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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
· Life update: So I've been at my new job for almost two months now, and things have been going well -- my affinity for Legos is already becoming well-known throughout the office, which I think is probably a good foretaste of the full-blown Georgia football obsession that will be manifesting itself in just a few weeks. I've also moved into a house, a little 1930s-era number just a few blocks off of the park. (Renting, not owning -- please, bitch, you know I'm not financially responsible enough to handle anything as complicated as a mortgage right now.) Between the park and the fenced-in backyard, Champ and Jenna are doing pretty well, thanks. I'll put some photos of the place up when I've got the place looking right (i.e. like a hobo's not squatting there), but I do have one thing set up exactly the way I want it, and it's the most important thing: the bar.
· In other Columbus-related news, those of you who (like me) were upset to see David Hale depart his role as the Ledger-Enquirer's resident Bulldog correspondent/blogger extraordinaire will be relieved to know that his successor, one Seth Emerson, gives a pretty good interview. Consider, though: Hale is leaving the Bulldogs beat to go cover the Phillies for a paper in Delaware; Emerson comes to Georgia from South Carolina after having covered the Gamecocks for five years. If there's a starker contrast between trading up and trading down, I must confess I haven't seen it. (Welcome, Seth.)
· As for the rest of my homemaking responsibilities, I've been sucked into Ikea's neon with a big assist from Holly -- I wouldn't say that I look forward to Ikea trips as much as I look forward to excursions to, say, the Lego store, but it's getting close.
· Speaking of Legos, I have a new gift idea for anyone who's interested in buying it for me -- the Tower Bridge, all 4,287 pieces of which will be hitting stores on October 1. I think it's going to be around three hundred bucks, so let me know when I should set up the PayPal account for y'all to donate to.
If you've been reading this blog for a long time you're probably aware of my borderline-unnatural obsession with station wagons, Volvos in particular. So imagine my dismay today when I discovered that this sweet piece of ass . . .
. . . probably won't be coming to the United States. That's right: Volvo, the company that helped turn station wagons into status objects, that put the 265-horsepower V70R on the road, that once used the advertising tagline "Until Ferrari builds a station wagon," is denying us the V60 wagon you see above. That's kind of like McDonald's announcing that it's only selling Big Macs in Europe and Asia from now on. Sure, you could just go get a Quarter Pounder or even an Angus Deluxe, but what if what you really want is a fricking Big Mac? And why would McDonald's just arbitrarily deprive us of the main product they built their name on to begin with?
Of course, a lot of the blame rests with people who insist on buying SUVs instead of wagons, which are just as practical but sleeker, more agile, and way more efficient. At any rate, in a world where even Volvo can no longer be counted on to stand up for station wagons, I figured I'd use this week's +5 to pay tribute to the wagon's unsung badassedness -- so join me, won't you, as I sing the praises of the Five Most Awesome Non-Volvo Station Wagons Ever:
Ford Taurus Hell of a way to kick this off, I know. But hear me out: When the Taurus first came out in 1985, at a time when pretty much every other car was rocking sharp angles and square sealed-beam headlights, this thing was hot shit. Or at least I thought so as an impressionable third-grader, and when my mom finally replaced her old Chevy Malibu with a Taurus LX wagon in 1987, I was in heaven. Not only did the thing look badass, but for the first time our family had a car with a rear-facing third seat in it, which my sister and I had coveted for years. Of course, it didn't take that long before we discovered that my cousin Duff and I were the only ones who could sit back there for any length of time without getting carsick, but hey, good for us. Incidentally, I remember taking a family trip up to Washington, D.C., when I was in junior high, and Duff was the one sitting back there with me while we were stopped at a traffic light somewhere in Alexandria and a dude in an Escort rear-ended us. Yup, we got to watch the whole way as the guy -- who was dealing with one of his kids in the passenger seat -- sped toward us, looked up, mouthed the words "Oh shit," tried to hit the brakes, and plowed into us at 30 or 35 miles an hour. The Taurus? Ended up with barely a scratch on the back bumper. So don't tell me that thing wasn't gangsta. Sometimes I still get wistful about it. Room for five passengers and two or three kegs . . . yeah, that would've been an awesome car to take up to college.
