and the kids were playing cricket with no shoes

i don't understand why people dial a phone number with the phone on speaker then pick up the receiver when the call goes through. why not just pick up the receiver and dial if you know you aren't going to talk to the person you're calling on speaker phone?

maybe it's just my raging inferiority complex, but there's something about the whole practice that strikes me as snobbish. it's like "look how cool i am. i know how to use speaker phone, but i choose not to at the last second."

Hope everybody had a fun and filling thanksgiving. I spent several days in Minden recharging my batteries. they're drained again, but at least i'll always have the memories. nothing particularly interesting to report from the weekend, which is actually my preferred method of spending weekends.

I'm having sushi for dinner tonight and i'm pretty excited about it.

Finished up with high school, headed to a state school and wandered into you

Before we get to the picks, a couple of quick thoughts...

...Check out this blog called postsecret. It's kind of funny, sad and strange. Basically, this guy gets people to anonymously mail him their secrets on a postcard. He also has compiled a couple of books. The site is updated on Sunday, and it doesn't look like there's any sort of archive on there to see old ones. Here are my two favorites from this week:

...I have seen various degrees of assholery in my day, but this takes the cake...

...and, finally, here are this week's picks.

Last week: 9-7-1
Overall: 54-56-9

BC -4.5 Miami
Texas -13 A&M
LSU pick Ark
Neb -14 Colorado
Fla -9.5 FSU
Natty -3.5 Uconn
Clemson -5 South Carolina
Kentucky +19 Tenn
OK State +5.5 Okla
Georgia Tech +2 Georgia
Louisville -11.5 Pitt
BYU +10.5 Utah
Boise -3 Nevada (this one scares me)
Wake +1 Maryland
USC -7 Notre Dame

Memorized Holy Grail really well, i can recite it right now and have you ROTFLOL

With the short week and work, probably will only have a couple of posts this week, with the second one being my college football picks after the lines are out. So here's a rundown of stuff i might have talked about this week...

...get to enjoy the longest weekend i've had in a while starting wednesday after work. heading up to Minden to kick it for the weekend. should be relaxing, provided i don't throw a brick through the tv during the LSU-Arkansas game...

...Line of the week: I was in the bathroom at the Superdome Sunday during the Saints-Bengals game, standing in line at the urinal. The radio broadcast of the game was playing in the bathroom and Cincinnati had the ball. It was third and six and the Bengals ran a play that only went for a couple of yards. The announcer says, "They're well short of the first down." A guy down at the end of the trough says, "Oh, come on! Do you have to say 'well short' just as I'm pulling my dick out?"...

...The LSU-Ole Miss game this week was a disaster. I hate to say this, but I think it's time for Skip Bertman and Les Miles to go. I really feel bad for Miles, who by all accounts is not the type of person you wish to lose his job. And there's no way in the world you can blame him for taking the job. But there's really no reason good reason he got it to begin with. Some quick facts.

Cellar-dweller UNC just signed Butch Davis, who rebuilt the Univerity of Miami program currently being disassembled by Larry Coker, to be their next head coach.

Les Miles is about the seventh-highest paid coach in the SEC

So what do those two things mean? One, if you're willing to pay for it, you can get a top-of-the-line coach. Two, coming off a recent national championship and with a cupboard full of talent, LSU was obviously not willing to pay for a top-flight coach.

If you haven't followed LSU closely, you probably think it's rather stupid for a coach who's lost four games in just under two years to be on the hotseat. But to echo the words of the guy who was more than a little responsible for bringing the title to Baton Rouge, it's not about the results, it's about the process.

THere have been three games this year where the other team's talent was even remotely close to LSU's. Auburn, Florida and Tennessee. And LSU goes 1-2 in those games, nearly 0-3, and almost blows a game against a terrible! italics exclamation mark Ole Miss team.

There are warning signs blaring right now and i'd like to get the problem solved before the bombs actually land. And that starts with getting a new AD who understands that if you have a great football program, you can pretty much name your bottom line and that profit is not necessarily a direct result of being cheap.

And then we hire a new coach, because there is no excuse for UNC making a better hire than LSU. There are no more than 10 programs in the country (and certainly not 6 in the SEC alone) that should be paying their coaches what LSU is paying theirs...

Update for sports friday

Like i said earlier, michigan ohio state is this weekend.

a group of ohio state fans have a band called the Dead Schembechlers, reference to long-time michigan coach bo schembechler...

