A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Careers headed in different directions, booze, and Legos, of course.

· Life update: So I've been at my new job for almost two months now, and things have been going well -- my affinity for Legos is already becoming well-known throughout the office, which I think is probably a good foretaste of the full-blown Georgia football obsession that will be manifesting itself in just a few weeks. I've also moved into a house, a little 1930s-era number just a few blocks off of the park. (Renting, not owning -- please, bitch, you know I'm not financially responsible enough to handle anything as complicated as a mortgage right now.) Between the park and the fenced-in backyard, Champ and Jenna are doing pretty well, thanks. I'll put some photos of the place up when I've got the place looking right (i.e. like a hobo's not squatting there), but I do have one thing set up exactly the way I want it, and it's the most important thing: the bar.



· In other Columbus-related news, those of you who (like me) were upset to see David Hale depart his role as the Ledger-Enquirer's resident Bulldog correspondent/blogger extraordinaire will be relieved to know that his successor, one Seth Emerson, gives a pretty good interview. Consider, though: Hale is leaving the Bulldogs beat to go cover the Phillies for a paper in Delaware; Emerson comes to Georgia from South Carolina after having covered the Gamecocks for five years. If there's a starker contrast between trading up and trading down, I must confess I haven't seen it. (Welcome, Seth.)

· As for the rest of my homemaking responsibilities, I've been sucked into Ikea's neon with a big assist from Holly -- I wouldn't say that I look forward to Ikea trips as much as I look forward to excursions to, say, the Lego store, but it's getting close.



· Speaking of Legos, I have a new gift idea for anyone who's interested in buying it for me -- the Tower Bridge, all 4,287 pieces of which will be hitting stores on October 1. I think it's going to be around three hundred bucks, so let me know when I should set up the PayPal account for y'all to donate to.

· Finally, this, because it's awesome.

The man who knew too much.

There are a lot of things the world needs more of right now -- renewable energy, diplomacy, decent-paying jobs, non-surgically-enhanced boobs -- but above all, what we need more of is smart people. Specifically, smart people who aren't afraid to be smart. And we need one more than we did Monday, because one of the best of them, Jim Fletcher, died of a heart attack that night. Mr. Fletcher was my humanities and AP English teacher my senior year of high school, and was probably the greatest teacher I've ever had, at any level.

Because of Mr. Fletcher, I know about Greek culture and all the things they did that still influence us today; I know about the ways in which Western culture and art was preserved throughout the Dark Ages when any kind of written historical record or learning was at a premium; I know how the Renaissance got started and how it morphed into the other artistic and cultural movements that came after. I can walk into an art museum, look at a painting, recognize what style or "ism" it is, and understand how that reflects what society was going through at the time it was created. Mr. Fletcher not only taught us about all those things, he taught us why they mattered.

But I don't want to make it sound like he was some effete snob who shut himself up inside his house with his classics, completely disdaining everything about modern culture. At the end of a long unit on the Dark Ages, he showed us "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in class; for those who were interested in learning more about the 1960s while we were reading Slaughterhouse-Five in class and discussing that decade's various cultural upheavals, he invited us over to his house to watch "Easy Rider" and "The Graduate," which was the first time I saw either. He rarely shied away from discussing difficult or controversial topics in class, because for all his sarcasm and irascibility -- which, to be sure, became the stuff of legend throughout the Columbus teaching community -- he gave us credit for being strong enough to handle that stuff unless we showed otherwise.

If we did show otherwise, of course -- whether it was by making a stupid comment in class or just getting caught napping in the back of the room -- we'd get called out for it in the most ego-shriveling manner possible. I can't recall a single time Mr. Fletcher yelled, or even raised his voice, at anyone; he'd just shake his head and mutter something about one of us needing to ride the short bus to school. "Wetumpka Tech," i.e. the only college we'd get accepted to if that was the best we could do, was another one of his favorite catch-phrases. He enjoyed verbal sparring with his students from time to time, but I rarely saw anyone get the better of him, and I can't recall a specific instance in which I enjoyed that privilege myself.

But in spite of the legend that had been built up around him over his 26 years at my high school, that kind of acidity wasn't his standard teaching M.O. It was OK if you didn't understand a concept the very first time. It was even OK if you didn't like a book or a piece of music or a style of art we were discussing in class. The only thing that was guaranteed to not be OK was not caring, was not wanting to know more. Differences of opinion were perfectly fine in his classroom, often even encouraged. Apathy was the biggest no-no.

