The Friday Random Ten+5 ties up some loose ends.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not exactly bursting with ideas for this week's +5 -- I guess the holidays done wore me out. But I'll go ahead and throw five things out there that I'd been meaning to mention here in one fashion or another and just never got around to it. Herewith, Five Things I Figured I'd Go Ahead And Get Off My Chest While It's Still 2007, Not That The Year Really Makes Any Difference One Way Or The Other:


Jenelle Moreno is my new favorite model on "Deal or No Deal."
That's case #17 if you're scoring at home. I don't know if she's any relation to Knowshon, but if I ever get on the show I'm totally going to ask her about that.


As excited as I was about the Pet Shop Boys' Disco 4 and Underworld's Oblivion With Bells, I was kind of underwhelmed by both of them.
All the tracks on Disco 4 kinda sounded the same (except for the Rammstein remix), which I guess kinda goes with the territory when you buy a CD of a bunch of different songs remixed by the same guys, but still, I'll take their original material any day. The Underworld album had a bunch of similar-sounding songs, too -- it started off strong, but starts to lose your attention 'round about the seventh or eighth track. It's not bad, but it isn't danceable like Beaucoup Fish, nor is it the life-changing experience Second Toughest in the Infants was back when I was a sophomore in college. That said, if/when they release the single of Beautiful Burnout," run out and get it.


Tommy Tuberville is overrated as a football coach.
Not that the guy's chopped liver or anything -- he's 79-33 at Auburn, so he's won a bunch of games -- but doesn't it seem sometimes like he gets an awful lot of attention for a guy who's only gone to two SEC championship games (and only one won of them) in nine years on the Plains? He gets plenty of credit for playing the really good teams tough, as well he should, but then they almost always fumble away a conference-title shot by losing to some scrub they should've easily handled. The exception, of course, was when they flat-out dominated during their undefeated 2004 season -- but they did so with virtually the same personnel they'd had the previous year, when they had three future NFL first-rounders in the backfield and were picked as the preseason #1 by more than a few people but belly-flopped right out of the gate and had to crawl to an 8-5 record. What was the difference between '03 and '04 (besides a year of experience)? A new offensive coordinator, Al Borges -- whom you may know as the guy Tubbs more or less fired a few weeks ago. And that brings me to what's maybe the crux of my argument: After replacing Borges with Tony Franklin, Tubbs is now on the sixth OC of his Auburn tenure, with all but one of the previous guys (Bobby Petrino) being demoted or replaced at Tuberville's discretion. (He's also spun the revolving door pretty regularly on DCs -- Will Muschamp is his fourth in nine years.) Contrast that with Mark Richt, who's only had to replace two coordinators since 2001 (one left for a head-coaching job at UAB, the other for the NFL). It seems that the constant turnover in the coaching staff might be one factor in the Tigers' inability to be a consistent presence in the conference title game, and it also seems like a head coach with Tubbs's rep for being such a strong CEO type would've figured that out by now . . . but then what do I know? He certainly knows how to whup Bama's ass on the regular, and maybe that's good enough.


I don't trust Mike Huckabee.
Yeah, I know he's supposed to be this nice, friendly guy, always quick with a joke or two, but . . . man, could he be any more overt about it? I half expect him to show up at the next debate wearing a HI, I'M THE NICE CANDIDATE! T-shirt. And as far as the jokes go, he needs to work on his delivery -- even when he has a good joke to tell, you can practically see him bouncing up and down behind the podium for 10-15 seconds before he gets it out, and you just know he's been dying for his chance to use it. I know nobody's going to be the least bit surprised to hear me saying this about a Republican -- my opinion is well established that Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate who has proven that he has two brain cells to rub together -- but any candidate who's that aggressive in his nice-guy-ness has got to be hiding something. And in Huckabee's case I think it's the fact that, beyond his oh-so-funny jokes and his background as a preacher, there's just not a whole lot there. Yes, we all think you're charming. Yes, we all think it's cool that you're BFF with Chuck Norris. But you gotta come up with something besides that and TAXES BAD IRAQ GOOD ROBBLE ROBBLE! if you want to get elected, chief.


Burger King's Angus burger is nowhere near as good as the Whopper.
I dunno, I just found this surprising. I figured Angus beef would taste all special or something, but I prefer the plain ol' Whopper, which has the added bonus of not swimming in steak sauce when you unwrap it.

Discuss.

In the meantime, the final Ten of '07:

1. Underworld, "Glam Bucket"
2. Starland Vocal Band, "Afternoon Delight" (only in a totally ironic context, of course -- ed.)
3. David Holmes, "Rodney Yates"
4. Johnny Cash, "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer"
5. U2, "Miracle Drug"
6. Dr. Dre, "Li'l Ghetto Boy"
7. A Tribe Called Quest, "Check the Rhime"
8. Dr. Dre, "Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat"
9. Orbital, "Waving Not Drowning"
10. Beck, "Loser"

Hell of a song to end 2007 with, and yet, in a way, it was inevitable. Throw your own Tens and random tangents in the comments section.