...who actually died this morning.

this puts a whole new, more bizarre twist on the game.

i orginally picked michigan to win comfortably 31-17. now i really have no clue

Dusty books and pictures on the floor

Welcome to Sports Friday.
My big plans last week for a do-or-die type weekend ended up being mediocre instead, which is fitting of how the rest of the season is going. Another loaded slate this weekend, maybe it will prove to be a little less bluh.

Surely it is unnecessary by now to point out that i suck at this and you should not actually consider this betting advice.

The 'Hey, it's your money' Picks of the Week

Last week: 8-8-2
Overall: 45-49-8

Iowa +2.5 Minnesota
NC State -3.5 UNC
Okla. -20.5 Baylor
Miami -3 Virginia
Tenn -8 Vandy
Navy -31.5 Temple
Duke +24.5 Georgia Tech
OK State +6 Texas Tech (a sure sign that Tech will cover)
Ark -14.5 Miss State
Notre Dame -31.5 Army (see above Tex Tech comment)
Michigan +7 Ohio State
Aub-3 Bama
VT pick Wake
Louisville -17 South Fla
Cincinnati +6.5 Rutgers
LSU -27.5 Ole Miss
San Jose State +25 Hawaii

***

Not a whole lot to talk about.

Of course, there's Ohio State v. Michigan this weekend. I've never liked Ohio State so I hope they lose. I'm not a big fan of the idea of the loser getting a re-match in the national championship game, but i would certainly take it over Notre Dame playing the winner for the title.

But for me, the game will really be nothing more than some afternoon entertainment while i'm tailgating for the LSU-Ole Miss game.

That game's going to be a snoozer, incidentally. Ole Miss has been prone to put up a pretty good fight in the past, but they're pretty bad this year.

And now the good news: you will never again read something sports related that offers so little insight.

Run when you run

well, the wednesday weigh-in is back. kind of.

i'm officially starting back on the three-quarters-ass weight loss effort today. you'll be pleased to know that i have gained back every bit of the weight i lost during the half-assed effort, so i'll be starting from scratch.

but i'm not weighing this wednesday, i'm going to wait until next week to hopefully have some sort of noticeable improvement.

i don't want make you mad, i don't want to meet your dad, i don't wanna be your dream come true

Hey everybody. Welcome to Sports Friday, which comes to you again after another week of non-sports posting.

Last week was tough for the picks. This week is the one that's going to determine my fate for the season, with a whopping 18 games being pickeed. I looked at the lines this morning and kept finding myself writing down games.

And, yes, because i hate myself, both teams i can never get right, Texas Tech and Notre Dame, appear this week.

If you consider playing any of these games, please look at my overall record then just pay a homeless guy $100 to kick you in the crotch. It'll be more productive. (in other words, don't do it! exclamation point)

The 'Hey, it's your money' Picks of the Week

Last week: 4-7
Overall: 37-41-6

Michigan St. +2 Minn
Cincinnati +18 WVU
Wisc. -1.5 Iowa
Baylor +16.5 OK St.
Kentucky -2 Vandy
USM -6 Tulane
Tulsa -14 Rice
Houston -3.5 SMU
Pitt -8 UConn
Miami +3.5 Maryland
eATMe +1 Nebraska
Notre Dame -11.5 Air Force
Boise St. -13.5 San Jose St.
Tx Tech +9 Oklahoma
Tenn +5.5 Ark
Wake +8.5 Florida St.
Texas -16 KState
Hawaii -38 La Tech

*****

Don't really have a whole lot of analysis from the Tennessee game. LSU got jobbed on yet another bogus replay call on the road and Keiland Williams finally got quality playing time when it matters. Hopefully that was just the first game of several where he is the primary back.

JaMarcus Russell made the types of plays his detractors have complained about and the types of plays that make it obvious (to me at least) that he is easily the best quarterback on the team.

There were a couple of questionable play calls by LSU on the offensive side of the ball, but overall i was happy with the gameplan. I was a little worried early since they used the same formation frequently that landed them a whopping three points against auburn.

I Can't Remember Anything, Part 4 of a 2-part series

Nothing you care to read from last weekend...

