The Friday Random Ten+5 writes checks that neither its body nor any of its other possessions can cash.

As my unemployment enters its second month and the search for new full-time wages grows longer and more frustrating, I've started looking for outside-the-box ways to make some extra cash. Some, like manning EDSBS for a week, have been right in my wheelhouse and relatively simple to pull off; others, like Johnny Dillinger-style bank robbery, have been sexy and potentially lucrative but rather impractical, both from a logistical and from a legal standpoint. But then there's the lottery. Only requires a small investment, is perfectly legal, potentially has a huge, life's-troubles-vaporizing payoff -- other than the fact that any given participant has but an astronomically small chance of actually winning, it's a can't-miss proposition.

Last time I paid a visit home to Georgia, the Mega Millions jackpot was at $120 million, and since then it's rolled over to a cool $146 million. What would I do with money like that? Oh, I'd find some ways to blow it to pieces, make no mistake. Obviously my first order of business would be to take care of practical matters like paying off credit cards, making charitable donations, and investing to create a secure future for the children I will one day either father myself or purchase off the Chinese black market, but with nine figures at my disposal I'm sure I'd have a lot left over even after all that. So this week's +5 is The First Five Things I'd Buy If I Hit The Mega Millions Jackpot Tonight:



A beach house on Edisto Island, S.C.
We first went to Edisto back when I was like 12 years old because one of my dad's patients gave us a week at his (gorgeous, immaculate) beach house there as a thank-you for having treated him so well. I fell in love with the place almost the minute we set foot on the island. It's about halfway between Hilton Head and Charleston on the South Carolina coast, which means it's close enough to those places to go shopping or get a fancy dinner or something, but far enough away that things are fairly quiet and isolated most of the time (and it's nowhere near as loud or tacky as Myrtle Beach). Sort-of-funny story: The guy who owned the house was a South Carolina grad and had Gamecock memorabilia all over the place, but this was long before I had any sort of real immersion in SEC football, so I just snickered at all the books and signs and trinkets referring to the Cocks. Heh, I really haven't matured in the last two decades at all.



A Lego room
We've been over this, right? Yeah, we have: a room covered floor-to-ceiling with those green, nubby Lego baseplates and with a giant walk-in closet full of shelves and drawers to contain and organize different kinds of Lego pieces. I certainly don't pretend to be the first person to come up with this idea, but I'd like to think I could do it better than anyone who has come before me. And that would be a major step in forging my lifelong friendship with Knowshon Moreno.



An antique Citroën DS
Preferably a fuel-injected, flush-headlamped DS23 from 1973 or so. I have to think I'd be the only person in Birmingham with one of these. And just to be really pointlessly extravagant, I might also try to find an old, scrapped 2CV body shell that I could put in the game room of my man-cave and use as a driver's seat for playing Mario Kart Wii. With all this newfound time on my hands, I have been crushing it at Mario Kart these days.



Eighties-style tabletop-cabinet arcade game
Man cannot live on Wii alone, however. If I could, I'd try to find one of those arcade machines that has like 39 games in a single machine -- Pac-Man, Galaga, Spy Hunter, Xevious, Donkey Kong, Arkanoid, all the good ones. Why a tabletop-style setup rather than an upright cabinet? Because you can't set a drink on an upright.



A big enough donation to the University of Georgia athletics association that I can get season tickets for the rest of my life
I honestly can't even fathom how big a donation this would have to be, but I'd like to see if, oh, a check for $20 million or so would be enough to convince them to name it Doug Gillett Field at Sanford Stadium. And if it was, whether they would then paint this picture in little logos on the 20-yard lines.

Wish me luck, peasants! In the meantime, the Ten:

1. Big Audio Dynamite II, "Can't Wait" (live)
2. Marvin Gaye, "Right On"
3. Gorillaz, "Latin Simone"
4. Talking Heads, "Slippery People" (live)
5. Thievery Corporation, "The Foundation"
6. Isaac Hayes, "Theme from 'Shaft'"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "Up Against It"
8. House of Pain, "Jump Around"
9. Handsome Boy Modeling School, "The Projects"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "It's Alright" (extended disco mix)

Your turn: Throw your lottery-jackpot wish lists and/or Random Tens in the comments.

There's no promotion like self-promotion.

I may have finished up my guest-hosting week over at EDSBS, but I'm still not done befouling other people's Web sites with my presence.

Here, at Dr. Saturday, is the latest installment in my ongoing Better Know an Embattled Coach series. This week's victim: Indiana coach Bill Lynch, who took over in mid-offseason after the previous coach died of a brain tumor, led the Hoosiers to their first bowl in 13 years, but after a 3-9 season is fighting for his job anyway. (Man, this economy is crushing everybody.)

Also, despite being a Florida blog and therefore under no obligation whatsoever to give a flying fuck what I think, Gators First gave me the opportunity to hold forth with my at-best-modestly-educated opinion about how the 2009 season is going to shake out for the SEC. Thrill to the first and very last time I will say anything nice about Tennessee or South Carolina this year.

Also, that post I did for EDSBS about Lou Holtz's (short-lived) Congressional ambitions? Got linked by The New Republic. (Which, in retrospect, probably would not have happened had I gone with my original concept for that post, "What Kind Of Sex Scandal Will Lou Holtz Get Caught In Once He Becomes A Congressman?" I think I'd decided to go with "Name found in little black book of Florida madam whose prostitutes are exclusively Asian women catering to men with lactation fetishes"; my sincere thanks to whoever talked me down off that ledge.)

