Wednesday, February 28

Car ads.

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. Don't have any excuse for it. But anyhoo, here are a couple YouTubes you can watch until I get my head screwed back on straight.

This'll probably out me as a true cheese-eating surrender monkey, but my favorite kind of car is the Citroën, a French brand that hasn't been sold officially in the United States since 1974 but is still puttering along in most of the rest of the world. Apparently their ads are pretty good, too. Here's an ad that airs in Germany for their new C6 luxury sedan:



The CGI is kind of cheesy, but it's still a funny idea. And here's an ad for the C4 hatchback. I don't know if it's meant to tie into the live-action Transformers movie that's coming out later on this year, but it might as well be.



There's another one for the five-door hatchback. And yes, I am going to see the Transformers movie the very first weekend it comes out.

Tuesday, February 27

Help for a fellow Bulldog.

Last week I mentioned a Georgia football player whose mother had been killed by a man who then burned her house down to cover up the crime. Somehow I managed to do this without mentioning the player's name, which is Michael Lemon.

At any rate, the NCAA has given Georgia permission to accept donations toward a fund for Michael and his younger brother Marquez, who are now in a situation strikingly similar to Clemson player Ray Ray McElrathbey and his younger brother. Donations can be sent to:

University of Georgia Athletic Association
c/o Eric Baumgartner
P.O. Box 1472
Athens, GA 30603

Make sure to write "The Lemon Support Fund" in the memo line of the check. Proceeds will be moved to a trust fund for Michael and Marquez that the university is in the process of establishing.

Thursday, February 22

Thursday Mystery Meat.

· You may have noticed some changes to the ol' sidebar in the last week or so. First, this blog now has a dedicated e-mail address, so you can now e-mail me at heyjennyslater.blog at gmail if you want to tell me how hard this blog rocked your face off or, alternatively, how much it sucks. E-mails of either kind are highly likely to be re-published here, but particularly the latter kind, so all e-mails immediately become property of me to do with as I please, or something. Also: I've added links to my MySpace page -- yes, it is the most boring one ever, but you're still welcome to be one of my Myspace friends or whatever they call them, if you're so inclined -- my old blog, and of course the now-famous "Dump Spots" map I made on Platial a while back that got written up in The Oregonian.

· I hope that some people will read this and give up on the idea that the media have some kind of all-encompassing liberal bias. Here we have a high-ranking reporter/editor at Newsweek basically coming right out and saying that he sees his job as being to ask questions of people in power, get their answers, and then regurgitate those answers verbatim without any investigation to determine whether those answers are, you know, true or accurate. Not only that but he appears to have less knowledge of how the federal government works than your average 10th-grade civics student. Come on, people -- you've got an entire clause in the Bill of Rights devoted to you, and this is the best you can do to meet those responsibilities? This is why I try not to refer to myself as a "journalist" anymore.



· Not only does a British airline (Virgin Atlantic) rank #1 on the list of airlines with hot flight attendants, but British women have the biggest boobs according to a "recent" (and rather vaguely identified) poll. (Links from Thighs Wide Shut.) Notwithstanding their total inability to build a car with a reliable electric system, some countries have all the luck.


Something about England, indeed.

· The Concerned Women for America in a nutshell: We're mad at Tim Hardaway because he's making the rest of us homophobes look bad.

· If you're trying to wrap your brain around just how hard Britney Spears has crashed and burned in the last few weeks, ask yourself: Did you ever think Kevin Federline would have the upper hand in a custody battle for anything other than a bag of Chee-tos?

· Finally, on a very serious note, the mother of UGA redshirt freshman was killed Wednesday, and after that it looks like the culprit burned her house down to cover up the crime. I can't imagine many worse things than this happening to somebody, so keep Michael and his family in your prayers.

Monday, February 19

Separated at birth.


Presidential candidate John Edwards and Kenneth the page from "30 Rock."


Self-alleged Anna Nicole Smith babydaddy Prince Frederick von Anhalt and Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite.


Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and "Dallas" star Victoria Principal.


Georgia gymnast Ashley Kupets and Dr. Elliott Reid from "Scrubs."


Former Fox News Bush spokesman/current White House Bush spokesman Tony Snow and legendarily connected actor Kevin Bacon.


No, wait. White House spokesman Tony Snow and Robert McNamara impersonator Donald Rumsfeld.


Ultra-right-wing former Senator Rick Santorum and "Family Guy" horndog Glenn Quagmire.


Newly hairless Britney Spears and Uncle Fester.

Saturday, February 17

"That's racist! I'm not on crack. I'm straight-up mentally ill!"

If you're just sitting around bored this weekend with literally no football to watch for the first time in six months, or if you're just someone in upstate New York who's slowly going bonkers being stuck inside under seventeen feet of snow, here are a bunch of clips from "30 Rock," which I consider to be far and away the funniest new show on TV. Yes, I knew I kind of whiffed on my prediction/hope that "Studio 60" would turn out to be teh awesome, but I've seen a bunch more episodes of "30 Rock," and trust me, it really is consistently good.

First, a promo narrated by the indescribably kickass Tina Fey with some scenes that kind of set the whole thing up.



