Why I shouldn't watch sports in Texas

I am in suite 547 of the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas right now, propped up on four feather pillows on a king-size bed, wrapped in a robe I can't afford, and drinking Dr. Pepper out of a wine glass. Four Points paid for the hotel, though I covered the DP. For the record, early 2008 is an excellent year and the bouquet is fantastic.

This past year I decided I was going to stop watching sports on television. Not exactly a soul-altering decision, though I am proud to say my motivation in this regard is as soporific as befits such a monumentally insignificant resolution: I need glasses. It was during the last college football season that I realized I could no longer read the scores on the screen while sitting across the room. Naive optometrists would likely blame this deterioration on my staring at spreadsheets on the computer all day as I grow older; or perhaps just on my growing older. Personally, I blame it on a receding hairline and a University of Utah football team that has underperformed for the past three seasons. I've thought about this a lot, and have developed a solution which, while it may appear complex on spec, is actually quite simple in application. Do nothing and wait for the problem to go away by itself while hoping the Utes get a new offensive coordinator next season. That failing, get plugs and continue to hope for a new offensive coordinator. In the meantime, stop watching sports (the better to ignore the problem, my dear).

Except for when I do. The Jazz just dropped Game 2 to the Lakers and looked pretty good doing it. Boozer needs to rediscover himself, and Williams needs to stop reinventing himself, but considering they have no answer for the NBA's elite 2 guards, that isn't bad. According to the announcers, at one point Bryant was 8-for-5 from the field, and I just don't know how you stop that.

At the end of the game there was a fishing-for-litigation commercial that made me recommit to my non-committal commitment. Studies conducted by the law firm of Shyster, Shyster, & Shyster have found that thousands of heart patients given a particular medication have died over a period of time. "If you have experienced similar side effects," and have no comprehension of statistics, call them at 1-800-DE-MINIMIS.

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