Citroën DS Break Before anyone makes any French-car jokes, "Break" isn't meant to be a consumer warning, it's just the French shorthand for "station wagon." (In the UK it was called "Safari" or "Familiale"; in the U.S. it was just called the "Wagon." Man, we had no imagination whatsoever back then.) By any name, the DS was decades ahead of its time when it first hit the roads in the mid-fifties: It was one of the first cars ever to have disc brakes, power steering, and a semi-automatic transmission; the wagon added a cavernous cargo area and a rear-facing third seat (w00t). The DS as a whole developed a devoted cult following, but the wagon has been converted into everything from ambulances to Ghostbustermobiles to off-roaders to, well, whatever the hell this is. There are still a few of them plying the roads in various far-flung corners of the U.S., and I'd like to think I'll be able to get my hands on one of them someday.
Bentley Continental Flying Star OK, this one's a bit of a fudge, because it's not technically a station wagon, it's a "shooting-brake" -- a specialized niche of car developed by (mostly British) rich guys who wanted to have something as fast and stylish as a grand touring car but also wanted to be able to carry their rifles and hunting dogs around their property. The Flying Star, converted from the standard-issue Bentley Continental by Italian coachbuilding house Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera, has everything that makes the Continental awesome (twin-turbo W12 engine, 0-60 in less than five seconds, top speed butting right up against the 200-mph mark) but adds a cargo area big enough for me to go by and borrow my parents' lawnmower when I've got yard work to do. Hey, awesome! And it only costs 590,000 Euros, which at the present exchange rate I think converts to approximately half a bajillion dollars. Give or take.
Alfa Romeo 156 Crosswagon The Crosswagon was sort of the Italian version of the Subaru Outback -- take a mainstream station wagon, jack up the suspension a couple inches, add bigger tires, and throw on some body cladding to make it appeal to people who might otherwise get snowed into buying an SUV. As the picture above indicates, it could actually hold its own off-road -- as much as anyone in Italy would ever need it to, anyway -- but had a high-pressure turbodiesel engine that got gas mileage in the mid-30s. Presumably this would have been the preferred car of left-leaning Italian soccer moms, which is a demographic I can live with. (Actually, they'd be called "mamme di calcio" over there. See, this blog teaches you stuff.)
Audi RS6 Avant I'm assuming you gearheads out there are familiar with the Audi R8, yes? OK, ponder this: Audi took the 5.2-liter V10 out of that car, dialed the horsepower up a few notches, and dropped it into a station wagon, which you can purchase and drive up to 174 miles per hour -- assuming you live in Germany, have $160,000, and are comfortable with the prospect of your face being peeled off by g-forces, Colonel Stapp-style. Quite simply, it is not only the most bad-ass station wagon ever produced but one of the most bad-ass cars on the planet, period. The only thing it doesn't have is the all-important rear-facing third seat, which is kind of a shame, because I think it'd be fun to put your kids back there and let them wave as you smoke Porsche 911s and Shelby Mustangs away from stoplights.
By the way, I'm launching a Twitter campaign (aimed at @VolvoCars_US) to demand that Volvo treat the V60 wagon as an equal: Be sure to use the hashtags #shameonyouvolvo and #freetheV60, along with whatever else you can come up with. With your help, I can force Volvo to bend to my whim and bring the V60 stateside, or at least send me some free shit.
Here's the Ten:
1. Pet Shop Boys, "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing" (extended version) 2. The Trammps, "Disco Inferno" 3. The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the U.K." 4. Eric B. and Rakim, "I Ain't No Joke" 5. U2, "The Unforgettable Fire" 6. Ned's Atomic Dustbin, "Grey Cell Green" 7. Beck, "Novacane" 8. Gorillaz, "Feel Good Inc." 9. Morrissey, "I'm Not Sorry" 10. Ice Cube, "Wicked"
Your turn -- your favorite wagons and/or wagon-related memories (even those not involving accidents), along with your own Random Tens, in the comments, por favor.
Over the past couple days, a number of the SBN-affiliated blogs -- EDSBS and Burnt Orange Nation among them -- have been posting about their favorite players from their respective teams. Not the players with the best stats, mind you, or even the players who won the most, just the guys they most enjoyed watching, the guys who put smiles on their faces and made them think, "OK, that dude makes me proud to be a [insert team name here] fan." Particularly at a time when the nauseatingly contrived spectacle of last night's Lebronathon makes us wonder if it's worth it to even call ourselves sports fans at all, it's nice to be able to pick out guys we do like and give them the credit they deserve just for brightening our days.
