The Friday Random Ten+5 is back, and it can't dance.

I know the Friday Random Ten+5 has been absent for a few weeks, and it's mainly because I just couldn't come up with any good ideas for +5s -- but a conversation I had with Holly the other day gave me one. We'll talk periodically about what we might plan, wedding-wise, if we ever decide to pull the trigger on this thing, and mainly it's just us coming up with outlandish ideas such as a Super Mario Brothers-themed ceremony where she comes down the aisle dressed like Bowser. (Her idea, not mine, which just makes it that much more awesome.) But we were talking about ideas for what song to play at our first dance, and we came up with some doozies. Hence, the Friday Randomness returns with Five Unbelievably Inappropriate Songs To Play As The First Dance At Our Wedding Reception.



Wu-Tang Clan, "Shame on a Nigga"
This is the song that inspired the entire conversation, and we've talked about it enough at this point that the chances we actually do it are probably right around 50-50. Which will make our parents so very proud of us, I'm sure.



Dead Kennedys, "Too Drunk to Fuck"
This would be appropriate since it describes quite a few people at the end of a wedding reception anyway. You go there to pick up some bridesmaids, you dance, you drink, and by the end of the evening you're in no position to do anything but puke on your nice clothes and cry in a cab on the way home. Or maybe that's just me.



Wham!, "Careless Whisper"
Hits the inappropriateness trifecta: references to infidelity, references to dancing . . . and five minutes' worth of pure, uncut, Colombian '80s cheese. Including '80s saxophone, which could make even "The Star-Spangled Banner" sound goofy.



Josh Groban, "You Raise Me Up"
I'm not including a YouTube here because this song is so godawful I can't even stand to have it on my blog. Yes, it's much worse than "Careless Whisper." Most of Groban's catalogue, if this song is any indication, makes "Careless Whisper" look like "Smells Like Teen Spirit." And to my ears, at least, it's way more offensive than "Too Drunk to Fuck." If we played this as our first dance, we'd have to play "Too Drunk to Fuck" or maybe Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" immediately afterward, just to demonstrate to everyone we didn't really mean it.



Nirvana/Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine, "Rape Me"
Pretty self-explanatory, no? It's either this or the Beastie Boys' "Girls."

And now the Ten, whose appropriateness cannot be verified in advance:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "K-Hole"
2. Johnny Cash, "Give My Love to Rose"
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Scartissue"
4. Pet Shop Boys, "Vampires"
5. Nanci Griffith, "I Don't Want to Talk About Love"
6. Tito Puente, "Mambo Gallego" (remix)
7. Fatboy Slim, "Going Out of My Head"
8. Underworld, "Ring Road"
9. Moby, "Bodyrock"
10. U.N.K.L.E., "Logan's Run"

Please welcome back the Ten+5 by putting your own Random Tens, and your ideas for utterly horrible wedding-reception numbers, in the comments.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets roasted.

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

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



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



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



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



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



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

And the Ten:

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

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

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

The Friday Random Ten+5 makes a career non-move.

So yesterday I spent the whole day working on a Habitat for Humanity house that my company in sponsoring. One of the questions we got asked when applying to volunteer on the house was "Are you afraid of heights," and I answered "no," so I got to work on the roof. And after a day of discovering how hard it is to do anything when you're constantly working at a 30-degree angle, I've figured out why roofing work is so expensive -- so few people are willing to do it that the ones who are can pretty much charge whatever they want. Lucrative work, but not something I will ever, ever do again if I can help it.

"I don't want to be a roofer" isn't exactly a controversial statement, though. There are plenty of other, more glamorous or exciting jobs I don't want to do, either, and that's why this week's +5 is Five Things I Don't Want To Be When I Grow Up:



Race car driver
This might be a surprise, because I like cars, and I also like driving fast. (I've probably racked up at least one speeding ticket in every county and municipality between Columbus and Birmingham.) But I also like air conditioning, and that's something race cars don't have. Driving three hours at 150-something miles an hour without air conditioning? I won't even drive across town if my air conditioning doesn't work, particularly if it's in the middle of a blazing south Georgia summer. So for right now I guess I'll just have to resign myself to the fact that I'm never going to get paid for driving much too fast.



