Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

Alright, as you might remember (you probably don’t) last Cowboys season, I did a little game-by-game breakdown of each Cowboys game up to the BYE. I even implored to the Cowboys, “Come on, let's make this season Pyromania and not Euphoria” Clearly they did not take my advice as the season turned out to be not like a good Def Leppard album or even a mediocre or bad Def Leppard album but more like the car crash that severed Rick Allen’s arm.

And like every other Cowboys fan not named _____ Jones, I am thoroughly disheartened by the piss-poor draft. If it weren’t for the glimmer of hope I got from the first half of the Tennessee game, I would probably be opening up a few veins in a warm tub and listening to Closer by Joy Division. As it stands, I will say that my optimism for the upcoming Cowboys season (henceforth know only as The Season We Let Mike Shanahan Take a Year Off and Let Wade Phillips Play Coach For One More Season) is like my love for the songs of The Smiths. I love the Smiths. I love them no matter what, just like how I love the Cowboys. No matter how many fumbles, first round play-off exits or Johnny Marr and the Healers albums come between me and them, the love still burns like a pair of sneakers in Andre Rison’s bathtub. And so with that, I meld the two together seamlessly (well, kind of) to bring you my Cowboys-Up-to-the-BYE week preview…

Sunday, September 13th - @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers (noon)

“A Rush and Push and the Land is Ours”

There is no theoretical reasons why the Cowboys would lose this game short of the entire offensive line catching Montezuma’s Revenge simultaneously. We started last season out with the Browns. Remember that? I do. There was a Browns fan in the stands dressed as a three-headed dog. I also remember the return of the Fox Football robot, the commercial where the Burger King reverse pickpockets people on the street and the introduction of the Volcano Taco. Which should indicate three things: 1. The game was kind of dull 2. Advertising works 3. But I have not, in the past year, eaten a Volcano Taco or anything from Burger King so maybe it doesn’t after all.

I usually drag myself weakly out of bed in time to catch the last 30 minutes of the pregame show for noon games on Sundays. I say silent prayers every weekend that someone will hit Terry Bradshaw in the mouth hard and right now, all my money is on otherwise mild-mannered Michael Strahan snapping and taking one for the team. But not this game. This will be like Christmas morning. I won’t be able to sleep and the minute I grasp the first strand of consciousness, all I will be able to think about is about how cocky Jay Glazer will be when he announces the last minute gossip and injuries. “Yeah so Michael Vick and I were Skyping this morning and he says to look for the wildcat out there today.”

Sunday, September 20th – New York Giants (7:15pm)

“Barbarism Begins at Home”

Wow, I cannot wait for this game. As far as I am concerned, the Tampa Bay game is like a bonus preseason game. Funny quote: either Brad Sham or Babe Laufenberg made the proclamation during the Titans preseason game that Tony Romo, upon a long completion to Jason Witten, was “better than anyone realizes, even Romo himself. Ahead of him you really only have Manning and Brady if we’re being honest.” The next play was a obscenity-inducing interception thrown by Romo. The issuer of the previous hot sports opinion amended his original statement with, “I take back everything I just said. Nevermind.” Now THAT’S the kind of play calling I love. Baseless and hyperbolic opinions which are proven completely inaccurate 30 seconds later. Buck, Aikman, Johnson, Costas et al, the ball is in your court.

Monday, September 28th – Carolina Panthers (7:30 pm)

“William, It Was Really Nothing”

Last season for Monday Night Football, we got the Eagles. Oh my, that was a game. I even remember bonding with hurricane evacuees over the punk-ness of Donovan McNabb. This season? The Panthers. Umm, yay? God, I am really trying to think of what exciting things could happen in this game. A punt hits the scoreboard? Another FAIL like this? I know that the Panthers, unlike us, actually made the playoffs last season. But now that Kerry Collins is sober in Tennessee and Rae Carruth is making license plates, they just don’t have that pizzazz they used to have. See what Jerry Jones has done to me with his love of felons?

Sunday, October 4th – @ Denver Broncos (3:15pm)

“This Night (or early afternoon, really) Has Opened My Eyes”

This game is a huge bundle of awesome for many reasons, few of which are actually related to the Cowboys. First off, I want to see what a difference Shanahan being gone makes now that some time has passed. I also am, of course, terribly interested in seeing how the Jay Cutler for Kyle Orton trade is going to work out. I am a totally shameless and unapologetic Kyle Orton sympathizer. But most important for me, I can’t wait to see how Knowshon Moreno is going to work out for the Broncos. I distinctly remember his otherworldly ability to leap and (unless I have made up this highlight reel in my mind) flip over defenders when playing for Georgia last season. Then again, I also stopped watching Georgia games after the blackout game against Alabama that turned into a footbortion. I would also really like to be able to wear a light jacket or sweater by the time this game rolls around? Alright, Allah/God/Pete Delkus?