So I decided to make this week's +5 my own list -- not definitive, by any means, since I only came to UGA in 1995 and hadn't really had anyone indoctrinate me into the ways of the red and black before that. But these are the guys I got most excited about watching, the guys who would put the proudest grins on my face when somebody would ask me, "So, hey, what do you think about . . . ?" Herewith, simple, short and sweet, my Five Favorite Georgia Players:
5. Tony Taylor Tony never seemed to get quite the same national media attention that, say, Rennie Curran or Odell Thurman got. But he always seemed to have a knack for being in on the play. If you needed a sack, he'd get one. If you needed an interception, he could come up with that too. And if you needed one of the weirdest, wildest scoop-'n'-scores in Georgia football history to flip the momentum of a game -- i.e. the play against Georgia Tech in 2006 seen above -- he'd pull that off, too. Never talked a lot of shit to his opponents, even though he'd usually earned the right to; just worked his ass off every single play, and more often than not had a big grin on his face afterward.
4. Hines Ward The 2006 Super Bowl MVP did it all, too, just on the opposite side of the ball: He caught passes, he carried out of the backfield, he returned kicks, and just for good measure, he passed quite a bit too, taking over at QB midway through his sophomore season in '95 after both Mike Bobo and Brian Smith got hurt. (As a result, he holds Georgia's record for passing yards in a bowl game, with a 31-of-59, 413-yard performance in the '95 Peach Bowl.) Oh, and he'd block a bitch into the earth's mantle, too, if he had to, a talent he has continued to display with great relish in his justifiably lauded career as a Pittsburgh Steeler. In both Athens and Pittsburgh, he's always seemed to have a big smile on his face as he climbs out of a pile of tacklers, and the smile just gets bigger the harder he's been hit. If this was an "I Hope He Plays Until He's 60" list, he'd probably be at the top.
3. D.J. Shockley Shock was the perfect story: Hypertalented recruit commits to the Dawgs, ends up having to wait his turn for four years behind the guy who would eventually set a new record for wins by a I-A starting QB, then has an absolute dream season -- 24-5 TD-INT ratio, another four TDs on the ground -- that culminates in an SEC title. He had every opportunity to turn into either a cranky, resentful also-ran or a raging egotistical douchebag, yet somehow it never happened; he was such a good kid that, if someone gave me a time machine but said I could only do three things with it, I'd stop the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, then go back to October 2005 and convince Mark Richt to bench him for the second quarter of the Arkansas game. Seriously, Shock deserved an undefeated season that year (or at the very least deserved to go out with something other than an utter defensive collapse and loss to West Virginia in the Sugar Bowl). I still hold out a glimmer of hope he's gonna break out and do something incredible in the NFL one of these days.
2. Knowshon Moreno Man, what isn't there to like about this kid. He had awesome moves in the backfield; he bounced right back up after tackles, Hines Ward-style; he pulled off highlight-reel plays like it was nothing; he danced a mean Soulja Boy; he played with Legos. But even with all that, I think my favorite thing about him was how much fun he was obviously having every minute he was out there. Ideally, all our players would be enjoying themselves that much. Do I wish he'd stayed around two more years? Oh, clearly, but I can't quite begrudge him leaving; I'll just root my ass off for him with the Broncos and hope that our paths cross one of these days when I'm wealthy and revered beyond all reason.
1. Champ Bailey If we'd had one or two like him in the secondary the past few years, even Willie Martinez couldn't have found a way to make us give up points. Schooled opposing wide receivers while playing defense, then turned right around and schooled his fellow cornerbacks while playing wide receiver (and schooled any of those guys who dared try to cover him on kick returns). Wore my lucky number. Dated one of the hottest gymnasts on campus. And then, just to ensure that we would be forever bonded in an irrevocable star athlete/groveling fan relationship, he went and got drafted in the first round by the Redskins. Champ's with the Broncos now, but he's still one of the bigger badasses in the NFL, I still have his jersey . . . and yeah, I named one of my dogs after him. There have been a lot of damn good Dawgs in Athens since I started school there, but he's the damn goodest.
Honorable mention: Jeff Owens (Georgia's own "huggy killbear"), David Pollack, Jon Stinchcomb, Rennie Curran, and Boss Bailey.