Policeman
This is interesting, now that I think about it, because "policeman" was the first answer I can ever remember giving to the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up question. (I was in some Saturday-morning activity workshop when I was like five years old, and we were supposed to make little puppets of the things we wanted to be when we grew up, and I made a policeman. At that point I don't think I had the werewithal to make a puppet for "international ladyslaying CIA assassin-slash-Lego sculptor.) Anyway, I've gotten into my share of legal issues over the years (see above remark about speeding tickets), but that said, it doesn't take a huge amount of intelligence to keep from running afoul of most of the laws on the books. Like, crystal meth possession. Once you've deduced that "Crystal meth makes all your teeth fall out and speeds up the aging process tenfold and is mostly done by dumb rednecks with absolutely nothing else going on in their lives," congratulations, you're no longer at risk of ever becoming a meth addict. So being a policeman seems like it would involve dealing with a staggering amount of truly moronic people, and I only have so much patience for that. I'd either build a reputation as the biggest cynical asshole cop ever whom nobody wanted to work with, or I'd start tasing people for incorrect grammar or calling me "bro." Neither one seems like a great career move.



Salesman
Cynical asshole though I may be, I mostly try to avoid confrontation if it doesn't come to me first. So I think I'm way too prone to taking "no" for an answer to ever be a successful salesman. "Hey, this life insurance will keep your family financially secure and is really affordable." "No thanks." "Allll righty then." I don't think that's how people make money.



Mime
I think this one goes without saying.



Lawyer
Here's the thing: I think I'd be an awesome lawyer. I can argue the shit out of stuff, and if it ever looks like the other side is getting the upper hand, I just confuse the issue and annoy the shit out of them until people give me my way just out of frustration. But while I would love to know more about the law, I don't think I'd ever want to, you know, litigate. Basically everyone else in the courtroom is either a criminal, i.e. someone too dumb to not stay on the right side of the law as per above, or a lawyer, i.e. someone who's as big an asshole as I am, or at least trying to be. I think I could take maybe six months of that before I just got completely fatigued by it. And then I'd quit and either write a bunch of novels like John Grisham or become a law professor. Which actually sounds pretty awesome, but I'd really just prefer it if I could jump straight to either one of those outcomes without having to be a lawyer first.

Just one of the many ways in which life doesn't work out the way I'd like it to, I suppose. And now the Ten:

1. Underworld, "Moon in Water"
2. U2, "4th of July"
3. Jefferson Airplane, "Volunteers"
4. Cut Copy, "Hearts on Fire"
5. Kraak and Smaak, "Enzo"
6. Mos Def, "Close Edge"
7. Genesis, "Invisible Touch"
8. U2, "Dirty Day"
9. Deeds + Thoughts, "The World's Made Up of This and That" (Fatboy Slim remix)
10. Underworld, "Cups"

Your turn -- your Random Tens and/or jobs you don't want in the comments.

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

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



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



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



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



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



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

And here's the Ten:

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

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

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

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets all historical and stuff.

This week's +5 is pretty straightforward -- Five Historical Figures Whose Lives I'd Really Like To Live. I'm not going to get too deeply into the impetus for this particular list, except to say that it started with a conversation with Holly about the University of Virginia and an acquaintance of hers who really would've liked to have had sex with Thomas Jefferson. OK, I may have already said too much.

But anyway, here's my list -- of people I'd want to be, mind you:



Winston Churchill
Every time I think I might like to run for some kind of public office, I think of the fishbowl that my life would be in and start to think that it'd be more trouble than it's worth. I mean, eventually someone would go back and find out about all the drinking and debauching in my past and end up revealing what a horribly irresponsible person I am. So I reckon the only way to have a career in public office and still be able to enjoy all those things is to a) be a political leader at a time before that sort of stuff started getting immediately dragged out into the open and b) be such a hero that nobody would've cared anyway. Voila: Winston Churchill, who held the UK together and made it a bulwark against the spread of the Nazi empire even while he was sucking down cigars and pickling his liver to within an inch of its existence. Oh, and annihilating pretentious dinner-party guests with cutting bons mots. Plus he got to be called "Sir," which is worth it right there.



