Since you seem to be unclear on the concept, I would like to present to you some examples of actual cleavage (Figs. 1-3), with markings helpfully provided so that it'll jump right out at you, so to speak.
Fig. (1): Joanna Krupa
Fig. (2): Catherine Bell
Fig. (3): Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
In each of those three figures, there is a clearly defined line or "valley" between the sweater puppies, suitable for holding a shot glass or dollar bills or what have you. In Figs. (2) and (3), the exposure of said line is great enough that it borders on the elusive "sideboob" [q.v.].
Therefore, while Sen. Clinton's shirt may, by some conservative definitions of the term, qualify as "low-cut," there is no "cleavage" on display here.
In the future, should you find yourselves confronted by semiotic questions of this nature, feel free to consult with me; I'm kind of an expert on these things. Or, alternatively, you could treat the presidential race with the respect that it deserves and not like a goddamn high-school prom, and thus refrain from covering non-stories like this at all.
Yeah, I'd probably go with that last one.
Sincerely, Doug Gillett Founder and CEO, Hey Jenny Slater Enterprises p.l.c. Lucy K. Pinder Endowed Chair of Mammary Arts and Sciences, Birmingham Institute of Lechery
· Over at the Crimson Tide blog Roll Bama Roll, they're also breaking down their season opponent by opponent, and yesterday they did sort of a mini-roundtable with me and T. Kyle King from Dawgsports about how we think Georgia's season is going to shake out. Thanks to Todd and the rest of the RBR guys for letting me bloviate -- for some reason, just like food always tastes better when someone else cooks it, blogging is often more fun when you're pontificating on someone else's site.
· As a pinko socialist -- well, compared to 99 percent of the rest of the people in Alabama, anyway -- I'm probably supposed to think poorly of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected from the right-of-center Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party earlier this summer. Still, even the most conservative French politician is probably more liberal than most American conservatives. And then there's the fact that Sarko would be an absolute blast to hang out with -- funner, perhaps, than even Bill Clinton. Here's Sarkozy absolutely plowed, in front of Vladimir Putin, no less; and, also courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, here's Sarkozy . . . well, being Sarkozy, I guess.
See, that's the great thing about France. If an American president was caught on film doing this, the articles of impeachment would be drawn up before his hand could even unclench the boob in question. But the president of France does it and the country just smiles, shakes its collective head and says, "That's our Nicolas, always grabbing people's boobs."
That said, if he lays so much as a finger on Melissa Theuriau, he'd better find someone else to start his Citroën for him in the morning.
"She was completely uncooperative and left everyone hanging about when she went for an hour's massage -- twice. She just didn't want to cooperate and was snotty and rude to everyone -- behaving like a complete and utter spoilt brat. When she wasn't pissing people off, Britney was smoking like a chimney. She didn't eat or drink anything other than can after can of Red Bull. She could have drank 20 of them all told . . . She had a problem with the extras being about when she did the pole dance. She was shy or embarrassed or something and she really started struggling with the whole thing. . . . "
Wow, we knew she'd forgotten how to dress, take care of her kids, or groom herself, but forgetting how to pole dance? She's really in trouble. But hey, at least she's got her looks back. Tell me this isn't sexy:
Sorry, I just realized I put a typo in that last sentence. I wrote "sexy" when I meant to write "Trent Reznor in drag." My apologies.
· Everything I've been hearing from the media says that the Braves' trade of Jarrod Saltalamacchia for the Rangers' Mark Teixeira was overall a good move, but I can't help but be a little disappointed. I was sitting at a Braves game with my friend Alex a few months back, and we were trying to come up with a fan club for Salty along the lines of "Matt's Bats" or "Sheff's Chefs" from a few seasons back, and she came up with a doozy: "Salty's Balls." So now what are we supposed to do? Are we going to have to sit here and come up with a pun on "Teixeira"? Good frickin' luck.
