Yet Another Episode of Envelope Blogging Theater

Dear Universe,

More of the Following Please:



This Bad News Bears-A League of Their Own Cowboys Season Turnaround


I realize that the Bad News Bears end up losing the championship game at the end of the movie. I purposely used them as my analogy to preserve my requisite blogger pessimism and to also remind everyone that Cowboys December suckdom is just around the corner. Now that I’ve laid down that disclaimer, I couldn’t be more excited about this Cowboys team. Looking at this three game stretch we have in front of us (and truthfully, there’s a few games in the final stretch that scream “freebie Cowboys win” but as they occur in December, I won’t categorize them as such), it’s tempting to think that a record of 9-2 is not outside the realm of possibilities. To then contemplate what Week 5 Amanda would have said if you would have told her a record like that was even a possibility, well, first you would have had to knock the bottle of bleach she was about to drink out of her trembling hands. I’ve decided to not try to predict Wild Cards, playoff spots, playoff wins, playoff losses, bowls of cereal, Super Bowls. Nothing. I’m enjoying the hell out of this emotional rollercoaster season. The only people who seem to be enjoying it more than me are Keith Brooking and Miles Austin. And I’m okay with that too. Just keep on keepin’ on, homedudes.




The Mavs Minus that Little Snafu with the Spurs Last Night


Losing to the Spurs hurts. No matter if it’s close or not. And the worst part about last night’s game was that, considering the Mavs recent track record of pulling off amazing come-from-behind wins, it was never incomprehensible that they could beat the Spurs. Even being down double digits. Of course, that was not to happen. And to add a suck cherry to the suck sundae, Josh Howard had to come out due to soreness in his ever-so-tender ankley wankley.

But seeing as the Mavs are tied for first place with the Rockets in the Southwest, last night didn’t dampen my Mavs spirits too much. Because the high I’m still on from the Rockets game and Dirk’s 29 point 4th quarter just doesn’t seem to wear off so easily. And no matter how many people tell me that Drew Gooden will only disappoint me eventually, I still love the dude. No matter how many people tell me that JJ Barea will never, as I predicted last season, score 50 points in one game (ok, I might have overshot on that one) I still love him in an almost unnatural and almost certainly unholy way. If the Mavs keep up this level of decentness and the Cowboys don’t drop the soap in December, I don’t know what I am going to do. Retain my will to live? Sing “Wonderful Christmastime” on an unending loop to total strangers until mid-January? These are all very, very real possibilities. Prepare yourselves.



Lady Gaga

Ok, I’ve been stifling this rant for a while now. I offer no disclaimers for this. I might as well be a 20 year old trust fund kid going to the Tisch School of the Arts, smoking clove cigarettes and discussing Matthew Barney at their parents place in the Hamptons. But I FUCKING LOVE LADY GAGA WITH EVERY LITTLE ENZYME IN MY BODY. Let me clarify. When I first heard about her, a point in time which I will not claim was long ago, it was probably in conjunction with the words “Perez” and “Hilton” which immediately made me break out into hives. Then I heard her song “Just Dance” and thought, “wow, what an awful song!” and completely dismissed her. I should back up in this story a bit. I have written a lot about how I gave up on all indie cred a long time ago. I don’t really follow pop music either. In fact, if anything, my music taste is kind of like that mosquito in Jurassic Park. It just got stuck in some tree sap around 2005 or so and I like it that way. I’m sure Time Life will put out a microdot collection of the greatest hits 1980s, 1990’s and the early ’aughts and my grandchildren will buy it for me to listen to on my iBrain or whatever and I will angrily grumble at them about how the Arcade Fires were what music really was back in my day. And they will euthanize me to save money on the water bill or something.

