If Jerry Jones Happens to be a Big Fan of My Blog...

Yes, the Cowboys are still in the playoff hunt. Mind you, that’s not anything to do with their ability to play good football. It’s mostly because Jeff Garcia sacrificed his beautiful face only to end up losing and allowing the Cowboys to remain playoff alive. Seriously, I can’t watch that postgame press conference but I was able to find a picture of Jeff Garcia immediately after speaking to the press, sans suit.




Ok so the Cowboys could potentially win the ability to yet again lose in the first round of the playoffs! And the route they would take to get to the playoffs would involve beating the Eagles in Philadelphia and quite possibly being pelted with various car parts if the Cowboys get a big lead early enough. That’s a thrilling thought. Well, the beating Philly part.

But no Cowboys fan was feeling like this on Saturday night. Some of the more reactionary fans/friends of mine declared that they wouldn’t even watch the Philly game. This same person also swore off a favorite bar of ours after the karaoke DJ didn’t let him sing before last call. But Saturday night was not fun. In fact, much like you would adjourn to a nearby restaurant to tell misty-eyed stories about your friend and how great she was right before she became a suicide bomber. I think it’s interesting some of the points that came up during this football wake that just happened to be occurring while Texas Stadium was being put out of its’ misery. I think it hits on some very important fears and concerns all Cowboys fans harbor.

1. Texas Stadium – Philip thinks that this shouldn’t be the last year at Texas Stadium and that it’s still the #2 profit-turning stadium in the league. I have never been to Texas Stadium and have only heard horror stories about the filth and disrepair it fell into over the past 10 years. But while I can’t imagine it being very salvageable this late in the process of decaying, I don’t understand why it could not have been refurbished and renovated over a few off-seasons. Everyone at the table agreed. It’s an iconic stadium. Why did it have to fall to the recent Dallas mentality of knocking down anything with any history in order to build something newer, shinier and with bigger TVs instead of being a Wrigley Field or Lambeau for America’s Team?

2. Arlington? – Nothing made the entire table more frustrated and angry than the fact that the opportunity to have the Dallas Cowboys play in Dallas was on the table and the city blew it. Well, Laura Miller blew it. It boggles the mind to think how great a stadium in downtown Dallas could have been. Knock down the Cotton Bowl or build something just south of the Trinity to bring commerce south of the river. I know it’s about four years too late to have this discussion but the thought of Cowboy fans driving to mothereffing Arlington to watch a game is ridiculous to me and all the fans I know. The Dallas Cowboys is something so iconic that it’s probably one of the first three things people will say when playing word association with “Dallas” so it’s just completely embarrassing that the city didn’t do everything it could to bring them back home, so to speak.

3. Tickets – Well, I should amend that. I say that the thought of driving out to Arlington is ridiculous to me but it’s a moot point since I know I will never be able to afford to see a game at the new stadium. I was never able to afford to go see a game at Texas Stadium. It’s really disheartening to think of tickets to see your favorite football team in the same way you think of the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog that comes out every year. Gee, wouldn’t it be amazing to own a life-sized replica of me made out of Legos or a child-sized helicopter for the kids? Yeah, it would and so would seeing a Cowboys game be. I understand that the Mavs were not the hottest ticket in town when Cuban started his fan-friendly pricing for last minute seats. But to his credit, even after they became the hottest ticket in town, you could still walk to the AAC and fork over $20 for a ticket as the game started. Jerry Jones is a businessman. I understand that. He’s trying to make as much money as he can. But in this season of bleach-drinking economy woes, I can’t see how anything about the new stadium (save its’ laser-shooting wheelchair ramps) that is fan-friendly.

4. Seriously, tickets – At no point was this issue hammered home more succinctly than when our table, which consisted of 6 die-hard Cowboys fans lamented the fact that no one at our table had ever been to a regular season Cowboys game. We talked about how we had planned, both last season and this season, to go before they moved to Pocket-rape Dome but could never afford it. Then Philip said technically he had been to a Cowboys game at Texas Stadium, though it was a preseason game. He told us the story of how he and his uncle had tickets which Philip had in his back pocket and which were swiped as they walked up to the entrance. He said he and his uncle were already there so they went ahead and shelled out $120 for two new tickets. It was at that point in the story that Courtney offered up, “That’s what’s wrong right there. Two preseason tickets are $120!”

