It's all over now, bébé bleu.

First Jenna Bush, now this.



Yup, that's Melissa Theuriau in that picture, and she done got herself hitched. And she didn't even tell me beforehand. (Thanks to Mack Williams and LD, by the way, for breaking the news to a brother gently.) Anyway, the point is, FAIL. There's going to be a period of mourning here at Hey Jenny Slater, I'm not gonna lie to you.

But in the meantime, nominations for a replacement are officially open. Nobody who's married or otherwise romantically attached; also no drug addicts, country musicians, porn stars, Scientologists, or Republicans. Everything else is on the table.

OK, some drug use is acceptable.

God is teasing me! Just like he teased Moses in the desert!

Man, you try to be a better person, you vow to give in to anger less and not be so judgmental of people, and then you read something like this"

Vito Fossella built a career as a staunch "family values" pol, polishing his image in his predominantly Catholic district with a string of anti-gay votes.

He even shuns his gay sister, Victoria Fossella, refusing to go to family events if she and her partner attend, a source close to the family said.

His double life is now exposed with the news he has a 3-year-old love child with a divorced Air Force colonel, and critics are calling him a hypocrite.

Making this even more fantastic is the fact that Fossella, the Republican representative of a district comprised of Staten Island and a small section of Brooklyn, got arrested at the beginning of this month for driving around Fairfax County, Virginia, with a blood-alcohol level twice the legal limit, and his extramarital affair first came to light when his mistress came to bail him out of jail.

Now, you can say what you want about a guy like, say, Jerry Falwell -- and Lord knows I have -- but I'll at least give Falwell this: He may have preached a petty, exclusionary brand of Christianity completely at odds with almost everything I've been taught, but he at least did us the courtesy of following that in his own personal life. He apparently never went and hooked up with gay guys in hotel rooms, and we haven't seen any "secret families" come out of the woodwork to reveal that Falwell fathered X number of bastard children and funneled them cash for years. This guy Fossella, though, not only carried on a years-long affair and fathered a child, but he thought he still held moral superiority over his gay sister, to the point where he refused to so much as breathe the same air as her at family gatherings. And that's even before you get to his multiple votes on Capitol Hill punishing not only gay people but even the people and communities who try to stand up for them.

This type of thing makes me want to go out and just punch somebody -- and it says something about the current state of the Republican Party that they're not willing to give him the heave-ho just yet. Sure, he's hateful, hypocritical scum, but . . . he got re-elected by a 14-point margin two years ago!

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

The Friday Random Ten+5 ties the knot. On Saturday.

The Friday Random Ten+5 experienced a 24-hour delay this week due to Blue-Screen-of-Death-related issues with Hey Jenny Slater's central mainframe, but it's probably just as well that it turned into a Saturday Random Ten this time around, because it coincides with the wedding of Jenna Bush. Now, as you know, she and I have a bit of a history together, but I wasn't terribly shocked to hear the news that she'd gotten engaged. I was, however, surprised to learn that she was getting married on her dad's ranch in fricking Crawford, Texas. Tell me, readers, and I'm talking to both men and women here -- if your family connections gave you the option of getting married at either the White House or a ranch in east Texas, which one would you pick? If I was Jenna Bush I'd be like, "Look, pops -- you're more than likely going to leave office with an approval rating in the 30s, and I'm going to be saddled with a public rep as daughter of one of the most inept presidents in history. This might be my last chance to salvage something positive out of this train wreck of a presidency, so screw your stupid ranch, I want a Rose Garden wedding. MAKE IT HAPPEN."

On the other hand, maybe this was the plan all along, which might explain why Dubya was spending so much time cutting brush down there. Still, I could write you a long list of places I'd rather get married. In fact, I think I'll get started on that list right now: In honor of dear Jenna, this week's slightly belated +5 is Five Places I'd Rather Get Married Than Crawford, Texas.



The 50-yard-line at Sanford Stadium
I realize there is only a very specific cohort of potential brides-to-be who would agree to this, but it's not like I'd be wanting to have it during halftime of an actual game (though that would be pretty sweet). Just your average summer Saturday, when the stadium isn't in use, would be fine. Though I'd probably at least have Mark Richt on the guest list. And Uga VI.



Las Vegas
One could argue that a prefab wedding ceremony at a kitschy Vegas chapel, officiated by an Elvis impersonator, would not really befit the son or daughter of the leader of the free world. But let's be honest -- at this point, how much more damage could this possibly do to the Bush legacy? And given that Nevada is more than likely going to be a swing state in this year's presidential election, it couldn't hurt to do a little pandering to the voters out there.



The Vatican
I realize that the Bushes aren't Catholic, but if it was my family, I figure there'd be nothing wrong with my dad the president calling up Pope Benedict and being like, "Hey, Your Excellency, do me a solid and marry my son and daughter-in-law at St. Peter's." Maybe he could sweeten the deal by promising to continue the ban on government funding for stem-cell research, I don't know.



The backyard of one of my ex-girlfriends
Again, this seems like something that would be well within the power of a sitting U.S. president to do; if my dad can order the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without giving them access to legal representation or even charging them with anything, he can rub one of my ex-girlfriends' sweet faces in it by issuing an executive order appropriating her backyard for a First Family wedding.



Austin, Texas
I mean, if you have to get married somewhere in Texas, at least do it someplace that has some decent bars.

