Mood: Hounded :/
Song: “Love Dog” – TV on the Radio

I was absolutely rocked, positively blindsided by the news of yesterday evening. I had few words then, and I don’t know if I can muster more now.

Of course, I speak of Samantha’s Tweet on her private feed that she’s on of the outs with Mathias and actually (yes!) regretting jilting me the way she did. Obviously, our mutual friend had to show it to me since she still hasn’t approved my request to view the feed, but I felt incredibly close to her nonetheless.

But what does this mean? It’s an ethical quandary is what. How do you welcome back someone who’s done such obvious wrong? The pain from the time I made my advance at Dave’s pool party and she stood there and laughed belly laughs for an entire minute, to the point that she had to prop herself against a deck chair to keep from doubling over. Is that forgivable sin? I guess a handy analog would be how the Eagles just signed Michael Vick. That was a bit of a shock as well. Here’s someone who was capable of malevolence – bringing death where life had thrived, upon beings of innocence! Still, he has suffered duly for his transgression and he actually managed to lose to the Eagles in an NFC Title Game, so in a way I have fond associations of him!

I am a believer in second chances, be it for heart stompers or dog killers. How could I not be? Certainly no being of perfect rectitude am I. If I am able to behold myself in the mirror, in full knowledge of the deceit that I am capable of and the deceit that I have in fact perpetrated, it would be low of me to judge another.

So who knows? Perhaps one day not far off in the future, we will be welcomed into Samantha’s private feed as a friend (and maybe more) and a troubled quarterback and a beleaguered franchise can find peace and success. But that’s only if we’re willing to give them a chance to earn forgiveness.

Emotions run high in the postseason. Emotions also cascade down the cheeks of the losers in the form of warm, salty failure. These are felt no more keenly than by these sensitive souls. Sure, they try to tell themselves their teams have exceeded expectations and that they are therefore immune to crestfalling after a title game defeat. Because they’ll need your emotional support, WHO YA GOT?

Mood: Delirious!
Song: “White Riot,” The Clash

I’m so…so… — fuck it I’ve got three Smirnoff Ices in me — happy!

We did it! This town finally won a title. No more wallowing in dejection and overwhelming rancor. We’re a people who are ready to love again.

Hark! It sounds as though some folks have already started with the raillery outside my door. Perhaps I will join them in the spreading of cheer.

Felicitations friends! We’re champions of the–

OH GOD WHAT ARE DOING WITH ME! NO, NOT THE PANTS! DON’T SET MY PUBES ON FIRE! OOOOWWWW FUCK!

LEAVE ME IN PEACE. I ONLY WISH TO CELEBRATE OUR – NNNNOOOO! MY ANUS IS NOT THE APPROPRIATE PLACE FOR THE PARKING METER!

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK

Please. Please.

Just leave me here to die.

Uuuuuunnnnnnhhhhhhh. The torrents of batteries… They were too much…

Mood: Buoyant??????
Song: “Bad Days,” The Flaming Lips

The Phillies are on the verge of ending the 25-year Philly title drought. It’s gonna happen! I’m so deliriously not sad that I could venture -get this! – outside the house. Look at all the cool stuff out here. Sunshine! Birds! People not conspiring to make my life miserable! Where’s all this been?

I’m almost…wait, hold the phone. The sides of my mouth, extending in at upwards angle? Can it do that? Are the legends true?

As much as I know the Rays are a tough team, recent history is on the Phillies’ side. This decade has repeatedly awarded long-suffering franchises. The Red Sox and the White Sox got theirs. Sure, the Indians the Cubs got turned back in the post-season, but there’s precedent! Sweet, sweet precedent.

C’mon Hamels! You gotta do this one for me, Chutley! I can’t go back to putting all my hopes on the Iggles. Andy Reid is trying to kill me. I have better luck with girls than he does with goal line offense. I hammer it in more often. Oh God, how sweet it will be. A title will give the lease on life I need to be such an abject pussy. It’s true! I know! But things are changing!

Goddamit Fightins’ You have to do this. DeSean Jackson is the kind of tard who would drop a gun at a crime scene. The Flyers will find a way to fuck it up. Oh no, darkness is descending again. Back in the house! Back in the house!

Song: Taking Back Sunday, “There’s No ‘I’ In Team”
Mood : Wary :/

Hey, the Eagles are doing all right. A few more performances like the one against the Rams and there might be serious cause for excitement. I know that’s something that’s hard to come by around here. With early season triumphs comes a return to crisp autumn air, perfect for donning hoodies and concealing the tan I didn’t get over the summer. Dare I say that things for the first time in a while are starting to look up.

