The Football Sex Society

Let Go, Let Gravity

2011-03-22T21:56:00.001-04:00

Copyrighting the phrase "Let go, let gravity."

Cynthia Ann

2011-02-27T19:16:00.002-05:00

CYNTHIA ANN

No future in Illinois
Silas told the big Parker clan
They pointed wagons for Texas
With a baby to Indian land
Cynthia Ann

Nocona told the Comanches
No future for us with white man
Settlers lay dying or bloodied
The chief’s prize in Indian hands
Cynthia Ann

Spirits cry over the river
Tears raining into the sand
The Red, she runs ever redder
Red as the blood on our hands
Cynthia Ann

Grieving girl grown to a woman
Son Quanah, chief Comanche man
Her life lived, loved as Indian …
Taken by a raiding white band
Cynthia Ann

A mother longs for her children
Her old ways, her Indian clan
No escape, no love for living
Broken heart soon covered with sand
Cynthia Ann

Spirits cry over the river
Tears raining into the sand
The Red, she runs ever redder
Red as the blood on our hands
Cynthia Ann

Sometimes I go to the river
I hear wind songs of the red man
I cry for my own lost mother
And I write with a trembling hand
Cynthia Ann

Lilo-A-Go-Go

2009-07-30T07:21:00.002-04:00

I met a pretty brown girl out in Waikiki
Lilo a go-go
I’ll never forget the leis she threw on me
Lilo a go-go
Polynesian pretty had the grass and the skirt
Lilo a go-go
She parted crowds like water; tsunami alert!
Lilo a go-go
Hooked by her brown eyes and her beckoning lips
Lilo a go-go
My lines got tangled between her breasts and her hips
Lilo a go-go
They say her name, it means the generous one
Lilo a go-go
“Say aloha,” she said, “when you go and you come”
Lilo a go-go
She take you places you thought you’d never know
Lilo a go-go
When fast gets too much then she just go slow
Aloha!

Motel 6 San Fernando

2009-07-29T22:41:00.003-04:00

Through cracked blinds in Room 203,
I see people jabbing each other’s orifices
with large vegetables
and urinating
on a small, shaved Asian man
bound naked in a corner
with a trout lashed to his penis
Or so it appears
Only the fish is visible
Opposite him,
a large, leather-clad woman
with a whip
has a raccoon on a leash,
and the raccoon is tugging
The Asian man looks very afraid
Lights are everywhere,
and two bull dykes
with pierced everythings
are capturing it all
on expensive digital video cameras,
surely to post on the Internet by midnight
I sleep uneasily

copyright 2009 Dan Murray

Cooking Meth In The Whiskey Stills

2009-07-29T22:26:00.009-04:00

The Bush has burned, burned down our lives
Soldiers have returned dead to grieving wives
Is he a poser or a prophet we’ve put now on the mount?
No wisdom from war gravestones, just a body count

Houses getting repossessed, jobs being lost
Economy collapsing, melting permafrost
C-cackling at electric cars, fat cats in limousines
Are p-pulling on their puppets and g-guzzling gasoline

And we just want our cell phones … and the way things used to be
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee

Turning black into red, green into shades of grey
Rich man wants a penthouse, poor man has to pay
A president went to Yale, from Skull and Bones he learned,
Get in line, boy, and milk the cow when it comes your turn

And we just want our laptops … and the way things used to be
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee

Blame the Mexicans, the Arabs, India and the Chinese
Have a governors’ convention at a sleaze striptease
The messages from the satellites make it crystal clear
The thieves are wearing neckties … here’s more on Britney Spears!

And we just want our iPods … and the way things used to be
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee

You can find a few of them still, the old Okies in California
Who’ve seen these dirty winds before, before you were born, yeah
Tulsa’s still home and their eyes still sting from their gritty memories
When they packed their desperation and chased the sun into the sea

The past beats steady in my chest … but today is texting me
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee
They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee

They’re cooking meth in the whiskey stills down in Tennessee …

Testify

2009-07-01T06:49:00.002-04:00

The madness at the mission
The gold and the guns
Sarita don’t speak, Sarita don’t cry
Wash the blood, throw the pistol
Kiss me -- Sarita let’s run
We deserve to live; bad men deserve to die

The priest told the sheriff
He saw a tall man and
a dark girl but she had steel blue eyes
She was holding a gun and
if he could understand
the tall man thanked the dark girl for his life