Anyway, congratulations to the happy couple. If the wedding ceremony's in Crawford, wonder where the honeymoon's going to be? Lubbock? Romantic Fort Worth? While y'all ponder that one, here's the Ten:

1. Nine Inch Nails, "Wish" (remix)
2. The Sloppy Seconds, "Just Because You're a Girl"
3. The Dust Brothers, "Who is Tyler Durden?"
4. Elvis Costello, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding"
5. Passengers, "Miss Sarajevo"
6. Pet Shop Boys, "Minimal" (Lobe remix)
7. The Beastie Boys, "Do It"
8. Public Enemy, "Burn Hollywood Burn"
9. The Chemical Brothers, "Come With Us"
10. Crowded House, "Walking on the Spot"

Now that's a Random Ten that just oozes romance. Throw your own Tens, and your dream wedding locations, in the comments.

Living every week like it's Shark Week:"30 Rock" vs. Georgia's 2008 schedule.

Apologies for the slow blogging over the last couple days, folks -- I've been working on a piece for something the Roll Bama Roll guys are hoping to put out later on this year (unless they weren't ready to announce that just yet, in which case I've been surfing the Web for porn). But I hope you'll excuse me for doing a little football work on the side, because we're getting right into the heart of silly season -- the point in the year at which we gridiron junkies give up all pretense of sanity and just start begging PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE for football season to fucking start already. Bloggers very much like myself are forced to spin thousand-word posts out of practice reports or spring scrimmages, and when we don't even have those to write about, we get desperate and start reaching big-time -- until the point where we're throwing up stuff like this or this, which are the sports-blogger equivalent of going to the cupboard and guzzling the vanilla extract.

The whole "College Football Teams as Other Things" archetype is always a good fallback, though, not to mention something I have some experience with. Roll your eyes if you want, but crap like this has earned me an upcoming spot as a guest lecturer in Dr. Marian Hamilton-Fletcher's semiotics class at Duke University (SOTC 4112 -- Group Comparisons of Things to Other Things: Theory and Practice).



The next installment in that less-than-distinguished series? Georgia's 2008 Schedule as "30 Rock" Characters. Now, this is only going to be funny to that select group of people who both a) follow Georgia football and b) watch "30 Rock" religiously, and perhaps not even to them. But it's perfect in its own weird way because the Dawgs, God love 'em, are like the Liz Lemon of football: Extremely talented, even "hot" by many standards, and very near the pinnacle of their respective career paths -- yet afflicted with the kind of neuroses and brain-fart propensity that always seems to bring them down just a few steps short of the brass ring. The 2007 season was a prime example of this.

So who are the people who'll be traveling in and out of our orbit and causing us problems this season? We'll start on opening weekend and progress chronologically.

(ADDED: Welcome, SI.com readers -- make yourselves at home, try on anything you like, feel free to grab one of our sales associates if you have any questions. And thanks much to Campus Clicks for the link; I've got you down for fifty bucks and my firstborn.)


Georgia Southern: Kenneth the page
Friendly, non-threatening; any gathering involving them is going to be polite and relentlessly upbeat, even as they're being put resoundingly in their place. Yet while it maybe easy to write them off as lightweights, after the Appalachian State-Michigan debacle there's no way we're going to be taking them lightly. "In five years we'll all either be working for him . . . or be dead by his hand."


Central Michigan: Pete Hornberger
No real rivalry here. Capable, always good for an unexpected flash of brilliance, but they've got too much baggage (MAC affiliation/the teenage son he's afraid of) for us to ever want to trade places with them.


at South Carolina: Devon Banks
Unctuous, devious, but mostly just annoying. Rivalry with Florida/Jack Donaghy (q.v.) has seen its share of interesting moments, even an upset or two, but even when they somehow succeed in ascending to the top echelon they never hang around for very long. Just as Banks tries to convince people he's heterosexual, the Gamecocks are determined to convince people they're SEC-championship material; no sane person should believe either one.


at Arizona State: Cerie
Just there to look pretty; in the grand scheme of things they don't actually figure that heavily in our chances for success (or lack of same). Yet just as many viewers wouldn't mind a hot blonde like Cerie getting more screen time, most Georgia fans would be perfectly happy to play some tougher, BCS-conference road games now and then.


Alabama: Tracy Jordan
They're not on crack, they're straight-up mentally ill. Currently vying for the title of Hot Mess of the SEC; down for a while, now poised for a major comeback, but at the same time highly dysfunctional, always in danger of a very public and embarrassing implosion. Capable of just about anything, from an awe-inspiring victory to an abject humiliation. Ongoing, frequently vicious rivalry with Auburn/Jenna Maroney (q.v.). Fervent belief in all manner of paranoid conspiracy theories (Auburn or Tennessee constantly plotting against them/"I believe there are 31 letters in the white alphabet").


Tennessee: Frank Rossitano
Obnoxious, and proud of it; they both live to provoke people. Deliberately wear some of the tackiest outfits imaginable, which more often than not include a trucker hat. On paper, they're losers -- so why are they so good at f$#@ing with us?