A special memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.: How to tell if ideas are good or bad.

Realized about halfway through that I was stealing this from EDSBS, but whatever.

Good idea: this video, or anything making fun of the "G.I. Joe" movie.

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Bad idea: Wearing this T-shirt whilst having a mugshot taken.



GREAT idea: maximizing time-for-money value by bringing a U-Haul to a Hooters car wash.


TERRIBLE idea: griending your boss on Facebook, then posting a message calling him/her a "total pervvy wanker."

The expectations game, part II: Too high, too low, or just right?

When last I tried to gauge the fan base's expectations of the Georgia Bulldogs going into the 2009 season, the consensus seemed to be that nine wins and a bowl invite, possibly of the January variety, were entirely reasonable goals to shoot for. Now we have our first "official" judgment of Georgia's prospects: Last Friday the coaches collectively ranked Georgia #13 in their preseason poll.

Does thirteenth in the nation sound reasonable for a team destined to win nine games and play in a bowl? It's tough to say, because translating wins and losses into an appropriate poll ranking (or vice versa) is no less a judgment call than anything else. Basically, I think your judgment of the preseason ranking -- whether you see it as too high, too low, or basically accurate -- kind of depends on where you think Richt has the program positioned at the moment. If you're not convinced that Georgia is strong enough to weather the losses of Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno without paying for it to at least some degree in the standings -- consider that #13 is just three spots below where last year's national-title-touted team finished the season -- you might think the preseason ranking is a bit high. If, on the other hand, you think Richt has built the program into one that's strong and consistent enough to where even the "floor" for wins is relatively high, #13 probably seems fair, maybe even a tad low to those of you who with a more optimistic world view than mine.

Personally, I think #13 is about where we ought to be: We're having to replace Stafford and Moreno, which is not a small task by any measure, but at the same time our new guys will be playing behind one of the best and most experienced offensive lines in the country, while on defense, we may have underachieved considerably last year but we bring back nearly everybody of importance, and by all reports they've had their wake-up call and are charging into 2009 committed to making up for last season's disappointments. Flip "offense" and "defense" in that description and what you've got is strikingly similar to how people would've described our squad around this time in 2007 -- a team that was also ranked #13 in the preseason (and, as we all remember, went on to considerably bigger and better things).

So with all that in mind, I've got two questions for y'all to continue the process of analyzing fan expectations for this season. First:

poll by twiigs.com

And second, a question that's similar to the first one, but not quite the same:

poll by twiigs.com

Go ahead and vote, and feel free to explain your responses in further detail in the comments. Next up: which specific games y'all actually expect to win in 2009.

There's no place like home, thank God.

A few years ago, I was in my hometown of Columbus, driving down Reese Road in the direction of Manchester Expressway, when I saw a couple teenage kids driving a red early-'90s Honda Civic coupe. It had a big spoiler on the back and a full complement of air dams, side skirts, and what have you -- its owner had pretty obvious designs on turning it into a "Fast and Furious"-style rice rocket. Only he hadn't gotten around to upgrading the rims or tires yet, because it was still riding around on the stock steel wheels and plastic Honda wheel covers, which combined with the big spoiler and ground-effects bodywork made it look weirdly top-heavy. The coup de grace, if you will (and I do), was the decal that ran across the top of the back window: It read "TO LOW FOR A FAT HO," and yes, that's how it was spelled.

Ah, Columbus. Don't ever change.

And actually, it hasn't, because as I was rolling into C-Town this past Wednesday afternoon for an extended-weekend stay with my folks, I wound up behind this vehicle at a stoplight on Manchester. I had to snap a picture of it with my iPhone, so the resolution is not great and you may not be able to read the stickers I'm talking about, but here's the picture:



And the three stickers read as follows, clockwise from left:

· MY BITCH GIVES GOOD HEAD
· Do I LOOK Like A FUCKING People Person?
· LIFE IS ALL ABOUT ASS: COVERING IT, KICKING IT, KISSING IT, OR TRYING TO GET IT

Note also the putty-gray aftermarket bumper, another clear sign that this car is destined for "Fast and Furious" duty but the driver just hasn't been able to pony up for the spoiler or the rims yet.

You're all class, Columbus. Yet you do have plenty of great barbecue restaurants, a nice historic district, and a Chili's . . . I wish I knew how to quit you.

Monday Morning Cage Match IX:A book I have not read vs. a book I also have not read.

A few weeks back my dear sister finished reading the first of the books in the Twilight series, and it would be safe to say her judgment of the novel's literary merit was less than charitable; in a two-part post on her blog, she ripped apart both what she called its shitty writing and awful social message for young girls. Now, baby sis would probably readily admit that she did not pick up the book in the first place thinking she'd like it at all, so she may have been a little bit prejudiced. So I figured, what if the Monday Morning Cage Match took a crack at the book with the unprejudiced, unbiased judgment you've come to know and expect? The thing is, I haven't read the book and, not being a 14-year-old girl, don't plan to, but there are plenty of books I haven't read and that's never stopped me from talking about them. So to come up with the definitive judgment of Twilight's place in the literary firmament, it's time for a quick comparison of what seem like two similar books, at least based on their titles: Twilight vs. Night.