But back to Lady Gaga. I read more about her and realized that she wrote her own songs and the more I listened, the more I realized that the girl knows her way around a hook. And I liked the influences she cited. Her nutty costumes even seemed somewhat endearing if not dangerously flammable. Then I saw her performance of “Paparazzi” at the VMA’s a few months ago. What. The. Hell? Did she just fake kill herself on MTV? God, that song’s catchy! Wait, is she now ascending into heaven? Also, is she the Phantom of the Opera? Does she ever wear pants? Is that real blood? If someone leads me to ask two or more of those questions in a three minute performance, I’m a fan of theirs. Case closed. Team Gaga. So I went back and listened to her songs again. Total fan. Then this week, she released the video for “Bad Romance” and I had the weirdest déjà vu moment. I was a huge Madonna fan from ages 5 to 10 (not physically huge, that came later when I discovered spaghetti noodles drenched in butter stuffed into a French bread loaf) and would pull my dresses off my shoulders and try my best to make my mom buy me heels and fingerless gloves to emulate my slutty idol. Sadly, my mom did not see it fit to allow me to dress like a child prostitute. John Hinkley, Jr. totally ruined it for all of us. But in my fangirldom, I would mark my calendar for Madonna music video premieres. I remember counting down the days until the “Vogue” video premiered and having a tape in the VCR at the ready for a solid week.

Well now YouTube is my VCR, Lady Gaga is my Madonna and “Bad Romance” is my “Vogue”. Damn, this song is killer. This video is amazing. Let me put it this way: my friend Philip doesn’t like 30 Rock because he claims that it’s not written for “people like me: stocky people who drive pickup trucks and have facial hair.” He loves Lady Gaga as much as I do. Case closed. Team Gaga.



Stephen King

I have a friend with whom I seem to constantly lament the lack of decorum on the internet. Apparently, we’ve added one new member to our club. And he’s been hit by a van so he’s got every right to be grumpy:

"Everybody bitches about everything." — Stephen King, on the Internet.


Dear Universe,

Less of the Following Please:



People Pelting Morrissey with Things

HE JUST GOT OUT OF THE HOSPITAL. STOP IT. FOR REALZ.



People Shooting Other People

I don’t want to trivialize anything. But seriously folks, cut the shit with the taking out your aggressions, fears, fundamentalist bullshit or just plain craziness on innocent people. If your trigger finger is so itchy or the voices are just too loud, kindly point the gun in your own direction for starters. For realz.



Mud at White Rock Lake

I had a little adventure on Halloween. If you were to make a movie poster for my action-packed Halloween day, Robert Wilonsky might call it a “bumper-splitting adventure!” In that vein, if anyone knows of a good place to buy a new front bumper for a 2002 Honda Accord, please email me at amandacobra@gmail.com. Here’s how it went down. It was really pretty on Halloween day. I drove to White Rock Lake for a jog. It was really crowded. Confusingly, there were a lot of parents there with kids dressed up in costumes. As far as I know, there is no candy fountain at or in White Rock Lake. And I should know because I had plenty of time to find it while my “situation” hilariously panned out.

As the lake was crowded, everyone was parking on the shoulder of the one way road that rings the lake. I picked a nice shady, grassy spot. As it hadn’t rained in a few days, I had no reason to be concerned about the mud to grass ratio of my parking spot. I kind of forgot that it had rained every day in October. I remembered that suddenly when I felt my car sinking. I tried play it cool and got out to go jogging. I then realized that playing it cool should take a back seat to getting the fuck out of this parking spot before my car became a permanent installation at White Rock Lake. But by the time I got back in the car to move it, it was too late. I was stuck. And people were looking. I tried to rock it back and forth. That might have even worked until one man kindly knocked on my window to let me know that my front bumper had been ripped off in my attempt to dig myself out. I think I handled the news pretty well.

I don’t really want to go into too many details about the rest of the ordeal. It was a lot like Vietnam. There was underbrush. There was a lot of mud and mosquitoes. Then there were a few attempts to use large tree branches, a paint tray, a beach towel and (oddly) a gym sock to get my car to higher ground. There was an aborted call to AAA for a tow. There was some talk of being dug out. There was a theory issued by me that maybe we could just come back in the spring. Then finally there was a tow rope and a man with a truck and a lot of testosterone, a taekwondo shirt and a lot of practical knowledge about how to tow a car out of a muddy ditch. He kind of saved my life that day. And the zip ties that hold my bumper in place remind me every day to never take a dry parking space for granted. I love you, cement.