· In other Braves news, delicate flower Tom Glavine is upset that so many people boo him when he comes back to Turner Field. Here's how you solve that, Tom: Next time you come back here, don't come wearing a Mets uniform. Problem solved! You can thank me later.
· As tragic as the mid-air collision of two news helicopters was last week in Phoenix, I've got a real problem with holding responsible the man who led police on the high-speed chase the chopper crews were covering in the first place. Yeah, the guy's a criminal, but it was the TV stations who made the choice to cover the chase live -- how did the suspect cause the two helicopters to crash into each other? Look at it a different way: Let's say there are a bunch of news helicopters circling around the Shrine Theatre on Oscar night to get aerial views of the crowds and the red carpet, and two of them hit each other and crash. Do you hold the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences responsible for holding a spectacle so big that the various news stations just felt compelled to cover it? Prosecute the chase suspect to the fullest extent of the law for carjacking and evading police, but don't use grief over a tragedy as an excuse to pile a bunch more charges on him just because you don't know what else to do.
· OK, that was kind of heavy, so here's something . . . well, even more disturbing. Here's "Mary Poppins" as a horror movie.
As promised, here is the first in a 12-part series of previews of each of Georgia's regular-season games this year. I realize I'm tempting fate in a big way here, but maybe in some small way the heightened pressure of doing this will prompt me to live a better, more generous, less sinful life over the next few weeks, in the hopes that God won't go looking for extra ways to punish me with a disastrous football season.
Each chapter of this unfolding, potentially deity-enraging story will feature phun phacts about the opponent, including last year's record, hotties that the institution in question can claim as students or alums, and info you may find helpful in the event that you want to trash-talk said team, fanbase, or whatever. And, of course, there will be a prediction of how the game will actually go, with a moderately non-vague at the final margin of victory and to whom it shall belong.
Does that make sense? No? All right, whatever. I bring you . . . Oklahoma State.
OSU quarterback Bobby Reid, makin' it rain on them hoes.
Hometown: Stillwater, Oklahoma. Last season: Went 6-6 in the regular season, whacking Nebraska but falling to Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech to finish tied for last place (3-5) in the Big 12 South; defeated Alabama in the Independence Bowl, 34-31, on a 27-yard FG with eight seconds left. Hate index, 1 being cuddly puppy, 10 being Dick Cheney: Two and a half. Ordinarily it's an ingrained reflex for me to wish horrible things on any team wearing this much orange, but we've only played the Cowboys twice in the history of our program -- back when the school was still called Oklahoma A&M -- and one of my good friends who helped keep me sane while I was living in Lynchburg went there, so I can't build up much beef for them. Associated hottie: Ha, you thought I was going to say Anita Hill, didn't you? Nah, son -- if I ever get nominated to the Supreme Court or something, I don’t need that kind of heat on me. Our OSU representative is instead Kinga Philipps (née Szpakiewicz -- she's originally from Poland), host of "Google Current Buzz" on something called Current TV. (Oh, wait, that's Al Gore's cable channel. As a good liberal, I should’ve known what that is.) Kinga graduated from OSU in 1997, and interestingly enough, played Austin Powers's mom in "Goldmember." Which is more than you've ever done.
What excites me: Oklahoma State hasn't had a particularly scary defense under Mike Gundy -- in their eight games last year against teams that would end up bowl-eligible, they bent over to the tune of more than 31 points per contest -- and could continue to struggle this year, particularly against the run. Not one starter returns on the defensive line, and while DE Nathan Peterson has turned into a pretty reliable sack machine, Georgia's O-line is going to be better than people think and should be able to open up some big holes for Kregg Lumpkin, Knowshon Moreno, and Brannan Southerland. Also, Gundy's OSU teams haven't performed particularly well on the road -- their away record in his first two years is 3-8, with those three wins coming against Florida Atlantic, Arkansas State, and Kansas. I do not consider it boastful to suggest that Georgia is somewhat superior to any of those teams. On the other hand . . .
