The Emo Eagles Will Be Fine Without You, Randy Moss

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.

The Emo Eagles Do Not Share Our Joy

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.

The Emo Eagles Let Out a Mighty Cry

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.