We're only a few weeks from that glorious time when football season rolls around and this blog shifts over to a clean-burning mix of 50% political/pop-cultural ranting and 50% declarations of how your team, simply by not being the Georgia Bulldogs, sucks out loud.
In due time I'll be joining in with the usual Blogpoll and roundtable shenanigans, along with R-rated trash-talking and all the other stuff you've come to know and hate. I'll also be doing an in-depth preview of the coming Georgia season, which is a bit of a leap of faith for me. Last year I did previews of the entire SEC, broken down into Eastern and Western divisions, which included predictions that the Dawgs would go 10-2, finish second in the East, and beat Kentucky and Vanderbilt; these predictions turned out to be wrong, wrong, and super-duper-hella-galactically wrong (respectively). Now, you might think that I would've been chastened by that misadventure, but that doesn't look like it's going to be the case -- in fact, I'm throwing caution to the wind and previewing the Georgia season game-by-game, including stabs taken at educatedly guessing whom I think will win. Tempting fate, you say? Probably, but whatever, man. If God hates me enough to change the outcome of football games solely to counter my prediction of what would happen, then clearly I've got bigger problems than football.
So anyway, the 2007 Risking the Wrath of God Georgia Preview will begin in a few days with Oklahoma State, with other games being posted in due time, i.e. whenever I fricking get around to them -- and here's where I can use your help. If you're a fan of a team Georgia plays this year and you want to counter my dumb-assed prediction with your own prognostication of how the game will go down, e-mail your scenario to me at heyjennyslater.blog (at) gmail, and I'll include your thoughtful, tastefully considered counterpoint in that team's preview. I've already got people lined up for Alabama, Ole Miss, Auburn, and Georgia Tech; if you're a fan of any of the other eight teams on our schedule, even Western freaking Carolina, send me your stuff. Try to be as funny as me. You won't be, but I'll still appreciate the effort.
Also coming soon: In the month leading up to the start of the college football season on August 30, I'll be putting up the 25 Biggest Plays of the Mark Richt Era one by one. I'll ruin the suspense right now and inform you that George Foster dry-humping a Florida D-lineman in the 2002 Cocktail Party will not be on there, but if you have any suggestions other than that, e-mail them to me or put 'em in the comments.
So that'll all start soon, but in the meantime, to tide you over, I wanted to help all of you SEC football fans, no matter which team you root for, get pumped for the 2007 season. In the spirit of the 2006 CFB-Award-nominatedGeorgia vs. Georgia Tech "Successories," here are your motivational affirmations. Enjoy, dillwipes!
ADDED: It was brought to my attention that many of y'all feel the poster for Florida was a little too, how do you say, deferential, particularly for a Georgia fan. Fair enough. To atone, I bring you this:
Before we get into the Ten+5, I have to show you this awesome thing that I totally found out about before Josh did (OK, that's kind of a total lie): a Web gadget that lets you upload a picture of yourself and then transforms you into a Simpsons character. Here's me:
Kinda cool, but let's put me into an environment that reflects my true personality:
Perfect.
Now to the +5 part. Based on a conversation that took place a couple of weeks ago during EDSBS Live!, in which a conversation with Stewart Mandel soon devolved into a discussion of people you're ashamed to admit you're turned on by but are anyway. I confessed one on-air, and now I've decided to turn it into the +5, because it shows I'm brave, or something: the Five Chicks I Shouldn't Think Are Hot, But Do.
Jenna Bush We've been over this before, I'm sure. While I'd like to say her particular combination of genes is a deal-breaker for me, as it ought to be for anybody, I can't. I don't care if she's dumb as a brick, or thinks Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, or whatever, she's hot. I'm not proud of that, but then this list clearly isn't about pride. (And she's a 'Horns fan, which counts for something.)
Hayden Panettiere Over the past few years, whenever assorted losers have set up "countdown clocks" on the Internet ticking down to when the Olsen twins or Hillary Duff or whoever turn 18 and therefore become "legal," I have been promptly and appropriately disgusted. But I would be a dishonest person if I denied sneaking a peek at Hayden Panettiere's Wikipedia page to find out when the magical date rolls around, if only to find out when I can stop suffering paroxysms of guilt for thinking she's hot. You may or may not be Catholic, but trust me -- even in a confessional, "Forgive me father, for I have sinned, I have a crush on the cheerleader from 'Heroes' " is not something you want to have to utter. (Fortunately, I only have another month left of this -- yes, I checked.)