What scares me: Try OSU's entire offense -- other than Boise State, they were the only team in D-IA to average more than 200 yards rushing and passing last year, which is going to be quite a test for a Georgia defense that will be n00b-heavy and probably nowhere near fully jelled this early in the season. The Cowboys' sheer balance on offense means it will be imperative for Georgia's DEs to take advantage of a slightly undersized OSU offensive line that's breaking in new starters at both tackle spots. Not having Paul Oliver is going to hurt, too, given that he's the guy we'd probably be putting on all-everything receiver Adarius Bowman (60 catches, 1,181 yards, 12 scores last year). If Georgia can't disrupt the passing game early, the only other option may be to double-cover Bowman and pray. Or slip QB Bobby Reid a mickey, dress Reggie Ball up in his uniform, and send him out there. I mean, whatever. I’m just planting seeds here.
Player who needs to have a big game: DE Marcus Howard. He and Jarius Wynn are being counted on to continue the strong tradition of fast, destructive defensive ends that Georgia has built under Mark Richt, yet just about everything I’ve heard from the mainstream media about Georgia’s ends so far this year is some variation on the they’re-too-small theme. If Howard’s ever going to turn into the kind of pass-game-disrupting Tasmanian devil typified by David Pollack and Quentin Moses, now would be a good time.
What I think will happen: I know that all of Bulldog Nation wants to believe this game is setting up like Boise State '05, in which an up-and-coming team with a potent offense came into Sanford with Shocking Upset on their mental to-do list but instead got pwn3d harder than Dan Quayle in a spelling bee, but that Boise State team was used to playing in the WAC, where the competition mostly sucks and the average stadium is one-third the size of Georgia's. Intimidation isn't likely to be an issue for the Cowboys, who travel to places like Austin, Norman, and College Station on a regular basis; granted, they haven't been winning those games, but simply playing in front of a 90,000-strong audience isn't going to be enough to goad Bobby Reid into handing out gift-wrapped INTs the way Jared Zabransky did. In other words, I’m not the least bit overconfident about this game -- it may be the toughest season opener of the Mark Richt era thus far, perhaps the toughest since we were opening up against South Carolina in the early 1990s.
But I have been very impressed with what I've been hearing out of Athens regarding the team's camaraderie and focus; they're clearly not overlooking this game, and while the overall experience level of the defense is rather less than what we started out with in '05, there's potential for them to come out swinging and make every bit as big a statement as the '05 Dawgs did against Boise State. Texas Tech, a team with a defense every bit as questionable as Georgia's, beat OSU at home last year by handing them poor field position in the second half and by getting in Bobby Reid's face; our D-line may be young, but Wynn and Howard have enough speed to pull off something similar if they really attack the edges of the Cowboys' O-line.
On the other side of the ball, the passing game could break out in a big way this year if the receivers step up, but the already-proven strength of this offense is the running game, and both Richt and Bobo know that. I would expect them to establish a rhythm early with Lumpkin, Moreno, Southerland and perhaps even Thomas Brown attacking the Cowboys' front four and holding onto the ball for as much time as possible. Even then, Oklahoma State's going to put points on the board one way or another, and the game will be a dogfight for the full 60 minutes, but I think Georgia will make a big defensive stand in the final seconds to escape with a victory of, oh, four points.
If you're trash-talking: Willie Nelson so loathed the OSU football program that he specifically instructed his listeners not to be Cowboys, and the following YouTube video, first unleashed upon the world by Every Day Should Be Saturday, might provide a hint as to why:
Hells to the yikes. If I were the kind of person who makes rash, sweeping generalizations based on brief video clips, I would be tempted to propose that at least one third of the OSU fanbase is composed of barely functional alcoholics. Fortunately I am not that kind of person, but that should not prevent y'all from drawing your own conclusions.
Next up: Georgia goes up against the South Carolina Gamecocks and attempts to kick Steve Spurrier down the well for the third year in a row. Be there!