The show has a number of very funny running gags that might be described as very "Arrested Development"-esque; my favorite centers around a movie titled "The Rural Juror."



Another is everpresent physician Dr. Leo Spaceman.



And, finally, some of Alec Baldwin's greatest hits from the "Tracy Does Conan" episode. Alec Baldwin, turns out, is one of the funniest people alive.



Thursday night on NBC may be the best it's ever been at this point -- yes, even better than the heady days of "Seinfeld" and "Friends." Those shows were funny, but whatever the network chose to drop in between them was inevitably awful. Now NBC has four shows in a row ("My Name Is Earl," "The Office," "Scrubs," and "30 Rock") that can go toe-to-toe with any sitcom currently on television.

Thursday, February 15

Friday Mystery Meat.

Ordinarily this is the spot where I'd put a Friday Random Ten, but you kinda got that on Wednesday. So instead you get Meat.



· I've made it clear that Valentine's Day is not observed in my household, but a bunch of us singletons in my building still got together over at a friend's apartment Wednesday night and cooked dinner and bitched about how pathetic our dating lives are. My contribution to this was the three-layer chocolate-raspberry truffle cake you see above, and yes, it was fricking awesome. I'm sorry, I know I'm bragging, but there it is. Ladies: Date me and, in addition to my other outstanding qualities, you get cooked for, all the time.

· I got to watch a lot of completely manufactured non-scandals during the Clinton years -- Whitewater, the White House travel office flap, the Air Force One haircut that supposedly brought the western United States to a grinding halt -- and yet I don't think I got as mad about any of those as I've gotten about this Nancy-Pelosi-wants-a-big-ass-plane thing. For those of you who apparently don't yet know these things, here are the facts: The Bush administration agreed to provide Dennis Hastert with government air transport after 9/11. Pelosi has not asked for anything more than Dennis Hastert got. The House sergeant-at-arms, not Pelosi, suggested that the capability to fly all the way from D.C. to California would be preferable for security reasons. Nancy Pelosi has not requested a C-32; she didn't even request a C-40 (neither of which are a "jumbo jet." She has not made any special requests based on a desire to fly in the lap of luxury or to bring a whole entourage of aides and family members along with her; in fact, she said she'd even fly commercial if it would shut people up. Even the Bush administration, not usually known for going out of its way to defend Democrats, has said the whole thing is "silly."

Now. After all that, if you still believe Nancy Pelosi is an elitist hypocrite who wants special perks for her air travel, guess what? You are a moron. An utter fucking moron. You looked at the unvarnished facts, your misconceptions and assumptions were all debunked one right after another, and you still decided to say, "Nah, I'm gonna stick with the false, trumped-up bullshit."

· I know I'm a big dork in multiple ways, but this is awesome:



It's the Pet Shop Boys as portrayed by Lego minifigures. Just to show the incredible diversity in Lego people, there are a bunch more musical figures, including, but not exclusive to, the Beatles, U2 (both Joshua Tree and All That You Can't Leave Behind versions), Nirvana, and, of course, the Village People.

· OK, one more: Flavor Flav. Yeeeeaaah, boyyeeee.



· In sports news, the NCAA finally got rid of its spectacularly ill-conceived football rule change that made the game clock run in situations where it previously didn't, thereby reducing actual play by as many as 10-12 snaps per game. (Yeah, why would we want to cut down on those precious ads when we could just deprive people of the football action they actually wanted to see? Buncha rubes.) Instead, the NCAA has chosen to focus on a more pertinent source of game slowness -- to wit, shorter team timeouts, and less opportunity for post-TV-timeout dicking around. Fine by me.

· OK, first of all, I think most reasonable people can agree Tim Hardaway is a giant dipshit. I mean, who utters the words "I hate gay people" and "I'm homophobic" in a broadcast interview? Even people who actually hate gay people don't say "I hate gay people" -- well, except for these knob jobs, and I'm not sure even Tim Hardaway would want to be associated with them.

But here's the thing, and stay with me: I don't think he should've had to apologize. I have many gay friends, I'm fiercely pro-gay-rights, but I don't think he should've had to apologize. What does it accomplish? "I'm sorry" or no "I'm sorry," gay people are still gonna think Hardaway is an asshole. And as well they should, because "I'm sorry" or no "I'm sorry," Hardaway is still a homophobe! Notice he didn't say "I'm sorry, I've seen the light, gay people aren't that bad, I'm OK with them now" -- he's sorry, sure, but until he says his views have changed, he's only sorry that he said those things out loud.

But honestly, I don't care whether he's sorry or not. In fact, I wish that more homophobic people would be that blatant about it, and would refuse to be sorry, so the normal people know exactly who they are and can stay away from them.

· The guy I would nominate to go first is Catholic League president Bill Donahue -- only I'm not convinced Donahue isn't going to be the next person to pull a Ted Haggard and turn out to be gayer than a football bat. Like I said, I'm close friends with a number of gay folks, and Bill Donahue does more talking about cocks and anuses than all of them put together.

· Now seems like a pretty good time to end things on a compleeeetely different note, so I'll simply say this: The latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is here . . . and for some reason I really want to buy an iPod. Even though I already have one!