It's become cliche' (as has the phrase, 'it's become cliche') to say "oh, everything but country" when one is asked about the type of music he or she listens to. It's sort of like how all the cool 20-something artistic types like to answer religious inquiries with, "I'm not really religious, but i really tend to lead toward buddhism. I also find Taoism especially interesting."

You know what, take that hand of yours that's holding Art of War and kindly shove it right up your ass. But back to the weekend.

Except for a little Kenny Wayne Shephard during our tailgating, we listened to country music all weekend. I can say that i like country music, since i grew up listening to Hank Williams Sr., Johnny Cash and others. But i really can't stomach the new stuff.

It's awful. So the drive Sunday morning to Atlanta was especially difficult to stomach.

So to help pass the time, i played a game i made up called "What recent crappy hit song is this current crappy hit song ripping off." Here's some of the couple i can call to mind. And before you play the "for somebody who doesn't like those songs you sure do know a lot about them" card, you can just use it as a bookmark for the copy of Art of War currently up your ass. Courtney is a new-country-music addict, and i can't help but hear the stuff.

she really likes that song called "Slow Down" or something with that line "not asking you to turn back around, but i'd settle for a slow down." i like to make up fake words to it like "i'm not asking you to party just now, but i'd settle for a hoe down." courtney looooooves when i do that.

But back to the game. Rosco Flap (who also sings the gayest version of "Life is a Highway" I've ever heard) (and i mean "gay" as in "gay" not "gay" as in "homosexual" or "happy") has this song now that will be played at every high school graduation in the country in may. It's a rip-off of "I hope you dance."

Then there's this war song which is a rip-off of every other war song written in the last three years.

Then there's a brooks and dunn song about rednecks or hicks or something that's a rip off of every other brooks and dunn song and another song about a redneck yacht club and another song about walmart.

then there's a song about a pregnancy test that is a ripoff of every other gimicky country song ever written and shouldn't have been written anyway because it's the stupidest song i ever heard.

i take that back, there was another song i heard twice and i said each time, "this is the stupidest song i've ever heard." but i guess i blocked it out because i can't remember what it was.

then there are all those songs that try to be clever about just being dumped and you think they're going to be sad, but they're actually about how happy the person is. All of those songs are rip offs of other songs like that....don't remember which one came out first.

I think that's about it.

We stopped in Marietta, Georgia to watch the Saints-Tampa Bay game at a Buffalo Wild Wings. I may have mentioned before that i can't go to eat anywhere without something going wrong (i guess it's payback for purposely over-tipping my whole life).

we get there and all order our drinks. The women folk order "Dos Equis light" which i had never heard of, but specify that they want the one in the green bottle. I also want a Dos Equis in a green bottle (not my first choice, but they didn't really have any beer i like. brands of beer i like, i like a lot, but there really aren't that many brands out there i care for), so i order a Dos Equis lager.

The waiter comes back and gives the women folk their dos equis lagers and hands me a dos equis amber. I'm not at all surprised. but i drink it anyway because for some reason, i have a soft spot for those in the food industry.

After i finish my amber, i tell the waiter i want another drink, but i want what the womens is drinking. he says, "dos equis light?" and i just say "yeah, that." so he brings me my lager and all is right in the world.

I think i peed 8 times at Buffalo Wild Wings.

After the Saints game, the women went shoe shopping to kill time while me and mr. david drank beer in the shopping center parking lot. Then we went to the atlanta airport.

we were really early, so i had to sit next to this group of people who annoyed the piss out of me. i can't think of anything in particular (other than the way one guy pronounced "tour" "too-er"), they mostly just sucked.

The flight home was pretty uneventful. I rotated between reading Hound of the Baskervilles and dozing off. There's something cartoonish about Sherlock Holmes, so i have trouble reading it as a serious murder/mystery book, but overall it's a good read. But i think Dr. Watson is a big pansy (and i mean "pansy" as in "pansy" not "Pansy" as in...nevermind").

Then we went back to courtney's parents house and went to sleep. It gets cold when we stay there sometimes so i got two blankets (the guest room has one of those beds with a bed that pulls out from underneath it and pops up, so when we sleep together at her parents' house i pull out and pop up and she takes the main bed).

At some point during the night, my top blanket fell off. courtney got up to use the bathroom and when she got back to bed she took the blanket off the floor and used it. So a bit later i wake up and see that she is using my blanket, which pissed me off (because i think she stole it).