Or at least they were. Until Jessica Simpson had to unleash her litany of searing taunts.

Women. Their cold, calculating cruelties never fail to cut me to the core. Well, fine, Romo beau, you with your lotus life. I know your new country album is freighted with heartbreak, but I know it not to be authentic. Nothing earns my disdain like the cries of apocryphal suffering. Besides, the ladies of Philadelphia are no less assured of victory. Just the other day, Samantha totally told me she thinks Philly is going to own on Monday night.

Okay, she didn’t tell me that. That’s been her Gchat away message and Facebook status for two days now. Even though she doesn’t speak to me much, posting such things is a clear sign that she wants to me to stay abreast of her thoughts and affairs. I mean, we would talk more but she’s always showing the red icon in chat, so I’m never quite sure how to proceed with initiating conversation. I just assume she has better things to do.

This team is really all I have going right now.

Song: “Needle In The Hay” Elliott Smith
Mood: Weltsmertz :(

Down some dark defile of the mind, terra incognito to the blithe and bourgeois notions of normalcy, lies a swath of consciousness shrouded in a substance as dark as Kevin Curtis is light. Shawn Andrews has seen this place. So, too, have I. Indeed, I’ve felt its wintry contours and been contained within its clammy manacles.

There is no 4th and 26 in this place. There is no (some other accomplishment in Eagles history).

It is very essence of inner tumult. It is the disease of depression.

When I first read that Shawn Andrews had not just looked, but plunged, into this abyss, I reacted much as William Styron did when he first read Camus: I received the stab of recognition that only proceeds from a writer who weds moral passion and a quiet strength.

“Football is important” he said. “A means to an end, but my mental health, I feel like, is a lot more important. That’s a helluva lot of money … Money’s good, money’s a necessity, but it’s not everything. I can’t put a price tag on my mental state.”

Richly emotive.

Unstinting in its power.

Only a bit gay.

Even more than the ineffable and unrelatable darkness of melancholia, he has weathered the slings and arrows of five years in Philly. They say Ricky Watters blacks out anytime he sees a green shirt. And he was only here three years.

I can only hope that Andrews will find actual help and not some doctor who will try to narcotize him to a stupor. I had sworn off my pills, well, until I saw that’s what Zack Braff’s character did in Garden State. Even I’m not ready to emulate that guy. I took a month’s worth of Lexapro as soon as I turned it off. I’m almost regretting that. Since sales of my latest collection of sestinas, “Oleaginous Hypocrisy” are less than brisk, I might try to conserve some of that Lexapro to barter for Eagles preseason tickets. You’d be surprised how far those go with Iggles faithful.

Song: “Bandages” Hot Hot Heat
Mood: Lugubrious :(

When is the moment you can know with complete certainty that someone will forever let you down? When can you quiet the murmur of indecision that allows you to cling remora-like to the twisting and turning minecart of heartbreak? I wish these things were spelled out. Life is too littered with indistinct notes and half-formed promises.

If this point exists, it must have been crossed with Samantha. Since she spurned me to start dating Mathias, she’s told me to “fuck off,” “buzz off,” “eat shit,” “get stuffed,” “hug C4,” “contract AIDS,” “die soon,” “kick rocks,” “rob butts,” “stab self,” “try men,” and “taunt cops.” Still, I can’t shake the lingering feeling that affection lies beyond those words. She must feel some obligation to put up a front of belligerence to appease her current fling. Once gone, I’m bound to get a better reception.

When I think of McNabb, it evokes the same reasoning. Yeah, he’s hurt again. He’s hurting us again. To a person of reason, the locus of dependability for McNasty is stretching further into rear distance. Those people don’t understand the intoxicating allure of expectation, a destiny that yearns to fulfill itself.

Someday Samantha and I shall know true happiness, united in experiencing an Eagles Super Bowl that will be a rapturous yea-saying efflorescence of perfection. And the Kevin Kolbs and the Mathiases of the world will be forced to accept their roles as temporary impediments to a love that can’t understand.

At least that’s what I wrote in red marker on her pillow case.

Song: “Song For the Dumped,” Ben Folds Five
Mood: Jilted :(

Same as it ever was. You think you have so much to offer someone – emotional support, intellectual stimulation, consideration for their needs, a big contract with lots of guaranteed money – and yet they return to easy crutch of the familiar. People can be weak. Change can be a minefield.

