Preseason BlogPoll roundtable: sleepers, statement games, and spending money.

Once again, MGoBlog proprietor/BlogPoll founder Brian Cook has (mis-)placed his trust in me to do the season's first BlogPoll roundtable, in which I get to stick my neck out and make a bunch of statements that have at least a 50-50 chance of looking dumber than dirt a few months from now, then all of you get to do the same. We only have THREE DAYS LEFT before the season actually kicks off, so let's get this thing started:

1. Without naming names, a few teams seem to have popped up frequently on everyone's "overrated" lists in the preseason, so let's forget about them for the moment and concentrate on a different group: sleepers. Which currently unheralded team are you currently putting at least a few of your chips behind in the hopes that you'll be able to say "totally called that" once they've accomplished big things by the end of the season?

Well, I put N.C. State at #19 in my preseason BlogPoll ballot even though both of the "official" polls relegated them down into the middle of the "others receiving votes" rabble -- they'd be 39th in the AP poll and 43d in the coaches', if we counted that far -- so I guess that makes the Wolfpack my top sleeper for this season. They've got a talented QB, Russell Wilson, who made phenomenal strides last season, as well as a defense that made similar strides and brings back five starters in the front seven; they've also got a favorable schedule that includes eight home games, beginning with a four-game out-of-conference homestand that has two I-AA scrubs sandwiched between South Carolina and Pittsburgh, both of whom are question marks. If the 'Pack sweep those, they could be 7-0 going into their midseason bye, and after the bye week comes a trip to FSU on Halloween, where they've split their last four visits. The only game the Wolfpack really need to be dreading is a November 21 trip to Virginia Tech, and it's not outside the realm of possibility for them to be eyeing a rematch with the Hokies in the ACC title game two weeks later.


A metaphor for State vs. the rest of the ACC in '09?

2. In a similar vein, pick a sleeper player on your team whom nobody's talking about right now and tell us why we will be talking about them by December.

You really had to be paying close attention to the box score to know who Aron White was last season -- he caught Georgia's lone touchdown in the Florida debacle, and caught another TD that helped break the Capital One Bowl open for the Dawgs -- but he is the latest in a series of impressive physical specimens Georgia has had at tight end. Two factors point toward White making a name for himself in 2009: One, the suspension of starting tight end Bruce Figgins means White will more than likely have that position to himself for the first six games, and two, a healthier and more solid offensive line likely will reduce his blocking responsibilities somewhat and free him up to do more pass-catchin'. Experienced receivers in general are going to be at a premium on the Georgia roster, too, so White could be a nice safety valve in blitz situations.

Another guy who's hardly a household name right now but could be by year's end: tailback Richard Samuel, who worked his way up through the depth chart over the offseason and was a bit of a surprise pick for the starting RB job earlier this month. Samuel rang up a 5.1-yard-per-carry average last year and will also benefit from a sturdier offensive line this season. Which is not to say any of us are going to be forgetting about Knowshon anytime soon, but the backfield situation in Athens may not be quite as dire as you've been led to believe.

3. Florida is about as big a consensus favorite as we've seen in recent years, but remember, USC got 62 out of 65 first-place votes in the AP's 2007 preseason poll and still managed to lose to Stanford. Given how difficult it is to go undefeated period these days, where do you think the Gators are most likely to stumble in the regular season?

I think the October 10 trip to Baton Rouge has to be the most obvious answer here, but even if the Gators succeed in knocking off the Tigers for the second straight year, they'd better take care not to relax too much when they get home: Their next opponent, Arkansas, should be packing just enough firepower on offense to make a game of it if the Gators come out sloppy. (And forgive me for gratuitously plugging my own guys here, but Georgia has a bye before the Florida game this year, just like they did two years ago, and are 7-1 all-time against defending national champions. Just saying.)


Including Florida in '97 and '07. Also just saying.

4. Which regular-season game not involving your team or conference are you most looking forward to this year?

As many of you already know, two of my best friends from college and I have made a tradition out of going to one big non-Georgia rivalry game each season just so we can say we've experienced it. Our first two outings, Ohio State-Michigan in '07 and USC-Notre Dame in '08 were duds as far as the games themselves were concerned, but this year I think we've picked a winner -- the Red River Shootout, Texas-Oklahoma for all the marbles. Well, a substantial portion of the marbles, at least. I fully expect this to be the de facto Big XII championship game, as it's been for four of the past seven seasons, but this year it could be a play-in for the national-championship game as well -- and with the Longhorn fans still fuming over being left out of the 2008 conference-title bout, this year we've got the added ingredient of some weapons-grade revenge-lust on the part of the 'Horns that's going to make "Inglourious Basterds" look like a Thomas the Tank Engine movie. It's going to be quite a weekend in Big D, and I vow to come back that Sunday with one of two things: a pair of hot pants from a Texas pom girl or a photo of me giving Tony Romo a pair of Norwegian goggles.