Vanderbilt: Toofer
Smarter and classier than most of the nut jobs they're surrounded by, but chronically incapable of rising above them. Both have Civil War legacies they'd probably rather people not know about (Toofer's ancestor fighting for the Confederacy/Cornelius Vanderbilt's fraudulent claim to being a naval commander). They score a big win every now and then, but somehow it never becomes a habit.


at LSU: Dr. Leo Spaceman
Two erratic sorts whose competence is always in question due to seemingly mindless risk-taking and wildly experimental play-calling; frequently make people wonder whether there's any higher brain activity going on up there at all -- and yet they somehow never pay a price for it. In fact, they still manage to hold the fates of power players such as Alabama/Tracy Jordan and Florida/Jack Donaghy (qq.v.) in their very hands on a regular basis. But what can you do? Football's not a science.


vs. Florida: Jack Donaghy
Powerful, cunning; their mere names inspire fear and/or respect to varying degrees. Still, they're not without numerous flaws and hangups (overdependence on Tim Tebow/cookie-jar collection). There are also some serious mommy issues lingering here, if Steve Spurrier counts as a mommy. We're beginning to make up some ground in this relationship with a satisfying victory here and there (42-30/calling them a "Class A Moron" in the Post), but there's still a long way to go before they truly see us as equals.


at Kentucky: Josh Girard
When we found them, they were opening for a puppet. Since then, they've gotten fairly talented in their own way; particularly good at impressions, whether it's Christopher Walken or a wide-open NFL-style offense. They test well with female viewers 12 to 24, but those people will buy just about anything. Yeah, they score a major triumph every once in a while -- they even punked us not that long ago -- but more often than not, when they meet up with a true superstar they come out of it looking like they've just been klonged over the head with a fire extinguisher by Elizabeth Taylor.


at Auburn: Jenna Maroney
Long history with Liz/Georgia. Was the star of the show for a while, but even that only went so far, as neither the "People's National Champion" nor a starring role in "The Rural Juror" inspired much lasting respect; now feeling very threatened by Alabama/Tracy Jordan's resurgence in the public eye, and hunting desperately for gimmicks (Tony Franklin's spread offense/Jenna's collagen injection and skin peel) to remain relevant. Perhaps not the sharpest knives in their respective drawers, as prior relationships with David Blaine and Terry Bowden will attest.


Georgia Tech: J.D. Lutz
Constantly frustrated about their respective places in the world and increasingly bitter about it. Due to either a lack of imagination or simple laziness, they've become content to offer up consistent mediocrity, whether it's five-loss seasons or an endless series of sketches revolving around hobos. Prone to calling us all manner of nasty names, yet once the smoke has cleared, they're on their knees begging not to be sent to some frigid, snowy clime (Alaska for Lutz, Boise for the Jackets).

And I guess that's about all there is to say, except we're gonna eat your family.

The Friday Random Ten+5 both rejects and denounces.

It's been a frustrating eye-roller of a month for us Obama fans, who have seen issues like Iraq, gas prices, and health care get thrown under the bus in favor of stories about Obama's space-case of a preacher. Obama explicitly distanced himself from Jeremiah Wright this past week after Wright went on TV and baked up a whole new batch of crazy, but it's still been an instructive exercise about just how careful people in the public eye need to be when choosing their friends these days.

And that includes me, since I've gotten fairly heavily involved in politics here in the B-hizzy. I might like to run for some kind of public office someday -- my complete failure in my first attempt notwithstanding -- so now's probably as good a time as any to comb back through my past and pick out the folks who are gonna be the biggest and heaviest weights around my neck in terms of getting elected. Hate to do this, but this week's +5 is Five People I'll Be Distancing Myself From As I Build A Political Career Over The Next Ten Or Twenty Years.



Robert E. Lee
Yup, I'm a descendant of General Lee, and while there are any number of positives about him -- he was a brilliant military strategist, had something resembling a crisis of conscience about slavery, and initially denounced secession as a "betrayal" of the Founding Fathers -- the fact remains that he kind of, you know, fought for the wrong side. Yup, you heard me, I'm a lifelong Southerner, I've never lived anywhere north of Lynchburg, Virginia, I love SEC football, fried chicken, and the state of Alabama, but the guy fought for the wrong side. I'm guessing that's enough to merit a distance-ing.



Jesse Jackson
The very first presidential candidate I ever supported was Jesse Jackson back in 1984, and as I remember it, the only reason I had for doing so was because I thought it would be cool to have a brother in the White House. I don't know; maybe I was compensating for the Robert E. Lee thing. (At any rate, I promise my reasons for supporting Barack Obama are far deeper and more thoroughly considered.) In the quarter-century since, Jesse's turned into a bit of a caricature, so just to be on the safe side, I promise never to support Jesse Jackson for public office ever again. Granted, I was only six years old when I supported him the first time around, but the right-wingers are bagging on Obama for a school he attended in Indonesia when he was almost that young, so I'm covering all my bases just in case. Sorry, Jesse, but you've been distanced.



My best friend Robert from grade school
Robert was the first friend I made back when we moved to Tennessee when I was 7, and we stuck together pretty much all throughout our nerdtastically miserable junior-high years. During eighth grade, Robert made the ballsy decision to run for class president, but his candidacy took a major hit when he and another friend of ours, Bill, got caught splashing water on an opponent's campaign posters. Robert gamely attempted some damage control by distributing Tootsie Pops to our entire class, but the tailspin proved too much to pull out of, and he lost by a convincing margin. Robert will always be a friend, but tactics like those are not what my campaign is all about -- or will be, if I ever have one.



Tom Cruise
I know this one is a little confusing. "But Doug, you've already stated unequivocally (and multiple times) that you think Tom Cruise is nuttier than squirrel shit. What more distancing or denunciation could you possibly do?" Well, readers, the truth is that I have a lingering connection to Cruise that hasn't been disclosed, and it is this: I was one of three people in the Western Hemisphere who liked Cruise's 2001 film "Vanilla Sky." Now, that doesn't mean I went out and bought the DVD or anything, but . . . OK, I bought the VHS. No, no, I'll show myself out.



