"If you really wanted to screw me up, you should've gotten to me earlier."

Yeah, whatever.

Just in case anyone was curious, my dog has already received a Valentine's Day present; I haven't received any. I hope that gives you an idea of what you're dealing with here.

Readers of this blog who know me personally are probably waiting for me to throw up the inevitable fuck-Valentine's-Day-sideways post on here, given that my dislike of Valentine's Day has been intense and long-standing. To be honest, I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to do that, or whether I even wanted to acknowledge VD at all; after all, does the world really need another pissed-off single ranting about how dating is a pain in the ass and Valentine's Day sucks . . . especially since I've already written one?

A few things you should know about that column: First of all, some things were apparently lost in the translation from newspaper page to Web page, specifically important things like paragraph breaks, proper typefaces, correct punctuation, that kind of thing. For any number of reasons, my memories of my senior year are hazy, but I'm pretty sure that column was a lot funnier when it was first published. Second of all, as hotheaded and asinine as the column is, it is directly responsible for what is still the only date I've ever had for Valentine's Day or a Valentine's-Day-related function. A girl from one of my journalism classes whom I'd always thought was hot (she was a dead ringer for "Scream"/"Wedding Singer"-era Drew Barrymore) e-mailed me the very same day the column was published and said she thought it was funny, she thought Valentine's Day was stupid too, did I want to go out sometime. So we went out for a while, and I won't go into all the gory details of how I managed to screw that relationship up, but the point is, if going off on a half-cocked rant about Valentine's Day swung me a date once, it can't be all that bad an idea, can it?

Still, I don't want to a) just drag out old material or b) come off as some misanthropic, grouchy asshat. Let me rephrase that: I don't want to perpetuate my existing image as some misanthropic, grouchy asshat. There are ways for a single person to enjoy Valentine's Day -- the candy, the realization that you're saving a lot of money by not having to buy your significant other a gift or drag her to a fancy restaurant or something, the knowledge that you can go off, get a hooker, and roll in at 6 the next morning without someone waiting at home wondering where the hell you were when you were supposed to be taking her out for Valentine's Day . . . what? Why are you looking at me like that?

Nevertheless, it seems clear to me that this is a holiday that, while not impossible to enjoy without a significant other, is a lot easier to enjoy if you have one. Because without one, you're much more likely to be reminded of all the failed relationships you've had in the past (or lack of relationships period), and what you've done to put yourself in that situation. For some reason this holiday always makes me think of the movie "High Fidelity," and I always see myself as being a lot like John Cusack's character in that movie: kind of a schlub, kind of neurotic, can make a kickass mix tape but, other than that, in the rare instances he does succeed with women he pretty much does so in spite of himself. Oh, and also a one-step-short-of-OCD listmaker. In fact, back when I was working in Atlanta -- I think this may have even been in the days and weeks leading up to Valentine's Day one year, though I may be remembering that wrong -- a co-worker and I were debating over whose relationship history was more pathetic, so we decided to make a list of every relationship, bad date, infatuation, etc. we'd had, compare lists, and determine a winner. When the deadline came, I handed her mine, she took one look at it and said, "Wow. I can't compete with this."


Your first girlfriend in high school dumped you for a guy who was in the marching band? Wow, dude. Just . . . wow.

In the spirit of that project and the five-worst-breakups structure of "High Fidelity," I thought I'd use this opportunity to pick out the stories from my dating record (or lack of same) that are most representative of my history with women as a whole. Everything in "High Fidelity" was done in fives, but I won't bore you with five stories; I think three should suffice.

1.
What better way to start this off than on Valentine's Day '02. I was actually semi-seeing someone long-distance at the time, this friend of my sister's then-fiancee, but what started as a perfectly innocuous Happy-Valentine's-Day phone call quickly turned into her yelling at me for something I'd done or hadn't done, so when Josh and DAve called to ask if I wanted to go up to Druid Hills and drink some beers and shoot some pool, I was more than ready. As I was flying up I-85 to meet them, the girl called again to yell at me some more, and I did two things I'd never done before: 1) hung up on someone and 2) threw the phone into the back seat. It was all very theatrical, not to mention cathartic.

Anyway, I get to the bar expecting for it to just be a night out with the boys, but it turns out there's a ton of girls there. Including a redhead named Megan who's apparently single, good at pool, and incredibly cute. There are some situations where "cute" is not only a more accurate description than "hot," it's actually a more desirable attribute, and this was one of those times. Basically, she was the kind of girl about whom I'd usually just sit there at the bar thinking, "Wow, she's cute, if I didn't have such a low opinion of myself I'd probably go talk to her," but this time -- whether it was liquid courage or the urging of DAve and Josh, I don't remember -- I actually cranked up the balls to go talk to her. We had a good conversation, she was friendly, I finally got to whip out my "I've applied to join the Peace Corps" line (which, at the time, was actually true) and she was suitably impressed. And I actually ended up getting her number. You could probably count on the fingers of one hand the phone numbers I'd gotten from girls at bars over the entire course of my life up to that point.

Anyway, fast-forward to the following week, I've waited the Vince-Vaughn-approved six days so I decide to give Megan a call. We talk for a while, I get around to asking her if she wants to go out and get a drink sometime, we're talking about when to do that when she gets a call on the other line from her mom and says she'll call me back in a few minutes. (For the sake of my own self-worth I'm going to assume it was really her mom and not "Would I like to discuss AT&T's new long-distance plan? God, yes, anything to get this jackhole off the line.") I'm just sitting there, having a beer, watching the Winter Olympics -- I'll just bet it was figure-skating, too, which would match right up with the general lameness of the rest of this story -- and I fall asleep. I wake up about midnight, shake the cobwebs out, and find a missed call on my cell phone from guess who. It's too late to call her back, so I wait until the next day, get her voice-mail, leave a message.

Needless to say, I never heard from her again. Which means I was probably only a single beer or ill-timed nap away from actually getting to go out with one of the cutest girls I've ever actually met in person. Good times.


Here's Reggie Brown shortly after getting a love tap from Junior Rosegreen in the '04 Georgia-Auburn game. Within a few days, I would know a similar feeling (though I at least retained full consciousness, which was nice).

2.
This next story I've alluded to a couple times in my lengthy discussions of the Auburn-Georgia rivalry. Setup: At a Halloween party thrown by my friend Amanda a couple years ago, I met a girl who'd just moved down from New York to start a job at the place where Amanda worked. Blond, funny, another example of the cute-being-better-than-hot phenomenon, an incredibly stylish dresser -- sorry if noticing that makes me gay, Josh -- and made a pretty hot '60s housewife, which was her costume at the party. (In case you're curious, mine was Bill Lumbergh -- suspenders, colored shirt with a white collar, coffee mug. You know the drill.) Anyway, I got her number from Amanda, we went out a few times, it was great. Easily one of the most attractive, most fun, and least frightening girls I've ever gone out with.

Couple weeks later I'm telling her about my plans to head down to Auburn that weekend for the football game, and for someone who went to NYU and has about as much prior exposure to college football as Kevin Federline does to soap and water, she seems pretty interested. I go out on a limb and ask if she'd be interested in going, and she says yes, so I tell her I'll get in touch with my ticket hookup and see if he can find me another one.

Now, before this all went down -- probably before I'd even met this girl to begin with -- I'd been telling my parents that I'd try to pay them a visit when I went down to Auburn for the game, since they only live like 30 minutes away. My guy comes through with the tickets, so I call the girl back, tell her we're good to go, and we start laying out plans for the weekend: "Yeah, we'll drive down Friday night, stay at my friend's apartment, tailgate with her and some other folks on Saturday, go to the game, probably go have lunch with my folks on Sunday . . . "

If you've ever seen the movie "Glengarry Glen Ross," then you know all about the silence that ensued after that: It was just like after Jack Lemmon says "If you're gonna make something up . . . " and Kevin Spacey realizes he's the one who broke into the office the previous night. Here we are, I've been seeing this girl for not even a full month, and already I'm telling her -- without any ulterior motive or anything like that, but still -- that we're going to meet my fucking parents. Not surprisingly, she says she's kind of nervous about that, so I start backtracking like crazy, but she's like, "No, if you've already made plans, then it's fine." We go down to Auburn, we go to the game (which Georgia gets annihilated in -- surely a premonition), we go to Columbus the next day, she grits her teeth through lunch with my family, we go home . . . a week or so later I get the "I think we should just be friends" e-mail. And there you go.

3.
Last year this girl April moved into one of the studio apartments in my building. She had a little dog, I had a little dog, so we'd see each other pretty frequently while standing out on the front steps waiting for our dogs to finish doing their business, and I started thinking I'd like to ask her out. In the meantime, it came out that her reason for coming and going at odd hours and being gone for long stretches of the week was that she was a dancer at one of the strip joints in Atlanta, and I almost didn't ask her out after that, not because I was somehow repulsed by her line of work but because I was worried she'd think I was only asking her out because that's what she did. But somehow I got over this hangup and asked her out, and she said yeah, so we did.

(Now, I know I just said I didn't ask her out because she was a stripper, but that fact did lead to one of the more entertaining conversations I've had with my parents. They asked me if I was dating anyone, I said yeah, they asked what she did, I said "She's a dancer in Atlanta," and then Mom went down the list: "Balllet?" "No." "Jazz?" "Uh, no." "Like, interpretive dance or something like that?" "Keep going." Cue big grin on Dad's face; end scene.)