The waitress’ eyes wandered
to the paper on the wall
Sarita don’t speak, Sarita don’t cry
See, see .. see the dark girl
and that one looks pretty tall
The café was flashing in red and blue lights

They strap me to the gurney
and they tap my vein
I leave my love, Sarita, in your steel blue eyes
Sheriff tried, he couldn’t break me
This is my last chance to sing
My still, blue lips to you will testify

My still, blue lips to you will testify

copyright 2009 Dan Murray

December

2009-06-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

December dances in
on two soft feet of snow
You thought you would be free by now
but you didn't have the heart to go
He said things would be different
That he would never let you down
But he can't change the way you feel
about these people and this little town

December comes too early
For as long as you can remember
They say hope springs eternal
They say it every damn December

So you watch from a darkened room
Smoke the chain and drink your gin
Your fingers fondle the telephone
As you fight the urge to dial again
Cause those far away strangers
Once your lovers and your friends
Left this town and life so long ago
when December forced your hand

December comes too early
For as long as you can remember
They say hope springs eternal
They say it every damn December

The tree's winking from the corner
Wal-Mart presents for the kids
Your teachers said you could go far
They say it now about your kids
And he comes home tired at night
He worked so hard for this little place
You see the pain moist in his eyes
When he sees the tear stains on your face

December comes too early
For as long as you can remember
They say hope springs eternal
They say it every damn December

Copyright 2006 Dan Murray

Take Me Back Texas

2009-06-03T09:53:00.000-04:00

Followed a blonde out to California
Shoved my sadness in a sack
Long, strange trip to the West Coast
Even by Fresno still looking back

Our love fell into the Valley
Between the Sierra and Monterey Bay
If I go wine-tasting one more time
Schwarzenegger’s gonna pay

Oh take me back Texas
I swear I’ll never do it again
Take me back Texas
Alice will you let me in?

Kiss me again Sarita
On the road to see my Brownsville Girl
And I’m going east of Eden
To give a Brady bunch necklaces of pearls

Oh take me back Texas
I swear I’ll never do it again
Take me back Texas
Alice will you let me in?

We’ll walk under the East Texas stars Celeste
Odessa hold me to your West Texas breast
Donna swears South Texas girls are the best
Just give me Texas women, you take the rest

Oh take me back Texas
I swear I’ll never do it again
Take me back Texas
Alice will you let me in?

We’ll go to Wahoo’s on the Island
First Monday in Canton
Chili Parlor in Austin
Palo Duro Canyon

Alice will you let me in?

Copyright 2006 Dan Murray

The Pampa, Texas, Blues

2009-06-03T09:51:00.002-04:00

(Woody Guthrie Left A Long Time Ago)

Back in the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie hung around
They’re so proud of him still, hear the festival sounds
He wrote of losers fighting users, unions standing ground
Then grabbed his guitar and girl and got the hell out of town

The oilmen and ranchers meet down at the cafes
They talk about futures … what the markets will pay
The workers in their trailers drink their off hours away
You gotta be tough or crazy to come here and stay

Cause Woody Guthrie left a long time ago
They call it downtown but the stores are all closed
And it’s too late for the last picture show
Woody Guthrie left here a long time ago

Down by the pawn shop I saw the old man
Hat on his head, not in his hand
He stood as tall as a broken man can
Rolled up a Bugler and spat in the sand

He said: “There was a time this place was all right
Man could find a job, a girl and a good fight
Take Highway 60 east or west, either one’s right
Just leave,” he said, then he walked into the night

Cause Woody Guthrie left a long time ago
They call it downtown but the stores are all closed
And it’s too late for the last picture show
Woody Guthrie left here a long time ago

They oughta just firebomb the west side of town
One day the wind is gonna blow it all down
The east and the south sides ain't none to sound
The north side, she's standing, but on flat, thin ground

The harvest long in, the Mexicans long gone
The rig hands and their meth, their curtains drawn
The notes on those trucks are about to be withdrawn
So I think that it’s time that I must be moving on

Cause Woody Guthrie left a long time ago
They call it downtown but the stores are all closed
And it’s too late for the last picture show
Woody Guthrie left here a long time ago

Woody Guthrie left here a long time ago

copyright 2006 Dan Murray

Cibola County Line

2009-06-03T09:49:00.001-04:00

Seven cities gleaming of gold
Prospectors in their graves
Tossing and turning and wishing
They had just one more day

