The Friday Random Ten+5 gets roasted.

Don't know if y'all heard, but a very funny individual passed away a couple weeks ago -- Greg Giraldo, a Comedy Central regular and veteran of the stand-up circuit. If you've never seen one of his Comedy Central roast appearances or heard his stand-up album Good Day to Cross a River, check out one or the other (or both); he had the kind of sense of humor that was awfully good at hitting people right where it hurt the most, yet you never got the impression he was only doing it for shock value. Above all, it had to be a good joke, and it usually was.

Anyway, his death got me thinking, who would I want laying into me if I was somehow fortunate, rich, or just ridicule-able enough to earn my own roast? Obviously can't have Greg Giraldo at it now, but there are a few other people I think I'd like to have there to give me the skewering I have richly deserved for years now. So this week's +5 is the Five Comedians I'd Invite To Destroy Me At My Celebrity Roast . . . take it away, folks:



Tina Fey
Obvious choice to be the headliner. Which reminds me, I hope every one of y'all caught last night's live episode(s) of "30 Rock"; if you didn't, you can catch every last minute of cameo-filled goodness here.



Patton Oswalt
Probably my favorite stand-up comedian in the world right now. And an entirely appropriate choice for someone to roast me, as his existential angst and misery so closely mirror my own. Yet he was the voice of Rémy in "Ratatouille," so I could almost kind of sort of pass it off as family-friendly.



John Oliver
Graphic insults and dick jokes? Most people would probably find that inappropriate. Graphic insults and dick jokes in a very proper British accent? Would really class up the proceedings, I think.



Dave Chappelle
The great thing about having Dave Chappelle do your roast is that not only would he deliver a hilarious string of insults, he might be able to hook up Wu-Tang or De La for the after-party, or perhaps even the event itself. Greatest Roast Ever? I think so.



Dave Attell
When I told Holly I was putting Dave Attell on my list, she asked me, "Do you really want Dave Attell in the same room with your mom?" My answer: Yes, because that would be hilarious. "So, Mrs. Gillett, masturbation: Let's talk about it." (Holly's reaction: still highly disapproving.)

And the Ten:

1. Randy Newman, "Louisiana 1927"
2. Isaac Hayes, "Chocolate Salty Balls"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "Always"
4. Röyksopp, "Only This Moment"
5. Mose Allison, "I Don't Worry About a Thing"
6. David Holmes, "Commercial Break"
7. Miley Cyrus, "Party in the U.S.A." (yes, I have this on my iPod, and you know you love it)
8. Dr. Dooom, "I Run Rap"
9. Stereolab, "Brakhage"
10. Moby, "Down Slow"

Your turn, folks. List your preferred celebrity roasters and/or Random Tens -- with or without Miley -- in the comments.

And I'm off to Savannah for a long weekend . . . I should be able to get on here while I'm out of town, but if I don't, well, that means I got into some horrendous trouble with the genteel society of Savannah, most likely alcohol-related, and woke up face-down and hungover in the Garden of Good and Evil. Which reminds me, if y'all have any bar/restaurant recommendations for me, throw those in the comments, too, while you're at it.

The Friday Random Ten+5 does not touch that dial.

As much as I love summer, there are three big reasons I love it when fall is about to arrive: 1) football season starts, 2) the weather cools off a bit, and 3) the new TV season starts. Since last night was the season premieres of "Community," "30 Rock" and "The Office," I declare that the official beginning of the new season, and it was everything I dreamed it could be: Betty White drinking her own urine, Matt Damon weeping about "grown-up love," and Steve Carell spanking his nephew. If you didn't watch (or don't watch) any of those shows, you probably don't have any idea what I'm talking about, but you can still revel in this week's +5: The Five TV Shows I've Most Looked Forward To At Various Points In My Life (Besides "30 Rock," Of Course).



"Seinfeld" (1989-1998)
When I say "the shows I most looked forward to," I don't mean the best shows I ever watched, or even the ones that I consider my favorite now -- I mean the shows that most firmly planted themselves in the category of "appointment viewing," the shows I did the most work to rearrange my schedule around. "Seinfeld," though, was appointment viewing, and one of the best shows, and one that's still one of my favorites even today. I think the thing that was so groundbreaking about it wasn't that it was "about nothing" -- or maybe it's more correct to say that when people talk about it being "about nothing," what they really mean is that the characters learned nothing as they went from one episode to the next. Refreshingly, there were never any tearful heart-to-heart talks or climactic speeches in which the moral of that week's episode was revealed; the characters acted crazy, they were horrible to one another, the story ended and they were just as crazy and horrible to one another the following week. Jerry was still a sarcastic guy who couldn't stay interested in the same woman for more than a couple dates, George was still a neurotic douche, Kramer was still a "hipster doofus" (and, later, a horrible racist). In its own way, it was indeed the show of its time, mirroring a society that gleefully stumbled from one misadventure to the next remaining defiantly resistant to learning anything from what they'd just put themselves (and others) through. And also my chemistry teacher from my sophomore year in high school, Mrs. Summers, and I bonded over it and she gave me a Snapple on the last day of school that year.



"Knight Rider" (1982-1986)
Important for three reasons: One, it was the very first show I can remember deeming "my favorite"; two, it taught me that Cars Are Awesome; three, it prompted my very first celebrity crush that I can recall -- on Rebecca Holden, who played April, KITT's chief mechanic, in the second season. To this day I can't participate in the public razzing of David Hasselhoff nearly as lustily as the rest of society; he gave me so much, man.



"The Cosby Show" (1984-1992)
You know what's weird about this program? At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to retroactively build up my White Liberal Guilt credentials, I and pretty much every other kid in my class from third grade through fifth or sixth made this show "appointment viewing" on every single Thursday night, and yet it never occurred to any of us that it was a "black show" or that the characters were any different than we were. Fifty years from now, we may be looking back on this show and realizing that it had a more profound (if less immediately apparent) effect on race relations in this country than Rodney King or the election of Barack Obama. (Of course, Bill Cosby would probably call me an idiot for even mentioning any of this, and he may not be wrong.)