Some people are going to quibble that there isn't actually a swimsuit anywhere in this picture; those people are invited to cram it.

Wednesday, February 14

Wednesday Not-So-Random Ten, Valentine's Day Dating Disaster Edition.


C'mere, Cupid -- I got somethin' for ya.

So once again it's Valentine's Day, or as I like to call it, Be A Complete Fucking Asshole To Everyone I Come In Contact With Day -- and just for the record, I was observing it as such even before Ann started campaigning to make it official. I was a prick before being a prick was cool, baby.

Anyway, a year ago today I marked the occasion by retelling three embarrassing stories that I felt were most representative of my dating history at a whole. Since that post was written, the following things happened:

· I got dumped on a voice mail. And just when it seemed like things were going well and I might actually be able to sustain a relationship longer than two months. Not that this is relevant to anything, but the girl did look like Erin Andrews. Fo' realz. Though I'm sure the real Erin Andrews would never do anything that tacky.

· There was this girl who lived in my building for a couple years and, according to some of my neighbors, kind of had a thing for me, but I didn't do anything about it as a result of an unofficial no-dating-anybody-in-the-building policy implemented in the wake of one of the disasters linked to earlier. But anyway, she graduated and moved out last spring, and then over the summer while I was out with a couple friends I ran into her at a bar in Lakeview. I called her up a few days later and asked if she wanted to go out, and she said she wasn't interested anymore.

· I got unloaded by a girl I met through a couple of friends -- after we'd been going out about a month and a half, she informed me that she'd been dating someone else the whole time, and that she'd decided she wanted to be exclusive with him. Fortunately, this left me a perfect opportunity to sound cooler than I actually was, because now, when people ask me what happened with her, I tell them, "Well, she said she wanted to be exclusive, and I just wasn't down with that." The fact that she wanted to be exclusive with someone else usually doesn't, you know, come up.

But the whole thing also led to a very amusing conversation with my friend Autumn, who works at a restaurant that this girl frequented. This happened not too long after I got the heave-ho.

Autumn: That girl you were dating who you brought by here once? She was in here the other day, wearing . . . I don't even know what to call it. She had on a black dress, but you could barely call it a dress, it was like . . . nothing.

Me: Wow.

Autumn: But wait wait, that wasn't the worst part, she also had on these knee-high boots that were . . . gold. Shiny, sparkly gold. She looked like a stripper.

Me: How did I miss this?

Autumn: I think you might have been out of town.

Me: Well, you have to call me the next time you see something like that, I'll come back.

Autumn: And all the guys in the restaurant were like, 'Is that the girl Doug was going out with?!' and I said yeah . . .

Me: Heh. Awesome.

Autumn: And then they were all like, 'Did he hit that?' And I said I didn't know and it was none of their business . . .

Me: What?

Autumn: It was none of their business! I was standing up for you!

Me: Dude, that's not how you stand up for a guy. If you really wanted to stand up for me you would've said 'Yeah, he shagged her senseless.'

Autumn: Ugh.

Me: 'Every time they came in here, she had this rosy postcoital glow . . . '

Autumn: Gross! You can do that. I'm through being involved.


So anyway, there are three more notches on the ol' Platial "Dump Spots" map (there may be more that I'm repressing). Now's your chance to bare your own souls about how romance sucks and Valentine's Day blows, but first, since everybody seemed to enjoy the last one, an antisocial, completely non-romantic Not-So-Random-Ten:

1. DeeJay Punk-Roc, "I Hate Everybody"
2. N.W.A., "Straight Outta Compton"
3. Beck, "Today Has Been a Fucked Up Day"
4. Joy Division, "Atrocity Exhibition"
5. The Bloodhound Gang, "You're Pretty When I'm Drunk"
6. Ice Cube, "Dirty Mack"
7. Johnny Cash, "Cocaine Blues"
8. Ween, "Piss Up a Rope"
9. Nouvelle Vague, "Too Drunk to Fuck"
10. Lou Reed, "Sex With Your Parents"

And a bonus 11th, a reminder for everyone else who's alone this Valentine's Day:

11. Avenue Q cast, "The Internet is for Porn"

Put your own romantic horror stories and/or treasured unromantic songs in the comments. We'll get through this together.

Tuesday, February 13

Attention libertarians: We come in peace.

One of the beneficial side effects of George W. Bush's so far disastrous presidency -- kind of like, Man, that six months of chemotherapy really sucked, but hey, I lost 30 pounds -- is that it has all but vaporized the longstanding myth that Republicans, even those who claim to be dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, really give a rat's ass about smaller government.

Libertarian-leaning conservatives, in particular, are getting pissed in a big way, as well they should be. I'll give you an example in my friend Josh, whom I've known and sparred with politically since college. Josh gives me plenty of grief for being a bleeding-heart pinko liberal, and I fire right back at him with plenty of pointed questions about how, if he's such a big libertarian, he's always pulling the "R" lever when shit-or-get-off-the-pot time rolls around every November. But at the risk of sounding patronizing, Josh has made some big strides lately, and he's been making them faster than a whole bunch of his conservative brethren: He rightly saw last fall's Congressional election results as a big wake-up call for the GOP, and he laid into Georgia's so-called conservative governor, Sonny Perdue, for apparently not thinking that Georgia's citizens are grown-up enough to even determine for themselves whether they should be allowed to buy beer on a Sunday.


