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 gives some shout-outs, then books out.

I'm kind of having to punt on the +5 this week because I have to leave for Atlanta in less than an hour and a half, so it's going to be more or less a roundup of random awesome stuff -- My Heisman Ballot Of Five Things That Have Been Awesome To Me This Week.



Green's package store on Ponce de Leon in Atlanta
Always a frequent spot to hit on the way to a Saturday of tailgating in Athens, but now virtually mandatory due to the fact that a) they keep expanding their liquor selections, b) they have a new walk-in Belgian beer cooler, and c) it takes a lot of alcohol consumption to make Georgia's defense look good.



Erin Andrews in glasses
Not a great screengrab above, but if you were watching Georgia's game against Arkansas last week then you know what I'm talking about. EA looked hot enough that all actual sexy librarians should now be referred to as sporting the "Erin Andrews at the Georgia-Arkansas game look."



Airplanes with funny paint jobs
See also: the Southwest Airlines "Shamu" planes; Western Pacific's old "Simpsons" plane; and SkyEurope's Boeing 737s with supermodels on the side. OK, that last one isn't really "funny" per se, but it still gets your attention.



The Jaguar XFR
The James Bond of cars: handsome, suave, doesn't look out of place at either a five-star restaurant or a competitive sporting event, and can straight-up murder any of its competitors without really breaking a sweat.



Hot wings at B. Merrell's in Columbus
I know I make fun of Columbus all the time, but it does have one major claim to fame: the site of the best Buffalo wings in the universe. A bold statement, I know, but B. Merrell's has ruined me for hot wings just about any place else in the world because theirs are so much better. Crispy without being breaded; sauce that's hot but not overpowering; perfectly rotisserie-cooked so that you can pack away 20 of them in barely more than the blink of an eye. Wing perfection, and I should know, because if you'd seen my gut lately you'd know that I've put away a few.

And now the Ten:

1. Thom Yorke, "Skip Divided"
2. Hall & Oates, "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)"
3. Dr. Dre, "Let Me Ride"
4. U2, "North and South of the River"
5. KRS-One, "2nd Quarter -- Free Throws"
6. Richard Cheese, "Fight for Your Right"
7. Meat Beat Manifesto, "Let Go"
8. A Tribe Called Quest, "The Infamous Date Rape"
9. Radiohead, "Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner)"
10. Dead Kennedys, "Stealing People's Mail"

What's been awesome to you this week? Throw that stuff (along with your Random Tens) in the comments . . . and I'm outta here.

Monday Morning Cage Match IV:Heavily armed VTOL ground-attack aircraft vs. AWW WOOKIT THE WITTLE BABY.

For the first time in the history of the Cage Match, I've got a dog in the fight -- a literal dog in the fight, come to think of it -- but I'll try to be as objective as I can in judging the battle royale of Harrier vs. Terrier. No animals will be harmed in the production of this post.

	[Boeing/BAE Systems AV-8B] Harrier	[Boston] terrier
Price	$30-35 million	$300-$1,000
WINNER: Terrier
Lineage	Hawker P.1127, first flown in 1960	Bull-and-Terrier and various breeds of bulldogs, first bred in the 1870s
WINNER: Tie
Original purpose	Ground/naval attack	Pit fighting, catching and killing mice and other vermin
WINNER: Harrier
Cuteness	Negligible	OFF THE CHARTS
WINNER: Terrier
Lethality	Considerable	Generally only to stuffed toys and Milk-Bones
WINNER: Harrier
Biggest drawback	Not supersonic	Gassy
WINNER: Harrier
Notable owners	Armed forces of the United States, Italy, and Spain	Rose McGowan, Famke Janssen
WINNER: Terrier

FINAL SCORE: Harrier 4, Terrier 4. From which we are forced to conclude that both are equally awesome.

The Friday Random Ten+5 dreams big.

Well, yesterday I turned 31, and for some reason I actually found myself taking stock of my life more than I did last year when I hit the big three-oh. Some of the things I'd wanted to do -- graduate from college, travel outside the country, date a stripper, go to the Michigan-Ohio State game -- I've managed to cross off my list, but there are still a few things hanging out there that I haven't done yet. So this week's +5 is Five Things I Want To Accomplish In The Next Thirty-One Years Of My Life. Hopefully 31 years will be enough time to knock them all out, but you never know:



Get mentioned in a Wu-Tang Clan song
There are still eight members left, so I figure I should be able to make friends with at least one of them. Preferably GZA or Ghostface.



