you see the steeliness that comes with any sustained and successful movie career. In Chéri you see the frailty and the strength, yet you rarely experience either with the depth of feeling you might because of the palpable uneasiness surrounding her performance. Grade: C

The Elephant King (2008) **½ There is in fact an elephant in The Elephant King, but his keepers are far from royal. Some time ago a scruffy bon vivant named Jake (Jonno Roberts) bilked his university for a travel grant to Thailand, and now he runs around spending the money on booze, drugs, women and a shabby crash pad. Oliver (Tate Ellington), his depressed, introverted brother, has joined Jake in Chiang Mai and quickly comes alive to the slacker expat lifestyle. You know you’re in for a cautionary tale when two fun-loving dudes buy a baby elephant on a drunken whim, install him by a motel pool full of empty beer bottles and show only mild concern when the dung starts piling up. Written and directed by Seth Grossman, The Elephant King tells a colorful if conventional tale of dysfunctional Americans abroad. Grade: C

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) **½ The creative people behind the cretinous Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the second blockbuster inspired by the popular Hasbro toys, have segmented their demographic into four discrete categories: 1. Young teenage boys who still play with Transformer toys (or keep them under the bed). 2. Older teenage boys who identify with the professional doofus Shia LaBeouf. 3. Somewhat older teenage boys who would like to play with the professional hottie Megan Fox. 4. Boys of all ages who think it would be cool to go to war and run around the desert shooting guns. Of course, viewers can embrace several categories at once; say, those who collect toys and liked Mr. LaBeouf in the last Indiana Jones movie. Or those who fantasize about having sex with Ms. Fox while shooting guns, a vision that distills the auteurist ambitions and popular appeal of the movie’s director, Michael Bay. And make no mistake: Mr. Bay is an auteur. His signature adorns every image in his movies, as conspicuously as that of Lars von Trier, and every single one is inscribed with a specific worldview and moral sensibility. Mr. Bay’s subject — overwhelming violent conquest — is as blatant and consistent as his cluttered mise-en-scène. Grade: C

Texas-OU and other hits

Just to keep the record straight, I am a diehard Texas Longhorn supporter, having graduated from UT-Austin way back when with a journalism degree, spending a large part of my time there on the sports staff of the Daily Texan. Then, when I came to Dallas to work for UPI, I used to spend many pleasing moments on the telephone with then Texas football coach Darrell Royal when he called in his ballot for UPI's weekly coaches football poll.

So, having said that, my feelings from watching yesterday's Texas-OU contest are:

• Overall, a rather boring game.
• I didn't get the feeling that Texas defeated OU, only that the Longhorns were ahead when time ran out.
• Keeping OU to a minus 16 yards rushing was an astounding achievement and probably contributed more to the final score than any other factor.
• Colt McCoy's chances of winning the Heisman Trophy are zero.
• I salute the Oklahoma brain trust that came up with the defensive game plan and the OU athletes that executed that plan.

Having been confined to a hospital bed for the last week (possibly more on that later), I have had the opportunity to watch more sports than I would have otherwise. Some observations:

• Neither Florida nor Tim Tebow impressed me that much yesterday and I agree with the AP for putting Alabama at the top of its poll. Right now I consider the race for the Heisman wide open with no clear leader.
• Alabama looked efficient, but really not that dominant against South Carolina. It did not come across as a great college football team, only as the best one out there right now.
• Last night's Yankees-Angels baseball game was a classic thriller. If New York can win one in California, which it should, this series should be over in six games.
• I'll give you Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, because after watching today's Saints-Giants game, I'll take Drew Brees as my starting quarterback any day.

The case for public health insurance

It appears Congress is going to pass some kind of health care reform legislation. The only question is whether the final plan will be more closely aligned to the legislation pending in the House of Representatives, which includes a public option, or the one in the Senate that does not. I have always believed that any meaningful reform bill must contain a public option, but not be dominated by it. By that I mean the option should only be available to the unemployed or for those working for small companies that don't provide health insurance to their employees. In that way, public options are not in direct competition with private insurers but would still work to keep overall costs down.

The New York Times has a superb editorial today that discusses this idea in more depth. It is worth reading for anyone who wants to engage in a sensible, intelligent, non-partisan debate on the subject of health care reform.

A couple of random weight loss, baseball observations (and I already know the topics are not related)

I don't know about you, but I am constantly bombarded about weight-loss programs. Most of them wind up in my spam e-mail box, which is where they belong, but weight-loss advertisements seem to proliferate on television, radio, newspapers, magazines. I wouldn't be that surprised if one of them snuck through on my I-Pod.

I am also overly sensitive about the subject because, frankly, and I am overweight and could stand to lose a pound or two or a couple hundred here and there. Regardless, I am suspicious about all the come ons.

Well, I found one that works. I am not making this up because I have outside authorities who can confirm this -- I lost 16 pounds in less than 24 hours yesterday and today. Can't say too much more about it except that most of this weight wound up in a series of plastic jars that was disposed off by trained Hasmat specialists. Ooops! Excuse me -- I've got to rid myself of some more pounds right now. Back in a second.

OK, better now, which means I can concentrate on baseball. It may not turn out that way, but the upcoming American League series between the Yankees and the Angels has the potential to be one of the best in baseball's history. The Yankees have the more powerful lineup, while the Angels have a more proficient one (I can't remember ever seeing a team that could start nine .300 hitters). Where the Yankees have the edge is in post-season experience and their bullpen, so I'm going with the Yankees to win a thrilling series.

I like the Phillies to win the National League, although I have some concerns about Philadelphia starter Cole Hamels. As I understand it now, Hamels will start Game 1 for Philadelphia, so my actual pick to represent the NL in the World Series is the team that wins Game 1 of the Phillies-Dodgers playoffs. I have heard that Philadelphia is shielding the world from the fact that some nagging injury is bothering Hamels. If that is true and Hamels is not at full strength, it's going to be up to the rest of the Phillies lineup to step it up. They proved they could do it in their series against the Rockies and Philadelphia has the grit to win a game Hamels pitches even if he is not at 100 percent. Whether they will do it is another matter. That's why I'm convinced Game 1 will tell the story of this matchup.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Adoration (2009) ****½ In Adoration, a profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion. Its story of a high school class assignment that becomes a minor cause célèbre is a rigorously structured variant of the everything-is-connected-to-everything school of filmmaking that has produced movies like Babel and Crash. But unlike those movies, Adoration, Mr. Egoyan’s finest film since The Sweet Hereafter (1997), doesn’t strain to maintain a pretense of naturalism. In every scene you feel the controlling hand of Mr. Egoyan who wrote, produced and directed it. Grade: A

American Violet (2009) **½ Near the beginning of American Violet, when Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), a feisty 24-year-old African-American woman, is arrested, handcuffed and roughly dragged by the police from the diner where she works, your heart sinks. We have already watched a police task force conduct a military-style drug raid on Arlington Springs, the housing project in Melody, Texas, where she lives with her mother, Alma (Alfre Woodard), and four children. You grit your teeth in expectation of more cruelty to come. Thrown into a jail cell with three other women, Dee is stunned to learn she is being charged not for the hundreds of dollars in parking tickets that she owes but with distributing narcotics in a school zone. Although she is not carrying drugs and none are found in her home, the prosecution claims to have a witness. Dee’s court-appointed lawyer urges her to take a plea bargain and agree to a 10-year suspended sentence with a small fine, rather than risk serving a 16- to 25-year prison term. When Dee hotly refuses, even her mother thinks she is a fool. American Violet, which is based on real events that took place in late 2000, has the quasi-documentary feel of a well-made television drama. Directed by Tim Disney from a screenplay written by its producer, Bill Haney, the film is beautifully acted by Ms. Beharie, whose high-strung character is no angel. Grade: C

Drag Me to Hell (2009) **** At a time when horror is defined by limp Japanese retreads or punishing exercises in pure sadism, Drag Me to Hell has a tonic playfulness that’s unabashedly retro, an indulgent return to Mr. Raimi’s goofy, gooey roots. More jolting and juicy than the typical PG-13 offering, the movie has a perfunctory plot that centers on Christine (Alison Lohman), a tenderhearted loan officer at a California bank. Swift and sure, Drag Me to Hell unfurls in vertiginous, comic-book frames, like a long-lost issue of Tales From the Crypt. Neither small humans nor smaller animals are exempt from the carnage, which is orchestrated (by Mr. Raimi and his screenwriting sibling, Ivan) to recall memorable moments in horror-movie history. Grade: A-

Every Little Step (2009) **** Watching Every Little Step, a documentary by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, is a bit like walking through a hall of mirrors. Life imitates art, art reflects life, and after a while the distinctions threaten, quite pleasantly, to blur altogether. The film follows a group of mostly young dancers and singers auditioning for parts in the recent Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, a musical which is itself built around the auditions of 17 mostly young Broadway-besotted dancers and singers. The premise of Every Little Step is no less inspired for seeming so simple and obvious, and it pays tribute to the durability and continued relevance of A Chorus Line, which opened in New York in 1975, before many of the performers in the movie were born. Grade: A-

Land of the Lost (2009) ** The only marginally interesting, if unsurprising, thing about the pricey movie spinoff of the junky children’s television show Land of the Lost is that a lot of money has been spent on yet another cultural throwaway. (Never say that Hollywood doesn’t know how to recycle.) Although the original Sid and Marty Krofft series, which ran from 1974 to 1976, doubtless still has its fans, because, well, some people are happy to watch whatever pops up on their televisions, I suspect that a fair share also like to light up before tripping down that particular nostalgic byway. Alas, only popcorn and soda were served at the screening I attended. Not that I didn’t sometimes laugh anyway. It’s hard not to laugh when Will Ferrell, who can be very funny when given something actually funny to do, takes off his shirt to brandish his flabby-pack, a ritual unveiling now apparently written into all his contracts. It’s a cheap gag, certainly cheaper than the digital dinosaurs that stomp through a few scenes (and less embarrassing than watching him plug the movie’s marketing partner, Subway). But it’s effective largely because Mr. Ferrell’s version of comedy’s familiar child-man always skews more creepy than sentimental. Grade: C-

The Proposal (2009) **½ Blame the heels. In her new movie, The Proposal, Sandra Bullock, playing a Type A (rhymes with) witch, totters around in a pair of exquisite high heels, the kind that elongate the legs and give a woman’s derrière the gentle backward thrust familiar from fertility figurines. The character, a no-nonsense, no-smiling publishing executive, otherwise favors an aerodynamic look (pencil skirts and ponytails), but the heels betray her. They throw a curve into her straight line and force her to tilt, sway and wobble. She might be the mistress — the harsh and exacting mistress — of her universe, but she’s clearly been prepped for a fall. Like most Hollywood romantic comedies these days, The Proposal is all about bringing a woman to her knees, quite literally in this case. The simple premise is partly telegraphed in the advertising tag line, "Here comes the bribe," which evokes wedding bells and desperation. Grade: C

Florida at LSU: Another reason never to adopt a college football playoff system

If college football had a postseason playoff in place, ya think Florida coach Urban Meyer would approach tomorrow night's game against LSU differently than he is now. For one thing, I guarantee you Florida quarterback Tim Tebow would not play -- at all, not even a down. Florida would be thinking "Look, we're going to get another shot at 'em after the season is over. Why risk everything now?"

It has been said many times before, but the beauty of the college football season is that every game matters. Both Florida and L.S.U. want to win this game because a loss severely hampers, if it doesn't cripple, the loser's national championships hopes (especially with an undefeated Alabama team waiting in the wings). If a playoff system were in effect, this game wouldn't be that important all -- the objective would be not to lose by too lopsided a score.

It's games like this that make me love college football. As hoped, my South Florida correspondent came through with an advance look at this matchup:

LSU has little offense, while Florida's offense is not anything close to its championship caliber of last year. This means that the game will be decided on the better defensive performance (a typical SEC scenario).

Tebow's injury is not going to be a major factor. If he doesn't play then Florida will insert Brantley at QB. He is a very solid junior who plays more like a decent Big 12 quarterback. Don't expect the running game to suffer because Florida has a couple of burners in the backfield who will replace Tebow's skills and a great offensive line. Even if Tebow plays he will not have practiced during the preceding two weeks. There will be a lot of rust and LSU will take advantage.

LSU is preparing for either quarterback. They are good enough to handle Tebow or Brantley. They are also going to key on the run since Florida does not have any quality wide receivers. However, this may be a mistake since the run emphasis will eventually open up the opportunity to go to a vertical passing game.

On the other side of the ball LSU has a mediocre offense. They have only faced one quality team all year -- Georgia -- and barely managed to put up 20 points. In fact, Georgia had them bottled up for most of the game and might of won if the referees hadn't blown a call late. It was their defense that kept them in the game. They have extraordinary speed and may be the fastest defense in all of college football. The line is also top notch.

Florida's defense is also quick and good. They return almost everyone from the unit that stifled Oklahoma in the BCS title game. The difference is that they are a bit banged up which creates a few soft spots. This doesn't get mentioned much since the media always focus on Tebow, but it is critical. However, Florida's special teams may be the best in country and could provide the edge for the Gators.

Don't overlook the home field advantage. It's almost impossible for a visitor to win in Baton Rouge on a Saturday night. This creates at least a touchdown advantage for the Tigers.

Here's the quick matchups:

Defensive Advantage: LSU (barely)
Offensive Advantage: Florida
Special Teams Advantage: Florida

Okay, it's prediction time: Florida 20, LSU 13. Florida's defense keeps them in the game and they get at least one score off a turnover. If Tebow doesn't start he may come off the bench to rally the team (is it a football game or a movie script?).

I'm also going with Florida, but I think it will be a lot closer game: The Gators by 2.
In other contests:
Alabama by 6 over Mississippi
Auburn by 2 over Arkansas
BYU by 15 over UNLV
Florida State by 2 over Georgia Tech
Iowa by 10 over Michigan
Kansas by 16 over Iowa State
Miami, Fla. by 32 over Florida A&M
Ohio State by 14 over Wisconsin
Oklahoma by 20 over Baylor
Oklahoma State by 2 over Texas A&M
Oregon by 7 over UCLA
Penn State by 30 over Eastern Illinois
South Carolina by 9 over Kentucky
TCU by 2 over Air Force
Texas by 21 over Colorado
Virginia Tech by 10 over Boston College

Slumming around

Have you ever been hanging out with the same old crowd when suddenly a fresh, new face burst onto the scene? This new person brings a new form of energy, a wisp of danger, the very real sense of excitement to an existence that needed to be invigorated. You find yourself capitulating to the new person's will almost immediately.