That, even above all the other things Mr. Fletcher gave us, was the most important -- the belief that knowledge was a good thing to have, that an awareness of one's history and culture was important, that willful ignorance was to be ridiculed, not celebrated. You'd think that'd be an obvious virtue, but look around you at all the people who go into life with a "Don't confuse me with facts when I've already made up my mind" attitude, the people who condemn anything the least bit edgy or challenging as dangerous to society, the people who'd mutter "faggot" if you tried to spark any kind of conversation about art or literature. There is a certain segment of society who not only don't know anything more about the world around them than the prejudices and assumptions they've already created, but whether because of fear, laziness, or resentment, they don't want to know anything more. But Mr. Fletcher did his part to help mold entire generations of kids in Columbus, Georgia, who were worldly enough to resist that.

Mr. Fletcher leaves behind a wife, kids, stepkids, and grandkids who are all going to miss him very much, but he also leaves behind hundreds, maybe even thousands, of former students who remember the gifts he gave them vividly enough to know what the next few generations will be missing. That may be the saddest thing about all of this -- the fact that the kids who come through Hardaway after us will never know what it feels like to be made smarter by James T. Fletcher. That was a pretty special privilege.

The word "elitist" gets thrown around a lot these days, so much so that it's started to lose any meaning. And the people who seem to be throwing it around the most are the ones in that group I mentioned earlier, the willfully ignorant who don't want to know anything more than what they've already decided. I'm sure they would've found Mr. Fletcher to be irredeemably elitist, too, had they ever met him, but Fletch didn't think he was better than other people based solely on their taste in art or music, their appearance, their political convictions, or any of that. The only people he thought he was better than were the people who didn't care enough to want to know more. If that makes both him and me elitist, then I plead guilty on behalf of the both of us. But I think it's the kind of elitism the world needs more of, and for helping to create more of it, Fletch has my gratitude.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gives some shout-outs, then books out.

I'm kind of having to punt on the +5 this week because I have to leave for Atlanta in less than an hour and a half, so it's going to be more or less a roundup of random awesome stuff -- My Heisman Ballot Of Five Things That Have Been Awesome To Me This Week.



Green's package store on Ponce de Leon in Atlanta
Always a frequent spot to hit on the way to a Saturday of tailgating in Athens, but now virtually mandatory due to the fact that a) they keep expanding their liquor selections, b) they have a new walk-in Belgian beer cooler, and c) it takes a lot of alcohol consumption to make Georgia's defense look good.



Erin Andrews in glasses
Not a great screengrab above, but if you were watching Georgia's game against Arkansas last week then you know what I'm talking about. EA looked hot enough that all actual sexy librarians should now be referred to as sporting the "Erin Andrews at the Georgia-Arkansas game look."



Airplanes with funny paint jobs
See also: the Southwest Airlines "Shamu" planes; Western Pacific's old "Simpsons" plane; and SkyEurope's Boeing 737s with supermodels on the side. OK, that last one isn't really "funny" per se, but it still gets your attention.



The Jaguar XFR
The James Bond of cars: handsome, suave, doesn't look out of place at either a five-star restaurant or a competitive sporting event, and can straight-up murder any of its competitors without really breaking a sweat.



Hot wings at B. Merrell's in Columbus
I know I make fun of Columbus all the time, but it does have one major claim to fame: the site of the best Buffalo wings in the universe. A bold statement, I know, but B. Merrell's has ruined me for hot wings just about any place else in the world because theirs are so much better. Crispy without being breaded; sauce that's hot but not overpowering; perfectly rotisserie-cooked so that you can pack away 20 of them in barely more than the blink of an eye. Wing perfection, and I should know, because if you'd seen my gut lately you'd know that I've put away a few.

And now the Ten:

1. Thom Yorke, "Skip Divided"
2. Hall & Oates, "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)"
3. Dr. Dre, "Let Me Ride"
4. U2, "North and South of the River"
5. KRS-One, "2nd Quarter -- Free Throws"
6. Richard Cheese, "Fight for Your Right"
7. Meat Beat Manifesto, "Let Go"
8. A Tribe Called Quest, "The Infamous Date Rape"
9. Radiohead, "Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner)"
10. Dead Kennedys, "Stealing People's Mail"

What's been awesome to you this week? Throw that stuff (along with your Random Tens) in the comments . . . and I'm outta here.

