Credit where credit is due.

So if the winner of the BCS National Championship Game gets to go to the White House and meet the president, isn't it only fair that Georgia, as the top party school in the country, should get to go to the Playboy Mansion and meet Hugh Hefner? I can't be the only one who wants to see Mark Richt present Hef with a Georgia jersey.

(Also, how awesome is it that this story got ink in the UK. Anything that brings Michael Adams closer to a padded room is fine by me.)

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.

The Friday Random Ten+5 gets its drink on.

Last night's debut of the 2009 college football season was . . . well, how would you describe it? "Underwhelming" would be one way; South Carolina and N.C. State were collectively outscored by the Yankees-Blue Jays game going on about the same time, while the ugliness of the debut of Oregon's offense under new coach Chip Kelly was exceeded only by the ugliness of the non-sportsmanship exhibited by Duck RB LeGarrette Blount afterward. But all this was mitigated by two factors: One, it was FOOTBALL, and even shitty college football beats 90 percent of whatever else they could put on TV, and two, you drink enough and even N.C. State's offense looks good.

Yup, the start of CFB season means the drink-drinkiest time of the year is upon us, and if, like me, you spend a typical Saturday splayed out on the couch watching not only your own team's game but as many other games as you can possibly consume from the end of "College Gameday" through the WAC nightcap that closes out the day's slate, you need some kind of an alcohol game plan. As something of an expert at this, let me help you kill two birds with one stone by offering this week's +5 up as My Five Favorite Alcoholic Beverages (And The Perfect Circumstances In Which To Consume Them).

These, by the way, will all be liquor-related; I know I don't need to remind you that beer can be guzzled anytime. Why, I'm fixing to pour some on my breakfast cereal right now.



Early-afternoon pre-game pick-me-up: Kir royale
Sometimes it's too late for a mimosa but still a wee bit too early to be really pounding the bottle, so here's a light, tasty, and very classy solution: champagne and blackcurrant liqueur, a/k/a crème de cassis (though the Kir Imperial, which uses raspberry liqueur instead, is probably better known to Americans). Not only is it a particularly festive way of celebrating the blessed return of college football after a particularly long and stultifying off-season, but both the Royale and the Imperial have a reddish tint, so they're a perfect way to show your Georgia colors at a tailgate.



First-half draaankin': Maker's Mark
A fellow Dawg blogger who should remain nameless (though you probably know whom I'm talking about if you're at all acquainted with the Georgia blogosphere) has turned gameday Maker's consumption into an art form. It's not for the faint of heart, but it's the kind of rocket fuel that makes for superbly lusty early-game cheering and ref-cursing, and it's smooth enough that it requires no mixers whatsoever. (If Maker's is a little too rich for your blood, bottom-line-wise, George Dickel No. 12 makes a fine substitute.)



Second-half stretch run: Gin & tonic
Other than the iron-willed blogger I mentioned earlier, not many people can keep up a constant Maker's drip for all three and a half hours of a football game. By the time you hit the critical late drives, you may be flagging, so it might be time to bust out the Tanqueray or Bombay Sapphire and ease back a little to a crisp, refreshing gin & tonic, particularly good for those early-season games that take place when it's still hot as balls outside. Depending on how intense the action on the field is, and thus how closely you need to be paying attention, you can regulate the gin/tonic balance accordingly to keep you from being too completely blotto to follow those last few plays.



Postgame celebration: Vodka martini (straight up with a twist)
This is my absolute favorite drink, the Champ Bailey of cocktails: a strong drink of not-water that conducts its business with class even while it's knocking you on your rear end. This is the celebratory beverage that says "I care too much about my team to toast their victories with Natty Light." You know that if James Bond followed college football, this is how he'd celebrate.



Last drink of the night: Bailey's on ice
As any truly talented dipso will tell you, you don't want to just shut the consumption off and go cold-turkey. You need to back off slowly before collapsing into bed and losing consciousness for the night, and here's one way to do it: Bailey's Irish creme, stout enough to count as a drink (not to mention substantial enough to qualify as dessert) but with a light enough alcohol content to bring you down gently off your preceding marathon day of boozing. Kind of the drink equivalent of that late-late-night WAC shootout you'll more than likely fall asleep in front of.

