Activities to Pursue During the Dead Zone

And so we have officially entered the “Dead Zone” of the sports year.  Spring football ended a couple of weeks back for the only program we care about.  College basketball ended for our guys on the same day, after one of the most successful seasons a Longhorn roundball team has experienced.  The baseball team is royally stinking the place up, so that offers neither solace nor refuge.  I can no longer determine if we even have a women’s softball team since Cat Osterman’s eligibility ran out.

If you’re like me, you got your income taxes filed at about 10:30 Tuesday night, so that very expensive diversion has now come to a merciful end, leaving you short of cash and wanting to beat your kids.  But they’re both grown and out the house, so you don’t even have that going for you.

She left and took the program with her.

So, here you are, with four months to get through before the 2008 edition of the Texas Longhorn football team reports back to the 40 acres for two-a-days, and you’re trying to figure out what to do with yourself.  As a public service, I’ve compiled the following list of things you might want to try in order to keep yourself from going insane over the next 120 days:

• Spend more time with your wife.  What’s that?  You’re not yet married?  Divorced?  Still married but your wife can’t stand to be around you because your feet stink?  Ok, then, spend more time with your dog, or your cat, or your goldfish, or… aw, the hell with this one.

• Get hooked again on Major League Baseball, like you used to be when you were a kid.  I mean, think of the riches we here in

  Texas enjoy where MLB is concerned.  There’s the Astros, and…ok, well, the Astros suck.  But there’s the Rangers, and…ok, well, the Rangers suck even worse than the Astros do.  So, you could be like me and be a life-long Dodger fan…but, well, the Dodgers suck, too.  Hmmm…now I remember why I’m not a fan of MLB anymore.

• Ok, well, how about NBA Basketball?  Spurs, Rockets, Mavericks – all good Texas teams, all will be in the playoffs, which are right around the corner.  Lots of ex Longhorns in the League now – Durant, TJ, Mihm, Ivey.  So what if the games are boring as hell for 3 quarters as the teams loaf around until crunch time – at least those last 8 minutes or so have some action in them.  Should be good for a few hours of viewing time a week.  So you got that going for you.
• Start watching “Dancing With The Stars”.  Don’t worry, your wife or girlfriend doesn’t have to know you’re just watching it because the female pro dancers wear next to nothing at all and Shannon Elizabeth has a great set of hooters – just keep going on about what incredible athletes they are.  Draw comparisons between Edyta and Secretariat, or Karina and Muhammed Ali.  She’ll believe you, seriously.  And even if she doesn’t believe you she’s going to let you watch it anyway.  You know why?  Because she thinks if she lets you watch for long enough, you’re going to agree to go get dance lessons with her, something all women secretly long to get their boyfriends and husbands to do with them.  
  

Secretariat had nothing on Edyta.

• If that doesn’t work out for you, or you’re afraid you might actually end up agreeing to do the dance lessons because you have no freakin’ will power, you wuss, well, there’s always “American Idol” – it’s on about 11 hours a week, and everybody else in the country appears to be watching it, so you might as well, too.  If nothing else, it’ll give you something to talk about with your co-workers in the break room the next day.  I’ll even give you  a 30 second rundown to get you up to speed so you don’t have to go into it cold:  David A can sing anything but he looks and acts like he’s 12 and is annoying as hell;  David C is this season’s token rocker dude, but he actually has talent and will become a real recording artist once he records the insipid first album his contract with AI  and Miles Davis will require him to record; Carly is Irish and ought to be able to sing anything but just can’t quite get it done; Sayesha thinks she can sing like Whitney but can’t; Brooke is adorable and you don’t really much care if she can sing or not; Jason is an Aggie stoner – seriously – and sings just like you’d expect an Aggie stoner to sing; Kristy Lee is this year’s female contestant whose voice is not good enough to win but is good enough to go into country music where she will become a star.  There – now you don’t even have a learning curve to go through.  No need to thank me.

Not the next Bo Bice.

Dude’s an Aggie - seriously.  The Dead Reveilles are not amused. 

• Once you’ve watched a few episodes of AI, it’ll be time to develop a drinking or drug habit.  This is a great way to pass the time and I hear those AA meetings are a fine place to pick up chicks, for you single guys.  Yeah, they’re mostly bipolar or psychotic girls who’ll steal your wallet while you sleep and run up huge credit card bills before you know what’s happened, but Sailor Ripley tells me they’re easy and good in bed.  Plus, if you end up in rehab you get to meet celebrities and professional athletes, so you can work on your autograph collection.
• Eat out and go to the movies a lot.  What the hell, you’ve got money.  Oh, right, just had to pay the income taxes – nevermind.
• Buy the complete DVD collection of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts and find out how funny Red Buttons really was!
• Purchase and watch the complete Battlestar Gallactica collection so that you can figure out just exactly what the frack Crazy Joe Davola was posting about the other day.
• As a last – and I do mean LAST – resort, immerse yourself in your work.  Shock your boss by showing up for meetings on time and making deadlines for four solid months.  Dedicate yourself to being the best you can be at whatever it is you do, because, as my old grandpappy used to say, there’s no greater reward than a job well done.  Yeah, old grandpappy never worked in corporate America, and didn’t really make much sense once the dementia set in, did he?

Ok, it’s not much but it’s pretty much all I’ve got here.  Barring any of these options you can just spend your time monitoring Barking Carnival and hope one of these lousy bastards puts up something worth reading from time to time.  Plus, I’m told that staring for hours at the little moving dots in Chris Applewhite’s football posts is almost as good as developing a drug habit.

I’m open to other suggestions.