Anyway. We went out a few times, during which time her apartment becomes the target of an insect infestation -- think "Arachnophobia" but with termites -- and she decides to move out. Over the course of a weekend I help her move all her stuff into a new apartment, and I'm thinking, Helped her move, that's got to be like +100 points or something. But her work isn't done, because she painted the inside of her old apartment while she lived there, and apparently one of the terms of her lease is that she's got to repaint it back the way it was or she doesn't get her security deposit back. So the following week, she repaints the apartment, and I'm unavailable to help because I'm working all day. Guess who is available to help? This guy Jeff who lives across the hall from me, an airline pilot who had either just recently broken up with his girlfriend or was right about to, I can't remember which. Just about every day that week, I come and go during my lunch hour and there they are, having a grand old time repainting her apartment. Being a complete idiot, I think nothing of this at the time.

A few days later, I call her to see if she wants to go out and get dinner or something like that, and she says, "Well, I'm kind of seeing Jeff now. But we can still be friends." Well, of course we can, because isn't that secretly what every guy wants? Fortunately, I still had her on the hook to pick up my mail while I was in Italy later that month, so at least I got something out of it . . . sort of. I guess. Still, this marked the point at which "Do not date girls who live in the building" went from an unspoken suggestion to an official policy.

Of course, this brief sampling barely even scratches the surface of the legion of girls I've gone out with once or twice and who mysteriously dropped off the face of the earth after that, adding to my reputation (as my friend Brian puts it) of "having more first dates than anyone I know . . . and fewer second dates than anyone I know." That list could probably fill a separate blog all by itself, the latest and greatest item being the World-War-III-incitingly hot Slavic chick who, completely unbidden, showed me her boob in a crowded bar, made out with me later on that evening, and only after that decided arbitrarily to stop returning my calls. (Was she embarrassed by her behavior? Or did she merely decide I'd gotten as much of a taste as she cared to dole out and would get no more? I leave this question to you, gentle reader, to decide.)

But still, these three incidents should probably give you a pretty good idea of how I can apparently screw up a good thing either by doing something or not doing anything at all. That's what you call being multitalented, folks, and don't you forget it.

I invite the rest of you unattached malcontents out there -- whether you're single, about to be single, or even if you're in a reasonably content relationship but still resent the yoke of obligation Valentine's Day hangs around your neck -- to throw your best, and by "best" I obviously mean "worst," date/relationship-fuckup story at me in the comments. Most embarrassing story wins a box of chocolates I'll purchase tomorrow when everything has been marked down 75 percent. Fo' really, people! I look forward to hearing from you.

On the political tip, again.

Last week I pointed out how my sister actually does this political-discourse bit a whole lot better than I ever have. Turns out she's just the tip of the iceberg (surprise, surprise). Here's a sampling of some of the best political stuff I've read in the blogosphere in the past week or so:

· Glenn Greenwald wrote a terrific essay about the political ideology of Bush supporters -- more specifically, whether they hew to any political ideology at all, in terms of the liberal-conservative spectrum at least, or simply view everything on a completely separate "pro-Bush/anti-Bush" spectrum. Not surprisingly, this kicked up a whole lot of righteously indignant dust on the part of pro-Bush bloggers . . . most of whom only ended up further proving Greenwald's point. You can read his follow-up post, a response to those critics, here.

I think this has relevance for not just the current political situation but the '06 and '08 elections, because I, for one, have been really curious to see how the GOP will fare in 2008 when they no longer have the supposedly mighty authority figure of W to rally voters around. Will they, as Atrios predicts, simply transfer their "authoritatian cult" onto whoever is the next GOP anointee? Or will the whole thing just fizzle out and give Democrats a much-needed boost? I'm interested to hear what everyone has to say about this, but particularly you Republicans out there.

· Paul Waldman wrote an interesting piece for Washington Monthly punching even more holes into the myth of the "liberal media," specifically as it pertains to the Sunday-morning political gab shows, who have shown a marked preference for conservative guests since long before Bush even got elected. I've long wondered how these programs can claim that an avowedly conservative commentator like Charles Krauthammer or Fred Barnes is somehow "balanced out" by an objective reporter (i.e. in non-columnist) from a news outlet such as the Washington Post or NPR. The standard conservative rejoinder to that, of course, is that "NPR isn't nothin' but a bunch of liberals anyway," but I have yet to hear anyone provide a speck of proof to that effect.

· At the blog Hullabaloo, Digby delivers a stirring response to the "Joementum Democrats" who seem to think that the best way for Democrats to regain power in Washington is to never criticize or dissent with the Bush administration, but rather to just paddle along in their wake and a-wish and a-hope that the American voting public appreciates their deference and obedience enough to vote for them. Right, because that worked great in 2002. Digby also pulls up a quote from Rush Limbaugh that sort of puts the Dick Cheney hunting-accident story in an interesting light, particularly considering the lengths some right-wingers have gone to to minimize the accident and/or act like anyone who even brings it up is a horrible, horrible person. If Rush Limbaugh can go around continuing to slander Hillary Clinton by claiming that she shot Vince Foster, then I'm not going to feel too much pity for Cheney for, you know, actually shooting someone.

· Just in case anyone was curious, George W. Bush, still not popular.

Separatin' the men from the boys.

College Football News has the list of 2006 SEC football schedules up along with brief analysis of how well each team can expect to do. All in all, their predictions of best-case, worst-case, and probable scenarios look pretty accurate, and their outlook for Georgia is promising; they have the Dawgs' "realistic record" for 2006 at 9-3, which is pretty much what I told Dan from What's the Good Word in our Q&A on recruiting and the outlook for 2006. CFN also says Georgia's "barring total disaster worst-case record" is 7-5, which, while certainly not up to the level of the last 4 seasons, is not wrist-slittingly bad for a team breaking in a brand-new QB and plenty of players in important spots on defense.

Given all the talk recently about "The Movement" (as started by T. Kyle King) to upgrade Georgia's out-of-conference schedule by booking a date with the Michigan Wolverines, I found it interesting, too, that as far as OOC schedules go, Georgia really has nothing to be ashamed of this year, at least in comparison to the rest of the SEC. Colorado and Georgia Tech, while not exactly national-title-contending powerhouses, are still competitive BCS squads who have a combined 9 bowl appearances in the last five years; and while I know I'm biased regarding anything UAB-related, the Blazers have a habit of almost always playing SEC teams tougher than they have any right to -- just ask Georgia's 2003 team, who barely squeaked by UAB on Homecoming Saturday. Better yet, ask LSU's 2000 team, who who got humiliated by UAB for their homecoming game. In Tiger Stadium. (I'm not wild about admitting it, but that's one more win in Baton Rouge than Georgia has the last 6 seasons.) Without the shoulders of man-beast QB Darrell Hackney to dump entire games on, UAB might actually be a better, more balanced squad than they were last year.

The only real eye-roller on Georgia's '06 schedule is the season-opening opponent, DI-AA Western Kentucky. I'll reiterate my call for Georgia to refrain from scheduling any more I-AA opponents outside of the every-five-years-or-so raging kegger with Georgia Southern.


This picture wasn't even taken at a football game; Pat Hill is actually screaming at a Red Lobster server who got his order wrong. Yes, he makes his players dress like that all the time.

However, the Pat Hill Trophy for OOC Ballsiness goes to Tennessee for putting Cal, Air Force, Marshall, and Memphis on the schedule. Now, it doesn't look all that imposing at first blush, and lord knows I'd rather pull my own toenails out with pliers than say anything complimentary about the Vols, but Cal is going to be very good next year, Air Force should be much improved (assuming Fisher DeBerry has been able to recruit some of those speedy black folk he was raving about last season), and I was surprised UT agreed to play Memphis ever again after getting punked by the Tigers back in 1996. I also have to give Tennessee some credit for not using a disastrous season as an excuse to bitch out of any of these challenging OOC commitments, like some other SEC schools I could name.

Runner-up for the Hill Award: Georgia, of course, though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that LSU scheduled Hill's own team, the Fresno State Bulldogs, for a home date on October 21.


Former Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, deep in thought. When you're going up against the likes of Florida International, you know it's going to be a chess match.

Not surprisingly, though, the competition was far more heated for the Bill Snyder Commemorative Golden Skirt Award for Pansy OOC Scheduling, and in the end it came down to a neck-and-neck race between Alabama and South Carolina. But as with their regular-season matchup last year, the Crimson Tide has emerged the winner. Here's their non-SEC slate: September 2, at home against a Hawaii team that will have to travel 5,000 miles just to get to Tuscaloosa; two weeks later, at home against Louisiana-Monroe, 'nuff said; October 7, at home against Duke (though I wait with bated breath for the Tide fans to start trying to convince people this is a real test because Duke is, after all, a BCS-conference team); and October 28, at home against Florida International. For a total of eight home games, which has to be some kind of record. Along with the Golden Skirt trophy, each of Alabama's players will take home a prize package including a Hello Kitty purse, a charm bracelet, and a one-year subscription to Sassy.

Runner-up: South Carolina, who only missed top honors because of their traditional season-ending game against Clemson (a road game this year). The rest of their out-of-conference slate: Wofford, Florida Atlantic, and MTSU. Also, Auburn has officially forfeited any right to whine about a potential BCS snub after booking Washington State (yeah, they kick ass about twice every decade -- 2006 isn't going to be one of those times), Buffalo, Tulane, and Arkansas State. No prize packages for y'all, but . . . what the hell, subscriptions to Sassy all around.