I'm sure most of you already have seen the ridiculousness of ESPN's "Who's Now?" bracket get hashed out thoroughly and repeatedly in the sports blogosphere. It's a silly idea, but more than being just silly, it's superfluous: They're hyping athletes in a contest to determine who's the most hyped, as if hype were something to be admired on its own merits. It's the equivalent of a "Richest Man in the World" contest in which the individual determined to have the most personal wealth wins a prize of ten million dollars, and while that may have formed the basis of our current administration's taxation policy over the last six years, I see no reason why that should have any influence on sports commentary.
So anyway, that's dumb in and of itself, but even if I didn't know anything about the "point" of the "bracket" (to the extent that it "has one"), I'd still roll my eyes at anything called "Who's Now?", for one simple reason:
You can't be an adverb.
Unless you're Michael Keaton, of course.
We live in a country where people will demand vehemently that English be made the "official language" even though they themselves have about as much awareness of the actual rules and structure of said language as they do the Malaysian stock market, so I'm going to give everyone a little refresher course on grammar here. You may already know all this, but just bear with me for a sec. Wikipedia -- a now reference source if ever there was one, buddy -- states that an adverb is a part of speech that "modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives (including numbers), clauses, sentences and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives." (My emphasis.)
Things are described by adjectives. Adjectives are words like "white," "hilarious," "tired," or "irresistible," just to name a few. You can be any of those things; heck, I'm all of those things, right now, even as I type this. Adverbs, on the other hand, might describe the degree to which or the manner in which I am any of those things -- "blindingly white," "utterly hilarious," "constantly tired," or "sexually irresistible," for example. Adverbs might also describe verbs -- the boy ran quickly, the car skidded sideways, Jessica Alba groped me hungrily, etc. etc.
However. The boy runs quickly, but he himself is not "quickly." Jessica Alba is groping me hungrily, but she herself is not "hungrily," she is "hungry." And while my very existence might connote sex, I myself cannot be simply "sexually" -- I have to be be sexually something, be it "irresistible," "magnetic," "overwhelming," or whatever adjective you'd care to throw in there.
You know you're feeling it.
And "now," contrary to what you might have heard or what ESPN apparently believes, is, in fact, an adverb. It cannot describe a thing. You can be eating lunch now, Dick Cheney is probably strangling kittens now, I might be taking Jessica Alba on a voyage to ecstasy the likes of which she has never before experienced now -- look, you're not here, so you don't know -- but nevertheless, it is impossible for me, or you, or Dick Cheney or Jessica Alba or whoever, to be "now."
And no matter how superhuman Lebron James or Reggie Bush might seem, it is equally impossible for them or any of ESPN's 30 other chosen athletes to be "now." The sheer grammatical implausibility of "Who's Now?" renders it a meaningless, irrelevant question; they might as well have had a contest called "Who's Extremely?" or "Who's Meanwhile?"
On plentyofblogsbetterthanthisone, ESPN has been appropriately ridiculed for taking what amounts to a big popularity contest and trying to sell it as some kind of watershed moment in the history of sports, so I will let those bloggers' words speak for themselves. Instead of adding to the demands that the Worldwide Leader stop insulting our intelligence, I will merely demand that they stop butchering the English language.
And that they stop it right now.
Bonus contest for grammar dorks: I've hidden 30 adverbs in the above post. Find them all and you win absolutely nothing!
Last week the +5 was a somewhat controversial list of women I shouldn't think are hot, but do; this week we flip the script and list Five Women I Should Think Are Hot, But Don't.
(Disclaimer: Walking disasters such as Lindsay "I Know Who Killed My Career" Lohan and Britney "Eatin' Chicken Wings in a Gucci Dress" Spears are not eligible for this list. I don't care what they looked like four years ago -- nobody should think they're hot now, unless your idea of foreplay is holding a chick's hair back while she pukes her guts out.)
