Monday, January 7, 2008

Super Bowl XLV

The temps reached into the balmy 80s on the first Sunday of the New Year. So I went bike riding at River Legacy Park. There was a large number of like minded people out on the trails enjoying the temporary respite from winter. On my third time around a group of 3 younger guys came up behind me. I sped up. They kept up. I asked if they wanted to pass. They said no, that I was setting a good pace. I sped up. I don't think they realized I was much older than them and that they could possibly be pushing me to an early heart attack. After about a mile of this un-asked for punishment I came to a bypass (that is not a heart attack reference), so I took the left and the speed demons did not. So I was rid of them. And not a crank of the pedal too soon.

After the exhilarating exhausting bike ride I decided to head to the new
Dallas Cowboy Stadium to snap some pics of the current state of construction. As many of you know the new stadium is pretty much being built on a graveyard of stolen homes and destroyed apartment buildings and bulldozed businesses.

As I got to the stadium zone I came in from a new angle, that being heading east on Randol Mill Road. This direction brought me to a very unfortunate unflattering view of the new stadium, with rundown tenement looking apartment buildings of a way more decripit state than those destroyed by the stadium, sitting now in the shadow of the new, according to Cowboy owner Jerry Jones, Roman Colisseum of the 21st Century.

To get a pic of the newly added banner extolling the upcoming 2011 Super Bowl hosted in the new stadium we pulled into one of the commercial buildings appropriated by the Cowboys. I got my pic and then drove in front of the building attempting to escape the parking lot, to no avail due to a line of traffic cones. Turning around I saw a large sign in the window of the former bank, saying "Dallas Cowboy Preview Center". It must give one quite a sense of empowerment to be able to take owner's places of business for your own purposes. It's almost like living in the Wild Wild West. Or the former Soviet Union. With Eminent Domain laws making it all very legal.

I have not as yet heard if Jerry Jones and the Cowboys are going to invite the former residents, of the land they legally stole, to the opening football game or the Super Bowl, or even for a look at their old land. I don't know know if it is known nationally what the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones did to people to get this stadium. I believe the total of Tony Romo's new contract is larger than the total paid to the victims. In addition to his 5 year contract Tony Romo got a $13 million signing bonus. As far as I know neither the Cowboys or Jerry Jones has given any of their land grab victims even so much as a Christmas card with a hard loaf of fruit cake.

I have not yet called up the Cowboys to pay my $100 non-refundable fee to be put on a list to pay $50,000 for a Personal Seat License Fee that gives me the right to pay a couple hundred bucks for a game ticket and hundreds more for a parking ticket. I gotta get right on that today. I'll be so sad if all the Seat Licenses sell out before I get myself one. I so don't want to miss that Super Bowl in 2011. Then again, maybe by then there will be such a big national stink over the way the Cowboys and Jerry Jones built their new stadium that the NFL pulls the game from Dallas and awards it to a more civic minded, more decent, more humane, more worthy team. Yeah, I'm sure that is gonna happen.

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