Buffalo, Tulane, and ASU? I feel like I'm in a sassy sandwich!

Intersectional matchup not involving Georgia I'm most looking forward to: Probably Tennessee-Cal, but LSU-Fresno should be a pretty fun one, too. LSU's fans have a rep for being some of the most confrontational in the country, but Pat Hill will be having none of that. (If you need more explanation of what I'm talking about, I've never read a better analogy for Fresno's "fuck it" attitude than Ian's right here.) Plus the inter-conference Rivalry Week matchups like SC-Clemson and Florida-FSU are always good ones. Florida State, in particular, hasn't been able to live without rageahol since last year's rump-thrashing by the Gators. Whether that motivation will be enough to overcome the Sooper Genius playcalling of Jeff Bowden, however, remains to be seen.

Well played, Lavine . . . well played.

I was going to mention something about this weekend incident in which Dick Cheney accidentally capped some dude while hunting, and I was going to make the probably obvious joke about how Cheney must've really been on some kind of rampage if he was intending to shoot Quayle but got a different guy instead -- but first I thought, "You know, I better check to see if anyone else has made that joke already," and then I thought, "If anyone made it, it's Matt Lavine," so I went over to Basket Full of Puppies, and . . . sure enough, he already had. Bastard!

Still, I have to give Lavine props for wading into the FreeRepublic forums to gauge the nutcase right-winger reaction to the incident -- which is certainly more than I would've bothered to do -- which reveals that the Freepers managed to wait 65 entire posts before re-accusing Hillary Clinton of assassinating Vince Foster, 69 posts before fantasizing about George W. Bush shooting Cindy Sheehan . . . and 66 before the light bulb went on and someone made a Quayle joke. I'm telling you, six years of complete Republican control in Washington have made the Freepers complacent -- those guys are slipping.

The only time in my life I'll ever play Fashion Police.

Thanks to TBOGG I've been having fun the last couple days browsing through Go Fug Yourself's archives of rampant, unchecked celebrity bad taste; and I knew this was the kind of thing baby sis would be all over, given that it plugs right into both her day job (fashion journalism) and her after-hours hobby (merciless snarking).

Still, both GFY and baby sis approach this topic from the women-critiquing-women angle, and while they're certainly the ones most qualified to do so, that doesn't mean a man (like myself, for instance) can't get in on the belittlement, too. Because -- at the risk of sounding horribly sexist here -- when a woman gets all dressed up to go out, there's a good chance that at least part of her motivation for doing so is to grab the attention of whatever dudes happen to be out and about that evening. And though GFY and Practically Harmless certainly have enough expertise in the area of fashion to be able to offer reasonably informed opinions as to what guys like and what they don't, the only way you're going to get 100-percent airtight dope on what men think is to ask a man.

So I thought I'd give everyone out there some insight as to what guys don't want to see when they go out to bars, clubs, parties, orgies, whatever to meet women. Now, if you're a female and your purpose for getting dressed up on a Friday or Saturday night is not to pick up a guy -- you're in a stable relationship, you've decided you don't need a man to be happy, you're saving yourself for Jesus, whatever -- then feel free to take all this with a Costco economy-sized grain of salt. Otherwise, pay attention, because I'm trying to help you here, and evidently some of y'all need it. Now, I don't pretend to speak for every single straight man out there, but with most of this stuff I have a feeling I speak for a large majority of them. And I know there's a chance you may see something on this list and be like, "Hey! I wear that pretty regularly and I never have a problem getting guys!", and that may well be the case, but when a guy sizes you up at the bar on a Saturday night, the lack of the following fashion items on your person could mean the difference between "Wow, this looks like a girl I really want to get to know" and "She's hot, I guess -- I just hope I can hit it and sneak out the back door before she asks me my last name." Yes, it's horrible, but we men are just shallow enough that gaucho pants can potentially be the dealbreaker in terms of us ever calling you again.

OK, I've said too much. Let's begin.


1. Mukluks
Every year there's at least one female fashion trend that becomes outrageously popular despite flying in the face of logic, sense, good taste, cultural appropriateness, pretty much everything. This past year, evidently buoyed by the beief that Ugg boots just weren't stupid enough, we have mukluks. Because when you women aren't around, when we guys are sitting around drinking beers and halfheartedly watching an NFL game we're interested in only to see how well our fantasy players are doing, we have conversations just like this: "Man, you know who's hot? Eskimos. God, I would nail an Eskimo in a heartbeat. Those round faces, windburned cheeks, and especially the big bulky furry clothes . . . anytime a National Geographic comes in the mail and the cover story's about the Yukon Territory or Siberia, I practically have to hide it under my mattress."

I mean, I was a little frightened when the absurdly-pointy-toed-shoe trend really started blowing up, because for a while all I could think about was what would happen if I ever had to take a shot in the nuts from one of those. In retrospect, though, I didn't realize how good we had it -- they were a little scary, but after a while they got to looking sexy. Mukluks, it's safe to say, will never be sexy. Particularly in freaking Birmingham, where even in the dead of winter it's rare to see the temperature venture below 45. Rarer still to see enough snow on the ground that you could wear these and not look like you belonged in a padded cell. Ladies, unless your job is transferring you to Ketchikan or Yellowknife, you're better off burning these things for warmth than wearing them.


2. Gaucho pants
Another semiannual trend seems to be that somebody, somewhere, makes a concerted effort to fuck up pants. Pants! After socks, probably the simplest item of clothing ever invented! Simplest and most effective, yet the designers just can't leave well enough freaking alone. First they threw capris at us, cutting pants off just below the knees and thereby flaunting the calves in a way that would leave only 2 percent of the female population looking attractive. When that fizzled out, they made the cuffs so bizarrely wide that they hide a woman's entire foot and leave her looking like a slightly fancier version of the skateboarders I hung out with in the Denny's parking lot when I was in high school. But a few months ago somebody decided to combine the worst features of capri pants and the weird-ass wide-leg trousers and dredge up the gaucho. I'm sorry, but every time I see these, I think, "Damn, someone forgot to change out of their jammies before they left the house." Ladies, is your pop-culture memory that short? Don't you realize what gauchos are? They're a shorter version of Hammer pants. Nine times out of ten I guarantee you that's the first person a guy thinks of when he sees you wearing these. We can't touch this? Maybe not, but we don't want to, either.


3. Jeans tucked into boots
It was casual Friday today, and everyone in my office took advantage by rockin' the jeans. Notably, however, none of us tucked them into anything. I had Timberlands on today, and I didn't tuck my jeans into those; our editorial assistant Cindy had on New Balance running shoes, and they too went unsullied by the tucking of jeans. So why have women everywhere risen up and arbitrarily declared, "OK, but these kinds of shoes are OK to tuck jeans into"? Basically, there are only two kinds of people who should be tucking their pants into their footwear -- cowboys and fishermen. Anyone else just looks like they left New Orleans after the levees broke and they didn't want to get their brand-new Calvin Klein jeans wet. Either that, or they look like they're wearing knickers. And while I'm sure there are guys out there who've had a Great Expectations fetish ever since reading it in high school, that subset is probably not big enough for it to be truly worthwhile to go out in public with the faux-knicker look. You're probably better off just sticking to Internet chat rooms for that kind of thing.


4. Mom Jeans
I can't even begin to describe my utter stupefaction upon learning that high-waist "Mom Jeans" were making a comeback of sorts. I mean, sure, the backlash against low-rise jeans was destined to be dramatic, but dear God, did it have to come to this? As much joy as I derive from making fun of overweight girls muffin-topping around the mall in inappropriately low-rise jeans, I will give that up completely if it means I never have to see another pair of Mom Jeans ever again.


5. Hats of pretty much any kind
I know I'm taking a risk here by issuing such a blanket condemnation, but outside of inclement weather, a funeral, or hair that hasn't been washed in a week, there's really no reason for a woman in the 21st century to go out in public wearing a hat. I think it's because the choice of hats available to women these days just seem so . . . affected, like Madonna trying to pull off that fake-ass British accent. Just sitting there on top of your head, a hat is hard to ignore, and that's the whole point, but there comes a point where you need to start embracing subtlety. A hat is basically the stylistic equivalent of walking around a bar with a megaphone shouting, "Look at me, I'm spunky/British/bohemian/ rugged/blah blah whatever!" OK. WE GET IT. Yet you may be surprised to learn that what you think your hat says about you and what it actually says are rarely, if ever, the same thing:

(a) Cowboy hat
What you think it says: "I'm a wild Western girl who's free to do whatever she wants, and nobody but a rugged man of the open range is fit to take me home!"
What it really says: "I just won third place in a wet T-shirt contest in Panama City."

(b) Newsboy cap
What you think it says: "I'd rather be in the East Village and/or London. That's how you can tell I'm intellectual and stuff."
What it really says: "Hopefully this hides the fact that I haven't washed my hair since Monday."

(c) Bucket hat
What you think it says: "I'm whimsical, cute, and carefree!"
What it really says: "I'm wearing something whose name has the word 'bucket' in it -- you think I still give a shit? Check back with me in a month's time and there'll be 20 more pounds under this thing."