Hey Jenny Slater advises you, of course, to drink responsibly. All that said, na zdravie, delinquents. Here's the Ten:

1. BT, "Embracing the Sunshine"
2. David Holmes, "Sick City"
3. DJ Shadow, "What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 3)"
4. Divinyls, "I Touch Myself"
5. Dr. Dre, "The $20 Sack Pyramid"
6. 3rd Bass, "Sea Vessel Soliloquy"
7. U2, "If God Will Send His Angels"
8. Underworld, "Five Ft."
9. Pet Shop Boys, "Miserablism" (Electro mix)
10. The Chemical Brothers, "Life is Sweet"

It's a great day to be alive! Please feel free to expound upon your own Random Tens and/or liquid weapons of choice in the comments.

An extremely belated Friday Random Ten+5(+another 10) recaps Vegas.

Hmmmm, so . . . I seem to remember implying that I'd try to post something from Vegas last week, didn't I? Er, sorry 'bout that. Turns out that free wi-fi is oddly scarce in Sin City, but perhaps more to the point, so are concepts such as "sleep" and "sobriety." But I'm home now, awake, upright (more or less), and not even that poor; didn't get arrested, didn't wind up getting married to a hooker, didn't even get throwing-up drunk at any point, though not for lack of trying.

So what did I do? Well, I learned a lot about Vegas on my first trip out there, which I'll share with you in this horribly tardy Friday-slash-Monday Random Ten+5, in which the +5 is Five Things I Learned About Las Vegas On My First Trip To Las Vegas:



1.
Ordinary concepts of scale have no meaning here. Think of the biggest hotel you've ever stayed in, and the ones in Vegas are still three or four times bigger. And that's just the actual guest accommodations; add in the gaming floors, restaurants, shopping areas, sportsbooks, theatres/show halls, convention halls, and really crazy stuff like aquariums (Mandalay Bay), wave pools (ditto), and roller coasters (yes, the New York, New York casino has one), and a lot of these places are closer in size to some of the airports you've flown out of.



2.
And a lot of them are connected -- Excalibur (where we stayed), Luxor, and Mandalay Bay are all owned by the same folks, so they're all strung together by shopping areas -- so it's possible for you to traverse great distances without ever actually stepping outdoors. For instance, we went from our rooms on one side of Excalibur to the aquarium on the far side of Mandalay Bay (above), and we probably walked about three-quarters of a mile each way, all of it indoors. The fact that you can go such long stretches without actually going outside really messes with your sense of space (because you don't feel like you've covered all that long a distance until you get back to your room and you're about to collapse), but also your sense of time -- the whole thing about casinos not having any clocks is true, but most of these places also severely limit the amount of natural light coming into the gaming areas so that you don't realize you've been playing blackjack or dumping money into the video poker machine until six in the morning.



3.
When you're a kid, you'll take anything someone hands out to you on the street if it's free, simply because the concept of getting something for nothing is so novel, but past a certain age, people no longer take stuff just because it's handed out to them. I know this because there were people on street corners and in casino walkways offering everything from drink specials to show tickets to hookers, and 99 percent of the pedestrians were strolling right by. How jaded have we become, that enduring so much as a five-minute conversation with a casino employee is considered too big a price to pay for free Criss Angel tickets? Oh, that's right, because Criss Angel is out-of-this-world creepy and his fuck-me face is staring glassy-eyed at you from nearly EVERYTHING at the Luxor these days, even the goddamn casino chips. Just because you were tagging Holly Madison for about five seconds a few months back doesn't make you a rock star, buddy.



4.
I did take the little gimme cards they were handing out for hookers on the strip, though, just to see how big a collection I could end up with by the end of the trip. And once I had a stack about as thick as two packs of cigarettes, I figured there'd be some duplicates in there, but out of the stack of more than 100 little cards, there were only a handful of dupes. What this tells me is that there are more hookers in Las Vegas than customers, possibly more than actual people. That's got to be one cutthroat-ass business out there, then. On a side note, some of the girls on those cards I recognized as having been Playmates at one time or another, and I'm pretty sure you're not going to get to bang a Playmate by calling any of the numbers on those cards, fellas.



