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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

Pink Mafia rides again!

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

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

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

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

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


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

Friday Random Ten, End of the World Edition.

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

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

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

Got it now? OK, good. The Ten:

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

OK, the last one is a joke. Really.

Comment dites-vous "Giggedy, giggedy"?

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lame duck l'orange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ladies, the fake line forms to the left.

You left "Anderson Cooper 360" for Fox? Apparently The Clash was wrong, and Rudi can, in fact, fail.

Two things came up over the past month that have kind of altered the way I function in terms of TV news viewing. The first involves Rudi Bakhtiar, whose eye-popping make-you-wanna-throw-rocks-at-Laurie-Dhue hotness has been well documented at this and previous blogs; mere days after noticing I hadn't seen her on CNN or Headline News in what seemed like ages, I'm flipping through channels on a Sunday morning and I catch a glimpse of a strikingly Rudi-Bakhtiar-esque woman up at channel 53 . . . otherwise known as Fox News. With a feeling of dread rising in my stomach, I flipped back, and there she was. A quick Internet perusal confirmed that Rudi had found a new home at Faux.

I have to give props to the enemy for a genius move on their part, as I can only assume this was the opening salvo in a diabolically Blofeld-like scheme to consolidate as much of the nation's newsreading hotness as possible in one network. If that turns out to be true, then watch out, Betty Nguyen and Robin Meade, y'all are probably next on Faux's hit list. That said, however, I'm obviously not crazy about Rudi's choice. Granted, the idea of Rudi Bakhtiar being employed by a company called Fox is somehow appropriate, yet I still can't help but feel betrayed in the same way I would if, say, Monica Pang announced an intention to go to grad school at Florida. Sure, everything seems hunky-dory now, but how long before they start forcing Rudi to accompany douchenozzle John "Senator Kelly" Gibson to his John Birch Society meetings? Will we soon see leaked photos of Bakhtiar standing over the nude, hooded body of Alan Colmes with a cigarette hanging from her insouciantly smiling lips?

The whole thing did jog my memory, though, of a post I'd seen on TBogg earlier in the month and had intended to comment on (but in my post-Sugar-Bowl state of anguish and malaise I failed to do so). TBogg's post was about Melissa Theuriau, a French newsanchor who's just, like . . . well, see for yourself:


In France she is called "la renarde," and she is hunted with only her cunning to protect her. (By the way, did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny? Neither did I. I was just asking.)

See what I'm saying? I mean, I've expounded at length upon the astronomical caliber of female splendor at UGA, but even there we didn't have any girls like this. And you would've known if we did, because the downtown bar scene would've suddenly dried up due to entire sororities saying "Why bother" and spending their Saturday nights at home with a pint of Cherry Garcia and the VHS of "Titanic."

So. Anyway, like I said, I'm kind of re-evaluating my worldview here. Maybe Rudi Bakhtiar doesn't have what it takes to be my fake girlfriend after all, but clearly Melissa Theuriau does. What to do, what to do? I know -- I'll let you, the reader, decide! Yes, you, the reader, get to help pick my fake girlfriend, the one I trot out anytime I want to comment on some grand claim made by George W. Bush that he has nothing to back himself up on, or, hell, when my regular day-to-day drudgery gets too boring to post on and I simply want to trot out my richly embellished fantasy life.

Mind you, that won't be easy, given that I also have connections to scads of other ladies in my fallacious fantasy past. So here's a quick rundown of all the options on your ballot, just so that you're in a position to make the most informed possible choice:


Rudi "The Subcontinental Siren" Bakhtiar
PROS:
· Is a journalist, so we got that in common.
· I'm assuming Fox News was willing to drop a boatload of money to bogart her from CNN.
CONS:
· Paychecks now signed by Rupert Murdoch.
· Iranian background means she's probably been on the government's terrorist watch list for months.
· Is a journalist.


Elisha "Kim Bauer" Cuthbert
PROS:
· Apparently is a sports fan.
· Canadian, which I can use if we ever go on vacation in Europe, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.
· Was in "Old School."
CONS:
· No confirmed interest in anything football-related -- only hockey, which I can't get excited about unless it's the Thrashers or the Canadiens.
· Unable to guarantee I wouldn't start giggling if she let slip an "eh" or an "aboot."
· Sometimes tends toward belts that verge on the gratuitously large.
· Was in "House of Wax."


Angelina "Homewrecker" Jolie
PROS:
· The vinyl bustier scene from "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Seriously, dude.
· "You know, we have the same birthday" a take-it-to-the-bank pickup line.
· Is an international humanitarian.
· Evidently likes kids.
CONS:
· Dating her would involve breaking up a family, and I don't do that anymore.
· The whole wearing-a-vial-of-Billy-Bob-Thornton's-blood-around-her-neck thing. Sorry, but you're probably going to have to adopt a few more Third World children before you can take that one off your permanent record.
· Doesn't exactly have a reputation for normal relationships.


Keira "Domino" Knightley
PROS:
· British accents are teh hott. (Make that an Oscar-nominated British accent.)
· Has abs like whoa.
· Actually picks mostly good movies to appear in.
CONS:
· Because she's a Brit, I'd probably have to do everything in reverse if I wanted to make a move on her in the front seat of a car. (See also: the "Seinfeld" episode where George "can't go left.")
· Can't legally drink -- in the U.S., at least -- for another two months.


Melissa "Frenchy" Theuriau
PROS:
· French accents are also teh hott.
· Being from France means there's an 83%-88% chance she's Catholic.
· Predilection for wearing tank tops and flirty sundresses while reporting on suicide bombings or avian flu makes her quite an innovator, at least by American standards.
· Might actually be impressed with the Serge Gainsbourg, Air, and/or Édith Piaf in my music collection. (Which would make her the first.)
CONS:
· The language barrier, given that 90% of the French words I know are obscenities.
· French nationality probably means she, too, is on the terrorist watch list.
· For similar reasons, being romantically linked to a non-Coalition foreigner probably deep-sixes any chance I'll ever have of getting elected to public office in the state of Alabama. (Just look what it did to John Kerry.)
· Is a journalist.