	Night	Twilight
Author	Journalist and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel	Mormon housewife Stephanie Meyer
WINNER: Night
Protagonist	Eliezer, Orthodox-Jewish concentration-camp inmate	Bella Swan, clumsy, bookish, yet somehow irresistible high-schooler
WINNER: Night
Villain(s)	The Nazis; man's inhumanity to man	An evil vampire coven; the inconvenience of dating someone who wants to drink your blood
WINNER: Night
Autobiographical?	Yes	You'd kind of have to think so
WINNER: Tie
Excerpt	"How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? ... But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man."	"As I had just that once before, I smelled his cool breath in my face. Sweet, delicious, the scent made my mouth water. It was unlike anything else. Instinctively, unthinkingly, I leaned closer, inhaling."
WINNER: Night
Sample praise	"Every sentence feels weighted and deliberate, every episode carefully chosen and delineated. It is also shockingly brief; it can be read in an hour, and carried in a pocket. One has the sense of merciless experience mercilessly distilled to its essence . . . To read it is to lose one's own innocence about the Holocaust all over again." (Ruth Franklin, The New Republic)	"hi i;m a new obsessed fan...probably too old to feel that way, but i can't stop reading the books! my fam never sees me anymore! can;t wait for new moon! i;m dying!!!" (Mindy, "Twilight Fans" group on Facebook)
WINNER: Night
Film adaptation?	No	Yes
WINNER: Twilight

FINAL SCORE: Night 6, Twilight 2. The biggest walkover in any Cage Match so far. I can tell you're shocked.

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.

My life at 31: an equation.

This + (This / This) = This.



(Hat tip: Holly.)

Memphis, we have a problem.

If you've devoured Michael Lewis's endlessly fascinating The Blind Side (as I have) and followed the amusing updates of cameos by Saban, the Orgeron, et al in the upcoming film adaptation (ditto), then you've probably been waiting with bated breath for the film's wide release in November. If that's the case, then Chris Mottram is going to throw some very cold water on those dreams, for he's got the film's trailer up over at Mr. Irrelevant, and . . . well, see for yourself:



How am I disappointed in thee, "Blind Side" trailer? Let me count the ways:

1. It's all about Sandra Bullock. Not that the woman Bullock plays, Leigh Anne Tuohy, wasn't an integral part of the story Lewis told in his book; she worked as hard as, if not harder than, anyone to lift Michael Oher up out of poverty. But she wasn't the main character in the book; she looks like she's going to be the main character in the movie. And that probably means that . . .

2. We've got another white-woman-saves-poor-aimless-black-people story on our hands. You could, if you were so inclined, condense The Blind Side down to that very cursory description, and to some extent film adaptations can only ever be stripped-down, USA Today versions of the books on which they're based, but still, The Blind Side was so much deeper and more complex than that. We could've gotten at least an attempt at translating that complexity to the screen, but instead it looks like what we're going to get is a lot more along the lines of Sandra Bullock being, in the words of Jack Donaghy, "Michelle Pfeiffer to your angry black kid who learns that poetry is just another way to rap."

3. The "You threaten my son, you threaten me" scene. Is my memory of the book completely faulty, or did that never actually happen? Someone telling Mike Oher to "sleep with one eye open"? What are your cheap gangsta theatrics doing in my peanut butter?

4. The use of The Fray's "How to Save a Life" in the first part of the trailer. Of the grown men I've known who have ever expressed any affinity for that song (or The Fray in general), all of them fell into at least one of two categories: a) Guys who had at least circumstantial evidence against their heterosexuality and b) guys who played it on their guitars so they'd look brooding and sensitive enough to pull in chicks. I've kind of gotten off topic here, but the point is The Fray has no place in any film that purports to be about sports.

Bright spots? Well, Quinton Aaron looks suitably mountain-sized to pass as Michael Oher (no mean feat), and Sandra Bullock is smokin' hot as a blonde. And there's always the cameos by Saban and Orgeron to look forward to. (Window treatments FTW!) Otherwise, it looks suspiciously like we've got some heavy football movie/chick flick miscegenation going on here, and the outlook, as the Magic 8-Ball might say, is not good. We'll have to save the final verdict for November 20, of course, but this grand jury is still prepared to at least hand down an indictment.

I'm takin' the wheel!(Oh, yeah, this is gonna end well.)

Just in case you missed me trumpeting the news on Twitter or Facebook, the great Orson Swindle is enjoying a highly jealousy-inducing vacation down on the Gulf Coast this week, and in a colossal error of judgment has put me in charge of Every Day Should Be Saturday while he's gone. So I'll be Alexander Haiging it up over there in his absence, bringing you all the college-football news that's fit to belittle and, where warranted, throwing in some of the miscellaneous stupidity you've come to expect from Hey Jenny Slater. As white-hot as the temptation is to do such a thing, I won't be overhauling EDSBS to a red-and-black color scheme with a header graphic of Vince Dooley being carried aloft by the boys back on New Year's Day 1981 -- I gotta at least try to be a courteous guest, after all -- but I think I can probably get away with a dick joke or a supermodel-in-underwear picture every now and then.

On that note, if you have a particular dick joke or undie shot you think merits inclusion -- or, perhaps more usefully, an actual CFB tip or link -- fire it off to the e-mail address at the top of the right-hand column on this blog. Can't promise I'll use it, but if I do, I'll at least do you the courtesy of valiantly guarding your anonymity by failing to give you credit. Wish me luck, folks.

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 says uncle.