"April"
Some of y'all know this story already, but "April" -- if that was her real name, and there's a decent possibility it wasn't -- was an exotic dancer who lived in my building and who I dated a few years ago for a brief period. In fact, a very brief period, one that could be measured in weeks rather than months, before she lost interest in me and started seeing the airline pilot who lived across the hall. Nevertheless, it's probably just enough of an association that I need to reiterate that I condone neither a) the sex industry, b) treating women as objects, or c) taking one's clothes off in public. Now, as for the Hooters waitress I dated not long after that . . . well, Hooters is an American institution, so if you want an apology or a distancing from that one, well, you're just gonna have to beat it out of me.

Everyone satisfied? All right, then, onward to victory! Not to mention the Ten:

1. Röyksopp, "So Easy"
2. David Cross, "Flying on a Mexican Plane"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "A Different Point of View"
4. Pet Shop Boys, "London"
5. Gorillaz, "Kids With Guns"
6. Venus Attack Project, "Riviera Paradise"
7. The Chemical Brothers, "Orange Wedge"
8. Röyksopp, "Remind Me"
9. Patton Oswalt, "America the Retarded Trust-Fund Kid"
10. Beck, "Waitin' for a Train"

Actually, now that I think about it, David Cross might sink my political chances, too. OK, he's number six.

Your turn -- Random Tens, denunciations, distancings, and any other miscellaneous condemnations you might want to issue go in the comments.

I come not to bury Buzz Bissinger, but to pity him.

I know that some people -- quite possibly Deadspin's Will Leitch himself, if recent comments are any indication -- are sick of the whole Buzz Bissinger vs. Will Leitch dust-up and the resulting flap it created in the blogosphere. For my part, I know Bissinger has almost certainly been called every nasty name in the book for his comments basically writing off sports blogs and the people who contribute to/comment on them as classless, mean-spirited knuckle-draggers, so I'm not going to join in with that, except so far as to say this: I thought it was amazing how, in that clip, Bissinger's purpose was ostensibly to call out bloggers for being profane, mean-spirited, and obnoxious -- yet as Kyle King points out, by a wide margin, Bissinger was the most profane, mean-spirited, and obnoxious person up on that stage. (Second place, unfortunately, going to Bob Costas.) In his attempt to rain hellfire and brimstone down on the vulgar barbarians of the sports blogosphere, Bissinger instead got right down there with them.

But there's something instructive in that, because it demonstrated -- inadvertently, I would assume, but I could be wrong -- the crux of this whole argument, and the thing that we all know scares Bissinger the most: There really isn't a whole lot of difference between what he does and what the sports blogosphere does. He's got his opinion; we've got ours. Now, Bissinger gets published in the New York Times and writes books that are turned into movies, while I try to steal just enough time from my day job to earn a few cents from Google each day writing fanciful yarns about Nick Saban's farts -- but turn out the lights and we're just two plain-looking, rather profane guys with opinions on sports.

The difference, of course, is that Bissinger went to an elite prep school, was an editor of the student paper at Penn, and won a Pultizer, and I've done none of those things. But if Buzz says that, say, Tony Romo is a good quarterback and I say Romo sucks, none of those academic or professional highlights make Buzz any righter than I am. And the thing is, there was a time when that might not have been the case, because people like me didn't have an outlet to hold forth with our opinions, so all we could do was read people like Bissinger and his colleagues and decide which of them we sided with the most. But now we don't have to do that. Buzz is understandably angry that his position at the top of the heap is in danger of being usurped, but in expressing that anger, he demonstrated that -- ta-da! -- he's no different from any of the rest of us. His elite Northeastern education may have given him more knowledge, credentials, and access than any of us will ever get on our own, but apparently it didn't give him enough manners to keep "I think you're full of shit" from being the very first words out of his mouth directed toward Will Leitch.

So it's ironic that Bissinger should claim to be so offended at the tone of the blogosphere. Yeah, plenty of what's written or commented on sports blogs is crude and profane, occasionally even crude and profane only for crudeness and profanity's sake, but a lot of what's uttered every day in conversations across America could be described exactly the same way. Not to get all high-minded on you, with an American-flag curtain and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" playing in the background, but one of the most basic bargains we make as citizens of the freest country in the world is that in exchange for our rights to say what we want to say, we often have to hear stuff we don't want to hear. And that bitter-with-the-sweet aspect is exactly the same in the blogosphere. I don't want to blow too much sunshine up the blogosphere's ass -- actually, I feel like a gigantic tool for even using the word "blogosphere" -- but I think anything that's managed to stay that reflective of our democracy, warts and all, must have some positive aspects to it.

For all his implied claims to being wiser and more mature than the rest of us rabble, Bissinger apparently couldn't muster the wisdom or maturity to do what the rest of us do when confronted by a comment, or an opinion, or a tone we don't like in the blogosphere: Simply roll our eyes, maybe mutter "douchebag" under our breath, and move on to something we do like. And the reason he couldn't do that is an abiding terror that that something we don't like might be him. Why he chose to respond to that situation by presenting himself as unlikably as possible on Costas's program is anyone's guess -- maybe that was his way of steering into the skid -- but if his aim was to convince us that he's classier or more knowledgeable than any of the rest of us, he not only failed, he pretty much convinced us of the exact opposite.