So i roll over and call her "a f'ing jew." (i guess i watch more south park than i realize, because never ever ever ever in a conscious state would i use the word jew as a derogatory word) (and i realize it should be "an f'ing" since the sound starts with a vowel [eff] but i didn't use the abridged version and the full version starts with a consonent sound [fuh].)

Monday morning i get the whole story on the blanket scandal. Notice i didn't say blanketgate. Nixon's cronies did not break into the Water Hotel and once it became a scandal they called it "Watergate." I hate it when people put "gate" at the end of any scandal. If they broke into the Motel 6, they wouldn't call it Blanket6.

anyway, i felt really bad because not only had i used a culturally insensitive insult that really isn't an insult anyway, but i used it for someone who didn't do anything wrong.

The end.

I will now entertain questions from the audience.

why's it have to be this way? be this way

Thoughts not pertaining to this weekend (but check out episode three that went up just minutes before this).

i know it has to do with kidneys, but hearing the word "renal" makes me giggle...

...Here's an excerpt from an e-mail with my thoughts of the britney/k-fed divorce:

I'm looking forward to seeing britney A) rebound from the divorce, drop some weight, and become hot again or, more likely B) spiral out of control, drop some weight because of a prescription medicine addiction and end up in playboy.

Leave your britney/k-fed predictions in the comment section.

I'm Fairly Certain I Know What I Did This Weekend, Take 3

The third installation in which i tell you what i did this weekend while typing everything that pops into my head along the way...

We made our way toward the stadium about an hour before kick-off. It was pretty much uphill the whole way, and there were lots of people selling tickets. As we got nearer to the stadium, we stopped so a few people in our group could use the bathroom.

While i waited, i had to overhear this drunk guy talking to another guy and his kids.

Here's the cliff's notes version of what information was exchanged between the two:
Guy and kids like LSU. Kids also like the Cincinnatti Bengals because of the uniforms.
Drunk guy likes Ohio State and the Cincinnatti Bengals.

Here is the actual transcript of the final 20 minutes of the 21 minute conversation.

Drunk Guy: "alright*! Cincinnati Bengals...Chad Johnson...Carson Palmer....Who Dey...Ohio State... alright*! Cincinnati Bengals...Chad Johnson...Carson Palmer....Who Dey...Ohio State...alright*! Cincinnati Bengals...Chad Johnson...Carson Palmer....Who Dey...Ohio State... alright*! Cincinnati Bengals...Chad Johnson...Carson Palmer....Who Dey...Ohio State..."

Needless to say I hated the guy. It was like the world's worst "Mr. Short-term Memory" SNL sketch. In fact, the guy should "be execute" for making me even remotely connect him to a great Tom Hanks sketch.

*The correct AP style is "all right" and i have steadfastly used it as such, but i've given up. Nobody else cares that alright isn't a word. or at least it wasn't last time i looked.

After a wait and a bit more walking we finally got into the stadium, which is the biggest f'ing bullshit joke of a stadium i'm ever been in. the concourses fit about two people at a time (three if there's no wait for the ladies' room). the seats are about 2/3 as wide as normal stadium seating and the rows offer about 1/3 the leg room. If you want to get up (and i didn't even bother, meaning that my booze was left sitting lonely in my pocket all game) the row in front of you has to stand up as well. We were sitting five people in six seats (courtney's dad had to fly home early) and were still elbow to elbow.

The concession stand is set up right outside the doorway between the bleachers and the concourse and is set up so the line perpendicular to the flow of traffic between the bleachers and the concourse. I never knew stadium design was a special olympics event.

The stadium holds about 107,000 people, but could take out 10,000 seats and i'm still not sure it would be comfortable. I know it's too much to ask for a school to show a little pride and reduce the capacity of the stadium to where attending a game is less painful than piercing your tongue with a food processor, but i really wish the tennessee athletic director would attend a game in the seats we sat in.

Rocky Top and Neyland Stadium can bite my ass.

In the row in front of us was a married woman and her kid and to their right was a married man (not her husband). On the first big play, the woman shook her pompom and hit me in the face (if that tells you how close together the seats were).

The woman and the man who wasn't her husband annoyed me, probably moreso than the drunk guy at the port-o-potties before the game.

At first the woman talked about how her dad had a plane and was going to fly her to the arkansas game. That didn't bother me nearly as much as her underwear. whenever she would sit down, courtney would nudge me and point. For the early part of the game, her white thong would peek out from her jeans. I don't know if she took them off or what, but the second half of the game involved me and courtney tricking each other into looking at the lady's rather gruesome asscrack.