Sorry for the sparse posting this past week -- hell, this past month. You'd think that I'd have all kinds of time to blog now that I'm not working 9-to-5 anymore -- OK, who am I kidding? It was always more like 10-to-4:30 -- but you'd be surprised just how quickly that time can get filled up with Internet porn. Uh, I mean job hunting. That's what I've been doing.

Anyhoo. This week's +5: Five Dudes Who Would Make Awesome Cool Uncles. This is not to express any dissatisfaction with my current uncles, who are all excellent individuals; I'm just saying, if you had an opening for a new uncle and wanted someone cool to fill the uncular role of someone who shows you all the stuff your parents refuse to let you do, these would be good ones.



George Clooney
By all accounts, Clooney is quite the championship drinker, so he'd probably be down for sneaking you cocktails at family gatherings when your parents weren't looking. But his real ace in the hole is his ability to pick up chicks. Let's be honest, what George Clooney throws back is probably hotter than 95% of the girls I've ever dated, and when you're rolling with Cloons you're always going to end up with some phone numbers in your pocket, whether you were actively looking for them or not. "Why, yes, I was in 'Ocean's Eleven.' Here, meet my nephew. D'ja hear that, Doug? Sasha's from the Ukraine, and she's trying to make it as a model. Isn't that interesting?" Why, yes, Uncle George, it is.



Pete Carroll
You can kind of infer just from Carroll's now-infamous Twitter feed that he'd be the kind of awesome, laid-back guy whose company you could always seek as a refuge from your own uptight asshole parents. When they're busting your balls about your grades suffering or why haven't you found a nice girl to settle down with or whatever, just take off for Casa de Carroll, where Uncle Pete is always willing to put on some Stones, hand you a Sweetwater 420, and give you some relentlessly upbeat advice about how to find the joy in life again. And I don't know how or why I know this, but I have a strong hunch that Carroll is a Wii owner, and that he's a Shaolin master at Mario Kart. (His favorite character is Yoshi, and he'll wipe the floor with you.)



Verne Lundquist
Can you think of anyone in America who'd be more fun to watch a football game with? I don't think I can. I mean, we all refer to him as "Uncle Verne" anyway; how awesome would it be to stroll into his wood-paneled den, flop down into the old leather recliner next to Verne's, and consume 11 or 12 straight hours of college football laced with liberal doses of Verne's "wuh-howw!!!" enthusiasm? And during the commercial breaks you could relate to him the tales your most recent sexual conquests, just to see if you could elicit any "lingerie on the field" comments. And anyone who brings Uncle Verne to game day is automatically the most popular person at the tailgate.



Joe Biden
Let's don't mince words here: Has Uncle Joe been kind of a mixed bag as vice-president so far? Yeah, I think you could say that. But the very same qualities that have earned Joe a reputation as being sort of a loose cannon in the nation's No. 2 spot would make him an awesome crazy uncle. While the rest of the family is sitting around the holiday dinner table making boring small talk and trying not to say anything that would get anyone else in the family worked up, Uncle Joe is the one who'll be plying you with Harvey Wallbangers, surreptitiously making the jerk-off gesture while Aunt Whoever brags about the great colleges her kids have been accepted to, and encouraging you to check out the funbags on the girl cousin so-and-so has brought to meet the family for the first time. Then, while the rest of the family is falling asleep in front of "It's a Wonderful Life," you, Joe, and the rest of the cool cousins go downstairs to smoke cigars and watch the unrated version of "Old School." The only potential sticking point here is potential awkward feelings toward Aunt Jill, but somehow I think Uncle Joe would be more flattered by that than anything else.



William Shatner
The take-no-prisoners ladyslaying skills of Clooney, the zest for life of Carroll, and the sheer lunacy of Biden, all in one awesome package. Take him to a bar, get a few drinks in him, and you can get him to yell "KHAAAANNN!" at innocent bystanders at the drop of a hat.

And now the Ten:

1. Erasure, "Chains of Love"
2. Thom Yorke, "Harrowdown Hill"
3. House of Pain, "Jump Around" (Pete Rock remix)
4. Elton John, "Tiny Dancer"
5. Underworld, "Jumbo"
6. Richard Cheese, "Personal Jesus"
7. The Beastie Boys, "Jimmy James"
8. Asie Payton, "I Love You"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "So Sorry, I Said"
10. The Clash, "Train in Vain (Stand by Me)"

No U.N.K.L.E. tracks on there? That kind of seems like a missed opportunity. Anyway, throw your own Random Tens and/or nominees for Awesome Cool Uncle in the comments, folks.

Pimpin' ain't easy*.* except where otherwise noted

I'll be honest, when reports first started surfacing that the 0-16 Detroit Lions had their eye on Matt Stafford as the first pick of the 2009 draft, I felt a little sorry for him. Then, of course, he signed a six-year contract with the Lions for $41.7 million, and I started feeling a little better for him.

Now, with the start of the NFL season less than a month and a half away, I'm pretty confident that regardless of what happens on the field, the kid's gonna be all right.



GATA, indeed.

(Hat tip: the great Senator Blutarsky.)

Monday Morning Cage Match VII:Puppets vs. strumpets.

