Are my eyes really blue?

Yesterday at the chiropractor:
HER: Are you watching True Blood?
ME: Am I what?
HER: Probably not, it’s more a chick thing, all the Gothic Southern romance stuff. And lots of violent blood and sex.
ME: One prom was enough.
HER: (Unable to speak.)
ME: (grin)
HER: Does your wife grasp how twisted you really are?
ME: She said ‘I do’, didn’t she?
And EZ-E gets a nickel for the prom joke.

The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room » Charles Barkley To Run For Alabama Governor in 2014:

NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said he’s going to run for governor in Alabama.

“I plan on it in 2014,” Barkley told CNN’s Campbell Brown on Monday.

When asked if he was serious, the former Philadelphia 76er said, “I am, I can’t screw up Alabama.”

He added that his native state could only improve. “We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren’t going anywhere,” Barkley said.

Oddly enough, the entire UT team was found with a big S for “SABAN” carved on their asses…

Let’s see: Alabama putting the wood* to a clearly-overmatched Tennessee team that couldn’t shoot straight…Vanderbilt managing once more to shit the bed** against a clearly inferior foe at a time when a win was critical to their future prospects…Republicans complaining that the media is pushing a meme of inevitability on behalf of a sprightly young Democrat for President…the Redskins whoopin’ that ass in the NFC East and tied for most wins at the halfway mark…SNL bringing the funny week in and week out…and most incredibly, pouring myself into bed at 2 AM after a night of assorted Baptist sin only to answer the bell at 8 AM and commence again – for the second weekend in a row?

When did it become 1992 again?

Rolling sixteen years off one’s personal odometer is very much like the same operation performed on used cars by the Sand Mountain dealers of my youth: sure, it might look newer and fresher, and you might be deceived into thinking it’s a much more capable machine than it is, but come Monday, you’re gonna see the rust on the undercarriage and feel the sludge in the crankcase and say “what the HELL have I done?” However, I have some decided advantages now that I didn’t have then:

* An extra decade-and-a-half of experience with the fruit of the vine/grain/cane. I know things now I didn’t know then, i.e. stick with one type of booze and don’t put too much of that sweet shit in it. Also, drink lots of water before, during and after, and take your ibuprofen.

* A good 50 pounds extra to help soak up all that booze. Yes, the waist size of my jeans has gone up six inches in sixteen years, but the flip side is that I don’t immediately start going loopy at the first whiff of bourbon.

* A girlfriend*** who is not psychotic, doesn’t drink, and can provide me with ongoing updates regarding whether it’s time to tap out or at least knock another 20 dB off my inside voice.

* QUALITY CONTROL. Miller Lite, Early Times, Boone’s – the swills of my youth are long gone. Nowadays, those of us who once pledged ourselves to the C.O.D. Club**** are snobbish enough that we drink only Guinness, or Maker’s Mark, or fine handcrafted cherry ciders, with occasional forays into a pleasantly oaken Napa cab or a fine single-malt that tastes like a beach fire. If you have to be a grownup, you may as well drink like a grownup.

I have successfully evaded hangover the whole way through these last two weekends, of which I am rightly proud, but I can also say in honestly that when the alarm rings, I’ll rise – but I’ll be damned if I’ll shine.

*Right now the only thing between Alabama and a trip to the national championship game is hubris. And as far as I know, Nick Saban doesn’t have time for that shit. Whatever they’re paying him, I don’t want to hear any caterwauling – name me one other coach, ever, that has taken a team from disaster to national title contender in one and a half seasons.

** SAME. OLD. VANDY. That’s right, I said it, it had to be said. There is not one single game the rest of the way (Florida in 2 weeks, then at Kentucky, home to UT, and at Wake Forest) that Vanderbilt will be favored in. Aside from the fortuitous arrangement of games to allow the 5 wins to come at the beginning of the year, and create the illusion of hope, there is nothing to suggest this team is any better than the many others who stalled on 5 in the last decade or so. Bobby may be credited fairly for getting the Dores from two wins a year to a reliable five, but I’m starting to think that it’s going to take a better coach to break through from five to seven, because you can’t build a successful team on the notion that you will never, ever make a mistake in the “itty-bitty things” phases of the game. Success doesn’t mean you never make a mistake, it means you can overcome a mistake. Which the Dores cannot.

*** For long-term committed and ceremonially-bound values of “girlfriend.”

**** If I still claimed any connection with the history of my undergrad institution, this would be the place for a chorus of something that sounds strangely like the middle-eight of “California Drinking Song.” Not for nothing were the club’s posted hours “Midnight to 4 AM.”

So somebody apparently decided that my fairly lame workplace needs to do something fun…so in addition to the regular “happy hour” which no lie, is exactly like you’d expect an on-site government-run happy hour to be, they decided to bring in some sort of “science comedian.” Don’t know, never heard of him, and quite frankly wouldn’t be caught dead in one of these happy hours, because if I’m going to socialize after hours it’s sure as hell not going to be at WORK. (Socialize DURING work, sure, but once the clock strikes 6, I got my own thang.)

So far today, I’ve had at least two separate emails, cc:all, profusely apologizing for the offensive content of the comedian’s performance, which they had no idea about and hadn’t seen in their research and had no idea would be part of his act.