And now the (other) Ten:
1. Lifelike, "Discopolis" (Chris Lake remix) 2. Pet Shop Boys, "Fugitive" (7" mix) 3. Hard-Fi, "Hard to Beat" (Axwell mix) 4. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Sir Psycho Sexy" 5. Underworld, "Born Slippy.TELEMATIC" 6. Dr. Octagon, "3000" 7. U2, "City of Blinding Lights" (Hot Chip 2006 remix) 8. Morcheeba, "Shoulder Holster" 9. Boogie Down Productions, "Jimmy" 10. Pet Shop Boys, "It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas"
Your turn: Your Random Tens and/or shortlists of favorite athletes from whichever team you call your own, in the comments, please.
Though I have next to zero interest in soccer generally, I've always gotten really excited about the World Cup, because it's sort of like an Olympics for one sport: People from all over the world come together in one place to (mostly) put aside political differences and compete not with guns and bombs but with sheer athletic prowess, and some people win and some people lose, but the hope is that everyone does so with a real love for the whole idea of competition and a respect for sportsmanship. (Well, except for the French maybe, but you never know what you're gonna get from them.)
Sitting there in my cube, though, surreptitiously checking the action on the FIFA MatchCast and being less and less slick about it as the game wore on and got increasingly tense, I was reminded not of any specific Olympic memory but of the 2006 Georgia-Georgia Tech game. An agonizing defensive struggle, packed with numerous great plays but an even greater number of missed opportunities, and it looks like the good guys are going to be hanging their heads right up until the last minute, when a talented but maligned player goes in for an amazing score.
It even felt the same way to be watching it: Just like in 2006, I was away from the actual action, keeping track of it on a few seconds' delay -- but there was a group of people watching the game on one of the big-screens on the opposite side of our floor, and in the 91st minute of the match I heard a huge cheer go up from that side of the building. Just as I'd heard a huge cheer when the Americans knocked in their disallowed goal in the first half, and just as I'd heard a huge cheer go up from Sanford Stadium, right down the street from our tailgate spot, when Staffy hit Massaquoi for that TD pass. Wait a few seconds, and then boom, the little soccer-ball icon popped up signaling Donovan's goal, and it was party time for the rest of the day. (Yeah, it was a weird way to be watching the game, but let's be honest, it wasn't like I would've understood the game of soccer any better had I been watching the action unfold on TV right in front of me.)
So congratulations, Team USA. And everyone say a prayer for similar miracles today for Slovakia, who need a win over Italy to have any hope of following the U.S. into the knockout stage.
And actually, while you're at it, say a prayer for American tennis player and damn good Dawg John Isner, who will be resuming the longest tennis match in history at some point later on today. If I weren't pulling for Isner so hard, I'd say just let him and Nicholas Mahut both advance to the next round and take on their opponent two-on-one -- it almost seems unfair to make someone lose at this point, and besides, after playing seven hours of tennis yesterday they probably only have enough combined physical stamina left to equal that of one healthy player (if that much). But Bulldog Nation's pulling for you, John -- just keep acing those serves, and stay hydrated, for God's sake.
Just out of curiosity, how does the Nobel Committee decide whether to award prizes in new categories? 'Cause if ever there was a reason to award a Nobel Prize in Beatboxing, this would be it. I mean, come on, this is at least as worthwhile as the Chemistry prize. (Stupid chemistry. "Oh, look at me! I mixed a bunch of chemicals in a bottle! Where's my million dollars?" Hmm, I don't know, can you do the sped-up music from Super Mario World? You can't? Then I guess you don't get a million dollars. [/realtalk])
The blog may have been offline for exactly three months, but that doesn't mean the world just ceased to turn on its axis during that time. A lot of stuff happened, some of which I might've liked to discuss on here, and now that HJS is more or less fully operational again, now's as good a time as any to go over that stuff, just to make sure we're all on the same page about stuff. (By which I mean you're on the same page with me, since you haven't had me around for the past few months to tell you what you should think and feel about everything.) So here's a quick refresher course -- Five Things I Probably Would've Posted About Over The Past Three Months If The Blog Had Been Up:
I got a job The most recent development, obvs, and the catalyst for the blog going back up to begin with. My sidebar profile is accurate -- I am indeed a paid lackey for a Fortune 500 company now, albeit one that treats its employees very well and has given me a fat benefits package. I'm not gonna tell any of you assholes where I work, for fear that one of you is gonna do something like order 50 pizzas and have them sent to my office, but suffice to say I'm a working man again, and very happy to be one. (OK, I can't keep a secret: I'm a hired assassin for BP, taking out whistleblowers in the Deepwater Horizon case. Did you know they actually have hitmen on payroll? Although on my business cards it says "Information Security Specialist.")