"Murphy Brown" (1988-1998)
Two things I knew even when I was only in junior high: Candice Bergen was hot, and Dan Quayle was an idiot. One thing that went right over my head, though, at the time: People who go into journalism as a career become bitter, romantically unlucky ex-alcoholics, and that's a best-case scenario. There was a lesson there if only I'd bothered to pay attention to it.



"The Golden Girls" (1985-1992)
This show was actually appointment viewing at two points in my life: the first time when it was on its initial run, and the second time during the summer before my senior year of college. I hadn't been able to nail down an internship for that summer, so I stayed up in Athens with a skeleton crew of fellow Red & Blackers who cranked out the weekly edition of the paper during summer semester. Each Wednesday, we'd stick around at the R&B offices until the thing was finally put to bed, then convene at a friend's apartment and drink grape Kool-Aid spiked with Golden Grain while we watched "Golden Girls" reruns. The drank, of course, soon acquired the nickname "Golden Girls Kool-Aid," and once we'd lubricated ourselves with enough of it, we headed on down to Boneshakers for '80s night. And yeah, you're remembering correctly, Boneshakers was a gay club, but on '80s night there was a pretty much equal mix of gays and straights, all of whom were welcome to dance like complete douchebags to songs like "Don't You Want Me," "A Little Respect" and "The Glamorous Life." Man, those were some good times. Boneshakers closed down a few years ago and is now something else; somebody needs to bring that place back.

And here's the Ten:

1. 3rd Bass, "French Toast"
2. Electronic, "The Patience of a Saint"
3. Billy Paul, "Me and Mrs. Jones"
4. The Chemical Brothers, "Get Up On It Like This"
5. Gorillaz, "Latin Simone"
6. Pet Shop Boys, "Se a vida é (That's the Way Life Is)" (Mark Picchiotti vocal mix)
7. The Go! Team, "Feelgood By Numbers"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "KDX 125" (Vangelis mix)
9. David Holmes, "The Ballad of Sarah & Jack"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "Go West" (bootleg version)

Your own most eagerly anticipated television shows, along with your Random Tens, are welcome in the comments.

Revisited the summer before my senior year at UGA with Golden Girls Kool-Aid and trips to Boneshakers

The Friday Random Ten+5 is still gettin' it done after all these years.

I don't remember where the inspiration for this week's +5 came from, but I was talking with Holly the other day about something -- maybe it was a movie, maybe it was an album, maybe it was a car -- and we were remarking on how well it had held up over the years. In our instant-gratification culture these days, I think that's a quality that doesn't get talked up enough: Anybody can make an object, whether it's a work of art or a consumer good, that gets people jazzed at the moment it's introduced, but it's much harder to make something about which people will be saying 20 or 30 years hence, "Wow, it's been a long time but that thing has still managed not to be embarrassing. I'd still be proud to watch/drive/listen to/be seen in public with that." So here's a salute to that which has stood the ravages of time better than lesser creations: Five People, Places, And Things That Have Held Up Really Well.



"Terminator 2: Judgment Day"
It's hard to believe that this movie is nearly 20 years old -- it was one of the first movies I saw after we moved down to Georgia in the summer of '91 -- and even harder to believe just how good the "liquid metal" visual effects look. For all the hype these days about advancements in CGI and 3D and whatever else, James Cameron probably set a bar with this movie for seamlessly blending CGI and live action that still hasn't been cleared. And while Cameron himself hasn't entirely resisted the temptation to make movies with so much CGI they might as well be video games, he still does it better than just about anyone out there.



Kathryn Bigelow
Cameron's one glaring error: calling it quits with Kathryn Bigelow after only two years. The picture above, taken shortly before Bigelow became the first female Best Picture winner in Oscar history? She was fifty-eight years old when that was taken. Guys, I know I can't speak for all of us, but if someone came to me and said "Marry your current girlfriend and she'll still look like this 30 years from now," I'd take that deal no questions asked. (Side note: Does winning the Oscar for "The Hurt Locker" give Bigelow the creative leeway she needs to make the "Point Break" sequel we've all been awaiting for nearly two decades? God, I hope so.) Honorable mention: Helen Mirren, old enough to qualify for Social Security but still straight-up crushing it in stuff like this.


Tears for Fears Everybody Wants to Rule the World
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Tears for Fears
As much as I like '80s New Wave music -- fuck that, as much as I love it; I celebrate its entire catalog -- even I have to admit that a substantial portion of it comes off as really cheesy these days. Tears for Fears, though, is in a lot of ways an exception. I mean, you can occasionally hear some 1985 in the tinniness of the synthesizers or drum machines, but otherwise, this shit still sounds really good, and Songs from the Big Chair is just a great album, period.



old Volvos
This past Tuesday I went down to the Volvo dealer in town for a special promotional event unveiling the new S60 sedan, which is certainly a gorgeous automobile, but let's take a minute to salute its boxy predecessors for their noble service in the mission of getting us to where we need to go and not getting us killed on the way there. Given how a lot of car manufacturers are re-introducing the concept of sharp angles in some of their recent designs, it's remarkable to ponder how good some of these old-style Volvos still look (the ones that have been well-maintained, at least), and while they may not have the laundry list of computerized, triple-redundant, radar-guided safety features that the new S60 has, they're still safe as a freaking house in the unfortunate event that you actually hit something. (Though I have to admit that the new S60, which has a camera mounted above the rearview mirror that scans the road for objects that look like people and will slam on the brakes for you if you're about to hit one of them, is pretty badass. Still, they're not bringing the wagon, and that is damn near unforgivable.)



"Muppet Babies"
This was the centerpiece of my Saturday-morning cartoon viewing for the vast majority of my childhood, and looking back on it now, it's funny how many of the visual gags went completely over my head. There was the Monty Python-esque cut-and-paste animation, which of course I totally didn't recognize as being Monty Python-esque to begin with, but this show was also chock full of pop-culture references that perhaps presaged all of us Gen-Xers growing up to become witheringly post-modern pop-culture-obsessed hipsters. That's what this show was: a training class for future hipsters. I'd really like to do a study interviewing people who were regular viewers of this show back in the '80s and seeing how many of them went on to become bloggers.

