A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Getting back in the saddle.

· First of all, I want to thank everyone who e-mailed or commented or text-messaged their kind wishes in the wake of my granddad's death last week. The family's been taking it really well, and I think we've all been extremely lucky to have big groups of people to rally around us when we've needed it.

Incidentally, while the process of "settling affairs" is still ongoing, I was granted what I guess you could call my piece of the "inheritance" while I was up in West Virginia with the family: an unfinished bottle of Glenlivet that had belonged to Granddad. We don't have many Scotch drinkers in our family, but he was a big fan. That bottle is one that will never be finished -- I'm always going to keep a little bit sitting there in the bottom, for Granddad -- but I'm proud to have it on my shelf.

· OK, enough with the seriousness; time to get back into this "blogging" thing, which I have been extremely slack about the last few weeks. I won't say anything dumb like "It's what Granddad would've wanted," because I frankly have no idea whether he gave a crap about this blog or anything on the Internet period, but -- if I let this unfortunate event stop me from blogging, then the terrorists have won, or something. Let's bring out the Legos.







· Those were so good, let's have some more. Cakes! My favorite:



· The other day I noticed an interesting confluence in my Twitter feed -- two Twitterers I follow, one ultra-liberal and one ultra-conservative, linked to the same snippet of video from Glenn Beck's appearance on "The View." And they both agreed that Beck pretty well got his ass handed to him. See for thyself:



First allow me to stipulate two things: 1) I don't like Glenn Beck. 2) I don't watch "The View" and, thus, do not find it to be an especially stimulating venue for political debate. But with all that said, allow me to ask: What kind of fucking idiot is Glenn Beck? You know you're going on "The View," so you decide to mock (and, demonstrably, lie about) its two most recognizable stars on your radio show? To call that "bush league" would be an insult to both bushes and leagues, and to call Beck a "buffoon" would be an insult to the many people throughout history who have managed to make perfectly productive careers out of buffoonery.

Right-wingers, you can take me at my word or not, it's up to you, but your already tarnished political brand is doing itself no favors by its continued association with a whining bumblefuck like Glenn Beck. Rush Limbaugh is an asshole, and avowedly so, but at least he's occasionally an asshole in the service of some greater point or idea; Glenn Beck is just a dork who fell bass-ackwards into a TV gig and who serves no current purpose other than to give sarcasm a bad name. Cut him loose and move on.

· Heard the other day that Olivia Wilde had been given the top spot on Maxim's "Hot 100" list for this year. Is it bad that I had to look up who she was?

· Conspicuously not on the list: CNN money/financial reporter Poppy Harlow. Happened to glance at her on the news the other day above the chyron "Tips for Servicing Your Hybrid" and said, out loud, "I'd service her hybrid." You know when's not a good time to say something like that out loud? When you're on the phone with your girlfriend.



Be that as it may, she's a live one, all right. But don't think for one second that I'm making her the new Hey Jenny Slater Official Future Wife or anything like that; I'm not getting my heart broken like last time.

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.

The clouds part, the sun comes shining down, a ray of light falls on me . . .

Some days you turn on the news and you see a story that just lets you know it's gonna be your week:

Women should wed a man who is uglier than them if they want a happy marriage, according to new research.

Psychologists found blokes who were better looking than their wives were more likely to be unhappy dealing with married life.

But guys with prettier partners tended to be more content, said the University of Tennessee.

There are some obvious caveats with this study, of course -- the first being that it was done at the University of Tennessee, whose last major research project was a thesis titled "Moonshine Gits [sic] you Drunk." Then there's the fact that this study is open to different interpretations, with "Men are shallow and are thus likely to be more supportive of hotter spouses" springing quickly to mind.

But hey, what do I know? I'm not a scientist. Research is research.

Ladies, you know where to reach me. The line forms to the left.


A scientifically proven match made in heaven.

Stop tasing me, bro: Revisiting the Gators.

Hate the Gators! Hate! Hate! HATE!

What I said at the time: A bit of substantive football discussion, some of it actually favorable toward the Dawgs . . .