Here's what Bissinger convinced me of: that he's someone who loves sports. That he loves writing about sports. That he has strongly held opinions. So strongly held, in fact, that he sometimes gets really pissed off and curses about them. In other words . . . a fan. A fan like me, even. That's all; no more, no less.

My devotion to this blog -- which has never earned me more than a few hundred bucks a year and the occasional link from SI.com's Campus Clicks -- should indicate pretty clearly that being Just A Fan is OK with me. I like not having to put in a set number of hours at a newspaper; I'd rather watch a Georgia football game from the stands than the press box. If all I ever am is a fan, I'll still be satisfied. Bissinger, apparently, isn't satisfied with Just-A-Fandom, and that's his right too. But his quest to be more than that, as successful as it may be, is not some epic journey that has a transformative effect on the way the rest of us enjoy sports in America. Buzz, if you could just understand and make your peace with that, all of us might be inclined to give you the respect you clearly feel you deserve.

Hell, maybe even Big Daddy Drew.

Radio Free T-Town.

[Bumper: Bush's "Machinehead," fade out]

PAUL FINEBAUM: Back with hour two of the show here this afternoon, where we've been talking about what I think, by any definition, has been a banner month for Nick Saban's Alabama football program. First we had another epic turnout at the A-Day Game, followed last week by Saban singlehandedly revolutionizing college recruiting with his -- did you even know you could talk to someone over the Internet? [pause] No, I know e-mail and instant-message and all that stuff, but did you know you could talk to someone and see their face live on camera, and they could talk to you and see yours? How'd he figure out how to do that? [pause] It's called 'videoconferencing'? Has anybody ever done this before? [pause] No? Well, so not only did Nick Saban invent a way to talk to someone live over the Internet, so far there's been no conclusive evidence that he didn't invent the Internet to begin with. I mean, all due respect to our former vice-president Al Gore, but let's give credit where credit is due.

All right. But now we're gonna get into this press conference he had today, just the usual briefing, you know, spring practice and all that, and maybe some of you have heard this clip already, but I'm gonna go ahead and play it again -- Kerry, run the clip from Saban's press conference.

NICK SABAN: . . . starting to come together OK -- you know, we're looking for playmakers on the offensive line, first of all, and Marlon Davis had a good day, Andre had a good day, but nobody's at a point now where they can just rest on their laurels and assume they're gonna start. A'ight? This is a long process, and I've told them that, and --

[audible passing of gas]

SABAN: -- we didn't do well enough on these fundamentals last year that just anybody's gonna get a pass. We've got a quarterback to protect and some running backs that we can't just leave out there to dry . . .

FINEBAUM: Everybody hear that? Nick Saban cut one in a press conference and just kept right on going. Like it -- like it didn't even happen! Can you imagine this going on at any other school? I mean, can you picture any other coach in the nation, standing up there, on the firing line, all these reporters pointing their microphones and their recorders at you, and you fart and don't miss a single beat? Up until now we'd just been conditioned to expect that if a coach had to let one loose up there, he'd be a gentleman about it, hold it in until the end of the conference, or maybe do that thing where you kind of clench your butt so that you only let a little bit out at a time, not enough to make an audible sound -- Nick Saban doesn't care about that. I mean, this is a no-nonsense guy: He's gonna give you what he's gonna give you, and if that's a fart in a press conference, then there you go. And some people are gonna complain about this, but what they don't get is that Nick Saban is just not going to be kept inside their box. He's not going to be bound by that. And that's why this team has such a bright future ahead of it.

Danny from Oak Grove, you're on with the Paul Finebaum Radio Network. How are you today, sir?

DANNY: I'm great, Paul, how are you?

FINEBAUM: I'm excellent, Danny, thank you.

DANNY: Well, Paul, I just want to say I agree with everything you said. For him to cut one like that and not get flustered, or even pause in what he was sayin' -- that's what we need in a coach, Paul. That's the kind of courage, or composure, or whatever you wanna call it that's gonna win us some games.

FINEBAUM: You're exactly right, Danny --

DANNY: Has anyone ever done somethin' like that before?

FINEBAUM: I'm sorry? You mean fart in a press conference?

DANNY: Yeah.

FINEBAUM: That's a good question, Danny, that's an excellent question, and I don't know the answer to that. We'll get our staff folks working on some tapes, and listeners, if you have any knowledge of that or if you can answer Danny's question, by all means, call in.

DANNY: Thanks, Paul.

FINEBAUM: Thank you, Danny. Robert in McCalla, how are you today, sir?

ROBERT: Wonderful, Paul, I gotta ask you, were you at that press conference?

FINEBAUM: Was I physically there? No sir, I didn't make it to that one.

ROBERT: Well, I was there, just kind of got to listen in for a while, and I got to smell the fart that Coach Saban cut . . .

FINEBAUM: No kiddin'. How was it?

ROBERT: Paul, I can honestly say I have never smelled a fart quite like it. It was kind of like fresh-baked bread --

FINEBAUM: Really!

ROBERT: Yeah -- like garlic bread, I guess I should say, it was a fart and all, but still, as farts go, it was pretty impressive.

FINEBAUM: And what's interesting is that they say people like the smell of their own farts but hate other people's -- but you're saying this one was nice? How'd the rest of the room react to it?

ROBERT: Well, they all looked like they liked it all right -- I saw a few people sniffin' the air, like they knew somethin' was different, and none of them looked disgusted or anything like that, so . . .