And now the Ten:

1. Young Holt Unlimited, "Soulful Strut"
2. Underworld, "EssGee"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "Minimal"
4. Moby, "Guitar Flute and String"
5. Cee-Lo, "Let's Stay Together"
6. Meat Beat Manifesto, "Everything Counts"
7. Underworld, "Kittens"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Swoon"
9. New Order, "Thieves Like Us"
10. Ice Cube, "When Will They Shoot?"

Your turn to take over in the comments: Random Tens, and nominations for stuff that's really stood up well over the years, are welcomed.

The Friday Random Ten+5 has some things it'd like to catch up on.

The blog may have been offline for exactly three months, but that doesn't mean the world just ceased to turn on its axis during that time. A lot of stuff happened, some of which I might've liked to discuss on here, and now that HJS is more or less fully operational again, now's as good a time as any to go over that stuff, just to make sure we're all on the same page about stuff. (By which I mean you're on the same page with me, since you haven't had me around for the past few months to tell you what you should think and feel about everything.) So here's a quick refresher course -- Five Things I Probably Would've Posted About Over The Past Three Months If The Blog Had Been Up:



I got a job
The most recent development, obvs, and the catalyst for the blog going back up to begin with. My sidebar profile is accurate -- I am indeed a paid lackey for a Fortune 500 company now, albeit one that treats its employees very well and has given me a fat benefits package. I'm not gonna tell any of you assholes where I work, for fear that one of you is gonna do something like order 50 pizzas and have them sent to my office, but suffice to say I'm a working man again, and very happy to be one. (OK, I can't keep a secret: I'm a hired assassin for BP, taking out whistleblowers in the Deepwater Horizon case. Did you know they actually have hitmen on payroll? Although on my business cards it says "Information Security Specialist.")



"Justified" and "Community" are two of the best shows on TV
Being unemployed obviously gave me a lot more time to watch TV, but in the case of "Justified" and "Community," that may have been a good thing. "Justified," the show with Timothy Olyphant as a federal marshall assigned to return to his hilljack hometown in eastern Kentucky, would probably have been worth watching if it'd just been Olyphant showing off his considerable bad-ass skills and shooting people for an hour every Tuesday night, but instead the show surrounds him with a whole cast of well-drawn characters with unpredictable nuances -- including Walton Goggins as Olyphant's Neo-Nazi-turned-backwoods-preacher bête noire -- and works equally well as both drama and action series. "Community," meanwhile, started kind of slow but got steadily funnier as it went along, and launched into overdrive with the "chicken fingers" and "paintball" episodes toward the end of the season -- seriously, whether you have to get them on Hulu, Netflix, your cousin's DVR, or a pirated Chinese DVD out of the trunk of someone's car, watch both of them ASAP -- and as far as I'm concerned is now appointment viewing on Thursday nights, particularly with "The Office" appearing to sort of go off the rails. Joel McHale's character is poised to join the pantheon of Awesome TV Douchebags whom I'm increasingly trying to model my life after.



I don't get the iPad
Like everything else Apple makes, it's real purty, and it's a fun toy, but am I that far off in describing it as a really big iPhone that can't make phone calls? Which is not to say I wouldn't gladly take one if it were offered to me, but I can't see paying five or seven hundred dollars for what is basically a toy. (I can only see myself paying three hundred dollars for a toy, specifically the Lego Taj Mahal, which you're damn right I'm gonna go out and buy now that I have a job again.)



I'm glad conference expansion ended up not being all that big a deal
As many things that I find nonsensical and infuriating about how Division I-A college football is currently set up, I didn't really want things to change so radically that we ended up with maybe only four 16-team "superconferences" around which the entirety of Division I-A was supposed to revolve. Not that I necessarily had a lot of faith in the idea that a "Pac-16" would work, though, because by more or less adding an entire division of the Big XII to its roster, the Pac-10 would've been opening itself up to the same problems that caused fractures in the Big XII: Just as that conference tacked on a bunch of Texas schools in an effort to expand and have a conference-title game, causing Nebraska to feel slighted enough in the proceedings that they eventually bolted for the Big Ten, the "Pac-16" would've had two completely different divisions -- the old Pac-8 on one side, and a "Red Dead Redemption" division (to borrow Spencer Hall's phrase) full of schools with little or no connection to the Rose Bowl or any of the conference's other traditions, but whose money and TV markets still would've become the conference's new power center. (Not to mention, of course, that anything that distracts people's attention from the superiority of the SEC is unacceptable.) In the end, the Big Ten and Pac-10 went to 12 teams, and the Big XII survived by shrinking back to 10 -- which is ridiculous, sure, but no less ridiculous than making Texas A&M fans truck their asses up to Pullman, Wash., or Corvallis, Ore., for conference games.



I'm really touched by how much y'all appeared to miss this thing
I'm gonna try not to get too maudlin here (or, conversely, let myself get too big a head about any of this), but when you're a blogger of any kind -- but particularly an unemployed one who sometimes finds himself struggling to come up with a reason to even get out of bed in the morning -- you sometimes wonder if anybody really cares what you have to say, and if it would matter all that much to anyone if you just stopped doing it. Well, I was pestered with enough "When are you putting the blog back up, assbag?!?" queries over the past three months to know that quite a few of y'all did care, and while some of you were bigger dicks about it than others, the concern still meant a lot to me. And now that things seem to be getting back on track in any number of aspects of my life, I feel like y'all are owed a debt of gratitude for making me feel important during a period when it was hard to find reasons to feel that way. So thanks to all of you, and I want you to know that just because I'm a working stiff again doesn't mean I'm going to be any more mature, or any less of a douche, on this blog going forward.

So here's to better times ahead. For everyone. And here's the Random Ten:

1. Stevie Wonder, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours"
2. Beck, "Debra"
3. The Chemical Brothers, "Playground for a Wedgeless Firm"
4. Ebn-Ozn, "AEIOU Sometimes Y"
5. The Smiths, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
6. Beck, "Modesto"
7. The Romantics, "What I Like About You"
8. Gnarls Barkley, "Surprise"
9. DJ Shadow, "Changeling"
10. Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die"

So: Anything you've been wanting to get off your chest for the past three months? Throw it in the comments, along with your Random Tens if you've got 'em. And happy weekend.