There's no place like home, thank God.

A few years ago, I was in my hometown of Columbus, driving down Reese Road in the direction of Manchester Expressway, when I saw a couple teenage kids driving a red early-'90s Honda Civic coupe. It had a big spoiler on the back and a full complement of air dams, side skirts, and what have you -- its owner had pretty obvious designs on turning it into a "Fast and Furious"-style rice rocket. Only he hadn't gotten around to upgrading the rims or tires yet, because it was still riding around on the stock steel wheels and plastic Honda wheel covers, which combined with the big spoiler and ground-effects bodywork made it look weirdly top-heavy. The coup de grace, if you will (and I do), was the decal that ran across the top of the back window: It read "TO LOW FOR A FAT HO," and yes, that's how it was spelled.

Ah, Columbus. Don't ever change.

And actually, it hasn't, because as I was rolling into C-Town this past Wednesday afternoon for an extended-weekend stay with my folks, I wound up behind this vehicle at a stoplight on Manchester. I had to snap a picture of it with my iPhone, so the resolution is not great and you may not be able to read the stickers I'm talking about, but here's the picture:



And the three stickers read as follows, clockwise from left:

· MY BITCH GIVES GOOD HEAD
· Do I LOOK Like A FUCKING People Person?
· LIFE IS ALL ABOUT ASS: COVERING IT, KICKING IT, KISSING IT, OR TRYING TO GET IT

Note also the putty-gray aftermarket bumper, another clear sign that this car is destined for "Fast and Furious" duty but the driver just hasn't been able to pony up for the spoiler or the rims yet.

You're all class, Columbus. Yet you do have plenty of great barbecue restaurants, a nice historic district, and a Chili's . . . I wish I knew how to quit you.

Best neighborhood ever.

This apartment complex went up a couple miles from my parents' house in Columbus this past year. I've never been inside, so I can't verify whether the name is true, but still, it sounds awesome.

Tuesday Mystery Meat.

· Audience-participation time! See if you can figure out what sickened me the most about this story concerning legendary freakshow John Mark Karr:

John Mark Karr, who made what turned out to be bogus claims of killing Colorado child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, was jailed Saturday in a domestic argument at his father's house in suburban Atlanta.

Officers received an emergency call late Friday from the house about an argument between Karr, his girlfriend and his father, Sandy Springs Police Lt. Steve Rose said.

Got that? Confirmed child-buggerer John Mark Karr, who told everyone he raped and murdered JonBenet Ramsey apparently just for poops and giggles, has a girlfriend. And I don't. Help me out, readers -- pills? Drano cocktail? Garden hose from the tailpipe through the cracked sunroof? Your suggestions are always welcome.



· The Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" is here. And as big an advancement as this plane represents in terms of materials, fuel efficiency and various other technologies, the advancement that will be most readily apparent to actual passengers is probably in the area of interior design:




The mood lighting and soft curves in place of hard right angles might take some getting used to at first, but in the end I think even a "European disco" ambience will prove far preferable to "flying Greyhound." The 787 will make its first actual flight sometime in September, and will enter scheduled airline service in May or June of next year -- in plenty of time for a big marketing tie-in with the next "Transformers" movie, whenever that comes out.



· And there will be another "Transformers" movie -- actually two more, no doubt to the delight of everyone who went apeshit over the first movie that came out this past Tuesday. In this interview, Michael Bay says they're even exploring the possibility of a transforming aircraft carrier for one of those films. The reeking shitburgers that were "Armageddon" and "Bad Boys II" notwithstanding, I think Bay might turn out to be an OK guy after all.

· Still on the subject of airplanes, here's a tip for Clay Aiken: If you're flying coach from L.A. to Tulsa, Oklahoma, you're not a big enough star to be throwing your feet up on other people's armrests.

· Ah yes, more solid publicity coming out of my hometown of Columbus.

· I really don't have much additional comment on this -- I think I've made my point -- but man oh man, I never cease to be amazed at just what a huge pile of shit we've gotten ourselves into over there in the Middle East. It's getting to the point where I'm not sure any mortal human being can get us out of it. With that in mind, please let me know in the comments or via the e-mail address at top right whether you'd be interested in purchasing one of these. (I'm seriously thinking about having some printed.)

The pride of the Fountain City.

Front page of today's Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. Click to enlarge.