So there you have it -- cast your vote or make write-in recommendations in the comments thread. (You're also welcome to make recommendations for a real girlfriend, too, which might even be better, now that I think about it -- but shit, I'll take what I can get.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a new catchphrase . . .

I know that the "Lazy Sunday" video from "Saturday Night Live" is the Internet video that's currently blowing up the spot, but I gotta say Conan O'Brien did them one better with James Lipton's rendition of Kevin Federline's "PopoZao" (link courtesy The Superficial). I will now be randomly hollering out "PopoZao" at awkward and/or inappropriate times in public settings, just to make people feel uncomfortable.

In the meantime, I think Conan should make dramatic readings of "PopoZao" a regular feature, with a different famous figure reciting the lyrics each night. I propose that they start off with the original Brazilian booty herself, Gisele Bundchen, and proceed with Sean Connery, Al Gore, Oprah Winfrey, et cetera et cetera. What do you think, sirs?

Friday Random Ten . . .

Culture warriors, come out and play-ee-ay!

. . . But before we get started, can anyone tell me why in the hell anyone thought this was a good idea? Look, I know that as a good wild-eyed liberal I'm supposed to think Kanye is a hero for calling out Dubya during the Katrina telethon, and I can't honestly say I've ever heard one of his songs I didn't like. (Kanye, I mean, not Bush, though Dubya's remake of "Cocaine Blues" on his last album was eerily compelling.) But this is the kind of stupid bullshit that only feeds the paranoia of the right-wing culture warriors who can't so much as watch a rerun of "The Cosby Show" without picking out sixteen different ways the show is insulting Christianity and accelerating the downfall of American society.

As you might have gathered by now, my sensibilities don't exactly qualify as "delicate," and thus it takes a lot to offend me. So I never thought I'd actually be uttering the phrase "this offends me as a Christian," but . . . I mean, are they actually comparing the suffering of Kanye West to that of Jesus? And I'm not even saying that I agree with what I just know is going to be the right wing's accusation, that Rolling Stone's editors are sitting around trying to come up with ways to persecute Christians, I'm just saying the idea of Kanye West's suffering as being on a par with Jesus's is witheringly inane. I'll confess that I haven't read the article -- I think I gave up on Rolling Stone after their fourth or fifth Britney Spears cover -- but seriously, what could possibly be Kanye West's claim to Christlike suffering? Taking heat for his Bush comments? Not winning a Grammy for "Gold Digger"? (Dude, I catch heat all the time for dissing Bush, and I've never won a Grammy . . . when's RS gonna Jesus me up and put me on the cover?) Howsabout from now on, before any of us decides to compare ourselves to the Big J.C., we stop and take a minute to consider what kind of douchebag company that puts us in.

Anyway, rant over. The Ten:

1. U2, "Where the Streets Have No Name"
2. Depeche Mode, "Rush"
3. The Pretenders, "I'll Stand By You"
4. U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
5. Fugazi, "Public Witness Program"
6. Dave Matthews Band, "Crash"
7. Miles Davis, "Rouge"
8. Blur, "Bank Holiday"
9. 3rd Bass, "The Cactus"
10. Janet Jackson, "Nasty"

Oh, we were doing so well there until the end . . . though it did give me an idea for Kanye's next single. No, my first name ain't "Baby," it's "Kanye" . . . Jesus Christ if you're nasty!

And thus is trod the razor-thin margin between genius and travesty.

No, it's not the 'stache playing tricks on you -- he really is badass.

Every Day Should Be Saturday was on-the-ball enough to bring us the news of an impending big-screen adaptation of the late, great "Magnum, P.I." TV series. Orson and Stranko seem to be convinced that this is a horrible idea, and given the clockwork awfulness of most old TV shows turned into movies, I'm not about to call their fears unfounded. However, I'm willing to hold out hope for the potential awesomeness of a Magnum movie, with one caveat: The movie has to star Tom Selleck in the title role. Has to! If it does, I'm there. If not, I will not only refuse to see the movie but also organize a full-scale nationwide boycott.

My early childhood TV viewing included a steady diet of "Magnum" thanks to my mom, who thought Tom Selleck was teh hott and who also happened to, at the time, be married to a dude who bore a striking resemblance to The Selleck himself. (Small vestiges of this resemblance continued throughout his life, though Dad pretty much forfeited any claim to Selleck-ness when he got rid of his 'stache a couple years ago.) So anyway, it's hard for me not to look upon the character of Thomas Magnum, and therefore The Selleck himself, as a complete badass. Living (by all appearances) rent-free on a massive estate in Hawaii, driving a Ferrari, bedding hot chicks, solving crimes? Every red-blooded male out there, whether he's aware of it or not, strives to live that kind of life.

But my greater point is that nobody other than Selleck can do justice to this role. Various folks in the EDSBS thread suggested people like George Clooney, who is also badass, but my question is, why can't Selleck carry this movie? OK, so maybe his resume over the past few years has been mostly made-for-TV work, but this cat has charisma out the Hawaiian wazoo ("Three Men and a Baby"? That season of "Friends" where he was shagging Courtney Cox? C'mon, people!) and deserves a starring role in something like the "Magnum" movie to be to his career what, say, "Pulp Fiction" was to Travolta's.