The Friday Random Ten+5 crosses its fingers and hopes for the best in 2010.

After a protracted holiday-induced absence, the Friday Random Ten+5 is back to say . . . man, 2009 really sucked. I mean, I'm not going to say everything that happened last year was bad, but any year in which I lose my job, get sued, have three back surgeries, have to move back in with my parents, the Dawgs lose five games, and the Redskins go 4-12 is not one I'm likely to look back upon fondly. The year had its isolated bright spots, but on the whole, 2010 almost has to be better by default.

I'm optimistic about this new year, and I'm full of hopes for various things -- obviously including finding a job, getting a new car, the Dawgs hiring a kick-ass defensive coordinator and running roughshod over the rest of the SEC East, that sort of thing -- but I've also got some assorted aspirations and hopes that fall outside those usual sorts of things. These are things that I believe can benefit not just me but all of society, and in the first +5 of 2010, I'm sharing them with you -- Five Things I Hope Happen In The New Year.



The "Arrested Development" movie finally coming to fruition
First we were told it was happening. Then we were told nothing was actually happening yet. Then we were told that it's happening, and it has a screenwriter, he just hasn't actually written anything yet. C'mon, guys, make this movie so it can be hilarious and a runaway success and get the TV series re-started on a network that actually appreciates it. Like, what about an NBC Thursday-night lineup including "The Office," "Arrested Development," and "30 Rock"? That's a lineup so awesome it might actually turn Jay Leno at 10:00 funny. Well, OK, that might be setting the bar a bit too high, but we can always hope.



Slovakia making the final four of the World Cup
My esteemed countrymen from the glorious sovereign nation of Slovakia have made the cut of 32 for the World Cup this summer, and few things would make me happier than to see them make it into the semifinals. Or into the semifinals (against the USA, of course). If that can't happen, then I want the Slovak hockey team to win the gold medal in the Winter Olympics.



Lego coming out with a James Bond series
They already have Star Wars figures who carry guns of some type, not to mention the "Agents" series, in which many of the minifigs are armed as well. Why not go all the way and introduce a James Bond series to tie in with the next Bond film, due to start filming later this year? They could make the tricked-out Aston Martin from "Goldfinger," the bad guy's secret under-lake satellite base from "Goldeneye," the two airplanes from the shootout in "Quantum of Solace," the possibilities are endless. (Just leave "Die Another Day" out of it. That one sucked.)



Joe Lieberman being eaten by something
Wolves, bears, giant irradiated scorpions, zombie Ted Kennedy, I'm really not partial. I just want his sanctimonious ass off my TV.



A huge nationwide backlash against the Twilight franchise
Baby sis has already expounded upon why the Twilight book series is not only appallingly poorly written but also in danger of making our young girls believe some horrible, horrible things about men and relationships, and done it better than I could, so I'll stay away from the literary criticism. All I will say is that pre-teen girls are by and large the dumbest demographic in the entire human race -- it's almost like they start devolving around age 10 and don't catch back up with where they're suppposed to be until 17 or 18 -- so anything pre-teen girls like that much almost has to be idiotic by default. And while I have no doubt that the Twilight fad will burn itself out in due time (if nothing else can kill the franchise, the inevitably godawful adaptation of the final book in the series will), I'm praying that our nation comes to its meager senses before then. It just makes me sad, going into a theatre to see a good movie and having to wade through a line of teenage girls and middle-aged housewives about to live vicariously through this idiotic romance as an escape from their own shitty relationships. New rule: If you're an adult male married to a woman who would go see "Twilight" un-ironically under any circumstances, you are entitled to as many extramarital affairs as it takes to blot out that fact, however fleetingly. I really hope that if there are intelligent civilizations in other solar systems, they wait until after this fad has burned itself out to come visit us, because I don't want them thinking Stephanie Meyer was somehow the pinnacle of culture in our civilization or anything.

Those are mine . . . and Holly has one to add: "For Tim Tebow to tank at the combine, fall to 26th or wherever in the first round of the draft so that the Cowboys pick him up, he has a terrible first half of the season and announces after only eight weeks that he's retiring from football, and thus the Cowboys have lost their first-round pick and Tebow's a pussy."

Wow. That's pretty specific . . . specific and hilarious.

Anyway, here's the Ten:

1. Hard-Fi, "Hard to Beat" (Axwell mix)
2. Pet Shop Boys, "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" (Voxigen mix)
3. Busta Rhymes, "So Hardcore"
4. 3rd Bass, "Triple Stage Darkness"
5. The Who, "A Quick One While He's Away"
6. The Dust Brothers, "This Is Your Life"
7. Patton Oswalt, "'80s Metal"
8. A Tribe Called Quest, "Start It Up"
9. LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out"
10. Roni Size and Reprazent, "Brown Paper Bag" (Photek remix)

Feel free to place your own Random Tens and/or wishes for the new year -- be they hopeful, magnanimous, vindictive, filthy, or some combination of any of those -- in the comments.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Admonishing Tiger, demolishing "Twilight," and wrapping up the week in hotness.

· I know it's been talked about endlessly over the past week, but I think it bears repeating: The above individual is what Tiger Woods cheated on. Tiger Woods looked at her, thought to himself, "You know, I'm Tiger Woods and that's not good enough for me, I should get to bang other ridiculously hot women besides her." So what I'm saying is that after Elin finishes working her dear hubby over with a nine-iron, every guy in America who's ever had to beg for nookie from even an average-looking chick should get in line behind her to give Tiger a boot to the nuts themselves, because . . . well, that's just being greedy in addition to being adulterous. To say nothing of stupid. Tiger, here's hoping she rips you for every last Escalade-crashin' dollar you have.

Maybe next time he should consult this.

· Apparently the Twilight book series goes off in directions even more fakakta than I could've ever imagined. A Twilight book so godawful that they don't even think they can film it? God deliver us. Seriously, if you're a woman under the age of 30 who's read any of those books as anything other than a goof or a dare from one of your friends, please e-mail me so that I can give you some suggestions as to actual works of literature you might un-rot your brain with. And if you're a human being over the age of 30 who's gone to see any of the movies in an un-ironic context, please kill yourself now. You're only going to mess up humanity's chances for survival when the "2012" apocalypse comes.