COLUMBUS NORTHERN LITTLE LEAGUE TEAM: We won! We won!ME: Oops.

The Columbus, Georgia, Northern Little League All-Stars have won the Little League World Series, beating Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 to take the world title. Kyle Carter struck out 10 batters in a complete-game three-hitter while Cody Walker scored the winning run on a two-run HR in the bottom of the third inning.

So where was I during all this? Uhh . . . sound asleep, blissfully unaware that the already-rain-delayed title match had been moved up to 5 p.m. Eastern from its originally (re-)scheduled time of 8 p.m. Which I only found out as I flipped on ESPN just now and watched, slackjawed, as they played the highlights from the game on "Baseball Tonight." Which means that, err, harrumph, my first attempt at liveblogging has been pretty much been, like most of my past relationships, over before it started.

But regardless, big ups to the Columbus Little Leaguers, who (as I mentioned earlier) weathered more controversy than any group of freaking 13-year-olds should have to and stayed focus to bring some pride to the Chattahoochee Valley. Between the Bulldogs going to the College World Series and the Columbus Little Leaguers winning the world title, it's almost enough to make you forget that the Braves are probably going to finish approximately 13,502 games out of first in the NL East. Congratulations, guys!

Little League World Series liveblog: Columbus vs. Japan Mother Nature.

Howard Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, Penn.: Columbus's own field of dreams?

As promised, this is where I'll be liveblogging the world championship game of the 2006 Little League World Series, in which the U.S. champs from the Northern League in my hometown of Columbus, Georgia, will play the international champs from Kawaguchi City, Japan. As of right now, the world title bout has been rain-delayed from 3:30 Eastern to 4:00 p.m. (I feel kind of bad for the kids from Beaverton, Oregon, and Matamoros, Mexico -- their third-place game, which was to have started at noon, has been cancelled entirely.) I'll be getting started here whenever they do; please bear with me if I turn out to do a completely crappy job with this, since I've never liveblogged anything before (and we're also having guests over at 5).

Anyhoo . . . in the meantime, ESPN's LLWS coverage can be found here.

UPDATE @ 3:58 p.m.: OK, now the game has been delayed until 6:00 p.m. Yikes. At this rate, these guys may be playing well into Monday. Well, I'll still start the blogging whenever they start playing.

UPDATE @ 5:00 p.m. sharp: Now it's 8:00 p.m. Just out of curiosity, when are these kids' bedtimes?

UPDATE @ 7:03 p.m., can I get a witness?: OK, ESPN says the game has been postponed until tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central. I still plan on liveblogging as much of it as I can before my fantasy football draft begins at 9:00 CT. Full coverage of the LLWS, interspersed I'm sure with dramatic details of how I smoked everyone else in my fantasy league by grabbing the lead-pipe-cinch sleepers of the draft, tomorrow evening.

Today America, tomorrow the world.

Josh Lester -- eighth-grader, shortstop, badass.

As I've mentioned before, my hometown of Columbus, Georgia, is not without its oddities and various embarrassments. But today we hold our heads up high, because today we stand but one step away from the top of the Little League mountain, for Columbus's Northern Little League team has beaten Beaverton, Oregon, in the Little League World Series to clinch the U.S. title and advance to the world-championship game tomorrow afternoon.

The road to the title bout has not been without the usual haters trying to harsh our team's buzz. First the apparently under-medicated mother of an Arizona player accused Columbus of throwing their Tuesday game against Lemont, Illinois, so that they wouldn't have to play the Arizona team again. Then, after the very same game, the Lemont coach accused power hitter Kyle Carter of showing "disrespect" to the game because he wears his cap slightly askew when, in fact, Carter wears it that way because he had a shunt implanted in his head as an infant to alleviate an arterial blockage (the Lemont coach still hasn't apologized). Then, after losing the game that advanced Columbus to the U.S. final, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, manager suggested that Georgia baserunners were tipping off pitches. (Less conspiratorial, but still annoying, was the Atlanta Constitution's insistence on splashing today's front page with a big photo of Josh Lester crying to illustrate a story on young kids getting emotional in their sporting endeavors. Because every 13-year-old boy secretly pines to have a picture of himself crying on the front page of a major daily newspaper.)

But whatever, because the Bulldogs of Columbus Northern are headed to the world-championship game (so suck it, Arizona, Illinois, and New Hampshire!) tomorrow to face the winner of tonight's Mexico-Japan international matchup. And for the first time in my storied illustrious occasionally respectable blogging career, I will be trying my hand at liveblogging an event. Yup, some people do BCS bowl games; some people do political conventions; I do Little League.