I don't understand what the deal is with females and their need to advertise their drawers or lack thereof. maybe i'm just getting old (get off my lawn) but that just does absolutely nothing for me. And trust me, when me and the guys are naked in the sauna together after a steamy post-workout shower at the Y, all we talk about is girls. Ok, that even grossed me out a little. weiner.

At the Saints games, there are two young women (mid-20s to early 30s) whose asses and underoos are always hanging out. One of them was nothing but asscrack last home game, and the other one had her thong showing in the front and the back. (it was black with white piping and looked to be some sort of cotton-nylon composite).

As for the guy sitting in front of us, he was shamelessly implementing the "look how much I love kid" method of flirting with buttcrack showperson. i originally put "shower" but i didn't want y'all to have the mental picture of a buttcrack shower. i don't know if a buttcrack shower would involve water coming out of a buttcrack, or buttcracks coming out of a shower head.

Anyway, there are simply no words that would do justice to how pathetic the slapnuts in front of me was. You'll just have to take my word for it. But he was being all gross affectionate with his son while chatting up the lady and offering to buy her son stuff while he went to the concession stand.

LSU won the game.

We go back to the cars and get mooned along the way. Then we go to a mexican restaurant that makes guacamole for you fresh tableside. talked a couple of tennessee fans at the bar while we waited for a table. he asked me about Les Miles. I asked him if he had an hour to spare. he didn't.

from there we went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I had very angry dreams that night. In the first one, i was yelling at the officials who spotted the ball on the 4th and 7 catch that kept the game alive for LSU. All i did in the entire dream was curse out these two officials.

Then in another dream, i was up on this loft with a group of people i don't know. One of the people was about to leave, but this other guy told him if he left the people down stairs would kick his ass. So i says, "i know some white guy with braces isn't talking about somebody getting their ass kicked." and he really did have braces, too. it was funny.

So he comes up to me and tries to start a fight, but i put him in this badass kung fu grip and told him i wouldn't hurt him if he'd just leave. but he kept trying, and i was like "ok, i warned you" and put him in the Boston Crab, old school WWF wrestling-style.

We got up the next morning and ate breakfast. I got eggs, sausage, a blueberry muffin, biscuits and gravy, hashbrowns and french toast. I put ketchup on my hashbrowns and put the french toast on a separate plate with syrup. when i was done with the french toast, i used the extra syrup for my sausage. i had my eggs between my biscuit and my hashbrowns. i ate my hashbrowns last so i wouldn't get ketchup on everything.

i also had orange juice. and it had pulp in it. i don't like pulp in orange juice. one time when i was kind of young i took a sip of orange juice and said, "yuck, there was a lot of pulp in that sip." but my brothers said that i said shit and not sip. but i didn't say shit. i wouldn't have said that.

I guess that's enough for now.

I Know What I Did This Weekend, Part 2

A continuation of everything you need to know from weekend, but mostly stuff you don't...

Got up Saturday and had breakfast at the hotel in Chattanooga. I had scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, hashbrowns, toast, orange juice, chocolate milk and coffee. I had butter and honey on my toast and ketchup on my hashbrowns. I put the eggs between the biscuits and gravy and the hashbrowns but ate the hashbrowns last so i wouldn't get ketchup on everything.

from there we drove to knoxville. it took somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours. we met up with another couple (the cousin and his wife of courtney's mother's friends). then we when to the store and loaded up on beer and liquor and food.

we parked by an interstate overpass 30 minutes or so by foot away from the stadium. the people manning the parking lot made us back into the parking spots, so we were forced to tailgate standing on railroad tracks. Only one train came and we got out of the way in plenty of time. on of the guys working in the parking lot saw we were lsu fans and gave us mini-bottles of jack daniels. i was wearing blue jeans and long johns, so before we got in the game, i put the bottle in the leg of my long johns and tucked the leg into my sock. the booze made into the game no problem.

After we parked, the lady folk started setting out the food in the back of the rental car (Sequoia, i think). Courtney was trying to pour some salsa into a bowl and instead spilled it.

Bet you can't guess what four-letter word came out of her mouth in front of her mom and her mom's friends...

"Seth!"