If you can buy it on Sunday in Lynchburg, Virginia, Jerry Falwell's backyard -- and you can -- you should be able to buy it on Sunday in Atlanta.

Am I sitting around waiting for Josh to start voting Democratic with a vengeance? Nope. I just now tried to picture him hanging out at one of the Tent City tailgates wearing an Obama '08 T-shirt and proclaiming an acute case of Barack fever, and it was about the most surreal thing I've ever imagined. (Don't even get me started on Hillary Clinton.) But as a left-leaning Democrat, I don't think it's too much to ask that libertarians, or at least those who purport to be, take a step back and ask themselves if the Democrats are still the real antagonists to their beliefs these days.

For the longest time the liberal has seemed to be the bane of the libertarian's existence. Neal Boortz, to my mind a LINO if ever there was one, inveighs against liberals with a vengeance on his radio show, but makes only passing criticisms of so-called conservatives. Up until recently, at least, groups like the CATO Institute railed against big government and blamed it all on liberals.

But let's take a look at some of the things that people like Josh and Neal Boortz consider "libertarian." For starters, they're both pro-choice as far as I know. Guess what? So are the Democrats. They're also pro-gay-rights, or at least they don't think the government has any place restricting them. Neither do the Democrats. Freedom of speech is paramount? The Democrats think so, too -- it's the so-called conservative Republicans who have been pushing stuff like the anti-flag-burning amendment. And I could write a whole month's worth of posts about how the Democrats have been the only ones really fighting for civil liberties the past six years, as George W. Bush has repeatedly taken a Ginsu blade to the Constitution with the full support of the formerly Republican-controlled Congress.


Oh, so that's where that ended up. Hey, who wants to suspend the right to due process?

A lot of libertarians (or people who call themselves as such) have, deep down, recognized that for a long time, yet they still primarily attack Democrats and liberals because of the old "tax-and-spend" stereotype. But that doesn't really apply all that much anymore.

One of the first major proposals from the new Democratic Congress -- yes, the Democratic Congress run by that horrible San Francisco liberal, Nancy Pelosi -- was to make some of the big budget cuts that their Republican predecessors hadn't had the balls to make in six years under Bush. They also passed a measure that would bring pork-barrel spending under greater scrutiny and make it easier to trace such projects back to their sponsors, something even the ultraconservative Republican representative Jack Kingston had to applaud.

This was necessary, of course, because government spending has has risen faster under Bush 43 than under any president since FDR -- and that's even if you don't take his increases in defense spending into account. Pork-barrel spending, needless to say, has set new records as well. (I could also go on and on about how that horrible liberal Clinton did a vastly better job of balancing the budget than anybody since WWII, including conservative demigod Ronald Reagan, but that's for another time.)

Are the Democrats going to be able to wave their magic wands and rectify this sad situation immediately? Or even before the 2008 elections? Not likely -- but it's worth pointing out that the only consistent budget surpluses since the 1950s happened under, again, that horrible liberal Bill Clinton. And Clinton is the only president in the last 30 years to have actually paid down any portion of the national debt. (As opposed to Bush, who just added more than $3 trillion right back to it.)


My grandkids are going to be paying this thing off. Thanks, dillwipe.

Now, again, I'm a liberal. Which means I likes me some social programs, some of which I'm sure make true diehard libertarians cringe. But first and foremost, I want to make sure the budget is balanced -- social programs or no, I don't believe in spending money we don't have. And as much as libertarians hate taxes, I still think I'm closer to their ideal philosophy than the Republicans who subscribe to the absurd notion that you can slash taxes, jack discretionary spending through the roof, and somehow not end up with a complete disaster on your hands.

So look, libertarians, I don't expect you to start loving Hillary Clinton. I don't expect you to abandon your tax-cutting principles. Honestly, I don't even expect you to start voting Democratic. But I do think it might be a good idea for you to re-evaluate who your friends are -- and who's really presenting the fiercest opposition to the things you want done. Because it isn't the Democrats who have exploded federal spending over the last six years. It isn't the Democrats who think you should be governed by a Christian worldview whether you want to be or not. It isn't the Democrats who are trying to dig into your stuff and find out whom you've been calling on your cell phone and which library books you've been checking out. It isn't the Democrats who tried to throw out the 800-year-old tradition of fricking habeas corpus. And it isn't the Democrats who subscribe to the "unitary executive" theory, a school of thought whose quest to place as much authority as possible in the hands of the executive branch would seem to go against not only everything libertarianism stands for, but against the very ideas upon which this country was founded to begin with.

So all I'm asking is that you don't automatically train your guns on the so-called liberals when you're getting your dander up about expanding government. Try zeroing in on those so-called conservatives once in a while - you'll probably find a lot more to get angry about.