Last night we were at dinner, and I don't know how we got on this particular subject, but we got into a disagreement over the release date of "Debbie Does Dallas," the kind of hotly contested but completely meaningless debate that only a rapid iPhone-assisted Web search could solve. Turns out it was released two days after Christmas in 1978, making the film only six months younger than I am. To what could we compare such an iconic film? In the spirit of the Monday Morning Cage Match, it would have to be a film with which it has only the most superficial, irrelevant similarities, and I think we've found a good one: Prepare yourselves for "Debbie Does Dallas" vs. "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

	Debbie Does Dallas	The Muppets Take Manhattan
Goal of protagonist(s)	Getting to Dallas to try out for the "Texas Cowgirls" cheerleading squad	Becoming huge Broadway stars
WINNER: Debbie
Goal achieved?	Who the hell knows	Yes
WINNER: Muppets
Stars	Bambi Woods, Robert Kerman, Rikki O'Neal	Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie
WINNER: Muppets
Percentage of action that takes place in titular city	Zero	75 or so
WINNER: Muppets
Sex acts captured on film	More than 40	Only the scene where Rowlf gives Miss Piggy a Dirty Sanchez
WINNER: Debbie
Hands up asses?	Shockingly, no	Yes, if you count all the puppets
WINNER: Muppets
Sequels	"Debbie Does Dallas" 2, 3, and 4; "Debbie Does Dallas: The Next Generation"; "Debbie Does Iowa"; "Debbie Duz Dishes" 1, 2, and 3; "Bang the Debbie Slowly" (seriously)	"The Muppet Christmas Carol," "Muppet Treasure Island," "Muppets from Space"
WINNER: Debbie (although "Muppet Christmas Carol" is a great film)

WINNER: Muppets 4, Debbie 3. Somehow I don't think this is likely to end the debate over which is the more iconic film, but whatever.

The Friday Not-So-Random Ten+5 begins planning for its future.

As I'm pretty sure all of you know by now, I got laid off a couple weeks ago, and after a back surgery, a few days' recovery, and a visit from some out-of-town guests for SEC Media Days, it's probably about time for me to start hunting for the next place at which I will (hopefully) be gainfully employed. There's just one thing, though: I don't like working. I realize that doesn't exactly make me anyone's unique little flower, but there are very few things I like enough to be jazzed about the prospect of doing them for a mandatory eight hours each day. Even some things I like when I'm just doing them on my own become dreary and unappealing when I think about having to spend five days a week in a cubicle doing them so that I'll get to eat that month.

What do I like to do? That's a question a lot of people have asked me over the past couple weeks, in an attempt to begin honing in on something I might like to seek out for my next job, and I can actually think of a few things. The +5 below is where I reckon I'll be starting my job search: My Five Ideal Jobs. Following that is a Not-So-Random Ten that will basically constitute the bulk of my job-searching, future-planning soundtrack over the next few weeks, but let's get to the jobs first, just in case any of you helpful readers might know of some openings for any of these:



Freelance Lego sculptor
I would hope that my Lego design/construction chops have already been well established on this site. "Freelance Lego sculptor" is actually the alter ego I use for myself when I'm in a new and unfamiliar city and roaming bars to pick up chicks. Sure, it probably sounds dorky at first blush, but there's a lot you can do with it. For instance, I tell girls I just got back from spending a month in Switzerland, where I earned $15,000 for building a 2:1-scale version of the Peugeot 5008 for a display at the Geneva Auto Show. Laugh all you want, but that story earned me a night of passion with Katherine Heigl last month. OK, not Katherine Heigl, but her personal assistant, which is practically the same thing.



Rick Neuheisel's sweater-vest coordinator
My fandom of Rick Neuheisel is also well established at this point. After maybe Jim Tressel, Neuheisel is also one of the sharpest-dressed coaches in Division I-A, with a wide variety of wondrous sweater vests at his disposal for any given game. As something of a sweater-vest aficionado myself, I feel I would be highly qualified to select the most appropriate vest for each situation, helping to ensure that Neu's reputation as one of the slickest ladykillers in college football remains intact.



Lucy Pinder's personal hand bra
Being an internationally famous, 32G-equipped glamour model means you spend a lot of time with your hands posed coyly in front of your boobs. Only problem is, that doesn't leave you with any free hands to do things like play video games, shift a manual transmission, cook flapjacks, or what have you. I would be happy to offer my services as someone who could handle the boob-covering while she tends to those other important activities, and I think she'd find that she was now able to handle her daily chores more quickly and efficiently than ever before.



Proprietor of the world's first human petting zoo
I don't see how someone hasn't come up with this idea already. A hygienic, safely monitored place where people can pet the kind of beautiful women or men they might never get to come into contact with otherwise? Way better than a lap dance, and way better than some regular old petting zoo with farm animals. Which would you rather pet, a supermodel or a billy goat? You shouldn't have to think too hard about your answer to that question.



James Bond supervillain
Living in the lap of luxury in a concealed mega-hideout, extorting billions from the world's governments -- heck, I could do that. Only I'd have two advantages over the supervillains Bond faced in movies like "You Only Live Twice" or "On Her Majesty's Secret Service": One, I wouldn't actually have to tangle with anyone as clever or capable as James Bond, since he's a fictional character. Two, I'd have the advantage of watching all the mistakes those villains made and knowing better than to repeat them. As satisfying as it might be to trap an enemy spy in an elaborate, slow, excruciatingly torturous (but theoretically escapable) trap, I would resist the temptation to leave him in something like that; as Bond has proven time and time again, you're really better off just shooting him right away and getting it over with. So I think I've demonstrated that I have the cunning and foresight to be quite a nefarious villain -- all I need now is a hefty infusion of venture capital so that I can build my secret lair and city-destroying laser and what have you. Anybody looking around for sound investments in a troubled economy? Let me show you my prospectus.