As for the rest of the casting, I'm not sure what the producers should do and they're certainly not soliciting my opinion, but here are my thoughts based on personal preferences and what I picked up in the EDSBS thread:

Straight-up casting
Higgins: Ricky Gervais ("The Office")
T.C.: Ving Rhames ("Out of Sight")
Rick: Jeremy Piven ("Grosse Pointe Blank")

Indie-cred casting
Higgins: Ben Kingsley ("Sexy Beast")
T.C.: Andre Braugher ("Get On the Bus")
Rick: Paul Giamatti ("Sideways")

Swing-for-the-fences, outside-the-box casting
Higgins: John Cleese ("Monty Python")
T.C.: Andre Patton (Big Boi of OutKast)
Rick: Zach Braff ("Scrubs")

Just my ideas, of course. But the one constant has to be The Selleck. No compromises on this one, kids. Feel free to make your own casting suggestions (and/or predictions of the movie's probable greatness/suckitude) in the comments thread.

Things I wish I'd written, Vol. XXVIII, No. 237.

Drink in the rich Haterade goodness of The 50 Most Loathsome People of 2005, as presented by Buffalo alternative rag The Beast. An annual omnibus skewering whose sheer choleric awesomeness must be seen to be believed.

A sampling:

On #24, Jim Guckert: "The most hilariously twisted figure of 2005, including Michael Jackson. Guckert, better known as Jeff Gannon, truly lived a life in need of two names: the upright, macho, McCarthyite Clark Kent and the buff, military-fetish prostitute Superfag. Gannon symbolized so many things: the exponential erosion of journalistic standards, the fundamental hypocrisy in the heart of each Republican (further evidenced by their charges of 'gay-bashing' when liberals could not conceal their amusement at his outing), unseemly conflicts of interest between the press and the GOP, etc. But what was lost in the sauce was that Gannon was a straight-up plagiarist, actually copying and pasting sections of White House press releases into his articles, and we don?t mean quotations. Now that?s a lazy propagandist. Nobody seemed to find that part of the story particularly interesting, but hey, what?s violating the first rule of journalism next to hotmilitarystuds.com?"

On #42, Nancy Grace: "Revenges herself nightly for the murder of her fiancée on every criminal suspect and defendant; facts be damned. Despite her viscous, Gump-like hyper-drawl, her brain can barely keep pace. Looks like a camel in drag. Her crude vindictiveness is to the myth of the southern belle what Roots was to the myth of the genteel South."

On #12, Barbara Bush: "Her polluted womb nurtured the seed of American decadence. The root of America?s decay; the poison tree from whence the fruit loop George W. Bush sprang. This unfeeling, unthinking patrician hag spawned America?s most notorious welfare child, whose every glaring deficiency has been excused or underwritten by undeserved wealth. Chuckling, she remarked of poor people displaced by Hurricane Katrina, 'And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.' Of their plans for permanent relocation, she speculated: 'What I?m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas.' A true aristocrat, she sees poor people as another species."

Who's number one? I'll give you a hint, it isn't Dubya, but it is someone equally worthless. After you read, feel free to make your own nominations in the comments.

I'm sellin' out, I want the world to know, I got to let it show.

You're going to start seeing some changes on this blog before too long, because I've decided to give Google's AdSense program a whirl. The details of the program, as I understand them, are pretty simple: I let Google throw up some ads on this blog and I get paid when people click on them, or something like that. Yup, apparently this POS blog has revenue-earning potential! Maybe all this means is that I earn enough to super-size one super value meal per month, but hey, that's free french fries in my pocket, beeyatch. Worth a shot, in any case.

Before this all kicks in, two things. First of all, I know some of you may be tempted to think less of me because I'm opening this sucker up to advertising. But I can assure you that this is, in fact, all your fault. Why? Because I started this blog in the hopes that people everywhere would think it was freakin' hilarious and that screenwriting offers, generous checks, and hot girls' phone numbers would start pouring in as society's way of thanking me for making the world a better place. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. So because none of y'all sent me the ducketts I was looking for, I had to sell out and get them myself. Don't worry, I'm not going to lord it over you or anything.

Second of all, the presence of ads on this site will not in any way impact the editorial content. So if/when I start dicussing how the Clorox ReadyMop changed my life or how the Volvo V50 sportwagon is cock diesel, you can rest assured that I do so only with the utmost sincerity.

Anyway. We'll see how this works and if I make any money off of it, and go from there.

Jeez, the one time in my life I want to watch CMT . . .

First time in Vegas and not one of them chose craps or blackjack as their talent?

Last night was the Miss America pageant, carried live from Las Vegas on CMT, otherwise known as Country Music Television. For reasons I'll get to in a minute, I actually wanted to watch this, which makes the first time I would've ever deliberately watched something on that network . . . but guess what? My cable company doesn't carry CMT. In Birmingham, Alabama! Which is like, I don't know, a provider in Miami not carrying Univision. Or one in Brooklyn not carrying . . . uh, the Jewish Network. Sorry, that analogy was a lot harder to make than I thought it was going to be. Anyway, I got my Maryland homegirl Kristen to text-message me updates throughout the event, so that, at least, kept me informed.

The reason that I was so interested in this, of course, was one Monica Pang, for whom you will recall both Kristen and I cheered our asses off as she stormed to victory in the Miss Georgia pageant last June. And here's a true story, hit up the link if you don't believe me: A couple months ago I was hunting through this blog's archives to try and dig up something I'd posted or linked to over the summer, and I randomly clicked on the comments thread for the post I did about Miss Georgia, and who had left a comment that had somehow gone unnoticed for damn near four months? Monica freakin' Pang, that's who, Miss Georgia her ownself. And she didn't even leave something like "You're a 'tard" or "I wish you were funny" like I'm accustomed to getting. So based on that, I actually threw caution to the wind and e-mailed someone from the Miss Georgia organization to see if I could swing an interview with her. I mean, why not, right? And it wasn't going to be the usual crap like "Oooh, are you nervous on stage?" or "What do most pageant contestants use to keep their swimsuits from riding up their asses," none of that bush-league crap -- we were going to sit down over beers or maybe cupcakes and talk about the Bulldogs' season and where she predicted D.J. Shockley would go in the draft, whether she likes George W. Bush, her favorite places to go get hammered in downtown Athens, that kind of thing. Oh, and how the hell she found her way to this blog in the first place. My first question was going to be, "Tell the truth, you Googled yourself to find out if any of the other Miss Georgia contestants were talking shit about you online." Not that I'm judging. I probably would've done the same thing.