(d) Baseball cap
I have to clarify this one, because in the right environment (a sporting event, the beach) or with the right logo (Georgia, the University of Georgia, UGA, the Bulldogs), girls can actually use this to look cute and spunky while also showing that they can appreciate sports and be one of the guys. Outside of those circumstances, however, see (c).


6. Skirts worn over pants
The fact that I even need to mention how retarded this looks indicates how much we've lost our way as a society. How is it that suspenders and a belt is considered ridiculous, but wearing a skirt over pants is OK? I'm pretty sure that there are senior citizens with Alzheimer's rocking this same look somewhere -- they put on a pair of pants, and then five minutes later they forget they put the pants on, so they throw on a skirt just to be on the safe side. That's what you want to look like?


7. Any item of clothing bearing words like "sexy," "cutie," "hottie," etc.
Rule of thumb, ladies: If Tara Reid's doing it, it's probably a bad idea. Here's another: I don't know who first said it -- I originally heard it from rock critic David Fricke -- but one of my favorite quotes of all time is "Cool don't advertise." In other words, if you have to emblazon a word like "sexy" or "hottie" across your chest (or ass) to convince the world that's what you are, guess what? It's not working. And in the rare instance a guy actually is gazing approvingly at whatever word is written on your shirt, ladies, I guarantee you that whatever you think is printed there, the word he's actually seeing is "EASY."

Boy, I'm glad I got that off my chest, aren't you? Now, you may be sitting there wondering, "Well, that's all well and good, now we know what guys don't want women to wear, but what do they want them to wear?" Duh, a miniskirt, bustier, g-string, and knee-high boots. I mean, I thought that was pretty well established. Or if you want to simplify things, a Playboy Bunny costume will do the trick. Dude, it's not like you can't throw a skirt on over it!

Not the Friday Random Ten.

Instead, I thought I'd try out something I've seen at Ian's joint and a few other places recently -- the iTunes Survey, and I love crap like this, because I'm firmly convinced that if our iTunes playlists somehow manage to survive the next seven or eight millennia, future archaeologists are going to treat these as the Lascaux cave paintings of our generation.

How many songs: 2,686

Sort by song
First song: "'Two More Sips!'," Patton Oswalt, I guess because of the quotes
Last song: " ," DJ Shadow, (if you have "Endtroducing," you know which one this is)

Sort by artist
First artist: 10,000 Maniacs
Last artist: ZZ Top

Sort by time
Shortest song: "Jim Backus," 3rd Bass, 0:03 (oddly enough, not "Short Songs" by the Dead Kennedys)
Longest song: Underworld's live set from the 2002 Creamfields festival, 1:01:38 (longest single song: "An American in Paris" performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, 18:29)

Sort by album
First album: "(The Best of) New Order," New Order
Last Album: "Zooropa," U2

Top Three Most Played Songs (I had to go to the iPod well for this, since I rarely listen to iTunes when I'm at home)
1. "Rotating Heads," The English Beat (9)
2. "Otter Rock," The Chemical Brothers (6)
T3. "Lazy Sunday," Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg (yes, from "Saturday Night Live")/"Heard 'Em Say," Kanye West/ "Aéroplanes" (Readymade mix), Serge Gainsbourg (4)

Song That First Comes Up On Shuffle
"I Think You Flooded It," David Holmes

Search . . .
by "sex," how many songs come up? 25
by "death," how many songs come up? 8
by "love," how many songs come up? 123
by "you," how many songs come up? 276

Thursday photoblogging.

Now that I finally have a camera, I figured it was time to actually post some of the pictures I've taken with it (which I suspect was the hope of the "anonymous benefactor" who gave it to me in the first place). These are some pictures I've taken with it in the last month or so here in Birmingham and up in Annapolis a few weeks ago:


First picture I took with the new camera -- of the dog, of course.


Me and my friend Jamie going out for New Year's. See how I kept my eyes closed? I do that in all the pictures of me that would otherwise be cool -- it's just my way of saying, "I'm so fly I don't need to keep my eyes open, cousin." Too real for you to handle.


The old Methodist church at Five Points, right near my apartment.


Looking the other way from Five Points. That's what's left of the sunset in the background, not a raging four-alarm fire on the UAB campus.


This is Jenna with Chez Fon Fon hostess/dogsitter extraordinaire Autumn, who usually takes care of her while I'm out of town.


This is me on my trip to Maryland last month. That building behind me? Is the Naval Academy's dorms. (To all the fellow Georgia alums out there who might be wondering: Yes, they put UGA's dorms to shame.)


Now for the interactive portion: This is me a) at the shore of the Chesapeake Bay with the Bay Bridge in the background or b) me being a complete dumbass, since it was about 30 degrees that morning and the lake-effect wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour while this picture was being taken. The seafoam you see on the shore behind me is actually frozen. That very faint sound you hear is my mom yelling "Where the f$#! is your jacket?!?" from somewhere in Georgia.

Nepotism: It's what's for breakfast.

As I've mentioned before, I've noticed the quantity of political stuff declining on this blog, and part of the reason is because I just can't get quite as fired up about it as I used to. But there's another reason, and that reason is that just about everything I want to say, my sister has said better and more incisively. I don't know whether it's because I've regressed or something, but lately if something of a political nature does get my dander up it seems like I can't comment on it without making snarky inappropriate remarks about the people involved and usually throwing in a "douchebag," "assface," or some similar construction in there. But baby sis, bless her heart, has no such problem, and you'd do well to check her blog out regularly if you don't already do so.

I've been aware of this for some time, but her most recent post, about the Danish cartoon controversy (God, I feel stupid just writing those words), made it especially clear. I've been so disgusted by the whole affair that my response has pretty much boiled down to "Europeans are unfunny-cartoon-drawing dillbags, and the Muslims who are rioting and setting fires over it appear to be no more mature than your average tantrum-throwing six-year-old, GOOD F$#!ING JOB, EVERYBODY." But Ann, coherent thinker that she is -- and excellent writer, one who pretty much puts my ass to shame -- instead has this:

. . . Notably, while Danish Muslims protested peacefully when the cartoons were originally published last fall, the violent protests didn't start until they were republished in European newspapers - in the name of freedom of speech.

It might surprise you to know that I think that is the absolute stupidest reason to do something. Toddlers, overindulged teenagers and dictators use the because I can excuse. Exercising your rights simply because you have them is perfectly legal, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Nose cut; face spited.

I think this hits particularly close to home for me because of my love of and respect for my First Amendment rights. They make it possible to do my job during the day and then go home and blog at night (or during the day when I'm supposed to be doing my job). My freedom of expression is what allows me to post as I do, to be as critical of the president as I want to be, to be shocking or outrageous or un-PC as it serves my purpose. I really, really like that.

When you have something that you truly respect and appreciate, you neither leave it unused in the box or throw it around like a baseball. When I post something inflammatory or controversial, whether I'm being sincere or sarcastic or being a Devil's Advocate, I have a reason for doing what I do and a message I'm trying to get across. I don't post controversial messages for the hell of it, because I know that pushing at the boundaries of my rights just for the sake of pushing is a lousy way to treat something I love. It's an infantile, "I'm-not-touching-you-I'm-not-touching-you" approach to freedom of expression.

At the risk of sounding like Glenn Reynolds, read the whole thing. I don't agree with every last thing she had to say, but she did manage to get her point across coherently and convincingly, and without the word "douche" appearing anywhere in the post.

Liberals and conservatives alike spend a lot of time complaining these days about how the political tone in Washington and elsewhere has become completely incoherent and uncivil, and they also spend a lot of time complaining about how this is all the other guys' fault. But whether you're liberal or conservative, Christian or non-Christian, Southerner or Yankee, whatever, and you want to be exposed to some actual reasonable political thought, take a gander over to baby sis's blog every once in a while. You'll be glad you did.

Tuesday Mystery Meat.

Damn, I should've done this yesterday a.m. -- "Monday Morning Mystery Meat" just sounds funnier. But anyway, this is just a grab bag of too-short-to-waste-an-entire-post-on flotsam, including the Simpsons, right-wing turdwits, and . . . boobies!:

· For the two or three of you who still care, the college-football-teams-as-"Simpsons"-characters post has been updated again -- and given that I finally achieved my goal of cramming UAB in there, probably for the last time.

· This may seem like a suspect topic to discuss right after dredging up the "Simpsons" post again, but has any group of political pundits burned through its 15 minutes quicker and in more embarrassing fashion than the Bush groupies at Power Line? If you're not familiar with Power Line, they're the guys who debunked the "Mapes memo" that purported to prove Bush's non-service in the Alabama National Guard during Vietnam, thereby getting Dan Rather ushered out the door at CBS a few months earlier than planned. For this top-notch job of font dissection, they won Time's "Blog of the Year" award, and have pretty much coasted on it ever since -- between that award and their association with the world-class joke that is "Pajamas Media," they appear to fancy themselves hard-hitting journalists (though anybody who could write this with a straight face is no more engaged in serious journalism than, well, I am). It appears that the Power Tools finally went into the red on the Self-Parody-O-Meter this week in their lame attempt to grill Sen. Dick Durbin over the legality of Bush's secret wiretapping program. Durbin says he's never heard of Power Line or Pajamas Media, and the best the Power Line guy can clap back with is a sputtering "Dan Rather knows something about it!" Dude. You guys have become the conserva-blog equivalent of Scott Stapp, dredging up the one old hit nobody really cares about anymore to try and make yourselves look relevant (or pull some underage tail at a Denny's). Here you are squaring off with Dick Durbin, a guy who cried in front of the entire Senate last year, and he just pwn3d your ass.