I just looked at her. "How do you get 'Seth' out of 'i just spilled salsa in the back of the car?'"

So for the rest of the trip if somebody goofed something up, I'd exclaim "Seth!" and everyone would start blaming me for it. It was pretty funny. luckily, nobody farted in the car.

I Know What I Did This Weekend

Random Tangets Spliced Together in the Hope that a Story is Born
Everything you need to know about this weekend, but mostly stuff you don't

I left work a little early to drive to New Orleans to catch a plane to Chattanooga. I don't think people do a very good job of checking their mirrors when they drive. There was a car in the left lane whose driver was oblivious to the fact that she was being quite an effective rolling road block.

So i finally make my way around her and some time later i see a police car coming up from behind in the left lane, with lights and siren on. Everyone else gets out of the way. Meanwhile, Captain Oblivious is beboppin along in the left lane with the cop about a foot and half behind her.

And this morning, the same sort of thing happened. I watched a police car with lights on try to pull a car over, only to have it drive along for about a mile not noticing the cop. the car still hadn't pulled over by the time they were no longer visible in my mirror.

The plan was to fly from New Orleans to Atlanta, then from Atlanta to Chatanooga. Courtney and I would meet her mom and two of her mom's friends in Chatanooga and stay there Friday night. Saturday morning, we'd drive to Knoxville and watch the LSU-Tennessee game. Then Sunday we'd drive to Atlanta and fly to New Orleans that night.

I selected my in-flight reading material at Books-A-Million Friday. I picked up (which i think was a sitcom for a little while) and Love MonkeyThe Hound of the Baskervilles. I got Love Monkey because I think my friend Ryan read it and said it was funny. I read most of it on the flight up there, and finished it off on the drive to atlanta.

All-in-all it's a fairly entertaining book about a 32-year-old who works for a tabloid named Tabloid. He's trying to land the girl of his dreams while juggling a batch of potential back-up plans.

There are laugh-out-loud moments. And the longer i'm away from it, the more I guess I'm OK with how it ends. I sort of felt it built up to something that was supposed to be big, but instead it just sort of stops. But the author throws enough in there that upon further review actually accomplishes enough to call it an ending rather than a "stopping."

I give it three and a half out of five stars, with it being closer to four stars than three stars. So maybe 3.6667 stars.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful. I remember being hungry before we left new orleans, but there wasn't too much available food wise. We had a shot layover in Atlanta, so we grabbed some Quiznos before we caught our flight.

When they called our zone to board, we went through the gate and down some stairs -- never a good sign. we walk outside to about the smallest puddle jumper i've ever seen, and definitely the smallest plane i've ever been on in my limited years of flying (flew for the first time Dec. 2003).

I don't handle flying particularly well, so i was not a happy camper at this point. we all board the plane. a few minutes before take off, the stewardess announces over the intercom, "For weight distribution reasons, we need someone from rows one through five to move back somewhere in rows 12 to 17."

Oh, shit.

I was sitting on a plane where the location of 150 pounds actually made a difference. This was not going to be a comfortable flight.

Turns out it wasn't so bad, just very shaky. From there we went to the hotel and went to sleep.

To be continued...

Some might say you get what you've been given

Hey, everybody. After a full week (practically) of non-sports posts, I can welcome you guilt-free to the latest full-fledged edition of Sports Friday. For you nonsports people, go straight to the end and check out the video.

The last few weeks have been extremely hectic. The forecast for the next few weeks has been downgraded to "very hectic." So I should be able to provide at least the occasional weekday post, but I can't make any promises. (Yes, I just wrote that paragraph with a straight face as i conveyed the false belief that you actually could give two flat-footed dumps whether or not i update this.)

"Hey, it's your money" Picks of the Week

Last week: 4-2
Season 33-34-6

Finally had a decent week for the first time in i can't remember how long. As the season progresses, I'm finding it harder and harder to find games I'm confident picking. So this week, I'm employing the "Blind hog finds an acorn" method and picking an unusually high number of games.

A few thoughts before i get to the picks. After getting burned early with big numbers, i've spent the last couple of weeks avoiding them, so i'm a little uncomfortable with how many big spreads i've got this week. Also, I'm very unsure about my picks for the Missouri, K State and Cal games. After missing every time I've picked a Texas Tech game this season, they're off the board. But I did return Notre Dame, which i think i've also missed every time this season.