. . . I’m optimistic about the fact that Florida returns only two starters on defense, giving them the one defense in the SEC that may actually be greener than Georgia's. Only three guys on Florida's '07 defense have ever sacked anybody at the college level; only one (Tony Joiner) has ever intercepted a pass. . . . On the other side of the ball, Florida is without a real backfield rushing threat for what seems like the bajillionth year in a row, unless you count Tim Tebow, of course.

Man, everything sets up so beautifully for this game. Georgia's offense should be clicking by this point, whereas Florida's defense might still be working through some growing pains, meaning the Dawgs could be in a position to put some real points on the board for the first time in ages; history's on our side, too, as the last Florida team to face Georgia as defending national champions received a 37-17 bitchslapping in Jacksonville. If ever there were a year to say "We're gonna beat Florida this year" and mean it, this is the one.

. . . but all negated by a minor technicality known as Fifteen and Two:

We all know what the most ominous aspect of this game is for Bulldog Nation, and it's the fact that over the last 17 years, Georgia has barely been able to buy a win, much less a streak of any kind. It's at a point now where Mark Richt could dress up the New England Patriots in red-and-black uniforms, send them up against a Florida squad composed entirely of special-ed kids and Medicare recipients, and you'd still be standing there stroking your chin and going, "I don't know . . . " If the mental block was too much to overcome for a senior-laden 2002 Georgia squad that was probably the best team we've fielded since Herschel Walker, you really have to be downing some happy pills to think a sophomore QB, a rebuilt offensive line and an experience-deprived defense are going to be able to get over that hump.

For Georgia victory, take one. On second thought, take two.

What's happened since then: Both teams have put together records of 5-2, 3-2 in the SEC, but they've taken very different paths to get there. Georgia looked great against Oklahoma State, discombobulated against South Carolina, strong against Alabama, and sub-comatose against Tennessee; Florida started off dominating, then went through a month-long stretch that included a sleepwalky win over Ole Miss, a shocker of an upset by Auburn, and a valiant loss to LSU on the road, but appeared to be pushing the needle back toward "dominating" with a 45-37 win over then-eighth-ranked Kentucky last week.

Care to amend your initial statement, sir?: Superficially, yes. I doubted whether Tim Tebow would look nearly as impressive as an every-down starter as he did as a glorified change-of-pace back, but if there have been any "times this year when the kid does something stupid enough to remind Gator fans just how valuable Chris Leak's experience as a four-year starter was," I must've missed them. As for the defense, the Gators are actually doing a little better than I expected, particularly against the run, where they're 15th in the nation (94.4 yards per game). Granted, the picture gets a lot less pretty when you move back to the secondary -- at 256.6 yards allowed per game, they're a surprising 95th in the nation against the pass. But I have to think at least a little of that is due to the fact that they've frequently been blowing opponents out to the extent that those opponents had to go pass-nutty late in the game just to try and make the score look respectable.

These are two teams that seem surprisingly equal on paper -- same records, both have lots of talent at the offensive skill positions, both are trying to bring a whole bunch of young guys through the system on defense -- and yet it's hard, for this Bulldog at least, to think of the two squads as being on the same level right now; a 21-point humbling in Knoxville and a last-play-of-the-game escape against Vandy will do that to a guy. As much raw talent as there is on our offense, our passing game has been intermittent at best, sometimes because Stafford isn't throwing balls accurately, other times because our receivers still aren't catching them; the running game has been terrific so far, maybe the most solid it's been since Richt arrived in Athens, but the depth we were so juiced about in the preseason has evaporated and we're down to Knowshon Moreno and a bunch of bench players. Our defense is good at a lot of things but not really great at any of them, and has displayed a disturbing propensity for breaking-as-opposed-to-bending at some of the most critical junctures -- or, as in the case of the Tennessee game, every conceivable juncture. Our punting and kicking have been top-notch, and we've dramatically cut down on turnovers, but other than that it's hard to find any one matchup in which Georgia really seems to have Florida dead to rights.

So at the risk of pissing off Michael Elkon, why don't we discuss some intangibles? Oh, yes, let's. Actually, let's start off with a semi-tangible: injuries. The one getting the most press on the Florida side is Tim Tebow's elbow injury -- specifically, his non-throwing elbow, which automatically leads me to believe that it's not nearly as serious as some have advertised, but supposedly it's going to make Urban Meyer a little more circumspect in his playcalling. That I can see, because at last count, Tebow was accounting for 73 percent of UF's 3,124 total yards on the season -- his 578 yards on the ground still make him the Gators' leading rusher by a fair margin -- and Meyer is going to be loath to subject the Rosetta Stone of his offense to any more injury risk than he absolutely has to.