Oh, and if you're going to call yourself a libertarian, then you might want to try actually voting libertarian once in a while. If you want libertarians to become a valid third-party alternative, support 'em! Personally, I would love it if a viable third (or even fourth or fifth) party started gaining some traction, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be the libertarians. And if the day ever comes when the Libertarian Party becomes the major-party voice for smaller-government conservatism, with the Republicans being reduced to thrown-together meetings in basements and library meeting rooms . . . well, I won't exactly be shedding any tears over that. But then I don't suspect you will be, either.

Friday, February 9

Because I only want people to be happy, that's why.

Apparently some conservatives ain't too happy with the folks who appear most likely to contend for the GOP nomination in 2008. A cat named "AcademicElephant" on the right-wing blog RedState has his own dream ticket, and it's . . . Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton.

In the end, R-B in '08 might be but a dream, but reflecting on it is an instructive exercise as we desperately try to fit the square pegs that are our declared candidates into the round hole of what we really need. We owe it to ourselves to nominate our most qualified candidates who have the most profound understanding of the national security challenges we face. We need a president and a vice president who are cool under fire. Who function in the real world but who are not strangers to idealism. Who have a clear vision of where this country needs to be 10, 20, even 50 years out and form their policy accordingly -- not with an eye to the next election cycle. Who think like CEOs but understand that they are the servants, not the corporate head honchos, of the American taxpayer. Who are singularly unimpressed by the pretensions of our enemies -- and many of our so-called allies -- but who are profoundly humble before the greatness of our nation. Who see our country as larger than themselves.

And who are Republicans so dyed in the wool that the Democrats respond with appalled horror at the very mention of their names.


"Appalled horror" would be one way of looking at it, I guess. "Peals of laughter" would be another. So would "rolling one's eyes and making the jerk-off gesture with one's right hand." But to each his own.

Anyway, if they run, it looks like they may have some competition:

Michael Savage, the nation's third-most listened to radio talk-show host, says he may leave his top rated show to make a bid for the GOP nomination for president.

"I know it sounds bizarre but when you consider the people running for the presidency, none . . . seems to be qualified," Savage told NewsMax in an exclusive interview. . . .

"I would think that somebody who's not a politician might be a viable candidate," Savage stated, stressing that he would focus his campaign on his mantra: "Borders, language, Culture."


I think that's awesome. I also think all candidates should have campaign slogans that are just meaningless strings of three abstract nouns. Peace, economy, cuisine! Athletics, colors, manners! Functionality, nudity, perspicacity!

On behalf of a whole bunch of people, I encourage both AcademicElephant and Michael Savage to live their dreams and make them happen. Not only do I want Rumsfeld, Bolton, and Savage to all represent the Republican Party in the 2008 Republican primaries, but I would be happy with an eventual Republican ticket composed of any two of those three people. Rumsfeld/Savage '08: In your heart you know they're hilarious. Or It's Happy Hour in America. Any other ideas?

Friday Not-So-Random Ten: Pay No Attention to the Sexual Orientation Behind the Curtain Edition.

Haven't done a Not-So-Random Ten in a while, so I figured it was time. And who better to be on the receiving end than meth-abusing male-whore-fucking televangelist Ted Haggard? This, after all, was a big week for Ted -- after just three weeks of "intensive counseling," he's "completely heterosexual." For realsies! I bet all you liberal "homosexuality isn't a choice" queer-lovers feel pretty stupid now, huh? And if Ted closes his eyes and imagines, say, Tom Brady or Colin Farrell while he's giving his wife a bit of the ol' slap and tickle, then, uh . . . well, uh, that doesn't mean anything. Everybody's got their something.

So congratulations, Ted, on making it out of gayhab, and welcome back to the fold, you big straight hunk of manly Christian virtue! (And before anyone asks, no, I don't have any of R. Kelly's 12-part magnum opus "Trapped in the Closet" on my iPod -- that would've been the shit, though.)


Now, back in there with you!

Ted's Ten:

1. The Sloppy Seconds, "I Don't Want to Be a Homosexual"
2. Johnny Cash, "The Beast in Me"
3. 10cc, "I'm Not in Love"
4. Avenue Q cast, "My Girlfriend, Who Lives in Canada"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "In Denial"
6. Damon Albarn, "Closet Romantic"
7. Electric Six, "Gay Bar"
8. INXS, "Strange Desire"
9. Squeeze, "Tempted"
10. Screeching Weasel, "I Wanna Be a Homosexual"

And, of course, a bonus 11th, the song that was practically made for situations like this:

11. Pet Shop Boys, "Can You Forgive Her?"

There's actually a David Allan Coe song that kind of applies here, too, but its title is too crass even for me to put it up here.

Anyway, put your own Tens, Random or Not-So-Random, in the comments, along with whatever advice you have for Ted as he explores his shiny new heterosexuality.

Thursday, February 8

The stupid! It burns!

Courtesy of LD at Gunslingers comes news of noted sociologist and football historian Rush Limbaugh entering into a discussion of racial dynamics in professional football -- right, because that worked for him so well last time:

The media, the sports media, has got social concerns that they are first and foremost interested in, and they're dumping on this guy -- Rex Grossman -- for one reason, folks, and that's because he is a white quarterback. . . . The media -- you, you know the social things. I don't need to go into this. They, they just want this guy not to do well 'cause he's a white quarterback.