5. In honor of Georgia's opening-weekend opponent and their most prolific booster, let's say you somehow come into T. Boone Pickens money and can buy anything you want for your program -- facilities upgrades, an airplane for recruiting, buy out the contract of that coach you hate, you name it. Where does your first check go?


"That's your private jet? But it only has two engines."

Last week's $333,000,000 Mega Millions jackpot probably would've been worth about $210 million if I took the cash option; knock off $90 million or so in federal taxes and I'd still have more than enough to give UGA three million to endow a dedicated special-teams coaching position at two hundred grand a year. Currently, those duties are split haphazardly amongst three different assistants, with defensive-ends coach John Fabris taking a lot of offseason heat from Bulldog Nation for our lackluster performance in kick and punt coverage over the past couple years. I say hire a dedicated ST coach and clear up the confusion once and for all. (My first choice, coincidentally, would be to bogart Joe DeForest from Oklahoma State, which would really piss off T. Boone.)

Job number two would be extending the third deck all the way around the east end zone to the skyboxes and bumping capacity up over 100,000 once and for all. I figure a donation like that would at least get my name on the field somewhere. Doug Gillett Field at Sanford Stadium has a nice rhythm to it.

Respondents, if you wouldn't mind, throw a link to your answers in the comments thread, and I'll try to include them in a roundup next week.

The Friday Random Ten+5 writes checks that neither its body nor any of its other possessions can cash.

As my unemployment enters its second month and the search for new full-time wages grows longer and more frustrating, I've started looking for outside-the-box ways to make some extra cash. Some, like manning EDSBS for a week, have been right in my wheelhouse and relatively simple to pull off; others, like Johnny Dillinger-style bank robbery, have been sexy and potentially lucrative but rather impractical, both from a logistical and from a legal standpoint. But then there's the lottery. Only requires a small investment, is perfectly legal, potentially has a huge, life's-troubles-vaporizing payoff -- other than the fact that any given participant has but an astronomically small chance of actually winning, it's a can't-miss proposition.

Last time I paid a visit home to Georgia, the Mega Millions jackpot was at $120 million, and since then it's rolled over to a cool $146 million. What would I do with money like that? Oh, I'd find some ways to blow it to pieces, make no mistake. Obviously my first order of business would be to take care of practical matters like paying off credit cards, making charitable donations, and investing to create a secure future for the children I will one day either father myself or purchase off the Chinese black market, but with nine figures at my disposal I'm sure I'd have a lot left over even after all that. So this week's +5 is The First Five Things I'd Buy If I Hit The Mega Millions Jackpot Tonight:



A beach house on Edisto Island, S.C.
We first went to Edisto back when I was like 12 years old because one of my dad's patients gave us a week at his (gorgeous, immaculate) beach house there as a thank-you for having treated him so well. I fell in love with the place almost the minute we set foot on the island. It's about halfway between Hilton Head and Charleston on the South Carolina coast, which means it's close enough to those places to go shopping or get a fancy dinner or something, but far enough away that things are fairly quiet and isolated most of the time (and it's nowhere near as loud or tacky as Myrtle Beach). Sort-of-funny story: The guy who owned the house was a South Carolina grad and had Gamecock memorabilia all over the place, but this was long before I had any sort of real immersion in SEC football, so I just snickered at all the books and signs and trinkets referring to the Cocks. Heh, I really haven't matured in the last two decades at all.



A Lego room
We've been over this, right? Yeah, we have: a room covered floor-to-ceiling with those green, nubby Lego baseplates and with a giant walk-in closet full of shelves and drawers to contain and organize different kinds of Lego pieces. I certainly don't pretend to be the first person to come up with this idea, but I'd like to think I could do it better than anyone who has come before me. And that would be a major step in forging my lifelong friendship with Knowshon Moreno.



An antique Citroën DS
Preferably a fuel-injected, flush-headlamped DS23 from 1973 or so. I have to think I'd be the only person in Birmingham with one of these. And just to be really pointlessly extravagant, I might also try to find an old, scrapped 2CV body shell that I could put in the game room of my man-cave and use as a driver's seat for playing Mario Kart Wii. With all this newfound time on my hands, I have been crushing it at Mario Kart these days.