A year later, you're still hanging out with the same old crowd when someone asks you if had you had met anyone new and interesting lately. "Not really," you reply. "You know, the same old same old." Suddenly you feel a twang of guilt because there was that one brief tropical storm that blew through a year earlier, but while it was a nice change of pace, it turned out to be something rather unsubstantial -- a fresh, sparkling coat of paint on what turned out to be a shallow package.

I've been having those same kind of feelings about the movie Slumdog Millionaire. It appeared suddenly out of the east, caught us all up in its tidal wave, blew through, picked up a slew of Oscars and left, not really altering the landscape all that much.

I was recently reviewing the handful of films that I thought were not only the best of last year but films that will be remembered fondly long into the next decade -- films like The Visitor, Frozen River, Happy Go Lucky, Milk, Wendy and Lucy, Let the Right One In, I've Loved You So Long, The Wrestler, and, yes, even The Dark Knight. And in the back of my mind was this nagging suspicion I was leaving out a film that belonged in that list. When I realized the film I was forgetting was Slumdog Millionaire, I took another careful look at it and thought, "No, it really doesn't belong on that list."

Slumdog caught us all by surprise, but like any light that shines too brightly at the beginning, its dazzle has faded rapidly. In about five years -- perhaps even less -- it won't even be remembered as one of the 10 best films of 2008, let alone the best.

The game's a killer

Reason 434,628 I don't play golf.

SI makes Alabama top seed; OU out of tourney for now

I mentioned last week that Sports Illustrated is pursuing the folly of a 16-team college football playoff and each week will be presenting a bracket reflecting how the tournament would be shaped if the season ended at that time.

So, if the season ended after last weekend's games, SI would elevate Alabama over Florida as the No. 1 seed. And Oklahoma, which suffered its second defeat of the season last Saturday, would be excluded from the 16-team field. (I fully expect the Sooners to be back in securely by the time the season actually does end).

At any rate, here's the mag's tournament seedings after last weekend's games:

(1) Alabama vs. (16) Nebraska
(8) Cincinnati vs. (9) TCU
(5) Virginia Tech vs. (12) Iowa
(4) LSU vs. (13) Oregon

(3) Texas vs. (14) Auburn
(6) Boise State vs. (11) Miami
(7) USC vs. (10) Ohio State
(2) Florida vs. (15) Oklahoma State

By the way, is there going to be a more significant regular season game played this year other than Saturday night's Florida at LSU battle? I'm hoping our South Florida correspondent can provide us with some much needed insight into this one.

A tragedy of Shakespearian proportions

I like Don Hill. I have ever since I got to know him beginning over eight years ago now. I always will like him. And the fact that a jury found him guilty earlier today ... or was it yesterday, now ... of some sort of public corruption doesn't alter my feelings about him one bit.

Don Hill is not a bad guy. Doesn't even come close. Now, someone who strikes or in some other way injures a defenseless child or a woman will be writ in large script in my black book of eternal damnation. But, c'mon, this is politics here and not even politics on a grand crooked scale like Watergate, Iran-Contra, Teapot Dome, Tammany Hall, New Orleans, Detroit.

I'm not excusing Hill or absolving him of any blame. Don Hill came across to me as a man who lived from paycheck to paycheck, not really ever getting ahead, one of the very few whose election to the Dallas City Council was an advancement in pay grade and who perhaps saw the opportunity to get a better brand of used car and took it. And even with that, I'm not convinced he's convinced he did anything wrong.

"I know in my heart that I didn't have a corrupt intent in anything I did," Hill told Gromer Jeffers Jr. of the Dallas Morning News after the verdict was announced. "I know the things that we did, my wife and I ... all we wanted to do is the very best for the citizens of Dallas, and we were doing it at great sacrifice."

Dallas has a municipal political structure that does not allow for leaders to develop. Take a look around you and count the real leaders in Dallas politics. You won't find any. Da Mayor likes to run things, but being in charge and being a leader are two entirely different things. In fact, the closest thing we have to a leader at City Hall is not even an elected official ... it's City Manager Mary Suhm. She has united normally warring political factions unlike any predecessor I can think of and when she raises her sword in the air and commands "Follow me," her employees will be right behind her. They may chafe at her brusque style now and then, but when all is said and done, May Suhm is the person you want commanding the troops in the field as well as dealing with the generals that ordered those troops there.

Hill, however, was emerging as a leader the black community of Dallas desperately needed and still needs. Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway is trying to fill that void, but Caraway only wants to make the black community a much-needed adjunct of the white power structure and not a separate voice with its own concerns, cultures and passions, which is what Hill wanted and what would be in the best interests of the black community.

When I was the public information officer for the City of Dallas, I wrote, among other things, a number of speeches for City Councilman Ed Oakley. Once, when Hill needed a speech written for a special Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration event, Oakley recommended me for the task. Hill sent me an e-mail, describing the event, what he wanted to accomplish and I wrote a speech for him. After the event, he sent me another e-mail saying it had been the most well-received speech he had ever given and asked me to do another one for another unrelated event, possibly even on the need for additional public housing. This relationship went on for a couple of months when one day I received an e-mail from Hill asking me if I was available for lunch. I told him I was and would meet him in his office at 11:30 a.m. I walked in at the appointed time, he took one look at me and said "What do you want?" I mentioned the lunch he had proposed. "But .... but .... but ...," he stammered. "You're white!" It was one of the nicest compliments I had ever received.

But I formed my greatest admiration for Hill watching him tackle difficult, divisive issues that came before the City Council. Unlike most of his colleagues, who only want to be on the winning side of any close vote, all Hill cared about was that he was on the right side and that usually meant the compassionate side. More than anyone else I've seen on the City Council, Don Hill gave a voice to all those who had no voice in city government.

And now these voices are silent once again and that's the greatest tragedy.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2009) ***½ You have to wonder about a movie called Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Is the redundancy in the title self-mocking or just bluntly declarative? It’s a question that lingers around the movie itself, which is either an affectionate chronicle of a Canadian heavy metal band that never quite made it or else a deadpan mockery of the same band. But there is also a kind of sincerity that can seem to the jaded eye like self-parody, and the earnest, heartfelt striving of the two men at the center of Anvil, Robb Reiner and Steve "Lips" Kudlow, makes the band’s story more touching than comical. Mockery would be too easy and too mean, and the success of Anvil! The Story of Anvil lies in its ability to make you care about an enterprise you might initially have been inclined to laugh at. Mr. Reiner and Mr. Kudlow may not quite merit full-metal glory, but they don’t deserve oblivion either, and Anvil! The Story of Anvil makes both a case and a place for their band. Grade B+

My Life in Ruins (2009) **½ My Life in Ruins, Nia Vardalos’s first movie in five years, might as well be titled How Georgia Got Her Kefi Back — Georgia being Ms. Vardalos’s character, a Greek-American tour guide in the old country, and kefi being the Greek word for joy, high spirits, life force, whatever. Directed by Donald Petrie (Miss Congeniality, Grumpy Old Men) from a screenplay by Mike Reiss that is larded with stale 1970s-style sitcom humor, My Life in Ruins has none of the homey authenticity of My Big Fat Greek Wedding (which Ms. Vardalos wrote). Seven years after her breakthrough, Ms. Vardalos may be slimmer and more glamorous, but she seems less real. This move is not likely to spur much tourism to Greece. The sights, though impressive, are not photographed interestingly, and the citizens of the host country are less than welcoming. Grade: C

Year One (2009) **** "Comedy," Jerry Lewis or some other professional wisenheimer once said, "is a man in trouble." In Harold Ramis’s Year One, a thoroughly, sometimes gaggingly broad and sly conceptual laugh-in laced-with-jokes — about God, poop, circumcision, female underarm hair and the state of Israel — comedy is two men dressed in animal skins and neck deep in shtick. Set in what looks like a succession of B-movie studio sets, the film brings to mind a Hope and Crosby road movie, though only if Bob and Bing, after studying the Bible as children and reading Nietzsche as adults, were grappling with issues of faith. Filling Hope and Crosby’s clown shoes nicely in Year One are Jack Black and Michael Cera as Paleolithic tribesmen. Grade: A-

This week's major college football matchups

Here's one of my favorite pieces of trivia: Between 1985 and 1987, Oklahoma only lost three football games and all three were to the University of Miami. In 1985, OU was ranked No. 3 in the country and Miami was unranked when the two teams met in Norman. In 1986 and 1987, the No. 1 Sooners lost to the No. 2 Hurricanes in Miami.

Tomorrow night these two teams meet again to determine which will remain in contention for this year's national championship. It's the top game of the weekend. Both have one loss on their record. OU's was the most shocking, a season-opening defeat at the ends of BYU in a game that saw defending Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Sam Bradford leave the game with a shoulder injury. He hasn't played since and won't play tomorrow. No matter. His replacement, Landry Jones, has looked spectacular, albeit against the likes of Idaho and Tulsa.

Miami began the season as a spoiler, first defeating 18th ranked Florida State and then Mo. 14 Georgia Tech. Last week, however, Virginia Tech blew out the Hurricanes 31-7 with a miserly defense that suffocated Hurricane quarterback Jacory Harris.

As good as Tech's defense is, OU's is better and that's the reason I'm picking the Sooners to win by 8, even though the game is being played in Miami.

Southern California at California. Here is how the Pac-10 has shaken out the last couple of years. USC loses a conference game it probably shouldn't have lost and then goes on to dominate the rest of the way, winding up representing the conference one more time in the Rose Bowl. The Trojans have already lost that game they shouldn't have, against Washington a couple of weeks ago. So they should cruise now, right? Perhaps, but I'm not so sure that awful weight room injury to running back Stafon Johnson doesn't prove to be a serious distraction.

Two weeks ago, California's running back Jahvid Best was considered the major Heisman competition for Florida's Tim Tebow. Then Oregon held him to 55 yards on 16 carries last week in a game the Ducks dominated 42-3 and Best's Heisman hopes ended. I'm not sure this USC team is as good as those previous teams that dominated the conference following a loss, but I do think they are probably five points better than Cal.

Louisiana State at Georgia. So far this season, five teams ranked among the Top 5 at one time or another lost. LSU seems to be the perfect candidate to be No. 6. Why? Most people think it will be because L.S.U is looking past this game to next week's matchup with Florida. C'mon. How can any SEC team look past Georgia?

I think the reason is more that L.S.U. may be the most overranked team in the country right now. The Bengals did beat South Carolina, but they looked terribly pedestrian last week against Mississippi State when they rushed for all of 30 yards total and scored on an interception return and a punt return. And Georgia has a much better defense than Mississippi State's as well as a better offense, built around receiver A.G. Green (who is averaging 107 yards a game to lead the league) and steadily improving quarterback Joe Cox. This game is going to be close all the way, but I'm picking the Bulldogs by 1.

ELSEWHERE
Alabama by 11 over Kentucky
Arkansas by 1 over Texas A&M
Cincinnati by 28 over Miami, Ohio
Florida State by 1 over Boston College
Georgia Tech by 5 over Mississippi State
Michigan State by 4 over Michigan
Mississippi by 3 over Vanderbilt
North Carolina by 15 over Virgina
Notre Dame by 10 over Washington
Ohio State by 17 over Indiana
Penn by 9 over Dartmouth
Penn State by 15 over Illinois
South Florida by 15 over Syracuse
Stanford by 3 over U.C.L.A.
Tennessee by 4 over Auburn
Virginia Tech by 24 over Duke
Wisconsin by 5 over Minnesota

Time to refocus the Polanski arguments

When Academy-Award winning director Roman Polanski was arrested Saturday in Zurich you would have thought a freedom-loving patriot had been unfairly detained for speaking out against a totalitarian political regime.

Petitions for free Polanski were circulated and signed by people in the entertainment community whose work I greatly admire.

Here's the deal, however. Polanski confessed to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 after plying her with Quaaludes and champagne. Then, when a plea bargain he thought was in place that would have kept him out of jail began to fall apart, he went on the lamb and fled the country. There is a warrant out for his arrest. Roman Polanski, the adult, preyed on a child and I don't care how many years have passed since that happened or how many fine films he has made in the interim, he must still be held accountable for this crime to which he confessed.

Why SI's college playoff system will never--ever--see the light of day

It is economically untenable for the overwhelming majority of university and college presidents/athletic directors.

The playoffs would add 15 post-season games to the college schedule, the effect of which would be to kill the current bowl system. Now there are those Utopians who dream you can incorporate the current bowl structure into a playoff system; the problem with that argument is that it's not the bowl structure that needs to be preserved, it's the bowl games themselves.

I can see SMU President Gerald R. Turner having fits about such a playoff system. SMU head football coach June Jones is not, right now, striving to make the Mustangs one of the top 16 teams in the country that could make a playoff; he just wants to get them bowl eligible and into a bowl game. That would be a huge plus for this team. Do you think he's gong to favor a plan that kills his chances of doing that? That will really help his recruiting efforts.

You could try to keep many of the current bowl games going along with the playoff games, but that would mean those bowl games are to college football what the post-season NIT is to college basketball: completely irrelevant. And where would the money come from for these bowl games with television revenues being diverted solely to the playoffs?

Here is the only way I can see a playoff plan like SI's working: Allow all the teams that don't make the playoffs the opportunity to schedule two additional games of their own that same season. Actually, I have been mulling various scenarios for this around in my head and you could really have fun and spark regional interest in pair of games played on a home-and-home basis with the outcome decided by total points of the two games.

Plus these extra two games would answer the objections of the teams who don't make the playoffs by giving them the opportunity to generate revenue; obviously not as much as a playoff team would make but at least it's directly generated revenue that would be better than the totally unsatisfactory "spread-the-wealth-among-conference-teams" that current playoff proponents are suggesting would satisfy those schools not among the Top 16.

But I don't think those proposing a college football playoff care one whit about the 100+ teams that don't make the final 16, only the handful that do. And as long as that's the case, you're never going to get a playoff.

I will continue to update SI's ongoing bracket as the year progresses. I mean, what harm can that do and, besides, it makes for a nice diversion from reality.

SI's college football playoff

Long-time readers know I have been opposed to a college playoff system for a number of reasons, chief among them being that I think it cheapens what is, without question, the most exciting and meaningful regular season in sports.

Sports Illustrated, however, has proposed a playoff system that I find intriguing. First, it is a 16-team playoff, not an eight-team one, which most propose. Second, it would be seeded totally disregarding the BCS, which would be mandatory for me to support a playoff system.

