Tag: Football

  • Ode to the Cowboy Fan

    Did you see that game yesterday? That humiliating game where Dallas shit the bed to the Green Bay Packers? That game? Yeah, that was awful, and embarrassing.

    Ung… here comes another few years of rebuilding. Possibly a new quarterback and a new head coach. Which sucks.

    I get why all other NFL football fans hate Cowboy fans. Yes, we are cocky with nothing really to show since 1996. But we sure act like we will win the Super Bowl every year, and there is an endless joy in watching us Cowboy fans break down in tears in the first round of the playoffs, year after year, after year, after year…

    And I was angry at that Cowboy team yesterday. I sat through 18 weeks of a season, with solid play from the defense and uneven play from the offense. But through all of it, at least that team didn’t lose at home. Home field advantage meant something, and coming into the playoffs in ranked 2nd, all of their games, save possibly one, would be at home. No, nope, not at all… they choked. Time came to show up, and they all ran away…

    My friend had the best line last night; “Green Bay better go on to win the Super Bowl, proving that no team stood a chance.”

    I can respect that logic.

    But here I am, Monday morning after the worst loss in Dallas Cowboy Playoff history, and I am forced to muster the energy to mutter, “Next year… We’ll get ‘em next year.”

  • ODDS and ENDS: Gym, Dallas Cowboys, and Being a Bad Drummer

    (In case you haven’t heard… Joe Walsh is my Spirit Animal.)

    Made it to the gym today. That would be my first gym visit for 2024. I know that I wanted to go, like, on January 1st, but I am rather lazy. So, making it in the joint by the 12th is like a win. I didn’t do anything crazy, just ran on the treadmill for thirty minutes. Also, I went later in the day, and not at the crack of dawn, as I wanted to miss the “Getting Back in Shape for the New Year” crowd. Yeah… most of these people will be gone by March. I’m not perfect either, but I do at least hang in there until June. I’m back in the gym by September, and then when it’s November, I’m done for the year. So, I really only work out seven months, and skip five. Now this year, I plan on being in the gym for eight months, and out for four.

    Hey! The Dallas Cowboys play on Sunday, against the Green Bay Packers. It’s the first round of the playoffs, and I am ready with hopes to be dashed! Dallas plays great at home, so it is conceivable that they will win this game and the next. Then for the NFC Championship, odds are that could be in San Francisco, which is just trouble. But it is the Cowboys, so there could be a meltdown, and dreams crashed before that. In the end, I picked the wrong month to quit drinking.

    I don’t think about this often, but today was a day when I had the overwhelming feeling of missing being a bad drummer in a not so great band. I don’t think we ever thought that we were going to be a huge rich and famous band, but we did like being loud and obnoxious. I did have trouble keeping in time, and I never mastered a stutter-step on the bass drum, but smashing the hell out of a kit was therapeutic. Lot of aggression got worked out. Another wonderful side effect of being in a not so great band was that we did listen to so much music; different artist, forms, styles, genres, ages, everything… I don’t listen to as much music as I used to. It was worth being in a garage band.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Christmas Has to Go, Can You Believe It, Must Win, and Serious

    (It’s a trip… it’s got a FUNKY beat. And I can bug out to it!)

    This is the weekend that we are taking the Christmas decorations down. Normally, we do this on January 1st, as a sort of cleaning the house for the New Year. And I think you can read between the lines there and see that the wife and I have passed the days of staying up late and waking with a hangover. But this year, we didn’t get around to it. We put it off. Not that we had a good reason to do that, other than we wanted to lay around and not doing anything on New Year’s Day. The end result was that we got an extra week of Christmas, which has left me feeling like the holiday has over stayed its welcome. I like Christmas, but I really like it when it lives tightly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

     Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we live in a world where the movies Cocktail and Road House exist.

    And I need the Cowboys and Tottenham to win this weekend. Simple as that. If it doesn’t happen I will be heartbroken and disconnected from the universe.