5. Stop hiring jackasses – I have written many times about Jerry Jones’ belief that any press is good press and that controversy makes for a more interesting football team. Philip made a great point and one with which we all agreed. During the montage at halftime of all the memorable moments at Texas Stadium, they included the George Teague hit on Terrell Owens several times. Philip noticed that even now that T.O. has been a Cowboy for a few years and paid a show-y apology to the star at midfield, it feels great to see someone knock the shit out of him. It feels even better to see that it’s a Cowboy. Now, I personally think that Terrell Owens overreaches the term “egomaniac” and is actually a straight-up truly weird dude. But that doesn’t stop the fact that he is clearly headed towards doing in Dallas what he did in San Francisco and Philadelphia. He will never be a tenth as concerned about the team as he is about his own fame. And instead of having to delve any further into this theory about Jerry hiring jackasses, I will just say “Pacman” and be done with it. Now, on the flipside of this you have Roy Williams. A Texas native, a UT alum and a genuinely hard working and talented dude. You KNOW he wants to be here. He played his high school championship game at Texas Stadium. He was rescued from the bowels of HMS Detroit Lions to come back home and play for America’s Team, his team. I believe with all my heart that Roy Williams not only is capable of being the kind of receiver Terrell Owens is now (not that great) but I more confident in his desire to be here and to be a Cowboy and to contribute to the team. Not like his pro football career is just a way to get the word out about his birthday party.

6. Who told Tony Romo where West Village was? – Alright, I know that I said that I wouldn’t pick on Tony Romo anymore. And yes, he’s a good guy, human-speaking. But I consider those two or three bonehead 30 yard passes to no one on 3rd and 2 to be my excuse to make this observation. Tony Romo “White Backwards Baseball Hat at Press Conference” 2007 season record: 13-3. Tony Romo “Newsboy Cap and Designer Leather Jacket at Press Conference” 2008 season record: 9-6. That’s all I’m saying.

A Particularly Disjointed Rant

It’s happening to me! I can’t believe it. I just did it. I just did the thing that my grandmother, and many senior citizens, does that drives me crazy. But you can’t get mad at them because they’re old. Now I’ve just done it so that means that either I am old and senile or…..something.

Here’s the deal. I was reading Will Leitch’s post on Deadspin about he and his best friend’s years-long tradition of vying for Dork King crowns by compiling their own personal Oscar nominations list the night before the actual nominations are announced. They even talk on the phone for hours about their choices the night before the nominations are announced. Will Leitch, you are not making this intense, burning crush I have on you any easier to justify. But that opened up a dialog between myself and the other guy who works in my cubicle who boldly stated this morning, “It’s snowing outside and I don’t feel like working today.” And by snow, he meant this:



So we started talking about movies.

Here’s the thing: I like movies. But I hate actually going to see movies, if that makes sense. I have never felt transported into a magical realm for two hours. I have never felt engrossed and completely wrapped up in the pitch black embrace of a theater. Movie theaters are usually 15 degrees too hot/cold. Concessions are expensive and the idea of 100 or so people sitting in the dark while all simultaneously gorging on junk food sounds like the subject of an upcoming Tyra Banks show about the hottest new eating disorder amongst teen girls. Or a Nine Inch Nails video or something. The worst part about movies is that other people also go to the movies. Maybe I should only go see really bad films during matinee hours. Seriously, I cannot handle other people when I go to the movies. Most of the time it’s when they laugh at something that isn’t funny and I feel alternately left out or fighting my urge to stand up, pause the film and ask each one why exactly they found that amusing. And contrary to popular thought, it’s not just people talking during the movie and it’s certainly not confined to non-art house mall cinemas. When I worked at the Magnolia Theater, we had 28 Days Later before it was on wide release. It was at one showing of that movie that an Australian woman thought it would be no biggie to bring her 4 month old child with her because “he sleeps a lot.” Apparently, times that he doesn’t like to sleep include times when there are sudden loud screams and zombie attacks brought to you in ear-splitting Dolby Digital. Weird. Other than proving that Australians have not evolved very far from their criminal lineage, this illustrates why I don’t like to go to movies. And since I don’t get wrapped up in many, if any films, enough to not do thinks like get up and walk around/make a phone call/check to see if that Jello I made is setting, viewing movies at my home is probably the best idea for everyone involved.

So I told my co-worker that I feel conflicted. I always want to see the movies that are being shortlisted for the Globes or Oscars. I usually think a lot of those movies look like movies I want to see. But there’s a vast ocean of indifference and annoyance that stands between the sentiment of wanting to see said movies and actually going to see them. It would be like if the only place in town that served your favorite meal of all time just happened to be a dentist’s office. If I were to make this a math equation, my desire to see Oscar-contender movies is less than or equal to (but most likely not) my ability to sit in a dark room with strangers and listen to them eat with their mouths open for two hours.