Anyway, the Miss Georgia rep probably rumbled pretty quickly the fact that Ms. Pang had better things to do than slum it with this smallest-of-small-time blogs, so the interview (obviously) never came through. But Kristen and I, and no doubt all of Bulldog Nation, were rooting for Monica in Miss America even if we were inexplicably unable to watch it.

Kristen's text messages informed me that Ms. Pang had made the round of ten, then of five, and finally that she had come in second behind Miss Oklahoma. Now, nothing personal against Jennifer Berry, whom I'm sure is delightful, but -- really? Oklahoma? I just get this vibe off her like she jumps around and talks in a really high-pitched voice when she gets excited and has a dog small enough to be carried around in a purse, possibly the currently trendy cockapoo/Maltese mix that my mom thinks should be called a "cocktease." (Which inspired me to try and breed my own dog with a cocker spaniel/Doberman pinscher mix and create the world's first Boston cockpincher, but that's really neither here nor there.) Anyway, I know opinions are like assholes, everyone has them, the Miss America judges have theirs and I have mine, theirs just happen to be wrong. I mean, look, Miss Georgia is gorgeous, she can rock the shit out of some Chopin, she's a UGA journalism graduate which is as sure a sign of genius as there is these days -- what more did they want? Someone to beat Spassky at chess or invent cold fusion right there on stage?

Well, I guess there's no point in getting too chafed over it now. But suffice to say that while she may be #2 on the stage (and maybe #10 or 11 in the program), she'll always be #1 in our hearts.


If the top contestant is unable to fulfill her duties or turns out to have some hard-core porn in her past, this is your 2006 Miss America right here, folks. Don't sweat the technique.

Edited to reflect the fact that Monica was first runner-up, not second (thanks Meghan).

Stuff you didn't want to know about me.

First of all, mad stupid props are in order for Michael from Yummy Brain Gravy and The Drizzle, who gave me the inside dope on how to sneak around Apple's best-laid plans and copy music files back off of my trusty iPod. Now my music library is whole again, and I can get back to using this computer for the use for which it was mainly intended: making an ass of myself on-line.

A week or so ago I was going to throw my own two cents in on Ann's post about the most heinous TV ads of 2005. If you haven't already, you really need to read that post, because she's spot-on in most of her criticisms, particularly the ones directed at the Dr. Scholl's "jellin'" ads (please! stab! me! in! the! face!) and at those Applebee's ads where they rewrite various moldy pop songs to shill for whatever special menu item they've got that month. Though in Applebee's defense, those aren't anywhere near as bad as Kraft taking EMF's 1991 quasi-hit "Unbelievable" (still a good song, I don't care what anyone else says) and rewriting it to pitch their new bagged cheese crumbles, with the end result being -- wait for it -- "Crumble-lievable." No, don't sing it to yourself to try and find out what it sounds like, you'll only end up hating yourself for it later. It's a shame Ann's post came out before this ad did, I can only imagine the field day she would've had with it.

Anyway, I was going to pile on with my own condemnations of ads that suck, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my tolerance for stupid advertising (or stupidity in advertising, as the case may be) might be a lot higher than my sister's. Like, f'rinstance, I know I'm in the minority here, but I think the Wendy's "ranch tooth" ad from last year is one of the funniest freaking ads that's ever been on TV. I'm sorry! I giggle like a little girl every time I see it; I giggled like a little girl when I was linking to it just now. Come on, a big tooth wearing a cowboy hat! It's funny! I also like the Sonic ads with the two guys in the car. I think they're funny! Sue me! You know, the two guys eating Sonic in the front seat of the car and the one on the left looks like Phil Simms.

So what was going to be a vicious skewering of bad ads instead turned into a long list of things about me -- likes, dislikes, the whole lot -- that might make those of you out there in Readerland think less of me, assuming that's possible. But I'm just putting it all out there on the table. Instead of venting my spleen at more bad ads, we're going to play a game called Is it Bad That . . . ? where all the questions are provocative and none of the answers are wrong, unless they're mine. Herewith, a view into the darkest hidden recesses of my soul:

Is it bad that . . . in the Dell ad where the perky blonde chick moves into the college dorm room with the goth chick, and it turns out they both have the same Dell laptop, I think the goth chick is the hotter of the two?

Is it bad that . . . on the subject of hot or kinda-hot chicks, I would, if given the chance, do Paris Hilton? Now, look, I know what the default response is supposed to be if you reveal something like that. "Paris Hilton? Do you even know where she's been? I wouldn't touch her with yours." And there's probably some validity to that, but I figure that anyone with as much money as Paris Hilton probably has a wide array of medical means at her disposal to eradicate whatever, uh, contaminants she may have encountered on her many forays here and there. Which means that if offered the opportunity, I'd have to do her, just for the story. I mean, come on -- this is one of those things that, like the Yankees or "Mallrats," way more people like than will actually admit to it.


Speaking of ads I'm not ashamed to admit I enjoyed.

Is it bad that . . . I don't think Andy Kaufman was the slightest bit funny? I don't even think of him as a comedian so much as I think of him as a second-rate performance artist who managed to Emperor's New Clothes his way onto "Taxi" back in the '70s. I mean, I'm sure the guy was brilliant by some definition, if only because he managed to fool so many people into thinking that getting up on stage and singing children's songs was both avant-garde and hysterical, but does that mean I gotta laugh at it?

Is it bad that . . . I have neither read any of the Harry Potter books nor seen any of the movies? I haven't seen any of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, either, and the more people bitch at me for not having seen them, the more determined I am to not go, just to be contrary.

Is it bad that . . . I once owned Headlines and Deadlines: The Hits of a-ha? Before anyone even makes the obvious joke, no, it wasn't a single (though if they had included only the songs that anyone in America ever heard of, it probably would've been).