And remember, I'm not stupid enough to actually bet these games. You shouldn't be either.

Mizzou +5 Nebraska
Florida -17 Vandy
Bama -15 Miss. State
Navy -12 Duke
Auburn -30.5 Arkansas State
Notre Dame -24.5 UNC
K State +3.5 Colorado
Tulsa -3.5 Houston
Arkansas -2.5 South Carolina
Virginia Tech -2.5 Miami
Cal -17 UCLA

What's so good about a Good Times van, when you're working on a broken man?

Courtney and I are heading up to Knoxville tonight (well, i think Chatanooga, technically) to go to the LSU-Tennessee game tomorrow afternoon.

I'm excited to be able to say that I've been in the stadium up there (Neyland?) but I've heard bad things about the person-to-seat-room ratio. But I guess there are worse things in the world than being squeezed into a stadium to watch an LSU game.

As expected, the Auburn and Florida games have completely killed my optimism for this game. Of course, I still think LSU will win, but I just can't get excited about thinking that LSU will win.

A couple of random thoughts on the game:
Jamarcus Russell is something like 5-6 against quality opponents, but I'm not sure that record is an accurate reflection of his skills at quarterback. But maybe I'm weird, because I can't get over the talk that people want him on the bench (or away from LSU completely). It seems that next to Les Miles, Russell is the least popular person associated with the team, despite being in the top 5 in the country in passer rating...

I'm very interested to see the scheme the LSU defense employs for this game. Last year, The Tigers pressured Ainge, the Tennessee quarterback, and built a 21-0 halftime lead. Then they proceeded to play the same soft zone that got them torched by Arizona State the previous game and blew the lead and lost in overtime. Part of me wants to forgive that mistake because post-Katrina conditioning woes caused the Tigers to dehydrate and cramp. It was all they could do just to have 11 defenders on the field on any given play.

But then history repeated itself this season. LSU spends all season pressuring quarterbacks (or knocking them out of games completely), and then proceeds to call off the dogs against Florida. Last year, LSU swarmed Chris Leak, who completed only 11 of 30 passes as he struggled under pressure. This year, they played back and let him pick the defense apart underneath, completing 17-26 passes. It's baffling, really.

LSU coaches have not exactly impressed me with their ability to make tactical or personnel adjustments this seasons. They still haven't figured out the tailback situation, it took them 40 forevers to find a punt returner and nine (nine! exclamation mark) games into the season you get to read stories about them wanting to get Trindon Holliday more involved in the offense (Oh, really? You mean the guy averaging 18.6 yards a carry should be getting the ball? Get the hell outta here, you crazy sombitch). So forgive me if i'm not exactly confident that they've learned their lesson and will let the dogs loose against Ainge, who, by the way, will be playing hurt.

Shmoke and a pancake

I try to keep predictions sweepingly general to keep myself from looking too stupid, but sometimes even i can't "save me from myself." At the start of the season, i said that West Virginia would sail through its regular season schedule then get killed by a legitimate opponent in a bowl game. Then i watched them beat somebody (Maryland?), and i said that they'd cruise through their schedule then at least put up a fight, if not win, their bowl game.

So they proceed to go get beat by Louisville. Watching the game, i can't help but imagine that West Virginia can relate to how LSU felt after their losses. That was a game I think the 'eers should have won, but gave it away. Not only did they give it away, they gave it away ugly. Although I must say that WV's defense pretty much sucked, so i won't go so far as to say that the 'eers were guaranteed a win if they didn't turn the ball over so darned much, but it at least would have been "tight like a tiger."

Instead, Louisville was victorious and got to "shake [their] booty KC and the Sunshine Band."

*****
turn on the sound and enjoy:

you don't have to pay, i've got all the change

I saw today that McDonald's is doing a McRib farewell tour. Does anybody know if this is a yearly gimmick since it's a seasonal menu item, or are they pulling it forever and ever?

i went ahead and signed the save the mcrib petition just to be safe. A world without McRibs is not one i want to live in.

****

Obviously not a lot going on in my world these days beyond work.

I meant to bring back Weigh-In Wednesday today, but I forgot.

I have been to the Y once, and i'm still sore from Monday's workout. didn't go back last night so we could hand out candy.

I've restopped drinking coffee and soft drinks, but have had way too much candy lately. so once i get that under control, look for a much steadier drop in weight than my first half-assed effort.