My hope that Tebow would be left comatose after being smothered in a freak brumski accident, sadly, have not come to fruition.

But to paraphrase Tracy Jordan, asking Tim Tebow not to run is like asking a bird not to fly, or a fish not to swim, or a tiger not to turn back into a Chinese dude at midnight. Teebs is gonna run whether anyone likes it or not; how much further injury Georgia's front seven has the capacity to inflict on him as a result of this is anyone's guess. Honestly, I think the Gator injury that will create more of an opportunity for the Dawgs is safety Major Wright's broken thumb. Wright had surgery Monday, and if he can't play, his fill-in will be Kyle Jackson; Gator fans look at Jackson the way we Dawgs look back on Jasper Sanks, if the comments I've read from Gator bloggers are any indication, which means Stafford could find some over-the-middle opportunities on Saturday.

Of the real intangibles, the one getting the most pub this week has been Georgia's bye week, their first in the week directly preceding UGA-UF since 1991. But as David Ching points out, that little nugget is more than a bit of a mirage, since Georgia got a 32-point hammering from Florida the last time we played them right after a week off; in addition, Florida is hardly worn-out or stale themselves, having had their open date just a couple weeks ago. What I'm more interested in is Kyle King's revelation that over the last half-century, Georgia is 5-1 when playing defending national champions, including a 37-17 humbling of the Gators in 1997.


Oh, I remember that day -- Robert Edwards running like a madman, "WE BELIEVED" in 100-point type on the front page of The Red & Black, everything.

So is any of this going to make any difference? Who knows. Georgia's barely been able to buy a victory in this series even when they've fielded a demonstrably better team; winning with one that's not demonstrably better is going to require at least a couple instances of pure blind luck. This season has been crazy enough all across the country that a Georgia upset this weekend would barely nudge the needle on my Surprise-O-Meter, especially given the precedent that was set just last year -- when a broken and bloodied Georgia team climbed out of a 1-4 midseason trough and turned their season around with a stunning blowout victory at #5 Auburn -- but I'm not holding my breath for that kind of lightning to strike again, at least not in Jacksonville.

What will happen depends, in large part, on Georgia's offense. In the Dawgs' last four losses to Florida, we've allowed 20, 16, 14, and 21 points, and still managed to lose by 7, 3, 4, and 7, respectively. Small margins all -- small enough that you'd think even a modicum of progress on the offensive side of the ball might be enough to turn things around for Georgia. Knowshon Moreno is awesome, and I think there's a better quarterback hidden inside Matt Stafford than the one we've seen so far this year; a bye week and a backs-to-the-wall scenario certainly worked wonders for Tennessee a few weeks ago (even though the bloom came off that particular rose in a hurry), so there's certainly a chance the Dawgs could rise up and deliver one of those pulled-straight-out-of-their-asses victories we came to enjoy so much at the end of last year. If that happens, it'll hinge on Stafford. As Senator Blutarsky describes, this game is gonna be one of those weird instances where we have to pass to set up the run, and that's gonna require both Mike Bobo having confidence in Stafford and Staff making on-target throws.


You must carry this team, young Matt. Carry it like you'd carry a keg . . . or a jeans-shorted coed.

A lot of on-target throws. Florida's averaging 35 points per SEC game in 2007, a bar Georgia has exceeded in only one conference matchup this year (hapless Ole Miss). So if you ask me how much offensive improvement is going to be needed to hang with the Gators, "a lot" seems like a pretty accurate answer. "More than we're capable of at the moment" seems even more so.

Under Richt, the Dawgs are 4-2 against the spread in the Cocktail Party (moral victory say what), so I can at least hold out reasonable hope for a game that doesn't get out-of-hand embarrassing early like the Tennessee game did. My prediction is that Florida throws a couple of scores on the board early, Georgia gimps around and puts one score, maybe two, on the board before halftime; as Tebow and his elbow get worn down and Florida's coaches start playing it closer and closer to the vest, Georgia chips away here and there at UF's lead, but a big late-game play by Teebs results in a score and puts it out of reach. Georgia loses by eight.