And now the Ten, which, as explained, is Not-So-Random this week:

1. Mo' Horizons, "Hit the Road Jack"
2. The Farm, "Hard Times"
3. The Beatmasters, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"
4. Underworld, "Two Months Off"
5. Beck, "Deadweight"
6. Miles Davis, "Freddie Freeloader"
7. Public Enemy, "Brother's Gonna Work It Out"
8. Pet Shop Boys, "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)"
9. The Smiths, "Stretch Out and Wait"
10. Avenue Q cast, "I Wish I Could Go Back to College"

Your turn, folks. Help me out! Let me hear your job suggestions, and/or random or not-so-random tens, in the comments.

The peanut gallery speaks, sort of, to no avail.

SEC Media Days is going on right down the road from me at the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, and while Orson Swindle, Joel Hollingsworth, and Cocknfire all got their media credentials for the event, I crapped out on getting any for myself. Hopefully one of them will be reading this and be brave enough to answer the questions I cannot, for here are the questions that I, on behalf of the great college-football-watching unwashed, would pose to each of the 12 SEC coaches:

Rich Brooks (Kentucky): What brings you joy? You don't have to say "coaching Kentucky football."

Gene Chizik (Auburn): Are there ever mornings when you wake up and think, "Holy fuck, how in the world did I ever get this job?"

Bobby Johnson (Vanderbilt): Are there ever mornings when you wake up and think, "I coach at Vanderbilt, if I win so much as five games they think I'm a fucking miracle worker," and if so, does that pretty much make your job the most awesome job ever?

Lane Kiffin (Tennessee): Faggotsayswhat?
Follow-up: I said, faggotsayswhat?

Urban Meyer (Florida): Will you take the head coaching job at Notre Dame after Charlie Weis gets fired at the end of this season?
Follow-up: How about the Dallas Cowboys?
Follow-up II: How about if I give you this nice crisp $100 bill?

Les Miles (LSU): You're basically wearing hats that size just to fuck with us at this point, aren't you?

Dan Mullen (Mississippi State): Do you ever feel pangs of regret at having left a wildly successful Florida program for this exceedingly difficult job, and if so, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a single tear rolling down your cheek and 10 being such an incredible tsunami of tears that you wish you could drown yourself in it, how much would you say you weep at these thoughts?

Houston Nutt (Ole Miss): The phrase we keep hearing over and over again regarding your team's prospects in 2009 is that you "don't handle high expectations well." Do those kinds of comments make you crazy?
Follow-up: Crazy enough to . . . wrestle this bear?!?!? (lead bear into room on leash)

Bobby Petrino (Arkansas): If Auburn administrators had come to you last fall after firing Tommy Tuberville and offered you their head-coaching job, you totally would've taken it, wouldn't you?

Mark Richt (Georgia): Last season you said that you eased off on full-contact drills in tackling practice. You do realize that that pretty much runs completely counter to the concept of "tackle" football, don't you?

Nick Saban (Alabama): What kind of small, furry animals did you strangle to death after Alabama's losses to Florida in the SEC title game and Utah in the Sugar Bowl last year, respectively, and how many of each?

Steve Spurrier (South Carolina): On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "not at all" and 10 being "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," how much would you say your lackluster showing at South Carolina has damaged your overall coaching legacy?

My new favorite thing ever.

Is there such thing as a posthumous Rick-rolling?

Monday Morning Cage Match VI:Whores vs. just regular naked ladies.

As the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were getting started this time last week, you heard a lot of folks make mention of the fact that the United States Senate is considered "the world's most exclusive club" due to the fact that it has only 100 people charged with deciding so many important things. And there's definitely some truth to that, but is it really the most exclusive club? I tried thinking of other groups that might have even fewer members, and you'll be shocked to discover that the first possibility I came up with was Playboy Playmates. (After all, in a given six-year stretch there will be at least 100 senators, but only 72 Playmates.)

Well, because I was laid out for most of this past week and had nothing better to do, I went combing back through Wikipedia to find the exact numbers, and it turns out that since Marilyn Monroe became Playboy's first centerfold in December of 1953, 670 different women have been Playmates, but only 476 different people have served any length of time in the U.S. Senate. So the Senate is, in absolute statistical terms, the more exclusive "club" here, but is it really the best club to be a member of? That's the subject of this week's Cage Match: Playmates vs. Senators.

	Playmates	Senators
Ruler of the roost	Hugh Hefner	Joe Biden
WINNER: Playmates
Method of selection	Hugh Hefner and photographers select from photos and bios sent by thousands of aspiring models	Popular vote
WINNER: Tie (Senate selection is more fair, but Playmate selection sounds way more fun)
Rewards/ privileges of selection	$25,000, virtually unlimited access to Playboy Mansion, C-list acting jobs	$174,000-$193,400/year, voting rights on legislation affecting the entire country, final approval of all Supreme Court nominees
WINNER: Senators
Most recent member(s)	Twins Karissa and Kristina Shannon	Comedian Al Franken
WINNER: Playmates (sorry, Al)
Hottest member(s)	All of 'em	Mary Landrieu (D-LA), obvs
WINNER: Playmates (sorry, Mary)
Most accomplished member(s)	Marilyn Monroe, who later became a world-famous actress	John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama, who later became president
WINNER: Senators (sorry, Marilyn)
Spend large amounts of time with	Hugh Hefner, the Girls Next Door, Sugar Ray Leonard	Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Jim Bunning, Jeff Sessions
WINNER: Playmates

FINAL SCORE: Playmates 5, Senators 3 (and probably one of those cases where the actual competition wasn't even as close as the score indicates).