But shut up, because it's Columbus, and we're a proud people. The game begins at 3:30 Eastern tomorrow afternoon and will be televised on ABC. Either watch the game or read this blog, because if you do neither, Kyle Carter and his skewed baseball cap will come to kick your ass.

Thursday mystery meat, and an opportunity for all you college-football fans to look S-M-R-T.

· Just out of curiosity, why did the authorities from Colorado or wherever pay for John Mark Karr to fly business class from Bangkok to LAX? According to the Thai Airways Web site, Karr's unrestricted business-class ticket would've cost 91,360 baht, which equals $2,436.57 -- whereas a restricted, economy-class ticket on the exact same flight would've cost nearly $900 less. You tell me whether John Mark Karr deserves complimentary champagne and fried king prawns. (Just in case you were curious, here's what Thai's new business class looks like.)



· Lord knows I've I've bagged on my hometown of Columbus enough over the course of doing this blog, so when something good comes out of C-Town, I'm going to call attention to it. Well, the Columbus Northern Little League team is in the semifinals of the Little League World Series tonight, so if you happen to be flipping through the various ESPN networks this evening and manage to catch a little bit of the game, cheer 'em on.

· Here's another Peach State athlete getting props: CollegeFootballNews.com has rated Georgia defensive end Quentin Moses the top DE in the nation and the number-two player overall.

· On the political tip, I'm going to make an admission that will probably surprise some of y'all: When I was living in Virginia in 2000, I voted in the state's Republican primary for John McCain -- partly because I thought he would make an infinitely better candidate than the empty-suit Bush, but also because I was seriously considering voting for him over Gore in the general election. Well, let's just say my respect for the "maverick" McCain has just about disappeared completely, because it's starting to look like the guy will just say anything to get elected. On "Meet the Press" Sunday, he basically said Bush's "stay the course" strategy is stupid, but that we need to continue it; he basically said Rumsfeld is a bad SecDef and needs to resign, but if Bush wanted to stick with him then that was fine. And then there was this comment to reporters earlier in the week:

[McCain] said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military. . . . McCain said that talk "has contributed enormously to the frustration that Americans feel today because they were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking."

But here's what McCain said to Chris Matthews just a week before the war first started:

MATTHEWS: Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the post-war scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq or at least a large number of them will treat us as liberators?

McCAIN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Basically, it's like this: When it looks opportune to stand by Bush and support him, McCain will do that; when it looks advantageous to talk about what a shitty job Bush has done, he'll do that. He'll flip-flop back and forth between them as often as he needs to. Watch out for this as McCain's 2008 presidential campaign begins to gather steam over the next year or so.



· But lest you think I can never, never bring myself to say something kind about a Republican, let me point out that Sarah Palin (above), former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and the winner of the Republican primary for Alaska governor, is adorable.

· Finally, if you're an excellent college-football prognosticator, or even if you're just a shitty one who doesn't mind being wrong, wrong, wrong in front of a reasonably large group of people, join the College Football Pick 'Em Group I set up on Yahoo -- pick each week's Top 25 games against the spread, and at the end of the regular season the person with the most correct picks gets a sizeable cash prize a fawning we're-not-worthy post on this very site and, consequently, the respect of every single person who reads it. Yep, both of them! To sign up, go here, click on "Create or join group," "Join existing group," and then "Join a private group," and then enter group ID number 14719 and password "tereshinski" (no quotes, all lower-case). When you sign up, howsabout posting a message on the group message board letting me know who you are and which blog you run, if you have one. Good luck!


JoeT3 wants to know if you feel lucky. Well, do you, punk?

Two shout-outs for C-town.

Most of the time, when my hometown of Columbus, Georgia, gets any attention, it seems like it's for stuff like, oh, unscrupulous mental-health facilities farming its patients out to work security at football games or something embarrassing like that. So when I get an opportunity to mention my hometown in something other than a "No, seriously, I haven't lived there in nearly four years" context, well, I'm gonna milk that sucker.

So I'm adding to the blogroll two fellow ex-Columbusites who are not only fellow C-towners but also fellow Hardaway High School graduates. The first is the adorable Erica, whose equally adorable family can be viewed at Ruthy Girls; the second, even though he hasn't updated in a while, is John Pezold at The Pezold Homestead, who gets a long-overdue link for linking to the Simpsons thing from a while back.