And in case you're scoring at home -- or even if you're alone -- yes, for the first time this season I'm coming right out and predicting a Georgia loss. Would I like to be wrong? Oh, yes, lordy, would I. But I'd also like Melissa Theuriau's phone number and a 1968 Alfa Romeo 33/2 Stradale. So . . . get back to me on that, I guess.


Hold me. Whisper some French stuff in my ear and just hold me.

I will run up and down Highland Avenue in front of my apartment building wearing nothing but a Georgia flag if: Georgia wins. Period. No "if we beat the spread" or any of that jive; legacy of failure in this series notwithstanding, I'm not baring my ass in the middle of Southside for a fuckin' moral victory.

They may be false, they may be true, but nothing has been proved . . .

I haven't been a diehard Georgia fan as long as some people have, but I've been one long enough to have experienced the full range of losses, from the hard-fought and bittersweet to the irredeemably soul-crushing. And I think I've decided that they can best be categorized by the typical and/or appropriate fan reaction, which to some extent fall into a continuum that I will describe thusly:

1 - The Bitch-About-It-With-Friends-At-A-Bar Loss. Either the kind of loss that you saw coming for weeks or a close-fought, respectable loss to a very strong opponent. The bitching is not of a this-team's-crap-let's-fire-the-coach intensity, it mainly just comes from a) regret at the one or two big plays that, had they gone differently, would've changed the outcome for the better and b) jealousy of how good the other program appears to be. Example: Georgia's loss to Florida last year. Closer than anyone probably expected, could've won or at least tied it late, but I think we knew by that time that even a one-touchdown loss to the eventual national champions was playing over our heads.

2 - The Crawl-Into-A-Bottle Loss. Or, The One That Got Away. You should've won, you didn't, and while the loss doesn't necessarily ruin your season all by itself, it definitely takes away some opportunities, prompting you to alter your consciousness until you can once again conjure appropriately fanciful visions of what might have been. Example: Florida, 2002, in which three brain farts (Shockley's pick, George Foster getting an unsportsmanlike for dry-humping a defender, Terrence Edwards letting the tying TD sail between his fingertips) was all it took to chuck a national-title shot.

(There's a 2.5 that I'll call the Get-Drunk-And-Be-As-Obnoxious-As-You-Possibly-Can Loss, in which the loss came on a play or series of events so bizarre that you can't get angry at anything other than Fate, but you've still got to take it out on someone, so you just try to ruin someone else's night. Textbook example is Auburn 2005, which we lost on a late busted coverage that allowed a 62-yard pass completion to set up the winning FG. I'm sure there are Auburn and Georgia coeds alike who still curl their lips at the thought of that lecherous asshole in the #4 jersey who hit on them that night.)


Wowee-wow-wow! Shall we discuss the failures of the soft zone over some fine champagna?

3 - The Fightin' Loss. You feel you got screwed in a critical game, or you got shown up by a bitter rival, but not so badly that you don't have the energy to want to kick someone's ass afterward. The obvious example is Georgia vs. Georgia Tech 1999 game, the one with Jasper Sanks's phantom phumble, but the 2001 Auburn game is probably a good example of the second subtype.

4 - The Find-A-Razor-Blade-And-A-Major-Vein Loss. Your season's over, and people will be clowning your ass for a long time; better to just end it all now than to have to deal with that kind of humiliation. Even though Georgia's 2006 season improved markedly down the stretch, the Vanderbilt game would be the prime example here.

But last night's puzzling loss to South Carolina didn't really fit into any of those; I guess it comes closest to a 3, but by the end of it I lacked the physical and emotional strength necessary to challenge someone to fisticuffs, not that there are that many Gamecock fans around here to take on in the first place. Instead, I'm having to come up with a whole new classification, one that would sit at a 2.75 or so if I had to give it a number but really needs to sit a ways above the continuum on its own little stratum.

