Hello,

Welcome to another exciting edition of my blog, it's full of excitement and surprises! (sort of)

Let's start with the most exciting news first. BYU Basketball Coach Dave Rose (who I saw at a Sheryl Crow concert last year) is cancer free. "Rose said in a news conference Monday that the results "came back normal," meaning that his body has no signs of the cancerous tumor that was removed from his pancreas and spleen in June at a Las Vegas hospital." Rose says, "I feel great. The doctors are extremely confident that we are right on top of the situation. They removed all the disease, and it has not returned. It doesn't show any signs of returning right now, and so we have scheduled for [another] scan six months from now, so we are I guess going on how I feel. And I feel great. I [have] good energy, good strength." (Thanks to Sltrib.com.) Good luck Coach Rose. (For those who follow this blog, Rose is also battling pancreatic cancer.)

There's a lot of new music out now: In the following order the song, the artist and themusicaddict quick rating. This is a ranking from 1 to 5 stars. 1) "Cowboy Casanova"- Carrie Underwood 4 of 5 stars. She's looking amazing in the picture. 2) "Meet Me On The Equinox"- Death Cab For Cutie 3 of 5 stars 3) "Doesn't Mean Anything"- Alicia Keys 3 of 5 stars. She's another amazingly gorgeous woman! 4) "We Weren't Born To Follow"- Bon Jovi 4 of 5 stars. This sounds like late 80's Bon Jovi. Depending on your perspective that could be good or bad. However I quite like this song. We need bands still playing rock. 5) "Happy"- Leona Lewis 3 of 5 stars 6) "Again"- Flyleaf 4 of 5 stars. I had one song credit left, this is the song I chose to buy. I'm glad Flyleaf is back.

Pearl Jam news: Pearl Jam kicked off this leg of their tour with a 28 song show in Seattle last night. According to Spin magazine, they kicked some butt. They play in Seattle again tonight. themusicaddict is in full countdown mode, as less than one week from today I'll be rocking out to Pearl Jam live. Pearl Jam has also taken over Paste magazine. That's the hype but it turns out to be pretty lame. Honestly it's not even worth looking into.

Spin magazine features Pearl Jam on their newest issue. On the cover of the October Spin, "At Home, At Work, And At Play With A Band Recharged". Unfortunately I still haven't been able to listen to their new CD, "Backspacer". I'm too poor to buy it. My beloved Rhapsody doesn't have it available, come on Rhapsody what is up with that? I found out this morning that myspacemusic had the CD available before "Backspacer" was released. Unfortunately that is no good to me. I am excited that Pearl Jam is selling bootlegs of their live shows. I plan on buying the Salt Lake bootleg when I can afford it. I really have enjoyed listening to the bootlegs from Pearl Jam over the past several years.

According to yahoo.com Angie Harmon is the #1 newsmaker: "Actress Angie Harmon is hosting a celebrity shoe auction in New York and sending her baby daughter through an obstacle course to raise money for charity. 9-month-old Emery Hope is among the babies crawling through a terrain of mock mountains and ski slopes Tuesday while their moms bid on shoes signed by celebrities including Tori Spelling". (Thanks to Yahoo! News.) Although I do have to call Yahoo! out a bit, Tori Spelling is a celebrity? Really?

Books: Oprah's new book was announced last Friday. It's "Say You're One of Them" by Uwem Akpem. Usually her books sail to the top of the amazon.com bestsellers. There has been a bit of a backlash against this book. With it's stories of child prostitution and slavery, a lot of people are turned off by the subject matter. As of this morning it was only the #13 bestseller at amazon.com. (The number 1 best seller very predictably is Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol".) That same disparity shows up at my local library. I'm on the waiting list for both books. For the Akpem book, I'm number 8 on the waiting list. For Brown's book I'm number 132 on the waiting list. Due to Oprah's influence there are 650,000 available copies of this book published. I usually like Oprah's selections, I'm going to give the book a shot.

The book I'm reading now is Jon Krakauer's "Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman". It's a biography of Pat Tillman who turned his back on $3.6 million to enlist in the military following 9/11. It's an amazing story so far, I'm about 35 pages in. Krakauer is critical of the the Bush administration and how they handled this whole situation. That includes using Tillman for propaganda, a role he was uncomfortable with. This book's contents are still relevant to the events going on in Afghanistan now. I recently read an article in an April, 2009 Time issue about Afghanistan. Reading both at the same time helped with filling in blanks with the bleak situation in Afghanistan. The main theme of both is we can't afford to mess up again in Afghanistan. Some people contend that once the Soviet Union left Afghanistan and then America cut them off completely that was the genesis of the 9/11 attacks. We gave millions of dollars in weapons to those who once were our "friends", but now are our enemies.

Last and definitely least. Jerry Jones please, please fire Wade Phillips. This man has no business being an NFL head coach. How many underwhelming seasons do we have to have him as head coach? (Mike Shanahan does not have a job now!) There's a reason this man has never won a playoff game as a head coach. As a defensive coordinator, he is the man. As a head coach, he is most definitely not the man! You and I Jerry aren't getting any younger, I'd love to see the Cowboys relevant again sometime in my lifetime.

Enough ranting for one day. I should be back tomorrow with more info about Pearl Jam, including their tribute to Michael Jackson after his death. themusicaddict