If the college football season ended after last week's games, here's how SI's first round matchups would look (the number in parenthesis is the team's seed):

(1) Florida vs (16) Auburn
(8) Oklahoma vs (9) Houston
(5) Virginia Tech vs. (12) Ohio State
(4) LSU vs (13) Iowa

(3) Texas vs (14) Oregon
(6) Boise State vs (11) TCU
(7) Cincinnati vs (10) USC
(2) Alabama vs (15) Miami

You gotta admit, there's a lot of appeal to those eight games. I know I would pay the semi big bucks to see that first-round Houston/OU matchup.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Away We Go (2009) ** Are we screw-ups? Verona wonders aloud. (I’m paraphrasing.) She and her boyfriend, Burt, expecting their first child, live in a ramshackle, poorly heated house and drive a boxy old Volvo. They are maybe a little scruffy, but they seem, objectively, to be doing all right, with jobs that don’t require them to go to work and a relationship that looks tender and durable. Verona’s question may or may not be disingenuous, but the answer provided by Away We Go, the slack little road comedy in which it arises, is unambiguous. Far from being screw-ups, Verona and Burt, played with passive-aggressive winsomeness by Maya Rudolph and Jon Krasinski, are manifestly superior to everyone else in the movie and, by implication, the world. And even though they express themselves with a measure of diffidence, it’s clear that they are acutely, at times painfully, aware of their special status as uniquely sensitive, caring, smart and cool beings on a planet full of cretins and failures. The smug self-regard of this movie, directed by Sam Mendes from a script by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, takes a while to register, partly because Ms. Rudolph and Mr. Krasinski are appealing and unaffected performers and partly because the writing has some humor and charm. Does it sound as if I hate this movie? Don't be silly. But don't be fooled. This movie does not like you. Grade: C-

The Brothers Bloom (2009) **½ Rian Johnson’s globe-trotting caper comedy The Brothers Bloom is the movie equivalent of an elaborate juggling act whose performers keep dozens of pins wheeling in the air. As much as you admire the stagecraft and the technical skills on display, when all is said and done, that’s all it is: a fancy, not-quite-two-hour stunt. What you take away from this snazzy-looking fantasy about fraternal grifters embarking on a final con are its travel brochure-pretty pictures of colorful locales including Prague, St. Petersburg and Montenegro. Beyond that your response to the movie, which takes too conspicuous a delight in its own cleverness, is likely to be a shrug and a "so what?" Like those airborne pins, The Brothers Bloom never lands. Grade: C

Filth and Wisdom (2008) *½ Pop go the dialectics in Filth and Wisdom, a tale of bumping and grinding your way to happiness from the hardest-working hard body in show business, that precision sex-and-beat machine turned first-time movie director known as Madonna. Set in London, the loosely threaded 84-minute story written by the Big M and Dan Cadan (a former crew member for her ex, Guy Ritchie) involves three roomies who are peddling body and soul in order to follow their different dreams, all of which should sound familiar to the Madonna faithful: music, dance and ... saving impoverished African children. Not that Madonna has gone in for originality, which isn't really her thing: rather, instead of repurposing a genre, she has riffled through the art-house catalog for inspiration, as evidenced by the film's intentionally grubby visual texture, jumpy editing, direct-address commentary, freeze frames and other tricks. Grade: D+

The Girlfriend Experience (2009) ***½ Steven Soderbergh shot The Girlfriend Experience over a few weeks last fall, with a relatively low budget, a portable high-definition video camera and a mostly nonprofessional cast. The film’s means are modest, not unlike the guerrilla techniques Mr. Soderbergh used in Che, but nonetheless The Girlfriend Experience has a sleek, tailored look appropriate to its setting, which is the moneyed precincts of Manhattan at the height — and most likely the end — of the recent gilded age. Every frame swims with signs of dearly bought, casually enjoyed luxury as the camera makes its way from high-end boutiques to jewelbox hotels, exclusive restaurants and the cabin of a private plane. Chelsea (Sasha Grey), the main character — more case study than heroine — is not only a consumer of top-of-the line merchandise, keeping a careful ledger of the clothes and accessories she has purchased and worn. She is also a commodity in this rarified market, a prostitute whose specialty is alluded to in the title of the movie. She offers her rich clients more than sex with an obliging, pretty young woman. The Girlfriend Experience is about, and also traffics in, the intoxification of surfaces, and to say it objectifies Ms. Grey, who is very young (just 21) and very pretty, would be more plot summary than critique When the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded and the 10th-anniversary deluxe collectors edition comes around, this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true. Grade: B

Management (2009) *** If hell is a place of soul-crushing boredom, the Kingman Motor Inn, the Arizona hostelry in which Stephen Belber’s off-kilter romantic comedy Management sputters to a start, is a gateway to damnation. This anonymous, sunbaked depot is where 38-year-old Mike Cranshaw (Steve Zahn) works as the night manager, repairing backed-up toilets and discharging other odd jobs under the watchful eyes of his parents, Jerry (Fred Ward) and Trish (Margo Martindale), who own the place. Mike’s dead-end existence is unsettled by a sudden glimpse of heaven when an attractive guest, Sue Claussen (Jennifer Aniston), who sells the kind of sterile corporate art found on motel walls, checks in for a short stay. With stalkerlike persistence, the pesky Mike courts her with a bottle of wine, "compliments of management," which he insists they drink together, followed later by cheap champagne. Management aspires to be a hybrid of that great-granddaddy of modern romantic comedies about uncomfortable male initiation, The Graduate, and smart American road-trip comedies like Flirting With Disaster and Little Miss Sunshine. If it isn’t half as good — or as funny — as its forerunners, it maintains its integrity as a small, sweet-natured comedy that refuses to obey the commercial dictates of Hollywood by allowing its characters to determine their own zany destinies. Mike may be a bumbling sad sack, but Mr. Zahn gives him just enough spunky appeal to lend this unlikely fly-by-afternoon coupling and its consequences a shred of credibility. Grade: C+

Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) **½ Monsters vs. Aliens cheerfully converts the two major sources of cinematic terror — invaders from outer space and inhuman, ungodly terrestrial creatures — into wacky, goofy, familiar figures. The movie, directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon from a many-authored script, comes out of DreamWorks Animation and offers the latest twist on the easygoing, parodic formula refined in the studio’s Shrek franchise and last year’s Kung Fu Panda. Just as Shrek and its successors pushed aside the sweet enchantment of traditional fairy tale movies in favor of belching and winking (with a saving spoonful of sugar at the end), so does Monsters vs. Aliens turn fright and apocalypse into strenuous, noisy, 3-D fun. The movie is curiously unmemorable, partly because nearly all of its humor depends on your having seen something like it before, even if you haven't. Grade: C

Shrink (2009) **½ Like smog settling over Los Angeles, a creeping sense of anomie haunts the Hollywood power players and parasites sidling nervously through Shrink, a portrait of a disenchanted therapist to the stars and his clientele. Directed by Jonas Pate from a screenplay by Thomas Moffett, based on a story by Henry Rearden, this dissection of a soul-sick community of self-medicating actors, writers and agents would like to think of itself as a contemporary Play It as It Lays, only kinder and gentler. Shrink doesn’t peer into the abyss as fixedly as Play It as It Lays, the 1970 Joan Didion novel or its screen adaptation by the director Frank Perry (for which Ms. Didion wrote the screenplay with John Gregory Dunne). Nor does it have the ruthless satiric thrust of Robert Altman’s Player, or the pungent gallows humor of a Bruce Wagner novel. But its central character, Dr. Henry Carter (Kevin Spacey), is afflicted with the same metaphysical malaise that engulfed Ms. Didion’s characters. The other characters are mostly too sketchy and their connections too contrived for Shrink to jell as an incisive ensemble piece. Grade: C

Thanks for (ruining) the memories, John

Back in the early 1960s, during my wanderlust days, I found myself living in St. Thomas and I remember my companion and I would often find ourselves on the beach on Friday and Saturday nights, passing around a guitar, a jug, some cannabis and generally being young, stupid, carefree, romantic and crazy. Several years later, I discovered four of our friends we met there joined together formally as a singing group that was originally called the Mugwumps and later became known as the Mamas and the Papas.

I would probably have mostly fond memories of that time anyway, but they were enhanced, possibly disproportionately, because I could say "I went skinny dipping in the Caribbean with the Mamas and the Papas."

Because of this revelation, however, all those fond memories have been erased, replaced by ugly thoughts. And I'm not happy about it.

This week's more intriguing college football games

The problem with football rankings is that they are based largely on expectations. At the beginning of the season Florida and Texas were ranked the two best teams in the country and, since both have won all their games so far this season, they are still ranked as the two best teams in the country.

But are they? Really? Based on their performances on the field so far this year I could make a strong argument that they are not. This is especially true after last weekend when both teams struggled against drastically inferior opponents. The week before that, Texas had its hands full with a Wyoming team that got thumped last week by a Colorado team that hadn't won all year.

So who deserves to be ranked No. 1? Based solely on their on-the-field performances so far this year, I would have to go with the Miami Hurricanes. To date this season, the Hurricanes have beaten a Florida State team that manhandled BYU on the road and then swamped what most consider a good Georgia Tech squad.

So exactly how good are the Hurricanes? This question could be answered tomorrow when the Canes venture to Blacksburg to play the Hokies of Virginia Tech in what I consider the Big Game of the Day. Miami has a new offensive coordinator this season in Mark Whipple and whether it's because of his systems or because of the outstanding play of quarterback Jacory Harris, the Canes are averaging 140 more yards and 8.4 more points a game than they did last year. Virginia Tech, on the other hand, opened the season with a 10-point loss to Alabama followed by a miracle win over Nebraska. Its usually strong defense seems suspect and so even though the Hokies are playing at home, I'm picking Miami to win this one.

California at Oregon: California, which may be the best team in the Pac-10, is a terrible road team. Last week it finally won at Minnesota, snapping a four-game road losing streak. This week the Bears travel to Auzten Stadium, widely regarded as the loudest stadium in college football. I don't know what to think about Oregon -- it lost both the game and its cool against Boise State, came back to whip a mediocre Purdue team, but then shocked the football world by ending Utah's 16-game winning streak. California is led by running back Jahvid Best, who has replaced Texas quarterback Colt McCoy as the current Heisman runnerup. One of the reasons Best has been so successful is because quarterback Kevin Riley has completed 70 percent of his passes so defenses can't cram the line to stop Best. California's road performance will keep the game close, but ultimately I think California wins by a field goal.

TCU at Clemson. Both Utah and BYU have lost this season, leaving TCU and Houston as the only probable BCS Busters for 2009. And to maintain that status, TCU must win this weekend in Death Valley. If you're looking for wide open spread the field football, this is not the game for you. But if you enjoy defense, the running game, playing for field position, this should be your cup of tea. TCU is the 15th ranked team in the country and Clemson is unranked so I guess a Clemson victory would be regarded as an upset. But what I said earlier about ratings being more about expectations than level of play is really true here. But if everyone considers it an upset, it's an upset: Clemson to win by two touchdowns.

Iowa at Penn State. The only reason this game is getting any attention is because Iowa dropped Penn State from the ranks of the unbeaten last year and because Penn State is ranked No. 5 in the country after playing a trio of patsies: Akron, Syracuse and Temple. Come to think of it, those are two good reasons. There's no way of knowing just how good this Nittany Lion team is and I'm not convinced they are good enough to knock off Iowa, even if the game is being played at Happy Valley. It may be regarded as another upset, but I'm going with Iowa by a TD.

Texas Tech at Houston. Not a game for the faint of heart. Both teams love to score. Both teams hate to play defense. I'm picking Houston 103-98.

Arkansas at Alabama. Does the name Ryan Mallett mean anything to anyone? In his last two years of high school ball, Matthew Stafford only lost one game and that was to a Texarkana team quarterbacked by Mallett, who then accepted a scholarship to Michigan and disappeared. Well, Mallett has re-emerged after transferring to Arkansas, infusing the Hogs with offensive power. Does Alabama have the defensive chops to stop Mallett and the Hogs? I'm saying a resounding yes: Alabama by three TDs.

ELSEWHERE:
Boise State by 18 over Bowling Green
Cincinnati by 16 over Fresno State
Florida by 4 over Kentucky
Florida State by 19 over South Florida
Georgia by 10 over Arizona State
Georgia Tech by 4 over North Carolina
Kansas by 7 over Southern Mississippi
LSU by two TDs over Mississippi State
Michigan by 12 over Indiana
Notre Dame by 3 over Purdue
Ohio State by 19 over Illinois
Oregon State by 2 over Arizona
Southern Cal by 31 over Washington State
Wisconsin by 18 over Michigan State

Tax is not a four-letter word

I'm still trying to get over the spectacle of watching the Dallas City Council, the worst collection of ward-heeling political hacks I've ever seen collected as a single political entity (and I spent a lot of time covering New York and New Orleans councils), pass the worst budget possible under current conditions and possibly the worst budget in the history of the city. And the disgrace of it all is that it wouldn't have happened if these hacks had simply listened to the electorate that put them in office in the first place.

All 15 members of this council are to blame. Even District 13's Ann Margolin, who voted against the budget, cannot be excused because she failed to come up with a legitimate reason for her vote, only an excuse. I got the feeling she was thinking "My predecessor, Mitchell Rasansky, never met a city budget he could vote for and I've got to follow in his footsteps and not think for myself. So I will find an excuse, regardless of how lame that excuse is." Her excuse was PILOT is a tax. Well, of course it's a tax. Everyone, with the possible exception of District 12's Ron Natinsky, who is to this city council what Dick Armey used to be to the U.S. House of Representatives and who may actually live in a Far North Dallas Fantasyland, knows PILOT is a tax. High ranking city officials admit to me on a regular basis it is a tax (all except Assistant City Manager A.C. Gonzalez who is wise enough to always speak as though everything he says is on the record). I have stood beside groups of these city officials at budget townhall meetings and seen them barely conceal their laughter when someone tries to explain why it is not really a tax ... not really. But for Ms. Margolin to use this reason to vote against the budget perpetuated the existing problem with the current council -- the worst in the city's history -- and made as much sense as refusing to go to Disneyland because Mickey Mouse is a rodent. She came across as a petulant child.

When 14-1 went into effect nearly 20 years ago, the great fear was that those elected to the council would only promote the interests of their own district and not the city as a whole. No one, and I mean know one (and I was among the political consultants hired to convince voters to create a more representative council), ever thought we'd see the day when the 15 people elected to the council would not only not be interested in the city as a whole but would completely isolate themselves from the wishes of their own constituencies.

