Roll into Irving and do your thing. Another 100-plus yard game for Deuce McAllister, Reggie Bush racks up 160 all-purpose yards, and Drew Brees throws for 384 yards and five touchdowns. Hell, even unsung stud fullback Mike Karney scores the first threee touchdowns of his typically blue-collar career. Defensive end Will Smith bounces back from injury to inflict a pair of sacks on Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. And New Orleans coach Sean Payton looks like he owns his former Lone Star employers to the tune of a 42-17 Sunday-night route. As the 9-4 Saints continue their drive to the playoffs, a confidence boost provided by such a massive win might be just what the doctor ordered.

Meanwhile down in Houston, self-proclaimed Screw-head Vince Young took the most stupendous crap on Texans coach Gary Kubiak. The lifelong Aggie brought to H-town after decades spent killing brain cells in the rarified air of Denver just couldn’t bring himself to do the most logical thing last spring. Just draft Vince Young the local public implored. But the misguided newcomer insisted on not listening. Forget that Vince is an accomplished hometown hero. Forget that Vince is a once-in-a-lifetime performer. Forget that Vince wins wherever he goes. But never, ever forget that Sunday afternoon Vince Young made Gary Kubiak look like the dumbest decision-maker in the history of football. May a slowed-and-chopped replay of the game-winning touchdown forever haunt his sleepless nights.

Chelsea 1, Arsenal 1
Lazio 3, Roma 0

Two great derby games last Sunday in Europe.

Longtime MLS coach Bob Bradley was named interim head coach of the U.S. National Team on Friday, the day after Juergen Klinsmann withdrew from consideration. Bradley will also coach the U.S. Under-23 team as it tries to qualify for the 2008 Olympics, and he's also one of the five finalists for the permanent job (Lyon's Gerard Houllier and Manchester United's Carlos Queiroz are reported to be two of the others). But he also could be gone by May – before the team even plays an official game.

Astros fans who have accused GM Tim Purpura of being slow to pull the trigger must now officially back off. There's plenty of other stuff to complain about. But yesterday, the Good Guys traded fledgling pitching prospects Taylor Buchholz and Jason Hirsh, and budding fan favorite Willy Taveras, to Colorado for starter Jason Jennings and Rule 5 tagalong Miguel Asencio, who, um, missed the past two seasons after elbow surgery. Doh!

Given the Astros' luck with trading away starters (Johan Santana, Freddy Garcia), Hirsh is an early favorite for the 2010 Cy Young Award. Although he was PCL pitcher of the year for Round Rock last year, he was no great shakes in the bigs. The Stros were already backed into a corner by Andy Pettitte's sudden yearning to be back on Broadway and last week's Jon Garland trade implosion, and Jennings did have an ERA under 4.00 last year in the pitcher's purgatory of Coors Field. The Juice Box may not be much friendlier, but at least Houston's humidity should help him keep the ball down.

Big news out of city hall: Councilmember Mike Martinez has announced Wal-Mart is undertaking a 60-day moratorium on development at Northcross. "This is a huge step in the right direction," reads a press release from Martinez. "The Mayor and Council members worked together on this deal, and I want the residents of the neighborhoods to know that we hear their concerns loud and clear. This will allow for more time to answer questions, re-notify, if necessary, and gain more input from the community," Martinez continues.

The moratorium opens a massive pressure-release valve. Scheduled to take the Northcross development up at their meeting tomorrow, intensity was building on City Council to act. Tomorrow being their last meeting of the year, the possibility existed that large portions of Northcross would have been demolished before Council's next meeting in the new year. With the moratorium, the mall will be unaffected when Council returns in January.

View the press release here.

Greg Clark is a botanist in the biology department at UT. He transacts most of his business wearing shorts and sandals and enjoys playing music before his lectures to help each class begin positively.
   Greg shares a home with his wife, Monica, an educator for AISD, and their 8-year-old daughter, Isabel, a burgeoning artist with a bedroom that can be accurately described as fairly princess-y. The yard of their Hyde Park home is filled with the plants Greg loves, and until a recent remodeling, a person could sit on the Clarks’ toilet and pass the time by reading Greg’s PhD, which hung on the wall nearby.
   During this same remodeling, Greg had to reconsider other of his decorating philosophies, including what to do with the discs covering a great deal of wall space in the Clark home. Each disc featured a picture or logo or the name and dates of a tournament, and collectively they represented a historical record in molded, round plastic of Greg’s years spent playing Ultimate.

The Water Treatment Plant No. 4 controversy centers around selection of the plant's site in one of two troubled locations: the currently slated Bull Creek site, or the city's preferred location in the so-called Cortana tract, both within the ecologically sensitive Balcones Canyonlands Preserve. But as SOS's Colin Clark writes in to say, there's a more fundamental problem: the need of the plant itself.

In judging the millions of gallons per day Austin requires (MGD), the city goes by peak-day numbers, a projection of worst-case usage. Clark brings our attention to a slide from Lee Leffingwell's water conservation task force, which was assembled to reduce water usage 1% a year for 10 years. The slide projects peak-day numbers into the future, along with numbers based on the 1% savings. Clark writes:

"What is completely remarkable from the slide is that with the 1% reduction in peak day demand continued into the future, Austin won't hit 260 MGD in peak day demand until around 2018 or 2019. Guess what our current water treatment capacity is (excluding the [to be demolished] Green plant)? 285 MGD. So twelve years from today, we are projected, by the City itself, to have a peak day demand of 25 MGD less than current capacity, after we demolish a plant that gives us 42 MGD. The year when we would get close to the 285 MGD mark is literally off of the chart, as the chart only goes to year 2019.

So why the big rush on the new treatment plant when it's not needed for perhaps 15 years?"

Good question.

Simple – by winning where the votes are. Like so much of American politics today, the Congressional District 23 race (see previous posts below) was something of an urban (blue) vs. rural (red) battle, and although Bonilla beat Rodriguez in 12 of the sprawling district's 20 counties, Rodriguez won the most populous, Bexar. Almost all of Rodriguez's 6,082-vote margin of victory came in the western part of Bexar that is within the district. Theoretically, he could have lost all of the other 19 counties and still squeaked his way into Congress. Although the district stretches all the way from San Antonio to the eastern city limits of El Paso, the San Antonio end dominates: 65% of the votes cast were in Bexar County, and Rodriguez took 56% of those. For a county-by-county breakdown, the Secretary of State's Web site.

Tonight kicks off the first of several inform meetings regarding the recently passed Commercial Design Standards Ordinance, and its centerpiece, the Vertical Mixed Use provision. Neighborhoods can decide to opt-in or opt-out of the zoning category, dependent on their desire to reside in a $500,000 condo above a gelato parlor. (We kid, we kid – well, kinda). Tonight's meeting is specifically geared toward neighbors of that Urban Village guinea pig, the Mueller development. That Bed Bath and Beyond they're building looks New Urban to the max!

Meeting happens tonight, Wed., Dec. 13, from 6-9pm, at the Region 13 Education Center, 5701 Springdale. Full press release copied inside.