Emmitt Smith Let Go in Wake of ALF Rumors

ports fans were surprised by this week's announcement that Emmitt Smith would not return to the Dallas Cowboys for another season. Cowboys management and affiliates were quick to say Smith's talents were not diminishing, and the prime factor in their consideration was the running back's $9.8 million salary. However, some are pointing a finger to Smith's life off the field as the real cause.

"Everyone is more than a little curious about his relationship with ALF," said an anonymous Cowboy, dressed as a cowboy. "We're not suggesting there's more to it than it seems, but c'mon—it's weird. If it were that guy from Max Headroom or Morton Downey, Jr., it would be strange, but nobody would really think twice. Is it '80s nostalgia? What's going on there?"

Others are also alluding to Emmitt Smith's alleged friendship with '80s celebrity/puppet alien ALF as a trouble spot that turned Cowboys management against him. Smith and the puppet met on the set of a long-distance phone commercial last year and have reportedly been close friends since. Many close acquaintances of both insist the two share an innocent friendship, attending sporting events, barbecues, and enjoying movie rental marathons together; but as a high-profile sports celebrity in a country where human-puppet relationships are under close scrutiny, some say Smith has left too much unsaid for the comfort of many sports fans.

"Everybody's wondering about Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith and 4-foot sitcom hairball ALF!" reported a recent gossip-column we copied word for word. "They claim it's all just fun, but you can't believe everything ALF says! When was the last time you saw a four-time All-Pro and Super Bowl MVP bar-hopping with a cat-eating Muppet? You can forgive our curiosity, I'm sure!"

While some would feel better with clarification from Smith or his felt cohort, others insist it isn't public business.

"Whatever Emmitt and Grover do by themselves is their business," said Cowboy quarterback Quincy Carter. "He's a stand-up guy and one of the best players in the NFL. That thing he hangs out with gives me the creeps, yeah, and I want to punch its face in when it tells me to dial 10-10-321, but none of that makes a difference when you need a first-class running back. They never should have let him go."

In a phone interview, someone claiming to be ALF attempted to set the record straight.

"This is ridiculous, and everyone knows it," said the Melmackian. "Why would anyone sign up for one of those outrageous programs and be obligated to pay premium prices when they could dial 10-10-321 from anywhere and save major bucks on long-distance? All calls for 7 cents a minute, no weird schedules to remember, no hidden charges! That's a lot of money you can save—and that's a lot of cats!"

The phone was suddenly cut off after the sound of a door being broken open, and the heavy sound of punching ensued, leading us to believe Carter had broken in and made good on his threat to punch the puppet's face in.

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Hey, Shorty, get me a glass o' buttermilk, will ya? Ah, thanks… nothin' like a nice cold glass o' buttermilk, no sir. Hey, I ever tell you the one about the milkman's boy? No? Well, listen up a spell…

You remember that ol' boy Floyd that used to deliver the milk, don't you? Long time ago. Guy was always pissed off at everybody, couldn't nobody talk to him for very long or he'd go off on 'em? You remember. Anyway, it turns out that ol' Cecil , who brings the milk now, is his son. I know, he's Moira's boy, rest her soul, and no, it didn't happen the natural way. Ol' Floyd was too mean and lowdown to ever spend enough time with a woman for that. And crazy Moira… well, you know I don't like to speak unkind of the dead. But anyway, here's what happened…

See, Floyd, he was always pissed off about something, like I said. And for a long time he held a grudge against Moira and her sister Penelope. Somethin' about 'em not givin' him a Christmas tip or some damn thing, I don't know. The thing was, he was in a position to do somethin' about his grudges if he wanted, and I guess he did, too. What I heard was that he used to take a bottle o' milk and get in the back o' the truck and whack himself, then he'd stick it in the bottle and get his duck butter all in there with the milk. He called it a "protein shake," and if you was on his shit list, pardon my French, you had to watch out that he didn't deliver you a protein shake with your regular order.

Well, I guess he had been givin' them ol' girls Moira and Penelope some o' them protein shakes for quite a while. And the way Penelope tells it, Moira didn't always use the milk to pour on her corn flakes. She said that if Moira coulda afforded it, she woulda bought enough milk to take a milk bath every morning. Now you know, them ol' girls wasn't rich, so Moira never did get enough milk at one time for that. Instead, she used to take one bottle each morning and wash her lady parts with it. Dutchy, I think they call it. So anyhow, turns out that she uses one or two o' them protein shakes and dutchies herself with 'em, and bingo, whaddaya think? Couple months go by and she realizes she's fragrant.

I'm tellin' ya, Shorty, no one in town could believe it, and not just because Moira and Penelope were about as ugly as monkfish left out to dry for a week. Thing was, they never had no truck with the men in this town, none of 'em. And they didn't have no truck with no men from no other towns, neither, far as anyone knew. They was suspected of being lebanese, to be perfectly honest.

That ol' Moira, though, she didn't try to hide it or nothin'. She said it was a sign from God, a whaddaya call it, one o' them unmasculate deceptions. She walked around town like she was givin' a watermelon a ride, just as proud as could be. Then when ol' Cecil gets born and grows up, whaddaya know, he's the spittin' image o' Floyd. Damnedest thing I ever heard, but it's one hunnert percent true. Ask anybody.

'Course now, Cecil, he's a little easier to deal with than ol' Floyd was, but that don't mean he don't got a temper. You just gotta stay on his good side, that's all.

Hey Shorty, you ever notice how chunky buttermilk gets sometimes?º more columns

"A wise man once said: 'It takes a fool to win the lottery.'

Wait, no. That's not right. In retrospect I think it was 'It takes a fool to get into pottery.' That's it. And that man was my father. Dad hated pottery, ever since he was kicked out of high school for pushing a potter's wheel out a third-story window, which landed on the school's mascot. That red-painted mouse never recovered from the head trauma it received in the incident. After that day, dad never forgave mice or the entire field of pottery for his failure to receive an education.

But the one thing dad did love, besides his family and possibly my brother Goose, was the lottery. Every week he'd buy as many tickets for the Irish Sweepstakes as the Hartwig family grocery money would allow, and every week he guaranteed us a victory. And, every week he'd lose on a technicality that involved filling out the forms wrong and picking too many numbers. Dad's strategy was simple, yet elegant: he picked all the numbers on the sheet, figuring the winning combination would pop up in there somewhere. And every week he'd write another angry letter to the local paper about how he'd been cheated by the Irish Sweepstakes. It became a Hartwig family tradition, like singing Christmas fight songs and poaching turkeys.

Eventually the day did finally come when dad won the Irish Sweepstakes. Some think he just wore them down over the years. That evening, he gathered the Hartwig clan around his knee to tell us the news, and he related a heart-warming story of how this day had been his dream since he was a school boy and he had been required to read a short story called The Lottery. It was the only thing dad ever read while he was in school that wasn't scratched into a toilet stall, and it changed his life forever. Dad put on his hat and coat, kissed us goodbye, and promised to smile down on us from heaven as he skipped out the door.

Boy was he pissed when he came home later that day with a big bag full of money."

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