· All right, it was bad enough when the asinine Salahi couple attention-whored their way into a White House dinner to which they weren't actually invited. But lying about being a Washington Redskins cheerleader? Now you're messing with the integrity of one of the greatest cheerleading squads in the history of professional sport, ma'am, and that just isn't gonna sit with me. (Seriously, if you want to be an NFL cheerleader that bad, go be one of the Dallas Cowboys cage dancers.)


White House Party Crasher Lady, whatever the hell your name is, trust me, you can't roll with this.

· A season of unrelentingly awful handicapping at EDSBS comes to a merciful end with my final picks column of the regular season, which involved me bending the laws of time and space just so that I could punt the responsibility of picking games onto someone else -- in this case, my 2002 self, fresh-faced and (hopefully) clear-headed enough to not make any worse a hash of the job than I already have.

· You may be surprised to know that I didn't actually watch any of the Victoria's Secret fashion show on CBS the other night. Seriously, if I want to see scantily clad women, why would I settle for viewing them through the PG-rated filter of a major TV network's censorbots? I did come across this, though:



I'm as outraged by that clip as anything I've seen on the Internet. Listen, I'm all for free speech and everything, but there is no reason that the words "too tall" or "boobs too big" should ever be uttered, either to this poor girl or anyone else. Shame on you, People In Charge Of Model Selection. This will not stand!

· One last video, also from Warming Glow, concerning a TV show that looks way too awesome to ever see the light of day in the U.S. -- and indeed, it's actually being produced for BBC4. Herewith, "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret" (put those headphones on, especially if you're at work, because the audio is highly NSFW):



Let me get this straight: I and millions of other people have been clamoring for the return of "Arrested Development" in some kind of form -- revival of the series, feature film, Internet shorts, anything -- ever since that show was cruelly killed off before its time a few years ago. So now they put Will Arnett and David Cross in a show together -- woohoo! -- and I can only watch it if I'm in Great Britain?

Not cool, TV gods. Y'all still owe me for the series finale of "Seinfeld" and the mere existence of "The Hills," and you're gonna pull this crap? I'm calling shenanigans. Shenanigans!

Monday Morning Cage Match XIX:Bubbles, balloons, and buffoons.

By now we've all heard about the little boy whom everyone thought had flown halfway across Colorado in a homemade balloon, only to find that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the kid's cravenly self-promoting dicklick of a father. Thus the "Balloon Boy" is almost sure to become a punchline or "Jeopardy!" answer lasting for the next, oh, seven minutes. But Balloon Boy's got to get in line behind a bunch of other kids who've been confined to similarly ungainly contraptions, and I can think of one right off the bat from a much-beloved "Seinfeld" episode. Get ready, America, for the brawl for it all -- Balloon Boy vs. Bubble Boy.

	Balloon Boy (Falcon Heene)	Bubble Boy (Donald Sanger)
Father's occupation	Reality-TV whore	Yoo-Hoo truck driver
WINNER: Bubble Boy
Mortal peril	Runaway homemade helium balloon flying as high as 15,000 feet	Immune deficiency in his blood
WINNER: Balloon Boy
Eponymous confinement most resembles	A flying Jiffy Pop tin	A clear plastic shower curtain
WINNER: Balloon Boy
First sign that something might be amiss	Dad called local TV stations before he called 911	Ordered George Costanza's girlfriend to take her top off
WINNER: Bubble Boy
Instrument of final downfall	Larry King	Misprinted Trivial Pursuit card
WINNER: Balloon Boy
Lasting quote	"You guys said that, um, we did this for the show."	"It doesn't matter. It's MOORS! THERE'S NO 'MOOPS'!"
WINNER: Bubble Boy
What have we learned?	Don't exploit children to promote your own fakakta endeavors	Don't try to take advantage of people at board games
WINNER: Balloon Boy

FINAL SCORE: Balloon Boy 4, Bubble Boy 3. I guess there's more romance to a giant fucking Jiffy-Pop-looking silver balloon than a plastic bubble.

The Friday Random Ten+5 boards the Satellite of Love.

Got into a conversation the other night about "Mystery Science Theater 3000," one of the cleverest ideas ever to hit American television. Aired for 11 seasons and could've easily gone much, much longer, as the supply of horrible movies is virtually as renewable as wind or solar power. Sometimes I wonder what Joel/Mike and the robots could've done with a movie like "Showgirls" or even "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Anyway, I thought I'd use this opportunity to go back through my favorite episodes of the show and even share some clips, which are in abundance on YouTube -- as a matter of fact, of the five episodes I'm listing here, I think all of them can be viewed on YouTube in their entirety. Herewith, my Five Favorite "MST3K" Episodes Of All Time:



"Mitchell" (ep. #512)
I have no idea what was going through the mind of the Allied Artists Pictures decision-makers when they decided to greenlight a movie about an overweight, slovenly, borderline-alcoholic police detective occasionally following a group of mobsters around, but the above clip is pretty representative of the level of "suspense" present throughout the film. Joe Don Baker makes for one of the most unintentionally hilarious law-enforcement "heroes" in cinematic history, whether he's getting in an argument with an eight-year-old while on a stakeout or reaching out from under the covers to grab a beer while he's nailing a hooker played by Linda Evans. This episode was hilarious from the opening credits straight through to the end, and also has the distinction of being Joel Hodgson's last episode.



The Brain That Wouldn't Die (ep. #513)
This is the 1959 sci-fi film that spawned the infamous image of the woman's disembodied head, hooked up to a bunch of tubes and wires, sitting in a pan of what the robots conjectured was gravy. One of those movies that takes itself way too seriously, and pays for it.



Wild Rebels (ep. #207)
Police convince a washed-up race-car driver to go undercover as the wheelman for a renegade bank-robbing biker gang. Starts slow but quickly gets way better, culminating in a hilarious climactic police chase in which the cars' tires manage to squeal even as they're careening through a swamp and the soundtrack music sounds like a jazz band on marijuana riding around in a car with loose tappets. Even the intermission segments (like the ad for Wild Rebels Cereal) were hilarious.