During the deliberations on this budget I attended a number of the council's townhall meetings and I attended them in all sections of the city. And the one message that came through loud and clear was "If it means keeping our rec centers and libraries open on their current schedules, if it means having a vibrant office of cultural affairs, if it means keeping our streets in acceptable conditions, if it means providing necessary services to our seniors, if it means keeping our city clean and safe, then, sure, go ahead and raise my taxes."

I attended one of District 10's Jerry Allen's townhall meetings he held at the Freshman Center of Lake Highlands High School. And I heard staunch anti-tax advocate, former city councilman Alan Walne, actually scold Allen and the rest of the council for not passing the tax increase the voters said they were willing to accept to pay for the 2006 bond program. "You're setting a dangerous precedent," Walne told Allen. "You are saying we can get all these things for free and you know and I know that's simply not true."

I attended another townhall jointly sponsored by District 14's Angela Hunt and District 9's Sheffie Kadane and I sat there and watched as Ms. Hunt asked for a show of hands of all those who favored a tax increase over the proposed cutbacks in city services. More than 60 percent of those attending raised their hands. All Ms. Hunt and Mr. Kadane have done since is to ignore the 60 percent.

Only District 8's Tennell Atkins seemed to be in tune. District 8 stretches across the bottom of the city from the western city limits to the eastern. It is a mess. Think of a California representative who must represent the concerns of a constituent living along the Mexican border with those of one living along the Oregon border. I attended three of Mr. Atkins townhall meetings, one in the far southwestern part of the city, one in the far southeastern part and one in the far southern part. In this instance, however, the attendees at all three of those townhalls knew what was needed to fix the problem, Mr. Atkins heard their cries for help but when he carried their message back to the center of political hackdom, he was scolded and told to stand in the corner until he saw things their way.

And what is their way? Essentially, it's that tax is a four-letter word, something never to be mentioned in polite mixed company. But really a tax is nothing more than the price we pay for government. Would we rather not have to pay for it? Like I would rather not have to pay for a root canal.

But what the the Ward-Heeling Hacks of Marilla don't understand is that not all taxes are equal. A tax becomes more onerous in direct proportion to the number of miles it has to travel before it is disbursed. So when it comes to taxes we hate, federal taxes top the list. Next come state taxes. Local taxes are at the bottom of the list.

Why is that? It has to do with pride of ownership. I will gladly pay to make sure my own house is safe and secure, freshly painted, spruced up, looks clean. That's where I live. That's my home. And, by gum, I'm going to do what I can to --spend what I need to spend -- make it the best in the hood. However, don't ask me to spend that same amount of money to do the same thing for that house in El Paso or Amarillo. And, whatever you do, don't even try to get me to contribute for a new foundation for a house in Miami, Des Moines or, heaven forbid, in Mumbai or South Africa.

People around here are still upset that Jonestown wound up in Arlington and not in Dallas. Why? Because of the economic benefits we lost? Hell, no. What was lost was far more important than economic benefits; it was the right to stick our index finger into the air and shout to the rest of the world "See, Dallas really is No. 1."

What the Ward-Heeling Hacks of Marilla fail to understand is that we, the people of Dallas, are proud of our city and we want to continue to be proud of it. We want to invite outsiders over, show them around and play "Can you top this?" And we're willing to pay for these bragging rights. If you don't believe me, just examine the results of the last bond election or attend a budget townhall meeting of your own sometime. Instead, the Hacks are going to let us slide into a slippery hole that will be terribly difficult to extricate ourselves from.

But it didn't have to be that way. The whole thing could have been salvaged as late as Wednesday's budget discussion. The door was opened when Mr. Natinsky responded to Ms. Margolin's silly objection to the budget. "PILOT is not a tax," Natinsky said simply and straightforwardly, almost as though he actually believed this Big Lie. Oh, I wish I had been on the council at that moment. I would have pushed my Request to Speak button and when Da Mayor called on me, I would have said:

"Colleagues, I want to present a motion that would serve as a substitute to the question now being debated. And I know this motion should receive unanimous approval from this body because I know how much you like to raise fees, but not taxes; and how you steadfastly maintain that PILOT is not a tax. The motion is Be it resolved that the city abandon its current tax structure, including all property taxes and the penny it collects from the sales tax, and, in place of those taxes, institute a series of fees based on the same parameters and formulas. Be it further resolved that, because property owners in the city, who are in the minority, subsidize the majority of the population who are renters, that a fee equal to 1 percent of each month's rent be assessed renters. Be it further resolved that the level of these fees address all the items of the city manager's proposed budget, both those below and above the line. And, finally, be it further resolved that these fee payments should now and forever more be known as Payments In Lieu of Taxes."

A look at Canadian and its high school football team

The New York Times has a spread today on the Panhandle town of Canadian and its unifying force, the high school football team, 2007 and 2008 state champions. Here's one paragraph I found particularly telling:

"After an energy boom tapped out in 1985, the downtown in Canadian, population 2,233, grew desolate. A dozen buildings were left empty or boarded up. But the town grew more savvy about the boom-and-bust cycle of oil and gas, remaking itself in the late 1990s as a regional center for ecotourism and refurbishing its downtown with restored brick storefronts, a popular steakhouse and a state-of-the-art movie theater (pictured)."

Later on, the author wrote:

"The current recession has gut-punched oil and gas drilling, costing 400 to 500 local jobs, city officials said. Yet Canadian remains one of Texas’ most prosperous school districts. It has an enrollment of only 798 from pre-K through 12th grade, but the school district’s property values were last assessed at $1.5 billion. Each student in grades 7 through 12 has been issued a laptop computer by the district. The tennis team has four courts on campus. The state champion track team has a new running surface. The football team has an artificial turf field, an 8,500-square-foot field house scheduled to open next month and a sophisticated computer scouting system that can track opponents’ plays for the last five years."

It's a good read. Check it out.

Shana Tovah

Happy 5770th. Let's celebrate!

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Battle for Terra (2009) **½ The movie’s messages are delivered with a heavy hand, but some of the scenes are eye-popping, especially — sorry, peace-loving Terrians — the battle sequences. Grade: C

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2009) ½* A junky-looking romantic comedy that’s neither remotely romantic nor passably comic. Grade: D-

Lymelife (2009) ***½ Despite some floundering, the film keeps you hooked, mostly through the performances by Timothy Hutton, Alec Baldwin and Kieran Culkin. Grade: B

O’Horten (2009) ***½ O’Horten is about frustration, patience, kindness and the wildness that lurks in even the calmest hearts. What’s odd about that? Grade: B+

Observe and Report (2009) ½* If you thought Abu Ghraib was a laugh riot then you might love this film, a potentially brilliant conceptual comedy that fizzles because its writer and director, Jody Hill, doesn’t have the guts to go with his spleen. Grade: D-

A look at a few competitive college football games this week

I put the word "competitive" in the headline for a reason. Many will argue that the two biggest games of this upcoming weekend are Tennessee at Florida and/or Texas Tech at Texas. The problem with those games are that neither is going to be competitive. Florida will spank Tennessee by at least four touchdowns, possibly by as many as six, and Texas is going to walk all over Tech, exacting revenge for last year's meltdown.

That leaves me with three games that have a chance to be interesting and competitive and the results of which could have lasting impact on the rest of this season.

Nebraska at Virginia Tech. The Cornhuskers are getting better, make no mistake about that, but they haven't arrived at the level where they can beat the Hokies in Blacksburg. If this game was being played in Lincoln, I would pick Nebraska, but this time around I'm going with Tech's defense to control Nebraska's high-octane offense.

Michigan State at Notre Dame. I picked the Irish to beat Michigan last week and maybe I just haven't learned my lesson because I'm going with them again this week. Notre Dame actually put themselves in a position to win that game last weekend and I don't think they'll squander those opportunities two weeks in a row. Besides, Notre Dame's offense is really, really good. And I still think the Big 10 is overrated.

Florida State at BYU. Some say this game will let the world know just how good the Cougars are and what their chances are of being this year's BCS busters. I, on the other hand, think Florida State has an awful football team this year -- awful as defined by losing to Jacksonville State at home. There's absolutely no way I can pick Bowden's Bunch to win in Lavell Edwards Stadium.

NY Times architecture critic doesn't much care for Jonestown

Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, writing in today's New York Times, has a few bones to pick with the Cowboys grand new stadium out in Arlington. For one thing, he writes:

"Cowboys Stadium suffers from its own form of nostalgia: its enormous retractable roof, acres of parking and cavernous interiors are straight out of Eisenhower’s America, with its embrace of car culture and a grandiose, bigger-is-better mentality. The result is a somewhat crude reworking of old ideas, one that looks especially unoriginal when compared with the sophisticated and often dazzling stadiums that have been built in Europe and the Far East over the last few years. Worse for fans, its lounges and concourses are so sprawling that I suspect more than a few spectators will get lost and miss the second-half kickoff."

For another: "Walk around to either side of the structure and you’re confronted with what looks like a conventional suburban office park. ... A few lonely trees only draw attention to the absolute joylessness of the scene."

He concluded: "As it turns out, the biggest controversy so far about the stadium has to do with its supersize scale. The four-sided video board over the field is so big, and hangs so low, that a Tennessee punter hit it during a preseason game. It’s a nice irony that for all the space, there may not be enough room at Cowboys Stadium to play a game."

So there's that.

My chief problem with the Baucus health care bill, besides the obvious one

The obvious one, of course, is that it contains no public option which makes it a bill that absolutely can not be supported. But even if it had contained that alternative, I could still not advocate the passage of the health care reform legislation proposed by Montana Sen. Max Baucus. Here's why:

In his recent impassioned speech on the subject to a joint session of Congress, President Obama clearly stated that any health care reform bill could not allow people to be denied health insurance based on pre-existing conditions. Baucus' bill disobeys that mandate, although he does so maliciously by substituting age for pre-existing conditions. His bill indexes the cost of health insurance to a person's age -- allowing insurers to charge up to five times as much for older citizens than younger ones -- and it just stands to reason that the older you are, the more likely you're going to have pre-existing conditions because you have simply existed longer.

It will also result in employers discriminating against older job seekers because the health care premiums of those workers would be more costly. It will also result in denying insurance coverage to a segment of the population that needs it most, destroy the concept of shared risk -- the foundation for health care reform in the first place -- and make insurance increasingly unaffordable the older you get.

Fortunately, far more sensible health care reform bills have been introduced in the House, so we don't lose anything by killing Baucus' Senate bill as soon as possible.

Good night, Mary

I first set eyes on Mary Travers in 1963. I was living in San Diego, Calif., at the time and Mary and her mates, Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, were just about the biggest thing going in popular music at the time. They had recorded two albums, an eponymous first album and a second one called (Moving), and they had a string of hit singles, Lemon Tree, If I Had a Hammer and most notably Puff the Magic Dragon. They came to San Diego on a concert tour and I remember having seats pretty close to the stage, so close that I noticed a scar on the inside of Mary's left leg. I decided that the scar was there just to prevent her from being absolutely perfect.

But I did not get to know Mary Travers until almost 15 years later and that came about through my association with the Kerrville Folk Festival, of which Peter Yarrow was a founding member and one of the festival's directors. I got to spend a lot of time around Peter during the three weeks of the festival and, even more important, Peter got to spend a lot of time hanging out with my then wee son who always called him "Puff the Magic Dragon Man." During mornings and afternoons the two of them would play hide and seek and some friendly wrestling games around the festival grounds. One year, Peter talked Paul and Mary into coming to Kerrville with him and on that occasion I got to meet and know Mary Travers through an introduction from Peter. We took to each other immediately, staying up late into the nights on the weekend they were in Kerrville solving all the problems of the world and trading war stories around a campfire until the sun began peeking into the valleys of the Texas Hill Country.

We began a written correspondence right after that and then a couple of years later David Card booked Mary Travers as a solo act at his Poor David's Pub. I picked her up at the airport when she arrived for that show and she asked if I could take the time to be her chauffeur because she had a number of errands she wanted to complete while she was in town. She wound up spending three days in Dallas during that time and we spent just about every minute of it together.

A couple of years after that Mary called me to tell me that she, Peter and Paul were getting back together for a reunion tour, but, unfortunately, the tour did not include a stop in Dallas. I wrote a story about the reunion, because it had not been announced anywhere else. The story ran in the Dallas Morning News and was later picked up by wire services and other publications. About a month later, I was notified by a Houston concert promoter that a revised schedule had been worked out and that Peter, Paul and Mary's reunion tour now included a Dallas date. It was years later, when I read the thesis that a Texas A&M masters student had written about me that I learned the story I had written had created such a demand for a Dallas show that a show was added. I was touched and Mary often kidded me about it.

I learned she was sick about five years ago. Mary didn't tell me. Mary, the tower of strength that she was, didn't want to put anyone in a position where they might feel sorry for her. But Mary had a number of very close friends, mostly female, and many of them knew that Mary and I had a 20-year friendship. We continued to correspond and I often talked to her friends and was thrilled at the news that through a bone marrow and stem cell transplant, she had licked the leukemia that had threatened her.

Perhaps it was because I had convinced myself that she had overcome the leukemia that I was so shocked and saddened this evening when one of those close to her called me to let me know Mary had died. "But I thought she had survived the leukemia," I said, hoping to reverse what could not be reversed. "It wasn't the leukemia that killed her," the caller said. "She died from the side effects brought on by one of her chemotherapy treatments."

Mary, the world is not as good a place as it was when you were in it. I will miss your compassion, your commitment, your loyalty and, perhaps most of all, your honesty. But I will always have my pleasant memories and a vivid mental picture of the scar that kept you from being perfect.

Someone please explain to me what exactly the City Council did

According to this story from the Dallas Morning News' City Hall Blog, the Dallas City Council voted to eliminate some of its own expenses. Here is one paragraph from that story:

"The biggest savings comes from an 11-3 vote to eliminate the printing of paper agendas that will save $70,000."

But then later in the same story comes this paragraph:

"The council chose not to cut home delivery of paper agendas because the $6,000 savings could only be realized if the full council agreed to it."

Does anyone else think this doesn't make sense? How could the council not vote to eliminate the home delivery of paper agendas that had already been eliminated by a previous vote?

Will "Nine" be held for 10?

The Weinstein Company's acquisition of A Single Man during the Toronto International Film Festival presents the company with a dilemma. The Weinstein's market their films with Oscar in mind and it may just have too many contenders and not enough money to promote them properly.