Eighties-style tabletop-cabinet arcade game
Man cannot live on Wii alone, however. If I could, I'd try to find one of those arcade machines that has like 39 games in a single machine -- Pac-Man, Galaga, Spy Hunter, Xevious, Donkey Kong, Arkanoid, all the good ones. Why a tabletop-style setup rather than an upright cabinet? Because you can't set a drink on an upright.



A big enough donation to the University of Georgia athletics association that I can get season tickets for the rest of my life
I honestly can't even fathom how big a donation this would have to be, but I'd like to see if, oh, a check for $20 million or so would be enough to convince them to name it Doug Gillett Field at Sanford Stadium. And if it was, whether they would then paint this picture in little logos on the 20-yard lines.

Wish me luck, peasants! In the meantime, the Ten:

1. Big Audio Dynamite II, "Can't Wait" (live)
2. Marvin Gaye, "Right On"
3. Gorillaz, "Latin Simone"
4. Talking Heads, "Slippery People" (live)
5. Thievery Corporation, "The Foundation"
6. Isaac Hayes, "Theme from 'Shaft'"
7. Pet Shop Boys, "Up Against It"
8. House of Pain, "Jump Around"
9. Handsome Boy Modeling School, "The Projects"
10. Pet Shop Boys, "It's Alright" (extended disco mix)

Your turn: Throw your lottery-jackpot wish lists and/or Random Tens in the comments.

A memo from the desk of Arnold T. Pants, Esq.:Things to do in Denver when you're unemployed.

Doing nothing, and it's everything I thought it could be.

Recently downsized but don't feel like actually looking for another job yet? Me neither, working sucks. Here's some shit to distract you instead:

· First of all, I'm gonna have to go ahead and pimp some of my own work, should any paying blogs, Web sites, or sports journals be looking for writers: Here's my less-than-rosy take on George O'Leary's job security for Dr. Saturday (prithee excuse the character formatting, we're working on it), and here's MY EXCLUSIVE ALL-ACCESS INSIDE LOOK at Lane Kiffin and the Tennessee football program for EDSBS! Why did Kiffykins give such broad access to his deepest, most top-secret planning to a Georgia interloper like myself? He probably fucked up and forgot to check that I was a Bulldog fan, but like everything else, he'll say it was all part of his master plan.

· It has come to my attention that some people found this past week's Monday Morning Cage Match unfairly biased in favor of Lexus and against Texas. One or two people hinted that had a category along the lines of "End zones" been included, the Lone Star State would've cleaned up. OK, I'm an open-minded guy, let's compare rear ends:


Lexus SC430 . . .


. . . and Texas Longhorns.

OK, yeah, you know what, y'all were right and I was wrong. Game over, Texas wins. My decision is final.

· And now that I've pimped my own work, it's time to pimp some other people's: Platinum-level Friend of Holly (and therefore friend of Hey Jenny Slater) Livia drops Pat Buchanan with a knee to the balls and keeps on kicking, while over at Practically Harmless, Sister of Hey Jenny Slater does the same to the Twilight book series here and here.

What else do we know about Bella? We know that she's clumsy. Sooo clumsy. Clummy-clum-clumsy. You can hear "Yakety Sax" faintly in the background throughout the book. She falls down in the woods. She trips over her own feet at the beach. She trips over her own feet in class. She drops her books. She thwacks her classmates in the head with a volleyball. She thwacks herself in the head with a badminton racquet. She gets paper cuts. At one point, Meyer specifically describes her eating a bowl of cereal, "chewing each bite with care," as if a Lucky Charms-Mama Cass moment is an ever-looming threat. And in case you weren't able to pick up on it yourself, Bella is kind enough to tell you herself.

I'm absolutely ordinary - well, except for bad things like all the near-death experiences and being so clumsy that I'm almost disabled.

Oh, are you clumsy? I totes hadn't noticed.

· Back to Pat Buchanan for a moment, sort of: As blatant a bigot as Pat Buchanan is, he is completely, utterly sane compared to Glenn Beck, who did everything except audibly shit his pants when a caller somehow managed to get past what I'm sure was NORAD-tight call screening to disagree with him on health care:



Now, here's my question: You're a radio host. You're crazier than a Greyhound bus full of methed-up ferrets, but be that as it may, you've somehow developed a sincerely devoted following despite yourself. Who says "GET OFF MY PHONE"?!?!? You're the host, Miss DuBois, fuckin' drop the call if it's that upsetting to you! Why throw a literal howling hissy fit and make yourself look like even more of a twit than you already have? I refuse to believe that anyone, even his most ardent fans, are actually laboring under the delusion that Glenn Beck is sane at this point; I think his fans are actually hoping he's crazy enough to jump the White House fence with an Uzi in hand or something like that. Actually, in Beck's case it'd probably be more along the lines of a Super Soaker filled with ReaLemon, because that's just the kind of thing he'd come up with, but whatever.