See, C-town isn't all that bad. We're not all crazy. Not completely.

The weekend in pictures, part I: airplanes.

My apologies if I sort of bummed everybody out with the last post. It wasn't my intention to do so -- well, no, it kind of was. But I thought I might post something a little less dispiriting by throwing up some pictures I took over the weekend while I was in Columbus. I now have a 128-meg memory card for my little digital camera, so I decided it was time to let that sucker rip.

First set is from the air show I went to with my dad. "Thunder in the Valley" has actually gotten to be a pretty big deal around these parts -- it isn't Paris or Farnborough, needless to say, but it does draw a pretty big crowd each year, and they manage to take advantage of their proximity to Fort Benning to bring in some pretty neat military aircraft, among other things. I know I've ragged on Columbus at numerous points in the past, but I really do think that if they expanded and publicized this air show thing a little more, they could turn it into a nationwide deal. My sister and I have talked at length about how Columbus really needs something that Atlanta doesn't have to sort of distinguish itself and move itself out of Atlanta's shadow -- well, I think the air show could be the ticket, if they did it right.


The undisputed star of the show, and a new addition this year, was the C-17 Globemaster III, the newest heavy-lift cargo plane in the Air Force fleet. I think the guy told us that, fully loaded, it weighs something like 580,000 pounds, yet it can take off in only 1,300 feet -- less than 1/5th the length of the Columbus airport's main runway. Which ain't all that long, considering that we only get ASA commuter flights in there anymore these days.


A bunch of folks strolling up into the cargo hold of the C-17, which is big enough to hold a CH-47 Chinook helicopter or an M1A1 Abrams battle tank, among other things.


Pops behind the wheel of the C-17, about 20 feet off the ground. Dad is a funny guy: When I first asked him if he wanted to go to the air show, he was like, "Ahhhh, I don't know, it's usually kind of the same every year" -- but once we got up in the C-17, he was as excited as a kid, and actually elbowed three or four little kids out of the way so that he could sit in the pilot's seat. (Of course I'm only kidding here. It was only one kid, and he shouldn't have been looking at Dad like that.)


Here's an A-10 Thunderbolt II coming around to do another demonstration of a tank-killing strafing run. The A-10 is basically an airplane built around a cannon, one that fires Coke-bottle-sized bullets that aren't so much "armor-piercing" as "armor-liquefying." I think if I'd followed through on my childhood dream of becoming a pilot in the military, I'd want to fly one of these -- slow, butt-ugly, and downright terrifying. Kind of like me, except for that last part.


An Aero L-39 jet trainer, here in Red Air Force markings even though it was built by my countrymen in (w00t) Czechoslovakia. (You can purchase a flight in one of these if you're so inclined -- or if, like GM chairman Robert Lutz, you have an extra $200,000 lying around, you can buy the plane itself.)


Detail of the nose art on a B-25 Mitchell from WWII.


Business end of a FedEx Boeing 727.


Two airmen watching the show from the roof of the C-17, one of the better seats in the house.

Tomorrow: Dogs!

Friday Not-So-Random Ten + the return of Mystery Meat.

All right, gentlemen, let's cut the crap -- which one of you is the trouble starter, which one of you is the punkin' instigator, and which is the self-inflicted mind detonator?

Over the course of my life, I have claimed no fewer than eight different cities as my official residence at one time or another. In the past month, half of those have been revealed to be home to some kind of depravity, malfeasance, or miscellaneous weirdness:

· Columbus, Georgia, February 28: A mental-health facility is revealed to have farmed patients out to work security at football games.

· DeKalb County (Atlanta), Georgia, March 7: A woman commits suicide during afternoon rush hour by leaping off the I-285 overpass down to I-85 below.

· Athens, Georgia, March 8: A 48-year-old man and a 68-year-old UGA booster get into a fistfight in the middle of a street over one man's dog barking at another man's dog. The 68-year-old proceeds to whup the 48-year-old's ass.

· Birmingham, Alabama, March 9: The culprits in a string of church arsons around central Alabama are revealed to be three college students who called the burnings "a joke."