A Single Man is a possible best picture nominee and Colin Firth (pictured) has emerged as the leading contender for the best actor Oscar. Julianne Moore is also in contention as a best actress nominee. The film is about the various stages of grief the Firth character experiences after the death of his lifetime partner.

Other Weinstein pictures eligible for the Oscar push are The Road and Inglourious Basterds. The Weinsteins have no choices on the latter film -- it has already gone into wide release -- and The Road has already been pushed back a year.

That leaves Nine, the musical re-invention of Fellini's 8½, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago) and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, and Marion Cotillard. This is the one film that was expected to give Clint Eastwood's Invictus a serious run for best picture. Now the depressing rumors circulating around Toronto involve the Weinstein's inability to promote all four films and the possibility that Nine will be pushed back to 2010.

I stress this is only a rumor, as is the story that Steven Spielberg has decided on Robert Downey Jr. to play Elwood P. Dowd in Spielberg's planned remake of Harvey.

TxDot's ulterior motive

I'm beginning to think the Texas Department of Transportation is taking all this secessionist talk by Gov. Hair and other Tea Party right-win nuts seriously. I mean, if Texas does secede, then there's no more federal highway funds--Austin becomes the federal government (which really is frightening when you think about it. Can anyone name another country of comparable size whose legislative body meets only 180 days every two years and still can't get anything done?)

But I digress. TxDot must be worried about a possible scarcity of funds should it secede (even though the state would probably get to keep a higher percentage of gasoline taxes, but what good is that with all these damn hybrids and alternative fuel cars on the road today?)

But I digress yet again. Somewhere in the bowels of TxDot's bureaucracy there's a brilliant mind who came up with a novel idea for getting the agency additional funds: "Let's design a license plate so hideous that drivers will pay extra to keep from having to put it on their cars."

I remember when the license plate was first proposed and, at the time, I thought it looked a tad garish. I can't remember all the details, but it was something like this: The state held a contest for 5th grade art students at an Austin elementary school and selected four-to-six finalists for the new plates. A graphic designer wasn't selected to do the plates because, remember, this is supposed to be a money-making, not a money-wasting proposition. The four-to-six finalists were then posted on the Internet and people went on-line to vote, exactly the same method used when the people of Dallas voted overwhelmingly to change the name of Industrial Boulevard to Cesar Chavez Boulevard. TxDot, unlike Dallas, didn't ignore the Internet vote even though it had more reason to ignore it than the city of Dallas did.

Like I said, I thought it was garish when I first saw it. And just sitting here on this page, it looks fairly benign. But lately I have seen it on cars and it looks downright hideous. I mean, it might be OK if you never plan to drive a vehicle with the new plates outside the state of Texas. If you do go beyond the state's borders with this plate, however, be sure to roll the windows up tight and have the stereo at full volume to drown out the laughter and the cat-calls.

However, there is an alternative. For an extra $30, you can order yourself a specialty license plate. I'm not talking about those vanity plates where you try to conceal something clever in as few letters as possible and no one but you can figure out what they mean. These are plates you can order and a small percentage of the proceeds from their sale can benefit the organization you choose to display on your plates. Texas has a whopping 188 choices of speciality plates available even as we speak and more are probably on the way. You can even order Dallas Cowboys specialty plates as though Jerry Jones needs more of your money than you have already given him. You can get a plate for just about any university in the state and a couple (LSU and Florida) that we wouldn't want here. You can get plates celebrating Big Bend National Park or Texas Music (but not Texas film), the Special Olympics, Boys and Girls Scouts, even Red Grapefruit.

I'm thinking TxDot fostered this new license plate on us to further the sales of these specialty plates. I know $30 may not sound like much, but you multiply that by the millions of Texas' registered vehicles and you're beginning to talk real money here. I know I will be ordering one so as not to have to dangle the new state plate from my car.

And I know which specialty plate Gov. Hair will be ordering. There's one that reads: "Texas -- It's Like a Whole Other Country."

The most underrated quarterback in college football

My nominee is Case Keenum of the University of Houston. Consider: Against an Oklahoma State defense that throttled Georgia the week before, Keenum connected on 32 of his 46 passes for 366 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. He also rushed for one TD. For the season, he is 55 of 76 for 725 yards, seven touchdowns and an interception. He has run for two touchdowns.

To put that in perspective, that's an average of 150 yards a game better than the numbers currently being posted by leading Heisman candidate Tim Tebow of Florida and two more touchdowns passes against more formidable opponents.

If Keenum keeps this up, he won't be underrated for long. Expect to see his name mentioned in the same sentence with Heisman by others before too long. His next big test comes in two weeks when the Cougars host Texas Tech. UH also must play Mississippi State (which, admittedly, did not look all that strong against Auburn), UTEP, Tulsa and Central Florida on the road.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Easy Virtue (2009) *** This may have been fertile grounds for satire in 1925, when Noel Coward’s drawing-room melodrama Easy Virtue debuted on the stage, but by now this film version feels rather done. Grade: C+

Grace (2009) **½ Grace doesn’t need a high body count to frighten, although its gore is stomach-turning. It’s a horrifying meditation on the unbreakable union of mother and child. Grade: C

Next Day Air (2009) **½ Can’t decide whether it’s a broad stoner comedy or a gritty Tarantino-esque action flick. The humor is there, but violence brings the laughter to an abrupt halt. Grade: C

Trumbo (2008) ***½ An unconventional film about an unconventional man. Part documentary, part expertly staged readings, it focuses on the unquiet life and unforgettable words of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, someone who, as his son puts it, never had to go looking for trouble because it always came to him. Grade: B

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) ** Wolverine purports to tell us more and yet gives us less: It’s so cluttered and action-packed that the action ceases to mean anything — virtually nothing the characters do or say results in consequences that stick. Grade: C-

This week's movie openings

I Can Do Bad All By Myself ***½ With this film, Tyler Perry is savvy enough to let riveting musical numbers by ringers like Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige--along with Taraji P. Henson’s deeply empathetic performance--carry the film’s feverish emotions more than his characteristically ham-fisted screenplay.

9 *** Sobering stuff for an animated movie that pitches itself somewhere between cutesy children’s entertainment and hectoring Grimm’s fairy tale. The problem with it, though, is that it lacks a consistent tone.

Whiteout *½ Even a bad thriller can be entertaining, and this gory murder mystery set in Antarctica has a certain dumb fascination -- up to a point. Then it is defeated by its sheer idiocy.

Sorority Row *½ This film might be utterly lacking in suspense, surprises, and wit, but nobody can say it doesn’t have a hero.

I can rest easy now

Walt Disney studios announced today that Johnny Depp will once again star as you-know-who in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, scheduled for release in the summer of 2011.

Jeffrey Wells really likes "Up in the Air"

Left Coast blogger Jeffrey Wells has gone all gah-gah over Jason Reitman's film Up in the Air, calling it "the most eloquent, affecting and altogether best film of 2009...so far. Yes, better than my beloved The Hurt Locker."

"This is one of the calmest and most unforced this-is-who-we-are, what-we-need and what-we're-all-afraid-of-in-the-workplace movies about adults that I've ever seen," Wells wrote today.

If you're not familiar with the film, it stars George Clooney as a business executive who absolutely loves his job: Flying around the country firing people whose bosses are too meek to do the dirty deed themselves. The story involves his relationship with two women, one (Vera Farmiga) who is a female duplicate of Clooney and another (Anna Kendrick) who thinks Clooney can be replaced by video teleconferencing.

Looking at this week's big college football games

No. 3 Southern California at No. 8 Ohio State: This is not only the biggest game of the weekend, it could be the biggest game of the entire non-conference year. And because it's that big means Ohio State is going to lose, even if the Buckeyes are playing at home. I mean, if OSU had that much trouble last week against Navy, imagine what the Trojan running game and defense is going to do. Plus, I think the Big 10 is the most overrated football conference in the FCS.

No. 18 Notre Dame at Michigan: I'm going against the home team here as well, even though I have sentimental personal reasons to pick the Wolverines. I just think the Notre Dame offense is too powerful for an inexperienced Michigan secondary. Also what I said in the last sentence in the previous prediction still goes.

South Carolina at No. 21 Georgia: No way the Bulldogs begin this season 0-2. No way.

Stanford at Wake Forest: This is the toughest call of the week for me. All the numbers point to a Stanford win but I'm going with Wake just because it does have the home court advantage and because I think the noon starting time is going to be tough on a West Coast team.

UCLA at Tennessee: I'm thinking the Vols will enjoy one more week of prosperity before they sink in the swamp next week.

Other Games:
Air Force over Minnesota
Alabama over Florida International
Arizona over Northern Arizona
Auburn over Mississippi State
Boston College over Kent State
California over Eastern Washington
Cincinnati over Southeast Missouri State
Clemson over Georgia Tech
Colorado over Toledo
Connecticut over North Carolina
Duke over Army
Florida over Troy
Florida State over Jacksonville State
Hawaii over Washington State
Illinois over Illinois State
Iowa over Iowa State
Kansas over UTEP
Kansas State over Louisiana Lafayette
LSU over Vanderbilt
Maryland over James Madison
Michigan State over Central Michigan
Middle Tennessee over Memphis
Missouri over Bowling Green
Navy over Louisiana Tech
Nebraska over Arkansas State
North Carolina State over Murray State
Northwestern over Eastern Michigan
Oklahoma over Idaho State
Oklahoma State over Houston
Oregon over Purdue
Oregon State over UNLV
Penn State over Syracuse
Pittsburgh over Buffalo
Rutgers over Howard
South Florida over Western Kentucky
Southern Miss over UCF
TCU over Virginia
Texas over Wyoming
Texas Tech over Rice
Virginia Tech over Marshall
Washington over Idaho
West Virginia over East Carolina
Western Michigan over Indiana
Wisconsin over Fresno State

One thing for sure: I'm not eating that chocolate muffin on the motel balcony

Up until today, there were two things I never considered that particularly dangerous. One was catching a breath of nighttime air on a motel balcony and the other was eating a chocolate muffin.

Lucy, you got some explanining to do

If there is anyone playing politics with school children it is the Arlington Independent School District which refused to allow President Obama's speech to school children be broadcast into any of its schools yet will bus school children to Jonestown on Sept. 21 (a school day) to hear a speech from George Bush.

The cost of doing nothing

There were a number of great moments during President Obama's health care speech last night before a joint session of Congress, but, to me, this was the most important words he spoke:

"Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true."

That is simply too high a price to pay and, for the life of me, I can't understand how anyone can look themselves in the mirror --can live with themselves -- and say they oppose any plan to make sure those things don't happen.

Must Keep Smiling

From the Pundit Kitchen

I know there's a subversive political message in here someplace if I could just locate it (Cont.)

Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey Record

Tea Party involved in Dallas bus crash that killed 23 seniors

I'm guessing you're familiar with those right-wingnuts that call themselves members of something called the "Tea Party." They are the irresponsible idiots who want to keep a majority of our citizens unhealthy, are fanning the flames of Gov. Hair's secessionist talk and are spreading lies among the senior population to convince them to oppose meaningful health care reform. Well, according to some fine reporting Lindsay Bayerstein (pictured), this same Tea Party is responsible for hiring the irresponsible bus company that led to the deaths of 23 elderly nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005. The bus, you might recall, burst into flames just outside of Dallas.

Call Missing Persons

The Sporting News polled 107 "football experts," including "27 Hall of Famers and past and present Pro Bowlers, executives and coaches," seeking to determine the Top 100 players in the NFL. Here is the list, along with a question: "Does anyone notice the omission of a local celebrity/quarterback?" (and I'm not referring to Matthew Stafford):

1. Peyton Manning, QB, Colts
2. Tom Brady, QB, Patriots
3. Adrian Peterson, RB, Vikings
4. Larry Fitzgerald, WR, Cardinals
5. LaDainian Tomlinson, RB, Chargers
6. Albert Haynesworth, DT, Redskins
7. Ed Reed, S, Ravens
8. Randy Moss, WR, Patriots
9. Troy Polamalu, S, Steelers
10. Tony Gonzalez, TE, Falcons
11. Ray Lewis, ILB, Ravens
12. Ben Roethlisberger, QB, Steelers
13. Dwight Freeney, DE, Colts
14. Steve Hutchinson, G, Vikings
15. DeMarcus Ware, OLB, Cowboys
16. Julius Peppers, DE, Panthers
17. Brian Westbrook, RB, Eagles
18. Drew Brees, QB, Saints
19. James Harrison, OLB, Steelers
20. Nnamdi Asomugha, CB, Raiders
21. Jared Allen, DE, Vikings
22. Donovan McNabb, QB, Eagles
23. Andre Johnson, WR, Texans
24. Steve Smith, WR, Panthers
25. Kurt Warner, QB, Cardinals
26. Champ Bailey, CB, Broncos
27. Shawne Merriman, OLB, Chargers
28. Osi Umenyiora, DE, Giants
29. Walter Jones, OT, Seahawks
30. Kevin Williams, DT, Vikings
31. Anquan Boldin, WR, Cardinals
32. Antonio Gates, TE, Chargers
33. Terrell Owens, WR, Bills
34. Alan Faneca, G, Jets
35. Patrick Willis, ILB, 49ers
36. Mario Williams, DE, Texans
37. Jeff Saturday, C, Colts
38. Jason Witten, TE, Cowboys
39. Brian Dawkins, S, Broncos
40. Matt Birk, C, Ravens
41. Joe Thomas, OT, Browns
42. Michael Turner, RB, Falcons
43. Clinton Portis, RB, Redskins
44. Bob Sanders, S, Colts
45. Terrell Suggs, OLB, Ravens
46. Justin Tuck, DE, Giants
47. Pat Williams, DT, Vikings
48. Joey Porter, OLB, Dolphins
49. Reggie Wayne, WR, Colts
50. Eli Manning, QB, Giants
51. Brett Favre, QB, Vikings
52. Asante Samuel, CB, Eagles
53. Chris Snee, G, Giants
54. Philip Rivers, QB, Chargers
55. Jordan Gross, OT, Panthers
56. Charles Woodson, CB, Packers
57. Lance Briggs, OLB, Bears
58. Tommie Harris, DT, Bears
59. Antonio Cromartie, CB, Chargers
60. Jammal Brown, OT, Saints
61. Brian Urlacher, MLB, Bears
62. Matt Light, OT, Patriots
63. Matt Ryan, QB, Falcons
64. James Farrior, ILB, Steelers
65. Vince Wilfork, NT, Patriots
66. Adrian Wilson, S, Cardinals
67. Lofa Tatupu, MLB, Seahawks
68. Jay Cutler, QB, Bears
69. Kris Jenkins, NT, Jets
70. Chris Johnson, RB, Titans
71. Shaun Rogers, NT, Browns
72. Julian Peterson, OLB, Lions
73. Kyle Vanden Bosch, DE, Titans
74. Trent Cole, DE, Eagles
75. Darnell Dockett, DT, Cardinals
76. Antoine Winfield, CB, Vikings
77. Willie Parker, RB, Steelers
78. Brandon Marshall, WR, Broncos
79. Leonard Davis, G, Cowboys
80. Aaron Kampman, OLB, Packers
81. Jon Beason, MLB, Panthers
82. Calvin Johnson, WR, Lions
83. Kris Dielman, G, Chargers
84. Andre Gurode, C, Cowboys
85. Jay Ratliff, NT, Cowboys
86. DeMeco Ryans, MLB, Texans
87. Roddy White, WR, Falcons
88. Michael Vick, QB, Eagles
89. Michael Roos, OT, Titans
90. Cortland Finnegan, CB, Titans
91. Ryan Clady, OT, Broncos
92. Haloti Ngata, NT, Ravens
93. John Abraham, DE, Falcons
94. Casey Hampton, NT, Steelers
95. Logan Mankins, G, Patriots
96. Steven Jackson, RB, Rams
97. Richard Seymour, DE, Raiders
98. Darrelle Revis, CB, Jets
99. LaMarr Woodley, OLB, Steelers
100. Dallas Clark, TE, Colts

I found it interesting that the Dallas Texans were roundly criticized a couple of years ago for taking defensive end Mario Williams with the first pick in the draft instead of Heisman Trophy winning running back Reggie Bush and that Williams is No. 36 on this list and Bush's name is nowhere to be found.