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Things to do in Denver when you're unemployed.

Doing nothing, and it's everything I thought it could be.

Recently downsized but don't feel like actually looking for another job yet? Me neither, working sucks. Here's some shit to distract you instead:

· First of all, I'm gonna have to go ahead and pimp some of my own work, should any paying blogs, Web sites, or sports journals be looking for writers: Here's my less-than-rosy take on George O'Leary's job security for Dr. Saturday (prithee excuse the character formatting, we're working on it), and here's MY EXCLUSIVE ALL-ACCESS INSIDE LOOK at Lane Kiffin and the Tennessee football program for EDSBS! Why did Kiffykins give such broad access to his deepest, most top-secret planning to a Georgia interloper like myself? He probably fucked up and forgot to check that I was a Bulldog fan, but like everything else, he'll say it was all part of his master plan.

· It has come to my attention that some people found this past week's Monday Morning Cage Match unfairly biased in favor of Lexus and against Texas. One or two people hinted that had a category along the lines of "End zones" been included, the Lone Star State would've cleaned up. OK, I'm an open-minded guy, let's compare rear ends:


Lexus SC430 . . .


. . . and Texas Longhorns.

OK, yeah, you know what, y'all were right and I was wrong. Game over, Texas wins. My decision is final.

· And now that I've pimped my own work, it's time to pimp some other people's: Platinum-level Friend of Holly (and therefore friend of Hey Jenny Slater) Livia drops Pat Buchanan with a knee to the balls and keeps on kicking, while over at Practically Harmless, Sister of Hey Jenny Slater does the same to the Twilight book series here and here.

What else do we know about Bella? We know that she's clumsy. Sooo clumsy. Clummy-clum-clumsy. You can hear "Yakety Sax" faintly in the background throughout the book. She falls down in the woods. She trips over her own feet at the beach. She trips over her own feet in class. She drops her books. She thwacks her classmates in the head with a volleyball. She thwacks herself in the head with a badminton racquet. She gets paper cuts. At one point, Meyer specifically describes her eating a bowl of cereal, "chewing each bite with care," as if a Lucky Charms-Mama Cass moment is an ever-looming threat. And in case you weren't able to pick up on it yourself, Bella is kind enough to tell you herself.

I'm absolutely ordinary - well, except for bad things like all the near-death experiences and being so clumsy that I'm almost disabled.

Oh, are you clumsy? I totes hadn't noticed.

· Back to Pat Buchanan for a moment, sort of: As blatant a bigot as Pat Buchanan is, he is completely, utterly sane compared to Glenn Beck, who did everything except audibly shit his pants when a caller somehow managed to get past what I'm sure was NORAD-tight call screening to disagree with him on health care:



Now, here's my question: You're a radio host. You're crazier than a Greyhound bus full of methed-up ferrets, but be that as it may, you've somehow developed a sincerely devoted following despite yourself. Who says "GET OFF MY PHONE"?!?!? You're the host, Miss DuBois, fuckin' drop the call if it's that upsetting to you! Why throw a literal howling hissy fit and make yourself look like even more of a twit than you already have? I refuse to believe that anyone, even his most ardent fans, are actually laboring under the delusion that Glenn Beck is sane at this point; I think his fans are actually hoping he's crazy enough to jump the White House fence with an Uzi in hand or something like that. Actually, in Beck's case it'd probably be more along the lines of a Super Soaker filled with ReaLemon, because that's just the kind of thing he'd come up with, but whatever.

· In other news of wingnuttery, some folks are apparently so determined to take Obama down that they're making up stories about Obama getting booed during the first pitch at the All-Star game last week. Hey, if that's all it takes to make something true, then I would like to announce here and now on this blog that Erin Andrews didn't spurn my advances in Tempe the weekend of last season's UGA-ASU game, she in fact came back to the house our group had rented and we polished off a '98 Dom in the hot tub. Salud, motherfuckers!


Oh, yeah, I got her number. It's OK, I know you want to touch me.

· Remember the Friday Random Ten+5 a couple months back in which the Mi-24/25/35 series attack helicopter received an induction into the Badass Hall of Fame? The "Hind" originally earned its badass reputation by laying waste to the Afghan resistance in the early 1980s, to the point that only a rapid influx of American-sourced surface-to-air missiles (as highly entertainingly dramatized in "Charlie Wilson's War") succeeded in turning the tide. Well, now that the Afghan military's forces are in the process of being rebuilt by coalition forces so that they can stand on their own two feet and defend themselves from the Taliban, the Afghan National Army Air Corps is being supplied with -- what else? -- Mi-35s. The irony here is so delicious and satisfying that I'm now substituting it for one meal each day.


The hunted become the hunters, or something like that.

· I would like to go on record as saying that Al Franken will one day go down in history as one of the better U.S. senators we've ever had. Unlike "Stuart Saves His Family," this statement is not intended as a joke.