5.
I don't recall the University of Nevada-Las Vegas having developed an especially sterling academic reputation, but after three days in Vegas I've developed a newfound respect for anyone who graduates from UNLV in four years. Not only do you have the constant distraction of world-class gambling literally a 15-minute stroll away, but the quality of tail roaming the periphery of the UNLV campus on Sunday afternoon was also world-class, on a par with Arizona State or UCLA or any of the hottie mills of the SEC. If you can actually focus on your studies enough to get handed a diploma after four years, I don't care if it's in music appreciation or video gaming, you're a better man than I am. Either that, or a eunuch.

And by way of apology for the lateness of this post, here's ten more things I learned this past week:

· The Pacific Ocean is like the penguin habitat at the San Diego Zoo: Real nice to look at, not actually any fun to swim in.

· There is no human malady that In-N-Out Burger can't cure. None that I've ever experienced, anyway. Well, maybe herpes.

· Hottest cocktail waitresses in Vegas: Mandalay Bay. Though we never did peek inside the Hooters Casino, and I was kind of disappointed that we didn't.

· Mandalay also boasts the strongest drinks, and has the best bar: Red Square, a Soviet-themed vodka bar featuring more than 200 different kinds of vodka from all over the world. There's even a private ice bar if you want to sample the really high-end stuff, and they give you a fur coat to wear when you go in there.

· Biggest boobs: Hard Rock Casino, a nonstop silicone valley on the part of cocktail waitresses and guests alike that will either turn you on or turn you off breasts forever, depending on your personal preferences. (In another paradox, it's also home to either the best- or worst-named restaurant in America, a Mexican restaurant called the Pink Taco.)

· Nicest blackjack dealers: Luxor. I didn't actually gamble that much, more out of fear than anything else, but I did settle into a nice comfort zone late Saturday night (er, early Sunday morning) at a table with Orson Swindle, Holly, and Peter Bean. It's perfectly fine to ask dealers for advice, too; the casino may not want you to win any money, but the individual dealers do, since the more you rake in, the more of a tip they're likely to get.

· That said, the very instant the words "Hmm, maybe I should quit now" pop into your head, fucking quit.

· Keep track of your jacket or any accessories you might be wearing just as you would your wallet.

· Try not to leave Vegas on a Sunday if you can avoid it. The traffic streaming out of there on Sundays is almost as bad as anything I experienced in Los Angeles the preceding week.

· Legoland is every bit as awesome as you'd think it would be. (Pictures definitely to come.)

And with that not-so-random ten out of the way, here's the Random Ten:

1. The Clash, "Sean Flynn"
2. The Beastie Boys, "Groove Holmes"
3. U2, "City of Blinding Lights"
4. U2, "If You Wear That Velvet Dress"
5. Radiohead, "Lucky"
6. DJ Cam, "Un Ete a Paris"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "To Step Aside" (Ralphi's disco vox)
8. Flight of the Conchords, "Song for Sally"
9. Q-Tip, "Moving With U"
10. David Gray, "Babylon"

Feel free to throw your own Random Tens in the comments, and talk amongst yourselves . . . I'm gonna go dry out my liver for a few days.

The Friday Random Ten+5 sells out.

One of my early New Year's resolutions (or resolution-like substance) is to get off my fat ass and put some real effort into making some money off the crap that I write -- double up on my freelancing efforts, sell a short story or two, finally buckle down and dig into the football novel I've had the idea to write for like a decade now. Theoretically, that could also include making some more money off this blog -- I mean, I have a little trickle of cash coming in every few months from the Google ads you see on this site, which I'm grateful for, but it could stand to be kicked up a notch. Is this site reputable enough to bring in some cash through direct editorial endorsements of various products and services? Ehh, probably not, but Todd at Roll Bama Roll evidently thinks his is, because he took the bold step earlier this week of singling out some brands he would gladly (and blatantly) shill for in exchange for a certain amount of that company's products. Kind of like a barter system, in other words, and I'm totally down with that. Cash doesn't necessarily need to change hands here, just some products whose regular (and free) presence could markedly improve my standard of living. So take a look, corporate America (and other countries), because I'm ready to start making deals here. And this week's +5 is Five Products I'd Be More Than Happyth To Shill For On A Trade Basis:



Zaxby's
Todd is 100-percent right about this one -- there ain't a single thing on their menu that I couldn't eat every day. In fact, Zaxby's came up in conversation at the office the other day and I determined that if I was stranded on a deserted island and could only have one kind of food washing up in crates on the shore every now and then, it'd be Zaxby's chicken fingers. Along with an advertising/endorsement trade deal, I'll even throw in a free marketing idea for you, guys: Start selling breakfast. Go head-to-head with Chick-fil-A in the chicken-biscuit arena; the tougher competition will make both companies work harder to create an even more perfect product, and the consumer will benefit. There; you can drop my block of gift certificates in the mail whenever it's convenient.



Cherry Coke Zero
The discovery of this wonderful concoction in my office was treated with the same wide-eyed enthusiasm I imagine mankind displayed when he first figured out how to create fire. It doesn't have any calories, but it doesn't have the bitter artificial-sweetener taste of a traditional diet drink, and to my mind it actually tastes better than regular Coke because it isn't so sugary sweet I think I'm giving myself diabetes every time I take a sip. I'm not a huge soft-drink consumer to begin with, but I figure if Coke sends my office a 12-pack every week we can call it even.



Jaguar Cars Ltd.
I still love my VW, but it'll be 10 years old next August, and it's probably a good time to at least start putting feelers out about possible replacements. And the Jaguar XF -- the supercharged replacement for the old S-Type that was named to Car and Driver's 10Best list in its first year of production -- is at the top of my list. Jaguar, you don't even have to give me one, just lend it to me for a year and I'll still give you all the free press you can stand. When that year is up, we can talk about re-upping the deal, but at the very least I'll have paid off my credit cards to the point where I can actually think about absorbing a car payment again.



Southwest Airlines
I flew SWA out to Arizona back in September and it was a pretty good experience, but I didn't really think a whole lot of it until I boarded a US Airways flight out to Los Angeles two months later. In addition to the $300-something US Airways charged me for a ticket, they charged me $15 to check a suitcase and another two bucks for a Coke on the Charlotte-L.A. leg. Yup, you don't even get so much as a Coke or a packet of peanuts without forking over some cash. Meanwhile, Southwest doesn't charge for the first two checked bags, doesn't charge extra for window or aisle seats, and slings free soft drinks all day long. Guys, between that and Birmingham's status as a secondary hub, you had me at "hello," and for the comparatively low cost of one free round-trip ticket per month you can plaster ads all over this site until you're blue in the face.



Stoli Blakberi
For those of you who caught one of my Facebook updates earlier in the week, this is the brew I was drinking straight at our office Christmas party at my editor's house. Knowing my history with vodka, it's a wonder I'm still employed as of this writing, but man, what wonderful stuff. It's just sweet enough that you can drink it straight even if you're not a drunk like myself, it has a nice aroma, and it makes for a vodka tonic that's damn near the nectar of the gods. Stoli has been my brand for a while now, but guys, you've outdone yourselves -- now your job is to keep a regular supply of this stuff coming my way so that I can extol its many virtues and come up with new recipes to spread far and wide. My next concept? The vodka float -- one half-fill glass of Blakberi, add a splash of Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice, dump in a big heapin' scoop of vanilla ice cream (or, alternatively, this), float away on a cloud of ecstasy. I think y'all hear me knockin', and I think I'm comin' in.

My pockets are empty, my hand is out, my principles have temporarily been suspended -- let's do this, people. And now the Ten:

1. The Chemical Brothers, "Song to the Siren"
2. Pet Shop Boys, "So Hard" (The KLF vs. Pet Shop Boys remix)
3. BT, "Deeper Sunshine"
4. The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
5. INXS, "Need You Tonight"
6. Underworld, "To Heal"
7. Underworld, "EssGee"
8. Orbital, "Waving Not Drowning"
9. Pet Shop Boys, "It Must Be Obvious" (UFO mix)
10. Bananarama, "Venus"

Your turn to make that pitch, readers -- Random Tens and/or naked appeals to major corporations for mutual marketing-centered back-scratching go in the comments.