Al Capone
Sharp dresser, very shrewd business mind, and OK, yeah, he killed quite a few people, but ultimately all he was trying to do was bring sweet, delicious bootleg liquor to a country that had been cruelly deprived of it by a tyrannical, nannying government. So if you think about it, he was really kind of a civil-libertarian folk hero. OK, maybe not, but nevertheless, the Geto Boys wrote a whole song about how good it feels to be a gangster, so who am I to argue with them?



Ian Fleming
When writing the most famous series of spy novels in the history of English literature qualifies as one of the least exciting things you've done in your life, you know you've lived said life to the fullest. Before he wrote 14 James Bond books (AND Chitty Chitty Bang Bang), Fleming lived an entire lifetime's worth of adventure leading the 30AU commando unit in World War II; while he was writing, he hung out with JFK, married a widowed baroness, and carried her off to a seaside villa in Jamaica. "I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much," he once said. "In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much." I have no idea what the Iron Crab is, but it sure sounds like Fleming got everything he wanted out of life before said crab finally took him down.



St. John the Apostle
He was BFF with Jesus and wrote part of the Bible. Nothing else comes close to having that on your résumé.



Orville Wright
Along with his brother, invented powered flight. That seems like a pretty significant contribution to civilization. I'm picking him over Wilbur because a) Orville got to fly the plane first; b) he kept most of his hair; and c) he had a truly kickass mustache. Sure, facial hair is less aerodynamic, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

Thought about putting Cleopatra on there just so I'd get to say "Hey, I got to see Cleopatra naked," but it would also involve sexual relations with quite a few caesars, and those guys were freaks. Not to mention it would all end with a snakebite. To live that eventful a life, only to meet your doom at the non-hands of a reptile, seems pretty bush.

So. Here be the Ten:

1. Genesis, "Invisible Touch"
2. Animotion, "Obsession"
3. David Cross, "Welfare Dentist on a Bender"
4. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "Go Daddy-O"
5. Pet Shop Boys, "London" (Radical Blacklite edit)
6. The Chemical Brothers, "Not Another Drugstore"
7. David Holmes, "The Ballad of Sarah & Jack"
8. The Chemical Brothers, "Get Up On It Like This"
9. The Clash, "Janie Jones"
10. Downright, "Drinking the Dregs"

Your own Tens, and your lists of people whose lives you wouldn't mind Quantum Leaping into for a spell, are welcome in the comments.

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

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



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



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


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



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



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

And now the Ten:

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

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

The Friday Random Ten+5 runs downstairs to see what Santa (or Rece Davis) brought.

So last night was the official beginning of the 2010 college football season, and it was everything I hoped it could be. OK, maybe not everything -- South Carolina looked frighteningly proficient, and at no point in the USC-Hawaii game did anyone leave a flaming bag of dog poo on the sideline for Lane Kiffin to frantically stomp out, but still, it was football. In high def. That I was watching on my own TV, in my own house, that I was paying for with money from a job, which was not the case this time last year. Maybe God really does want me to be happy.

I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that I look forward to this glorious day in much the same way that a little kid looks forward to Christmas; that's how giddy the anticipation is. It's got all the trappings of Christmas, when you think about it: excited predictions about what we're all going to get (in the wins column), wearing special outfits and cooking special foods, spreading glad tidings to our fellow believers, making elaborate travel plans. (Seriously, a couple weekends ago Holly and I sat down and planned out every weekend between now and mid-December -- who our teams are playing, where we're gonna be, whether we'll be in the same place or off doing our separate thing. I made a spreadsheet. It's color-coded. Maybe you're not impressed, but Holly's mom was, and that's what counts.)

So I hope that counts as proof that I haven't become totally jaded, or completely lost my ability to experience childlike wonder about, you know, stuff. And football's not the only thing: There are still some things I await with breathless anticipation, even as an adult. These wonderful things are the subject of this week's +5: Five Things I Anticipate As Eagerly As Christmas (Or Football Season).