So here's the Five:
Penelope Cruz Maybe I'm being gratuitously dickish here, but I really think the Seinfeld episode "The Strike," the one where Jerry's dating the "two-face" girl who's gorgeous at some times and frightening at others, was inspired by Penelope Cruz. The pictures above are a case in point: At right, we have Good Penelope -- fresh-faced, windswept, smokin'; at left, though, we have Evil Penelope -- angular, smirking rather than smiling, one eye weirdly bigger than the other. (You can really see it in this photo, apparently taken during Cruz's audition for the lead role in "The Forest Whitaker Story.") Her duality is so pronounced that she can sometimes switch back and forth between the two in the span of a single movie (as you would know if you've seen "Vanilla Sky"); in the end, I guess I just don't like the odds here.
Victoria Beckham The bottle-blond hair, the suspiciously intense tan (particularly for a British person), the bizarre futuristic outfits, the boobs that stare gravity in the face and laugh -- she just doesn't even look like an actual human being to me, but rather some advanced humanoid that was grown in a lab. It's entirely possible that she was created by an alien race who sent her down to earth to mate with David Beckham and spawn a master race of alien-human hybrids who will enslave us with their telepathic powers and their ability to "bend it," whatever the hell that means. (While I'm rolling here, another thing I don't get is the whole point of that "Coming to America" reality show she's got on NBC. A fabulously wealthy, globally famous woman whom some people obviously consider attractive, married to a soccer superstar, coming to the entertainment capital of the world . . . oh, heavens, however will she manage in this strange new land? As if it weren't bad enough that she has to be chauffeured around on a completely different side of the road over here, she's going to have to learn an entirely new word for "bumbershoot"!)
Any of the Girls Next Door who aren't Holly I don't know, the other two just don't do a whole lot for me. Then again, I've never had three apparently Playboy-caliber girls offer to all live in my apartment and triple-team me at my leisure, so what do I know. (If that ever happens, I'll be sure to update this post as necessary.)
The Pussycat Dolls Here's how out of it I am: I had to go to Wikipedia to find out what exactly they are, which is apparently "an American pop and R&B, and dance and burlesque ensemble." Oh, uh, OK. Upon further investigation, "The Pussycat Dolls" appears to be a broadly nebulous title applied to any of a number of singing/dancing groups in various places around the country whose "leadership" and composition are subject to change at any time, so . . . yeah, I still don't know what the fuck is going on here. I do know three things, though: 1) The concept of pre-fab thrown-together pop groups is, to me, distasteful on its face; 2) a group of strippers who don't actually take their clothes off is like a BMW with square tires; and 3) I could probably go down the street to the Blue Monkey tonight and, in less than 15 minutes of searching, pick out a dozen Birmingham-area girls hotter than any of the Dolls. What I would then do with that dozen is anyone's guess, but my initial guess is that it'd involve baby oil, naked pyramids, and a Vespa scooter. I have needs.
Naomi Campbell I can honestly say I didn't think she was all that big a deal even at the height of her career; and then she started throwing phones at people. (Now, dating really hot psycho chicks can be kind of exciting when they seem normal at first and you get to slowly uncover their various layers of psychosis one by one, but if you go into it knowing they're bat-shit crazy, man, that's just stupid.)
There, I said it. And now the Ten:
1. Nancy Sinatra, "You Only Live Twice" 2. Kylie Minogue, "Falling" 3. DJ Shadow, "Right Thing/GDMFSOB" 4. Keith Frank and the Soileau Zydeco Band, "Sometimes We Make You Move Your Feet" 5. Jan Hammer, the theme song to "Miami Vice" 6. Ice Cube, "Who Got the Camera?" 7. Pet Shop Boys, "Se A Vida É" (Pink Noise mix) 8. Pet Shop Boys, "The Resurrectionist" (Goetz B. mix) 9. David Cross, "My Daughter's First Date" 10. The Strokes, "Trying Your Luck"
And there you have it . . . now you're welcome to throw your own Ten, and/or gals (or guys) whose alleged hotness you just don't "get," in the comments.
We're only a few weeks from that glorious time when football season rolls around and this blog shifts over to a clean-burning mix of 50% political/pop-cultural ranting and 50% declarations of how your team, simply by not being the Georgia Bulldogs, sucks out loud.