This was a Get-Laid Loss. You don't want to fight, you don't really want to drink that much, you don't even want to try and sit around and hash it out with your fellow fans. You just want to find a beautiful woman who knows enough about your team and your fandom to be able to console you but not enough to really want to have a conversation about it; you want to treat her to an hour or so of passionate, staring-deep-into-each-other's-eyes lovemaking and fall asleep in her arms. Sorry if that's got a cheesily Bridges of Madison County ring to it, but it is what it is.


That was amazing -- much better than your run defense, at any rate.

The hallmark of the Get-Laid Loss is that it's a big game, big enough to be quite emotionally invested in it, but it's not played well enough that you get your usual orgasmic joy over once again being immersed in college football, so you have to go seeking that orgasmic joy in another, perhaps more obvious, place. Your team didn't get blown out, but neither did they do any one thing well enough that you can speak hopefully about it the next day; it comes at a point in the year where it doesn't necessarily ruin the season, yet it also exposes some reasons for you to be a little wary about the team from there on out. It's not fun, but it's not agonizing enough that you feel the need to pour your heart out about it to others. You just want to forget about it, get some sexual healing, and move on.

The South Carolina game, needless to say by now, wasn't a whole lot of fun for me to watch, nor is it a lot of fun for me to rehash, even now. I don't like the fact that all those knob jobs on the Gamecock Central message boards are going to assume that their first win over Georgia in six tries somehow means they "own" us now; I especially don't like the fact that all the news reportage of the game seems to be hewing to the old "Spurrier punks the Dawgs once again" storyline, even though it took him three years in Columbia and a fruity tipped-ball INT at the goal line to accomplish that. I can't bitch about a total team implosion like the one that gave Tennessee the win in 2004, but at the same time I can't pick out anything about our play that makes me say, "Well, at least we managed to . . . " I just want to chuck the game tape in the trash compactor and move on to the next game.

Since we didn't do anything consistently enough to be able to draw any overarching Xs-and-Os conclusions, I can merely say that we looked . . . hesitant. There were two or three play calls that looked a little questionable, but looking back it doesn't seem like anything we were destined not to execute if we could've just played with more confidence. The most representative play, I think, was the one, I think it was toward the end of the second quarter, where Stafford tossed what basically amounted to a long handoff to Sean Bailey on third and only about two, and even though Bailey had two defenders zeroing in on him, he had enough momentum that he could've gotten the first if he'd just kept going; instead, for some reason Bailey hitched up just long enough to get whacked by Brandon Isaac for a one-yard loss. That kind of "Mmmm, I'm not sure I can do this" attitude infected pretty much the entire team, save for Knowshon Moreno and perhaps Tripp Chandler, all evening long. Our defensive line didn't blow anybody off the ball the way they seemed to against Oklahoma State; our passing game just never looked in sync. Either Stafford didn't look like he was 100-percent sure where the ball was supposed to go, or the receivers were running routes with the meek tentativeness of a Democratic congressman, almost as if they were looking back toward the QB murmuring, "Is this where I'm supposed to be? Is this OK? Are you sure? . . . "


Not sure that this is how that play was meant to go, chief.

There's not a lot of tangible, execution-related information you can take away from a game like this, so all we can do is gather ourselves and say we've got two weeks of practice and one cupcake game to shape up. I don't think we're as bad as we looked against South Carolina, but we're obviously not as good as we looked against Oklahoma State -- who, in retrospect, fielded a defense that was nowhere near as lockdown as what we're going to see once we dig into the heart of conference play. So with that in mind, we're sitting at zero once again. We've obviously got some real talent, but not enough so that we can win meaningful games by loafing around. The good news is, the season's not over in the sense that we have nothing left to play for; the bad news is, the season's not over in that we're as good as we need to be just yet.

As frustrating as the game was to watch, I'm confident that nothing about our play was so godawful we can't make it good. But I'm still a little dejected at being deprived of what could've been a far more enjoyable weekend of football. And no, before anyone asks, I didn't manage to make up for the loss in the getting-laid department, though it's not too late to redress that; I'm taking inquiries, ladies, and you should know that when morning comes around I make some fricking awesome French toast.


"Music to my ears, mon chere."

But at least I can take solace in the fact that I'm not . . .