Dreams to the west, dawn at our backs
If we can just make it this time
Seven desert cities gleam of gold
Beyond the Cibola County line

We blew the truck clutch at Fort Sumner
When we stopped to see Billy the Kid
Ground third gear down to Albuquerque
Where we never shoulda done what we did

Dreams to the west, dawn at our backs
If we can just make it this time
Seven desert cities gleam of gold
Beyond the Cibola County line

I never meant to kill the Mexican
But the Mexican meant to kill me
Twitching hand, glint in his eyes
I knew how things were gonna be

Dreams to the west, dawn at our backs
If we can just make it this time
Seven desert cities gleam of gold
Beyond the Cibola County line

We left him lying dying in the basement
He burned us, smell our burning tires
Crazy how fast two people can run
Blood on their hands, feet on the fire

Dreams to the west, dawn at our backs
If we can just make it this time
Seven desert cities gleam of gold
Beyond the Cibola County line

Copyright 2009 Dan Murray

Sunday's For The Lord

2009-06-03T09:45:00.001-04:00

Monday’s for the mayor
He knocks right at nine
She has whips and razors
He supplies the wine

Tuesday’s for the councilor
who lusts for the mayor’s seat
She knows about the hunger
Councilwoman pays her to eat

Our small town’s scarlet secret
A path worn to her back door
But they don’t come round Sundays
She saves Sundays for the Lord

Wednesday’s for the weatherman
He shows up rain or shine
She decides the forecast
And where to tie the clothesline

Thursday’s for the football coach
The team comes later that night
Cheerleaders been slipping round
Asking her advice and for a light

Our small town’s scarlet secret
A path worn to her back door
But they don’t come round Sundays
She saves Sundays for the Lord

Friday’s for the preacher man
While the rest are at the game
He screams to holy heaven
But he don’t use Jesus’ name

Saturday is Saturday
TGIS; take a spot in line
15 minutes, no arguing
No man can choose his time

Our small town’s scarlet secret
A path worn to her back door
But they don’t come round Sundays
She saves Sundays for the Lord

She draws her shades on Sundays
We all live by some accord
Salvation in a blackened spoon
She saves Sundays for the Lord

Our small town’s scarlet secret
A path worn to her back door
But they don’t come round Sundays
She saves Sundays for the Lord

Copyright 2009 Dan Murray

Esperanza Believe

2009-06-03T09:42:00.000-04:00

A man with the plan, had it all figured out
Home in the hills, money and clout
Accident, got high mixing some paint
Ran the streets, showed things you can't

Esperanza believe
Esperanza believe

Disgraced now, his station grew weaker
Until he was reduced to a troll in Topeka
He lost his job, his house and his wife
Then a tornado came and the bridge saved his life

Esperanza believe
Esperanza believe

From that day on he lived like a Quaker
Until he fell in with a cat from Jamaica
Who had Colombian friends of cocaine means
And bomber coats packing lead magazines

Esperanza believe
Esperanza believe

Now he's back on track, new beginning
Same little town, now high-brow living
Sometimes he thinks of how far he was down
They say that the Feds have been sniffing around

Esperanza believe
Esperanza believe

They Will Not Walk This Way Again

2009-05-18T08:45:00.009-04:00

Journalism as I knew it in the Rio Grande Valley from 1986 to the dawn of 2000 is dead and daily newspapers as a whole are following fast, stricken with the business equivalent of pancreatic cancer. Unsustainable business model. It’s just a matter of when.

Whatever journalism becomes, it won’t be populated the kinds of talented, usually flawed people who passed through the Valley before and during my time. Only a very few remain on the border. Many have fled daily newspaper business entirely. The others are either soldiering onward at distant papers or dead. We lived a lifestyle that anyone who wasn’t there cannot hope to understand.

I cursed it and wallowed in it, and now, at times, especially during a tedious string of mundane domestic nights, I long for it. This is not a story about the most fun I had in the Valley. Not even close. It’s not about the best journalism or writing I did there. Not even close. Shit lizards, it’s from my least favorite time – 1990-91 – at my least favorite of the three newspapers, the Valley Morning Star. But it sums up the kind of lifestyle that was not all that extraordinary for Valley journalists. Some were just colorful fuckups of limited ability, but others could be found on the front page, in the awards lists and occasionally in the police blotter. I certainly was not the first to lead it. It would make interesting reading, indeed, a list of Valley journalists who have showed up for work with Boys Town mud and piss on their shoes. Not all of them would be men.

