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.