U2 and a Pop Music Daffynition

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U2 in 1980, not in Champaign, Illinois.

My memory is a very fragile thing, especially when it is based on a mistruth, not to be confused with a bald-faced lie. It was almost midnight on a Thursday night. It was the winter of 1980, I was in Champaign, Illinois trying to find “myself” as a pre-young adult, walking about the campus thinking that the answer would just come up and introduce itself to me. Instead, I stumbled upon a bar called either Panama Red’s or Mabel’s. The front door was wide open. Warm air and the stench of cigarettes and spilt beer spewed out, as well as someone screaming/singing “If you walk away, walk away, I walk away, walk away, I will follow.”

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Express Yourself, No One Else Is Going To

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In America, there is no better time to express yourself than now. Thank you, First Amendment. Thank you, internet and social media. Thank you, 24-hour news cycles. And you too, Donald Trump, current president of the United States. NFL. Gold star families. Me too. North Korea. Free. Form. Punctuation. Iran. Isis. The greatest divider of all time: Linus and the Great Pumpkin. Gun violence. Pearl Jam. Uber. Black lives matter. White supremacy. Little, yellow, different. Puerto Rico. This Is Us. Hurricanes. WikiLeaks.

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And The Voice of The Brave

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He had to be brave. Any other feeling he had would have just gotten in the way and made things more difficult. When one makes a life-changing decision like this, there is no room for fear, doubt, even hunger. Roberto Gonzalez had just auditioned for a national singing competition and made the final cut. The finals would be televised later in the evening. He was eating a corned beef sandwich with some Doritos®. It was delicious.

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When Fantasy Football goes awry

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There was absolutely no doubt about it. It was/is a bad year for the NFL. What, with the whole kneeling during the national anthem controversy and all of its political implications, and how about the whole evasion of head-on collisions causing brain cancer. Ask any US President, and he’ll gladly tell you that football is definitely failing, just look at the horrible ratings.

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