Yup, funny stuff, guys. I guess we can now expect an apology from all the Christian Coalition folks here in Alabama who were just certain that the fires had to have been started by a bunch of god-hating liberals . . . well, I'll let someone else hold their breath for that. In the meantime, I'll just roll my eyes and make the jerk-off gesture over stuff like this (courtesy of the New York Times):

In the area on Mr. Moseley's page where visitors can post messages, alongside more than 12 expressing shock at the arrests and promising to pray for the accused, was one that Mr. Cloyd posted on Jan. 9. It read:

"To my dearest friend Moseley:

"The nights have grown long and the interstates of Alabama drunk driverless, the state troopers bored, the county sheriffs less weary, and the deer of Bibb County fearless. 2006 is here, it is time to reconvene the season of evil! Only one problem stands in our way. I got a new cellphone for Christmas and I no longer have your number, so send it to me and evil shall once again come to pass!

"May our girlfriends be concerned about our safety, may our parents be clueless, may our beers be frosty, may our love lives be fruitful, may our weed be green as the freshly mowed grass!"

So from this we can deduce that what we have here is not a bunch of God-hating leftists, not a couple disgruntled employees, not even a bunch of Satan worshippers, but . . . three dorks. Three whitebread, suburban dorks.

Well. I'm going to steal a page from my sister's book and replace the usual Friday Random Ten with an extra-special custom-made Friday Not-So-Random Ten . . . Benjamin Moseley, Russell DeBusk and Matthew Lee Cloyd, this is your life:

1. The Streets, "Geezers Need Excitement"
2. Chemical Brothers, "Under the Influence"
3. Fatboy Slim, "Because We Can"
4. Talking Heads, "Burning Down the House"
5. A Flock of Seagulls, "I Ran (So Far Away)"
6. Electronic, "Getting Away With It"
7. Iggy and the Stooges, "Search and Destroy"
8. The Smiths, "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore"
9. Johnny Cash, "Busted"
10. The Clash, "Straight to Hell"

Other crap in the news:

· Jessica Simpson will soon be testifying before Congress on behalf of a charity called Operation Smile. Well, that's only fair, right? The Supreme Court got to gawk at Anna Nicole Smith for a few days, so Congress gets Jessica Simpson? Here's the quote I thought was funny: "A source claims, 'She's in the phase of her life now where she wants to use her celebrity for good.' " That's swell. I was getting tired of the phase where she was using her celebrity for evil.

· Dear Jewish people: Just in case any of you were thinking you could make it into heaven without accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, Jerry Falwell would like to remind you this is categorically not the case. This means YOU, Ian!

· Speaking of bad-ass Jewish people, I was totally going to throw the Natalie Portman gangsta-rap video from last week's "Saturday Night Live" up on here, but if what Matt Lavine tells us is any indication, that's a good way to get in trouble with NBC's lawyers -- so instead I bring you the following, also found at YouTube. Don't know where the hell it came from, but I found it delightfully appealing to both my inner child and my inner dirty old man. How NSFW it is depends on what your W is -- if you work at a sports-radio station, it's probably fine; if you're reading this at the Bob Jones University computer lab, not so much. (What am I talking about? There's no way you're reading this at BJU -- their NetNanny software probably pre-emptively electrocutes you if you even think about coming to this site.)



· By the way, congrats to Paul for half a million hits -- I'm not wearing a cap right now but if I were I would doff it to you, sir.

Oh, well, we'll always have the Miss Georgia Pageant.

Got this off of CNN; I'm assuming they were trying to give people the location of a hazmat-train derailment or the latest Gulf War vet to kill his wife.

This shouldn't necessarily mean anything to someone who grew up in, say, Compton or Bed-Stuy, but it's not an easy thing to be from Columbus, Georgia. First of all, as with so many other mid-sized cities in the area, we're kind of living in Atlanta's shadow; almost all of the airlines, for instance, pulled out of Columbus airport once they realized people were perfectly willing to drive an hour and a half to get a cheaper flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson. Oh, and the secret formula for Coca-Cola was actually invented in C-Town by one John Pemberton, whose house you can tour in the historic district -- yet in the entire "World of Coca-Cola" museum in downtown Atlanta, they don't mention Columbus one fucking time. So basically, as far as the rest of the Coke-consuming world is concerned, Coke is, was, and always shall be an Atlanta product, while Columbus is only a place where you might stop for five minutes to purchase said luscious nectar on your way down to, like, Panama City or something. I can't tell you how many girls in college, upon hearing I was from Columbus, perked up and said "Oh! I stopped there for gas on my way to the beach last month!" -- and then, when I asked if they'd ever been there for any other reason, responded with a charmingly quizzical "Noooo . . . "