But that’s the point in the conversation where it happened. When naming all the movies I wanted to but was not willing to see, I listed Doubt and Milk and Gran Tourino and Frost/Nixon and then, “Christina Goes to a Wedding or Rachel at a Marriage or whatever.” That’s what my grandmother does. She is 80 so she feels like she has earned the privilege of not having to learn the actual, correct names of anything she wants to talk about. One time she told me that she saw a drummer on a PBS special who was dressed really sharply in a suit and she was surprised because, according to her, “drummers wear sweatshirts.” I really liked this theory and wanted to know who was this beat-keeping rapscallion she spoke so highly of. It turned out to be, in her words, “the drummer for Huey and the Newspapers.” That’s Huey Lewis and the News for anyone who has never had to talk about Huey Lewis and the News with your elderly grandparent. Don’t even get her fired up by talking to her about her least favorite radio personality, “Rush Lindbergh.” I think he’s probably so conservative and angry because someone kidnapped his baby. She was super bummed out when her favorite show “Dr. Quinn’s Medicine” was cancelled back in the 90’s. Now lest you think that I am in any way making fun of my grandmother, let me make it clear that she is a vibrant, intelligent and funny 80 year old woman with whom you can discuss, once you figure out that she’s referring to “Adaptation” and not “Adoption”, Charlie Kaufman films with. In fact, my tribute to the fact that she is still alive and kicking and pretty agile-minded is that I rarely correct her title or name jumbles. But I always think, “Oh man, I hope someone corrects me when I get old and change the names of everything.” Then it happened today. One week into my 28th year of life.

The worst part is that my coworker didn’t correct me and instead just nodded and went, “Yeah, that looks ok too.”

I Never Wanted to See You This Way

I went to see an old friend on Friday night. I haven’t seen this friend in a few years. But back when I was a music journalist, I spent almost every night with this friend. This friend’s name was Gypsy Tea Room. In the early to mid aughts, I did everything at Gypsy Tea Room from drinking to shouting to taking a shower upstairs. And obviously, I saw shows there. We were tight. I remember how proud she was when she won Best Venue in the Dallas Observer a few years in a row. I even remember she won “Cleanest Bathrooms at a Venue” one year. The joke there being that the bathroom at Trees had actually been mentioned in Spin Magazine as being one of the five filthiest venue bathrooms in the country. But not Gypsy. In fact, in her heyday, she had an attendant in the women’s bathroom that would sell you everything from gum to hairspray to cigarettes.

But then we drifted apart. I stopped being a music writer and stopped going to national shows as much. She had a nasty incident with skinheads assaulting and paralyzing a concertgoer at an Old 97’s show she hosted. She also had the misfortune of being located in Deep Ellum which saw crime, bad dance clubs, underage drinkers and light rail construction shoo people away in droves. Then one day I heard that my old friend Gypsy Tea Room was closing. I can’t say I was surprised. Clearly if I had abandoned her, there were others who had also abandoned her. I didn’t go back to see her on her final night because it would have seemed really superficial. After all that time of not coming by, I didn’t think it seemed right to show up just to see her off.

I heard from some friends that someone was trying to bring her back and that someone was the same owners behind The Door. The Door was a Christian-run emo club which I only entered twice. Once was to see a local band comprised of some friends. I ordered a can of Diet Coke and hustled out of there after their set was done. The second time was as a favor to a label friend who wanted me to come out and review a band called Midtown. She persuaded me to do this by taking myself and Midtown to Angry Dog and plying us with a lot of food and alcohol. I remember telling Midtown that they should cram their drinking in at Angry Dog, as The Door was a Christian club which did not serve alcohol. One of the guys from the band said something about their stage setup probably not going over very well. It was only after we all drunkenly stumbled back to The Door and the band took the stage that I fully realized what he was talking about. They toured with a huge light up sign that only read “MIDTOWN SAVES”. It went over better than expected. But I digress.

So owners of The Door did indeed take over my friend Gypsy Tea Room when their own establishment had a date with a wrecking ball. Somewhat confusingly, the name they gave to my old friend’s new incarnation was The Prophet Bar. Which was already a Dallas bar long ago. But this time, The Prophet Bar was going to serve as an all-ages music venue where kids could visit my old friend and see shows just like I used to do. Only I started hearing horror stories from some friends who went back to visit our old friend. The first story I heard was of a poorly trained bar staff, a pitifully stocked bar, expensive drinks, mixers in cans and a cash only policy. I understood that the people who took over my old friend were not big on drinking in general so that kind of made sense.