Xxxxx

The greyhound track had just opened at Harlingen, and people like me, Gary Long, Tom Drew and Buddy Green would make a bee-line for it as soon as we could flee the Star. Tom had money. Me, Gary and Buddy were usually broke. Buddy and Gary were so notorious that dogs were named for them.

I was at the track waiting for a race with Rosie’s Image, a black dog that shared its name with a hooker I knew in Mexico City. It was equally reliable – not at all – but I always felt compelled to bet on it. I heard my name on the loudspeaker. Phone call. Go to the public phone.

It was Jerry Deal, the maniac Star city editor. Any efforts at cooperation between the three Valley papers ran dead against everything Jerry ever knew. The Herald and The Monitor were the closest papers, so they were the enemy, and he lived to beat them at everything he could, from briefs to big shit.

There had been a prison riot in Matamoros. Rival prison drug gangs. Bodies impaled on stakes in the courtyard. Now there was a standoff. It had been The Herald’s story. It was right across their bridge, and the Herald was knee deep into it. Julio Lozano, the notoriously murky copy editor at The Herald, was in telephone contact with one of the drug gang leaders inside the prison. There is a story best saved for later about Julio and one of the cauldrons from the 1989 Spring Break narcosatanico killings.

Jerry was never deterred by the obvious. He’d ask me to check around with U.S. federal people, since that was my beat. I found out off-record that the Mexican government was using U.S. Customs Enforcement phone lines to negotiate with the prisoners. The Mexicans didn’t trust their own. I had a good relationship with Steve Woody, the Brownsville Customs Enforcement chief. We were both good ol’ West Texas boys and hit it right off.

It was 9:30-10 p.m., near the end of the race card. Jerry was relaying a message. Steve Woody had called. The Mexican government was sending the federal attorney general into the Matamoros prison with a surrender or die ultimatum. Now!

Jerry had already assumed I’d drop everything and jump at a chance to beat The Herald, even if The Herald would probably (and did) get a story into print first. He had Allen Essex waiting at the Star with a camera, and we headed for Matamoros in the junker Pinto that Allen had sold me for $500 when I first got back from Mexico.

It had a house fan mounted on the dashboard and a rusted-out hole in the floorboard that you could drop your beer cans through. There was a big crowd outside the CERESO prison, which is square in the city, but we were the only U.S. journalists there. The Mexican media were everywhere. Zorros, Mexico’s elite federal tactical operations police, crouched on the surrounding rooftops with sniper rifles and machine guns.

People milled around opportunistic taco and hotdog cart operators. It looked a big block party with very strict chaperones. I bullshitted best as I could with the Mexican journalists and Allen, who spoke no Spanish, and drank a helluva lot of Pepsi.

About 5 a.m., there was a ripple through the crowd. The AG was coming out with the prison ring leader. The prisoners had surrendered. Tension tightened like a power line when the prison door opened, and the Zorros shouldered their guns. As the AG and drug lord descended the steps through a path of soldiers, one of the Mexican photographers snapped a shot with a very old camera, and the flash bulb exploded.

That’s where I thought I might die. Everyone ducked and you could hear moving gun metal, but no shots were fired and soon everything was over. Sunrise was near, and I needed to pee.

Allen and I headed back for the bridge, but I couldn’t wait. Somewhere near Blanca White’s, I turned into a neighborhood and found the quietest street I could. Nothing was moving as I went behind the Pinto and began flooding the street. Sure enough, headlights.

I was just ducking into the car, pants half zipped, when the Matamoros cops pulled beside us and ordered us out. Allen was useless.

“What were you doing?”

“Nothing, sir, nothing.”

“You were pissing! Come here! Look at this puddle in the street! You were pissing!”

“I’m sorry, officer, I had to pee really bad.”

“Women and children live in this neighborhood! You were disrespecting them! You were disrespecting Mexico! You were pissing on Mexico!”

“I meant no disrespect, officer. I would have pissed on Texas, but I could not wait. My companion and I are journalists. We were outside the prison all night covering the riot. I just had to pee.”

That gave the cop cause to pause and consult with his partner. Any run-of-the-mill American miscreant would’ve been shaken down and/or thrown in jail. He returned.

