Thursday mystery meat.

Italy v. France, World Cup 2006: No matter who wins, there are no losers here.

· I don't know how it happened -- I'm betting it's Kanu's fault somewhere along the line -- but I've gone from "Soccer sucks, but the World Cup's kinda cool" to "OK, I think I'm actually starting to like soccer." It happened sometime during the second half of the Germany-Italy match Tuesday afternoon in Dortmund, which was a scoreless tie at the end of regulation -- and yeah, I know, I've already said that any sport in which scoreless ties are commonplace can't be all that worthwhile, but there was something different about this one, maybe the knowledge that the very next goal, whomever it came from, might be enough to vault a team into the Cup finals. As it turned out, that was correct: After a scoreless first extra period, it was looking a lot like the second might end the same way and we'd end up going to penalty kicks, but in the 119th minute Fabio Grosso (great porn name, by the way) knocked a ball around the German goaltender and into paydirt. And I can't do this goal justice for anyone who wasn't actually watching it at the time, but had the ball gone in a straight line, it would've bounced harmlessly off the left goalpost, but somehow Grosso managed to put some English on it, almost like John Smoltz bending a sweet curveball right past a helpless batter, and instead of going straight it curved just left of the goalee's outstretched hand and just right of the goalpost, and this bit of mind-boggling needle-threading was all the Italians needed to rip the hosts' hearts out of their chests and move on to the finals. The Azzurri added another beauty of a goal less than two minutes later, and while I don't want anyone thinking that I'm no longer counting down the minutes to the start of actual football season -- you better believe I am -- I think I'm finally starting to figure out why they call it the "beautiful sport" or whatever.


It never occurred to you that this might not be the best outfit to wear to a movie called "Dead Man's Chest"?

· All right, back to girls. Now, y'all probably had an inkling of this already, what with things starting to heat up between me and Melissa Theuriau and all, but . . . well, it's over between me and Keira Knightley. Probably for good. We had some good times, shared some laughs, and it was always a big thrill to flip open the old cell phone and get a really horrendously filthy voice mail from her in that oh-so-proper British accent. But we finally had to face up to some irreconcilable differences -- namely, the fact that I enjoy eating things such as fried chicken, barbecue, and steaks, while she enjoys eating . . . well, nothing, if the above photo is any indication. Look, darling, when I said "I could go for some ribs," I didn't mean yours, OK?

· Speaking of pictures that somebody somewhere is probably going to end up wishing they could take back, peep these pictures of the offspring of newly elected California Congressman Brian Bilbray. One would think that the children of a man who had been running in one of the most closely watched special elections in the country would take a little more care than to allow their publicly viewable Web sites to feature pictures of themselves illegally consuming alcohol, but then again, let he who has not pounded the booze before the age of 21 cast the first stone, right? Besides, the blond chick looks like she's down for whatever (shut up, she's 19, so I can say that). I also dig her brunette friend who's flashing "the shocker" in one of the pictures.


So did I, repeatedly, but you don't see me putting up any billboards about it.

· Yesterday as we were driving to Atlanta to hail Dad's victorious completion of the Peachtree Road Race, my sister caught a glimpse of a billboard somewhere on the Downtown Connector that read simply, "I pooted." We both wondered what the hell that could possibly mean, and after doing some research this morning (and by "research" I mean "about ten seconds' worth of Googling"), I found out what: It's a promo for Cartoon Network, as are a number of seemingly random billboards around the Southeast, including the "Clowns hate tangelos" billboard I see on I-20/59 every time I'm headed back into Birmingham from Atlanta. My immediate question is, is this really an effective advertising strategy if people have to get on a computer and Google the phrase to find out what the Funk & Wagnalls it means? -- but then again, I did bother to do that, as did a whole bunch of other people apparently, so . . . maybe it's working.

· There's another rather inscrutable billboard in Birmingham, visible from the southbound lanes of the Elton B. Stephens Expressway as you pass downtown, and all it says is "banfigureskating.com." I went to that Web site and it's an "unofficial" promo site for Birmingham's arena football team; now, promoting arena football is fine, but doing so by saying that figure skating isn't a "real sport"? Dr. Pot, paging Dr. Kettle . . .


Submitted without comment.

· Paul Westerdawg has a great post with some comments from a few Bulldogs stationed over in the Middle East, as well as a link to a terrific column portraying Georgia Tech as the Jan Brady of college football in the state of Georgia.

· Also, here's a long-overdue to blogger and fellow Red & Black alumnus Will Mosher and his blog Excerpts From a Work in Progress. Will's usually a lot funnier than I've ever been, though I guess that's a pretty limp-wristed compliment when you think about it. Let's just say he's funny and leave it at that.

· Finally, Kyle King thinks I'm a wuss. Hey, dude, you'll get no argument from me. Though the picture of Vivian Leigh was a nice touch.