Preach it, Rush! It's about time somebody stood up for white quarterbacks, since they have historically gotten hardly any credit for their teams' successes. More often than not, the media just makes them look bad.

Case in point: the QB Grossman was going up against in the Super Bowl, Peyton Manning. Here's a guy who has been an integral part of the Colts' success ever since he joined the team in 1998, yet do you ever hear about his contribution? Nope. The guy can't even get a TV endorsement deal -- it's like every company in America has him on some kind of blacklist or something. And just to add insult to injury, those heartless fucks voted him Super Bowl MVP as a big practical joke, just to call even greater attention to his miserable 25-38, 247-yard performance. He couldn't help it if he sucked! You saw how bad the weather was!

And it's not gonna get any better, people. Of the seven quarterbacks selected to go to Saturday's Pro Bowl, only six are white. Unacceptable! What more do we have to do to make sure that whites are properly represented at this position?

My only beef with Limbaugh is that he didn't go far enough. Now that we know how white quarterbacks are automatically the target of more criticism than any other race, where is the apology for Ryan Leaf for all the abuse heaped on him all those years? When is someone going to say "I'm sorry" for making fun of Chris Weinke?

Seriously, I can't even imagine how stupid someone would have to be to buy this. As much as my stomach turns at the mere thought of Rush Limbaugh, I could at least give him credit for occasionally being clever, but this was like a sub-Sean Hannity, even sub-Michael Savage, level of stupid. The Democrats must be seriously kicking his rhetorical ass if this is the best thing he can find to piss and moan about.

Wednesday, February 7

To rehab and have not.

Here's a shocker: Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor recently embarrassed by a very public adultery scandal (heh, I accidentally typed "very pubic" just now), is entering rehab. 'Cause he's a drunk, see. And that made him cheat on his wife.

Now, first of all, if this guy was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle and cheated on her, what he needs is not Betty Ford but probably the Burton Blatt Institute, because he is clearly retarded. But let's take a look at the laundry list of people who have preceded Newsom into rehab in the past few weeks:

· Mel Gibson, entered rehab July 31 after going on an anti-Semitic rant during a traffic stop (and calling a female cop "sugar tits").

· Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), entered rehab in September shortly after pleading guilty to bribery and other corruption charges in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

· Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla), entered rehab October 1 after resigning his seat due to charges that he was chasing underage male House pages.

· Michael Richards, entered rehab in November after responding to hecklers at a comedy show by going on an N-word-filled tirade.

· Tara Conner, entered rehab right before Christmas after sullying the good name of Miss USA by going on a drunken coke-filled bender.

· Lindsay Lohan, entered rehab January 17 because she was a drunken whore.

· Isaiah Washington, entered rehab January 24 after an ongoing controversy in which he repeatedly referred to one of his "Grey's Anatomy" costars as a "faggot."

And now Newsom. Of this illustrious group, clearly Tara Conner actually needed to go to rehab, because she was seriously going off the deep end. But it's interesting how the rest of them just suddenly discovered they were alcoholics only after being exposed as a Jew-hater/racist/homophobe/teenage-boy-buggerer/etc. (I would say that Lindsay Lohan really needed the rehab, too, but apparently she's been taking off whenever it suits her and "treating the facility like a hotel," so her rehab stint looks almost as much like a publicity stunt as it does for all the others.)

Rehab has turned into such an automatic knee-jerk step for any celebrity caught doing something monumentally stupid that even the word "rehab" has become an instant punchline. And as someone who's seen relatives go into rehab because they were, you know, actually alcoholic and in danger of drinking themselves to death, this really pisses me off. My loved ones had to struggle with actual addiction, and in some cases the struggle just to get them into rehab tore our family up in ways that still haven't been completely healed; these people go into rehab based on advice from a publicist and then pop out in two weeks expecting their reputations to be completely scrubbed clean.

Yeah, I know, the Honorable Judgey McJudge is presiding, court is in session, and what right do I have to be judging these people blah blah blah. But I'll tell you something: Even when my rehab-bound loved ones were at their very lowest point, they never accused Jews of being the source of all the problems in the world, fucked around on their wives, chased after teenage boys, or accepted bribes from a disgraced lobbyist. When douchebag celebrities imply that their spurious "alcoholism" was responsible for all this misbehavior by going into rehab, it not only insults our collective intelligence, but also feeds misinformed stereotypes about what kind of people alcoholics are and what they do.

It wasn't so long ago that if a celebrity or athlete or politician went into the Betty Ford Center, it was done as secretly as possible, because they didn't want anyone to know just how far they'd sunk. Does it say anything to you that they're now announcing their rehab trips to anyone who will listen? It does to me. Rehab used to be a last-ditch effort for people whose lives had all but completely collapsed; now it's a first-ditch effort for people in need of a good career move. And I'm sorry, call me judgmental if you like, but that ain't right.