David Cross

I will give David Cross credit for many things. His standup is funny. His character on Arrested Development is genius. He’s from Georgia, like me. But there’s some things that have been bugging me about David Cross for a while. The part about his standup that bugs me is his constant “I’m totally leaving this shithole redneck town and all you small-minded backwoods hillbillies” railing mentality. You’re out, dude. You’ve been out for decades. The bit is getting old. I get it that the Bush administration were a bunch of misogynist, war-mongering redneck assholes who reminded you of the good ol’ boys who ran things when you were a kid and you want to call them on it. I get it that you find conservative Christians to be narrow-minded sheep. But Jesus dude, you’re becoming as one-note as Larry the Cable Guy, your arch-nemesis.

I’ve discussed my rampant liberalism in depth on this and many other forums. I’m with you on many issues, brah. But then you do things like claim that you did some coke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner within 40 feet of the President in a bid to be shocking and outrageous and “badass” or something. Jesus, really? Really, dude? Whatever could be next? Safety pin an upside down American flag on your backpack? Spray paint “SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME” on Henry Kissinger’s lawn? Read The Anarchist’s Cookbook on a crowded train? Loudly profess your admiration for Anton LaVey at your grandmother’s bingo night. Edgy? You’re doing it so wrong.

HANG THE (me)J, HANG THE (me)J, HANG THE (me)J

My old buddy Geoff has a blog called The Hanging Brain. He's a funny guy and a damn good writer. He asked me to put together a list of some of my favorite songs by local acts. I was scared that he was going to punch me in the face if I didn't comply so I did as I was asked to do.

Here are the results:

http://thehangingbrain.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/hanging-brain-radio-guest-dj-amanda-cobra/

Please feel free to use this blog's comments section to tell me how much my taste in everything sucks. I need to be ripped. Hard.

A Lot of Stuff Can Happen in a Fortnight, Apparently

As you may or may not have noticed, You Go Live in Utah has been disturbingly post-free recently. I have been brainstorming amusing stories I could make up about my absence. I was going to cry swine flu. I was going to make up a story about being cast on the new season of Rock of Love. I thought I might even get away with convincing all of you that I was boycotting blogging until Miley Cyrus returned to Twitter. But alas, dear readers, I trust that you would have seen through all of these lame excuses. The simple and truth-soaked reason is that my actual job that keeps the lights flickering in my cold East Dallas apartment has inundated me with all kinds of holiday-related work. And despite all the kind offers that this blog has had from people who want to advertise their penile-enhancement drugs or their work-from-home pyramid schemes, You Go Live in Utah had to take a sad little backseat for a few weeks while Amanda Cobra did (yuck) real work.

Luckily, not much happened in those few weeks. Oh wait, no scratch that. Everything happened in the past few weeks. Black turned to white. Cats started mating with dogs. Dane Cook became funny. As the first week passed and the Cowboys had massacred the Falcons, I thought I should start keeping a running list. Maybe on the back of an envelope. And since I had done such a poor job on the Mavs season opener (again, so did they so I didn’t feel too bad) I thought I needed to remind myself to redeem my Mavs-dom while I was at it. The next thing I knew, the envelope started to look like notes from Sports Journalism 101 as transcribed by the Zodiac Killer. One of the notes at the bottom of the envelope is the ultimate in give-up blogging. “Blackface? F it, whatever.”

So everything on this envelope has already been written about. I’m approximately two weeks behind on all of these topics, save last night’s game against the Jazz and Dirk’s “yes, please I’ll take that” of yet another Mavs team record. I decided that instead of trying to say clever things or scrape the carcasses of these topics for any scraps of funny meat, I would do this like those Time Life picture books that all our grandparents had when we were growing up. Let’s look at the last two weeks with nostalgia. Feel free to put on your copy of “Begin the Beguine” by Cole Porter.




Remember when the Cowboys beat the Falcons and Matt Ryan got sacked a bunch of times? And the Falcons bitched about how the Cowboys didn't close the blinds and the sun was in their eyesies-wysies? And how Keith Brooking continued his streak of awesome by beating his former team in his first season playing outside of Fulton County? Yeah, that was pretty badass. And remember how it was the begining of the emergence of our new Lord and receiver Savior...