· In other news of wingnuttery, some folks are apparently so determined to take Obama down that they're making up stories about Obama getting booed during the first pitch at the All-Star game last week. Hey, if that's all it takes to make something true, then I would like to announce here and now on this blog that Erin Andrews didn't spurn my advances in Tempe the weekend of last season's UGA-ASU game, she in fact came back to the house our group had rented and we polished off a '98 Dom in the hot tub. Salud, motherfuckers!


Oh, yeah, I got her number. It's OK, I know you want to touch me.

· Remember the Friday Random Ten+5 a couple months back in which the Mi-24/25/35 series attack helicopter received an induction into the Badass Hall of Fame? The "Hind" originally earned its badass reputation by laying waste to the Afghan resistance in the early 1980s, to the point that only a rapid influx of American-sourced surface-to-air missiles (as highly entertainingly dramatized in "Charlie Wilson's War") succeeded in turning the tide. Well, now that the Afghan military's forces are in the process of being rebuilt by coalition forces so that they can stand on their own two feet and defend themselves from the Taliban, the Afghan National Army Air Corps is being supplied with -- what else? -- Mi-35s. The irony here is so delicious and satisfying that I'm now substituting it for one meal each day.


The hunted become the hunters, or something like that.

· I would like to go on record as saying that Al Franken will one day go down in history as one of the better U.S. senators we've ever had. Unlike "Stuart Saves His Family," this statement is not intended as a joke.

· Finally, courtesy of Twitter pal and equally rabid Bulldog partisan Ally, here's the first solid, specific recommendation anyone's given me so far as to what I should be doing with myself while I'm unemployed. Soon as my folks leave their house for any length of time, I'm building something along the lines of this:


Rooftop Waterslide

· Actually, maybe this is what I need to be doing with myself:



Of course, pimping, as Big Daddy Kane warned us, isn't easy, and I should probably save this kind of work for when I really buckle down and get serious about holding down a regular job.

The Friday Random Ten+5 is all about making learning fun. Or at least tolerable.

A few years ago I was visiting my friend Kristen up in the D.C. area, and we were taking one last blitz through the Smithsonian before I had to run to National Airport and get on a plane. And we got to talking: If we came into an inconceivable sum of money, enough to endow a whole network of museums in a major city, what would those museums be? The Smithsonian covers a lot of territory -- honestly, once you get past American history, natural history, art, and planes and rockets, you kind of have to get down into some very specific categories to come up with something new. But I think I've got five ideas that would provide the nucleus of a museum system that would bring joy and knowledge to people around the world. This week's +5 is Five Museums That Would Make Up The Dougsonian Institution:



The Museum of the Interstate Highway System
I know that not necessarily everyone finds the Interstate system as fascinating as I do, but I think it's amazing how Eisenhower just up and said "Hey, let's build tens of thousands of miles of big wide roads all over the place" and bam, they started growing. This museum would have exhibits on road construction and how the government decides to build roads where they do, with special information on sections of Interstate built over and through mountains, over large bodies of water, and even under the ocean. And one big room would be devoted to an interactive map of the nation's most lucrative speed traps. See, you're going to learn important information here.
Temporary exhibit: From MacArthur Maze to Spaghetti Junction: America's Great Interchanges



The National Air Disaster Museum
Whenever I go to Washington, no matter how packed my schedule is, I always carve out a little time to wander through the National Air & Space Museum. I loved airplanes as a kid; my dad used to take me there all the time. But the one thing it doesn't have a lot about is airplane crashes. This museum would feature artifacts of some of the biggest and most famous plane crashes of the past 50 years or so -- this section of Delta flight 191 would make a nice centerpiece for the exhibit hall, if we could get our hands on it -- as well as an interactive feature where you and a group of friends could pick seats on a number of different doomed flights and then find out whether you would've survived or not. Morbid fun for the whole family!
Temporary exhibit: Aeroblotto: Alcohol-Related Crashes of the Post-Soviet Era



The National Gallery of Football Bloopers
As much as the Smithsonian Institution contains, it doesn't have a whole lot on sports, except for I guess one small section of the Museum of American History. This museum would be devoted to football, but not the great historic plays and players of the game, since we've already got multiple halls of fame for that. Nope, this museum would display the great fumbles, pick-sixes, missed blocks, blown calls, disastrous trick plays, and general brain farts in football history at the pro, college, and high-school levels. (And what the hell, the CFL and arena leagues too.) Plenty of hands-on opportunities here, including interactive features such as Which Detroit Lion Is Going To Blow This Play? and Can You Return A Jarrett Lee Interception For A Touchdown?
Temporary exhibit: "It's Just a Game, Dawg": A Reggie Ball Retrospective, 2003-2007