Time Chasers (ep. #821)
Besides having one of the most half-assed titles in film history, this flick also boasts a nerdy, smug, mulleted "hero" who, as protagonists go, is even harder to root for than Mitchell. Filmed in 1990, but for some reason not released until 1994, by which point the hairstyles and fashions were already hopelessly out of date. Seriously, if I were the main character and had that haircut, I would not go around being nearly as satisfied with myself as he constantly appears to be. And as the robots are quick to point out, the "future" depicted in the movie basically looked exactly like the present (even in 1990). Please, even cell phones weren't that exotic by then.



Devil Doll (ep. #818)
"It's true what they say, you only rent ham." This film concerned an evil magician/hypnotist who somehow transferred the soul of one of his assistants into a ventriloquist's dummy. A central joke of the episode is that the supposed "hero," Mark the newspaper reporter, doesn't actually do anything for pretty much the entire movie; most of the "action" is incited by the dummy itself, which should give you a pretty good idea of what you're dealing with.

Two honorable mentions: "The Touch of Satan," from the ninth season ("Softens hands while you do dishes"), and "Prince of Space," from season eight ("I LIKE IT VERY MUCH!"). Really, you can't go wrong with anything involving a Japanese movie dubbed over with American voices.

And now the Ten:

1. Richard Cheese, "Add It Up"
2. Madonna, "Open Your Heart"
3. Del tha Funkee Homosapien, "Fake as Fuck"
4. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Three to Get Ready"
5. Soul Coughing, "Super Bon Bon"
6. Stella, "O.K., Tomorrow I'll Be Perfect"
7. The Go! Team, "Junior Kickstart"
8. Orbital, "Halcyon" (7" version)
9. Adam Sandler, "Buddy"
10. Dr. Dre, "The Day the Niggaz Took Over"

Your own Random Tens and/or favorite MST3K episodes in the comments, please.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Insurance salesgirls and Twitter accounts, but first, porn!

· Contrary to what some of you might think, just because I'm a raging commie pinko liberal doesn't mean I'm all that different from you. At the end of the day, I'm just a man. I like my beer cold, my chicken wings hot, my football loud, and my boobs D-cup or bigger. Yet there's one thing I've never gotten into: hard-core porn. Why would I want to watch two people have sex if neither one of them is me? Don't get me wrong, I'll watch naked women 'till the cows come home, but you throw a dude into the mix and suddenly the only thing I can think about is all the sex I'm not having. (That and the fact that I'm looking at another guy's dick. I really don't like looking at dicks, period, and more often than not that includes my own. But I digress.)

So it was with trepidation that I clicked this link, sent to me via Twitter by Jerry of The Joe Cribbs Car Wash. Don't blow a gasket, Jerry's married, for crying out loud, and that link is completely safe for work. But it's about a pornographic parody of "30 Rock." Here's the safe-for-work-except-for-some-naughty-words trailer:



I was prepared to hate everything about this film, based on, among other things, my revulsion at the mere thought of Liz Lemon (or a Liz-Lemon-like character) getting twisted out by one or perhaps multiple cast members of the show. That mental image still makes my inner child cry, but here's the thing: The trailer's really funny. Being a screenwriter for a porn flick has to be kind of like being Orrin Hatch's vice chief of staff for LGBT relations, but whoever the writers of the "30 Rock" parody are, they've nailed the show's comic sensibility. ("I bought this table with the money I made from my hit movie 'Little Black Baby, Cracka-Ass Parents.' ") The dude who plays the Jack Donaghy stand-in, Herschel Savage, sounds so much like Alec Baldwin I don't know that I'd be able to tell them apart with my eyes closed. Someone clearly did their research and put some effort into this, and I'm glad to see it.

It's all enough to make me seriously consider buying a copy of the DVD . . . but my mom specifically told me not to.

· Last week's Friday Random Ten+5 got me thinking about Flo, the Progressive Auto Insurance Salesgirl -- not that I shouldn't think Flo is hot, just as none of you should, but anyway, WSB News tracked her down and uncovered some interesting info about her in what I can only guess was an EXCLUSIVE interview. Among them: Her name is Stephanie Courtney, and she's 38; she's a member of the L.A. improv group The Groundlings; and she has a recurring role on "Mad Men." And it's apparently not easy being Flo:

"They tease my hair, spray it and stick the headband in it," Courtney explains. "And the makeup is like painting a portrait on my face," she says, laughing. "It's insane. It totally changes things on my face. It's like having a mask on."

I think you mean it's like having an adorable mask on. But Flo isn't bad-looking in real life, either, as evidenced by the picture with the article.

· Who is the richest fictional character in the world? Apparently it's Scrooge McDuck, whose mining/manufacturing/treasure-hunting empire is valued by Forbes magazine at around $29.1 billion. I'm not counting Uncle Sam in this ranking, because he's not so much a fictional character as he is a generic symbol for a government that can print basically as much money as it wants. I was surprised to find Princess Peach off the list due to a revolution within the Mushroom Kingdom. I have no idea how they calculated any of this, but it's still a fun read, and yes, it includes Jabba the Hutt's interstellar criminal empire.

· I've said it before on Twitter, but it bears repeating: If you're not following shitmydadsays, you're missing out on a real opportunity to maximize your Twitter potential.

· One more inuendo-riffic embedded video, courtesy of faithful reader Matt, to amuse you on a rainy Thursday: the "Shake Weight," which lets women achieve toned, shapely arms and presumably acquire some other valuable talents in the process.

The Friday Random Ten+5 is [glad to hear you're OK/sorry about your recent demise].

While assembling last week's "awesome cool uncle" +5, my crackerjack Hey Jenny Slater consulting team and I ran into a recurring problem: not being entirely sure whether the people we were talking about were dead or not. And that's particularly humbling for me, because "Is So-and-So still alive?" is a pretty basic question, one you should be able to answer pretty quickly (and, preferably, with a minimum of Googling) if you fancy yourself a true repository of quasi-useful pop-culture information, as I do. But I'm not perfect; I put my pants on one leg at a time (except on the days when I don't wear any, which are becoming more and more frequent) and I occasionally have to sneak over to Wikipedia to find out if someone still has a pulse, just like the rest of you do. And on that note, this week's +5 is Five People I Had To Look Up To Find Out Whether They Were Dead Or Not.