· Michigan, whose season-opening implosion is making Wolverine fans look wistfully at Tennessee's 2005 season and think, "If only . . . " My friend Stanley, at whose house I watched the Georgia-SC game, surmised that the Oregon shellacking might be enough to tip the balance and get Carr fired midseason, but the problem is that there's nobody on that coaching staff the administration could possibly want to promote to the interim position. I could, however, see defensive coordinator Ron English being told to hit the bricks tomorrow morning. Over the Wolverines' past five games, they've allowed an average of 36.8 points and close to 500 yards; English's recent résumé points include getting shredded by the states of Ball and Appalachian, which means either 1) we've got to add two more stars to the American flag or 2) someone's never going to be able to get a meal in Ann Arbor ever again. I'm going with the second one.


Quack, quack, hee-haw . . . that means duck, jackass.

· Or Virginia Tech, who embarrassed me and my ill-advised upset prediction by getting nearly half-a-hundred hung on them in Death Valley last night. I seriously thought VT's defense would be enough to take them to the brink of a national-title shot this year; if you had told me before the season started that the Hokies would give up 48 points, my only question would've been which three opponents they gave them up to. But not only did they give up those points to a single group of pissed-off Tigers, they didn't give them up via a lot of turnovers or cheap short-yardage situations; LSU just crammed the ball consistently and repeatedly down their throats to the tune of 598 yards. Whether it has anything to do with the April shootings or not, it looks like neither VT nor, by extension, the ACC is going to come within 100 miles of national-title consideration this year.

· But there was one team that was surprisingly impressive Saturday, and because I obviously couldn't wear my Georgia hat as I took Jenna out this morning for a stroll through the Southside neighborhood of which I am king, I had no problem donning a Washington Huskies cap instead. Yes, it's purple and clashes with pretty much every shirt I've ever thought about owning, but so what? These guys are turning out to be pretty good, and I wonder if Notre Dame fans are scratching their heads over the fact that Ty Willingham now has two convincing wins under his belt while their own squad has nothing but a coach with a frontbutt, a quarterback with questionable bloodlines, and a pair of multiple-touchdown losses. In the words of flying ace Ted Stryker, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

· Finally, I will honor our new Gamecock overlords by invoking a moral victory: For thirty-three minutes and forty-four seconds on Saturday, UAB led Florida State in Tallahassee. The pride is back, baby!


Those devil horns can only mean one thing -- we're going for a full 45 minutes against Alcorn State next week, bitches.

Saturday Not-So-Random Ten: No longer a world superpower, but still sexy at 218.

Today is Bastille Day, and while relations between the U.S. and France haven't exactly been great over the last few years, it appears that the new French prime minister, Sir Simon Milligan Nicolas Sarkozy might be looking to turn that around, and besides, France is one of the few countries in the world who's managed to do this democracy thing nearly as long as we have without completely screwing it up. Herewith, a not-so-random Ten Things That Are Great About France.


They did give us considerable military aid during our own revolution. Maybe it was just to fuck with the British, but hey, it's the thought that counts.


Lots of good art, even if much of it was drug-induced.


Serge Gainsbourg, who, by drinking and smoking his way through a career of shockingly filthy pop songs, took the persona of the don't-give-a-fuck pop star to new heights. Also shagged Brigitte Bardot.


The bikini. Yup, we have two French dudes to thank for that.


The Concorde (well, half of it, anyway).


Brie, which is delicious.


Escargot, which is also delicious. (Screw y'all. It is.)


The Citroën automobile.


Air, which is possibly the most subtle make-out music out there.

And last but not least, of course we have . . .



Joyeux Anniversaire, you Bastille-charging, crusty-bread-eating socialists, you. And we're sorry about the whole Freedom Fries thing.

My predicament.

So I was at Costco with my sister earlier this evening, making one of our monthly stock-up-like-there-was-a-hurricane-coming grocery runs, and while we were nosing around the DVD pile I saw a girl who bore a striking resemblance to official hottie of Hey Jenny Slater and future ex-wife Melissa Theuriau. Striking enough to inspire a split-second of oh-my-God-is-that-her-without-makeup-and-if-so-what-the-fuck-is-she-doing-at-the-Hoover-Costco, at least. So here are my questions:

1. Should I have gone up to her and tried to somehow start a conversation? It looked like she was there with her mom or older sister or somebody, which kind of complicated things.