The Phil Steele annual
Stipulated: When you're making multiple sweaty-palmed visits to Books-A-Million round about the first week in June to see if the Holy Grail of football statistics and handicapping advice has arrived, you have a problem. Maybe a terminal one. But the arrival of Phil Steele's college football bible is the unofficial halfway point of the offseason -- a sign that it really is OK to start getting publicly geeked up about this stuff again, not to mention a sign that the end of the seemingly interminable football-free desert is on the horizon. And when you open that thing up to find that your team has been anointed by Saint Phil to do great things, it's like a ray of sunlight has burst from the clouds and pointed itself straight at you.



New James Bond movies
Even in the waning days of the Pierce Brosnan era, as the Bond franchise threatened to crumble into a mess of over-the-top CGI and questionable casting choices, the arrival of a new James Bond movie was something to look forward to. Now that the franchise has been rebooted and an emphasis has been placed on actual, you know, cinematic merit, it's become An Event. The series has stalled as MGM Studios has gone into deep financial troubles, but Daniel Craig is still under contract for two more movies, and both Craig and director Sam Mendes are said to be eager to get started on the next film once MGM gets its finances squared away. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping there will be a 23d Bond film (and a 24th) -- it just looks like we're going to have to wait a while for them.



New updates to the iPhone operating system
OK, yes, this is Nerd City, the kind of thing that (ugh) a Georgia Tech fan might get jacked up about. But if you were an iPhone owner, you'd understand. "You mean I can cut-and-paste with a tap of my finger now? AND there's multitasking?!?!" Maybe it's sad that this is what I've been reduced to, but hey, it's a harsh world out there. You take your glimmers of hope where you can find them.



The World Cup
Here's the weird thing: For 47 out of every 48 months on average, I don't follow soccer at all. No, I don't feel guilty about this, it's not like soccer doesn't have enough fans elsewhere in the world. But there's just something about the World Cup that's awesome to me. Maybe it's the fact that nations from all over the world -- in some cases nations who might otherwise be inclined to despise one another -- are coming together in a single country just to play a game. Maybe it's the opportunity to see teams from fairly downtrodden countries rise up and get a chance to kick the ass of a superpower every now and then. Or, hell, maybe it's just stuff like this. But whatever the case, the World Cup is the one case in which I can get excited about someone winning 1-0 in overtime. It's not football (well, it's not our kind of football), but it'll do.



Getting my income-tax return
For about the past decade, I've been fortunate enough to get a refund from the gubmint on my income taxes, rather than owing them more money. It's kind of like getting a nice little present (or in some cases not-so-little) out of nowhere in the otherwise bleak expanses of February and March. And I can probably set my watch by the moment one of my libertarian or conservative friends pops up in the comments to say "I don't know what you're getting so excited about, the government's only giving you back your own money," but -- man, quit blocking my shine. It's money. I can spend it. Why bitch about it? Assuming I'm still going to continue getting refunds now that I'm at a new job, I think I'm going to blow 2011's refund on this.

Wow, I feel like a kid again! OK, not really. But here's the Random Ten, which I know y'all have been anticipating as eagerly as Christmas, or football season, or the return of the McRib sandwich:

1. The Roots, "The Spark"
2. Sugar Ray, "Spinning Away"
3. The Clash, "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais"
4. Beck, "Modern Guilt"
5. DJ Shadow, "High Noon"
6. Beck, "Youthless"
7. The Pixies, "There Goes My Gun"
8. Dexys Midnight Runners, "Come on Eileen"
9. P.M. Dawn, "Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "Metamorphosis"

Your turn to put your own Random Tens, and/or lists of things you still bother to bounce up and down getting excited about, in the comments. And happy Footballmas, everyone.

The Friday (Saturday?) Random Ten+5 throws out some prognostications.