"The Sun Always Shines on TV" is the jam, motherf$#!er!

Is it bad that . . . I once subscribed to Playboy and Maxim simultaneously?

Is it bad that . . . I replaced them with The New Yorker and Harper's?

Is it bad that . . . I kind of like the Nissan Armada? Don't get excited, I would never buy one, I just think they're kind of cool.

Is it bad that . . . I didn't actually like the movie "Vertigo"?

Leave your vicious judgments in the comments section, and I may or may not try to improve my life accordingly. Keep in mind I'm kind of baring my soul here.

Friday Random Ten, I'm Not Dead Yet Edition.

My apologies if I've given every impression of falling off the face of the earth since leaving for my trip up to D.C. last weekend. I've been here in Birmingham this week, safe and sound, but spending an inordinate amount of time trying to reconstruct my bigger-than-I-thought music library on my computer. Apparently when I was transferring all my .mp3s over from the old laptop to the new one, a bunch of them went overboard in the process, so I've been spending the last few days trying to recover them if possible or re-rip them from CDs if I've still got them.

This was time-consuming but mostly successful, and I'm down to about 100 or so tracks that I'm thinking have pretty much been lost to the ether. Just about all of it is stuff I previously purchased on the Apple Music Store, too, and I'd just as soon not have to re-blow another $100 on .mp3s I already purchased a while back. So here's my question for the day: Can you e-mail an .mp3? This is an obvious enough question that the answer is either "No, you actually can't" or "Yes, what are you, a complete 'tard?", so I know there's a 50% chance I'm leaving myself open for some real denigration here. But I figure it's worth it if I can just get people out there to e-mail me these things if they've got them.

My plan is this: If it turns out I am a 'tard and duh, yes, you can e-mail .mp3s, I'll post a list of the ones I'm still missing up here in the next couple days, and then both all of you loyal readers with musical taste as bad as mine can throw me .mp3s of that crap if you've got it somewhere in your collection and you're feeling unnecessarily generous. Anyway, somebody hook a brother up with an answer to the e-mail question in the comments, and we'll go from there.

With that, here's the Random Ten as spit forth by my iPod. As opposed to my computer, and this is significant, because all the songs I have, even the "missing" ones, are sitting there in my iPod and in a perfect world I'd just be able to copy them off of there onto my computer. But did you know that once you put a song on an iPod, the only way to get it off there is to delete it entirely? As in, you can't copy it off of there and back onto, say, a new computer or something like that? Which I guess makes sense from Apple's perspective, because otherwise you could just have iPod owners around the country swapping iPods like wives at a 1970s key party and loading up on each other's music libraries, and then there'd be no need for people to blow money at the Apple Music Store at the rate of $0.99 a throw, but still, suck! (Yes, I know, I'm the last person on the planet to have figured out this dirty little non-secret of the iPod/iTunes system, but remember, I'm the guy who doesn't even know whether you can e-mail a freaking .mp3, for crying out loud, so don't go overestimating my intelligence just because I found an acorn with that Simpsons thing a couple months ago.)

Anyway. Rant over. Fo' really. The Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "If Love Were All"
2. Afro Man, "She Won't Let Me Fuck"
3. Modern English, "Melt With You"
4. Johnny Cash, "Nobody"
5. Bowery Electric, "Coming Down"
6. Happy Mondays, "Lazyitis"
7. The Fugees, "The Score"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "One and One Make Five"
9. The Chemical Brothers, "Marvo Ging"
10. Dead Kennedys, "Let's Lynch the Landlord"

Don't forget to somebody throw me an answer to the .mp3-e-mailing question in the comments . . . and, of course, drop your own Ten in there if the spirit moves you.

Take it from someone who's been there -- it's a long flight back from Seattle.

Them feets work better if you got 'em on the ground, cousin.

I've been spending the weekend up in Maryland with my best friend from college, who moved here a few months ago, and being up here on the weekend that the Redskins play their first divisional playoff game in 6 years, and only their second in 15 years, is kind of like when I leave Birmingham to go back to Georgia to see my folks for the weekend or something: I smile knowing these are my people. In Georgia it's people with Georgia front license plates and Bulldog stickers on their cars, here it's people with Redskins flags flying from their car windows. On a Friday afternoon, as they drive home from work. It's walking into a bar on Saturday afternoon and realizing that the #56 Lavar Arrington jersey the little blond hostess is wearing just makes her hotter. Somehow it's fitting that after the Redskins' long 15-year trip through the desert, I'd end up watch them finish the trip up here.

Yeah, they lost. Lost despite a +3 turnover margin and rolling up more than twice as many yards as they did the previous week when they somehow won. And look, I thought I wouldn't have to worry about Florida receivers repeatedly ripping my heart out of my chest once the college season was over. But whereas a Georgia loss leaves me with a sick feeling in my stomach and usually drives me to confession the following Wednesday evening, feeling certain that I must have really done something to piss God off if he's gonna do me like that, this latest Redskins loss leaves me disappointed but upbeat, because for the first time in 15 years there's light at the end of the tunnel for us 'Skins fans that finally isn't an oncoming train. Clearly, the team is not perfect, as anyone will attest who saw them set offensive football back 20 or 30 years in the win against Tampa a week ago, but we've finally ginned up another playoff run and we've finally gotten the Cowboys monkey emphatically off our backs, and I'll take that in a heartbeat.