Maybe instead of a dead pool next year, I'll do a "rehab pool" where everyone has to list five people they think are going to do something idiotic and then race on over to rehab claiming that alcoholism was the cause of their stupidity. Who would the candidates be? Not disgraced male-prostitute-fucking televangelist Ted Haggard -- he's "completely heterosexual" now (pfft), and don't you forget it. How about Lisa Nowak, the astronaut facing charges that she was on a mission to murder a "romantic rival"? You know, except for the NASA connection, that story wasn't even all that bizarre until it was revealed that she wore an adult diaper for the duration of her 900-mile drive from Houston to Orlando so that she wouldn't have to stop for potty breaks. I mean, before, she was just on some Amy Fisher shit, but you throw diaper-wearing into the mix and you're officially bringing Teh Crazy.

Incidentally, I noticed in the linked story that Nowak is being forced to wear a GPS device so that the authorities can monitor her whereabouts. That's right -- she's being tracked by satellite. How ironic is that? Way more ironic than a Death Row pardon two minutes too late or ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife, at the very least. Truly, the space program giveth, and the space program taketh away.

Monday, February 5

Super Bowl wrapup.



· Congratulations, Peyton Manning. I like you a lot more now that you're not making my Bulldogs' life a living hell every year.

· On a related note, if a Florida QB had won the Super Bowl the same year that the Gators are holding the national titles in football and basketball, I think I'd be up in a clock tower right now.

· Let the record show that my final score prediction was within two points of each team's eventual totals, and within one point of the total aggregate score. But then I am well established at being awesome at predicting stuff like this.

· How weird is it that both the college national-championship game and the NFL championship game both began with the opening kickoffs being run back for TDs -- and yet both teams that did that ended up losing anyway?



· Lord knows I hate to make rash overgeneralizations, but this year's crop of Super Bowl TV ads sucked. Suh-huh-hucked. Suckity-sucked-sucked. The David Letterman/Oprah Winfrey ad (above) was far and away the best ad of the night; I also thought the Kevin Federline ad for Nationwide Insurance was funny. And some of the Budweiser ads were cute (as opposed to hilarious, which is what you kind of expect of an ad that somebody spent $2 million to place). But everything else was incredibly lame.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the ads, though -- is it just me? Or did they really blow this year?

Friday, February 2

Friday Random Ten and fat/non-fat update.



With an indeterminate number of precincts reporting, Hey Jenny Slater is calling the Great Tyra Banks Fat/Non-Fat Debate of 2007 for "Not Fat" -- actually, "Hott with Two Ts," which as of now has taken just under 80 percent of the vote. So I guess we can officially dismiss Tyra's alleged fatness as a more or less purely tabloid-constructed phenomenon. I believe all the more salient points have already been made, so I'll simply say this: I wasn't one of those people who vowed to leave the United States if George Bush got elected in 2004, or if we invaded Iraq, or whatever, but if we ever get to the point in this country where a 5'10", 161-pound, 34DD-packing woman is considered gross, I am getting the hell out of here.

Anyhoo. The Ten:

1. Moby, "Find My Baby"
2. Radiohead, "Morning Bell"
3. Shane MacGowan and the Popes, "That Woman's Got Me Drinking"
4. DJ Shadow, "Ape Shall Never Kill Ape"
5. Johnny Cash, "Mary of the Wild Moor"
6. The Human League, "Human"
7. James Brown, "Give It Up or Turn It Loose"
8. A Tribe Called Quest, "Oh My God" (remix)
9. David Cross, "Flying on a Mexican Plane"
10. U2, "The Wanderer"

and a bonus 11th -- no, I'm not even going to name it on here. I'm too embarrassed. I'm simply going to put the video up here and see how many people remember how f'ing huge this was on MTV back in, like, 1985.



Last but not least: Colts 31, Bears 16.

Toss your own Random Tens, embarrassing '80s music memories, Super Bowl XLI predictions, whatever in the comments.

Thursday, February 1

The explosion shall be of extraordinary magnitude!


Where were you when 1/31 happened?

Boston seems to be recovering from the Great Mooninite Invasion of 2007, but rather than just having a good laugh about it and/or scolding the rapscallions responsible and sending them home, the City of Boston seems to be intent on treating the aftermath with the same level of needless hysteria with which they treated the initial, uh, placement of Lite Brites.

Let me get this straight: The Aqua Teen Hunger Force "guerrilla marketing" campaign was tried in nine other cities, including New York and Washington, two of the most (rightfully) terrorist-jumpy cities in the world, and yet Boston was the only city that went apeshit over it. They came upon magnetic-light renditions of a cartoon character the average college student could probably identify in less than five seconds and took it upon themselves to determine that they were bombs. The mayor and the police brought the city to a crashing halt, yet they now want to throw these two guys in jail and charge Turner Broadcasting three quarters of a million dollars for their panic?

I mean, if you're a terrorist and you want to plant bombs all over a major American city, are you going to decorate them with flashing blue lights to make sure everyone pays as much attention to them as possible before they go off? Really?