My apologies for the Friday Random Ten+5 getting pushed back a good 24 hours -- unexplained molasses in my Internet connection have prevented me from getting just about anything done during that time, but the problem seems to have been (mostly) alleviated. So I thought I'd toss out some predictions involving varying degrees of ballsiness about the 2010 football season. Only one of them has to do with the Bulldogs, mind, and nearly all of them are pulled straight out of my ass, but hey, if that's not what the preseason is for, then what, I ask you, is it for? Anyway, here's the +5 for this last Friday before the glorious dawning of another season -- Five Random-Ass Predictions About College Football in 2010:



The Georgia secondary will key noticeable statistical improvement by the Georgia defense.
Look, let's not beat around the bush here -- going from a 4-3 front to a 3-4 is not an overnight project, and the Bulldog defense is going to struggle this year. But by the end of the season I think we'll feel pretty confident about the direction in which Todd Grantham has us pointed, and I think a big part of that is going to be our pass defense, of all things. The more I hear about Scott Lakatos, the more I like him -- he did an excellent job at UConn with nowhere near the kind of blue-chip talent we have access to down here -- and if nothing else, he seems to have completely replaced Willie Martinez's philosophy of "If you're a senior, you start, regardless of whether you have any idea what you're doing" with the revolutionary idea that the better players play. And we've got some good ones -- Bacarri Rambo and Brandon Boykin both looked good last season, and Vance Cuff and Sanders Commings are two guys I'm also very excited about. It's been a long time since our pass defense didn't give acid reflux to entire stadiums full of people, but I think Lakatos has us on the way back.



The game of the year will be the "Civil War" -- Oregon vs. Oregon State for a trip to the Rose Bowl.
With the USC dynasty apparently over and Oregon coming off a rather tumultuous offseason, there are no invincible teams in the Pac-10 this year, and the race for the conference title should be very interesting. I don't think it'll be decided until the very last weekend of the regular season, when Oregon and Oregon State play in Corvallis with the winner taking all. OSU seems to be mostly flying underneath the radar this year, but they've got a ton of returning talent and have, I'm told, one of the Pac-10's scarier home-field advantages. I had the Beavers at #16 in my preseason BlogPoll ballot and wouldn't be surprised to see them higher than that in the mainstream polls by the time bowl invites are handed out.



Boise State and UConn will go to BCS bowls; USC and Texas won't.
Boise State, I think, could get there even if they lose to Virginia Tech -- they're ranked high enough in the preseason, and the VT game is early enough, that they've got plenty of time to work their way back into the top 10 -- and I'm more convinced every day that UConn is going to come out of basically nowhere to win the Big East this year. As for USC, I just don't get why so many people are ranking them as the favorite to win the Pac-10 title again. Sure, pound for pound they may be the most talented team in the Pac-10 on paper, but they probably were last year, too, and all it got them was an 8-4 regular-season record and a trip to something that is now called the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl -- and that was with Pete Carroll. You really think Kiffykins is a money bet to do any better? After the off-season they've had? As for Texas, I think they'll be fine on defense, but first-year starting QB (even if he is incredibly talented) plus big questions on the O-line plus a running game that's been non-existent for two years now equals a team that may be counting its blessings just to get back to the Holiday Bowl. I think they'll be right back in the thick of the title hunt next year, but 2010 is gonna require some rebuilding.

Added: Have been reminded that USC is under a bowl ban for the next two seasons. So, uh . . . hey! I got one right already! [smiles nervously, slinks awkwardly off stage]



The postseason firings will be less notable for who gets fired (Brewster, Zook, Friedgen) than who doesn't (Rodriguez, Hawkins, Price).
As I explained in the "Hot Seat" post I did on Rich Rodriguez earlier this summer for Dr. Saturday, Michigan is one of the few remaining programs in the country that looks for reasons not to fire a head coach, and if Rodriguez can just squeeze the Wolverines back into a bowl (which I think he will) he'll get enough of a vote of confidence to last another year. Hawkins, too, stands a good chance of getting Colorado back into a bowl this season, and CU's decision to delay their entry into the Pac-10 until 2012 may have earned him some extra time (though if he goes 4-8 next season, they'll waste no time unloading him so that they can get a fresh start in their new conference). Price, meanwhile, is a guy who appears to be well-liked enough in El Paso that he might be able to survive even another 5-7 season (though I think UTEP gets back into a bowl this year, too).