· Finally, courtesy of Twitter pal and equally rabid Bulldog partisan Ally, here's the first solid, specific recommendation anyone's given me so far as to what I should be doing with myself while I'm unemployed. Soon as my folks leave their house for any length of time, I'm building something along the lines of this:


Rooftop Waterslide

· Actually, maybe this is what I need to be doing with myself:



Of course, pimping, as Big Daddy Kane warned us, isn't easy, and I should probably save this kind of work for when I really buckle down and get serious about holding down a regular job.

The week that was (excruciating).

Soooo . . . I think I probably owe some kind of an explanation as to why I have, for all practical purposes, fallen off the face of the earth for the past week. Don't worry, I got one, and it's a doozy.

On Friday I got laid off from my job at UAB, where I'd worked for nearly seven years, easily the longest stretch I've ever worked at any one job. On the one hand, it was kind of liberating, given that honestly, I'd pretty much fucking hated my job for the past few months. Without naming names or digging too much into the soap-operatic office politics that have taken over at my former place of employment, I received several signs over the past couple months, the most important of them being the careless (and callous) demotion of my beloved department head who had faithfully served the school for more than three decades, that indicated to me that none of us were particularly respected or valued anyway; so in that sense, my being removed from that situation is a good thing.

On the other hand, it turns my search for new employment from "want to" right into "absolutely have to," which in the current job market is kind of a scary 8-ball to get caught behind. Not having made any serious searches for new jobs in the last seven years, I feel like I'm a bit rusty at it to begin with, and while being unattached enough that I can basically throw a dart at a map and pick a new place to settle down is definitely liberating, it also kinds of brings about its own set of new responsibilities -- by which I mean there are that many more cities and venues where I feel like opportunities might be whizzing right by my head at any given moment. I know there's something out there for me to latch onto, it may just take me a little while to figure out where.

Then, on Tuesday, I went in for surgery to have a cyst removed from my back, the fourth such surgery I've gone through in the past two and a half years, and the most invasive and involved one yet. That explains more directly while this blog went dormant over the last few days, but it's not something that's going to continue, given that I'm recovering nicely and am no longer too drugged-up or exhausted to compose a coherent sentence. Actually, if the hospital I'd been in had had Wi-fi, I might've tried to throw something up here, even if it'd only been something along the lines of "brrgghh cut open sewed up sleepy fugfhairhgapr;ofjRG," just to prove that I still existed, but no such luck. There's another surgery in store for me a couple months down the road to finally solve this problem once and for all, but I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it.

Anyway, that's what's been going on, so it's been a difficult week, but nothing that's going to prompt me to crawl into a hole and die or abandon all my loved ones and escape down to Buenos Aires to nail a hot Argentinean chick, as attractive as that second option has looked at various points in the past few weeks. And it's certainly not going to infringe upon my future blogging schedule if I can help it -- I mean, now that I no longer have the university's watchful eye gazing upon me, I can blog ANY HOUR OF THE DAY I WANT TO, MOTHERFUCKERS, so that'll be nice. (That said, if any potential employers to whom I have applied happen to be reading this, please know that I have nothing but the utmost respect for whatever rules you might have regarding the use of workplace time and computer hardware and, should you see fit to grace me with a title and a salary, will happily follow them to the letter.)

A lot of y'all who first heard news of my employment and/or medical issues through Twitter or Facebook or whatever have been kind enough to send me your wishes, thoughts, and prayers, and I really appreciate that. The more I think about the state of things at the moment, the more it reminds me of where I was in the summer of 2002, when I got laid off and had a potentially amazing 27-month date with the Peace Corps yanked right out from under me, and got to feeling about as low and as cut-adrift as I had in a long, long time, only to end up with a (then-)stable job in a city that gave me seven years of better friends, opportunities, and experiences than I could've ever imagined possible. If this current rough patch has anywhere near as upbeat an ending, I'll be in good shape.

But I'll be honest, the search for that upbeat ending begins sometime next week; for right now I'm just going to be spending the next few days drinking beer, playing Mario Kart, and mooching some free meals off my parents. I mean, y'all know me. I'm too much of a douchebag to not try to milk this at least a little bit.

Monday Morning Cage Match V:The Lexus flexes from Long Beach to Texas.

The Cage Match is pretty straightforward this week, or as straightforward as anything can be that compares a car to a state: This morning's competition is Lexus vs. Texas.

	Lexus	Texas
Founded	1989	1845
WINNER: Texas
Immediate impact	Loss of market share for established German and American luxury-car brands	A new slave state, war with Mexico
WINNER: Lexus
Major products	IS-series sports sedan, LS460 luxury sedan, RX350 sport-utility vehicle	Oil, livestock, cotton, football stars, batshit-crazy politicians
WINNER: Lexus
Motto	"The Pursuit of Perfection"	"Friendship" (seriously)
WINNER: Lexus
Awards/ distinctions	Named most reliable auto brand in the U.S. fourteen times by J.D. Power and Associates	Largest of the lower 48 states, 2005 college football championship
WINNER: Texas
Do they make hybrids?	Yes	That sounds like one a them faggot-ass hippie tree-hugger cars
WINNER: Lexus
Responsible for George W. Bush?	No	Yes
WINNER: Lexus

FINAL SCORE: Lexus 5, Texas 2. Damn, Texas, you just officially got messed with.

I came for the disaster porn, I'm stayin' for the bongos!

First posted at Holly's joint, and too good to pass up:



Stop, you had me at "Corcovadooh-no!!!"

Happy weekend, mofos.