Nancy Pelosi Shut up. Just shut the fuck up right now. I think she's cute; so shoot me. She's also an ass-kicker, and I don't care how big and bad and extraconstitutional Dick Cheney thinks he is, put him in a locked room with The Pelosi for five minutes and he'd come out missing some teeth. And possibly a limb.
Erin Surance Pink-haired cartoon spokesperson for esurance.com, and the hottest 'toon on TV right now. Yes, even hotter than Lois Griffin.
Lafawnduh from "Napoleon Dynamite" There's a woman who works somewhere in our building who's six feet tall and always immaculately put together, and we've sort of secretly nicknamed her Lafawnduh, but as a total compliment. I don't know about you, but Kip Dynamite is a very lucky man. If someone like this was willing to move all the way out to Idaho for my pasty-white ass, then I, too, would love her more than technology.
OK, now that I've got that off my chest . . . the Ten:
1. Josh Rouse, "Directions" 2. CJ Bolland, "It Ain't Gonna Be Me" 3. Public Enemy, "Caught, Can We Get a Witness?" 4. Pearl Jam, "Daughter" 5. Pet Shop Boys, "One More Chance" (Remix '88) 6. Snap!, "The Power" 7. Gorillaz, "All Alone" 8. Nicola Conte, "Bossa Per Due" (Thievery Corporation remix) 9. Dimitri From Paris, "Une Very Stylish Fille" 10. George Jones, "She Thinks I Still Care"
Your own Ten, be it songs or guilty pleasures of the hottie variety, are requested in the comments.
· Last Friday night was karaoke! karaoke! karaoke! 'till the cows came home at Starz on Valley Avenue here in Birmingham. And before you even ask, the answer is: yes. I started off with "Tiny Dancer," and then later on in the night, just to demonstrate that I have range, I followed it up with "The Humpty Dance."
I'm going to do a mash-up of the two and call it "Hold Me Closer, Humpty Dancer."
Tips on how to kick ass at karaoke, because I do: 1) Sing songs you already know all the words to, and only use the monitors as a last resort. 2) Don't pick a song with a lengthy instrumental break, because you'll just end up standing there waiting for something to do. (Sadly, this is why "My Humps" is actually a better karaoke song than "Jump" or "If You Leave.") 3) If you want to move ahead in the queue of wannabe singers, and it's not your birthday and you don't have big tits, pick a song that doesn't fit your appearance. Nobody particularly wants to hear a popped-collar frat guy sing Limp Bizkit for the 213th time, but if that same guy wants to sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart," that'll get him up on stage. Or a rail-thin, five-foot-nothing black girl singing Drowning Pool's "Bodies" (which actually happened Friday night). Mix it up a little bit, and you will be richly rewarded.
· Wow, those Vick bloodlines really created some upstanding gentlemen, didn't they? This sucks big-time for the Falcons, who unloaded Matt Schaub in the off-season and may be looking at the Joey Harrington Xperience if Ron Mexico turns out to be in shit that's as deep as everyone seems to think he is. On the other hand, though, not only do I no longer have to feel any guilt about hoping that D.J. Shockley ends up the Falcons' starting QB, I can now even put an over/under on when that'll happen. I'm going to set it at 5.5 games into the season (not counting exhibition games). Who wants in? Or should we do it like a knockout pool? I'm down for whatever here.
He's coming, Atlanta . . . and he'll be wearing a familiar color scheme.
· So it turns out Mitt Romney is every bit as big a girl as John Edwards supposedly is, if not more so, only I'm guessing Mitt's "makeup consulting" expenses get a whole lot less play in the so-called liberal media than Edwards's haircuts. But that's fine; I, for one, hope Mitt sails to the GOP nomination. You have to work pretty damn hard to be the biggest tool in this year's Republican presidential field, but Romney has nailed it with a flip-flop tendency that makes John Kerry '04 look like a pillar of consistency by comparison. Republicans, please nominate this dingus so I can start punching up my résumé for submission to the Obama Administration next year. My suggestion for a running mate is Paris Hilton, who appears to have about the same level of respect for the country's intelligence as Romney does. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)
I feel that I have sent the same letter to you once a month for the last six months, and I am now sending it again.