Open a Hooters in a foreign country
This is one where I've kind of got to get on the stick -- Hooters has already opened up establishments in 24 foreign countries and a few overseas territories besides, so I'm running out of opportunities to truly break some new ground here. But as near as I can tell, Rio de Janeiro, Bratislava, Heidelberg, and Moscow are all ripe for new locations. Any one of those cities would have a large customer base, and an extensive pool of "talent" with respect to potential employees, to draw from.



Drive a car through a fruit stand or plate-glass window
This happens often enough in action movies that I'm kind of disappointed I haven't gotten to do it yet. I'd compensate the fruit vendor and/or glass company for their loss of assets, of course.



Meet Hugh Hefner
I bet a guy like that has all sorts of sage advice to offer someone like me, including the answers to major life questions such as "How can I remain an incredible badass even at the age of 83?" and "How do you maintain three ridiculously hot girlfriends at once and keep them all from despising each other?" I mean, I should be so lucky as to ever be faced with either of those issues, but still.



Eject from a fighter plane
I've already crashed a car and made the airbags go off; this, I guess, would kind of be the next step up. They both involve controlled explosions and a vehicle that's probably going to be unusable afterward.

And now the Ten, courtesy of the iPhone 'cause my iPod's in my car and I don't feel like going down and getting it:

1. The English Beat, "Mirror in the Bathroom"
2. Sloppy Seconds, "I Don't Wanna Be a Homosexual"
3. Donna Summer, "I Feel Love"
4. The Police, "Every Breath You Take"
5. R.E.M., "At My Most Beautiful"
6. U2, "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"
7. Dead Kennedys, "Short Songs"
8. Talking Heads, "(Nothing But) Flowers"
9. Joy Division, "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "My Head Is Spinning" (Electro set remix)

Your turn -- Random Tens and goals for the next however many years of your life go in the comments.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets wistful. Or maybe just pathetic.

The other day Orson Swindle announced that he'd gotten an advance copy of Phil Steele's legendary preseason college-football publication, that lucky rat bastard (except for the whole, you know, breaking your back and ending up immobilized for weeks thing). Between the imminent release of the annual Steele opus and the preseason top 25s that have started popping up on various Web sites over the past few weeks, I've really been reminded just how much I'm starting to miss football. It was acute enough when we still at least had the distractions of National Signing Day, spring games, or the NFL draft to distract us; at this point we've basically got three more months of nothin'. And it hurts.

But that's just one of the things I've been missing lately. There are plenty of other things I've found myself pining for, or at least wishing they'd pop up again, and thus this week's +5 is Five People, Places, And/Or Things I've Been Missing Lately:



Alfa Romeo
Originally, this Italian car company, which had stopped selling in the U.S. in 1995, was supposed to return to the American market in 2007. Then it was 2008, then 2009. And now that the economy has gone in the crapper and the auto industry is on life support, it looks like they've pushed the date back to 2011. That may actually be a good thing, since it'll probably take at least that long for me to pay off the rest of my credit-card debt, but once I get that off my permanent record I want to be able to buy a Brera (above) or, barring that, a 159, particularly the station-wagon version. Speaking of which, I miss station wagons.



Getting to visit the cockpit
I can remember flying on Piedmont Airlines as a little kid and getting to go up and say hello to the pilots (and no, none of them ever asked me if I liked movies about gladiators or had seen a grown man naked), and then getting my "pilot wings" pinned on me by a flight attendant. Post-9/11, of course, you practically need security clearance to get anywhere near the cockpit, and I'm kind of bummed my kids are never going to be able to have that experience. And at the risk of sinking into "What's the deal with airline food?" humor, I also miss decent snacks on airplanes. I can remember when Piedmont would give you a bag of smokehouse almonds even on a short hop over the Smokies; then airlines throttled back to honey-roasted peanuts, then regular peanuts, and now you're lucky if the flight attendants fire a bag of goldfish at you with one of those compressed-air guns they use to launch T-shirts at people at basketball games. And why don't they just make the whole airplane out of the black box?!? OK, I'm done now.