“Not because you are American journalists, but because we the police of Matamoros believe in respecting and cooperating with our American friends, we are going to let you go. Go home, and do not ever piss on Mexico again.”

Allen and I made it home at daybreak. I was staying with Wally Simmons, my longtime mentor and the Star managing editor. I slept until about noon, when Jerry called and told me to go back to Matamoros and tie up the prison story. The Herald was hitting the streets with its version, told after the fact by U.S. and Mexican officials, about the time I reached Matamoros and went to the U.S. Consulate. Some of the prisoners were Americans.

The consul was outside surrounded by U.S. reporters answering questions. Armando Villafranca, a Valley veteran who was working for the San Antonio Light at the time, kept fucking with me and my notebook while he repeatedly asked the consul, “Did you smell any fear? Did you smell any fear?” Pinche Armando then went and posed as a family member bringing daily food to prisoners, made it about 10 feet inside the door before he was busted, then wrote an “exclusive first-person account from inside the prison of death.”

I went back and wrote a blow by blow of the end of the siege, describing what I had seen first-hand and lifting most of the facts from the Mexican papers, The Herald and wire services. It read like a sports story, and the U.S. federal people ate it up. By the time I turned in the story, the dogs were running again out at the track, so that’s where I went.

I forget the race and the dogs’ names, but I nailed a trifecta for like $300. I could have gone to the titty bar out by the dog track, long a favorite haunt of Valley newspaper photographers like Bruce Lee Smith and Carlos Moreno and later Ric Vasquez and Larry Clubb. But Gary Long had turned me on to a sleazy topless place in downtown Harlingen that had a tiny stage and five or six dancers with no green cards.

(DETAILS SEALED UNTIL ACTUAL PUBLICATION: In summary, I ended up back at Wally’s with a stripper, liquor, weed and cocaine and made a lot of noise.)

Boss man Wally, whose wife was away in East Texas, stuck his head in the bedroom door about 10 a.m. as he was headed to the Star. The girl’s black hair showed from under the covers.

“Murray, I thought you were sick last night. I heard all that moaning, then I realized that wasn’t you and that’s wasn’t sick. I’m gonna tell Jerry you’re just going to your school board meeting today then filing. Does she have any friends?”

For many reasons, only a few of them good, days like those will not pass again.

Obama Inauguration: History Already Has Been Made

2009-01-20T06:59:00.004-05:00

Barak Obama indeed makes history today when he becomes the 44th person to take the oath of office for the presidency of the United States of America.
But the greater history was made Nov. 4 when, collectively but with strong dissent, American voters showed the world a fundamental change in the way we look at ourselves and how we're willing to do things.
Detailed positions on individual issues don't get people elected. Simple slogans do, and Obama's was "change."
That a black man was calling for it wasn't new. That Americans listened and acted was.
After 43 times of doing the exact same thing, appointing a white male as leader of the country, we decided to change, and the invisible wall we tore down was every bit as menacing as the one in Berlin.
No one wanted to say it, but many of us quietly kept our fingers crossed that Obama would make it to Washington today to take his oath.
The racial hatred that gripped this country for so long still lurks out there, ever dangerous, but we are braver than before, and we are winning.
It was so fitting that Martin Luther King Jr. Day preceded the inauguration.
Too many politicians go to Washington with no intention of representing the people who elected them, only themselves and the interests who financed them.
But Obama is truly representative. His face is that of a changed America.
Down on the Texas-Mexico border, in towns not so little anymore, the locals divide themselves into Red and Blue parties.
The people are mostly brown and have lived together all their lives, but in matters political, they need symbols and colors to differentiate themselves.
Fine. Color is beautiful, and we could use a few more Green Parties.
But we will no longer tolerate a dividing line between black and white.