· A Danish newspaper publishes an editorial cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad. Muslims all over the globe go apeshit. An Iranian newspaper retaliates by soliciting cartoons making fun of the Holocaust. Congratulations, Islam, you've fallen hook, line, and sinker for a "You suck"/"No, you suck" sissyfight so lame I can remember witnessing ones exactly like it . . . back in the third grade. "He's gonna make a cartoon about me? Ooooh, I'm gonna make a cartoon about him!" Except it's especially stupid because they're making cartoons about Jews -- they're not even making cartoons about Denmark, who started this whole thing to begin with. Although I have to admit, aside from butter cookies, Hamlet or Helena Christensen, I can't think of anything Danish-specific to make fun of right off the top of my head.


Yes, it's ridiculous, but that's still one more hit than Deion was ever willing to make.

· Look, I'm about as easily distracted by female T&A as any man currently living, but I still have to ask, is there anybody in America who honestly finds this sexy? "We're gonna have models in lingerie!" OK, I'm listenin'! "And they're gonna be wearing pads!" Uh . . . kinda weird, but OK . . . "And helmets!" Um . . . what? "And that black stuff that football players put under their eyes!" OK, I think we're officially done here. Who would actually pay thirty bucks for this? That's more than actual porn. Not to mention you can pay one-fifth that for this at your local Joe Muggs. Or to put it another way, given the choice between watching two hours of the Lingerie Bowl or fifteen minutes of "LCI Matin," I'm willing to read subtitles.


If Melissa Theuriau is taking the field, it could be the Burlap Sack Bowl and I'd still watch.

· On a random perusal through my referral log this morning, I found that the first 20 search-engine queries that brought people to this site included: "sisters naked"; "hot lesbians"; "hot whore"; "jenny and barbara Bush sexy"; "bikini chain gang naked"; "naked news videos"; "whore woman"; "hot lesbians"; "naked sisters"; "naked in shower"; "look my naked ass"; "koran fuck"; and "children pageant winner pictures." Is it bad that the last one was the one that creeped me out the most?

· And finally, for the interactive portion of Mystery Meat, which suit do we prefer: LSU signee Charles Deas, in an item from the Silky Johnston Signature Collection, or Tennessee men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl, wearing a one-of-a-kind creation called "Cône du Trafic" from Emporio Phillippe Fulmér?


Next stop: Player Haters' Ball! (Photos ganked from Paul Westerdawg).

Confessions of a Techie, part II.

Never let it be said that at Hey Jenny Slater we don't love our enemies. Republicans? SUV drivers? Georgia Tech fans? Hell, we gots nothin' but love for 'em, cousin! Especially the Techies. In fact, we went so far as to break virtual Internet bread with one last November in advance of the big Georgia-Georgia Tech tilt, just to give the non-Clean-Old-Fashioned-Hate-initiated amongst you a chance to see what makes Georgia fans and Techies so different.

With meaningful football now over with until August or so, us addicts have resorted to talking recruiting and making wild-ass, off-the-cuff predictions about next season just to tide us over -- it's pretty much the equivalent of an alcoholic raiding the pantry and drinking all the vanilla extract. But it's fun! And what better way to share the love than with a Tech fan? Please welcome Dan, purveyor of the blog What's the Good Word and self-confessed Tech fan, who was kind enough to join in on a sort-of-roundtable about recruiting, prospects for 2006, and of course all the things that make the Bulldog-Yellow Jacket rivalry so unique. Dan sent me his questions, I sent him mine, we answered 'em, and posted them for your consideration (my answers to his questions are posted here). (Nathan from Golden Tornado, who participated in the November Q&A, may follow in a little bit.)

As a side note, Dan is, like myself, a former resident of the teeming metropolis of Columbus, Georgia. We didn't go to the same high school, though -- I went to Hardaway, he went to Brookstone, Columbus's biggest private school. When I found that out, I had to feel flattered that he would take time out of his busy schedule reading The Robb Report and beating his servants to respond to my inquiries. (OK, I had to make one joke.) All right, enough! On with the questions:


1. Without feeling compelled to compare yourselves to the typical SEC fan -- who, for better or worse, follows pretty much everything football-related to a degree bordering on rabid obsession -- how closely does the typical Georgia Tech fan follow recruiting? Is it a bigger or smaller deal now than when Ross and/or O'Leary were coaching?

This question alone makes it worthwhile that I participated in this roundtable. I personally hardly follow football recruiting at all. Basketball recruiting is another matter, but I really only check in on football recruiting on signing day and see how we did.

As for the average Tech fan, I would say the online contingent follows it rather closely. Being somewhat numbers-based, they flock like flies to shit for this stuff. I would say they are still less fanatic than, say, those folks that were using flight records to figure out who coaches were potentially visiting. We're obsessed, not psychotic.



In the matter of People vs. So-Called Recruiting Experts Who Think They're So Smart But Don't Really Know Shit, we respectfully submit Calvin Johnson as People's Exhibit Q . . .

2. As has been said many times, recruiting rankings don't necessarily mean squat when the players actually strap on the pads and take the field -- Calvin Johnson, who certainly wasn't pegged as an automatic superstar when Tech snagged him in 2004, being a prime example. So what's your reaction to the general consensus among sportswriters and so-called recruiting "experts" that Tech signed kind of a supermarket-brand recruiting class in 2006?

I tend to think they have some points, but at the same time with probation and scholarship limits we probably did about as well as we could. I firmly believe we have some 3-stars in [Demaryius] Thomas and [Jamaal] Evans that could contribute a lot more than expected early on. And we do seem to have a solid track record of diamond-in-the-rough-type players. James Johnson, for, instance was a 2-star player and I think he will be our entrenched #2 receiver next year. As well as a larger big-play threat than Bilbo was.

So I guess my consensus is that on paper they might be right, but I don't judge a class until we start getting some legitimate on-the-field performances. I see a good number of redshirts in that class. So it will be at least 2-3 years before we'll know who is right.


3. Since Chan Gailey shocked pretty much the entire country -- the Georgia Tech fan base not least among them -- by going down to the Orange Bowl and knocking off Miami, he has lost again to Georgia (albeit in a very close game), gotten embarrassed by Utah in the Emerald Bowl, and lost arguably his biggest and most important supporter in Tech AD Dave Braine. On Signing Day, he made some off-the-cuff comments about not really being concerned with the fan base's reaction to his latest recruiting class that, if I read you guys correctly, didn't sit too well with Jacket Nation. Assuming that Tech's next AD is a "neutral party" regarding Gailey -- in other words, a Tech "outsider" without Braine's sense of obligation and/or loyalty to Chan -- what are the chances that the new AD shows Gailey the door if the Jackets go 6-6 in '06? Or to look at it a different way, what circumstances do you think there would have to be before the administration would be willing to fire Gailey and eat the remaining years on his contract extension?

I don't think Chan's leaving in '06. Not with the new extension, but I think if he goes 6-6 next year, the offense sputters yet again, Reggie shows little to no improvement yet again, and he remains obstinate about hiring a real OC for '07 then he better get his resume in order. Chan has been his own worst enemy in his years with his headstrong refusal to get a real OC out there and his insistence on playing a guy that's possibly an NFL DB as his quarterback.

The biggest issue for the next 1-2 years is how competitive we are in games against teams better than us, whether or not we drop a game to a team worse than us, and if we have yet another inexplicable performance a la the Emerald Bowl this year, UNC last year, and Duke the year before that. Sometimes a good team loses to a bad team, but we've been a supposedly good team that gets our ass handed to us by a bad team at least once a year. (And I don?t care what anybody says, this year's Utah team was a BAD team.) Then again, we're interviewing the dumbass AD from Missouri, so maybe we'll finally have all three stooges in place for next year.


4. In 2004, Georgia beat Georgia Tech by only six points, and while it was a close game for a while, as a Georgia fan I never really felt like the Bulldogs were in serious danger of losing. Last year, Georgia's margin of victory was slightly greater (seven points), yet I was on edge for nearly the entire game and refused to breathe a sigh of relief until the final kneeldown. What were your reactions to the '05 game, and how do you feel Tech has narrowed the gap versus UGA since the blowout in 2002?

The blowout in '02 was about preparation, so I never felt the gap was as big on the field as it appeared between the two teams. The truth was that Richt had his team ready to play a rivalry game and Gailey didn't. Which once again touches on my biggest complaint of the Chan Gailey era, the lack of mental preparation from the head coach.

Even though the score was smaller, I always felt the '03 game showed a much larger gap in talent between both teams. We played fairly well in that game and just got pushed around the field by a larger, stronger, and more talented team.

As for the '05 game, I really felt we had a shot to win that one and just came up a little bit short. Some of it was on-the-field performance -- Reggie lost his head yet again in a big game. Some of it was coaching again -- I just looked at the stats and we had 3 different players average over 4 yards rushing on the day, but with no touchdowns. And some of it was just some credit needing to be given to UGA for stepping up and making plays when they needed to. I was upset at the end of the game, but I never felt like we gave up ('02), got dominated ('03), or missed a chance to steal a game we should have lost badly ('04).


You can't really see the scoreboard behind Michael Johnson, but it says Georgia 51, Georgia Tech 7. Don't listen to Dan -- that was a fun night.