FINEBAUM: You know, I'd be interested in finding out what you've got to put in your diet to make your farts smell like fresh-baked bread. I'm assuming Nick Saban isn't on some macrobiotic diet or having organic food flown in from California or something like that, so whatever he eats is something any of the rest of us can get at the Publix anytime we want, but how does he do it? How has he been able to figure out something that no coach -- to the best of our knowledge -- has been able to do? And again, you're seeing this investment from Mal Moore pay off in ways nobody could've foreseen back in 2007. When you're willing to make a brave move, and you're willing to shell out some money for a top-flight coach, you get farts that smell like fresh bread.

ROBERT: Absolutely, Paul, couldn't have said it better. Love your show.

FINEBAUM: Thanks, Robert. Jerry from Pelham is next. What's going on, Jerry.

JERRY: Hi, Paul, good to be on your show -- been listening for a long time and this is the first time I've called in, so I'm excited to be on today.

FINEBAUM: Glad to have you. What's on your mind?

JERRY: Well, I was thinkin' about how this sets us up for --

FINEBAUM: You're talking about Coach Saban's passing gas, now.

JERRY: -- yessir, I was thinkin' about how that might set us up for a big season but then also a big recruiting year in oh-nine, because even though this has happened pretty early in that recruiting process, I gotta think that there are kids all over the Southeast or even the country who are gonna see that clip or hear that gas and think, 'That's a guy who doesn't care about puttin' on appearances or tellin' the press or anybody what they want to hear, that's a guy who just cares about winnin'.' But I was wonderin' whether you thought that might come into play, so I'll hang up and listen.

FINEBAUM: Yes, Jerry, and I think that's an excellent point, because the personality of a coach has so much to do with the decision that a kid makes when he's coming out of high school. And I would bet there are more than a few kids who are gonna see this tape and be impressed with the fact that his mind was more on the team and how they were doing than on trying to hold in his gas and come off as pretty for the TV cameras. I mean, you can look at it this way -- a kid's got the choice between Nick Saban, national-title winner, coached at the NFL level, not afraid to cut one at a press conference, or Joe Schmoe, no NFL experience, standing up there grimacing and clenching his teeth so that he won't let out any flatulence, just so that everyone will think he's all nice and proper and no one's gonna go, 'Oh, so-and-so farted in a press conference' in their newspaper article. Who do you think that kid's gonna pick? [pause] I mean, I know who I'd pick, I can't speak for anyone else, but yeah, I think that is gonna make a difference, and that's an excellent point to make. Glad you brought that up, Jerry. George in Birmingham, you're up next on the Paul Finebaum Radio Network.

GEORGE: Yeah, Paul, you asked whether anyone had done anything like this before, and you and all the Bama fans are acting like this is the first time it's happened, but heck, Tommy Tuberville burped in a press conference right before the Auburn-Ole Miss game two years ago! --

FINEBAUM: I'm sorry, George, he burped?

GEORGE: Yeah, I remember it clearly, he was doing his Friday press conference and it was right after lunch, I guess, and he burped. Maybe tried to hold it in a little, but he --

FINEBAUM: Now, I don't doubt your story, George, I'm sure that happened, but do you really think that that's on a par with Saban farting in front of a room full of reporters and TV cameras?

GEORGE: It's gas, isn't it, Paul?

FINEBAUM: Sure, it's gas, but do you really honestly believe that a belch is comparable with a -- with flatulence?

GEORGE: One comes out the mouth, Paul, one comes out the other end, it's the same --

FINEBAUM: See, right there, you've proven my point. Go back to that rhyme everyone learned in elementary school: 'Pardon me for burping, it wasn't very smart, but if it'd come out the other end, it would've been a fart.' Even as kids we know that a fart and a belch are on two different levels.

GEORGE: Paul, you're giving Saban all this credit for something that happened during spring practice! Tuberville burped during the season, the Friday before a game, and you're just acting like it's no big deal! You think Tuberville wasn't standing before a whole bunch more cameras and news reporters than --

FINEBAUM: Lemme ask you this, George, how'd Auburn do in that game?

GEORGE: In the Ole Miss game?

FINEBAUM: Yeah. You remember what the score was?

GEORGE: [pause] I know Auburn won.

FINEBAUM: Uh-huh. But you remember by how much? [pause] We're looking it up right now, and I believe -- yeah, they're telling me 23-17 was the final score in that one. A top-ten Auburn team, playing a godawful Ed Orgeron Ole Miss team, and they won by six points. That's what that burp got you, George. You may think it's comparable to Saban farting on stage, but that's all that got you, was a six-point win over maybe the worst team in the SEC.

GEORGE: And what's that fart gonna get Alabama, another loss to Monroe? Another trip to Shreveport for a bowl game?

FINEBAUM: George, did you listen to the clip? I mean, I'm wondering if we even heard the same fart. You're apparently an Auburn fan, and that's fine, but I don't see how anybody could hear or smell that fart and not be impressed by it. And I'll tell you something, George, any coach in the SEC, whether it's Tuberville or Les Miles or Richt or anyone else, they just dismiss this fart as no big deal and it's gonna come back to haunt them. I mean, it may be too early to say just yet, but that little bit of gas that he passed may have upset the balance of power in the Southeastern Conference.

GEORGE: [audible sigh] Well, Paul, I enjoy listenin' to your show, even when it's about Bama, but I think we're gonna just have to agree to disagree on this one.

FINEBAUM: Well, that's fine, and I do appreciate the call, but I'm stickin' to my guns here, that fart could make a lot of people look real stupid by the time the 2008 season is over. And Nick Saban ain't gonna be one of them.