Sizing Up Super Bowl XLIII

2009-01-18T23:02:00.006-05:00

First thoughts on Super Bowl XLIII:
It's Roman numerals and Cardinal numbers.
Arizona's players, coaches, sideline staff, etc., deserve all the praise they are about to get. Everyone but owner Bill Bidwell. They won in spite of him.
Notoriously cheap Bidwell's family has owned the Cardinals since 1932, he has had outright control since 1972, and the reasons certain franchises ALWAYS SUCK start at the top. I can't ever imagine Detroit in a Super Bowl.
The Resurrection of Kurt Warner Part ? is a great story, but the God angle is going to get old real quick.
When I was a sports editor, a born-again writer turned in a column on one of my days of that got in the paper. The whole thing was about how a local high school team won a regional playoff game solely through the will and grace of God. I had to explain to him why we shouldn't be devoting chunks of newspaper space to crediting God with sports successes. The next game made my point. The blessed team lost like 42-7. God doesn't do quarterfinals.
The Cardinals are a good warm-fuzzy story, and I'm searching for any reason I can to truly believe that they'll beat the Steelers. As a lifelong Cowboys fan, I am obligated to hate the Steelers.
But Pittsburgh is going to win. The Steelers are grinders. They're not surprised to be in the Super Bowl. Arizona is riding a hot streak. San Diego, now vanquished, was riding a hot streak. The Steelers' defense pounds people and makes big plays that win games. The offense has enough playmakers to be a threat that Baltimore wasn't and won't throw the game away. And Pittsburgh's defense won't play Arizona blitz-stupid the way Philly did.
Super Bowl footnotes are littered with upstart teams who, subconsciously and fatally, considered reaching the game achievement enough, and Arizona feels like one of those Atlantas, Cincinnatis, San Diegos and Seattles.
I'm getting a feeling that ball control is going to be huge in this Super Bowl, and Arizona's scary offense will spend a lot of time watching from the sideline.
That all said, I'm pulling for Arizona. True fandom has its obligations, and mine put me fundamentally and forever at odds with the Steelers.

Don't Sully Sullenberger

2009-01-16T21:32:00.005-05:00

Joe the Plumber, crawl back under a house. Your 15 minutes are up. There's a new hero in town, and no doubting his credentials.
Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger is the pilot who landed a US Airways jetliner on the Hudson River and saved the lives of everyone on board.
He deserves all the praise we can pile, but not all of the attention he's gonna get. Someone somewhere is eventually going pull some perceived skeleton out of Sullenberger's closet and try to sully his name.
If/when that happens, remember that Sullenberger didn't ask to be a hero, but he was ready to be one, and when the moment of truth came, he delivered.
Perhaps more admirable than Sullenberger's cool under ultimate pressure is the time he devoted to preparing himself for the improbable.
Part of it is pride/ego, the "not under my watch" defiance, to be sure. But Sullenberger was foremost just watching out for those folks. He took the responsibility with which he was entrusted seriously. What if Bernard Madoff flew jumbo jets?
Former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry was world class cool under pressure and himself once safely put down a private plane in an emergency landing behind a high school.
But let quarterback/punter Danny White fake a kick without telling anyone and Landry would flip, screaming "No, Danny, no!"
So the many of the impositions that are about to be made into Sullenberger's life are bound to expose some flaw, because we all have them.
But as for skeletons in Sully's closet, they're probably just going to be chicken bones that the plumber left a few months ago while eating on the job.

Strange Days in the Desert: Memo to a Surrogate Cardinals Fan

2009-01-11T10:20:00.001-05:00

First, Carlos, you are forgiven for contracting Cardinals Fever. It is permissible for lifetime Cowboys fans to have a surrogate team, recommended even. We grew up under the assumption that the Cowboys are ALWAYS in the playoffs, because they ALWAYS were. (1974 never happened).
Then Jerry Jones bought 'em, blew up life as we knew it and let Jimmy Johnson build a faster pussycat. But for all of his considerable business acumen and passion for the game, Jerry is a football fool.
He's a polished Pacman, bouncing from blunder to blunder, each usually legal in the criminal sense, but collectively felonious in football terms. He has expertly enhanced, embellished and exploited the Dallas brand, but he imploded the White House That Jimmy Built, and judged by on field success, the Cowboys have been nothing but a money trap since.
We Faithful have walked the desert for more than a decade, and Texans endure deep depression near the end of football season anyway, ever desperate to find something to get us through to the next August, even in good times.
And you, Carlos, wandered deeper into the desert than any of us. Yet here it is January, and the desert is blooming.
The Glendale/Racine Cardinals are the poster children for pro sports futility. Until two weeks ago, most Cardinals fans had never seen them win anything. Now they're a win from the Super Bowl.
Good God man. Go ahead and cheer. Hell, I am. Why not a San Diego-Arizona Super Bowl? That would stuff a sweat sock down the throats of those New England whiners. I even have a smattering of unjustifiable good will toward the Chargers, just because of the time I served in Stockton and the Spanos family's roots there.
So you are granted this exception, Carlos. Your Cowboys loyalties will not be questioned. In fact, I would load up on all of the Cardinals 2008 playoffs T-shirts and caps I could find.
History says they're sure to become collectors' items, guaranteed to gain value over time.
Me, I'm far removed from your climate of euphoria in the desert. Another foot of snow just fell on the Catskills, and the cabin fever is tightening its grip.
Little to do but numb the mind and let it drift to happier places, maybe go rummaging on eBay for Cowboys T-shirts from the '70s and '90s.