The National Library of Lingerie
I'm just going to come out and say it: Women's underwear fascinates me. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also on its own merits; there are just so many different kinds, styles, sizes, colors, and materials that someone needs to open a museum to contain it all. This institution would be a wellspring of knowledge on all the different types of lingerie and why they're different (how is a thong different from a G-string? you won't know until you go!), along with a detailed history of lingerie showing just how much smaller everything is than it used to be. There would also be a huge interactive exhibit on bra sizes and how, for example, a 32F cup holds the same volume as a 36D (it would be hands-on, of course). Everything you always wanted to know about undies but were afraid to ask.
Temporary exhibit: Lift and Separate: The Physics of the Push-Up



The American Institute of Fast-Food Innovation
Confession #2: I'm a sucker for new frontiers in fast-food. I was all over the McRib and the P'Zone; I even liked the McDonald's Pizza when that product had its very short trial run back in the early 1990s. You put some new cheese or topping on a plain old burger and I'll eventually succumb to temptation and go out and try one. This museum would have a big exhibit hall centering around that ongoing cheeseburger arms race, in which fast-food joints constantly try to outdo each other with bigger, sloppier, and more artery-clogging burgers, but it'd also have exhibits on obscure regional and seasonal offerings through history, such as the McLobster (yes, some McDonald's still sell lobster rolls at certain times of year in New England and the Canadian maritimes). And the museum would be connected to an international laboratory funded to research and create the fast-food advances of tomorrow.
Temporary exhibit: The World's Longest Curly Fries

And now the Ten:

1. Dave Matthews, "Dodo"
2. Downright, "Say Some Words"
3. The Clash, "Death is a Star"
4. Fatboy Slim, "Praise You"
5. Ryuichi Sakamoto, "Bibo no Aozora/04"
6. U2, "New York"
7. St. Germain, "Latin Note"
8. New Order, "60 Miles an Hour"
9. The Clash, "Know Your Rights"
10. De La Soul, "Ghetto Thang"

Now it's your turn. Your Random Tens and/or brilliant museum concepts in the comments thread, if you please.

A somewhat sensationalized version of a conversation had with my parents this past weekend.

A river-view table at a nice restaurant in Columbus. Nicer than the protagonist deserves, at any rate.

ME: So have there been any repercussions from the I'm-engaged thing I pulled on Facebook last week?

MY DAD: Your Aunt _________ was certainly excited.

ME: That's right . . . she's on Facebook, isn't she.

MY DAD: Mmmhmm. She was excited, and by the end of the week, so was the rest of the family.

ME: Oh. (pause) So, uh . . . how many people do you think it got out to?

DAD: By now, no telling.

ME: So you think I should just, uh . . . e-mail everyone in the family and tell them it was a joke and apologize?

DAD: It's not that simple. By now it's gotten around to relatives you haven't even met. Actually, it's gotten around to relatives I haven't met, not in years, anyway.

ME: I think you're exaggerating.

DAD: Someone up in Connecticut e-mailed me "congrats" the other day and asked if you'd set a date. I e-mailed my mother to find out who this person was and she said it was one of great-granny Renshaw's nephews. Which I guess would make him my . . . second cousin? Once removed? I can ask her if you'd really like to know.

ME: Oh.

(long, awkward pause)

DAD: Your mom and I were talking, though, and there is one thing you could do to sort of, I don't know, clean all this up.

ME: What's that?

DAD: Well, have you thought about . . . actually getting engaged?

ME: Well, duh, sure I have. I mean, one of these days, I hope to meet the right girl, and we hit it off, and . . .

DAD: No no no, that's not what I mean. I mean, have you thought about just going out and getting engaged?

ME: What do you mean, "just 'going out' and getting engaged"?

DAD: I mean go out, just find a girl, and get engaged to her. For a few months. Get engaged, let everybody get excited for a little while, and then if you want you can just break it off later.

(even longer, more awkward pause)

ME: Mom, are you on board with this?

MY MOM: Well, you are 30, you're kind of at a point in your life where it wouldn't be the strangest thing that you could do . . .

ME: But, I mean, as a Catholic, doesn't that strike you as being kind of . . . disrespectful to the institution of marriage?

DAD: Not if you don't actually get married.