    Some evenings, late at night, when I am alone on the couch while my family sleeps, I start to believe that the core of me is a very serious person. Alone and in the dark, I am confident in this pronouncement. And I say these things to myself when I am normally watching a terrible ninja movie, or something awful by Bert I. Gordon. That is when I know that I am a contradiction at all times. A silly one at that. I like walking funny and talking in goofy voices. I make up songs about doing mundane tasks. And I’d rather laugh than cry. I’d rather make you laugh; Try to make you happy through humor. I still attempt to rob an honest melancholy tear from people… but… I have never felt sure that’s what I’m best at. Yet, honestly, I have never felt sure about anything. And if I think too hard about that, I might start to wonder, worry, and then cry. Which is why I’d rather laugh. Hold it off, at bay, for a little while longer.

  • ODDS and ENDS: The Mugshot, Don’t Get Caught in the Rain, and Fantasy Football

    (Mr. Campbell… who cares?)

    I will admit that I was one of those millions of online leeches waiting for the release of the Trump mugshot. I wanted to see it. I wanted to be there when it was released so I could be one of the first to see it. And I was very pleased with what I saw. A former President was arrested, and he was treated like any other defendant in the criminal justice system which, for me, sent a signal that no one is above the law in this country. I am also aware that not everyone will see it that way. There are a large number of people who will see this mugshot, and project their own feelings on it, to see a system out to punish political opposition. There is another reason why I wanted to see this mugshot, for I believe it is the closest form of justice we will get when it comes to Trump and the crimes he’s accused of committing. Sadly, I don’t believe that he will be found guilty on any of these charges in the four cases. He will be acquitted because deep down in our America soul, we cannot send a President to jail. We treat our Presidents like gods. Each one gets his own temple, though we call it a library. And if they happen to be one of the truly greats, we build a shrine to them in Holy City of DC. So, this mugshot, with his disgruntled gaze, is as close to justice as he will get. This humiliating picture will last forever in American history, never to be forgotten.

    Walking around in the rain with wet jeans on is the worst.

    I will not play fantasy football this season. The league I play in has not reformed, and I fear it is dead. The League is Dead! Long Live the League. I’m not sure anymore, but I think I have played in the league of old college friends, work collogues, and random people, for close to fifteen years. In that time, I have won the League three times, all the while just guessing on who to play each week. What brought about this timely death was the sad fact that everyone has lives that have pulled us in different directions. From marriages, kids, careers, and taking care of parents, we aren’t the same people anymore. It’s a little sad, but it does prove the old axiom that everything changes – nothing stays the same. Goodbye Fantasy Football…

  • Women’s World Cup: Spain v England – Final

    Couple of things here –

    I call bullshit on Prince William not going to Australia to support England’s team. That whole, saving the environment by not flying there, thing is just the laziest of excuses. We all know that shit wouldn’t have been pulled on the men’s team. It would have been an easy win for the Prince to show up at the final with his daughter cheering on the Lionesses. Besides, Queen Letizia and Princess Sofia of Spain were able to make it. Just saying.

    Honestly – who picked Spain the win this thing?

    And furthermore, we all should have picked Spain to win this thing. Clearly, they knew something we didn’t.

    As for the match, Spain was the better squad. Really, England was never in this game. Sure, Mary Earps had a hell of a match stopping that penalty kick, England’s only bright spot, but they didn’t start to get their act together well into the second half, and at that point it was too late. Spain was in control of this game from the start, and it never ceased to feel like they knew they were going to win this. In the end, the better team won, which I guess is what you want to see in a final. Nevermind all of Spain’s drama off the pitch, because in the end, what matters is how you play the game on the field.

    And last; I got up at 6am to watch the Final. I also woke up my daughter, and the two of us snuggled up on the couch to watch these two teams play. For all the craziness that happened in this World Cup, this was the moment that I had been waiting for – watching with my kid. I don’t know if this will have a deep impact on her, but it was a moment in time where we were together, watching the best players in the world go at it, and give it everything they had. It was fun and I’m glad that we shared it together.