In due time I'll be joining in with the usual Blogpoll and roundtable shenanigans, along with R-rated trash-talking and all the other stuff you've come to know and hate. I'll also be doing an in-depth preview of the coming Georgia season, which is a bit of a leap of faith for me. Last year I did previews of the entire SEC, broken down into Eastern and Western divisions, which included predictions that the Dawgs would go 10-2, finish second in the East, and beat Kentucky and Vanderbilt; these predictions turned out to be wrong, wrong, and super-duper-hella-galactically wrong (respectively). Now, you might think that I would've been chastened by that misadventure, but that doesn't look like it's going to be the case -- in fact, I'm throwing caution to the wind and previewing the Georgia season game-by-game, including stabs taken at educatedly guessing whom I think will win. Tempting fate, you say? Probably, but whatever, man. If God hates me enough to change the outcome of football games solely to counter my prediction of what would happen, then clearly I've got bigger problems than football.
So anyway, the 2007 Risking the Wrath of God Georgia Preview will begin in a few days with Oklahoma State, with other games being posted in due time, i.e. whenever I fricking get around to them -- and here's where I can use your help. If you're a fan of a team Georgia plays this year and you want to counter my dumb-assed prediction with your own prognostication of how the game will go down, e-mail your scenario to me at heyjennyslater.blog (at) gmail, and I'll include your thoughtful, tastefully considered counterpoint in that team's preview. I've already got people lined up for Alabama, Ole Miss, Auburn, and Georgia Tech; if you're a fan of any of the other eight teams on our schedule, even Western freaking Carolina, send me your stuff. Try to be as funny as me. You won't be, but I'll still appreciate the effort.
Also coming soon: In the month leading up to the start of the college football season on August 30, I'll be putting up the 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era one by one. I'll ruin the suspense right now and inform you that George Foster dry-humping a Florida D-lineman in the 2002 Cocktail Party will not be on there, but if you have any suggestions other than that, e-mail them to me or put 'em in the comments.
So that'll all start soon, but in the meantime, to tide you over, I wanted to help all of you SEC football fans, no matter which team you root for, get pumped for the 2007 season. In the spirit of the 2006 CFB-Award-nominatedGeorgia vs. Georgia Tech "Successories," here are your motivational affirmations. Enjoy, dillwipes!
ADDED: It was brought to my attention that many of y'all feel the poster for Florida was a little too, how do you say, deferential, particularly for a Georgia fan. Fair enough. To atone, I bring you this:
Before we get into the Ten+5, I have to show you this awesome thing that I totally found out about before Josh did (OK, that's kind of a total lie): a Web gadget that lets you upload a picture of yourself and then transforms you into a Simpsons character. Here's me:
Kinda cool, but let's put me into an environment that reflects my true personality:
Perfect.
Now to the +5 part. Based on a conversation that took place a couple of weeks ago during EDSBS Live!, in which a conversation with Stewart Mandel soon devolved into a discussion of people you're ashamed to admit you're turned on by but are anyway. I confessed one on-air, and now I've decided to turn it into the +5, because it shows I'm brave, or something: the Five Chicks I Shouldn't Think Are Hot, But Do.
Jenna Bush We've been over this before, I'm sure. While I'd like to say her particular combination of genes is a deal-breaker for me, as it ought to be for anybody, I can't. I don't care if she's dumb as a brick, or thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, or whatever, she's hot. I'm not proud of that, but then this list clearly isn't about pride. (And she's a 'Horns fan, which counts for something.)
Hayden Panettiere Over the past few years, whenever assorted losers have set up "countdown clocks" on the Internet ticking down to when the Olsen twins or Hillary Duff or whoever turn 18 and therefore become "legal," I have been promptly and appropriately disgusted. But I would be a dishonest person if I denied sneaking a peek at Hayden Panettiere's Wikipedia page to find out when the magical date rolls around, if only to find out when I can stop suffering paroxysms of guilt for thinking she's hot. You may or may not be Catholic, but trust me -- even in a confessional, "Forgive me father, for I have sinned, I have a crush on the cheerleader from 'Heroes' " is not something you want to have to utter. (Fortunately, I only have another month left of this -- yes, I checked.)