5. It's no real secret that, based on his lack of success against the Bulldogs, most Georgia fans would be perfectly happy to see Chan Gailey stay at Tech forever. On some message boards at the AJC and other places there's even an unofficial group of Georgia folks calling themselves the "fans of Chan." Does this bother you as a Tech fan, or does it pretty much roll right off your back?

I worry much more about what our own fans say than what opposing fans say. In reality, I don't care much about anybody else?s opinion but my own. Let's just say I don't hold very high expectations for humanity in general. I do however appreciate a good sense of humor (the reason I like Paul Westerdawg and JeromeFromDecatur so much). I think opposing fans with a good sense of humor do a lot to keep your own fans honest in terms of expectations. Of course the college football world is filled with about a half-million Rodney Farvas that think they are the next Henny Youngman. So I?m not bothered by ?the jokes,? just how really fucking stupid most of them are.


6. At least from what I've been able to ascertain, Tech's losses to graduation this year aren't going to be debilitating, and they should bring a reasonably experienced squad to the table in 2006. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech will have to recover from the Marcus Vick turmoil and break in a new QB, Virginia will also be very green at QB and at some of the other skill positions, Miami has some major soul-searching (and assistant-coach-searching) to do, and North Carolina and Duke . . . are, well, North Carolina and Duke. So what do you think are Tech's real prospects for winning a division title in the ACC this season -- and what are their prospects for finally knocking off the Dawgs?

I think a division title is a possibility for next year's team, but a lot will revolve around QB play and if the offensive line grew enough for us to go back to being a primarily run-first team. I gripe a lot about the playcalling, but it was never that we were vanilla-looking. If vanilla wins games then I am perfectly happy. What I couldn't stand was going into lead-protection offense with 15 minutes left in the game and a 3-point lead. How we mix being aggressive with being smart and whether or not we stick with our QB's strengths will be a big deciding factor in how we do in the ACC next year.

As for the UGA question, I think next year might really be our shot for a while. With the sanctions we're going to have a definitive gap built over the next 3 years, so we need to catch you while we're a fairly veteran squad and you're busy truly having to break in a new QB. I don't count D.J. as a new QB since he received so many snaps over his career. In my opinion it's a good year for you guys and a bad year for us for this game to be in Athens. That might do a lot to close the gap. How we look over the course of the season will do a lot to determine my opinion going into this game as well.


Gailey says you will run it up the middle and f$#!ing like it!

And now for the obligatory post-Super Bowl post.

Well, I was right about Pittsburgh's half of the final score, at least, and they can't take that away from me. As far as being wrong about everything else, though, getting to watch former Bulldog Hines Ward pick up Super Bowl MVP honors sure salves whatever pain there was from that. The option pass from Randle-El that scored the game-icing touchdown was a thing of beauty, but honestly, given that Pittsburgh's starting offensive 11 includes three guys who started at QB at some point in their college careers, you almost have to wonder why they don't run that kind of thing every other play. (Wonder if D.J. Shockley should just go ahead and start looking for a condo in Pittsburgh now?)

Other things that were fun to watch:

· The pregame parade of previous Super Bowl MVPs, which included three ex-Redskins: Mark Rypien, Doug Williams (w00t) and crazy bastard John Riggins. Honestly, if I'd just come out and told you that there was a white RB who amounted to anything in the NFL as recently as 1985, your first inclination would've been to put me in a white padded room, wouldn't it?

· The FedEx commercial with the cavemen, which gets my honor for best commercial of the night. (Runners-up: The Bud Light "sheep streaker" ad and the MasterCard ad with MacGyver.)

· A halftime show that didn't suck, and I hope that recent halftime-show successes from U2, Paul McCartney, and the Stones -- particularly when combined with the very high-profile fiascoes from Justin Timberlake/Janet Jackson and Ashlee Simpson (in last year's Orange Bowl) -- mean that we have officially closed the door on the era of teenybopper pop acts in football halftime programming. I'm still confounded by the logic of someone who can look at the overall community on NFL fans and think, "I think what these people are really clamoring for is a guy who used to be in N'Sync."

· The fact that Aaron Neville's pre-game rendition of the national anthem was almost a carbon copy of Horatio Sanz's performance parodizing Neville in the previous night's episode of "Saturday Night Live."

· Bill Cowher finally winning one. Honestly, when you think "hard-ass NFL coach," aren't that mustache and that chin two of the first things that pop into your head? I'm counting on the guys at EDSBS to devote a Very Special "Mustache Wednesday" to The Cowher.


Finally a legitimate dark-horse candidate to play Magnum, P.I. How could I not have thought of this before?

One obligatory Super Bowl post, comin' right up . . .

I say "obligatory" because, as you've no doubt realized if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, any Super Bowl that doesn't include the Redskins automatically has two big strikes against it in terms of capturing my interest. Now, football has always been the one sport I will make a point to watch even if I don't particularly care about either of the teams participating; which distinguishes it from, say, baseball, which I like but can't really get into beyond rooting for the Braves or the continued misery of the Mets, or pro basketball, which for me occupies a level of awareness somewhere around performance art or Canadian politics. Particularly if there's nothing else on, not only will I sit down and watch a football game pitting, say, Central Southwestern Bumfuck Tech against the Greater Birmingham School for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, I can probably pick someone to root for within five minutes of kickoff. (That would be Birmingham DD&B, by the way. Underdogs and all that.)

But for the last 10 years or so -- likely coinciding with the point at which the Bulldogs began superseding my NFL loyalties in terms of which team I lived with, died with, ate, slept, and pooped -- the Super Bowl has maintained a distressing trend whereby it seems to be less and less of a big deal to me with each passing year. When I was a kid, the Super Bowl was Must-See TV pretty much every year, because there was a good chance it would feature either the 'Skins to root for or the Cowboys to root against. But the chore of picking a team to root for has gotten to the point where it now requires real physical effort on my part, as evidenced by this timeline:

1998, Green Bay vs. Denver: Liked Brett Favre, didn't buy into the whole "Shucks, wouldn't it be great if John Elway finally won a Super Bowl?" lovefest. Dude, if Elway hasn't won a SB yet, whose fault is that? Advantage: Packers.
1999, Denver vs. Atlanta: Gotta go with the semi-hometown team, naturally, although even before the big day finally rolled around all of us in Athens probably had some idea what a massive windmill we were tilting at with those guys. Advantage: Falcons.
2000, St. Louis vs. Tennessee: These were the salad days of Kurt Warner, back when you could root for him out of sheer stunned excitement rather than "Aw, don't worry, man, Eli Manning ain't shit" pity. Advantage: Rams, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping Kevin Dyson would get that one last yard and force OT.
2001, Baltimore vs. New York: Giants, feh. And if the 'Skins can't get out of bed in the morning, much less make it to a Super Bowl, I can at least plaster a smile on my face and pretend that B-more is the next best thing. Advantage: Ravens.
2002, St. Louis vs. New England: In retrospect I get a real Bizarro World feeling knowing that I ever rooted for New England based on underdog status, so I'll peg this one as the point at which my SB interest began to trend markedly downward. Best fuckin' halftime show in the history of the game, though (a compliment that probably deserves to be in Webster's under the entry for "faint praise"). Advantage: Patriots.
2003, Oakland vs. Tampa Bay: Never had much use for the Raiders; that didn't necessarily mean I was jazzed about Tampa, though. I think I only pulled for TB based on my admiration for/fear of Jon Gruden, a guy crazy enough to earn the title of "the Kool Keith of NFL head coaches." Advantage: Bucs.
2004, Carolina vs. New England: Had to listen to this one on the radio while I drove from South Carolina back to Birmingham, and the fact that I didn't make any effort to reschedule my trip should probably tell you something. Advantage: I don't even remember.
2005, New England vs. Philadelphia: Deep down I think I wanted Philly to win, but not so much Philly as Donovan McNabb, and only then so Rush Limbaugh would look like an even bigger assbag than he already did. But rooting for McNabb also meant rooting for T.O., so . . . Advantage: The special episode of "The Simpsons" that came on directly afterward.

So now we've got Pittsburgh vs. Seattle, two teams that I have absolutely nothing against and like various things about, yet I haven't been able to come up with any feelings on Super Bowl XL more insightful than "Isn't it kind of weird that in clothing sizes, 'XL' is bigger than 'L,' but in Roman numerals it's the other way around?" (Nice, huh? Came up with that while I was picking up groceries this morning. No, no, you're welcome.) I like Pittsburgh's blue-collar ethos, I like Ben Roethlisberger (starting QB for my fantasy team this year, represent), I like Bill Cowher and his mustache, I love Hines Ward; I know I told at least a few people earlier in the week I'd be rooting for Pittsburgh, and yet . . . and yet . . .

The whole media hype over this matchup is starting to sound awfully reminiscent of the hype over two other very important football games to have taken place in the past month or so. You've got a team that's a clear favorite, at least according to the oddsmakers; one team with more of a pigskin tradition, and thus what the media see as way more worthy backstories and subplots. One team that gets talked about so much on TV that you almost have to start leaving yourself Post-It notes on the fridge to remind you who the other team is.