[Bumper: Bush's "Machinehead," fade in]

FINEBAUM: Coming up after the break, we'll take some more of your calls and let you weigh in on Nick Saban's effluviation, plus in the next half-hour we'll have Kevin Scarbinsky from the Birmingham News on to talk about it and -- you know what, Kerry, what that guy said about the fresh-baked bread thing, I wonder if that means Coach Saban's feces might actually not stink. We'll ask Kevin Scarbinsky about it, take your calls, and a whole lot more, after this.

[Bumper: Bush's "Machinehead," fade out]

[CUE PANTS STORE AD, 0:30]



(Thanks to Stanley for helping to provide the inspiration for this crap.)

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:The first rule of Pants Club is you don't talk about Pants Club.

• Before this increasingly pants-centric blog digs into the heart of today's memo, first things first: Congratulations, Georgia Gym Dogs, on your fourth consecutive national gymnastics title. And what the hey, good luck on making it one for the thumb next year. If that happens, then an entire senior class will have graduated from UGA never knowing what it's like to not be defending national champs. How many other people in any sport can say that?

• I have a regular female reader who, as a Florida alumna, claims to find my awesome red pants reprehensible, yet I think deep down she really finds them sexier than Richie Sexson listening to Prince's Lovesexy while driving an Acura NSX through Middlesex, because the other day she e-mailed me a link to this clothing store, which offers these pants for sale:



Now, how is that not enabling me like a motherfucker? My only dilemma now is deciding whether to buy these pants now or hold out for a pair that have little Ugas patterned all over them, which these folks hint they might be offering next year. I mean, the Super-G pattern is certainly a quantum leap, but pants with little Ugas . . . I don't need to tell you that those pants would be my Everest. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how this drama plays out.

• As a side note, said female reader is soon to make the very tricky one-SEC-school-to-another grad-school jump -- she's headed up to the University of Alabama to start law school this fall. Congratulations, and I wish you the best of luck on both your law studies and your newfound (and inescapable) association with stuff like this. (H/T: EDSBS.)


If being a Bulldog is a kind of religion, then this is apparently our Holy Communion.

• To the surprise of absolutely no one -- but to the obvious delight of Your Humble Blogger -- red pants got a mention in Every Day Should Be Saturday's epic "Stuff Red and Black People Like" last week, a compendium that is snarky, insulting, suffused with a strain of contempt thick enough to cut with a chainsaw -- and all too horribly true, even for this rabid Dawg fan. If you're one of the six remaining Web surfers who haven't checked it out yet, go now.

• As someone who both wastes an inordinate amount of time each year (including this one) watching the NFL Draft and loves a good Internet quiz, I thought I'd point y'all toward this one, which gives you a quote and asks you whether it came from NFL draft coverage, a "Dancing with the Stars" judge, or an escort-service ad. I was a not-too-shabby 12-of-15 overall, but it was hard. At least as hard as the SATs.

• The actual draft, incidentally, was kind of a drag this year; a lot of trades spiced things up, but there seemed to be a real dearth of superstars, not just the Georgia hopefuls but pretty much everybody. I mean, when the #1 overall pick is an offensive lineman and the marquee QB taken at number three is someone that even his newly adopted hometown "fans" can't trouble themselves to get excited about, you know it's kind of a down year.


Devin Thomas, disproving Big Daddy Kane's theory of pimping not being easy.

As for my own team, you know I've been bitching for what seems like eons about the Redskins' longstanding habit of trading away mid-round picks in exchange for free agents who have maybe one or two good seasons left in them before they start hobbling around on walkers. Well, Draft Day '08 was kind of a "be careful what you wish for" moment, because while my guys ended up with an embarrassment of riches in terms of draft picks -- five in rounds 2-4 alone, which is five more than they had last year -- they somehow didn't feel it was necessary to use those picks to address serious weaknesses on the D-line, not to mention filling the gaping Sean-Taylor-shaped hole in their secondary. Yet somehow Colt Brennan was worth taking at #186. Okey-dokey, guys. I'm sure the kid's raring to go, but I hope we haven't forgotten just how badly he needs a decent offensive line in front of him.

• No real point to this item, I just wanted to share with y'all one more time how excited I am to be heading to the Georgia-Arizona State game this September.

• Since I've just been back to Athens to relive my college days and shared with you some of the details of my dialing back my maturity level a decade's worth or so, I might as well go all-out and share the following video with you. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you "Everything Poops," not to be confused with Taro Gomi's children's classic Everyone Poops. There's no point in me trying to deny that this clip made me laugh until tears were literally streaming down my face; just watch it (while exercising caution if you're in a work environment, or if you have a full bladder, for that matter).

See more funny videos at CollegeHumor

Goodbye, Memory Lane; hello, Nostalgia Superhighway.

On Friday I looked forward to this past weekend's informal Red & Black reunion in Athens by recounting my five most treasured memories from college, but what I failed to consider at the time was just how little of the surface of my college years I was actually scratching. That didn't really dawn on me until we met up at the new R&B headquarters on Baxter Street, which make our old shop at 123 North Jackson look like a Cabrini-Green meth lab by comparison. Not only is the building itself a palace, but the kids who get to work there now are using computers every bit as fancy as the hardware I've got at my current job. I would go off on a crotchety rant about life not being fair and kids these days not knowing how good they have it and blah blah blah, but I can't because I've been distracted by a fascinating feature that longtime publisher Harry Montevideo was kind enough to show us on Saturday: The entire back catalog of the R&B, every last issue, has been digitized by the UGA library and put online. You can browse through them here (though you may have to download a plug-in to get started).