Since becoming a GEICO customer in January of this year, you have reported 131 accidents, requesting reimbursement for repairs necessitated by each one. You have claimed not to be responsible in any of them, usually listing the cause of the accident as either "Sneak attack by Decepticons" or "Unavoidable damage caused by protecting freedom for all sentient beings."
Some Republican is going to turn this into an attack ad, I just know it. Then again, if David Vitter can bang prostitutes up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and survive the hit politically, maybe Prime can weather this. I'm pulling for him.
And speaking of "Transformers," that reminds me . . .
· Megan Fox, the blazing hottie who plays the female lead in "Transformers," reminded me of somebody from my past, and yet for the life of me I couldn't figure out who it was, until this past week it finally hit me: She looks like Kristin, this girl I knew back in college. I don't remember her last name, but I figure it had to be fairly close to mine alphabetically, because she sat near me in Bill Lee's Introduction to Telecommunications class during spring semester of my sophomore year. (Dr. Lee was a stone-cold pimp, but that's another story for another day.)
Anyway, Kristin and I started hanging out a lot that semester, meeting up at what was then Blue Sky Coffee in College Square to study for Dr. Lee's marathon exams; a friend of mine even asked me if anything was, you know, going on, and my only response was, duh, I don't know. You have to understand, I was the latest of late bloomers -- I'd only had one actual girlfriend my entire life up to that point and only maybe a handful of actual dates besides that, and was kind of lacking in self-confidence besides, so I pretty much did need someone to fly an airplane over my dorm trailing a banner reading YES, I LIKE YOU before I would feel fully justified in making a move. So anyway, we'd hang out at Blue Sky, she'd ask me to walk her back to her car, she even invited herself over to my dorm a couple of times, and I did . . . nothing.
It probably took another five years, long after I'd graduated of course, for me to look back and think, "Wait a minute. She was coming on to me." Thus making me one of perhaps the ten dumbest people alive. Like Mitt Romney dumb.
I didn't say it was a good story.
But anyway, now that my memory has been jogged about this, Kristin, if you're out there, this is Doug from Dr. Lee's Intro to Telecom class back in '97. I finally figured it out, and I apologize for being a total retard. Forgive me, and holler if you're still anywhere within 200 miles of Athens these days -- I promise I've grown up a little, and maybe even gained a few IQ points, in the last 10 years.
Today is Bastille Day, and while relations between the U.S. and France haven't exactly been great over the last few years, it appears that the new French prime minister, Sir Simon MilliganNicolas Sarkozy might be looking to turn that around, and besides, France is one of the few countries in the world who's managed to do this democracy thing nearly as long as we have without completely screwing it up. Herewith, a not-so-random Ten Things That Are Great About France.
They did give us considerable military aid during our own revolution. Maybe it was just to fuck with the British, but hey, it's the thought that counts.
Lots of good art, even if much of it was drug-induced.
Serge Gainsbourg, who, by drinking and smoking his way through a career of shockingly filthy pop songs, took the persona of the don't-give-a-fuck pop star to new heights. Also shagged Brigitte Bardot.
The bikini. Yup, we have two French dudes to thank for that.
The Concorde (well, half of it, anyway).
Brie, which is delicious.
Escargot, which is also delicious. (Screw y'all. It is.)
The Citroën automobile.
Air, which is possibly the most subtle make-out music out there.
And last but not least, of course we have . . .
Joyeux Anniversaire, you Bastille-charging, crusty-bread-eating socialists, you. And we're sorry about the whole Freedom Fries thing.
As a follow-up to this post, in which I pondered the possibility of offing myself due to the fact that former JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr has a girlfriend and I do not, I bring you the news that Karr's significant other has shown her face in public. Here they are at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, where misdemeanor domestic-abuse charges against Karr were dropped this morning:
She looks . . . normal. I could see how one might even describe her as "cute." At the very least, she's not someone you'd be ashamed to go out in public with -- doesn't weigh 350 pounds, doesn't have a hunchback, etc. She's even of a reasonable age (even if, at 22, she's 20 years younger than he is, which I'm not sure whether that should make me feel better or not).
So I don't know. Somebody, help me out here. Help me understand.
Until then, I guess the ol' head's going back in the oven.