(long, awkward pause, not quite as long or awkward as the previous pause but still fairly long and awkward)

DAD: Look, all I'm saying is, you've got a ton of relatives out there who think you got engaged because you lied -- the least you could do is make it true for a little while. Give them a return on their emotional investment.

ME: But, OK, who would I get married to?

DAD: What about ______?

ME: She's married.

DAD: Oh, right, right.

MOM: What about her sister? The one you got the dog from?

ME: Married too. Remember? She got married before ______ did --

DAD: Didn't you date a girl for a few months you met at the park -- Amy or something? The one who had the two Boston terriers?

ME: Ugh, and who dumped me over a voice mail? Try again.

DAD: The Hooters waitress?

ME: Seeing someone, and probably not interested.

DAD: What about Holly from the thing you did last year the week of the Tennessee game?

ME: On the other side of the continent, and probably not interested either.

MOM: She was interested enough to imagine what life would be like if she was married to you . . .

ME: That's . . . not even remotely on the same planet as the same thing, Mom.

MOM: (hurt) Well, I'm not going to keep giving you ideas if you're just going to shoot them down.

(long, awkward pause, about equivalent in length and awkwardness to the preceding pause)

DAD: Look. We can go around in circles about this all evening long, but the fact is, you created a situation here, and you need to fix it. Your mom and I have given you an option, and it's yours to take or not take, but you better do something.

ME: Huh.

(long, awkward pause, longer than the preceding pause but perhaps not quite as awkward)

ME: If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go use the bathroom, and if the waitress comes back, tell her I'd like another Guinness, and two would be even better.

(excuses himself and heads into the lobby; dials phone)

HOLLY: What do you want?

ME: Hey, uh, how's it going?

HOLLY: Fine, what do you want?

ME: What makes you think I want something?

HOLLY: So you're just calling to chat?

ME: Uh, well, no.

(long, awkward pause)

ME: So, uh, the engagement-on-Facebook thing has kind of blown up in my face, and my dad's kind of riding my ass to do something about it, so I could use your help.

HOLLY: To do what?

ME: You want to, uh, get engaged? For a little while?

(awkward pause of medium length)

HOLLY: Well, look, this has been fun, but I've got a ton of cleaning to do, and . . .

ME: No no no, don't hang up, don't hang up, seriously. You want to get engaged? Just for, like, a few months? It'll placate my family for a little while, then we can break it off, no questions asked, I just have to do something . . .

HOLLY: And what do I tell my family?

ME: Same thing I'm telling mine -- and when we break it off, you can even tell them it was my fault and that I'm a huge asshole. I just need something to take the heat off for a few months.

(long, awkward pause)

HOLLY: I want a ring.

ME: Uh . . . OK . . .

HOLLY: Silver band, 'cause gold will turn my finger green, and some kind of round cut, none of that princess-cut bullshit. Oh, and I don't get out of bed for less than a full carat.

ME: Wow, uh . . . how much is that gonna cost me?

HOLLY: I don't know, how much is your family hating you for the rest of your life gonna cost you?

ME: Right, right, sorry, sorry. OK. You got a ring.

HOLLY: And I do want you to be the one who's the asshole when we finally break up.

ME: Yeah. Sure. No problem.

(pause)

HOLLY: And you're gonna have to come out here and do it.

ME: What? To L.A.? Why? Why can't I just e-mail everyone and tell them the news?

HOLLY: Because my family's gonna want photographic proof -- the nice restaurant, the ring, getting down on one knee, the whole deal. I don't care about any of that, mind you, but if you want to back everything up then you're gonna have to do it. I'm going for verisimillitude here.

ME: Well, I guess since I'm headed to Vegas anyway . . .

HOLLY: Oh, yeah, and when we're all in Vegas, you buy all my drinks.

ME: For fuck's sake --

HOLLY: In case it slipped your mind, I'm the one doing you a favor here, huckleberry. Ring, in L.A., my drinks in Vegas, or I walk and good luck explaining things to your relatives.

(long pause)

ME: Can we go to Legoland while I'm out in California?

HOLLY: Sure, what the hell.

ME: See you on Monday.

TH-TH-TH-THAT'S ALL, FOLKS (FOR THE TIME BEING)

The Friday Random Ten+5 dares to dream.

Kind of a rough week here in the Salty 'Ham -- nothing life-threatening, just a lot of crap that I could leave everything behind (except the dogs, of course) and go off and start an entirely new life somewhere. Maybe I'd keep my own name; maybe I'd go Witness Protection Program and give myself a brand-new, cooler-sounding identity like Dirk Hardcastle. Then again, I'm kind of a low-key guy, so maybe a name that doesn't call quite as much attention to itself, something like Flint McHugepenis. I don't know, I haven't really thought it all through just yet.