Columbus is actually the second-largest city in Georgia after Atlanta, though you wouldn't have known it for the longest time. It's always been a pretty good place to be married and in your thirties and raising a kid, just not a terrific place to be a kid -- while I was living there during my high-school years we pretty much didn't have anyplace to spend our Friday/Saturday nights other than the Denny's on Macon Road, since everyplace else was either 18/21+, closed by 10 p.m., or a public area we'd previously been kicked out of by the local gendarmes. And I know that probably sounds ridiculous to some of y'all, but you really have to understand the iconic status you can apply to a place when you don't have anywhere else to go. (Kinda the same deal as with Israel, right? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure people have any number of reasons for living there, but it ain't the peaceful streets or the lush vegetation.) Even today, I'll hear somebody mention, out of the blue, the time they did at the Macon Road Denny's, and something just clicks, and it's one of those moments like, "You were in the shit?" "Yeah. I was in the shit." (My best friend from high school once set a record -- knowing full well that it would never be officially recognized by the people at Guinness -- by spending 24 hours straight there, just to see if he could do it. And, with the help of waitresses who were on a first-name basis with each of us by then, he did, by God.)

Now, Columbus has changed a lot since then, mostly for the better. We got a Starbucks a few years ago -- becoming only the 35,428,739th city in the world to do so -- as well as a performing arts complex that's become the envy of a lot of cities in the Southeast. And because of that arts center and the gradual expansion of Columbus State University's fine-arts programs into the downtown area, downtown Columbus has gone from nothing but a bunch of boarded-up storefronts and wig shops to a bar/restaurant scene that's actually gotten pretty active. At the moment, it's probably a lot more impressive if you like booty music or live bands that apparently think there should be a state law requiring at least one playing of "Sweet Home Alabama" per set, but still, strides are being made, and the greater Chattahoochee River Valley area is the better for it.


Welcome to Columbus's famous Uptown Tap. Chances of running into someone Doug vaguely remembers having gone to high school with: close to 100 percent. Chances of running into these girls: substantially lower.

Nevertheless, Columbus is still seen as kind of being Atlanta's mildly retarded pothead little brother in a lot of ways. We've got a lot to live down -- Fort Benning's controversial School of the Americas and the seedy-strip-club-and-lingerie-modeling-joint-saturated Victory Drive, for example -- and even when we luck into somebody or something we think is going to be our ticket to stardom, it rarely turns out quite the way we'd planned. (To illustrate this point, let the record show that we've given the world Jasper Sanks, Newt Gingrich, and Justin Guarini. No, no -- you're welcome.) To that rap sheet of civic shame you may now add this, brought to my cringing attention by both Paul Westerdawg and EDSBS earlier today:

When fans submitted to security checks during the last two years at home football games of the Atlanta Falcons, Auburn University and the University of Georgia, among those carrying out those checks were residents of an unlicensed Columbus mental health center.

The use of Greater Grace Community Center residents in security details at major professional and college sporting events, confirmed by a number of the residents, was not disclosed to the universities or the arena operators.

They were part of a Contemporary Services Corp. security crew whose services ranged from bag checks to on-field security. The California-based company provides security support services at major sporting arenas throughout the country.

The residents were working the games for Greater Grace Baptist Church and pastor Robert Upshaw, two of the former residents said. The church and the center are affiliated.

Yes, you read that right: Residents of a mental-health facility were working security at Georgia, Auburn, and Atlanta Falcons games. Check that: Not just a mental-health facility but an unlicensed mental-health facility. So you don't even get to rationalize to yourself that they were at least getting some kind of officially sanctioned treatment. I don't know much about the facility in question, but if what Dan says in the EDSBS comments thread is true, they've got no business coming anywhere near the word "security," much less staffing it at major sporting events.

I use this story to illustrate the strange situation Columbus constantly finds itself in. Despite all the recent efforts made to embiggen the cromulence of our fair city, we just can't seem to work our way into headlines like, oh, "Columbus researchers perfect cancer vaccine" or "Jolie looking forward to raising children in Columbus"; we get "Columbus booby hatch farms out patients as security guards." Such is life in the Fountain City. Well, let's just hope any publicity is good publicity, right?


Yesterday, when I was mad . . . they made me search handbags at the Georgia-Auburn game.