Hottest seats heading into 2011: Les Miles, who I think is poised for a mediocre year in Baton Rouge that will more than likely initiate the tried-and-true assistant housecleaning in the offseason; Mike Gundy, who has the fewest returning starters in the country this season and has already been the target of grumbling from T. Boone Pickens; and Butch Davis, who could also be headed for a disappointing season and has the added pressure of a player-eligiblity scandal that seems to be building by the day.



Alabama and Oklahoma will face off for the national title.
Not a very outside-the-box pick, I know, but I think Bama will weather their defensive rebuilding a lot better than some people seem to think. Meanwhile, Oklahoma -- while I don't think they're a better team than Ohio State, at least on paper -- will have the advantage of an easier schedule; a late-season loss to Wisconsin, Penn State, or Iowa will put the Buckeyes just far enough back that they miss out on a title shot. Their disappointment, however, will be nothing compared to that of Boise State fans, who will watch their team go undefeated for the fourth time in five regular seasons but still get boxed out of the national-title game. (At which point Orrin Hatch will demand immediate Congressional action, perhaps even involving impeachment hearings.)

Now watch as none of these five things turn out to have been accurate by the end of the season. But until then, the Ten:

1. Pet Shop Boys, "New York City Boy" (The Thunderpuss 2000 club mix)
2. 3rd Bass, "M.C. Disagree"
3. U2, "She's Gonna Blow Your House Down"
4. Toto, "Africa" (shut up)
5. Phil Collins, "Sussudio" (shut up twice)
6. U2, "4th of July"
7. Asian Dub Foundation, "Return of Django"
8. 3rd Bass, "The Merchant of Grooves"
9. Crowded House, "Catherine Wheels"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "Hit Music"

Apologies again for the lateness of this week's Ten+5 -- feel free to regale us all with your own predictions for the upcoming season, and Random Tens, in the comments.

A very non-expendable Friday Random Ten+5.

Soooo last week Holly and I accompanied Josh to a screening of "The Expendables." Really, our motivation for going wasn't to watch the movie so much as watch Josh watching it -- as you can tell by his blog, he's been a wee bit excited about the movie for, oh, a year and a half now. So you can imagine our dismay -- to say nothing of Josh's -- when it turned out that the movie, to put it politely, stunk on ice. Basically, it was a direct-to-DVD movie with an $82-million budget. I'm still not convinced that the film had a script at all, and yet somehow the actors, for all their badassery, seemed overmatched by what meager dialogue they had. So we didn't get much in the way of characterization, and even less in the way of motivation. (Seriously, when Mickey Rourke is the deepest and most soulful character in your story, you've got problems, particularly when he's only on screen for a total of maybe 10 minutes.) And while all of this kvetching about dialogue and character might seem irrelevant in a movie that clearly sells itself as a pretty mindless action flick, even the action scenes descended into complete incoherence after a while. It's pretty hard to bore me with gunfights and massive explosions, but somehow "The Expendables" managed it. The one exception: Terry Crews and his automatic shotgun. Messing with either is inadvisable.

It did get us to talking afterward, though: If we were putting together an ensemble cast of total badasses for some kind of suspense film, be it a good 'n' violent war movie, a caper flick, or whatever else, who would we pick? I don't have the plot of mine quite nailed down yet -- band of grifters hired by the CIA to clean out the entire treasury of a rogue terrorist nation, maybe? I'm still working on it -- but I know who my five badasses would be. Thus this week's +5 is the Five-Man Army For My Ensemble Action Movie:



George Clooney
I know not everyone is crazy about Cloons -- he talks a lot, he can be kind of a dick, he dates women far beyond the caliber of anyone you or I will ever so much as be in the same room with. But that's kind of what makes him a badass, I think. And he was suave as hell in all three of the Ocean's 11/12/13 movies. I see him as being kind of like the American version of James Bond; it's easy to picture him shooting people whilst wearing a tux.