Truthfully, though, there's a lot of stuff I'd like to be able to do, some of which I can still learn as a 30-year-old, others of which I probably can't. But as long as I'm fantasizing about alternate-universe lives I might like to be leading right now, this week's +5 might as well be Five Talents I Wish I Had:



Playing the piano
I would love to be able to hear a song one time, sit down at a piano, and within a few minutes be able to bang out the melody on the keys, whether the song was Beethoven's "Für Elise" or Camper van Beethoven's "Take the Skinheads Bowling." And yeah, I know, there are any number of people out there who would be happy to start giving me piano lessons right now, but I don't want to go through the decades of lessons and drills and having to learn from scratch how to play the piano, I just want to be magically granted the ability to do it.



Speaking Russian
I started taking some very rudimentary Russian lessons a few years back when I thought I was going over to Russia with the Peace Corps, and kind of put it aside when the assignment fell through before I'd even gotten over there. I can write in Cyrillic and sound it out -- which is fun all by itself, because the Russian alphabet, above, is one bad-ass-looking alphabet -- but I'd still like to be able to actually speak the language and carry on a conversation in it, because that's probably the only way my future career as an international super-spy is going to get off the ground.



Breakdancing
Some people, my parents included, have suggested they don't want me trying breakdancing because I grew up with scoliosis and I had a metal rod installed in my spine when I was a teenager. But if anything, I think that metal rod would make me even stronger and more able to sustain the strain that breakdancers put on their bodies on a regular basis. In fact, my eventual goal would be to quit my job, lay out my square of cardboard by the Starbucks in Five Points, and rip shit up on a regular enough basis that I could make a living out of it. Birmingham isn't like New York, where there are breakers in every subway station; I'd pretty much have the market cornered here.



Flying a jet airplane
In addition to scoliosis, I have "mild colorblindness" on my lengthy list of genetic imperfections and deficiencies, so I can never fly for the military or a U.S. airline, but I wouldn't mind knowing how to fly a plane of my own. I mean, once I sell my novel and make an assload of money and buy my own Bombardier Global Express, I'm just gonna hire a pilot anyway, so that I can kick back in the cabin and get liquored up and watch movies and whatnot, but in the event that my hired pilot strokes out in the cockpit or something, I'd like to be able to grab the controls and fly us to safety. Not only would it be lifesaving, it'd be a fun story to tell at my next high-school reunion.



Bending the laws of time and space to my whim
And yes, if I accidentally locked myself inside a particle accelerator and acquired these abilities, I'd go about my business butt-naked too, just like Dr. Manhattan. I mean, what the hell is anyone gonna say to me? I can make you explode just by pointing at you, Mr. Clothes Lover.

And now the Ten:

1. Gorillaz, "Sound Check (Gravity)"
2. A Tribe Called Quest, "Like It Like That"
3. 3rd Bass, "Hoods"
4. Wang Chung, "Dance Hall Days"
5. Crowded House, "Kare Kare"
6. The Police, "Message in a Bottle"
7. R.E.M., "Lotus"
8. Gorillaz, "Rock the House"
9. The Doors, "Break on Through (to the Other Side)"
10. Sting, "My One and Only Love"

Your turn, mortals. Throw your own Random Tens, and/or lists of talents you've always wanted to magically be granted, in the comments.

Scene from an as-yet-unrealized future.

Setting: Five years from now, late fall turning into winter, a large spare room on the third floor of a house in Georgetown. Save for a hardwood walkway leading from the doorway to the opposite side of the room, the floor is covered entirely in green plastic panels with identical rows of little bumps, and the walls are covered with the same kind of panel in blue. Buildings and vehicles are scattered amidst thousands of Lego bricks of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

Two grown men are sprawled amidst this chaos of multicolored plastic: D, a doughy, bearded Caucasian in his mid-thirties, and K, an athletic African-American man in his mid-twenties. They both sift determinedly through the mounds of pieces, occasionally picking one out to snap onto their creations; D pauses from time to time to check on a baby napping in a bassinet in the corner.

K: You got any flat gray things over there?

D: Yeah, what size you need?

K: Four dots by . . . six dots. Two of 'em, if you got 'em.

D: Yeah, here you go.

K: Thanks.

D: What are you making, anyway?

K: Well, I already made the "Knight Rider" car, now I'm making the truck for it to drive up into.

D: Sweet.

They work in silence for a few minutes. D checks the bassinet again, where his infant son is still sound asleep.