Playoff Solution To BCS Crap

2009-01-03T10:30:00.000-05:00

The BCS is big-time college football power brokers playing ostrich: ignoring grave flaws in the way a national champion is selected by burying their heads in piles of bowl money. After Texas kills Ohio State, because the Big 10 sucks and vegetation is a silly mascot, the Longhorns, USC and Utah will all have legitimate arguments that they should be national champs.
Here's the playoff fix: Limit regular season to 11 games. Take the Sugar, Rose, Orange, Fiesta and three others, one of which has to be the Cotton, $1 billion stadium and all. Four of them are quarterfinals, two are semis and one is championship, and they rotate.
To get there: Top 8 teams get byes. 16 other teams play the for the right to play them in the best of the current bowl mid-tiers ... Alamo, Gator, Holiday, Outback etc. Prerequisite is stadiums have to be good enough. Then you're down to the quarterfinals. That gets 24 teams in and gives 23 bowls meaning. There were 34 bowls this year, so take 8 more teams and have a little NIT gig with the Hawaii Bowl as the championship. What's so hard, and why would the Liberty Bowls of the world complain about having meaning?!

Winter in the Garden: Chance Leaves The Oval Office

2008-12-23T12:57:00.003-05:00

Christmas week in the Catskills, but no cheer for Texpatriates. Two feet of snow fell over the weekend, fastening an icy grip that won't release until April.

You know you're screwed when birds start flying away from you in formation. They're long gone, and now the deer, which spent the summer and fall up in the mountains doing deer shit, are descending on the Hudson Valley to scrounge for food and die on the ice-covered roads.

I had avoided the young Yankee redneck who lives down the hill until now, but he has a Jeep and a plow, and after the first heavy snow, I trudged down the road with $25 and made a new friend.

He seems decent enough; spends his weekend nights in his yard drinking, smoking weed and shooting guns with his buddies, but I lead a peaceful life now, and joining them would just be reverting to old ways.

Now Neighbor Neck and his posse roar around on snowmobiles all day scaring my animals.

"Hell, this is my favorite time of year," he said as he plowed my 150-foot gravel driveway, flashing a grin that hints of meth use.

Not me. Texans don't mind visiting winter, but we're loathe to live in it. We get edgy around too many flannel shirts. Monty Python was onto something about lumberjacks.

You can be sure that as soon as George W. Bush hands over the keys to the White House, he's high-tailing it back home to his ranch and his new North Dallas bunker to weather out the shit blizzard he's brought on this country.

Bush was Chance the Gardener with a drawl and the delusion that he was in charge. But there was no Ben Rand, no sage wisdom, only evil Dick Cheney and a slash-and-burn GOP stage crew of puppeteers. They managed to rape, pillage and cripple almost every institution of stability in this country and slime it's world reputation, all in eight short years, then dance away free while leaving the victims to clean up the mess, while having the cavalier audacity to maintain that deregulation is the answer to everything.

Bush, meanwhile, literally tap-danced for reporters and frequently reminded them and himself: "I'm the president."

The words are etched in my memory as goofy-gleeful and drawn out, coming from an Alfred E. Neuman grin superimposed on the head of a Jack in the Box drive-thru clown ... "I'm the presideeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnt!"

I fear that somewhere out there is a poor parrot who spent the last eight years in a cage facing a television always on and turned to Fox News, and now has a bird brain incurably filled with Bushisms that he spews out at random. Even the most ardent pet advocates will eventually agree that there's no choice but to kill him.

And I don't even hate Bush. I just wish he hadn't happened to us.

"In the garden, growth has its season," Peter Sellers' Chance said. "First come spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again."

We are definitely in the grips of winter.

Even Barack Obama fled to Hawaii to reminisce about a lost normal life and stare off into Pacific to contemplate the mess he worked so hard to get himself in.

Because "Being There" was hilarious, but being here is everything but, and spring feels very far away.