Anyway. Annapolis, for y'all who have never been here before, is a pretty cool little town. And the U.S. Naval Academy, for lack of a better word, is badass. As we were walking around the campus on the guided tour yesterday, I got to daydreaming -- you know, everyone has these daydream threads or storylines where they imagine what their lives would be like right now if they'd done X, Y, or Z when they were younger; mine include Where would I be if I'd learned how to play football when I was a kid and gone on to star in college?, Where would I be if I'd started a band with my friends when I was in high school?, etc. etc., that kind of thing. Anyway, to that list I added, Where would I be if I had gone to the Naval Academy and ended up graduating with honors? I can't say for sure, and I don't know that I would've even made it through, given that four years at the Academy requires a level of physical exertion I'm not sure I could've withstood when I was 18 or 19, much less now. But when they show you the promotional, video of all the graduates on commissioning day in their dress whites throwing their caps up into the air -- and I'm sure this is exactly what they were going for when they filmed that -- you can't help but try and picture yourself among them. And I, for one, couldn't help picturing my dad up in the stands, almost wetting himself with pride. Depending on what your kid does and where he/she ends up, some folks are going to be impressed by it and some folks aren't, but saying "My kid just graduated from the Naval Academy" tends to shift that balance to about 90/10.

Anyway, this afternoon it's hop on a train at Union Station and ride on down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, to meet up with some relatives who may or may not have power after the storms last night. Why is it that every time I take a trip up North these days, it snows? Do I have some shamanic snow-creating powers that follow me whenever I travel north of the Mason-Dixon? That might actually be more impressive than being accepted to the Naval Academy, now that I think about it. Well, not really.

Gettin' funk like a shoe . . .

Take a good look at the fella in the picture above, because this man is The Truth, son. Here's a number for you: 132. That's the total number of yards the New York Giants accrued on their way to becoming the first team to get shut out in a home playoff game in more than a quarter-century. Now, why am I showing you a picture of the Redskins' coach while quoting the Giants' statistics? Because the Skins had fewer yards than that on Saturday and still won. When your coach is The Truth, you can do these kinds of things.

Now, was it an ugly win? Oh, you bet your ass it was -- on a beauty scale of 10 (the Rose Bowl) to 1 (pick pretty much any win from Georgia's 1999 season), this was a 1, and it may not even make it that high if you decide you want to get decimal points involved. But it was an awesome win to me, because it made the month of January exciting again. With a very few notable exceptions over the last 10 or 15 years, the final gun of the college national-title game has been a profoundly depressing moment, because it means that unless I can find an NFL team to pretend to care about, I don't get to participate in the final glorious month of football as anything more than an impartial observer -- it's kind of like being in Model UN in high school and getting stuck representing the Holy See. Maybe once or twice in a millennium I'll get lucky and I'll get to pretend the Falcons might actually go all the way, but other than that, it's a cold and lonely month since the Redskins are almost assured to have played themselves out of playoff contention by Thanksgiving. But not this year. Now instead of congratulating my friends on how awesome the Jags or the Bucs or the Pats are this year, I get to believe again. It's entirely possible that all this breathless triumphalism is preparing me for nothing more than the Skins getting donkeybonked up in Seattle this weekend, but even if that happens, you won't be able to convince me the Redskins aren't back. Because The Truth is back.

That was the meat of the weekend, but there was also plenty of gravy, including beautiful weather, a Saturday night out with a hot blonde, and a James Bond marathon on AMC. (The girl I went out with Saturday -- do you think it would creep her out if I asked her to wear nothing but a bikini and a knife the next time she comes over? I mean, I'm just asking, but that particular ensemble didn't become iconic by accident.) Not only the best gadgets and the best chicks in movie history, but some of the best theme songs, too. And I'm not even talking just about the classics, either, like "Goldfinger" or "Live and Let Die," but does anyone remember "A View to a Kill"? Made in 1985, Roger Moore was pretty much collecting Social Security checks by then, and the theme song was done by Duran Duran, probably knocked off in between takes for Notorious. And it rocks. Hard. Maybe because it carries that tinge of menace you can only understand once you've seen Christopher Walken play a Bond villain, and you can only understand the creepiness of that once you realize just how much his association with supposedly innocuous "Saturday Night Live" characters such as the Continental and the "more cowbell" guy only intensifies said menace. Or maybe it's just me.


When you're standing next to Grace Jones and you're the one scaring people, that is an accomplishment.

Switching the topic a little here, but speaking of people whose menace is tinged with comedy (or vice versa), how is it that Marcus Vick, whose metamorphosis from football player into rap sheet creator came as absolutely no surprise to anyone who'd ever heard the name "Mo Clarett," still managed to surprise even the most jaded among us with the sheer velocity of his downfall? I mean, here's a guy who was walking on Communion-wafer-thin ice since having applied the old "grass on the field" maxim a little too liberally in Blacksburg a couple years ago, still manages to get kicked off the team thanks to his nifty personal-injury stunt in the Gator Bowl, then waits until after he's declared for the NFL draft to get caught waving a gun at some kids outside a McDonald's. (Before you even ask, yes, the "he was only trying to buy his date a Happy Meal" joke has already been made.) Proving once again that he's really only intimidating when the opponent is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

I don't know what kind of a pro prospect the kid's gonna make -- on the one hand, he did manage to injure himself celebrating an ultimately meaningless score (during the ACC championship game) in a manner so embarrassing that only the NFL's Bill Gramatica has been able to match it. On the other hand, even Lawrence Taylor showed some remorse when he fucked up a dude's leg, and that was only by accident. And I don't know that I want to see Marcus showing up in any of those United Way ads, because "Won't somebody think of the children" means something completely different coming out of his mouth from what it does coming out of anything else's, and it involves dabs of Sex Panther cologne and a twenty slipped to the desk clerk at the Days Inn to ensure that he "didn't see nothin'." (OK, I had to make one joke.) In the end, though, this is probably all academic, because I'm willing to bet good money that the closest Little Vick ever gets to an NFL playing field is waiting outside the Georgia Dome next to big brother's H2, with a shammy at the ready in case a pigeon manages to crap on it.


Vica Wear: The bling that says, "I make Billy Carter look respectable."