So I've, uh, been kind of lazy lately when it comes to blogging. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it. Obviously that'll pick up some when football season starts, but I'm not waiting until then to get started, dear reader. Instead, I'm going to be pumping up the Friday Random Ten from now on. I figure any douchebag can hit shuffle on his iPod and write down the first 10 songs it craps out, but I'm not just any douchebag, oh no -- I'm going to be bolstering these with some actual content, a weekly list of five things that . . . fit a predetermined category randomly chosen by me. Maybe it'll be inspired by something I read or saw, maybe it'll be inspired by nothing more than a fight I got into with a friend of mine after seeing who could turn up an Evan Williams bottle and chug the longest without stopping. But either way, it'll be, you know, something.
This week's Somewhat Less Random Five, inspired in part by an EDSBS post from a few weeks back, is Five College Bowl Games We Don't Have Now, But Should. I mean, we've got 32 already, what's five more going to hurt? Right? Right?
Halliburton Capital Bowl FedEx Field, Landover, Maryland December 30 Notre Dame vs. MAC
If Notre Dame is truly "America’s Team," then it must be a debilitating morale crusher for America to have to watch each and every January as the Irish truck off to yet another BCS bowl they kinda sorta maybe didn't deserve and get curb-stomped by yet another more qualified at-large team. The Capital Bowl kills two birds with one stone: It lets the Domers prove their manhood by annihilating a far weaker squad to get their jollies (a staple of Bush administration foreign policy for years now), but it also provides a safe place to stash ND instead of letting them take up space in yet another BCS berth. In case the Irish hit a really down year, Halliburton will be ready and willing to pay off as many referees as necessary to ensure a predictable, America-friendly outcome.
Kraft Foods Windy City Bowl Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois December 27 Big 10 vs. Big East
If we can have a bowl in Detroit, certainly we should be able to have one in the City of Big Shoulders, which has better sightseeing, more history, and a substantially lower chance of getting killed. It'll be cold outside, that's for sure, but that's all the more reason to load up before the game on fresh-brewed beer and piping hot deep-dish pizza at any one of the city's numerous fine dining establishments. Bowl Week activities for the players include baggage-carousel rides at O'Hare and the Ferris Bueller Fantasy Tour of the city's most famous landmarks; one lucky fan will get to take the field at halftime and compete with beloved Bears signal-caller Rex Grossman to see who can throw more footballs through the hole in the giant box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese in two minutes. (Sexy Rexy gets a four-ball head start, though, just to make things fair.)
Alaska Bowl presented by Alaska Airlines Anchorage Football Stadium, Anchorage, Alaska December 13 WAC vs. Sun Belt
We've got a bowl in the other non-contiguous state; we've got bowls in places like Boise and Albuquerque. Honestly, how much worse could Alaska be? The major drawback to this game is that the biggest dedicated football stadium in the state of Alaska only seats like 4,500 people, but let's be honest -- if we make this a WAC-vs.-Sun Belt matchup, most of the teams who would be in line to participate only put that many butts in the stadium for their own home games anyway. Fun Bowl Week activities for the players could include an Alaskan cruise, a salmon-throwing competition at the Alaska Airlines freight terminal at Anchorage International, and 18 holes at the North Star Golf Club, North America's northernmost golf course, in nearby Fairbanks. ("Nearby" being a relative term in a state that's more than twice as big as Texas, of course.) The temperature in mid-December will more than likely be somewhere in the high teens, so bring some gloves, wimps!
TAM Linhas Aereas Rio Bowl Estádio do Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil January 1 SEC vs. Big 12
If we can hold a bowl game in fricking Havana, then by God, we should be able to have one in Rio. Unfortunately the American football season ends long before Carnaval, but that doesn't mean we can't have one rocking-ass New Year's celebration in the land that brought us Alessandra Ambrosio, a bunch of one-named soccer players, and the thong bathing suit. And what better way to introduce Brazil to real football than to bring them two hard-hitting squads from the SEC and Big 12 going at it hammer and tongs in South America’s largest stadium? The place holds 97,000 people, but there'll be enough churrasco, Caipirinhas, and luscious, luscious booty for everyone. If there’s a better bowl location in the Western Hemisphere, fucking name it.