I also found it disheartening that the only players on this list who are on my fantasy team this year are quarterback Kurt Warner (No. 25), running back Michael Turner (No. 42) and my backup quarterback (at least for now) Jay Cutler (N0. 68).

Hunt blames others for problems she helped create

Displaying the height of hypocrisy, Angela Hunt has a scare piece on her blog today about the city's debt and its ability to repay that debt. The issue is the 2006 bond program and how miserably Ms. Hunt and many other city council persons have handled the sale of those bonds. "But don't blame me," Ms. Hunt essentially writes today, "let's disregard the wishes of the voters even more than we already have."

Ms. Hunt's undemocratic suggestion is to curtail by as much as 50 percent some of the bond programs scheduled for next year.

Let's review, shall we. In 2006 voters passed the largest bond proposal in the city's history after being told exactly how much the these capital improvements would cost. The voters said "Hey, we want these projects and we're willing to pay this price for them."

Ms. Hunt and the the majority of her council colleagues then reneged on the entire deal, saying "Hey, we can get you all this stuff for free. You won't have to pay a cent for it. We'll just cut about $190 million in essential services, fire 800 city employees, close libraries and rec centers and pay for it that way."

Now Ms. Hunt has the unmitigated gall to criticize what she and the rest of the council brought on themselves by saying "Hey, we can't cut anymore so we just won't build what we promised we would build and you said you would pay to have us build."

Here's some advice for you, Ms. Hunt, and the rest of the City Council: Quit representing just the 43 percent of your constituents who are homeowners and start representing all of the people of your district, as you were elected to do. You failed to follow the wishes of the voters in order to protect this 43 percent minority and now your solution for your failure is to disregard their wishes even more by not giving them the improvements they voted for.

Super Bowl predictions

It's really a stupid thing to do: To predict the next Super Bowl matchup before the regular NFL season even begins. But Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News have leaped into the breach, so, naturally, I'm going to follow. Both King and Gosselin say the New England Patriots will be the AFC's representative in the big game. King has gone way out on a limb and said the Chicago Bears will represent the NFC and Gosselin believes it will be my beloved New York Giants. As for me, I'm going to take somewhat of a flier and predict the Minnesota Vikings will upset the Patriots in next February's big game.

Atkins won't support the Natinsky plan

The more I get to know Dallas city councilman Tennell Atkins, the more I like the guy. In fact, he may be my first council "hero" since Ed Oakley left. I know. I know. The fashionable thing is to be an ardent follower of Angela Hunt, absorbing every word that comes out of her mouth as the gospel when it comes to city policy. I hate to tell you this, but that empress has no clothes.

Mr. Atkins, on the other hand, is the real deal. I wouldn't call him a "leader," because that would assume he has followers. Unfortunately, most of the other council members are nothing more than sheets, billowing in whatever direction the political wind is blowing at the time. Mr. Atkins, on the other hand, sees the problems, knows why they were caused and comes up with a way to fix them, even if those ways are not the most popular approaches.

Tonight I attended my -- oh, gosh, I haven't even kept count -- budget townhall meeting and my third hosted by Mr. Atkins. After it was over, I approached the easily approachable Mr. Atkins and asked him if he planned on supporting the Natinsky amendment, a $2.4 million plan devised by North Dallas Councilman Ron Natinsky (left) that will rely mainly on fee increases to raise the money needed to solve the Recreation Center Problem that has dominated these town hall gatherings. Mr. Atkins placed his hands on my shoulders, looked at me as though I had either just landed from another galaxy or had escaped from some institution for the politically wah-wah and said "Are you kidding? Do you think it's fair just to make the people who use the rec centers pay for them. These centers are for all the people of Dallas and all of them should be paying for it."

Really, all I wanted was a "yes" or "no" answer and I did not want to engage in a political discourse right there in the cafeteria of McNair Elementary School in far Southwest Dallas so I just stood there as Mr. Atkins then went into a recitation on why it was also wrong to tax Atmos Energy, but, by this time, my head was swimming (I have not had much sleep lately and I had not eaten all day), so I wasn't really following his logic on this one. Not only that, I still couldn't wrap my hands around Mr. Atkins first argument that it was wrong to have the people who use the rec centers pay to keep them open. I actually thought that was perfectly fair. It was only after I was back in my car to begin the 24-mile drive back home that I realized how right he was.

Our democratic form of government is based on the premise that we taxpayers pay for things whether we use them or not if it is believed, by the majority, to be in society's best interest. Let me give you an example. The only time in the last 25 years I have set foot inside a Dallas Public Library was to vote. Now, I have nothing against libraries. But when I want to read a book, I will simply buy it or borrow from My Hero who is dead-solid perfect on making recommendations for books I should read. I'm not saying that's the right way to do things; only that's my way. I have yet to find any research I needed to conduct that I couldn't perform from my home computer, as slow and as outdated as that computer may be.

Be that as it may, a portion of the taxes I pay go to support the Dallas library system. I doubt I would get very far if I walked into City Manager Mary Suhm's office and said "Listen, I really don't ever use the library, so let's say we just reduce my taxes by the same percentage as libraries get from the General Fund."

Natinsky's plan, when you really look at it closely, is the same thing as charging library patrons a major fee for every book they check out or an hourly fee for use of library facilities. While we're at it, let's only charge code violators the money required to keep Code Compliance operating. I have lived in Dallas a little more than 40 years now and I have never -- not once -- run into a Code Compliance person performing his or her duties. So why should I pay for them?

I pay for them because that's the way government works. That's the way government is funded, a principle Mr. Atkins understands, but most of his colleagues don't. I say most of his colleagues don't because I'm afraid Mr. Natinsky's undemocratic plan, which, like most taxation plans you'll find in Texas, hits hardest on those who can least afford to pay them, will pass. But, then, when it comes to the never-ending class-race warfare in Dallas, we all know which class and which race will win. It's always been that way and I don't see it changing anytime soon.

I know there's a subversive political message in here someplace if I could just locate it

I am convinced that if a white President, of either major political party, had wanted to address school students, you would now have heard the uproar from fascists like Mark Davis and the rest of the right-wingnut stormtroopers.

Here is the text of what the President said. Warning, if you don't give a damn about the future of this country -- a future that will be decided by our schoolchildren of today -- I advise you stop reading now.

Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Time picks the 50 best Web sites of 2009

Do you have a couple of hours, perhaps a week, a month or even a year to spare? Then this is the place for you. But don't say I didn't warn you.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Crank: High Voltage (2009) ** Laughably and knowingly preposterous, cheerfully un-PC, and violent in a way that makes the myriad slaphappy deaths of Wile E. Coyote seem downright dull in comparison. Grade: C-

Dance Flick (2009) ** This slapstick and scatological spoof settles for obvious punchlines, delivering just enough laughs to justify its existence without coming anywhere near the bar set by Scary Movie. Grade: C-

Local Color (2008) Unseen by me.

Sleep Dealer (2009) *** The film’s plot is a bit thin, and the performances are earnest and dutiful. But there is sufficient ingenuity in the film’s main ideas to hold your attention, and the political implications of the allegorical story are at once obvious and subtle. Grade: C+

Valentino: The Last Emperor (2009) ***½ Ultimately, the film feels as glitzy and superficial as the fashion industry itself, a bauble in full regalia, and it’s likely your interest in the documentary will depend largely on your prior interest in the subject matter. Grade: B

The best college football game of the weekend

I'm going with 13th-ranked Georgia at No. 9 Oklahoma State. If the Bulldogs manage to upset the Cowboys -- and I think there's an excellent chance of that happening because of OSU's weak defense -- then it will cement the Southeastern Conference's position as the No. 1 football conference in the nation and the talk will begin that the Big 12 is overrated.

I do think Oklahoma State's Dez Bryant is a better receiver than Michael Crabtree was last year for Texas Tech. Bryant also returned two punts for touchdowns last year and if OSU had a defense that could force more punts, Bryant would be a legitimate Heisman candidate this season. Quarterback Zac Robinson will either be throwing to Bryant or handing off to running back Kendall Hunter, a combination that guarantees the Cowboys will score a lot of points.

Georgia enters this season without quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Knowshown Moreno, but it will have wide receiver A.J. Green, who's even better than Bryant, and a fifth-year senior, Joe Cox, at quarterback. I'm thinking Georgia coach Mark Richt, one of the best in the business, will play it conservatively on offense, hoping his top-notch offensive line will allow the Bulldogs to keep the ball away from the Cowboys.

A lot of folks will be interested in OU-BYU, but the only thing I find intriguing about this game is whether BYU will even manage to keep the score close. If you can only watch one college game this weekend, my choice would be Georgia-Oklahoma State.

New York Times predicts Texas will win national championship

And so we reach the Longhorns, my pick for this season’s national champs. This is a pick based on a trio of factors. The first is Texas’s combination of overwhelming talent and senior leadership. We all know about senior quarterback Colt McCoy, of course, but Texas is also very experienced on its offensive line, which was a major key during the program’s last national championship run. Texas can also tout a talented linebacker corps and, as always, a strong and deep secondary. The second factor is a very winnable schedule. Yes, Oklahoma will again be a major test, as will a road date with Oklahoma State. But Texas beat O.U. in 2008, and had fewer losses and faces fewer concerns than the Sooners do entering this season. If U.T. can escape both O.U. and the Cowboys, I don’t think it will be tested by another team on its schedule. My third factor is the least tangible: I believe U.T. will use last season’s disappointment as inspiration. It’s a very simple premise, actually: the best teams typically win, and when you add Texas’s desire to make up for how last season turned out, you have the makings of a national champion. Call it a hunch, one aided by an experienced coaching staff and a deep, talented and experienced roster. The best news? Whether I’m right or wrong, college football is mere hours away.

I understand how to vote for Best Picture Oscar; it's the counting that has me confused

For a minute there, I thought the Motion Picture Academy was going to make voting for the best picture Oscar identical to the manner in which the nominees are chosen.

The best picture nomination process works as follows: Each voter gets a ballot on which they are to select five best picture nominees (this year it will be 10) in order of preference. In figuring up the nominees, five points were awarded each picture ranked No. 1, four points for No. 2 and so on. This year I'm figuring it will be 10 points for the picture ranked No. 1, nine for No. 2 and so on. The five (this year 10) pictures with the most points (not the same as the most votes) are the nominees.

Simple enough.

Earlier this week came the announcement that on the final ballot this year, voters will be asked to rank the 10 nominees in order of preference on their ballots. That was OK, too, until I learned the manner of tabulating the winner is not going to be on the same point system by which the nominees are selected.

See if you can follow this twisted process: The best picture ballot will be detachable from the rest of the ballot. Once they are detached, they will be placed in up to 10 separate stacks depending on which picture was named No. 1. If one stack contains over 50 percent of the returned ballots, it will be declared the winner. Now I'm willing to bet that in the last 20 years, we have only had three films that would have surpassed that 50-percent threshold: Schindler's List in 1993, Titanic in 1996 and Slumdog Millionaire last year.

So, in the likely event that no film gets 50 percent, the stack with the smallest number of ballots will be redistributed according to which film is listed as No. 2 on each of the ballots in that stack. If none of the remaining nine stacks has one with at least 50 percent of the total ballots, the process will be repeated until finally there is one stack with at least 50 percent of the total ballots.

The reason behind this tabulation change is that the Academy didn't want people to think that the winner would have captured the Oscar with 10 percent plus one of all the votes cast. Why, I don't know. I have always said that the main problem with any award process like this is that, even with five nominees, it was possible that the winner could take home the award with just 21 percent of the vote. Translated that means that a whopping 79 percent did not think that winning nominee deserved the award. So why are we quibbling over 10 percent, just because the Academy decided to double the number of nominees for the top award?

Here's the other problem I have with this system. Every time, the Academy reduces the number of "stacks," it reduces the possibility that the picture named No. 1 on most of the ballots will win the Oscar and more likely that a film listed as No. 2 or No. 3 on most of the ballots will win, which nullifies the reason for handing out the award in the first place. I'm betting that if this system had been in place in 2006, Little Miss Sunshine would have undeservedly won the Oscar instead of The Departed and quite possibly Michael Clayton would have won the following year instead of No Country for Old Men. On the plus side, however, it would have meant Brokeback Mountain would have defeated Crash in 2005 and either the more deserving Traffic or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would have won over Gladiator in 2000.

An early look at likely Oscar nominees

This list of possible nominees in the eight top categories is not based on any polling data -- I will begin polling Academy members later this month. These are strictly educated guesses based on what I've seen, heard and read so far this year. It should be noted that the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off next week and prior to last year's TIFF there was no talk at all about Mickey Rourke's performance in The Wrestler or the film Slumdog Millionaire. (All nominees listed alphabetically.)

