Bring back the silver helmets

I'm on record against anything called "Pro Combat" that doesn't involve actual soldiers. But if we're heading down that path anyway for the Boise State game, I'd like to see some throwback flair to the new uniforms.

I'd like to see silver helmets in the mix, with an updated "G" on the side in a nod to the 1962 uniforms described here.

All in all, I think we downplay silver in general. I'm not calling for a silver-out ... yet. But it sure looks good mixed with that red and black, and it's a lot better than white.

We cannot stumble when we are on our knees

- A church sign I saw this weekend, somewhere between Athens and Macon.
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It's summer. Spring practice has ended. Is there any way we can get Tony Cole some more eligibility so he can just take all our lumps for us?
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Texas Tech Coach Mike Leach on how difficult it is to control a bunch of college kids all summer long: "If you've got 130 church choir members, you know, somebody's up to something."
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How are holograms made?

Apparently, with a laser.
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If you're one of the 5 people who haven't seen the Susan Boyle video from that British American Idol show, well here it is:

"I've never been given the chance before, but here's hoping that will change."
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Clemson: The most famous thing about us is a rock someone brought back from California.


In other news, I briefly visited Clemson, S.C., last weekend.
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Bruce Springsteen and Axyl Rose singing a Beatles song:

It's football season

I think I hope Lou Holtz gets hit by a truck tonight.

South Carolina and N.C. State's offenses are just terrible.

Oregon State-Stanford is on, allowing me to flip between two college football games on a Thursday night. I'd forgotten how glorious this is.

Barack Obama's speech: "Meh."

Steve Spurrier: Still a jerk.

Chris Fowler: "Haven't seen a game in Commodore Stadium. Looking forward to it."

Uh, OK.

The year is 1987

Why isn't Buck Rogers in syndication?

Also, make this tax policy story fun

If I can go all journalism on you for a moment, Danny's blog about the female impersonator story that was assigned but never ran in the paper reminds me of my own "we can't run this" moment.

Oddly, it also involved a transvestite.

You have to run a legal a before you change your name. I picked one up a few years back where a man was changing his name to a woman's name. I don't remember the name.

Anyway, it turned out this was a man who divorced his wife, had a sex change operation, became a lesbian and was marrying another woman. I contacted her (the pronoun she preferred) and she and her partner agreed to an interview.

I pitched the story and it was received with enthusiasm. I spent quite a bit of time with the couple and also interviewed one of her kids, several sex-change doctors and another transvestite who lived nearby.

You try finding and cold-calling sex-change doctors and transvestites for an newspaper interview sometime. It's not a quick process.

I turned the story in and the editor, and I am not making this up, said we couldn't run the story because it read too much like Jerry Springer and not enough like 60 minutes. Could I, he asked, make it read less like Jerry Springer?

A transvestite in Macon, Georgia, decides he/she is a lesbian and marries another woman. Yeah, I'll 60 Minutes that puppy right up.

Needless to say, the story never ran.

The ones they told you about

I'm headed to Savannah for a couple of days. It's much needed. Here's hoping I come back one of the good people.

Sound on that link, by the way.

Of course we should apologize for slavery

These double posts are becoming less rare...

I wrote this last year, when the Georgia General Assembly was considering a formal apology for slavery:

Of course we should apologize for slavery. Every human being should.

We should be sorry that we don't love our fellow men like we should. That we let fear and hatred hold us back in this advanced age.

Martin Luther King Jr. was quoting Matthew most of the time. Who was, of course, quoting Jesus.

Love your neighbor.

I'm sorry slavery happened. I'm sorry it happened on my own soil, in my country. I'm sorrier still that so much of it, and so badly, happened in my beloved home state.

I also had these lines, which I liked. But I never felt good about the segues to them:

If you say "we" when you say "America," I think that's proof you owe an apology. ...

I honor all dead. Every man has good in him and is to be missed, and those who sacrifice for others most of all.

This sandwich is fantastic, you over-charging hippie

I seldom link the stuff I write for the regular paper here. But I really liked this restaurant review.

For what it's worth

I had entirely too much to drink Saturday and wrote this:

Old pine trees have few limbs.

I seem to remember it being a metaphor.

Today's Lucid Idiocy

Just a random page from my notebook. This one, it turns out, was written just about the time I started this blog.

The "go crazy" line, in fact, is about this blog. The Mike Wallace thing is from my favorite car insurance commercial. "A Christmas Carole" may be the best piece of fiction ever written.

And I do not feel like a sexual dynamo. But I do snore:

God Bless us, every one.
- Tiny Tim

Hey, we're all contributing to the tapestry of humanity. Being woven, as it were.

I know you think that I might go crazy. And I have news for you: I will.

I got the key, to the Highway.
- Eric Clapton

Can't beat the world, he said.
Shit, I beat the world last week, I said right back. ---ker keeps calling me, asking for a rematch.

Isn't it amazing how women can just make the world stop.

When it's about Mike Wallace, the story ends with me putting him in the wall.
- Kid, GEICO commercial

Please, I'm like the worst suitor you ever had.

Almost all sexual dynamos snore.

Progress is often based on failure.

Those remote control boats...

The following people should never listen to anything I say:

Everyone.

Feel free to pay attention to what I write.

Is anyone else amazed by dryer lint?

The amount of it, I mean. How is there anything left of my clothes?

Also, I love the sayings "first things first" and "it's always in the last place you look."

Who's gonna disagree with that?

What is Love?

I missed a lot of them, but this was my favorite Super Bowl commercial:

Larry Munson, Herschel Walker and Knowshon Moreno

I just can't tell you how awesome this is. It's the piece that ran before the Sugar Bowl.

The look on Knowshon's face when Herschel says "the only thing that separates us now: the Heisman and the National Championship" is going to keep me warm the entire off season.

Hat tip: Georgia Sports Blog (of course).

Sunrise in Colorado

I meant to post this last week, but got busy. It's the view from the house where my parents took the family recently for a ski trip.

Fletch F. Fletch

If Animal House is the reason I went to college (and it is), then Fletch is the reason I became a reporter.

Oddly enough, we're not allowed to lie nearly as much as I was led to believe.

And, just for fun:

A word on friendship

Friendship is not like family, or even love. It exists only if everyone agrees it does.















And if I pass this way again
you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her
on that I give my word
in world of steel-eyed death and men fighting to be warm
Come in, she said, I'll give you
shelter from the storm

Awesomest. Family. Ever

My family got together last night because my sister is moving to San Diego (you know, after it stops being on fire) and to take the annual Christmas card picture. We had to take it inside because it was raining. And it was night time.

Here we are:













Like the president and vice president, we should never all be on a plane together.

We should do that with Athens

Every now and then I read a sentence that just blows my mind. This one is from the September National Geographic, in a story about spiders that live in caves:

Evolved in isolation and unable to disperse, species often consist of just a handful of individuals in one cave, or one room of one cave.

To put it another way, we WILL beat Florida

No reason at all on this, other than to move that last post down.

Hold me tight, flying through the air
Coy dogs calling, we're almost there
Laugh so hard that the devil's all scared
I got a real good mind, to beat you senseless