2. What would I say to her in a situation like that? I'm guessing "Wow, you really look like this French anchorwoman I think is really hot" would probably be a non-starter.

In case you're wondering what I actually did, the answer to those two questions is 1) nothing, and 2) nothing. But still, I'm curious as to what your suggestions would be in a scenario such as this, so that in the getting-hit-by-lightning-whilst-holding-a-winning-Mega-Millions-ticket minuscule chance that this ever happens again, I'll know what to do.

Where is your god now, Maxim?!?

I don't want to beat a dead horse here, but just to recap:



This is the woman Maxim magazine thought was hotter than


her,


her, or


her.

. . . And for once, I have nothing to add.

Skanks for nothing.

Now joining Time magazine and its "100 Most Influential" list in the barrel: Maxim magazine -- which, yes, I used to subscribe to way back when -- and their "Hot 100" list for 2007, which features Lindsay Lohan at #1.

Lindsay Lohan. Lazy-ass, cooter-flashing, borderline-illiterate cokehead Lindsay Lohan. Not this Lindsay Lohan from three years ago, the fresh-faced ingenue prepared to take Hollywood by storm; this Lindsay Lohan, who looks like she'd be more at home flashing her tits for Mardi Gras beads in the infield at Talladega.

Conspicuously not chosen for #1: Jessica Alba, who had to settle for #2; Angelina Jolie, apparently not even considered top-10-worth at #12; Elisha Cuthbert, stuck back at #25; Alessandra Ambrosio, even further back at #51; Joanna Krupa, #66.

Not appearing on the list at all: Erin Andrews; Jill Wagner; and yes, Melissa Theuriau.

In graphic terms, we're meant to believe that this



is hotter than this, this, or this:




Uh-huh. When future media historians look back and try to peg the date when Maxim officially and irrevocably jumped the shark, May 15, 2007 will be it. I have a feeling Esquire subscriptions are about to spike in a big way.

Time out.

If you remember this and this, then you probably already know what I think about Time magazine's "100 Most Influential" list. Time, I'm going to give you the same advice I gave a friend of mine in college back when he decided it would be a good idea to drink an entire six-pack and smoke a bowl before he went on a date: I know you think this is an interesting idea that will spur lots of talk and analysis, but all you're going to do is make people laugh at you. Seriously, don't ever do this again.

In case you haven't had time to peruse the whole list, here are some people Time thinks are among the world's 100 Most Influential:

· Tina Fey. Look, I love Tina Fey. I've gone on record as saying that "30 Rock" is the funniest show on TV right now, and if she weren't married I probably would've spent most of my trip to New York in March waiting outside Rockefeller Center with a dozen red roses and a diamond ring. But one of the 100 most influential people in the world? Has "30 Rock" made it over to Russia or China yet? And if it did, would they even get how funny "The Rural Juror" is?

· Kate Moss. Tell me one important or influential thing she's done in the past 12 months other than getting photographed in public with coke on her pants.

· Rosie O'Donnell. Right, because her feud with Donald Trump is shaping up to be one of the great cultural schisms of our time. (Oh, and notice that the piece on her was written by Barbara Walters -- what, they couldn't get Kelli Carpenter?)

· Wesley Autrey. Great guy, and one of a very small percentage of people in this country who can truly be called a "hero," but do you even recognize his name right off the top of your head? He's the guy who jumped onto the New York subway tracks last year and saved a guy who had fallen off the platform due to some kind of seizure, thus . . . triggering a nationwide wave of subway-platform-life-savings? Again, a sterling example of humanity, but I'm not convinced he really qualifies as "influential" on a global (or even national) scale.

Meanwhile, here are some folks conspicuous by their absence:


· George W. Bush and/or Dick Cheney. No, I don't like them, and I am about 90-percent sure that we can already call them two of the most inept and destructive leaders in American history. But like them or not, you gotta admit they have a powerful effect on things, even if it's mostly negative. Andrew Sullivan sums it up pretty well: "I don't think Bush has ever been as influential as he is now. If he supports something, vast numbers of people around the world -- and a majority of Americans -- will automatically oppose it. Whatever else that is, it's influence."