Those two other games I'm talking about? Georgia-West Virginia in the Sugar Bowl, and USC-Texas in the Rose. And in both cases, that favorite, that supposedly superior squad, that bunch that the media just couldn't stop talking about, went down in flames. Well, at least USC's flames could be characterized as a "blaze of glory" -- Georgia's certainly couldn't, unless your usage of "blaze" is meant to imply "pot smoke," which would certainly explain why Georgia's defense seemed to be running at about half the speed of those Mountaineers who supposedly weren't worth giving a shit about.

My point is that I feel like the Steelers are kind of being shoved down my throat here, and while it's certainly easier for me to tolerate that than, say, the Cowboys, I still have to ask (and imagine this being read in the voice of one of those sorority-type girls who puts a rising inflection at the end of everything she says) -- um, there's this team? Called the Seahawks? And they're, you know, really good? Good enough to be a one seed in their conference? You know? . . .

Don't get me wrong, I still love Cowher. Still love Ruthless. Still love Hines Ward, who I hope gets 12 grabs for 200-something yards today. But I also love the city of Seattle and everything associated with it -- yes, including Starbucks; hating Starbucks is just another one of those liberal causes celebre along with "Brokeback Mountain" and the Alito nomination I just can't quite get out of bed for. Meanwhile, I can't say I've ever gotten all that jazzed about the Steel City. (Hey, I live in what was once called "the Pittsburgh of the South" -- you think that makes the ladies weak in the knees?) Seattle's got a couple Georgia guys too. And if a city already has four Super Bowl titles to its credit, then it's going to take an awful lot of effort for me to cheer them past a team that's still waiting for its first.

But the real tipping point is this: Seattle has the SeaGals, maybe the most underrated cheerleading squad in the NFL. (Yes, bogarting the title from the San Diego Chargers. It's my blog, I'll change my mind if I want to.) Whereas the Steelers have . . . the what now? No cheerleading squad whatsoever? Dude . . .


Her name is Sequoia; please try to contain your shock upon learning that she's originally from the West Coast.

It's gonna go down like this: Pittsburgh puts up a couple scores fast enough to make people think this is gonna be another 2003-style ass-pounding, but Seattle just keeps chip, chip, chipping away until Josh Brown boots the go-ahead field goal with under a minute left, 'Hawks win, 23-21. Super Bowl MVP -- oh, I don't know, let's be saucy: Hasselbeck.

Oh, and despite the best efforts of the TV censors, there will be bare nipples in the halftime show for the second time in three years. Too bad they'll be Keith's.


Turned 62 just a couple months ago. Doesn't look a day over 90.

Pink Mafia rides again!

Gay guys hate this dude and it's not because of the hair?

As if "Brokeback Mountain" wasn't getting enough attention, now we have stupefyingly hirsute film critic Gene Shalit getting tagged by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for an inappropriate choice of words in his review of the film. Just for the record, GLAAD wasn't slamming Shalit just for giving the movie a less-than-glowing review, but still, I can kind of sympathize -- every time I tell people "You know, I just don't have any interest in seeing that movie," I feel like a homophobe.

And no, I don't have any problem with gay people, or even with the thought of two gay dudes kissing -- look, I lived in Atlanta for two and a half years, so the very notion of two guys making out as "shocking" is something that I just can't help but giggle at. I think my non-interest is derived from two things, the first being just a general desire to be contrary: The more people nag at me to do something, the less I want to do it, until my attitude turns from apathy to outright opposition. It happened with the "Lord of the Rings" movies -- when the first one came out, I didn't really have any feelings about it one way or another, but the longer and longer I went without having seen it, the more people nagged and berated me for it, so finally I made the conscious decision not to see any of the LOTR flicks just to be an asshole.

But the second and perhaps more relevant reason is because I think there's a plot afoot here -- and no, right-wing nuts, it isn't gay indoctrination. Look at what this movie primarily offers: Heath Ledger, romance, guys in tight jeans, gay dudes. These are all things women love. And that's why I think "Brokeback Mountain," rather than being some big gay-indoctrination political statement, is actually the biggest stealth chick flick of our time. I mean, really, if I told you "Heath Ledger," "cowboys" and "romance" without mentioning "gay cowboys fucking," you'd think "chick flick," right? Give Ledger or Gyllenhaal a cute-but-neurotic hag and throw in a couple Harry Connick Jr. tunes and what you've got is a prequel to "Will & Grace: The Movie."

Now, I'm not going to make any judgments on the quality of the movie itself without having seen it, and I'm willing to stipulate that the acting and filmmaking talents displayed therein are top-notch. Worthy of the Best Picture Oscar . . . well, in all honesty, who cares? All I know is that neither "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" nor "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" got any Oscar nominations at all, and therefore I can only conclude that the whole process is as bogus as a football bat. And why is the Academy's opinion any more valid than mine -- or, for that matter, T. Kyle King's, which is that "The Dukes of Hazzard" wuz robbed? As I've said before, the only thing I really remember about that movie is Jessica Simpson in one tiny outfit or another, but how is my enjoyment of that any less legitimate than a so-called "discerning" filmgoer's enjoyment of Heath Ledger's gay-cowboy verisimillitude? Ledger has his God-given acting talents, Jessica has her God-given . . . uh, other things, so who among us has the right to tell anyone else which they should think is better?


T. Kyle to Jessica: "I wish I knew how to quit you."

Friday Random Ten, End of the World Edition.

Britney Spears. Kevin Federline. Tom Cruise. Katie Holmes.

As of this writing, there were three human beings in the world who had genetic material from at least one of those people. In nine months, there will be two more.

I'll pause for a moment so that you can find the razor blade, bottle of pills, or whatever tool you find most effective.

Got it now? OK, good. The Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "London"
2. The Clash, "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais"
3. The Beastie Boys, "Ask for Janice"
4. U2, "Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad"
5. Geggy Tah, "Whoever You Are"
6. INXS, "Not Enough Time"
7. Groove Armada, "Whatever, Whenever"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Come Inside"
9. R.E.M., "Radio Free Europe"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "I Want a Dog"
11. Kevin Federline, "PopoZao"

OK, the last one is a joke. Really.

Comment dites-vous "Giggedy, giggedy"?

Breaking news: George W. Bush correctly uses a multisyllabic word. We go now to LCI's Melissa Theuriau with the details. Melissa?

Well, the ballots have been tallied from the Pick the Next Official Fake Girlfriend of Hey Jenny Slater Contest, and it wasn't even close. So not-close, in fact, that the refs had to invoke the seven-inning mercy rule before crowning the winner. Meliissa "Frenchy" Theuriau overcame the language barrier, the stigma of being a French citizen -- sorry, a Freedom citizen -- and upstart status to smoke the rest of the field like a Gitane and claim a shocking victory. (I'm going to refrain from making the obvious joke about being shocked to see "French" and "victory" in the same sentence, but that doesn't mean y'all have to.) In the event that Theuriau is unable to fulfill her duties, or files un ordre cesser-et-renoncent against us, the title goes to the first runner-up, hockey superfan Elisha Cuthbert -- but until then, to Miss (please let it be Miss) Theuriau, congratulations.

So now I guess I'm going to have to petition my local Bright House provider to start carrying LCI or whatever the hell channel she's on, but that's only one of probably many lifestyle changes that will need to be made on the part of myself and this blog. Some, such as eating escargot or driving a Citroën, will be fairly easy since I kind of liked those anyway. Others, such as becoming a wine snob, disdaining America, or finding anything remotely sexy about Gerard Depardieu, will be more difficult. But some sacrifices you just gotta make, I guess. And besides, I'm already huge in France. Huge. Jerry Lewis ain't got shit on me. Mis cela dans votre pipe et fumez-la.


Laugh if you must, but it's still a hell of a lot easier for me to find this attractive than Depardieu.

(More Citroën shit here -- these cars are the joint, son. And yes, the chicks dig 'em.)

Come with us, and leave your earth behind . . .

When you see in the mess hall, all new jacks, even if you're old, give me that respect . . .

I'm not naive enough to think that a top-five recruiting class equals automatic success -- a few years of the Jasper Sanks Experience will remove those illusions pretty quickly -- but still, it's nice to know we pulled in some top-notch talent on Tuesday. And given what a sleazy business recruiting and recruiting analysis can be sometimes, it was a relief to see pictures like the one above -- to steal a phrase from a better blogger than I, is there anyone who seems more happy with the way his life turned out than Knowshon Moreno? Paul Westerdawg is right -- dude looks good in red, but then, so do most people.


In an alternate universe, I'm in the third section, 10 rows up, seventh seat from the right.

As long as I'm back on the football tip, it's high time I got around to posting on T. Kyle King's master plan -- and I owe him a big apology for not having gotten around to this until now -- to get Georgia and Michigan hooked up for a home-and-home series sometime in the near future. Click on the link for all the relevant contact info, which Kyle has been kind enough to provide.

I'm a big fan of this idea for two reasons. The most personal of the two is that Michigan was one of the schools I applied to, and got accepted to, back when I was taking the big college crapshoot my senior year of high school. (That sound you just heard is Brian from MGoBlog, whose head just exploded at the thought of someone choosing another school over Michigan.) As a matter of fact, Michigan was the first school that sent me an acceptance letter, and in my immediate post-acceptance state of ecstasy I was prepared to throw down and become a Wolverine right then and there. (OK, part of it was because of the tour guide who showed my dad and I around when we wnet up to visit the previous summer -- she was cute and blonde and pronounced the name of the town "Annerber" . . . adorable!) I got a few more letters after that, of course, and the proximity of Georgia, combined with the free car promotion my parents were running in conjunction with the HOPE Scholarship, pointed me on the path toward becoming a Bulldog. But I've always maintained an affection (and rooting interest) for the Wolverines, and it would be a huge thrill to actually get to watch them take the field, particularly against the Dawgs.

