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July is almost through - NICE. Let's see what the internet has offered up for us, shall we? Always a nice time to get enraged, indignant, and inspired...
KEEP YOUR SHINY, GREEDY TEETH AWAY FROM OUR BARS. Aggies are known for a number of things -friendliness, spirit, honor, internet indignation, adorably deluded sense of past athletic accomplishment. We're the total package.
Broadly arching over Aggie sensibilities are conservative ideals such as personal liberty, private property, and loving firearms more than family members. That's what makes the following story so curious.
According to reports, Texas A&M is threatening to use eminent domain to drive a historic Dallas bar out of Deep Ellum to build - wait for it - a dental school. In April, the A&M board of regents - a laughable bunch of stooges drunk on hubris, petty ego, and overpriced scotch - voted behind closed to doors to initiate eminent domain proceedings to wipe the wonderful Elbow Room bar out of existence if the owners (Aggies themselves) refuse to sell.
No government overreach here. This is what happens when you give the keys of a world class, incredible university to brazen trial lawyers, career bureaucrats, and cocky, dim good ol boys who were born on dirt that had oil underneath. Sprinkle in some dentists and you have the worst smattering of people to hang with in a cool bar. Fitting, I reckon.
I'm a former resident of Dallas that doesn't fit many of the most common (and deserved) stereotypes. My haunts were in Deep Ellum. I'm a recovering bar rat from hangs like Adair's, the Dallasite, Sons of Hermann Hall, and yes, the Elbow Room.
You don't go to Deep Ellum to hang with people who make a mint fixing teeth. You go to Deep Ellum to get blind drunk with people who are missing teeth.
A&M will give some polished PR rhetoric that they're working to find a "mutually beneficial" solution that appeases all parties. It shouldn't take a business whiz to realize that once the phrase "eminent domain" is uttered, the property owner loses virtually all leverage and hopes for a competitive market to sell their asset - an asset they had no intention of parting with in the first place.
If you reside in Dallas, consider making a pit stop down at the Elbow Room. Show some fellow Ags the love and spirit for which we're known. Tip back a couple pints, crack wise, grease your bartender a little extra, and thank God you aren't a soulless suit driven by such drudgeries as "eminent domain."
Cheers,
A rabid Anti-Dentite
NO LUKEWARM TAKES. Speaking of dentists, the only place you used to be able to read The Sporting News was in the office of a cavity filler. Evidently this rag enterprise still exists to churn out takes so bold that passionate, psychotic fans like ourselves just MUST click. This week, the taek du jour was REALIGNMENT LOSERS. Worthy fodder considering something as nuanced and long term as conference alignment can be measured in a scant five year window. Evidently, A&M and Mizzou are losers for going to the SEC. His explanation:
Those Aggies wanted to get out from under the extreme Texas shade, and they’ve certainly gotten that done. But even with Johnny Manziel in his final season at QB in 2013, A&M was only a .500 SEC team. Which is exactly what it’s been for three seasons in a row.
Playing in the Liberty Bowl and Music City Bowl couldn’t have been what Texas A&M’s board had in mind when it fought so hard to get out of the Big 12.
Well I guess that's settled.
Have a peach of a Thursday.