My New Litmus Test for Sports Euphoria

Alright. Tonight is the start of Mavs season. And you know what? I am sick of the pent-up team pride and enthusiasm of their fans that the Mavs and the Cowboys squander each season. We have so much team pride that we start planning parades and shit two games into the finals. Dallas is like the Andrew W.K. of fans. We don't ask for much. We want to win shit and we want to party in celebration of winning shit. We don't care about having a perfect season or gaining respect. The Cowboys claim of the title of "America's Team" actually ensured that lots of football fans hate the Cowboys with a burning passion. You should google the words "hate" and "Josh Howard" or "hate" and "Mark Cuban" just for fun.

The World Series made me think. Mostly about my friend Joe Burns. I met him through the gaffer tape-filled world of touring. As long as I have known him, he has worn a Phillies baseball cap. Every picture I have ever seen of him, he is wearing a Phillies baseball cap. It was always kind of an "awwww, bless!" kind of thing since I pictured Joe sitting around his nursing home with the tattered remains of that baseball cap in his hands, cheering on the Phillies to maybe one day make the playoffs. I was cocky because I am from Dallas and my teams are famous and awesome and rich and stuff.

I'm not a baseball person but I have been sending every good vibe I have the Phillies way since the playoffs started because I just imagined my friend Joe in the happiest place possible with each win. He seriously wears that Phillies hat EVERYWHERE. At all times. And if a Philly team is gonna win something, it better not be the fucking Eagles.

Then the Phillies won the World Series. And at last count, according to the coverage on Deadspin, no fewer than 10 cars have been flipped. I saw video of a man humping a telephone pole with a crowd of thousands cheering him on. I saw a picture of a Phillies-loving hipster being pinned and arrested next to his courier-requisite bike. Apparently, it's still going. I read the comments from Phillies fans who have been drunk for more than 24 hours at this point. And I got a little misty-eyed.

I remember being 12 years old in 1993 and going to a Super Bowl watching party at our youth group leader's house in Lake Highlands. I remember the moment the game was over, we took our blue streamers to the street and stood on the side of Abrams waving streamers and screaming our Skittles-damaged brains out. Even the sound of distant celebratory (I think) gunfire didn't dampen our spirits. I begged my mom to let me skip school to go to the victory parade downtown. She vetoed that idea and I remember thinking that even the gang fighting was probably totally exciting.

I remember seeing Pantera playing the Stars fight song on a float at the Stars victory parade. I remember hugging total strangers at a sports bar in Denton called Dusty's when the Mavs beat the Suns and were headed for the Finals. I remember my best friend Chrissy (after several ill-advised game watching pina coladas) and I hugging like Dirk and Nash and me mouthing the words "Chrissy, is this real? Are we going to the Finals? It can't be real." Our enthusiasm even lead to us jumping in the back of the car with some friends from the bar to rush to Love Field to wave at an airplane.

So here's my new pocket guide to how I will celebrate each Dallas sports franchise milestone:

Mavericks ending up with more than 50 wins at the end of the regular season = metal drum trash can fire

Cowboys making the playoffs at all, even as a wild card = automatic handgun fire into the ceiling of my apartment

Mavericks getting past the first round of the playoffs = sitting in my car laying on the horn for half an hour, regardless of the time

Cowboys making it past the first round of the playoffs = minor, easily controlled arson of a stranger's residence

Mavericks or Cowboys making it to the Finals/Super Bowl = car flipping....lots of car flipping.....more arson

A championship title = Mutal Assured Destruction of any object or carbon-based life form that crosses my path

Kinda-Creepiness

More Halloweeny-ness, however tangental. A recent illo done for The Stranger about the Twilight series of novels, soon to be a motion picture. It sounds perfectly awful and about as entertaining as Joe the Plumber's forthcoming country music album...but the Vampire/Werewolf/Teenage Girl love triangle made for a nice image.

Clearing Out the Cobwebs of Apathy

You know that feeling when you are at some store in the mall and there's really loud and abrasive house music pumping and the store is full of people having inane conversations into their Bluetooth and you just want to wave the white flag and curl up into a ball on the floor?

That's how I feel about the following things:

1. The Cowboys season up to this point
2. The Election
3. Tomorrow's Mavs season opener

I've gone through the full range of emotions about all three things and it has left me feeling worn out. I have been hopeful, scared, enraged, hopeful again, frustrated, confused and now finally I have arrived at the Isle of Apathy. Not only have I arrived but I have filled out a change of address form and started measuring for drapes for my straw hut.

A short list of things that are less terrifying to me than seeing Brad Johnson about to receive a snap:

- a toddler carrying a book of matches and drinking a bottle filled with bleach

- that part of The Exorcist where Linda Blair does a crazy crabwalk backwards down the stairs

- waking up next to Mavs Man and realizing he's taking camera phone pictures of me in my sleep

- riding on the back of an unevenly balanced Vespa down the Tollway at 2am

- Sarah Palin watching my pet polar bear while I am out of town

In regards to the election, I wish I would have taken some sort of extremely heavy sedative after I voted on Friday so that I could just sleep through this final agonizing week. I've done my part. I hope others do as well. But seriously, I cannot hear anything else about this election. I like Barack Obama. I voted for him. But at this point, I don't want to hear him or see him until approximately 10pm on Tuesday, November 4. I don't care if Sarah Palin spends a million dollars having suits made of discarded stem cell material. I am officially done with the whole thing. I can't get any more outraged. I'm outrage deficient.

I kind of feel the same way about the Cowboys. Just like how I have a good feeling about Obama's chances of winning this thing, I feel like once Romo's itty-bitty hurt pinkie finger gets better, Felix Jones comes back, Roy Williams gets settled in, Jason Witten's ribs heal and we get a week off, we actually have a pretty good second half of the season to look forward to. But until then, I have to deal with Wade Philips cheering for missed field goals, T.O. being nearly useless, Marion Barber picking up a whopping 2 yards on each carry and listening to people consider the pros and cons of putting Bollinger in. I wish I had another one of those sedatives to take until Thanksgiving.

Which leads me to the Mavs. Jesus, I can't even work up the enthusiasm to properly discuss how nervous the little basketball team we've got going right now is making me. I said I would be positive about the Mavs this season. So in keeping with that promise, I will refrain from pointing out how non-awesome the Mavs were in the pre-season.

Basically, the only way this blog entry could have possibly been more apathetic, lethargic or generally "meh" is if I had some sort of dictation/transcribing software and I could have just posted this blog by dictating it in short, exasperated grunts.