Foster's Australia Bowl Telstra Stadium, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia January 2 SEC vs. Pac-10
Effete Pac-10 football snobs like Heismanpundit are always bitching about how SEC teams don't ever travel outside the Southeast, even for out-of-conference games. All right, fine: Howsabout we make a Southeastern Conference team travel as far from the Southeast as it is humanly possible to go -- to the other goddamn side of the world? Will that shut you up? We'll even pit them against a Pac-10 squad, as there is currently no bowl game matching up teams from these two conferences. (Actually, this is mainly just an excuse to pair up the South Carolina Gamecocks and the Oregon State Beavers in a game, which would be hilarious. Go on, just ponder it for a sec.) Thrill as teams from two historic leagues brave weapons-grade jet lag, the gastric consequences of "vegemite," and toilets that flush the opposite way to claim supremacy in one of the most exotic venues ever to host a football game. Halftime entertainment: Kylie Minogue joins Colin Hay and whatever remaining members of Men At Work we can scrape together for a stirring duet of "Down Under."
Awesome, right? Yeah, I know. And now the Ten:
1. Avenue Q cast, "The More You Ruv Someone" 2. Depeche Mode, "Happiest Girl" (Pulsating orbital vocal mix) 3. The Bloodhound Gang, "Lift Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)" 4. Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer" 5. The Farm, "To the Ages" 6. Pet Shop Boys, "West End Girls" (Sasha remix) 7. Pearl Jam, "Go" 8. All Saints, "Pure Shores" 9. Dave Attell, "Shaved Pubes" * 10. DJ Shadow, "Napalm Brain/Scatter Brain"
* This is from Attell's stand-up CD Skanks for the Memories; he didn't actually write a song about shaved pubes. "I have shaved my pubes. Not 'cause I wanted to -- I was involved in a horrible gum accident. Had to work a little frontier medicine."
Your own Random Tens and/or bowl-game ideas are welcome in the comments.
1. Like him or not, Clinton got his poontang fairly, squarely, and legally. Clinton didn't force Monica Lewinsky to give him a beejer. As far as anyone knows, he didn't even pay her or offer her any other kind of compensation. He just found a chick at the office who wanted to blow the president and said OK. Maybe I'm just splitting hairs here, but that seems slightly different from a nearly decade-long pattern of soliciting prostitutes, which I'm pretty sure is still illegal in most places. Louisiana and the District of Columbia included.
3. Clinton never said marital fidelity should be a condition for holding elected office. Vitter, writing about Clinton's iniquities in 1998, apparently thinks it should be:
The writings of the Founding Fathers are very instructive on this issue. They are not cast in terms of political effectiveness at all but in terms of right and wrong -- moral fitness. Hamilton writes in the Federalists Papers (No. 65) that impeachable offenses are those that "proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
I'm counting down the seconds until someone leaves a whiny comment on here condemning me for taking joy in Vitter's misfortune, saying that "I thought liberals were supposed to be the compassionate ones." Hey, you know what? I'm compassionate as a motherfucker. My baseline is that not only do I not care what you do in your private life, I'll proudly defend your right to do it. As long as you don't mess with me, I will turn a blind eye to whatever you want to do behind closed doors, as long as it's legal. Hell, as long as it's between two consenting adults -- in all honesty, I don't care if you nail hookers, two or three at a time, with whips and chains, get peed on, whatever, until the cows come home. Your business. If you can handle answering to your God or your spouse or significant other or whoever, go wild.
But my compassion is reserved first and foremost for those who show compassion to me. You fucka with me, I fucka with you -- and if you go on the campaign trail bragging about what a big moral upstanding person you are, and you slag my values just because I don't get worked up into a froth about what two gay dudes do in their boudoir, then you leave yourself open for any criticism of your own personal life someone might care to lodge. You can believe this or not believe it, but if Vitter had just shut the fuck up and stayed out of other people's personal lives, I wouldn't be uttering a word about this. Instead, he railed against other people's private lives even while he was banging hookers from the French Quarter to K Street. And that, my friends, is something I can laugh about with a clear conscience.
Or if I can't laugh about that, I can at least laugh about this comment from Vitter's wife Wendy while David was running for re-election to the House of Representatives:
In 2000, Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News Service she could not be as forgiving as Livingston's wife or Hillary Clinton if her husband were unfaithful.
"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary," she said. "If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."
Aiieeee! If I'm David Vitter, I'm thinking re-election is the least of my problems at this point.
John Mark Karr, who made what turned out to be bogus claims of killing Colorado child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, was jailed Saturday in a domestic argument at his father's house in suburban Atlanta.
Officers received an emergency call late Friday from the house about an argument between Karr, his girlfriend and his father, Sandy Springs Police Lt. Steve Rose said.