Sam Elliott
Did you know Elliott, in addition to being "The Stranger," is the voice of Smokey the Bear? For those reasons and many others, I'm glad Elliott is still alive; honestly I don't know exactly why I thought he might not be, I guess I just thought anyone who'd done as many westerns as he had was automatically at risk for lung cancer or cirrhosis or any number of horrible hard-livin'-type diseases.
Status: alive



Boris Yeltsin
Now here's a guy who had to worry about cirrhosis. (Died of congestive heart failure, actually, but whatever.) I should've been keeping up better with ol' Boris; by the time he took the reins of the Kremlin, Russia had long since gotten over its habit of propping up its chief executives and saying "Oh, no, Comrade X just has a bit of the flu" well after said leader had well and truly kicked the bucket. By contrast, Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, will never, ever die, ever (unless stabbed in the heart with a crucifix or exposed to direct sunlight).
Status: dead since 2007



Candice Bergen
Confession time: I had a huge crush on Candice Bergen back in the early "Murphy Brown" years. C'mon, she was hot, and a major ass-kicker to boot; maybe would've even been a candidate for "cougar" status, had such a term existed during the George H.W. Bush years. In the show's final season, there was a long story arc about Murphy Brown being diagnosed with breast cancer, which I suppose is why I had been worried about Bergen's continued well-being, but she's still alive, kicking, and working. (Trivia: Did you know she was the first female host of "Saturday Night Live"?)
Status: alive



Roy Scheider
Yeah, I know, he only died a little over a year ago, so I should've been way more on top of this. I guess the problem is I'm always getting his name mixed up with Rod Steiger, so I was -- what? Rod Steiger's dead too? Been dead since 2002? Well, fuck.
Status: dead since 2008



Wilford Brimley
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're all going to say: "Jesus, Doug, of course Wilford Brimley's still alive. He's still doing those diabeetus ads all over TV." Well, Billy Mays has been in the ground for more than a month now but I'm still seeing him in commercials for both the Awesome Auger and the Fix It! Pro Pen. And don't even get me started on all those albums Tupac released after he got killed. Actually, if they continued to use Brimley's voice even after his death, that'd be a pretty forceful marketing strategy right there. You hear the beyond-the-grave voice of Wilford Brimley ordering you to eat your Quaker Oats, you eat some fucking oats, my friend.
Status: alive

And now the Ten:

1. U2, "City of Blinding Lights"
2. Underworld, "Boy, Boy, Boy"
3. Orbital, "Chime" (new version)
4. Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Kiss Them for Me"
5. Wu-Tang Clan, "Bring Da Ruckus"
6. Jefferson Airplane, "Volunteers"
7. Tomoyasu Hotei, "Battle Without Honor or Humanity"
8. Röyksopp, "Go Away"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "Footsteps"
10. The Jazz Jury, "Wake Up"

Now you put your own Random Tens, along with your lists of people about whose alive-ness you may recently have been dubious, in the comments.

Monday Morning Cage Match VIII:Hipster doofus vs. Wall Street doofus.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the film Kramer vs. Kramer, which swept the big four Academy Awards -- Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress -- in addition to the Best Adapted Screenplay honor; only "The Silence of the Lambs" has matched that achievement since. Why bother telling you all this? Well, I figured that after 30 years it was time for a rematch, and the Monday Morning Cage Match is the perfect place to host it. So here's Round Two of Kramer vs. Cramer:

	[Cosmo] Kramer	[Jim] Cramer
Day job	Variously an actor, writer, bagel maker, and owner of "Kramerica Industries"	Stock speculator
WINNER: Kramer
Side hustle	One of Murphy Brown's famously short-lived secretaries	One of Donald Trump's boardroom lackeys on "The Apprentice"
WINNER: Cramer
Bibliography	Coffee-table book about coffee tables	Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer); Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich; Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World; Confessions of a Street Addict; You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper
WINNER: Tie (quantity vs. quality, like)
Greatest achievement	Playing a nude game of backgammon in the Cayman Islands with Elle MacPherson	Staying employed at CNBC after having gotten his lunch eaten by Jon Stewart on multiple occasions
WINNER: Kramer
Method to his madness?	Yes, even though we're not sure what it is	Increasingly doubtful
WINNER: Kramer
Statement they probably wish they could take back	"Throw his ass out! He's a n****r! He's a n****r! He's a n****r!"	"No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble. If anything, they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear."
WINNER: Cramer
Currently working?	Not that we've noticed	Yes
WINNER: Cramer

FINAL SCORE: Cosmo Kramer 4, Jim Cramer 4. So apparently they are equally reputable. We're not sure which one should take that as the bigger insult.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets its mourn on.

So Michael Jackson has died, and we're knee-deep in wall-to-wall media coverage that isn't as intense as 9/11 (so there, Ocho Cinco) but is every bit as intense, if not more so, than Princess Diana's 12 years ago. Honestly, I can say I was never that big a Michael Jackson fan; I think it goes back to when the "Thriller" video was released in 1983 and that final scene, where Jackson looks back at the camera with those glowing yellow wolf-eyes, frightened me about as much as anything I can remember from my childhood and scared me off of the King of Pop for quite a while. (Seriously, I was only six at that point and I was probably sleeping with the lights on for a solid week after that. Agghhh, that shit still scares the living crap out of me!)

So anyway, I'm not going to be one of those folks camped out in front of the hospital or in front of his mansion in L.A., not that I've ever been the type to get so worked up over a celebrity's death to do that anyway. But that doesn't make Jackson's death any less sudden or sad, and I'm certainly not above being affected by the death of a celebrity to some extent. And that's the subject of this week's +5: the Five Celebrities Whose Deaths I Took The Hardest.