"Justified" and "Community" are two of the best shows on TV Being unemployed obviously gave me a lot more time to watch TV, but in the case of "Justified" and "Community," that may have been a good thing. "Justified," the show with Timothy Olyphant as a federal marshall assigned to return to his hilljack hometown in eastern Kentucky, would probably have been worth watching if it'd just been Olyphant showing off his considerable bad-ass skills and shooting people for an hour every Tuesday night, but instead the show surrounds him with a whole cast of well-drawn characters with unpredictable nuances -- including Walton Goggins as Olyphant's Neo-Nazi-turned-backwoods-preacher bête noire -- and works equally well as both drama and action series. "Community," meanwhile, started kind of slow but got steadily funnier as it went along, and launched into overdrive with the "chicken fingers" and "paintball" episodes toward the end of the season -- seriously, whether you have to get them on Hulu, Netflix, your cousin's DVR, or a pirated Chinese DVD out of the trunk of someone's car, watch both of them ASAP -- and as far as I'm concerned is now appointment viewing on Thursday nights, particularly with "The Office" appearing to sort of go off the rails. Joel McHale's character is poised to join the pantheon of Awesome TV Douchebags whom I'm increasingly trying to model my life after.
I don't get the iPad Like everything else Apple makes, it's real purty, and it's a fun toy, but am I that far off in describing it as a really big iPhone that can't make phone calls? Which is not to say I wouldn't gladly take one if it were offered to me, but I can't see paying five or seven hundred dollars for what is basically a toy. (I can only see myself paying three hundred dollars for a toy, specifically the Lego Taj Mahal, which you're damn right I'm gonna go out and buy now that I have a job again.)
I'm glad conference expansion ended up not being all that big a deal As many things that I find nonsensical and infuriating about how Division I-A college football is currently set up, I didn't really want things to change so radically that we ended up with maybe only four 16-team "superconferences" around which the entirety of Division I-A was supposed to revolve. Not that I necessarily had a lot of faith in the idea that a "Pac-16" would work, though, because by more or less adding an entire division of the Big XII to its roster, the Pac-10 would've been opening itself up to the same problems that caused fractures in the Big XII: Just as that conference tacked on a bunch of Texas schools in an effort to expand and have a conference-title game, causing Nebraska to feel slighted enough in the proceedings that they eventually bolted for the Big Ten, the "Pac-16" would've had two completely different divisions -- the old Pac-8 on one side, and a "Red Dead Redemption" division (to borrow Spencer Hall's phrase) full of schools with little or no connection to the Rose Bowl or any of the conference's other traditions, but whose money and TV markets still would've become the conference's new power center. (Not to mention, of course, that anything that distracts people's attention from the superiority of the SEC is unacceptable.) In the end, the Big Ten and Pac-10 went to 12 teams, and the Big XII survived by shrinking back to 10 -- which is ridiculous, sure, but no less ridiculous than making Texas A&M fans truck their asses up to Pullman, Wash., or Corvallis, Ore., for conference games.
I'm really touched by how much y'all appeared to miss this thing I'm gonna try not to get too maudlin here (or, conversely, let myself get too big a head about any of this), but when you're a blogger of any kind -- but particularly an unemployed one who sometimes finds himself struggling to come up with a reason to even get out of bed in the morning -- you sometimes wonder if anybody really cares what you have to say, and if it would matter all that much to anyone if you just stopped doing it. Well, I was pestered with enough "When are you putting the blog back up, assbag?!?" queries over the past three months to know that quite a few of y'all did care, and while some of you were bigger dicks about it than others, the concern still meant a lot to me. And now that things seem to be getting back on track in any number of aspects of my life, I feel like y'all are owed a debt of gratitude for making me feel important during a period when it was hard to find reasons to feel that way. So thanks to all of you, and I want you to know that just because I'm a working stiff again doesn't mean I'm going to be any more mature, or any less of a douche, on this blog going forward.