I won't bore you -- and oh, lordy, would I bore you -- by repeating all my Greatest Hits from the opinions page; anything you can conjure up in your head about my circa-1998 feelings on SUVs, the Republican Party, or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is probably far superior to what I actually wrote. What I will do is give you a little nostalgia tour of the mugshots that went with those columns. I think this historical rundown -- an "Evolution of the Feces," if you will, and I do -- is going to be instructive in terms of demonstrating why my success with women, even in a target-rich environment such as the University of Georgia, has been so meager over the years.

Herewith, my first-ever R&B mugshot. Keep in mind this is how thousands of readers were first introduced to me back in mid-1997.



Now, I distinctly remember being laid low with a raging head cold at the time that photo was taken, so it's not like I was putting my best foot (or face) forward by any means, but still, gahh. My goatee looks like it was maintained with a Black & Decker hedge trimmer, and needless to say, I wasn't smiling (in fact, I only actually learned how to smile for photos sometime in the last six months or so).

Thankfully, version 2.0, which mercifully replaced Boo Radley up there in time to make regular appearances on the editorial page during the summer I served as opinions editor, was a little better . . .



The good news is, the goatee was a little better-trimmed by that point; the bad news is, it still existed at all, and my sartorial choices weren't much better (that said, you can have my Gap anorak when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands). When I was appointed Variety editor for the regular daily fall paper later that year, we took another one . . .



. . . in which I actually bothered to look presentable (I think I had a job interview or a meeting or something like that the morning that photo was taken, hence the reason they were able to catch me on the one day out of the year I was wearing a tie). The goatee's still there, but oddly enough, I finally ditched it within two weeks of this shot; surely, then, the final version of this mug, the one that was front and center during my last semester, the one during which I actually got to occupy the editor-in-chief's chair, we'd finally get right . . .



Ohhhh. No dice. So sad. The goatee's gone, but so's the coat and tie, and my hairstyle has regressed back to something closer to what I was rocking in sixth grade than anything that would be considered remotely stylish, even in 1999.

Based on this series, then, I can only estimate that at no time in my college career, even on my best days, did I ever rise higher than, say, 40th percentile out of the whole student body in terms of physical attractiveness. It's tough having a Costco economy-sized drum of FAIL staring you in the face like that, but fortunately, I've risen above it.





The top photo is me (far right) with four of my best friends from the R&B; the bottom photo is me and my friend Jennifer getting wicked pissed at The Globe on Friday night. And I have finally become, as you can see, one sexy bitch. I've long since aged to the point where I'm too old to be considered desirable by college chicks, but it still happened. I count this as a moral victory.

More:



Me and my favorite journalism professor, Conrad Fink, in the R&B newsroom. Fink was the AP's Asia bureau chief during much of Vietnam, and thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time lying on his stomach in rice paddies with bullets whizzing over his head; I'm sure he could not be prouder that I'm now basically living off a state government's dime, for all intents and purposes doing PR for a university.





The girls and the guys at the Twilight Criterium bike race in downtown Athens. Goddamn, those are some sexy individuals up there. And the girls aren't bad either.



Last but not least, our whole group in the lobby of the R&B building.

Obviously, after a weekend of uproarious-laughter-filled reminiscing and All-Pro alcohol consumption, the question was frequently asked -- not least by Your Humble Blogger -- Why in the world did we ever graduate from here? For many of us, this often graduated into, Hell, I'm comin' back! It really is sad how much better-equipped I am right now to have a non-stop kickass four years of college than I was back then; my alcohol tolerance has increased dramatically (I was effectively on a solid IV drip from 5 p.m. Saturday to 1 a.m., and still woke up bright 'n' early Sunday morning ready to run a 5K if I had to); I'm a better writer now, too; and I'm exponentially more attractive than I was ay any point between September 1995 and May 1999 (though certain caveats apply to that statement, of course).

And yet, even if I could be magically offered four more undergrad years at UGA with which to inflict my older, wiser, sexier self on the world, it probably wouldn't be as good, because my fondness for the place has so much to do with the people who were enjoying it along with me -- the folks I got to hang out with this past weekend. If I could gather 10 or 12 of us up in an MTV "Real World" house on Milledge Avenue and relive the good ol' days that way, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but since that's not feasible -- even if it is a pretty intriguing reality-show premise, now that I think about it -- those days are probably best left as-is in our collective memory banks, unsullied by any craven mid- or one-third-life attempts at going back and re-enacting them. Not that it would necessarily be as soul-obliterating as this, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun as what I remember. Memory Lane may have been widened and expanded out into a roaring twelve-lane superhighway, but that doesn't mean you're still not screwed if you get on the wrong side and barrel headlong into oncoming traffic.

But that just makes those friends, and the fact that they've seen fit to stay so close to me (and each other) over the years, mean that much more. Y'all know who you are, both those of you who were at the "reunion" and those who couldn't make it, and this is as good a time as any to say: Thank you. Thank you for letting me join in your reindeer games; thank you for cheering me when I was up and giving me a hand when I was down; thank you for making me pee my pants with laughter on an hourly, if not minutely, basis; and thank you for, by your mere presence, making me a happier, cooler, and better person.

And I'm not kidding about the "Real World" thing. Tell me now if you want on that list, 'cause when my Mega Millions numbers finally hit, we're totally doing that.