Mike Wallace
Wallace is/was the standard-bearer for a dying breed of journalist: the investigative reporter/interviewer who wasn't afraid to be a complete asshole. Once upon a time, interviewers were less concerned with currying favor and being best buds with their sources/interviewees than they were with actually asking tough questions and getting relevant information, and when you sat down across from Wallace, you knew you were going to get some shots across the bow (or maybe right into your gut). Who has that kind of balls these days? Hardly anybody on the Sunday-morning talk shows, that's for sure, and not even Wallace's own son, Chris, who is a dead ringer for Dr. Leo Spaceman but has yet to do anything else to distinguish himself.



Punk rock
Watched the movie "24 Hour Party People" the other night, about Factory Records and the Madchester music scene of the 1980s, and it was awesome. And it reminded me how much I miss good music in general, but also punk rock in particular. And I'm not talking about bullshit pseudo-punk like Fall Out Boy, or even goofball pop-punk like Blink-182, I'm talking about genuine, angry, garagey punk like the Clash or the Sex Pistols or the Buzzcocks (above) or Iggy Pop. I mean, the economy's in the shitter and nobody can find a job, which was a defining theme in a lot of the British punk of the late '70s, and just like the people in that period, we're coming off a long stretch in which pop music has sucked out loud and desperately needs someone to rebel against it. Somebody give me an oi.



Boobs
Yeah, it's been a while.

And now the Ten:

1. Richard Cheese, "More Human Than Human"
2. Flight of the Conchords, "The Prince of Parties"
3. Naked Eyes, "Promises, Promises"
4. Radiohead, "Paranoid Android"
5. Big Country, "In a Big Country"
6. Elvis Presley, "Suspicious Minds"
7. Sting, "Seven Days"
8. Underworld, "Shudder/King of Snake"
9. John Phillip Sousa, "The Liberty Bell"
10. U2, "Lemon" (Bad Yard club mix)

Your turn, punks. Random Tens and lists of stuff you've been missing lately go in the comments.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Bad ideas in every bite.

· Are you following Hey Jenny Slater on Twitter yet? You should be, because then you can learn about stuff like this, which I spotted on Valley Avenue ion Saturday while making a run to Costco.



Open question to any and all of my readers in the Birmingham area: Did any of y'all actually avail yourselves of this service? If so, how'd that work out for you? I'm honestly curious.

· As public declarations go, though, I think a message from a grown man in a diaper might still be preferable to this.



Someone's idea of a joke, you say? Oh noooo. Check out this essay -- in which the statement "masturbation is sex" is made without even a smidge of irony -- and this MySpace blog post, in which the author "fearlessly testifies to her struggle and victory over masturbation!"

Maybe I'm being overly flip here, but doesn't this all seem a little . . . melodramatic, somehow? Here's a tip, guys: If you're "struggling" that much with masturbation, you're probably doing it wrong. All that said, though, I'll give fifty dollars to the first Hey Jenny Slater reader who purchases one of the "Ex-Masturbator" shirts and provides photographic proof of having worn it for the entirety of a Christian church service.

· If you're really "struggling" with masturbation, though, the GOP has a solution. Turns out they have a solution for everything. (Thanks to Mac G for the link.)

· Here's an honest question: Why does ESPN Classic only show old football games during football season? Why not show old football games now, when football junkies like me are that much more desperate for a fix? I rarely watch old games on Classic because there are usually new games to worry about, but if they showed them between February and July (and showed, say, basketball from August to November and baseball from December to February), I'd watch the hell out of that. Just a thought, ESPN! A brilliant idea, free of charge. You can thank me later.

· God, I hope Lane Kiffin never gets fired. Ever.

· Finally, a good idea: Southwest Airlines has added to their already extensive list of specially painted airplanes by putting Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model Bar Refaeli on the side of a Boeing 737.



We better make sure the ex-masturbators don't find out about this.

"Please take care opening the overhead compartments, as contents may have shifted during flight."

I was wondering whether anyone would ever come up with any video of the actual landing of US Airways flight 1549, and somebody did.