· Rudy Giuliani. Again, you don't have to like him, and I pretty much don't, but how can you have Michael Bloomberg on here and not him? Yeah, Bloomberg's the current mayor, but what accomplishment of his can you name besides banning smoking in all the bars? Doesn't Giuliani's arguable position as the Republican frontrunner for 2008 (though certainly less dominantly so after Thursday night's debate) count for something?


· Bill Gates. I'm posting this using Internet Explorer on a computer running Windows XP, so there you go.


· Louis Gallois. No, you don't know him, but he's the current CEO of Airbus Industrie, the international consortium that builds the one-half of commercial airliners worldwide that aren't built by Boeing and that is currently attempting to revolutionize air travel with the A380 superjumbo. And even if the A380 turns out to be a financial disaster for the company -- which might yet happen -- it deserves credit for lighting a fire under Boeing's ass and inspiring the turnaround of an industry giant that had been on the ropes for a better part of a decade. Without the shadow of the A380 looming over them, it's doubtful Boeing would have made their own attempt at revolutionizing air travel with the 787, either.


· George Bodenheimer. Otherwise known as the current president of ESPN, which, for better or for worse, pretty much dictates the ways in which sporting events are broadcast and analyzed not just in the U.S. but all over the world.


· Melissa Theuriau. Oh, I'm sorry, maybe you think being the most beautiful newscaster in the world is no big deal.

Oh and hey, now that I think about it, where the hell is my name on this list? I was Time's fucking Man of the Year for crying out loud! Back in December I was #1 in the world, and a mere five months later I can't even crack the top 100? What a bunch of Judases. Is it because they're still mad at me for not renewing my subscription?

I know that lists like this are extremely subjective in a lot of ways, and if you asked 100 people to write down their lists, not only would you get 100 different lists, there probably wouldn't be more than a dozen people who even appeared on the majority of them, much less who were unanimous choices. But man oh man I wish Time would dial their Artificial Gravitas Machine down from 11 and instead pitch these lists for what they really are -- "We Get 100 Famous People To Write About Other People They Like."

Then again, I guess I should just be content that Ann Coulter wasn't on there this year. You take your victories where you can get them, I suppose.

Droppin' the deuce: A very special birthday Mystery Meat.

That's right, suckers -- today marks the second berfday of Hey Jenny Slater. Two glorious years of football trash-talking, political trash-talking, hot chicks, and indiscriminate cursing. How awesome is it? I think the phrase you're looking for is "extremely f$#!ing awesome," my friend.

That said, though, there may be some of you who have only started reading this blog recently, and two years is a lot to catch up on. I certainly don't expect you to go back and read five-hundred-something posts in one sitting, unless you're, like, a Maytag repairman or a backup quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts or Dick Cheney's ethics advisor and you really don't have anything else to do for the next couple weeks. For those of you who've just joined us, here's the gist of the first two years of Hey Jenny Slater, as condensed as I can possibly make it.

· The Georgia Bulldogs are awesome. Oops . . . no they're not. But wait, yes they are. And I am awesome for covering them. Whatever the case, Georgia Tech still sucks hard.


Georgia Bulldogs: Great team, or greatest team?

· Not awesome: George W. Bush, Republicans in general.

· Also awesome: the Washington Redskins, the Pet Shop Boys, Wes Clark, "30 Rock," Tom Selleck, cheese grits, Citroëns.

· And, of course, Boston Terriers.


It doesn't get much more badass than this.

· "The Simpsons" and college football are practically the same thing; Pluto is a whiny little bitch; I am a hater; Sexy Santa costumes kick ass.



· I look like Elle MacPherson, yet am somehow still a loser.

· Nevertheless, that has not kept this blog from becoming the preferred blog of former Miss Georgia Monica Pang.


For reals.

· Birthdays are important to me, so you should probably buy me stuff.

· I have a richly detailed fantasy life.

· But, completely separate from that, I will be moving to France soon because I'm the future husband of a French newscaster Melissa Theuriau, or (in the words of official Hey Jenny Slater friend-for-life Benjie) "that French chick who does the news in Barbie clothes."


In some alternate dimension, this may actually be true.

· And finally, I throw toasters.

There. I hope that gets you up to speed. Now you are well qualified to jump into the comments thread and tell me how awesome I am.