Picture
Amelia
Capitalism: A Love Story
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Invictus
Nine
Precious
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Director
Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Clint Eastwood, Invictus
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life
Rob Marshall, Nine
Lone Scherfig, An Education

Actor
George Clooney, Up in the Air
Matt Damon, The Informant!
Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine
Morgan Freeman, Invictus
Viggo Mortenson, The Road

Actress
Abbie Cornish, Bright Star
Carey Mulligan, An Education
Saoirse Ronan, The Lovely Bones
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia
Hilary Swank, Amelia

Supporting Actor
Matt Damon, Invictus
Richard Gere, Amelia
Richard Kind, A Serious Man
Alfred Molina, An Education
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, Nine
Judi Dench, Nine
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air
Mo'Nique, Precious
Rachel Weisz, The Lovely Bones

Adapted Screenplay
An Education
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Precious
Up in the Air

Original Screenplay
(500) Days of Summer
The Hurt Locker
A Serious Man
The Tree of Life
Up

New York Times' prediction for Oklahoma's 2009 football season

Oklahoma’s not going anywhere, despite facing issues up front and again dealing with Texas and an improved Oklahoma State team in conference play. The Sooners are simply too good, too talented on both sides of the ball, to take any major step back from last season. Looking at the schedule, I think Oklahoma will finish with an 11-1 record. Certainly, O.U. will do no worse than 10-2, with an additional loss perhaps coming at Nebraska or at home to Oklahoma State in the regular season finale. Now, I think it’s clear that I do believe Texas to be the better team in 2009. Not that Oklahoma won’t have something to prove, having lost in the national championship last fall, but I think Texas will have an enormous chip on its shoulder due to last season’s disappointment. So Oklahoma, in my mind, will come in second in the South; like with Texas last fall, that will result in Oklahoma being on the cusp of the national championship but settling – if you can call it settling – for a major B.C.S. bowl.

Why you should never trust Eric Celeste for shrewd political analysis

Eric Celeste (pictured here), writing today in D magazine's Frontburner blog about Kinky Friedman's decision to run for governor again, offered this interesting tidbit:

"His (Friedman's) candidacy will again help the Republican ticket by drawing a just-significant-enough percentage of votes from Democratic candidates to ensure another Rick Perry victory."

That might have been true if Mr. Friedman was running as an independent as he did four years ago. He's not, however. As this story (which was also Mr. Celeste's source) makes clear, Mr. Friedman is running this time around in the Democratic primary. That means he may take enough votes away from Hank Gilbert to hand the Democratic nomination to Tom Scheiffer. (Or, which is of utmost importance to Mr. Friedman, he might sell more copies of his upcoming book Heroes of a Texas Childhood. Expect him to mention it quite a lot during his campaign stops.)

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Earth (2009) ***½ This first feature from Disney's new nature division has an encyclopedic reach and spectacular footage shot by more than two dozen crack cinematographers.

Good Dick (2008) **½ Alternately compelling and dramatically limp, the film scores points for exploring unfamiliar territory but lacks the emotional depth to make some very strange behavior believable.

Sin Nombre (2009) **** There are some brief minutes when the tension drops and the story starts to sag, but filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga almost always fills the frame with something worth seeing, and the story has a built-in suspense.

State of Play (2009) *** The overall lack of subtlety is a riot — there's even a cautionary production of Peter and the Wolf happening in the background during one journalist-politician showdown at a Beltway gala. Still, it's a pleasure watching this cast make the most of the material.

Sugar (2009) **** The film's style is so "objective" it's a bit subdued, yet this is a sports drama of total originality, as well as the most authentic inside view of the immigrant experience the movies have given us in quite a while.

Jewish culinary history

This research conducted by the blog's Rocky Mountain correspondent:

According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5769.

According to the Chinese calendar, the year is 4706.

This means that Jews went without Chinese food for 1,063 years, a period known as the Dark Ages.

The best movie guide ever

Courtesy of the blog's South Florida correspondent, you can click here for the most indispensable movie guide ever created. You can, of course, thank me later.

A perfect description of Ted Kennedy

Of all the words written in the last 24-plus hours following the death of Sen Edward Kennedy, these, written by John M. Broder of the New York Times, are my favorite:

"He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy."

"The greatest United States Senator of our time"

I feel a distinct sense of loss at the passing of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. It's as though an era I felt passionate about has come to end. I was just under the legal voting edge when John F. Kennedy ran for President, although my father worked on his campaign as did I as a student at the University of Texas at Austin. I was a hard-working, loyal supporter and worker on the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy and when he was assassinated in 1968, much of my zeal for and belief in the American political process died with him.

President Obama had this to say about today's passing of the last of the Kennedy senators:

"For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.

"I valued his wise counsel in the Senate, where, regardless of the swirl of events, he always had time for a new colleague. I cherished his confidence and momentous support in my race for the Presidency. And even as he waged a valiant struggle with a mortal illness, I've profited as President from his encouragement and wisdom.

"An important chapter in our history has come to an end. Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States Senator of our time."

"And the Kennedy family has lost their patriarch, a tower of strength and support through good times and bad.

"Our hearts and prayers go out to them today--to his wonderful wife, Vicki, his children Ted Jr., Patrick and Kara, his grandchildren and his extended family."

A solution to the city's budget woes: Have the PILOT fly at a higher altitude

City Council members Angela Hunt and Sheffie Kadane at their joint budget townhall meeting Tuesday night

I was attending the joint Angela Hunt-Sheffie Kadane budget townhall meeting last night and heard assistant city manager A.C. Gonzalez and both council members insist that the city's fiscal 2009-10 budget, as proposed by City Manager Mary Suhm, doesn't raise taxes. That's a lie. It does raise taxes. It only raises them indirectly through something called PILOT.

I've explained this before, but let me go through it one more time. Dallas Water Utilities, a City of Dallas department, is designated an Enterprise Fund which means it doesn't require city tax moneys to operate. All of its income comes via the water rates it charges its various customers. The city, through this nifty gimmick called PILOT (an acronym for Payment In Lieu of Taxes), duns Dallas Water Utilities a designated amount of money which then goes into the city's General Fund, that pool of money that comes from sales taxes, property taxes and other fees that's used to operate city government. DWU then raises its rates to recover this payment. Neat, eh?

So last night I'm sitting in the drama room at St. Thomas Aquinas School on Abrams Road listening to District 9 councilman Kadane say his No. 1 priority is finding funds to keep the city's rec centers open longer and District 14 council woman Hunt's concern that this will be the second consecutive year there's no money in the budget to slurry seal our streets, or that less money should be spent on the 2006 bond program or that she's worried about cuts to youth programs.

And I realized there was a simple answer to all this: Since the Dallas City Council insists on perpetuating the myth that PILOT is not a tax increase, why not just charge DWU more and have those funds make up the difference needed? Of course, that will mean higher water rates, but, hey, that's not like a tax increase. Or at least that's what the city maintains.

I did find it interesting, however, and it confirmed my suspicions that citizens are willing to pay for good government, that one citizen speaker at last night's meeting criticized the council for not raising the taxes needed to pay for the 2006 bond program, money voters authorized the city to appropriate. When Ms. Hunt asked for a show of hands of those agreeing with the speaker, an overwhelming majority of those present raised their hands. Of course, when it comes to our City Council, the will of the people doesn't mean a thing anyway so nothing will come of this. But I did find it interesting and I suspect Ms. Hunt found it intriguing as well.

A new Mark on the Office of Cultural Affiars?

Angela Hunt revealed -- oh so quietly -- at her townhall meeting last night that "a way has been found to preserve the Office of Cultural Affairs" as a separate entity. Now this is a big deal to all the arts groups around the city and for Ms. Hunt to be so covert about this revelation had me scratching my head. What's going on here? Why not trumpet this news from the rooftops?

Obviously, General Fund moneys are not involved in this. Private donations were secured. Those who donated these funds would be regarded as heroes within the arts community. So why aren't these heroes coming forward to be recognized?

Here's my guess: The money was donated by Mark Cuban, who doesn't want anyone to know he regularly comes to the aid of the city when it is financially strapped. Let me give you an example, although Cuban himself will deny any involvement in this, as will the City of Dallas. There are two Calatrava bridges designated to span the Trinity River. The first and best known, because it has been in the news so much lately, is the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge, named after its benefactor. The city, however, had major problems securing the private money needed to pay for the second bridge until Cuban wrote a check to cover it.

Cuban, however, doesn't want anyone to know about his largess, because he fears knowledge of it will make him a "mark" (pun intended) for every money-hungry organization/individual, both legit and, shall we say, dubious. Cuban doesn't want to be on this list of "people you can always turn to when you need money donated." He considers himself a businessman who loves his adopted city but not a charitable foundation. And, frankly, I can see his point here.

Cuban has obvious ties to the arts community through his 2929 Entertainment, which, among other things, owns the Landmark movie theaters, and his Magnolia Pictures, the company that distributed two of my favorite films so far this year, Julia and Big Man Japan. So I can see his interest in coming to the aid of the Office of Cultural Affairs.

Now I'm not saying that Cuban positively donated the money to keep the city's Office of Cultural Affairs open. I'm just suggesting that a lot of signs are pointing in his direction.

That dirty little state we call home

According to this, Texas leads the nation in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (almost double the amount of smoggy California: 625.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to California's 395.5). Then there's this:

"If Texas was a country, it would rank seventh in the world in carbon dioxide emissions."

NCTCOG sticks its toe in the water when it should dive in the pool

The Transportation Department of the North Central Texas Council of Governments will present a briefing today to the Dallas City Council's Transportation and Environment Committee on the notion of keeping 18-wheelers out of the left-hand lanes of freeways with three or more lanes. The briefing will say, according to COG's pilot study, this is a great idea for safety, air quality and mobility; that it is embraced by the public; and that an overwhelming number of truck drivers obey these rules without being forced to by the gendarmes.

So far, so good. But then slide 11 says don't implement these restrictions on freeways where it's really needed. The way I read this slide, titled "Corridors Proposed for Near Term Truck Lane Restriction Implementation," COG is only recommending these restrictions on I-45 from the southern Ellis County line to the road's terminus in downtown Dallas; I-20 from Spur 408 in extreme Southwest Dallas to where it joins I-30 west of Fort Worth; and I-20 from I-45 to around the Dallas-Kaufman County border.

Hey, what about I-35E where the majority of trucks travel? How about North Central Expressway? How about I-30, especially heading east?

If you're going to do this -- and you should -- do it right and where it will do the most good. If this half-hearted attempt is all COG proposes, it will give Gov. Hair another reason to try to revive his Trans-Texas Corridor boondoggle.

Does Dallas really kill 28,000 dogs and cats a year

The way I read this briefing being presented to the Dallas City Council's Quality of Life today, 28,370 dogs and cats will be put to death in the city's animal shelter this year.

Now the briefing doesn't say that. It doesn't even mention killing animals. But how else is one to interpret the figures on slide 4? Taking the numbers, which are for three-quarters of a year, presented on that slide and extrapolating them for a full year, it says 37,209 dogs and cats will be impounded by the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30). Of those, 2,783 will be adopted, 3,229 will be transferred to rescue groups and 2,827 will be reclaimed by their owners. That leaves 28,370 dogs and cats unaccounted for. What happens to them?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

Austin cares more about public safety than Dallas

Austin mayor Lee Leffingwell, Mayor Pro Tem Mike Martinez and Councilmember Chris Riley are co-sponsoring a resolution that would prohibit text messaging and using the Internet while operating a motor vehicle. According to the official release:

"Studies make this very clear," said Mayor Pro Tem Mike Martinez. "And, common sense reinforces what we already know; using a phone while driving is very dangerous and is factor in many traffic incidents."

The City Council agenda item directs the City Manager to prepare ordinance to prohibit the writing, sending or reading of text messages, instant messages and emails or viewing the internet on a mobile phone or other portable electronic device.

"Multi-tasking while driving is not a good practice," said Mayor Lee Leffingwell. "With kids headed back to school we should all take this time to be very aware on the road and put an end to text messaging while driving."

It's long past time the Dallas City Council followed suit.

New movies to be released tomorrow on DVD

Adventureland (2009) **** Mixes the intimate, indie vibe of Daytrippers with the absurdist screwball streak of Superbad, to winning effect.

Duplicity (2009) ***½ There are so many leaps back and forth in time, so many twists and countertwists and double fake-outs, that I kept losing track of who is supposed to know what when.

Fighting (2009) *** As its defiantly bland title suggests, Fighting is a bare-bones effort that tries just hard enough to keep us watching. By making good use of its New York setting, filmmaker Dito Montiel does bring a certain indie grit to the generic story.

Full Grown Men (2008) **½ A strong cast, beautiful production values and generally pleasant execution can't disguise the fact both laughs and surprises are on the thin side here, despite the abundant care and affection lavished on the central characters by first-time writer-director David Munro.

Goodbye Solo (2009) ****½ Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani possesses a disciplined sense of composition and form, a vision of the world that extends beyond the boundaries of his own navel, and the understanding that it is possible to make films about class and race in this country without pandering to the audience.

The Informers (2009) * A nihilistic, narcissistic, knuckleheaded move about nihilistic, narcissistic knuckleheads, The Informers might have been an interesting exercise in satire, if it only had a sense of humor. Which it doesn't. You'll need one, though, after forking over hard-earned money to rent it.

Life Is Hot in Cracktown (2009) ** Life goes far past the boiling point for most of the characters in this hilariously overwrought ghetto soap opera from cult writer-director Buddy Giovinazzo.

Rudo y Cursi (2009) ***½ The film scores from every angle — comic, personal and cross-cultural.

Sunshine Cleaning (2009) *** Could have been a little more darkly comic in places but the performances are superb.

Trouble the Water (2008) **** One of the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New Orleans.

More on "Shutter Island"

By time I learned yesterday about the decision by Paramount to push back the opening of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island until February, previous commitments prevented me from doing anything but accepting the studio's own explanations for the move. I have tried to poke around this a little more today (somewhat more difficult to do on a Saturday when many offices are closed), but the story I'm hearing is that the studio execs liked the film but on a Cape Fear level, not on a The Departed, GoodFellas, Raging Bull or even The Aviator level.

On this, I'm leaning toward trusting their judgment. They made the same decision this time last year with The Soloist which, it turned out, was not only not awards-worthy, but died quickly upon its release earlier this year.