Obviously I don't have experience landing airplanes on water, or anything else for that matter, but I was still amazed at how easy the pilot made it look (from a grainy distance, at least). There's a common perception that water is a much nicer, softer surface to have to put a crippled plane down on than, you know, land, and under certain circumstances I'm sure that's true -- but the faster you're going, the harder your impact is even when you're hitting water, as anyone who's belly-flopped off a high dive will attest. Bullets fired at certain angles, for example, have been known to deflect off of water, and while the US Airways plane wasn't going nearly as fast as a bullet -- "only" around 125 miles per hour, according to this article -- go get in your car, get up to 125, and hydroplane the thing if you think anything's easy to control at that speed. Not only that, but anyone trying to land a plane on water has to bring it in almost completely flat and level, because if you don't, you run the risk of dipping a wingtip into the drink and ending up with something more along the lines of this. For that plane to be floating more or less placidly in the Hudson River with 150-something people standing on the wings, waiting patiently to be rescued, I don't know if it qualifies as an actual miracle, but it'll do until a real one comes along.

Somebody buy Chesley Sullenberger a drink, and in the meantime, if anyone's been looking for a cheap Airbus A320 they could take on as a "fixer-upper," I might have a few leads.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Knowshon! Legos! Videos! Bacon! It's a cavalcade of awesomeness!

• First things first: the Knowshon Hurdle, because you can't get enough of it . . .



. . . but to me, that isn't as personally affecting as today's revelation that KNOWSHON LIKES PLAYING WITH LEGOS. I already knew he was an amazing athlete; now I might just be prepared to call him the most awesome person who has ever lived.

Sorry, I'm gonna need a minute.

• While I do that, check out this campaign video for the Palin we should be electing this year.



Incidentally, I have the audio from the "strange women in ponds distributin' swords" scene on my iPod.

• Back to football for a sec: A couple seasons ago, as I'm pretty certain I reminded you multiple times over, I won the Job Award in the 2006 College Football Blogger Awards for doing the best job of toaster-throwing covering Georgia's midseason descent into madness (and subsequent redemption). That was flattering, and I appreciated it, but even I have to bow down to one Washington Huskies fan who, in the wake of Washington's controversial last-second loss to BYU, logged onto U-Dub's Scout.com forum and posted about as eloquent and original an expression of utter hopelessness and despair as I could ever hope to come up with even in my darkest hours:

Whatever sins the Husky football program committed, whatever the sins of the late James era, the Neuheisel era, the Gilby-Ty era...whatever sins were committed 100 years ago, the McElhenny years, the days of prejudice...whatever wrongs we have done individually or collectively as Husky Nation....surely we have been punished enough. because now, it's just piling on. I am officially calling a 15 yard unsportsmanlike penalty on God.

That's truly brilliant . . . blasphemous, certainly, but brilliant. Hat tip to Brian Cook, whose brilliant "This Week in Schadenfreude" series is almost as much fun as building Lego creations with Knowshon Moreno.

• Also brilliant is this story in The Onion this week, only there's one problem: The airplane in this fake ad . . .



. . . is not Air Force One, nor a Boeing 747 at all, but rather an Airbus A340 from those snooty-ass Eurotrash over at Airbus Industrie. [/OCDplanegeek]

Still, good show overall, and I also owe long-overdue props to The Onion for their "Onion News Network" series of fake news videos, because they are truly breathtaking in their verisimilitude and completeness. Not only are the segments funny, not only are the production values surprisingly high, but the actors who play the news "anchors" and "correspondents" are pitch-fucking-perfect in their portrayal of America's TV media. Seriously, they're like "The Daily Show" taken to another dimension of reality and lived-in-ness. If you haven't bothered to check any of them out yet, you can start with this one . . .


Portrayal Of Obama As Elitist Hailed As Step Forward For African Americans

. . . and don't forget to also take a gander at "Reporters Expose Airport Security Lapses By Blowing Up Plane," which sounds like something "NBC Dateline" might actually do for sweeps week.

• Also covered in The Onion this week, albeit in entirely straight-up fashion: Should everything taste like bacon? I was a very early proponent of the theory that bacon is humanity's Universal Food, as it can be added to literally everything, so the prospect of adding bacony goodness to existing foods through "bacon salt" is one I find highly intriguing. What do you think, sirs?