Nancy Pelosi Shut up. Just shut the fuck up right now. I think she's cute; so shoot me. She's also an ass-kicker, and I don't care how big and bad and extraconstitutional Dick Cheney thinks he is, put him in a locked room with The Pelosi for five minutes and he'd come out missing some teeth. And possibly a limb.
Erin Surance Pink-haired cartoon spokesperson for esurance.com, and the hottest 'toon on TV right now. Yes, even hotter than Lois Griffin.
Lafawnduh from "Napoleon Dynamite" There's a woman who works somewhere in our building who's six feet tall and always immaculately put together, and we've sort of secretly nicknamed her Lafawnduh, but as a total compliment. I don't know about you, but Kip Dynamite is a very lucky man. If someone like this was willing to move all the way out to Idaho for my pasty-white ass, then I, too, would love her more than technology.
OK, now that I've got that off my chest . . . the Ten:
1. Josh Rouse, "Directions" 2. CJ Bolland, "It Ain't Gonna Be Me" 3. Public Enemy, "Caught, Can We Get a Witness?" 4. Pearl Jam, "Daughter" 5. Pet Shop Boys, "One More Chance" (Remix '88) 6. Snap!, "The Power" 7. Gorillaz, "All Alone" 8. Nicola Conte, "Bossa Per Due" (Thievery Corporation remix) 9. Dimitri From Paris, "Une Very Stylish Fille" 10. George Jones, "She Thinks I Still Care"
Your own Ten, be it songs or guilty pleasures of the hottie variety, are requested in the comments.
· Last Friday night was karaoke! karaoke! karaoke! 'till the cows came home at Starz on Valley Avenue here in Birmingham. And before you even ask, the answer is: yes. I started off with "Tiny Dancer," and then later on in the night, just to demonstrate that I have range, I followed it up with "The Humpty Dance."
I'm going to do a mash-up of the two and call it "Hold Me Closer, Humpty Dancer."
Tips on how to kick ass at karaoke, because I do: 1) Sing songs you already know all the words to, and only use the monitors as a last resort. 2) Don't pick a song with a lengthy instrumental break, because you'll just end up standing there waiting for something to do. (Sadly, this is why "My Humps" is actually a better karaoke song than "Jump" or "If You Leave.") 3) If you want to move ahead in the queue of wannabe singers, and it's not your birthday and you don't have big tits, pick a song that doesn't fit your appearance. Nobody particularly wants to hear a popped-collar frat guy sing Limp Bizkit for the 213th time, but if that same guy wants to sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart," that'll get him up on stage. Or a rail-thin, five-foot-nothing black girl singing Drowning Pool's "Bodies" (which actually happened Friday night). Mix it up a little bit, and you will be richly rewarded.
· Wow, those Vick bloodlines really created some upstanding gentlemen, didn't they? This sucks big-time for the Falcons, who unloaded Matt Schaub in the off-season and may be looking at the Joey Harrington Xperience if Ron Mexico turns out to be in shit that's as deep as everyone seems to think he is. On the other hand, though, not only do I no longer have to feel any guilt about hoping that D.J. Shockley ends up the Falcons' starting QB, I can now even put an over/under on when that'll happen. I'm going to set it at 5.5 games into the season (not counting exhibition games). Who wants in? Or should we do it like a knockout pool? I'm down for whatever here.
He's coming, Atlanta . . . and he'll be wearing a familiar color scheme.