An old label friend of mine occasionally talks me into going to a national show with her. This past Friday, she persuaded me to go see the Eagles of Death Metal with her. I like the Eagles of Death Metal. I do not, unlike Axl Rose, think of them as the Pigeons of Shit Metal. My label friend told me she was on the list and I could have her plus one. The show was at The Prophet Bar. Much like me, this label friend spent hundreds of nights at Gypsy Tea Room and we talked about how nice it would be to go back and see her. We heard some things had changed but we were sure we’d still recognize her.

We were wrong. While the actual venue had only changed slightly (mind you, not for the better), what we saw upon visiting our old friend’s formerly pristine restrooms, of which she was so proud, was this:




The thin white object you see to the right of the caution sign is a discarded tampon applicator. There was no attendant, there was no gum to be purchased, there was no soap, there were no towels and there was most certainly no toilet paper. Luckily, we picked up on that before any of us “broke the seal”. As three of us girls plotted obtaining some bar napkins, I spotted an unattended stack of paper towels. These were rationed out carefully though one did go to a desperate girl who realized too late what a terrible situation she had gotten herself into. We all mourned what had become of our sweet old friend. One girl commented how, in the years that we spent attending shows at Gypsy, we never would have dared any sort of vandalism more serious than a small shout-out in Sharpie on a stall wall. Mainly, we never would have thought to promote our favorite band using this method:




While I’m sure Dear & The Headlights are an amazing musical group, I would prefer to learn of them through some sort of Recommended If You Like program or last.fm or perhaps through a friend who thinks that I would like Dear & The Headlights. It is unnecessary for you to vandalize and graffiti a toilet seat for the sake of spreading the word about your favorite band. Because it’s, at best, inconvenient and rude and at worst, filthy and vile and a surefire way to make sure I will never, in fact, “listen to Dear & The Headlights”. So it’s counterproductive as well. I do appreciate that you chose to spread that message on a toilet that had also inexplicably been knocked loose from the wall and was tilted at an angle. Thanks for not defacing the one toilet out of 6 that appeared to have both water and the ability to flush, I guess.

We headed back out to the hallway between the small and large side of my old friend to meet up with our male friends who had also decided to use the bathroom. As we waited for them to exit their restroom (which did have an advantage to ours by having a large bottle of hand soap sitting open on the countertop), I mentioned that the condition of our old friend brought to mind Back to the Future Part II when Marty McFly buys a sports almanac in the future but is verbally reprimanded by Doc and forced to throw said almanac in the trash. Only Future Old Biff overhears the conversation, picks up the almanac, carjacks the Delorean, heads back to 1955 to give the almanac to Past Young Biff which results in Marty McFly returning to a Hill Valley 1985 which resembles Compton if Compton was the setting for Mad Max. The Gypsy Tea Room bathroom looked like Rich Biff 1985 Hill Valley minus the trash can fires.

But then the boys came out of the bathroom ashen-faced. One of them reported that conditions were worse in the boys bathroom. We said that was impossible. It was then that he revealed that there was a substance on one toilet in the boys bathroom which, while no one was willing to positively identify it, appeared to be the remnants of a male having some personal time with himself. We did not believe it. Who would come to my old friend to, well, you know? I refused to believe that someone would turn my dear old friend into some sort of bukakke nightmare. But our male friend took my Blackberry into the restroom and came back (sorry) with photographic evidence that, while again not totally conclusive, was mighty persuasive.



I needed a drink so I went to the bar at which I had spent many nights in my early 20’s witnessing musical groups perform for people who were more into them than I was because they were up against the stage and not standing at the bar like I was. I saw that the rumor of canned mixers is fact. I cannot really begin to explain the pricing policy on drinks because it varied depending on which bartender (of the two) you patronized. And sometimes the same bartender would have some sort of unadvertised drinks sale while twenty minutes later, perhaps due to the economic crisis, the same drink from the same bartender would skyrocket in price. Unfortunately for me, this was the case with what turned out to be my last drink. I ended up having to make up for my cash shortfall by using meter change. Luckily, it was the end of the show and I didn’t really feel like hanging around the bloated, raped and disfigured corpse of my old friend Gypsy Tea Room much longer. Also, if I had wanted another drink, it would have been mighty hard considering that this mass of chewed, tangled and exposed wires was what we found sticking out from behind the ATM. Or former ATM, I suppose.



I wish I had never seen you again, my old friend. Sorry that kids are bad. I will remember you the way you used to be and not the syphillis-ridden Fresh Kills that you have become.