So here's to better times ahead. For everyone. And here's the Random Ten:
1. Stevie Wonder, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" 2. Beck, "Debra" 3. The Chemical Brothers, "Playground for a Wedgeless Firm" 4. Ebn-Ozn, "AEIOU Sometimes Y" 5. The Smiths, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" 6. Beck, "Modesto" 7. The Romantics, "What I Like About You" 8. Gnarls Barkley, "Surprise" 9. DJ Shadow, "Changeling" 10. Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die"
So: Anything you've been wanting to get off your chest for the past three months? Throw it in the comments, along with your Random Tens if you've got 'em. And happy weekend.
The "Onion News Network" has already put out dozens of pitch-perfect parodies of 24-hour news networks and morning shows, so it should probably come as no surprise that their piss takes on "SportsCenter" are seamless as well.
Stay with it through the stinger at the end. I hope some of these guys are getting acting jobs elsewhere; to be able to ape the tone of ESPN's reporters and anchors that closely speaks to some level of talent. (I mean, if Paris Hilton can still show up in movies . . . )
There are a lot of things the world needs more of right now -- renewable energy, diplomacy, decent-paying jobs, non-surgically-enhanced boobs -- but above all, what we need more of is smart people. Specifically, smart people who aren't afraid to be smart. And we need one more than we did Monday, because one of the best of them, Jim Fletcher, died of a heart attack that night. Mr. Fletcher was my humanities and AP English teacher my senior year of high school, and was probably the greatest teacher I've ever had, at any level.
Because of Mr. Fletcher, I know about Greek culture and all the things they did that still influence us today; I know about the ways in which Western culture and art was preserved throughout the Dark Ages when any kind of written historical record or learning was at a premium; I know how the Renaissance got started and how it morphed into the other artistic and cultural movements that came after. I can walk into an art museum, look at a painting, recognize what style or "ism" it is, and understand how that reflects what society was going through at the time it was created. Mr. Fletcher not only taught us about all those things, he taught us why they mattered.
But I don't want to make it sound like he was some effete snob who shut himself up inside his house with his classics, completely disdaining everything about modern culture. At the end of a long unit on the Dark Ages, he showed us "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in class; for those who were interested in learning more about the 1960s while we were reading Slaughterhouse-Five in class and discussing that decade's various cultural upheavals, he invited us over to his house to watch "Easy Rider" and "The Graduate," which was the first time I saw either. He rarely shied away from discussing difficult or controversial topics in class, because for all his sarcasm and irascibility -- which, to be sure, became the stuff of legend throughout the Columbus teaching community -- he gave us credit for being strong enough to handle that stuff unless we showed otherwise.
If we did show otherwise, of course -- whether it was by making a stupid comment in class or just getting caught napping in the back of the room -- we'd get called out for it in the most ego-shriveling manner possible. I can't recall a single time Mr. Fletcher yelled, or even raised his voice, at anyone; he'd just shake his head and mutter something about one of us needing to ride the short bus to school. "Wetumpka Tech," i.e. the only college we'd get accepted to if that was the best we could do, was another one of his favorite catch-phrases. He enjoyed verbal sparring with his students from time to time, but I rarely saw anyone get the better of him, and I can't recall a specific instance in which I enjoyed that privilege myself.
But in spite of the legend that had been built up around him over his 26 years at my high school, that kind of acidity wasn't his standard teaching M.O. It was OK if you didn't understand a concept the very first time. It was even OK if you didn't like a book or a piece of music or a style of art we were discussing in class. The only thing that was guaranteed to not be OK was not caring, was not wanting to know more. Differences of opinion were perfectly fine in his classroom, often even encouraged. Apathy was the biggest no-no.
That, even above all the other things Mr. Fletcher gave us, was the most important -- the belief that knowledge was a good thing to have, that an awareness of one's history and culture was important, that willful ignorance was to be ridiculed, not celebrated. You'd think that'd be an obvious virtue, but look around you at all the people who go into life with a "Don't confuse me with facts when I've already made up my mind" attitude, the people who condemn anything the least bit edgy or challenging as dangerous to society, the people who'd mutter "faggot" if you tried to spark any kind of conversation about art or literature. There is a certain segment of society who not only don't know anything more about the world around them than the prejudices and assumptions they've already created, but whether because of fear, laziness, or resentment, they don't want to know anything more. But Mr. Fletcher did his part to help mold entire generations of kids in Columbus, Georgia, who were worldly enough to resist that.