MILES AUSTIN! All Hail Golden Gums! Seriously, who would have thought that our prettiest receiver would also become, far and away, our best? A gentetic football architect could not have drawn up a better football player blueprint. Miles Austin could be pulled over on the Tollway with a midget tranny hooker in the passenger's seat and a trunk full of pure Afghan heroin and I'm pretty sure a smile and a quick photo op would ensure that the whole matter died a quiet, citation-less death. Speaking of our new, Exalted One...



Remember how this past Sunday we also killed the Seattle Seahawks? Remember the chemistry between Miles Austin and Tony Romo? Remember Crayton running that kickoff return all the way back for a touchdown? Remember Hurd's catch? Hell, even Roy "I'm a Wide Receiver Too!" Williams got a touchdown (for one very brief second)? And remember how the Giants have lost three in a row and how the Eagles managed somehow to lose to the, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, sorry.....(regains composure slightly) Oakland Raiders? And how because of all that we are now tied for first in the NFC East? I know, it's weird, right?



Then remember how, after a totally soul-sucking and awful season opener against the Wizards, the Mavs managed to beat the LA F'ing Lakers? Granted, it was a Pau'less Lakers but it was the LA Lakers and the Mavs beat them by nearly 20 points? As a side note, I want to start a big and tall men's shoe store which will in no way be affiliated with Pau Gasol called Pau-less Shoes.



Then remember how we beat the Clippers too? Ok so beating the Clippers isn't a huge feather in anyone's cap. But it did lead to Baron Davis being compared to Kimbo Slice. And anytime that happens AND the Mavs win, I'm happy.




Then came last night. I thought I was going to just watch a little old Mavs game. Against the Utah Jazz. And I was watching a game full of shots not going in and thinking, "Wow, I am really going to have to stretch to find something to write about this game. Nothing to see here." Absolutely nothing would go for the Mavs and they weren't getting any fouls called. No free throws. No anything. Then came the fourth quarter. At this point you've read and heard enough about it that you don't need me to recap it other than to remind you that Dirk has set yet another Mavs team record by scoring 29 in the final quarter, 40 in the game and saved the entire team single-handedly. And apparently healed lepers who were waiting in the tunnel.

So the Mavs are on a roll and let me offer you a little reminder that, as of right now, the Cowboys have the same record as the New England Patriots and last year's Super Bowl-winning Steelers. So thing's are all-around awesome in Sportsville, right? We've hit the reset button and we're back in Happy Land and maybe even the curse of December Cowboys Football Suck has been lifted, right? Everything's golden, right?

Well, not entirely. Funny enough, when I started thinking about writing this blog entry, one of the pictures I intended to post was Popeye Jones's mugshot. But before I wrote this entry, I went for a jog on Katy Trail today. About five minutes into my jog this afternoon, I saw a distinct pair of ears. Nah, couldn't be. Then there was the Mavs warm-up shirt. Then I saw his face, swollen and scabbed up. And then I started thinking about what I was going to write. And the mugshot I was going to post. Here's the thing. I like Popeye Jones. I don't know him personally but I've always liked the guy for some reason. I don't like drunk driving. I don't make any excuses for him and I'm pretty sure he doesn't either. His face this afternoon certainly didn't. I'm not going to try to read too much into a chance encounter on a jogging trail. But the guy I saw and the weak smile he gave this afternoon made me realize that I could not and would not be posting his mug shot.

I don't care if anyone thinks it's a double standard we hold athletes to and how he could have killed a busload of orphaned puppies or whatever. This is, after all, a blog. Maybe I'm wrong but his swollen and slightly scabby face was the face of a guy who is more than aware of what kind of work lay ahead of him and what a mess of trouble he's in and he doesn't need anyone piling on him right now. On a side note, he is in better shape than me but I was able to keep a decent pace with him (in a non-stalker fashion) for some time. I blame the fact that he eventually left me in the dust on the fact that his iPod obviously did not randomly decide to play "Killer Queen" by Queen on an unexplained loop at one point.