Got that? Confirmed child-buggerer John Mark Karr, who told everyone he raped and murdered JonBenet Ramsey apparently just for poops and giggles, has a girlfriend. And I don't. Help me out, readers -- pills? Drano cocktail? Garden hose from the tailpipe through the cracked sunroof? Your suggestions are always welcome.
· The Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" is here. And as big an advancement as this plane represents in terms of materials, fuel efficiency and various other technologies, the advancement that will be most readily apparent to actual passengers is probably in the area of interior design:
The mood lighting and soft curves in place of hard right angles might take some getting used to at first, but in the end I think even a "European disco" ambience will prove far preferable to "flying Greyhound." The 787 will make its first actual flight sometime in September, and will enter scheduled airline service in May or June of next year -- in plenty of time for a big marketing tie-in with the next "Transformers" movie, whenever that comes out.
· And there will be another "Transformers" movie -- actually two more, no doubt to the delight of everyone who went apeshit over the first movie that came out this past Tuesday. In this interview, Michael Bay says they're even exploring the possibility of a transforming aircraft carrier for one of those films. The reeking shitburgers that were "Armageddon" and "Bad Boys II" notwithstanding, I think Bay might turn out to be an OK guy after all.
· Still on the subject of airplanes, here's a tip for Clay Aiken: If you're flying coach from L.A. to Tulsa, Oklahoma, you're not a big enough star to be throwing your feet up on other people's armrests.
· I really don't have much additional comment on this -- I think I've made my point -- but man oh man, I never cease to be amazed at just what a huge pile of shit we've gotten ourselves into over there in the Middle East. It's getting to the point where I'm not sure any mortal human being can get us out of it. With that in mind, please let me know in the comments or via the e-mail address at top right whether you'd be interested in purchasing one of these. (I'm seriously thinking about having some printed.)
Y'all might not know it to look at the sedentary, booze-soaked sack of unmotivated crap I've become, but I used to be a pretty active runner. I started about midway through my senior year at Georgia; I don't know what prompted me to start doing it, but I wanted to try and get some kind of regular physical activity, so one morning I got up early and, starting at my apartment on Milledge Avenue, ran as far as I could before I had to cry uncle and switch to walking. And then every day I would run one telephone pole further down Milledge than the day I had before. (The fact that Milledge Avenue was home to nearly every sorority house on campus was merely a happy coincidence.)
In the span of less than one full semester, I was doing right around three miles every morning; not long after I moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, later on that summer, I was up to four. (And it wasn't an easy four, either; this won't mean anything to anyone who's never lived in the L-Boogie, but I lived on Langhorne Road and was running up that huge hill between Blackwater Creek and Rivermont Avenue.) I kept this pace up in Lynchburg, Atlanta, and the summer I lived in Columbus before I moved to Birmingham; I even kept it up for a month or two after moving here, but whether it was because of my allergies or Birmingham's legendarily awful air quality, I started hacking up a lung every time I ran more than about a mile or so. And like any good American would do when confronted with something mildly uncomfortable or physically demanding, I quit.
Fast-forward to last week when I was home in Columbus visiting my folks. The Sunday AJC, naturally, was chock full of news about the Peachtree Road Race that was being held that Wednesday. I asked my dad if he was planning on running the Peachtree like he had the previous year (just to give you an idea of the shape that I've degenerated into, you'll recall that Pops ran 6.2 miles and came out of it just fine, while I started feeling dizzy just standing in the hot sun waiting for him). Dad said he was going to take a year off but maybe run it again in '08. And I then uttered a candidate for inclusion in the next edition of Bartlett's Famous Last Words, whenever that comes out: "I tell you what. When I get back to Birmingham, I'm going to buy a new pair of running shoes, and I'm going to start running again. And one year from now, we're gonna run the Peachtree together."
This past weekend, I bought myself a new pair of running shoes and some shorts. And this morning, I got up at a few minutes after five -- thanks to various work-, finance-, and personal-life-related stresses, I haven't been able to sleep any later than that anyway -- and took off down Highland Avenue. On this, the first time I've run for something other than my life in more than four years, I made it all the way to the Chevron station (where Highland busts a 90-degree right turn at the 280 overpass) before wussing out and walking. With the help of Google Maps, I recreate this distance here for your edification:
Google Maps calls this a distance of about 1,300 feet; I say fuck it, let's round it up to a whole quarter-mile. Either way, though, there's a long way to go before I make it up to 10 kilometers.