Sunday, October 11th - @ Kansas City (noon)

“Asleep”

Sundays are my one day I allow myself to well and truly sleep in. I feel like I must accomplish things on Saturday mornings and when football is not around, Sundays exist merely as a stopgap between weekend and being at my desk at work. Football gives me a reason to get out of bed. But what about when it’s football against the Kansas City Chiefs? I will probably watch at least half of this game in bed. Wow, this season sure does start off kind of slow, huh?

Oh wait, after the break we have a four week span that will see us play the Eagles, the Redskins, the Packers and the Giants again. Yeah, I’m saving up all my other Smiths songs for that streak. So expect to see a lot of “Girl Afraid”s and “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”s and “Miserable Lie”s. By December, I expect to be able to fully utilize “I Started Something That I Couldn’t Finish” and “Stop Me if You Think You’ve Heard This Before.”

On a side note:

Dear Mike Shanahan,

I love you, Mike Shanahan. Please come be our coach and make Tony Romo care about winning football games. You can keep Wade as our defensive coordinator because he’s the only head coach in the NFL that would take that kind of demotion. Or you can bring someone else in. Just please come and crack the whip. I’m not usually the type to sink to this kind of thing but I will let you touch my boobs if you come coach the Cowboys. Over the shirt, five seconds, no pictures.

Love,
Amanda Cobra

Pouring Out Some Diet Coke for You, Homes....

I hate to admit this but I remember, as a child, that certain family members from a certain side of my family always made cheap jokes or openly booed and hissed when any member of the Kennedy family was shown on the news. If it was John Kennedy, there was some reference to Marilyn Monroe (the irony being that the family member in question has yet to master fidelity himself) and I dared not even speak the name Ted Kennedy for fear of the onslaught of insults and venom that would be unleashed. When I was about 10 or 11 and started becoming interested in politics and started kind of forming my own ideas, I remembered that we learned all about this John F. Kennedy guy in class and we had gone to where some mean guy shot him. So I started reading books about JFK and then RFK and eventually became interested in the sordid, tragic and compelling story of the entire Kennedy clan.

When this family member found out about my interest in the Kennedys, I was ridiculed for my admiration of any member of the Camelot. I was told horror stories about things that the family did. They drank, cheated on their wives and went to a Congressional costume parties dressed as Barney the Dinosaur with a nametag that read “Tyrannosaurus Sex”, which probably actually solidified my love for Ted Kennedy. It was the first time I actually remember thinking, “But I admire this person and he has done great things and why can’t I have a political opinion without being ridiculed for it?” I’d hear the mentions of Chappaquiddick over and over again. It was kind of a foreshadowing for the people who can negate Bill Clinton’s ability to bring Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin together to talk and shake on a peace agreement or him continuing to be able to do things like negotiate the release of two American journalists held hostage in North Korea instead of retiring to Preston Hollow by just saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” or mentioning a cigar and snickering.

Ted Kennedy died today and, while it wasn’t a surprise, it really made me sad. We all knew he had brain cancer. I didn’t think he would make it this long. But of all the times when we need a Ted Kennedy, of all the times when we need to put aside partisanship and fear for the sake of helping the country’s working class…well, it’s right now. With all the boogeyman talk of Death Panels and compromises on public options, I hope and pray that someone will pick up the torch that Ted Kennedy would have carried. If your memory is failing to recall all the things that Ted Kennedy championed during his nearly 50-year political career, let me jog your memory. I get teary when I start to think about the fact that, despite the progress we have made in the past year, the fear-mongering, uninformed and paranoid-email-forwarding idiots could ruin the greatest shot we’ve got at a national health care system that provides for all citizens, not just the lucky ones.

So in memory of Ted Kennedy, who was able to put aside left or right allegiance to try to help the poor, disenfranchised and disabled, I want to give major, major props to John McCain. I understand that he is following his party line and that he probably genuinely has misgivings about Obama’s health care plan. But these absurd town hall meetings have not been, by and large, about debating the pros and cons of the proposed health care program. They have been about screaming and packing heat and telling seniors to go rent Logan’s Run. So when John McCain stands up to town hall meeting attendees by reminding them that a) there is no booing in civil discourse (House of Commons being the glaring exception) and b) that Obama is the president, he is not trying to sidestep or violate the Constitution and he deserves respect, I give a hearty tip of the hat to McCain.