Sorry if I sound a little schadenfreude-ish about the whole thing. It's not that I wish misfortune or a "Boogie Nights"-like failure spiral on anyone, particularly a Hokie, but the point is I didn't have to wish it -- New Mexico asked for, and got, the whole thing himself. And what I'm worried about is the prospect that, as somebody in the Broncos front office did with Clarett, somebody is (at least temporarily) going to mistake Little Vick's dipshittery for "passion." And if that confusion is enough to somehow get Vick drafted before my boy D.J. Shockley this spring, you're gonna have to bodily restrain me from driving up to Virginia and doing some leg-stomping of my own.

Of course, we could avoid this all right now if someone could gather Little Vick together with Kevin Federline, Mike "Brownie" Brown, Ashlee Simpson, Sean Hannity, and that guy who used to be in Creed and put them all in a house. Then it'd be a reality show called "The Worthless Life." Wouldn't you watch a show like that? Hell, I'd watch it.

Friday Random Ten.

1. 3rd Bass, "Derelicts of Dialect"
2. Massive Attack, "Safe From Harm"
3. Nanci Griffith, "Drive-In Movies and Dashboard Lights"
4. Doc and Merle Watson, "Train That Carried My Girl From Town"
5. The English Beat, "Mirror in the Bathroom"
6. The Pretenders, "I'll Stand By You"
7. Bobby Darin, "More"
8. The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"
9. Stealers Wheel, "Stuck in the Middle With You"
10. David Holmes, "Radio 7"

And because my iPod managed to go through 10 entire songs without pulling up anything by the Pet Shop Boys -- a rare occurrence, if you've ever seen my music library -- I'll go ahead and pass along the announcement that the boys are releasing a new album, "Fundamental," on April 17. I expect everyone who reads this blog or knows me personally to go out and buy it. If you don't, we can still be friends and everything, but it's safe to say I'll probably respect you a little less.

I love the smell of self-promotion in the morning.

It smells like . . . victory:

And with that, I'm done with football until the Redskins take the field this weekend, except to say this: Texas, 44-38. You heard it here first.

Close enough. For all you punters who gambled and won big thanks to this sage advice, no thanks necessary, just e-mail me here and I'll let you know where to send the check.

Speaking of checks, though, the real winner here is Vince Young, who not only just earned himself top-three draft status and an eight-figure contract, but is also certain to be hip-deep in hot and cold running poontang the second he gets off the plane in Austin.

Good show all around, 'Horns. Hook 'em.

ADDED: One Gator fan's take on how The Onion would cover the Rose Bowl upset, and it's funny enough to get me to actually like Florida people. For the next couple days, anyway.

The postgame report as presented by Dave Attell and Sara Silverman.

A posse of Georgia defenders comes to the unpleasant realization that, at times, the "tackle" part of "tackle football" can be just as important as the "football" part.

I'm too exhausted to say a whole lot about last night's Sugar Bowl, and certainly neither insightful nor clever enough to make any analysis that The Drizzle, Ian or Baby Sis haven't made already, so since obscenity-laced post-bowl-loss e-mail exchanges seem to be all the rage lately, here's what I initially fired off to fellow Jawja alum and Official HJS Bestest Buddy Kristen, currently kickin' it in Maryland:

OK, you know what the worst part of that game was? It wasn't the getting bogged down 28-0 in the second quarter, though that did bring back plenty of juicy PTSD memories of the '99 Auburn-Georgia game which was as close to a living nightmare as I've ever experienced in my lucid, wide-awake life. It was storming back on both offense AND defense to pull within three points at the very end, only to fail to seal the transaction and end up losing anyway. It was like stepping to the absolute hottest woman at the bar, getting shot down, preparing to leave and then have the same woman sidle up to you and say she was sorry for being rude, she'd really like to go home with you, and then you get her home and you've got her pants off and then . . . splack. And you know what, Sugar Bowl? We CAN'T cuddle. It's much too late for that now. And I know this probably DOES happen to a lot of guys, but we are not "a lot of guys," we are the University of Georgia, and when we take a bowl game back to our place we [copulate] THE [feces] OUT OF IT! That's what we DO! . . . We're Georgia and we GET! IT! ON!

I want to apologize for that. That was totally inappropriate.

At first I was going to put Kristen's response up here, but it's basically an analogy comparing the game to men who, uh, finish too soon from the female perspective, and it's probably even fouler than mine.

So, yeah. Colorful, but cathartic. The good ones always are, aren't they?

Anyway, since it is now time for all Bulldogs to salute our Mountain State rulers, I have to bow down to We Must Ignite This Couch, for having, if nothing else, maybe the best blog name in history. And with that, I'm done with football until the Redskins take the field this weekend, except to say this: Texas, 44-38. You heard it here first.

2003 lament of the year: "I could've seen boobs."

Well, it's a new year, and two things the other day brought back a bunch of memories of what I was doing three years ago right around this time. The first was this post by official HJS homey Josh, concerning the Draconian anti-tit-flashing policies in place for the Sugar Bowl parade, now that said parade is taking place in Atlanta; the second was an e-mail from homey Darren, whom I've seen only once since we trucked on down for the last Sugar that Georgia played in, the one following the historic SEC-title season of '02.

Ordinarily, hopping in the car and road-tripping down to N.O. for a game wouldn't have been all that big a deal, but this one was a little different. Darren was in Atlanta, assigned to cover the Peach Bowl for the newspaper he works for, and the Peach didn't start until 7:30 p.m. So our plan was that he would cover the bowl game, I would ring in the New Year with some mutual friends of ours in East Atlanta, and then we would meet up at the Krispy Kreme on Ponce and drive all night down to New Orleans. We ended up finally meeting up at Krispy Kreme about one o'clock, and . . . the journey began.

