Check out the world’s greatest competitors!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/06/16/VI2009061601349.html?sid=ST2009061803878

Here’s a question: Are you still driving around the same car you had in 1995?  Jones isn’t either, but he’s still using the Vince Lombardi Trophy from that year as a hood ornament.

From Gil Lebreton in today’s Ft. Worth Star-Telegram column, “Questions for Dallas Cowboys remain at the ‘We’re OK’ corral”

Jerry Jones, having issued a speaking ban on all life and quasi-life forms working in PokeLand, has assumed the mantel of Master and Commander of All Things Poke, a/k/a M.C. Poke.  Our main man, Just Jerry, is looking to sell some additional tickets out there in Jerry World, which is scheduled to open up for Serious Poke Play this coming August!  Can you even believe that?  So lucky are we.  I’m hearing that NBC and ABC and FOX and ESPN all want to televise the first game.  It’s going to be like Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, with M.C. Poke changing into a sweater and talking to all us boys and girls in soft, reassuring tones.  I can’t wait!  Assuming a proper disinterest in the product on the field, this is a dilly of a time to be a Poke fan.

So, anyhow, we locals are being bombarded with advertisements about getting season tickets to watch America’s Team, your very own Dallas Cowboys, in person, live!!! from Jerry World for less than $1,300 per year!  What a deal! Quel deal!  Muy dealo!  Gee whiz, with eight home games during the regular season and two exhibition games a year, that’s a steal.  Someone’s stealing something from someone, right?  Why jeepers creepers, that’s ten games for a mere less than $1,300, an average of $130 per game ~ ~ no more than your average bi-weekly tab for lattes at the recently shuttered Starbucks located down the road from your home.  (Look for Roy Williams, # 31 before he became # 38, asking if you want foam with that.)

As it turns out, according the the Pokesite I visited from espn.com, the Cows are selling these less than $1,300 duckets for a $1,558 down stroke and $1,298 per year.  I practice The Dark Arts ~ Law ~ not something gay and smiley like accounting or mathematics.  I may be off on my calculations here.  But I’m thinking that if you buy and hold this ticket, and if you reup on your ticket for 779 years, your average cost, with the amortized down payment, would actually be $1,300 per year by Year No. 779.  And by Year No. 780, 2789 AD, you’ll truly be in “less than $1,300″ territory.

Another good thing about this?  I’m almost positive the Cows win a playoff game before then.

On another matter, did you hear Buttercup Puffalump tout that he enjoyed coaching T.O.?  Yup, he said that after T.O. was cut.  I guess M.C. Poke’s decree on speaking Pokealicious Pokeisms was lifted long enough for Buttercup to speak out.  It was touching, watching those vacant eyes staring off into space while a flat monotone robotted out: “I   en    joye    duh    coa    ching    T    .    O    .”

[Note to staff: Whoever's on the marionette strings, be more subtle pulling the strings next time.  And synch up the lip movements to the words.]

The Pokes have played 20 games since they blew out Brett Farve and the Green Bay Packers on Thanksgiving Day in Dallas in the 2007 season.  The Cowboys were 12 - 1 after that game.

In the last 20 games,  Dallas is 10 - 10, including a playoff loss to the Giants in the 2007 post season.  (Perhaps you recall there was no post season playoff games for the Pokes in 2008.)

In those 20 games, T.O. had one monster game ~ against the Niners here this season, T.O. caught seven for 200+ yards.  In the other 19 games since Thanksgiving of 2007, according to Norm T.O. averaged four catches for 53 yards.

Probably pretty good # 3 receiver numbers, but you don’t pay # 3 receivers $9,000,000 per year.

Time to get your Pope on!  No, not that one.  Alexander.  You remember him, right?  Consider AP’s trilogy as it applies to Jerrall Jones, a/k/a M.C. Poke ~ the Master and Commander of the Poke Universe.

M.C. Poke’s first stanza:  For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Followed by his second stanza:  Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

And finally, thank goodness, the third:  To err is human, to forgive divine.

Much to read, more to say, but for the moment, enjoy the day!

If you’re 50 or over, go here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw6H3crLzpg

If you’re under 50, go here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsuXbkrA_AQ

If you’re really happy ~ it’s such a great day ~ go to both.

I’ve retired once.  I worked for more than 40 years and retired.  Once.  One time.  It wasn’t my idea, the retirement thing, but when they stop paying you, it’s time to cobble together the shreds of your remaining dignity and declare retirement.  (The phrase you’re racking your brain over and trying to recall is “olly olly oxen free” or more colloquially, “ally ally alls in free” as sort of a do-over for the rest of your life.)

Little did I know at the time that the proper term for what I did was “tirement”  not “retirement.”  Now, today, with The Dairy Queen announcing, through his agent (another failing on my part, i.e., no agent), that’s he’s retiring again, or re-retiring if not re-re-retiring, I realize my one and done disappearance from the work-a-day world was nothing more than a tirement, and a paltry one at that.

It is possible, however, that this is a geographical retirement, effective only on the East Coast or in a specific time zone, and that there are still games to be played and interceptions to be thrown in the Midwest, Southwest and Left Coast, or in the Central or Mountain or Fantasy Time Zones.  It’s become harder and harder to tell about such things with The Dairy Queen.  It’s good to be able to make one’s own reality.

I will miss him, though.  Rather, I’ll miss the Brett Farve of the 90’s and early 2000’s, in his pre-Dairy Queen phase.  I believe football will miss him, too.  It’s not like a Steve Young or Troy Aikman retiring, terrific quarterbacks who took their teams as far as they could go, winning the whole pot.  The Good Brett did that as well, but he was more than that.  As I’ve heard others say, he feels like a guy who could have played this game 40 years ago as well as he played it six to ten years ago.  He played a lot better than he retired, but that’s setting the bar pretty low, and I can forgive him for that.

I remember going to a handful of Texas Rangers games back when Nolan Ryan was pitching for them.  The games never turned out this way for me, but each time I went, I knew and felt that I had a chance to witness and feel a part of something special with Ryan.  I knew and felt that this night might be the night of his next no-hitter.  He had it in him.  He always had it in him.  Brett Favre had  the same element in him ~ that on a given Sunday afternoon, he could be special.  He could make it special, with his team but also above and beyond his teammates.  He wasn’t unique, but he was rare ~ a special player.  I’ll miss him.