D: That spin move you pulled on Umenyiora the other day was sick, by the way.

K: Thanks. You like the seats I got you?

D: Fifty yard line, fifteen rows up? Fuck yes I liked 'em. We saw everything.

K: I'da gotten you a skybox if you'da wanted one.

D: Aw, hell, if I wanted to watch it on TV and get waited on I'd just as soon watch it at home. Being in the stands is way better.

Another pause.

D: Fuck. Why can't I find any blue lights to match this red one?

K: Thought you said you had some.

D: Yeah, but they're all the wrong kind. These are all round ones with a bump on top. I just want a flat, square one. It has to match the one on the other wingtip.

K: Why not just use a round red one with a bump on the other side?

D: See? This is why you're my friend.

D snaps the red and blue lights into place and eyes his creation critically.

K: What's that, an Airbus A380?

D: Yeah, but I can't get the tail to look exactly right. The real one is longer and sweeps up a lot more gradually than this.

K: I think it looks fine.

D: That's nice of you to say. (pause) Hey, you want to stay for dinner tonight?

K: Uh, sure. Your wife ain't gonna mind, is she?

D: Pffft, no. Besides, I'm gonna be doing all the cooking anyway.

K: What you cookin'?

D: Macaroni and cheese.

K: With the crispy stuff on top?

D: Fuck yes, lawya.

K: Sweet.

D: Figured we'd eat some mac and cheese, whip out another one of the James Bond DVDs . . . you still haven't seen "You Only Live Twice," right?

K: No, that sounds cool. Can't stay out too late, though. Practice is early tomorrow morning. Big game at Dallas this week. Playoff implications.

D: Oh, you don't need to remind me. I'm all over that shit. Plus Clooney asked me to TiVo it for him.

K: You know George Clooney?

D: Yeah, I thought I told you. He's a cool guy and everything, but he's always bumming favors off of people -- "TiVo the Monday-night game for me," "Hey, write me a screenplay for this movie I want to do," blah blah blah. Funny motherfucker, though. He's gonna be swinging by here in a couple weeks, actually -- you should come by. We're gonna do Wii bowling. Clooney loves that shit.

K: Yeah, man. Long as we've clinched home-field by then. Zorn's been riding us pretty hard lately. Always starts gettin' tense this time of year.

D: No, I hear you.

K: Done!

K holds up his creation, a black semi truck with a huge gray trailer. He flips open the back door of the trailer and a black car pops out.

D: Baller. Did you even do the inside of the trailer, too?

K: Check it out.

D: Aw, it's got the little computers and everything. Lemme go get my camera, we'll take some pictures of it.

K: Thanks, man.

D produces a digital camera and takes several pictures of the truck and the black car.

D: Awesome. We'll put these up on the Web site tonight.

K: You know what, man? I love my teammates and everything, but I think you're my best friend here.

D: Aww, you're my best friend too, Knowshon.

D's wife, W, appears in the doorway, her arms loaded with shopping bags from a number of upscale stores.

W: Well, it looks like my boys have been busy today. What'cha been making?

D: Knowshon built the "Knight Rider" truck. Here, show her.

W: Wow, that's impressive. Y'all gonna be ready for some dinner in a little bit?

D: Yeah, I'm gonna make macaroni and cheese. Can we eat it while we watch one of the Bond DVDs in the family room?

W: Well, I suppose.

K: You're the best, Mrs. G.

W: But don't forget, first you have to write me up a draft of that proposal for the nursing school's multimedia series.

D: Uh . . . what?

The green-and-blue room and the brightly colored smattering of Lego bricks dissolve into a grim bluish-gray cubicle, where D is sitting in a desk chair, fitfully shaking himself out of what was probably an unplanned midday nap. His boss, B, stands over him quizzically.

B: Our proposal we're going to take with us to the nursing-school meeting on Thursday. You got my e-mail about that, right?

D: Oh, yeah . . . right. Yeah, the meeting.

B: You need to start responding to those e-mails. Sometimes I'm not sure whether you've gotten them or not.

D: Oh, yeah, I meant to. I've just . . . had a lot on my mind lately.

B heads back to her office. Once she's safely out of view, D moves his mouse to switch off his computer's screen saver. When his desktop reappears, his Web browser is displaying the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Web site, where a banner headline reads: UGA'S STAFFORD, MORENO DECLARE FOR NFL DRAFT.

D sighs audibly . . . wistfully.

D: Someday, Knowshon. Someday.


(Seriously, good luck, Knowshon. Wish you would've stayed a Dawg for one more year, but with that NFL paycheck, you're gonna be able to buy all the Legos you can handle. GATA.)