It’s so funny to me that this Death Panel hocus-pocus seems to really be sticking. My 80 year old grandmother would probably volunteer to go up before the non-existent Death Panel. She’s been telling us that she “probably won’t be around much longer” for almost a decade now. Every time I go to her house, she gives me yet another household item like some sort of drawn-out Estate sale. The irony is, of course, that her mother spent 20 years claiming that she wasn’t gonna be around much longer either until she passed away just shy of 100. In fact, my grandmother’s insistence in her own eminent demise is the biggest reason I haven’t had to buy kitchenware, luggage or scarves as yet in my adult life. Maybe she just voted for Obama to get in the front of the line for the Socialist Death Panels?

Why the present-day Dallas Cowboys are an awful, ridiculous, absurd monster and alternately, why I cannot wait for football season to begin

I hate the Dallas Cowboys. Really, I do. Which is extremely uncomfortable considering that they are the team that I support. Nay, the team that I follow religiously. The team that I get depressed about missing during the summer and cannot wait until they come back in the fall to depress me with their bad football playing. The only analogy I can think of is the bad boyfriend.

The Cowboys are the boyfriend that you know, on paper, is completely awful. All your friends regularly ask with frustration all over their face why you are staying with him. They like to run down the list of things that he has done to hurt you or piss you off. He’s borrowed your car without asking and disappeared for three days with no explanation when he returns. He regularly uses phrases like “killer, brah” and “fo’ shizzle”. He doesn’t “get” the movie Idiocracy and calls is “dumb”. He wears Affliction t-shirts, jeans and flip flops most every day. Worse than all of that, when you try to defend your choice to stick with him to anyone, you cannot easily provide any reasons to justify your choice. You just, ummmm, well….you just, you know….I mean you don’t know what it’s like when it’s just us and no one else is around and…..

The Dallas Cowboys are a joke. A big, fat football joke. They used to not be. I think. Maybe I was just too young to get the joke back then. But Jerry Jones seems hell-bent on murdering any integrity the team may have. Because more than winning or playoffs or Super Bowls, Jerry Jones just wants to be really, really famous. Had he been born in a different time and not come into money (may need to re-evaluate this saying before posting) as he did, he would be a fixture of the reality show audition circuit and eventually become a staple of low-level basic cable reality programming. He’d eat monkey penises or make out with a pair of midgets or form alliances with smarter people and then throw them under the bus to avoid elimination. But mark my words; come hell or high water, he would be famous. And that’s a really bad thing for the Cowboys.

Let’s start with the most current wang measuring contest. The TV. I haven’t been to Cowboys Stadium yet but will be going soon because of the one good idea Jerry has had in a decade, the $29 party pass. Everyone that has been to the Stadium agrees that it is impressive if for nothing other than its size. Fresh Kills is also impressive because of its size, so size doesn’t always matter. I already hate the TV and I haven’t seen it. You know why I know that I hate the TV? Because at Mavs games, I hate the jumbotron. I never watch replays on it. I focus on the court instead. I sometimes realize this when I start to hear boos and remember, “Oh yeah, they show replays on the jumbotron.” But horses for courses and I do understand the appeal of the world’s largest replay screen to some people.

But when you find out that the screen is low enough that THIRD STRING punters could hit it with a punt, you eat humble pie. Not that a slice of such has ever passed between the lips of Jerry. But that’s when you take big HD lemons and make HD lemonade. You go, “oh yeah, well check this out….we can move the TV up because we have the most badass stadgeium of all time so suck it." You smile and push a button and pretend it’s as easy as that to move the screens up while simultaneously texting your assistant to get some cranes over to Arlington post-haste. You don’t, under any circumstances, claim that punters just shouldn’t, you know, hit the TV and say that the screens will not be moved as they provide “entertainment value” to patrons. You know what provides amazing entertainment value? Football. Non-dead-ball-filled football. Not that I think Jerry gives a flying anything about football. He’s the Paris Hilton of owners, great at brand building and so easy to hate

Before the football season starts each year, Deadspin runs something on each team in the NFL about why each franchise sucks. Here’s this year’s Cowboys one. I’d like to address each reason, if I could. And I can because this is my blog:

1. Their new stadium will rape your wallet multiple times over. Some of the new features of Jerry Jones' (YEEEEEEHAWWWWW!) $1.2 billion Cowboys Stadium include carpeted floors (whee!), the world's biggest LCD screen (fer watchin' all dem big plays!), and a retractable roof. Oh yeah, there's also the $60 pizzas, and the $35, standing room only Party Passes the team is selling to an estimated 35,000 people PER FUCKING GAME. In other words, any time you attend a Dallas Cowboys game this year, nearly one third of the people in the stadium will be trying to take your fucking seat.