· So it turns out Mitt Romney is every bit as big a girl as John Edwards supposedly is, if not more so, only I'm guessing Mitt's "makeup consulting" expenses get a whole lot less play in the so-called liberal media than Edwards's haircuts. But that's fine; I, for one, hope Mitt sails to the GOP nomination. You have to work pretty damn hard to be the biggest tool in this year's Republican presidential field, but Romney has nailed it with a flip-flop tendency that makes John Kerry '04 look like a pillar of consistency by comparison. Republicans, please nominate this dingus so I can start punching up my résumé for submission to the Obama Administration next year. My suggestion for a running mate is Paris Hilton, who appears to have about the same level of respect for the country's intelligence as Romney does. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
I feel that I have sent the same letter to you once a month for the last six months, and I am now sending it again.
Since becoming a GEICO customer in January of this year, you have reported 131 accidents, requesting reimbursement for repairs necessitated by each one. You have claimed not to be responsible in any of them, usually listing the cause of the accident as either "Sneak attack by Decepticons" or "Unavoidable damage caused by protecting freedom for all sentient beings."
Some Republican is going to turn this into an attack ad, I just know it. Then again, if David Vitter can bang prostitutes up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and survive the hit politically, maybe Prime can weather this. I'm pulling for him.
And speaking of "Transformers," that reminds me . . .
· Megan Fox, the blazing hottie who plays the female lead in "Transformers," reminded me of somebody from my past, and yet for the life of me I couldn't figure out who it was, until this past week it finally hit me: She looks like Kristin, this girl I knew back in college. I don't remember her last name, but I figure it had to be fairly close to mine alphabetically, because she sat near me in Bill Lee's Introduction to Telecommunications class during spring semester of my sophomore year. (Dr. Lee was a stone-cold pimp, but that's another story for another day.)
Anyway, Kristin and I started hanging out a lot that semester, meeting up at what was then Blue Sky Coffee in College Square to study for Dr. Lee's marathon exams; a friend of mine even asked me if anything was, you know, going on, and my only response was, duh, I don't know. You have to understand, I was the latest of late bloomers -- I'd only had one actual girlfriend my entire life up to that point and only maybe a handful of actual dates besides that, and was kind of lacking in self-confidence besides, so I pretty much did need someone to fly an airplane over my dorm trailing a banner reading YES, I LIKE YOU before I would feel fully justified in making a move. So anyway, we'd hang out at Blue Sky, she'd ask me to walk her back to her car, she even invited herself over to my dorm a couple of times, and I did . . . nothing.
It probably took another five years, long after I'd graduated of course, for me to look back and think, "Wait a minute. She was coming on to me." Thus making me one of perhaps the ten dumbest people alive. Like Mitt Romney dumb.
I didn't say it was a good story.
But anyway, now that my memory has been jogged about this, Kristin, if you're out there, this is Doug from Dr. Lee's Intro to Telecom class back in '97. I finally figured it out, and I apologize for being a total retard. Forgive me, and holler if you're still anywhere within 200 miles of Athens these days -- I promise I've grown up a little, and maybe even gained a few IQ points, in the last 10 years.
Today is Bastille Day, and while relations between the U.S. and France haven't exactly been great over the last few years, it appears that the new French prime minister, Sir Simon MilliganNicolas Sarkozy might be looking to turn that around, and besides, France is one of the few countries in the world who's managed to do this democracy thing nearly as long as we have without completely screwing it up. Herewith, a not-so-random Ten Things That Are Great About France.
They did give us considerable military aid during our own revolution. Maybe it was just to fuck with the British, but hey, it's the thought that counts.
Lots of good art, even if much of it was drug-induced.
Serge Gainsbourg, who, by drinking and smoking his way through a career of shockingly filthy pop songs, took the persona of the don't-give-a-fuck pop star to new heights. Also shagged Brigitte Bardot.
The bikini. Yup, we have two French dudes to thank for that.
The Concorde (well, half of it, anyway).
Brie, which is delicious.
Escargot, which is also delicious. (Screw y'all. It is.)
The Citroën automobile.
Air, which is possibly the most subtle make-out music out there.
And last but not least, of course we have . . .
Joyeux Anniversaire, you Bastille-charging, crusty-bread-eating socialists, you. And we're sorry about the whole Freedom Fries thing.