Mr. Fletcher leaves behind a wife, kids, stepkids, and grandkids who are all going to miss him very much, but he also leaves behind hundreds, maybe even thousands, of former students who remember the gifts he gave them vividly enough to know what the next few generations will be missing. That may be the saddest thing about all of this -- the fact that the kids who come through Hardaway after us will never know what it feels like to be made smarter by James T. Fletcher. That was a pretty special privilege.
The word "elitist" gets thrown around a lot these days, so much so that it's started to lose any meaning. And the people who seem to be throwing it around the most are the ones in that group I mentioned earlier, the willfully ignorant who don't want to know anything more than what they've already decided. I'm sure they would've found Mr. Fletcher to be irredeemably elitist, too, had they ever met him, but Fletch didn't think he was better than other people based solely on their taste in art or music, their appearance, their political convictions, or any of that. The only people he thought he was better than were the people who didn't care enough to want to know more. If that makes both him and me elitist, then I plead guilty on behalf of the both of us. But I think it's the kind of elitism the world needs more of, and for helping to create more of it, Fletch has my gratitude.
"Georgia Wins" on the Jumbotron, and Athens itself -- both sights for sore eyes.
I felt my eyes welling up not once but twice Saturday night -- the first time was when the lone trumpeter started playing in the southwest corner of the upper deck at Sanford Stadium and the highlight video started up on the Jumbotron. Hearing Larry Munson narrate the video, the crowd shout at the top of their lungs as "Baba O'Riley" started, seeing the team rush out onto the field, I realized it'd been more than a year since I got to see all that in person, and I realized how much I'd missed it; and I also realized that after months of variously expressing hope, despair, barely contained frustration, and a million other conflicting emotions over the state of our football program, there is still no better place to be on a beautiful evening in the middle of November than Athens, Georgia, surrounded by friends.
Bacarri Rambo: big-hitter, game-saver, hero. Get well soon, baller.
The second time came with less than a minute to go in the actual game, when Bacarri Rambo made his bid for folk-hero status by flinging himself at Mario Fannin at the goal line, knocking what would've been the tying touchdown pass away from him, and landing flat on his back and motionless. Whether he knew it as he was flying through the air or not, Bacarri was sacrificing himself to make the game-saving play in what might've been our biggest and most desperately needed win of the season. I hope everyone who was out there saying silent prayers for him and then chanting "RAM-BO, RAM-BO" as he was carted off the field remembers that guys like him are the ones down there on the field doing our dirty work; guys like him are the ones we're pinning our hopes on each week; guys like him are the ones who take the hit when we give into our temptation to lay into our own players and divine sinister motives for what they're doing or not doing on the field each Saturday. There will be time enough after this season is over to determine what worked in 2009 and what didn't, who's likely to be a major contributor to our success going forward and who isn't, but for right now I hope Bulldog Nation keeps that image of Bacarri in their minds and remembers just how much each and every one of our guys are risking out there just so that we might have something to be proud of the next morning.
Israel Troupe, hopefully the forgotten man in our receiving corps no more after making this catch.
In between those two emotional moments, of course, there was the usual roller-coaster ride of momentum being given away, snatched back, and changing hands many more times over before the final gun sounded; in a way, it did follow the early-season script I alluded to in my preview of the game -- go in a hole early, claw our way out of it, dangle the momentum in front of our opponents' faces and risk handing it back to them at least one more time before the whole show finally ends -- but with a couple of differences.
First of all, we didn't dig ourselves into the early hole with turnovers. Quite frankly, we dug ourselves into the early hole with abysmal play-calling on both sides of the ball -- seriously, you've got A.J. Green, the best receiver in the nation, and you're going to waste his once-in-a-generation talent on swing passes? You're gonna let Auburn convert three straight third-and-longs on the way to a second easy touchdown? And when we ended the first quarter down 14-0 in points and 145-5 in yards (needing a seven-yard run from Caleb King on the last play of the quarter just to sneak into positive territory), I'll be honest, I was giving serious thought to the prospect that I might not be there to see the second half start. But as the game unfolded and Georgia hunkered down, got their heads on straight, and clawed their way back from the early deficit, a funny thing happened: For the first time all season, we didn't commit any turnovers. Nor did we kill ourselves with penalties -- after a dumb offsides/false-start flag on each team's opening drive, we only committed two penalties the rest of the way.