But a journey of a thousand miles (or even just 6.2) begins with a single step, and that, at least, I've accomplished. And I'll be keeping y'all updated on my progress here over the next year. Just major milestones and events that I might run in and things like that; I'm not going to bore you with updates on my weight, my diet, or what sports drinks I'm consuming. (I ain't changing my diet at all, and everyone knows my energy drink comes in a bottle marked Stolichnaya.) But I'm hoping that, in the grand shame-based tradition of Roman Catholicism, I'll be able to count on y'all to shame me into sacking up and forging ahead should my resolve start to flag at any point between now and July 4, 2008.
Tomorrow: a full three tenths of a mile? The sky's the limit!
A few weeks ago Every Day Should Be Saturday put up a pretty nifty manifesto outlining a code of conduct every amateur football blogger/pundit should strive for -- stuff like focusing on what is interesting and fun as opposed to the designated MSM Big Game storyline (#10) and not giving a rip about individual postseason awards (#16). Good recommendations all, though I'd like to add one more to that list if I may, and I invite all of y'all to join with me:
We will not stoop to engaging in discussions of which school's fans exhibit the worst behavior, nor will we act like criticisms of a given school's fans somehow amount to substantive football commentary.
You know what I'm talking about: The insinuation that because a fan of Team X flipped you off when you were just trying to ask directions to the stadium, or because a large group of Team X fans were raising hell at your hotel while you were trying to get some goddamn sleep, or because an inebriated Team X booster followed you all the way back to your tailgate screaming his school's fight song at you, this somehow makes Team X's school a festering pit of depravity about which nothing kind or complimentary can ever be said ever, with every person who has ever graduated from or been employed by said school being guilty by association. You may think you are doing the rest of us a service, Team Y fan, by publicly shaming these alleged Neanderthals and warning the rest of us of their obnoxiousness, but really all you're doing is making yourself look like -- how do I put this gently? -- a big whiny-ass titty baby. Just as patriotism, in the words of Samuel Johnson, is the last refuge of a scoundrel, so is complaining about other teams' fan behavior the last refuge of a loser.
Apparently someone managed to transport himself forward in time and snap a picture of my firstborn son, little Champ Gillett, at his first Georgia football game.
That's what it really boils down to, isn't it? Ninety-nine percent of the time, people complain about the supposed obnoxiousness of an opposing team's fans because said opposing team just beat their ass lopsided. If your team has just waxed its opponent, you're probably too busy celebrating (and/or gloating) to give a rat's ass about how the other team's fans are acting in defeat; on the other hand, if you've just been thumped, your self-esteem is at low ebb, you're looking for anything you can hold over the heads of the victors -- and since you don't have the scoreboard to back you up, you go ad hominem and slag off the other team's fans as boorish troglodytes. There's a certain banal logic to all this, but it's still pretty pathetic.
Now, as the rabid devotee of a team that both 1) wins a lot and 2) has a bit of a reputation for rowdy fans, it may look like I have an agenda here -- but it's an agenda supported by years of experience. Take our bitter in-state rivals, for instance. We have now beaten Georgia Tech six years in a row, each year in a fashion more soul-crushing than the last, and as you might guess, the Techies are getting a little tired of this. But they can't seriously say their team is superior to ours, so instead they comfort themselves with fanciful tales of how obnoxious we Bulldogs are and how, no matter how many times we punk them on the actual field of play, they're still glad they're not us. They attempt to reinforce this by regaling each other with sordid tales of how they saw drunk Georgia fans peeing off the upper deck at Sanford Stadium, children getting screamed at and having objects knocked out of their hands, and much, much worse. (In fairness, they're not alone, as this hysterical South Carolina fan forum graphically demonstrates.)
Above, an overzealous UGA fan viciously attacks an unsuspecting Techie at last year's UGA-GT game just for saying Calvin Johnson was "awesome." True story.