Of course, none of this prevented the usual gang of right-wing mouth breathers to fall all over themselves proclaiming that this was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack, or at the very least a "dry run" of same, and even after the whole thing had been revealed as an ATHF stunt, they were still trying to claim that the "culprits" were threats to America, or aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden, or . . . whatever. Honestly, what is it about some people in our post-9/11 world who just aren't fulfilled unless they're soiling themselves with fear over some minor non-scandal? Can't you just picture bin Laden laughing his hairy Wahhabist ass off right now, knowing that he doesn't even have to actually attack us to watch us launch into paroxysms of terror, he can just let Ignignokt and Err do the heavy lifting for him?

Turner shouldn't have to part with one thin dime over this. And if the city of Boston had any sense at all -- which I know has been all but disproven -- they'd drop this as quick as humanly possible, because the longer this is a national story, the longer they look like frickin' idiots.

In the meantime, I'm going to buy up all the plastic sheeting and duct tape I can find, so as to protect my apartment building from a potential attack by Marvin the Martian or the Jakovasaurs. You bastards will never take me alive!


We should totally be profiling these duck-billed barbarians.

I don't like to brag or anything, but I'm now officially awesome.

The handing out of the inaugural College Football Blogger Awards is well underway, and Yours Truly has apparently managed to snow a whole bunch of people into thinking I'm a decent writer. Suckas!



First off, I was the runner-up in the balloting for the "Trev Alberts Quits to Do Construction" Award for funniest blog. This might actually be more impressive than the award I actually won, for the simple reason that the winner of the Trev was Every Day Should Be Saturday, one of the funniest and best-written blogs about anything, anywhere -- meaning that "runner-up" is basically equivalent to "funniest blog by a mere mortal." Hear that? I'm the funniest blog in all of college football that isn't EDSBS. Take that, commenters/ex-girlfriends who say I'm not really that funny!

And now for the award I actually won without qualification:



Hey Jenny Slater took home the Job Award -- that's Job as in "the Biblical book of," not "take this and shove it" -- which is awarded to "The blog that has suffered through its chosen team's dismal season with the most dignity," recognizing "Continued engagement in the face of crippling, misery-inducing defeat. A stiff-upper lip and sane reaction to everything crumbling to dust." I feel quite fortunate and honored to have been presented this award by a fellow Bulldog, Dawgsports.com's T. Kyle King.

Mayor Kyle points out that it may not be quite accurate to refer to Georgia's 2006 campaign as "dismal," given that it ended with three consecutive ranked victories, a 9-4 record, and a national ranking. But one could be forgiven for thinking it was headed that way during the middle of the season, in which the Dawgs incurred four dispiriting losses and won three games by embarrassingly small margins against lousy teams. Not coincidentally, that seven-game stretch began with the pulled-out-of-our-asses win over Colorado that spawned the infamous toaster-throwing incident, which I'm fairly certain clinched this award for HJS.

But if you're interested in following my week-by-week chronicling of the Dawgs' fast start, descent into near-disaster, and season-ending Phoenix-like ascension from the ashes, here are all the postgame recap stories in chronological order. (I like to think that I won this award by virtue of more than mere toaster abuse.)

I've been wondering why I'm feeling down . . . (Georgia 48, Western Kentucky 12)
The crowd all love the show, just how far will he go? (Georgia 18, South Carolina 0)
Swear that there'll be murder, tell him that I'm ill (Georgia 34, UAB 0)
How can you expect to be taken seriously? (Georgia 14, Colorado 13)
Once inside, I couldn't believe my eyes (Georgia 14, Ole Miss 9)
I may be wrong, but I thought we said it couldn't happen here (Tennessee 51, Georgia 33)
I made my excuses and left (Vanderbilt 24, Georgia 22)
Waiting for a red-letter day (Georgia 27, Mississippi State 24)
We're lying in the gutter, but we're looking at the stars (Florida 21, Georgia 14)
Don't want to be seen or heard, don't want to shout out loud (Kentucky 24, Georgia 20)
I didn't get where I am today without getting in someone's way (Georgia 37, Auburn 15)
Today I feel like dancing, singing like lovers sing (Georgia 15, Georgia Tech 12)
Was it worth it? Yes (Georgia 31, Virginia Tech 24)

Thanks to all who appreciated what I wrote and voted accordingly -- though I hope I don't sound ungrateful when I say I hope I won't be in a position to compete for this award again next year.

And congrats to the winners, all of whom are rounded up here.

Pardon our progskgh$$235":*(Y*V ^&$(&^T JBV.

Things may be a little screwy on this blog for the next few days -- I switched over to the new-and-improved Blogger this morning, which, for the first hour at least, has proven to be "new and improved" in much the same way New Coke was back in 1985. A post I was trying to write just now was ruthlessly vandalized to within an inch of its life by having all its hyperlinks wiped out, and it's starting to look like anyone who actually bothered to leave a comment by signing in with their Blogger account has been neutered down to "anonymous" status. Posting photographs, too, looks to be turning into an even bigger pain in the rear than it already was.

But bear with me, I'll get it all straightened out. You'll note that starting with this one, posts will include labels so that you can immediately go to all posts of a certain category, be it politics or hot chicks or whatever. I'm sure this will be a big boon to those of you who like reading about football but hate my treasonous left-wing rants, or vice versa.

Anyhoo. Thanks for your patience. Robust self-aggrandizement over my recent recognition in the College Football Blogger Awards to follow later on today.