I know this to be true, as do my cherished Eagles. Last summer, Samantha was dropping hints that she and Mathias might be on the outs. Now was my chance to show her what I had to offer. I took her to a couple movies she was dying to see. Even went shopping with her, y’know, to show her how much I enjoyed her company. I spent hours listening to her detail the various problems her relationship was undergoing. All the stuff Mathias wouldn’t do for her. We didn’t get physical. There’s no way I could force her to cheat.

There was this one day in July, I was at a Phillies game and she had me on the phone the whole time. She was weeping, I mean, really bawling for hours on end. I don’t even remember what happened in the game, so intense was my concentration with what she had to say. I guess Mathias had really screwed up big. Flirted with some other girl really obviously right in front of her. Even bragged a little about how hot this other girl was. What a dick.

So Samantha says she doesn’t know why she kept falling for assholes like him and why she couldn’t ever settle for a nice guy like me. Then came the bombshell: she had something important to tell me if I’d meet her the next day for lunch.

So I arrived at the Cosi the next day, hoping for the best. Soon enough though, noon turned to 1 o’clock and she hadn’t shown. I called her cell a few times and it kept going straight to voicemail.

A few days went by and I hadn’t heard anything but until I ran into her friend outside the Tower Records (God, I miss it). She told me Samantha was out of town at Mathias’ family’s beach house for the next two weeks. Apparently he told her he was just kidding around about the other girl. He also told her about the beach house.

That’s when I knew I screwed up. If only I’d acted like I cared more during those calls, she’d've known I was the one. I mean, I did care. But I really should’ve poured it on. Whould it have killed me to shed a few tears myself?

I think the Eagles learned that lesson too.

mood: downcast :/
song: “Mad World” Michael Andrews

You mean to tell me all the other teams in the NFC East now have at least three Super Bowl titles and we have none?! Making the lacuna that is our trophy case all the more crushing, a void that stares back at you with mascara-lined eyes. This really very nearly curdles the arrival of the new Portishead album.

Why should I be happy for New York? Why should I be happy at all? It’s antithetical to Iggles fandom. Next thing you tell me, sports should be something you enjoy rather than a reinforcement of your bleak worldview. I don’t buy it.

Now, really. You guys didn’t need to beat New England, did you? I mean, who does that? You did it our way the first time in the regular season by falling agonizingly short. Why bother doing a crazy thing like winning? We’d already dispatched Arlen Specter to sap their credibility. That’s how you’re supposed to hurt teams, with passive-aggressive assaults months after the fact.

To steal a phrase, their quarterback grew up against the Pats; our quarterback threw up. Meanwhile, the Mets just wrapped up the NL East by signing Johan Santana.

It’s enough to make a guy brood silently and contemplate his mortality as it relates to the unfeeling universe.

[Sighs] Fucking Eagles.

mood: pensive :|

I was fishing around for updates on Samantha’s deviantART and Facebook pages, listening to Belle & Sebastian’s “Is It Wicked Not to Care” when Phil shoots me over this link on McNabb wanting the Eagles to load up in the offseason.

Now there’s something I can get behind. But I think I understand the underlying uneasiness in his words. He writes about players feeling replaced if they bring in newer marquee ones, no doubt tapping into his own anxieties with a hard-charging young quarterback waiting in the wings.

I was plagued with similar pangs for months once Samantha started hanging around that Mathias guy. Sure, they were only classmates in some night school classes she was taking, but they recently spent a Saturday afternoon at the Magritte exhibit downtown. She knows I like Magritte. Guys in bowler hats and pipes! Sheer absurdity. Then just the other day, I see a heavy detailed oil portrait of his cock on her deviantART page.

Don’t know if I should start to be worried.

Samantha doesn’t like to watch sports, meaning I have to be kind of furtive about my fandom. Every time it comes up in passing, I get the rundown about how it’s androcentric and heteronormative. Sure, I say – hoping to look those up later – but aren’t most things? Then she lays the whole “football causes domestic abuse” line on me. What am I supposed to say to that? Boom Bitch? Haha. Kidding, of course. Can’t believe I just wrote that.

We were the only team in the NFC East not to go to the playoffs this year. Sure, there’s more substantive concerns. The world is full of dark torment and a forbidding swirl of anomie, but how am I supposed to care about the elections or some Bhutto assassination when the Eagles are in the cellar and the Phillies get swept out the playoffs?

It’s really a curious analog, myself and my teams. The fans at the Linc are a little too rough and tumble for me and I think the same applies to Donovan. We weight issues in similar ways also, carefully considering them and then whining endlessly even if it’s detrimental to their resolution. Samantha says she dislikes that about me. I say there’s a lesson to be learned from the lachrymose. Look what it’s doing for Hillary.

In fact, I’m crying now. Wow. I hope he stays.