For all the nail-biting I'm sure we all did and all the opportunities we let whiz by our heads, it was a surprisingly clean game in that regard, and it gives me hope that someone or something is starting to sink in with our players. There's going to be a lot of soul-searching amongst our coaching staff once the season's over about why it took 10 games for all that stuff to sink in -- actually, 23 games, when you consider that last year's team wasn't exactly a paragon of excellence in those categories either -- but for right now, it's nice to be able to sit back and revel in something other than our program's uncertain future for a change. We needed this win in the worst way, and we got it thanks to a tremendous team effort from a bunch of guys who refused to give up.
All in all, except for the whole going-into-a-two-touchdown-hole-in-the-first-quarter thing, it was a weekend that couldn't have gone any better if I'd scripted it myself beforehand. I got to give Orson Swindle and Holly a taste of the Full Athens on a beautiful autumn day in which Athens the Georgia fan base put their very best respective feet forward. The tailgating scene was everything Holly had been told about and then some, and even Orson, a Florida grad rarely inclined to say anything nice about Georgia unless compelled to by crushing gridiron defeat and/or gunpoint, evidently had a blast:
So thanks to the city of Athens; the Georgia fanbase; the Tent City crew, especially Scott Hartman for being my ticket hookup; Holly and Orson; and, of course, the Georgia team and coaching staff for collectively giving me the best Saturday of the football season thus far. As Holly and I were sitting there in section 134, row 12, watching the Dawgs do a little post-victory dancin' in front of the student section, it occurred to me just how many of my most cherished Georgia football memories are from the UGA-Auburn rivalry; this was the 13th straight Georgia-Auburn game I've been to (and it was the day after Friday the 13th, no less), but it was anything but unlucky.
Elsewhere:
· I don't know how much comfort this will be to the more beleaguered segments of our fan base (and I certainly don't like that it's coming at the expense of Paragon SC, a guy I've met in person and love like a brother), but for what it's worth, Bulldog Nation, the whole "Has Our Coach Lost His Mojo?" meme is hardly exclusive to Georgia at this point. Pete Carroll arguably had a good bit further to fall, too, and it'll be an interesting (if perhaps not especially enjoyable) exercise to compare him and Mark Richt as they try to steer their teams through lower-than-expected bowl bids -- and, potentially, through thorny off-season dilemmas concerning the respective states of their defenses. As much as you might want Willie Martinez gone, folks, we at least haven't given up 55 points this season, to Stanford or anyone else.
That's Commitment with the stop; Integrity gets credited with an assist.
· While taking in as much of Florida-South Carolina as we could before heading down to the stadium, I noticed a Gamecock player with "Courage" on the back of his jersey, followed by one with "Service," and I remember thinking, "My, those South Carolina guys do have some cool, if unusual, last names" -- but then I saw the guy with "Commitment" and I was reminded that both South Carolina and Maryland were gearing up in special military-themed unis to mark Veterans' Day. Here's my question, though: If I'm the Wounded Warrior Project marketing guy tasked with pushing this idea, how thrilled am I that the two teams agreeing to wear the special jerseys are South Carolina, for whom November 11 is right around the point where their annual late-season slump is hitting terminal velocity, and Maryland, who at this point isn't making a run at anything other than the title of worst team in the ACC? Don't get me wrong, I have no beef with the idea in principle; I just hope that for the sake of our troops they manage to land two more inspiring teams next time around.
· UAB Blazers Watch: Don't look now, but dear old UAB is 5-5 after dispensing with Memphis and only needs one more win to earn the second bowl bid in the program's history. I kind of doubt that they'll get that sixth win against East Carolina this weekend, but I'm seriously considering heading back up to the Salty 'Ham on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to see if Black Tebow can nail down that sixth win at the expense of George "Master's Degree" O'Leary and the UCF Knights. Oh, how delicious that would be.
· Wofford Terriers Watch: A difficult season continued in its difficult-ness with a close loss to Samford. The switch to an option-based offense, clearly, has been a rough one for the Terriers, but they can end the season on a high note with a win at Furman this weekend.
· Cheerleader Curse Watch: The winsome Chelsie (above) did not manage to doom her team to a loss on Saturday, but the fact that her Minnesota Golden Gophers had to come from behind to beat DI-AA South Dakota State on a late field goal should prove that the Curse's powers have not disappeared.
· And finally, never let it be said that I don't keep my promises. Flag run, engage.