My personal expectations for Shutter Island diminished the more I was exposed to the film. Its first trailers appear to have focused solely on the setup: An accused murderess (played by Michelle Williams) sentenced to a remote mental institution that is the only building on a remote island escapes and can't be found, although, we're told, it's impossible to escape from the island. A pair of policemen, one played by Leonardo DiCaprio (playing in, if my count is correct, his fourth Scorsese film), is dispatched from the mainland to the island to solve the mystery. These original previews didn't even feature Ben Kingsley who apparently plays the warden of the institution.

The last series of trailers, however, have focused more on what happens to DiCaprio when he arrives on the island and I was overcome by how much those scenes reminded me of Alan Parker's 1987 film Angel Heart, which I liked more than a lot of folks. In that film, Mickey Rourke plays a detective hired by Robert DeNiro to find a missing man, but the films turns into an allegory: The DeNiro character is actually the devil and the film is about the Rourke character's descent into hell.

If my perceptions are correct, then Paramount is doing the right thing.

New York Times' prediction for TCU's 2009 football season

Though I have the Horned Frogs as the best non-B.C.S. conference team in the country in 2009, it’s going to be hard for T.C.U. to bust its way into a B.C.S. bowl. The schedule has me worried: road dates at Virginia and Clemson in non-conference play (though Virginia should be a clear win) and, as always, B.Y.U. and Utah in the Mountain West. These four alone should result in one loss, which will be enough to cost the Frogs – much to the delight of the B.C.S. – a shot at a major bowl trip. Which is a shame, because as we all know, what may end up happening is both the Big East and A.C.C. (if, say, F.S.U. beats Virginia Tech in the conference title game) sending a nine-win team to the B.C.S. while T.C.U. plays in front of a half-packed Qualcomm Stadium for the Poinsettia Bowl. In a perfect world, the Horned Frogs could even lose a game and still reach the B.C.S.; however, the current landscape is far from perfect, and Tostitos, FedEx and Allstate have made it abundantly clear that they want big-name teams, not T.C.U. (or any other non-B.C.S. conference team, for that matter). Would I love to see the Horned Frogs get there? Yes, few things would make me happier. However, as good as this team may be, I predict at least one stumble.

How do you measure "alarmed"?

I ran across the following news summary on DallasNews.Com: "Passengers on American Airlines Flight 414 became alarmed when they saw parts falling off the right wing and heard unusual noises after takeoff from San Diego on Friday evening."

"Became alarmed"? What does that mean, exactly? If I'm looking out the window of an airplane in which I'm flying and I see parts of the wing falling off I'm screaming as loud as I can "My, g-d, we're all gonna die!" You want "alarmed," I'll show you "alarmed."

Paramount removes "Shutter Island" from Oscar contention

I must admit to a mild case of shock at the news that Paramount Pictures has decided to bump the opening of Martin Scorcese's Shutter Island from October to next February, thus removing it from Oscar consideration this year and probably Oscar consideration period. The reasons Paramount is giving for the delay are (1) it doesn't have the funds right now to promote the movie in the manner in which an Oscar-caliber movie needs to be promoted and (2) star Leonardo DiCaprio's current schedule would not allow him to promote the film.

It all sounds like a bit of hogwash to me and a rude way to treat Scorsese's first dramatic release since his Oscar-winning The Departed. The positive side to this dreary news is that Shutter Island will open the same week in February 2010 that The Silence of the Lambs opened in 1991 and now that there are 10 Best Picture slots instead of five, it still gives Scorsese's picture a shot for next year.

The winner of all this to me is a movie that I think is going to be a genuine sleeper success story this year, A Serious Man, which is scheduled to open Oct. 2, the same day Shutter Island was originally set to premier. Now Man not only has that date all to itself, but it may have secured its place among the best picture nominees.

New York Times' prediction for Oklahoma State's 2009 football season

It’s truly unfortunate that a team as offensively skilled as Oklahoma State clearly remains the third-best team in its own division. To be fair, ranking third in the Big 12 South is nothing to be ashamed of, as both Texas and Oklahoma are national title favorites; in addition, despite coming in behind that pair in the South the Cowboys are the third-best team in the superb Big 12, which makes them an easy pick for top 15 status in the F.B.S. But I can’t shake the feeling that even with this tremendous offense, Oklahoma State will struggle increasing upon its win total from a season ago. Not that there’s truly anything wrong with that: the Cowboys are only one year removed from ending a frustrating string of seven-win finishes, and a 6-2 finish in Big 12 action would represent the program’s best conference record since the league’s formation. So here’s my prediction: 9-3, 6-2 in the Big 12, with losses to Georgia, Texas and Oklahoma. For those keeping track at home, that means the Cowboys would lose to three teams ranked in the Countdown’s top 14 teams. Minus Texas Tech, I’m convinced Oklahoma State will blow the doors off the rest of its schedule.

Cultural affairs funding in Dallas and the city's Office of Cultural Affairs are two separate issues

Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm and District 3 council member Dave Neumann at the townhall meeting Neumann jointly sponsored with District 1 council member Delia Jasso Thursday night.

If an inter-galactic alien who had been briefed on Dallas before leaving its planet landed somewhere in the city and mistakenly wandered into a budget town hall meeting, the poor thing would scratch that part of its body that housed its thinking and reasoning mechanisms and go "Geez, I thought this was football country. What's all this talk about cultural affairs?"

And that would be a legitimate question because the further north in the city one of these townhall meetings is held the more likely it will be occupied by 30 or so folks who have been programmed to be so upset about the city manager's proposed budget concerning cultural affairs that they can't get their souffles to rise. And they can make it sound like hundreds and thousands of people will poor from their homes and descend upon city hall unless something is done about it. These folks are upset because (1) the spigot has been turned off the faucet from which pours tax monies flowing to various arts organizations and (2) the Office of Cultural Affairs (I wonder how many people in Dallas know that this office is located in the Majestic Theater?) is being merged with the Library Department.

I would estimate about 80 persons came to the Hitt Auditorium in Methodist Hospital Thursday night for a budget townhall meeting jointly sponsored by District 3 council member Dave Neumann (not so much an ally of the cultural affairs folks) and freshman District 2 council member Delia Jasso (who seemed to lend a more sympathetic ear to their arguments). Now 30 people in a room of 80 can seem like a significant number. But here's the real numbers: Those 30 people probably represent 100 percent of the people in a district passionate about this issue.

Follow along with me here while I play with some numbers. Let's say there's roughly 1.2 million people in the city of Dallas. That, of course, is not an exact figure, but it's close enough for the point I want to make. The city is divided into 14 council districts, each of which is supposed to contain an equal number of people. That means each council person represents roughly 86,000 persons. So now you have 30 people who really care about the future of cultural affairs and 85,970 who don't, or, in the case of the joint meeting last night, 30 defenders of the arts and 171,970 folks who think cultural affairs are what Jennifer Aniston engages in.

So how is all this going to play out? I have attended about a half-dozen of these town hall meetings during this current budget cycle and I have had talks with elected officials, those on the city staff and "interested third parties." What I have been able to piece together is that on the first issue -- funding the Office of Cultural Affairs doled out to arts groups around the city -- much of that is probably going to be saved IF (and I put that "if" in capital letters because it is, indeed a major "if') private investors can be found to kick in around 50 percent of the needed money. In political jargon, this is called "matching funds" -- Sam's Dairy agrees to donate $10,000 on condition that the City matches that amount. It's done all the time -- the Police Department receives a lot of grant money in the form of matching funds. One of the speakers at Thursday night's townhall meeting made the case for a small arts program she was running in Oak Cliff not that far from where the Jasso-Neumann gathering was taking place and she painted a vivid picture of a cultural alternative of the argument being made on behalf of the city's recreation centers.

What I think is going to happen is that, as the city council gets closer to voting on the final budget, City Manager Mary Suhm is going to perform another one of her Annual Miracles and inform the council that most, if not all, of the cultural affairs programs funded in the current budget will be funded again next fiscal year through matching funds.

That leaves the completely separate, largely cosmetic issue of what's going to happen to the Office of Cultural Affairs. It won't remain a stand-alone department. It will be merged with the Library Department and the position of director of the Office of Cultural Affairs will become an assistant director. The consensus of those I have talked to is that the only issue left to be resolved is whether the words "cultural affairs" will be part of the new department; i.e.
will it be called the Department of Library Services and Cultural Affairs. That is viewed as a good compromise by everyone except those in the Library Department who view Cultural Affairs somewhat like an adopted stepsister with leprosy.

So here's my prediction for cultural affairs in the upcoming budget: Funding for most, if not all, of the cultural affairs programs will be salvaged, and the Office of Cultural Affairs will become part of the Library Department. This not going to satisfy the Noisy 30, but those 85,970 other folks in each of the 14 council districts can join our inter-galactic alien visitor in knowing that cultural affairs means seeing George Strait in the same stadium as the Dallas Cowboys, Bruce Springsteen in concert, Dancing With the Stars or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

A suggestion for all sports writers/reporters/editors

A complete ban on all stories about Brett Favre from the Super Bowl that concludes one season to the opening of the following season. He's been playing sports writers/reporters far better than Horowitz ever played the piano. Quit falling for his junk.

Two more reasons I'm looking forward to the movie "Nine"

Reason No. 1: Penelope
Reason No 2: Cruz

"Save our rec centers"

First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans and District 10 City Councilman Jerry Allen at Mr. Allen's budget townhall meeting Tuesday night

A funny thing happened on the way to Dallas City Councilman Jerry Allen's District 10 budget townhall meeting Tuesday night. It got hijacked by the concerned citizens of Hamilton Park, a relatively small, predominantly black neighborhood nestled into a corner bounded roughly by LBJ (north), the DART red line (east), Forest Lane (south), and North Central Expressway (west). Although it is part of District 10, not that many people would associate it with Lake Highlands, which most consider the boundaries of Mr. Allen's district.

I would guess close to 50 percent of those attending Mr. Allen's townhall meeting, held at the Lake Highlands Freshman Center, were residents of Hamilton Park and their concern was identical to the concerns voiced in the three other townhall meetings, all in South Dallas, I have attended. Do something to preserve what hours can be preserved for the rec centers.

It's a fascinating development. The Lake Highlands Recreation Center is located less than 1,000 yards from where Mr. Allen's meeting was held, but not one speaker complained about hourly cutbacks there. But where the hours at Lake Highlands might have been trimmed, those at Hamilton Park's Willie B. Johnson Center were scalped. Under the city manager's currently proposed hours, Lake Highlands would be open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Willie B. Johnson, on the other hand, would only be open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. That's 45 hours of operations for Lake Highlands compared to 30 for Johnson. Not equitable at all.

One message is coming through, at least to me, in the first week and a half of these budget town hall meetings and that is money must be found, somewhere, somehow to keep these recreation centers open longer, especially those centers serving the minority communities. That should be the first and foremost priority of the Dallas City Council as it prepares the final budget.

And leave it to former council member Alan Walne to provide one way to find some of this necessary money. Although if I read this council correctly, these members are interested more in "what's in this for me" and not "what's in the best interest of my constituents," so Mr. Walne's absolutely brilliant idea will probably receive absolutely no traction. The last bullet on Page 21 of the slide presentation offered at every budget townhall meeting says: "International travel for business recruitment reduced." Mr. Walne suggests the word "reduced" should be replaced with the word "eliminated."

It can be argued that because the Mayor led a contingent of city council representatives on a trade mission to China that a couple of additional laundries and maybe a few restaurants opened here that wouldn't have otherwise and, yes, in the long term, these missions, it could be argued, might possibly lead to economic investments in our city we might not have achieved otherwise. But, let's get our priorities straight here. These are tough times we are dealing with and if we can keep the Willie B. Johnson, the Kleberg and other recreation centers open 15 more hours a week by eliminating trips to China and Belize than I say eliminate them. It's about giving our young people places to go and things to do that will keep them off the streets. It's about providing services to our senior citizens that give them a sense of worth and, by all that's holy, providing for our youth and our senior citizens is far more important than putting another feather in the cap of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

I must also praise Mr. Walne for his brilliant insights into PILOT as a veiled tax increase and the city council's failure to trigger the mechanisms to pay for the 2006 bond program like the voters instructed it to do. He also lamented the fact that more members of the council refused to follow Mr. Allen's suggestions for cutbacks to their own budgets.

But it was the Willie B. Johnson Rec Center that dominated the conversation Tuesday night. Mr. Allen's appointee to the library board took the cutbacks to the library hours gracefully but did mention that she wished more money could be found to purchase materials for the library during the upcoming fiscal year and I would argue that, after the rec centers, that really should be Priority No. 2. At the same time, I'm hoping such groups as Friends of the Libraries will use this budget as an excuse and a reason to redouble their efforts in securing funds from the private sector to purchase these materials.

Which brings me around to Cultural Affairs. Some woman had the effrontery at Mr. Allen's meeting to argue that funds should be made available to keep the Office of Cultural Affairs separate from the library. That should be at the bottom of the priority list. Here's what the city manager should do about the Office of Cultural Affairs: Continue her efforts to merge it with the Library system, but simply rename the merged department The Office of Library Services and Cultural Affairs. There you have it. What those misinformed souls I like to call the Art Farts don't understand is what's being eliminated is not the functions of the Office of Cultural Affairs, but much of the support needed to have two separate offices. In times like this, we should not be wasting money on this kind of duplication of efforts. And all those Art Farts out there should not begging for government handouts, but should be going out to those rich art patrons friends of theirs seeking donations. Look, it wasn't the city who built the new opera house and the new performance center. They were built with private donations and those kind of donations -- not tax dollars needed to keep our rec centers open and get more materials for the library and, dare I say it, pave additional streets -- should be what fuels the development of the arts in this city.

But the biggest idiot (Well maybe not the "biggest." It could be argued that the guy who didn't want to be "insulted" by having his sanitation rate reduced wore the Biggest Idiot of the Night crown.) of all waited until the end of the meeting, but she was one of those jerks that doesn't really want to ask a question. She wanted the opportunity to grandstand her own particular political agenda. Her stupid question was "When is the city going to begin working on the Trinity River Corridor Project" but then had the gall to say she "didn't have time" to wait around the for the answer which is, of course, not only has it already started but many major projects such as the Trinity River Audubon Center and Overlook Park are already completed and available to the public. But, like I suggested earlier, she didn't want her question answered, she just wanted a platform and she wouldn't have listened to the answer anyway because it would not have fit her agenda.

Finally, is there an electrician anywhere in the vicinity of the Lake Highlands Freshmen Center? The lights in the auditorium flickered throughout the meeting and it was distracting and annoying. That could be fixed and what's more, funds for fixing it will come from the budget of the Richardson School District. Can't beat that.