Robert De Niro
Just turned 67, and still has it. And though he won Oscars for "The Godfather Part II" and "Raging Bull," I think my favorite performance of his is in "Casino," a movie I thought was just OK at first but seems to have gotten better and better with age: He plays a character who's smarter than most of the people around him, smart enough to know that the house of cards they've all built for themselves is going to come crashing down eventually, yet he can't keep himself from getting caught up in the glamour and temptation along with them. (Yet I also laugh every time I think of him in "Meet the Parents," asking if it's possible for him to be milked.)



Clive Owen
If Clooney is the American James Bond, Clive Owen wouldn't make a bad British one; if Daniel Craig ever decided to hang up his Aston Martin keys and retire from the franchise, Owen would be first on my shortlist to replace him. Equally adept as a badass ("Inside Man") or as a heavy-drinking sad sack forced by circumstance into becoming one ("Children of Men," one of my top five movies of all time).



Samuel L. Jackson
Permanently ascended into the pantheon of badasses 16 years ago with this line and has since cemented his legacy through "Shaft," "Black Snake Moan," the "Iron Man" films, and being one of the only tolerable things about the "Star Wars" prequels. And now, as Josh points out, he's lending his badassery to support a worthy athletic cause.



Michael Caine
Sir Michael will turn 80 in less than three years, but whatever -- he was one of the original movie hardasses back in the '60s and has retained that title ever since. Even when the movie he's in is absolute crap -- i.e. 1987's "Jaws: The Revenge" -- he manages to maintain his awesomeness: "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific." His most recent performance was in "Harry Brown," an average movie featuring an exceptional performance from Caine, and while there was a rumor going around for a while that it would be his last leading role, that has since been debunked, to our great relief.

My movie will be called "The Indispensables," catch it at a theatre near you the twelfth of Never! (Followed by a cash-in direct-to-DVD sequel, "The Machine-Washables," sometime after that.) And now the Ten:

1. Looking Glass, "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)"
2. John Coltrane, "Resolution"
3. Pet Shop Boys, "I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More" (PSB Extension mix)
4. Jakatta, "American Dream" (Afterlife mix)
5. James Brown, "Papa Don't Take No Mess (Part I)"
6. Radio 4, "New Disco"
7. The Jazz Jury, "Pictures"
8. Talking Heads, "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)"
9. The Streets, "Has it Come to This?"
10. New Order, "Everything's Gone Green"

Your turn: Give me your five-man ensemble cast of badasses, along with your Random Tens, in the comments.

The Friday Random Ten+5 takes this job and shoves it.

By now I'm sure y'all have heard about the strange case of the JetBlue flight attendant who quit his job in dramatic fashion by throwing open one of the plane's rear doors, inflating the emergency escape slide, and sliding the fuck on out of there. There have been conflicting reports about what exactly transpired after Steven Slater's flight from Pittsburgh landed in New York, but from what I've heard, this dude is my god. First of all, if you've ever flown on a plane in your life you know that you're not supposed to get up and start yanking stuff out of the overhead compartment until the plane has "come to a full and complete stop," and if you're willing to start a fight with a flight attendant over said rule, you pretty much deserve whatever's coming to you.

Second, it was an awesome way to quit a job; I've had some jobs I wish I could've unloaded with one-tenth the flair that Slater demonstrated. I've never had a job in which I had immediate access to an inflatable escape slide, but still, I'm sure I could've improvised something, if I'd really had the balls to go through with it. Mental Floss magazine posted a list earlier this week of other panache-filled ways to tell your boss to pound sand; I thought I'd take this opportunity to add a few of my own with this week's +5: Five Other Awesome Ways To Quit Your Job Even If You're Not A Flight Attendant.



Get a bunch of your friends to dress up as FBI agents, storm into your office, and drag you out of there kicking and screaming. This is a good choice if you actually like some of your soon-to-be-former co-workers, because it'll give them the entertainment of endless speculation with one another about what the hell you actually did.



Hire a stripper to jump out of a cake in your boss's office holding a sign that says "[Your name here] quits." Again, fun for everyone in the office. Plus there's cake!



In the middle of a staff meeting, start shaking, and yell "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" and run right through a window, then pull the ripcord on a parachute you've concealed underneath your clothing. (Note: You should probably wear bulky clothing. Also this only works if your boardroom is at least 50 floors up.)



