It's Thanksgiving, and Arnold T. Pants is servin' it up for the first time in quite a while. The main entree, the big preview of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game, will be along later on today for y'all to carve up at your leisure, but here's some stuff for you to nosh on until then:
· Need some bad gambling advice? Err . . . I mean, need some gambling advice, bad? My weekly picks column is up over at Dr. Saturday's joint, and not only do you get another round of stab-in-the-dark picks, you get a brief look into a family once again gripped by the Cavalier-Hokie rivalry. Virginia-Virginia Tech: It's just like Texas-Oklahoma, only without the offensive firepower, "SportsCenter" highlight-reel-making hard hits, or national-title implications! Not that any of it matters, because win or lose, my dad will still brag that UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson, and you can't take that away from him.
Dammit, I was talking about a wall of separation between "church" and "state," not "Virginia's offense" and "the end zone."
· I didn't think anything could be tastier than Thanksgiving dinner, but these comments, collected by Andrew Sullivan, from right-wing tools (and a few out-of-touch Democrats) about how Obama couldn't possibly win the presidency, are pretty delicious, if only in that ironic, Montgomery Burns "deliiiicious" way. Eat up, but not too fast, or you'll get a tummyache.
· Last political item and then I'll quit: All my peeps in Georgia, while you're out there tomorrow tearing your hair out with frustration amongst the Black Friday crowds at the malls, how 'bout you swing by your local polling place and give a very simple gift to the entire state of Georgia by voting for Jim Martin in the U.S. Senate runoff against Saxby Chambliss. Chambliss, you'll recall, is the guy who ran ads against incumbent Max Cleland in 2002 juxtaposing Cleland's face with that of Osama bin Laden and saying that Cleland, who left three limbs behind in Vietnam, was soft on national security; since then, he's done absolutely nothing of note in Washington except attempting to shield Imperial Sugar from any culpability in a February explosion at a Savannah plant that killed 14 people. Now Chambliss basically has nothing to run on this time around except for "Elect me or the Democrats will be in control over everything ARP ARP SOCIALISM ARRGGGHHH," which you can basically interpret as "I'll stand in the way of every last thing Obama tries to do to turn the economy around." Please, Georgia, for all our sakes, send this guy packing,
Oh, and Georgia fans, if you needed any further evidence that Chambliss is not to be trusted, consider: Both Martin and Chambliss attended UGA for undergrad and went on to law school, but Jim Martin got his law degree (actually, law degrees, plural) from Georgia; Chambliss shunned his alma mater to attend law school at Tennessee. And that is unacceptable.
· OK, one more political item, sort of. Last night I was watching Olbermann and Maddow on MSNBC, and both of them were giving George W. Bush the business for screwing around with the annual "Thanksgiving turkey pardon" while Obama was arranging his economic task force and looking, you know, presidential and shit. And yeah, the contrast between the two was kind of embarrassing, given that the only meaningful work was being done by the guy who isn't even president yet, but . . . you know what? Whatever else you can say about him, George W. Bush is certainly in his element with the goofy, meaningless ceremonial aspects of being president. I don't trust him to direct foreign policy and I sure as hell don't want him anywhere near a budget, but when he was pardoning the turkeys, all I could think of was, Awwww, little guy's having fun out there. His approval rating is in the tank and he's probably going to go out as one of the least popular events in American history, but for right now, at least, he's got a smile on his face.
And that made me think, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to keep Dubya (or a guy like him) around as, like, an executive-branch jester or something like that, to handle the turkey pardons and White House Easter-egg hunts while Obama tends to the serious country-saving matters. I mean, as low as Flavor Flav has sunk with all his reality-show appearances and whatnot, people forget that he really was an integral part of Public Enemy back in the day, because people might not have been able to handle all the heavy science Chuck D was dropping if Flav hadn't been there to lighten things up with the occasional dose of comic relief. That's how I see this president/president-elect relationship playing out over the next couple months: You've got Barack Obama in the Chuck D role, kicking it about the serious issues and making sure the American people know what's up about what's going on in their society, and Dubya can be the one jumping around in the background, pardoning turkeys and dancing around with visiting music/dance groups with the clock hanging around his neck. Seriously, what's the harm? Wouldn't that be a nice way to be, you know, bipartisan and stuff?
· By the way: I know I mentioned this in an earlier Dr. Saturday column -- and I know y'all read it, RIGHT?? -- that I'm headed off to Los Angeles on Friday to watch Jimmy Clausen get dismem . . . er, I mean to see the USC-Notre Dame game. I'll be in L.A. until Tuesday, so we've got some time to kill; a good chunk of it will be spent at Legoland down in Carlsbad, another chunk will no doubt be spent stalking Tom Selleck, but we'll surely have some free time beyond those two activities over the course of the weekend. So if any of y'all live in L.A. or have spent any substantial amount of time there, and know of something that we just HAFTA see/do, holla in the comments thread.
· And, finally, some side dishes in the form of YouTube videos that have made me laugh over the past couple weeks.
Flight of the Conchords' loving tribute to David Bowie:
The "pre-taped call-in show" sketch from Mr. Show:
And while not technically a YouTube, this "Daily Show" segment from the height of the Tom DeLay scandal a couple years ago is one of the funniest things I've seen on TV. Ever.
Happy Thanksgiving, schmucks. Eat too much, but otherwise, be safe.
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