But the second reason is that I'd be really excited to see Georgia schedule some credible non-conference opposition again. The SEC as a whole has a reputation for not exactly taking on the titans of the gridiron in early-season out-of-conference play, and while the "Playing an SEC schedule is hard enough" excuse is certainly valid to a point, can anyone honestly say that the thought of playing UL-Lafayette gets their blood a-churnin'? If you had forty or fifty bucks to blow on a face-value ticket, and the choices were New Mexico State or Michigan, would you need longer than two seconds to make your choice? There was a time when Georgia needed a non-conference sacrificial lamb or two to bump up the W column to the point of bowl eligibility, but if we've really "knocked the lid off" the program like we claim to have done, then we don't need to do that anymore. What we need to do is start following the old "to be the best, you gotsta beat the best" maxim, and historically, at least, Michigan is the best.

Here's two other teams to provide food for thought: Auburn in 2004 and Texas in 2005. Both of them went 13-0, but Texas won an undisputed national title and Auburn didn't -- and part of the reason was their schedules. Clearly, both teams had their share of out-of-conference cupcakes, but Texas had a big boy -- Ohio State, who would finish the '05 season ranked 4th in the country, and whom Texas played on the road, no less -- and Auburn didn't. (Their toughest non-conference competitor? Juggernaut Louisiana Tech.) Obviously, the two situations are not completely analogous, since Texas had the luxury of starting the season already sitting at #2 while Auburn had to work its way up from #17 -- but does anybody seriously think that if Auburn had maybe put Michigan or Ohio State in place of the freakin' Citadel on September 25th, they still wouldn't have been able to leapfrog Oklahoma for a shot to play in the big game?

There's no guarantee that a win over Michigan would automatically vault Georgia into The Show at whatever indefinite point in the future this game would be played -- not to mention no guarantee Georgia would beat Michigan at all -- but it's still an avenue worth pursuing. If nothing else, it's a chance to get national exposure and a "GameDay" visit on a weekend when everyone else in the conference is slumming with the Tulanes and Utah States of the world, not to mention a chance to squire potential blue-chip recruits around on a day when all this wildness is going down.

So anyway, if you're a fellow Bulldog, or a Michigan fan who's somehow managed to stumble their way onto this site, follow T. Kyle's link and write a couple letters to a couple athletic directors. Oh, and I dibs two tickets when the home game gets put on the sked.

Lame duck l'orange.

Don't waste you time trying to be a go-getter
Things will get worse before they get any better
You know there's always somebody playing with dynamite --
But I don't worry about a thing, 'cause I know nothing's gonna be alright
-- Mose Allison, "I Don't Worry About a Thing"

Those of you who migrated here from George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?! may have noticed a distinct lack of political fulminating on this site over the last few months. That hasn't been on purpose, but neither is it something I'm particularly concerned about. I just haven't been following politics period as much lately; used to be that my daily Web-surfing began with the same 10 lefty blogs -- often even in the same order, that's how much of a routine it had become -- but most of them I probably haven't looked at in a couple weeks or more.

It's not that I don't care anymore, it's just that . . . well, you know what? Maybe I care a lot less. At least, with George W. Bush now a lame duck -- and a not-especially-popular one at that -- the whole game seems to have much less of a point than it used to. Depending on which polls you look at, Bush has an approval rating anywhere between 35 and 50 percent over the last four months, and between 38 and 47 percent during January; split the difference and let's call that a 42.5-percent rating. If you'll look at the polls again, you'll notice that nearly every single poll in the last couple months has an approval number within margin-of-error spitting distance of that 42.5 figure. So what that tells me is that there's a floor of about 42.5 percent of the American public who just aren't going to disapprove of Bush no matter what he does. Similarly, the other 55-57 percent of the public is pretty much done with Bush and don't see any reason to give him a thumbs-up.

Get it? We're at an impasse. Which is not exactly anything new for the red and blue sides of America, but before, and I'm thinking 2004 here, that impasse was worth breaking. Now I'm not sure that it is. Bush is a lame duck, and not only is a majority of the American public tired of him, in quite a few instances a majority of Congress has been tired of him, too. Whatever happened to Social Security reform? A permanent renewal of the PATRIOT Act? How come Bush's supposed star wattage wasn't able to save Tom DeLay's position atop the Republican Congressional leadership? The guy puts the "lame" in "lame duck," and not only is he a lame duck, he doesn't even have the approval ratings Clinton had at this point in his presidency. Yes, you head me right: Clinton got a beejer from an intern, which according to Republicans at the time was the crime of the century, and still had approval ratings thirty points higher than Bush, who's supposedly the savior of the free world. What I'm trying to say is that if Bush accomplishes anything of consequence in the last two years of his presidency, it'll be a miracle. So don't worry about it.

"But what about Alito?" Man, what the fuck about Alito? Look, right off the top of my head I could probably name you about a hundred guys I'd rather see on the Supreme Court, and I think that weepy-wife bit Mrs. Alito pulled during the confirmation hearings was every bit as contrived as professional wrestling, but look, this isn't the end of the world, either. Dude is not going to overturn Roe v. Wade because the Republican party doesn't want it to be overturned, so let's stop yammering on about abortion like it's the only thing that matters.

The only thing that really made the hairs stand up on my neck about Alito was his apparent willingness to grant the executive branch all sorts of new and fantastic powers, but there's an easy way to put my mind at ease about that, too: Get someone in the White House whose strings aren't being pulled by total fascists. And we're not gonna have another chance to do that until 2008, so . . . let's start focusing on 2008 and quit grab-assing around in 2004 and 2005.

Here's what I want the Democratic Party to do over the next two years: Take all the energy you were going to spend lambasting Bush and spend it coming up with:

1. A viable health-care plan. Don't let yourselves be intimidated by the Pavlov dogs on the right wing who are going to start shrieking "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!!!!!111!1!" the minute anyone utters the phrase "health care." Every poll I've seen in the last few years indicates that Americans as a whole think the current employer-based system of health care sucks giant donkey balls and would be open to the idea of a universal plan if it was done right. So it's time for the Democrats to stop letting Republicans determine their policy stance on this issue and start letting the people guide it instead.

2. A homeland-security reform plan. For all Bush's talk about being tough on terror and strong on security, our borders are still porous, our seaborne cargo is still going unchecked, and we still can't answer anything stronger than "Duh, I dunno" when asked if there's a possibility someone could sneak a backpack nuke into our country. Actual, relevant, boots-on-the-ground security issues have taken a big-time back seat to our current windmill-tilting in Iraq, and it's time those priorities got flipped. The Republicans aren't going to do it, so it's time the Democrats did.

3. An energy-independence plan. Some people are going to ask if this isn't just stealing a page from Bush's State of the Union speech a couple nights ago, but let's get real, son -- Bush's call for reduced dependence on foreign oil is going to go the exact same route his hydrogen-powered-cars plan and his mission-to-Mars plans went: straight down the memory hole, never to be spoken of again. Bush talking about weaning America off foreign oil is kind of like Scott Weiland vowing to get off heroin: Sure, it'd be great if he did, but how many times has he promised to do that already, and do you really believe him this time around? Trust me, we won't hear Bush utter another word about energy independence for the remainder of his presidency, so that's why the Democrats should pick up that football, which is just laying on the ground untouched, and run with it.

The most important thing, though, is that when putting together strategies on these three issues, the Democrats must remember that "Bush sucks" is not a plan. If there's one thing I've learned over the last decade or so, it's that bashing the guy who's held the office for the previous four years is a bullshit strategy for winning the presidency. It was a crashing failure for Dole in '96, it was a non-starter for Bush in '00 (even though he hustled his way into the White House anyway), and it sure as shit didn't work for Kerry in 2004. Yes, the Bush administration has been singularly self-obsessed and incompetent for the past six years now, but as I pointed out earlier, most of the people in America already know that now. And barring a miracle, by the time 2008 rolls around Bush will already be looked upon as one of the least competent, most ineffectual presidents of the last century. So why spend an entire election year telling people what they already know? The 2008 election is going to be about the next 50 years, not the last eight. Democrats, lay out a plan for how you're going to fix Bush's numerous messes, handcuff the presumptive GOP candidates to Bush if you like -- it shouldn't be hard with a field as stupefyingly lame as this one -- but come up with something more substantial than "Bush sucks" for a slogan, because by 2008 that isn't going to be any more relevatory than "Ice Cream is Delicious" or "Democrats '08: Because the Sky Is Blue!"

I know all this probably sounds kind of fallacious coming from someone who used to have a Web site called George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!, but I plan on doing my part by not leaping on every little stupid thing Bush does over the next two years. The guy is at the point of self-parody already, and anything I could do to make fun of the really trivial stuff would just be piling on at this point. Sure, if he does something especially hilarious, I'll jump on that, but as for the run-of-the-mill stuff, the brain-dead speeches, the Abramoff connections, etc. etc. etc., I'll trust that y'all already know about, and have made up your mind on, such things and move on.

I'll leave the Hurricane Katrina recriminations to the Congressional investigators and the Abramoff decisions to the courts, which will leave me more time to talk about chicks and sports. That's called priorities, people.