Call a press conference and say that the best way you can accomplish your job is by not actually having it anymore.



Nail your boss's daughter (or son), write your resignation letter on his/her underwear, and send it to your boss. If you've got any photos of the act that you can sneak into your boss's next PowerPoint presentation, that might be even better.

If I ever quit doing this blog for good, rest assured I'll come up with a killer way of letting you jagbags know. Until then, here's the Ten:

1. Nouvelle Vague, "Human Fly"
2. The Beastie Boys, "Tough Guy"
3. Notorious B.I.G., "Get Money"
4. A Tribe Called Quest, "The Hop"
5. Gnarls Barkley, "The Boogie Monster"
6. The Clash, "Atom Tan"
7. Beck, "Tropicalia"
8. KRS-One, "Real Hip-Hop -- Part II"
9. Stereolab, "Rainbo Conversation"
10. Gorillaz, "M1A1"

Share with us, won't you, your own job-unloading fantasies, and your Random Tens, too, while you're at it.

The Friday Random Ten+5 strips down to the bare essentials.

Last week we discussed what not to wear when you're otherwise completely nekkid. I think we can all agree that to walk into the bedroom completely naked except for dark socks or a bicycle helmet would be pretty weird (and emphatically mood-killing). But let's say you want to do a little naked accessorizing for a special occasion. What can you use? Hey Jenny Slater is here to help with the second installment of its fashion-themed +5 series: Five Things It's OK To Wear When You're Otherwise Completely Naked.



White athletic socks
I know what you're thinking: Why is it OK to wear white socks when naked but not black socks? Honestly I can't put it into concise words. Maybe it's the athleticism implied by white socks, whereas dark socks just imply "board meeting" or "senior citizen in dark socks and sandals using his metal detector on the beach." Maybe it's because white socks are a valuable ingredient in any "naughty cheerleader" or Hooters-girl role-playing. But whatever the case, white socks are OK. Stripes at the top are also acceptable if you want to bring your team colors into it.



Sports jerseys
If you're not ready to go with just white socks, a jersey is a good way to protect your virtue while still gearing up for some action. Granted, not everybody is turned on by this, but I think most of the rabid sports fans I know would be thrilled to find that their significant other was willing to combine one of their favorite things, i.e. sports, with another one of their favorite things, i.e. doin' it. Particularly if the jersey in question is from your favorite team. That's a pretty special gesture.



Boots
Always awesome. I shouldn't have to explain this one. High heels always a plus. (Excluded from this category: galoshes and duck boots. Oh, and hip waders. Work boots are OK if you're trying to play Sexy Plumber or something, but you've got to exercise caution. That one's not for amateur hour.)



Elbow-length gloves
A touch of class for an otherwise debaucherous situation. Having a girl wearing nothing but elbow-length gloves come into your room lets you imagine you're bedding someone far above your station, living out one of those "illicit affair with a member of the royal family" fantasies. (I'm the only one who has those? OK then.) Or maybe you really are bedding someone far above your station, in which case, so much the better.



Bandoliers
There's an element of danger here that's just too awesome to pass up. When someone comes into your room wearing nothing but bullets across their chest, that's basically them saying, "I want to have sex with you, but it's going to be dangerous. In fact, there's a significant chance that we're going to get shot at while we're doing it." But if they've got that much ammo on them, there's a reasonable expectation that they're going to protect you, and how special is that?

Also acceptable: thigh-high stockings, T-shirts, rollerskates, all neckwear except for bowties and ascots, lifejackets, pillbox hats, snakes. I'm glad we could have this talk.

And now the Ten:

1. The Who, "Who Are You"
2. Beck, "Dead Wild Cat"
3. Outkast, "Hey Ya!"
4. U2, "Lemon"
5. 3rd Bass, "Soul in the Hole"
6. The Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen"
7. The Dust Brothers, "Space Monkeys"
8. Madonna, "Beautiful Stranger"
9. A Tribe Called Quest, "Can I Kick It?"
10. Lou Reed, "Walk on the Wild Side"

Your Random Tens, along with any suggestions you might have about proper naked accessorizin', are welcome in the comments.