The outcome of the Peach Bowl, which involved Tennessee getting an Ike-Turner-caliber beatdown from Maryland, I mention only because it was a nice dose of karmic come-uppance both for Casey Clausen, perhaps the biggest asscrack to have ever taken a snap for an SEC team, and for Jabari "Talkin' 'Bout the Rose Bowl" Davis. But despite getting a front-row seat from which to witness the richly satisfying donkeypunching of the Vols, Darren, a fellow UGA grad, was in a foul mood when we met up at the Kreme. Not because of the outcome of the game, obviously, but because he'd spent all that time covering a completely half-assed, disinterested performance by the Vols when he could've been partying like a rockstar in the Quarter. "I could've been getting hammered on Bourbon Street, watching girls flashing right and left," he said as we rocketed down I-59 in his Camaro. "Instead, I had to spend four hours watching Clausen and the rest of those douchebags play a game they obviously didn't care about and stink up the Georgia Dome."


Apparently you can spell "citrus" without "UT," but you still can't spell "another excruciatingly lame loss to Georgia" without "Casey Clausen."

This theme repeated itself the next morning, as Darren hunched over his laptop in our hotel room trying to come up with a lead for his follow-up story. "How do I write an interesting story about such a shitty game?" he asked. "Write what you feel," I told him. "Your lead should be, 'I could've seen boobs.' " He typed that as his first sentence, though I don't think that made it into the final story. I'm sure I would've found out if it had.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. About 6:30 a.m. New Year's Day, we rolled into a downtown N.O. that looked like those movies where a nuclear war or other catastrophe has plunged America into a grimy, dystopian future -- trash blowing about in the streets, roving bands of sullen youth who were most likely ending a night as opposed to starting a day. We went up to the hotel room where some friends of Darren's -- 10 of them, if I remember correctly -- were staying, and we squeezed ourselves in there and tried to grab a few hours of sleep.

The following morning, after watching some of the bowl-game action from early in the day, we headed out to tailgate. Downtown New Orleans, it must be said, is not a great place for tailgating unless you're cool with the roar of crowds and marching bands being replaced by the roar of semis racing down I-10 a few dozen feet over your head. But bourbon consumed beneath I-10 gets you just as plastered as bourbon consumed on the north campus quad in Athens, so by the time we headed into the Superdome we were tuned up pretty good.

It goes without saying that Georgia won the game, or I wouldn't even be telling you all this. The game itself wasn't all that compelling, to be honest -- it was pretty much just gravy on top of the best season Georgia had strung together since the Herschel days, and was probably only the 9th or 10th most exciting game out of 14 we played that season -- but it was still an awesome experience just to be watching the Bulldogs, after 14 years of terrifying lows, dizzying highs, and creamy middles since Vince Dooley surrendered the coach's job, finally reclaim elite status. Now, of course, it's hard to look back on that night without also thinking of what transpired in that building three years later, and it almost seems just gratuitously cruel to point out, as we did, that Tulane had more conference/division championship banners up in the Superdome than the Saints did -- but, well, I promise it was funny at the time.


You're my boy . . . uh, DeMario! (Sorry, no picture of Greg Blue available.)

After that, it was naturally off to the Quarter, where the Georgia fans outnumbered the FSU people at least 2 to 1. The story gets a little hazy at this point, for obvious reasons, but I do remember the exact number of pairs of boobs I saw: 2. One pair belonged to me, as I flashed a group of girls on a balcony in the hopes that they'd toss some beads and then return the favor (that's just my steez, ladies, and yes, I'm single); and the other belonged to a trannie stripper who was shaking what his/her momma gave him/her on the corner of Bourbon and some other street. I have to say this came as a disappointment, both to Darren and to me.

I was not disappointed, however, by our trip to Harrah's on Canal, which was jampacked not only with Georgia fans but current and former Georgia players. Including my boy, my dawg, the one and only Champ Bailey, who was hanging out with his "little" brother Boss, a linebacker on the '02 team. I put "little" in quotes because while Champ isn't all that massive a guy, at least when you see him out in public -- I had to look a little closer to make sure it was really him when I first saw him -- Boss is freaking ginormous. There are many celebrated photos of #45 flying straight up into the air like the shark in the opening credits of "Jaws" to block a punt or field-goal kick, and I can assure you The Boss looks even more massive and imposing in person. Darren tried to get me to go over and introduce myself or something, but I was wearing my #4 jersey at the time, which would've looked a little retarded, and jersey or no jersey I have no doubt that whatever I said to them would've quickly devolved into a "Chris Farley Show" of nervous fawning that would've left all three of us uncomfortable.


"Hey . . . remember that time you returned an interception for a touchdown against South Carolina? Remember that? That was awesome."

After a few hours watching other people gamble money, we trucked our drunk asses back to the hotel, packed ourselves back in with 10 or 12 other people, and crashed. The next morning it was back to Georgia.

And thus ends my story, which I guess wasn't really that interesting, but in addition to getting watch Georgia cap off an unexpectedly kick-ass year -- something I hope will be repeated in Sugar Bowl LXXII: The Atlanta Season on Monday -- I got to do something I can now file away with my trip to the top of the World Trade Center in '94 in my Memory Bank of Stuff People Can't Really Do Anymore. I'll always have a special place in my heart for the ATL, I hope the Sugar Bowl returns to New Orleans one day, if for no other reason than because it'll probably be easier to find cheap tickets when a bajillion UGA alums don't live within a 30-minute drive of the venue.

Oh, and because there'll be more boobs. I really want Darren to see some boobs.

The first 10 songs that came up on my iPod in 2006. (After U2's "New Year's Day," of course.)

This is important, because my mom always used to tell me that whatever you're doing on New Year's sets the tone for what you'll be doing the entire year.

1. Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, "Misirlou"
2. Avenue Q cast, "Purpose"
3. Underworld, "King of Snake" (Barking mix)
4. Average White Band, "Pick Up the Pieces"
5. U2, "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
6. Morrissey, "You Know I Couldn't Last"
7. Enigma, "Return to Innocence"
8. Fatboy Slim, "Everybody Needs a 303"
9. Thievery Corporation, "2001 Spliff Odyssey"
10. Madonna, "Like a Prayer"