Now, I can understand how somebody could be misled. I mean, watching Sanford and Son, you’d never understand why Redd Foxx had to spell his name with an extra X…but if you owned, say, sixteen Redd Foxx albums, you might. (And if you actually saw his nightclub act, I understand that you’d come away thinking it should be spelled FoXXX.)

But seriously…what the hell counts as offensive science comedy? Did he endorse Lamarck in preference to Darwin? Did he mock Boyle’s Law? Make some rude allusions about thulium? Was there a sexual innuendo about Schrodinger’s Cat? Inquiring minds…

Before I die, I want to get the paste concession at this place. When I pass, I can be cremated on a pile of $100s.

“Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than fumble this football.”

-John Heisman

“Or throw another INT.”

-Stagger Lee

Not much you can say about that one. Georgia is indisputably the better team – mostly because Knowshon Moreno is faster than Walt Flanigan’s DAWG and will probably pick up another Heisman to go alongside Walker and Sinkwich – but I think Vanderbilt can stand toe to toe with any team in the country. The problem is, they don’t have enough to get over unless they do every single little thing right. The turnovers in the last two games have been the difference maker.

The less said about Longshore at Cal, the better.

In other news:

* When I finally go the way of all flesh, I insist that somebody round up a Dixieland band for my wake. In fact, I would like drinking, dancing, and probably only a couple of sappy tracks (probably a couple of Killers tunes and Springsteen singing the Unplugged version of “Thunder Road.”). There’s no reason you can’t show people a good time just because you’re, you know, done.

* Cash bar, though. I’m as Scottish dead as alive.

* I can still go out, knock down a half-dozen DRANKS, pour myself into bed at 2:15 AM and still arrive at breakfast at 8:30, on time, on target, and fresh as a !-ing daisy. However, as Chris Rock says, “just because you do it don’t mean it’s to be done.” All I can say is thank God the Skins don’t kick until 1:15.

* I like to think the youth of America find me colorful and entertaining, and in the proper setting – say, dinner – I’m a smashing guest. However, at age 36 and married, I have about as much function at a dance club as tits on a tree. I also question the efficacy of a bar that has Laphroaig but not Maker’s Mark. I mean, WTF, and what that place does to Guinness shouldn’t happen to Al-Qaeda. It is comical, though, to watch people rockin’ out to Bell Biv Devoe and think “you weren’t BORN when that came out.”

* I frequently wonder aloud to my lovely bride “why don’t we go out in Palo Alto more often?” Last night around 1:30, I figured it out – because it’s full of Palo Alto people, mostly Stanfurdites, and because there’s no Irish pub there.

* I see that the 703 no longer counts as “Real Virginia.” Based on what I know of Virginia beyond the broadcast reach of WJFK, I daresay that’s just fine. Mambo Sauce says that the new DC is the DMV – District, Maryland, and Virginia – and I find no fault with their assertion, especially since I am now off to the bar to watch the Skins handle their business. They’d better, anyway, or Bickel is going on suicide watch.

* The high-school kid at dinner next to me last night was literally young enough to be my own child. Does that make me some kind of old fart?

* My Buddy Vince Sez, “Beer is good.” The fact that his daughter is going to school dances may be a factor.

Finis.

If Karl Rove is a poor man’s Lee Atwater – and make no mistake, he is – then Steve Schmidt is a homeless man’s Karl Rove. Seriously. At this point, down double digits with less than a month to go and all the internals tracking against him, John McCain should be suing Schmidt for malpractice at the very least. Personally, I would be lining up some pipe-hittin’ micks from South Bend IN for an Irish blanket party.

It didn’t have to be like this. In fact, if I were running things, I could probably have McCain up by six or eight points, without ever using the words “Ayers,” “Wright,” or “my friends.” Follow the bouncing ball, kids…

Continue reading “I Am A Bad Ass”

Although if you have to lose, losing to Coach Croom’s team is far from a disgrace. There’s actually a lot of symmetry there: a good stout defense that capitalizes on mistakes and an offense that does just enough to keep the ball away from the other team. Vandy got out-posessed 36 minutes to 24, and that should really tell you all you need to know. Well, that and the fact that they set season highs for penalties and turnovers. Much of what has gone well all year for the ‘Dores revolved around doing all the itty-bitty things right and not making mistakes.

Well, technically, all that’s shot to hell now is the national title game berth. Everything else up to and including an SEC championship is still on the cards, as the Commodores are technically still tied for 1st place in the SEC East. But then, we do have Georgia next week. My concern there is that once the Dawgs realize that they really need not to get snakebit again (and heaven knows Vandy has shocked their shit more times than they’d like to remember), we will wake up in a week on a 2-game losing streak and at risk of foundering against Duke…and losing the Duke game would seriously raise the possibility that the 5-game winning streak will be capped by a Tedford-esque 7-game losing streak.

And then there will be trouble.

(No idea why the ‘Skins shat the bed, although I put all the blame on Johnny “Cakes” Auville. If he ever bets on YOUR team, hang yourself. Or better yet, hang him.)

That’s right, I said it, and F you Mike Godwin. I’m through calling a spade a fucking shovel.