Do not get me wrong, I hate the idea of the new stadium because all the footage I have seen of it looks like the stadium equivalent of a model home in a “starting in the $400,000’s” planned community in Southlake or DeSoto or something. Completely soulless but filled to the brim with plasma concessions menu displays, frosted glass bathroom countertops and faux-modernism. But the idea that I can finally attend a Cowboys game and stand there on a pavilion and watch my team play is genius. If you have a seat at a game and are paranoid that a third of the people in the stadium will be trying to take your seat, breathe a deep sigh of relief when you realize that if that does indeed happen, the problem can be rectified with a simple “Yo homes, that’s my seat. Cough up a ticket or back to the party zone, hombre.” Takes about 5 seconds to say and will work 100% of the time. Also, Deadspin claims that the new stadium is “a painfully expensive, unnecessary luxury stadium that replaced a perfectly useful old home”. No. No, it isn’t. It is a painfully expensive, unnecessary luxury stadium that replaces a terribly dilapidated to third-world-esque levels stadium. Texas Stadium was the proverbial “used condom stuck to a dog corpse floating down the Ganges” of NFL stadiums.

2. If I have to hear Berman say "How bout them Cowboys?" one more god damn time… Seriously, Jimmy Johnson. FUCK YOU. Just because you won the NFC title against the 49ers back in 1993 didn't give you license to coin a phrase that would stay in the football lexicon forever and ever, well past the point of tolerance.

Point taken. When I was a kid in Georgia, my dad used to say “How ‘bout them Braves?” so I think it’s more of just a good-ol-boy way to sound folksy and blue collar and possibly backwoods. On a similar note, this list of NBA franchise slogans provides many a giggle to me.


3. I'm an American, and I did not ask for this team. Speaking of annoying terms associated with the Dallas Cowboys, the phrase "America's Team" was coined by NFL Films VP Bob Ryan in 1979 because he needed a catchy title for the team's 1978 highlight film.

Duuuuuuude, we get it. The phrase was coined before I was even born. It’s not my fault. I don’t call them that. One could argue that, as the top selling franchise as far as merchandise goes, the Cowboys are statistically speaking, America’s Team. Funny story: if you watch the Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien, you will notice that the two main characters have a club (“charolastras”) of sorts and one of the bylaws of the club is that “Whoever roots for Team-America is a fag.” I always assumed that this was a reference to either vague anti-Americanism in Latin America or a soccer thing. Turns out, if you watch the movie with the director’s commentary on, the sentence was mistranslated on the subtitles. What the rule is actually meant to read is as “Whoever roots for America’s Team is a fag.” True story. So even Mexicans are sick of the America’s Team thing.

4. They won't even have a chance to choke away a playoff spot this year. While the rest of the division improved, the Cowboys were fit to stand pat with Wade Phillips (he of the 0-4 playoff record) as head coach. They also did virtually nothing to their roster, with the mild exception of adding LB Keith Brooking. In short, this is the exact same team as the one that shat the bed last year. Only thinner at wideout.

Again, this bullet point belongs on a list of “Why Jerry Jones Sucks”. I fully believe that Jerry purposely half-ass drafted and blatantly ignore signing possibilities to pay for his new BonerDome. Which is why all Cowboys fans should be storm the gates of Valley Ranch with torches and hastily-made nooses at the ready, calling for his head.

5. Always remember: Michael Irvin once stabbed a guy in the fucking neck with scissors.

Done. Like 9/11 and where I was when Janet’s boob fell out, I hereby promise to never forget.

Yes, our team essentially sucks. And we hear about it constantly. We hear about how egotistical and underachieving we are. We hear people bitch about us like how everyone bitches about the prom king being a total dick. And then on top of all of this chimp diaper flinging, we still have to deal with the fact that at the end of the day, we love a team that doesn’t care about us and plays poorly at least 50 % of the time. Tony Romo told us he didn’t care that we didn’t win. Jerry Jones is telling us he doesn’t care about our football performance and would probably lower the TV screens in the ultimate middle finger to the actual sport the stadium was supposedly built to host. Wade Philips, while endearingly incompetent, is still incompetent. And while I wouldn’t go as far as to say that he doesn’t care, he doesn’t seem to mind losing a whole lot either. To be a Cowboy fan is to be a glutton for punishment, shame and disappointment. We all deserve Purple Hearts.

And I can’t wait for the season to begin. Even if we go 1-15. Even if Jason Witten finally breaks in half and Martellus Bennett is taken back to his home planet mid-season and we are left tight-endless. Because it’s football and it’s my team and it sure as hell beats reading or exercising or something on a sunny fall Sunday.

Now move the fucking TV up, Jerry and stop being a prick about it.