Phil Hartman (1998)
Easily my favorite "Saturday Night Live" cast member of all time. In fact, I can't remember a single thing I've ever seen him in where he wasn't funny, whether it was any of his numerous "SNL" sketches, "NewsRadio," his voice-acting on "The Simpsons," his cameo as "Vicky" the tour guide in "So I Married an Axe Murderer," or anything else. And the thing was, he didn't go the coke-binge-and-numerous-unsavory-sexual-partners route that so many really popular comedians seem to go down; by all reports he was a faithful husband and a good dad. So that made it only that much more shocking when his wife (who apparently was drug-crazed) shot him and then committed suicide in the spring of '98. I'm convinced that if Hartman were still alive today he'd be hailed as one of the best comic actors on the planet, and maybe he'd have a recurring role on "30 Rock" or something.



Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel (1991)
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Dr. Seuss is still my favorite writer of all time. I've still got bunches of his books proudly displayed on my bookshelf, and he saved my ass when I was taking the AP English exam during my senior year of high school, when the open-ended question was something like "Choose a book that deals with the topic of discrimination in society and how that book's depiction of a certain type of bigotry added to its message." Obviously we'd read a ton of books that year that would've worked for that question, but we'd covered the various eras of English lit in chronological order, which meant that the most recent material -- and therefore the stuff I remembered the best -- was postmodernist stuff that I couldn't make heads or tails of (while the older stuff I'd understood better was too far back in my memory to be able to pick out specific details). So I went for what NFL draftniks would call "a reach": I picked out Dr. Seuss's 1961 story "The Sneetches." I wrote the hell out of that essay, and you know what? I got a 5 on the test and got to exempt out of all the freshman-comp classes in college. Thank you, Dr. Seuss, for being a brilliant writer whom even doctorate-level literature scholars apparently have to respect.



Ann Richards (2006)
I've liked or agreed with plenty of politicians and elected officials; rarely, though, have I been naïve enough to admire any of them. But Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, was a major exception. She was unashamed of her liberalism on a number of issues and unafraid to call out people whom she thought were full of bullshit no matter where they sat on the political spectrum. And she was one of the last of an era in which certain Democratic politicians could actually be described as "badasses." Hopefully that era is on its way back, but either way, we could still use someone like Ann Richards right about now.



Optimus Prime (1986)
OK, yeah, Optimus Prime is a fictional character. But Transformers and Legos regularly traded the titles of my favorite and second-favorite toy when I was a child, and the "Transformers" TV cartoon was must-see after-school viewing all through elementary school, so when Prime finally bit the bucket in the feature-length animated film of '86, that was a biiiig, big deal. This Slate article explains it pretty well: As much violence as there was in the action cartoon series of my childhood, nobody ever actually died. But not only did Optimus Prime die in the movie (and not come back), he was gone from the subsequent season of the cartoon show, and didn't return until the three-episode "Rebirth" arc from the fourth and final season in 1987. Man, that show was a lot harder-core than I realized.



Johnny Cash (2003)
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of country musicians I've ever actually liked (and probably still have enough fingers left over to do this). But I love Johnny Cash. And his death, less than four months after the passing of his wife June, was one of the saddest and somehow most romantic deaths of any popular musician that I can recall. He and Nanci Griffith are probably still the only two country artists whom I've deemed worthy of having entire albums' worth of material on my iPod.

Speaking of which, here's the Ten:

1. Nanci Griffith, "Love at the Five and Dime" (fancy that)
2. Underworld, "Born Slippy (NUXX)"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "It's Alright"
4. Radiohead, "Karma Police"
5. Dead Kennedys, "Short Songs"
6. Wu-Tang Clan, "Clan in Da Front" (which reminds me, Ol' Dirty Bastard should get an honorable mention on the above list)
7. Underworld, "Juanita/Kiteless" (live)
8. Elton John, "Bennie and the Jets"
9. A Tribe Called Quest, "Find a Way"
10. Talk Talk, "It's My Life"

Your turn, folks -- the celebrity deaths that had the biggest effect on you (Michael Jackson's is eligible, by the way) and your Random Tens go in the comments.

OK, now the Friday Random Ten+5 is buying what you're selling.

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The Friday Random Ten+5 gets all starry-eyed.

This one's gonna be kind of a quickie, 'cause my plane leaves for L.A. in less than an hour and with the terror level being raised to Code Fuchsia or whatever it is with all that crap going on in India, there's no telling what they're going to make us do before they let us on that plane. "I don't have more than three ounces of liquid on me, I swear!" "Oh, sure, maybe not in a bottle . . . but you can either empty your bladder right now, or you can stay home."



Christopher Walken
I'll bet a lot of people, upon unexpectedly seeing Christopher Walken out in public, demand that he say the "MORE COWBELL" line. I wouldn't do that. I might, however, get him to call my mom on my cell phone and offer her some fine champagna.



Megan Fox
Because I feel like I need more information about that whole dating-a-Russian-stripper thing, and she seems pretty cool, so I'm sure she wouldn't be the least bit creeped out by a complete stranger coming up and asking her about that.



Matt Damon
OK, you're kind of going to have to willfully suspend some disbelief here, but a couple people have told me that I look like Matt Damon with facial hair. One of them is my mom, and the other is a co-worker of mine whose name I will keep secret to protect the innocent and/or visually impaired. Anyway, I think it would be awesome to see Matt Damon at a Starbucks or something in Hollywood and be like, "Matt Damon! People say I look like you!" just to watch his eyes get big and all the color drain out of his face. Fun!



Tina Fey
Obviously.



Tom Selleck
Also obvs.

And now the Ten:

1. Richard Cheese, "Me So Horny"
2. Radiohead, "How to Disappear Completely"
3. U2, "Got to Get Together"
4. The Police, "Every Breath You Take"
5. The Roots, "Act Too . . . The Love of My Life"
6. U2, "All I Want Is You"
7. 3rd Bass, "Episode #3"
8. Outkast, "The Rooster"
9. Sting, "Everybody Laughed But You"
10. Gnarls Barkley, "Go-Go Gadget Gospel"

Your turn, folks -- leave your Random Tens and/or celebrity-sighting wish lists in the comments. And I'll let you know if I run into any of those people this weekend.