These stories are all appalling; they are also utter horseshit, every bit as spurious as the stories of cracked-out Katrina refugees raping fetuses in the Superdome. And that's another reason that opposing-fan-behavior kvetching should be stricken from the repertoire of any CFB blogger or pundit who wishes to be taken even remotely seriously -- it lends itself to the most absurd fish stories imaginable. Not only does the opposing team's supposed obnoxiousness get exaggerated with every step further down the grapevine, until the stadium in question has become a veritable Thunderdome of fan-on-fan mayhem, but there is the equal and opposite reaction of turning one's fellow fans into beings so ridiculously pure and noble, not to mention superhumanly strong, you almost have to wonder what the hell they were doing wasting time at a football game when they could've been ending worldwide hunger or bringing al-Qaeda to its knees with their bare hands. In that South Carolina fan forum I linked above, for instance, there are dozens of stories of drunk, brutish UGA starting fights for no reason whatsoever, yet somehow every one of those stories ends with a brave Gamecock fan rising up and Buford Pussering the Bulldog into oblivion. (Based on this sample, I can only conclude that the average male student at SC is over eight feet tall and weighs around 900 pounds.) And on a slightly less violent note, you've also got stuff like this:
Uh-huh, sure, you betcha. Readers, if any of you believe that the words "You're from Florida? Nice to meet ya! We just want to say welcome, and that color of blue looks really good on you!" have ever left a Tennessee fan's lips, then please contact me as soon as possible; I have a pristine, collector's-item 2000 Volkswagen Jetta that I would be willing to part with for the fire-sale price of only $49,999.00, and I'd also like to tell you the story of the time I nailed Jessica Simpson in the back seat of P.Diddy's Escalade. (On the other hand, this video lets you play a fun little mini-version of that NBC game show hosted by Penn Jillette: Which one is the girl who only gives blowjobs because she thinks it "doesn't count" as sex? Which one is the girl who told everyone her appendix burst when the real reason she disappeared from campus for a month is because her dad put her in rehab after she wrapped his 5-series around a lamppost? It's time to play . . . Identity!)
I mean, for crying out loud. You're really going to complain about other fans yelling "You suck" and "We're gonna kick your ass"? I'm going to let you in on a nasty little secret, ladies, and it is that college football fans occasionally say some very unkind things to their opponents. Guard that secret with care, because it is a dark and powerful truth, known only to those brave souls who have ever attended an SEC football game anyplace in the world ever.
Folks, we live in a country where the vice president, the statesman tasked with presiding over the Senate, once told a sitting senator to "go fuck [him]self" on the floor of that very legislating body. After that, if you're surprised that someone who likes a football team different from yours would ever tell you that you "suck," then perhaps you should just stay inside your house and never venture outside your front door on the off chance that some random person might disagree with you and hurt your feelings.
FSU Cowgirl Jenn Sterger recoils at the sight of a zealous Miami fan. They're normally such a quiet, subdued bunch.
If you still insist on attending college football games, you are advised to sack up and not allow your sense of self-worth to vaporize every time an opposing fan informs you that your team's ass is about to be kicked. Ignore that fan, hit him with a stinging comeback, inform him that the jerk store called and they're out of him -- just don't bitch and moan about it. Sitting around whining about how those fans are "foul, foul, foul" might earn you a couple extra gold stars on the Emily Post Fan Club message board, but it means fuck-all to anyone who actually knows or cares anything about football.
I make this solemn vow today: If we lose to Alabama on September 22, then Tide fans, you may shout "Hey Dawgs, we just beat the hell out of you!" as loud as your vocal chords are capable, or as local noise ordinances allow. If we lose to Tennessee up in Knoxville two weeks later, then Big Orange fans, you can play "Rocky Top" until your 8-track players start shooting sparks. If we lose to Georgia Tech to close out the regular season, then guess what, Techies -- you have carte-blanche to brag by any means necessary about how Georgia's reign is over and there's a new sheriff in the state. Do all of those things, and you won't see me complain about your bad manners on this site, because we will have gotten beat fair and square. On the other hand, though, if we beat you, I'm going to brag about it until I'm blue in the face, explaining in exhaustive detail exactly why and how your team, campus, and city suck massive amounts of ass -- using charts and diagrams, if necessary. And if you then have the nerve to whine about this treatment, I will then explain in equally detailed fashion why you're a pussy, and may also suggest a brand of diapers for you to purchase.
And if you're a 'tard, I'm going to call you a 'tard.
That's how it works in big-time college football. That's how it should work. Winners get the glory and the right of first refusal on any trash-talking; losers get to suck it up and hope to get 'em back next year. Attempting to usurp this hierarchy by bringing the class level or etiquette of the other team into the discussion will make you look like a big whiny douche, but it won't change the numbers on the scoreboard.
That's my new rule. Go in peace, you inbred redneck jean-shorts-wearing assbags. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
