Longest. Richt. Interview. Ever

God bless David Ching for typing this all out. His wrists must ache.

Gee, women can be mean

I was in our break room here for about 45 seconds and the T.V. was tuned to some show called "Charm School" on VH1. I was there long enough to hear one girl refer to another as "back-stabbing tramp-ass ho."

And for another to call someone a "slut."

And for the alleged slut to respond "At least I'm getting paid. You're giving it away for free."

Said a female colleague of mine: "That show is retarded."

God, he's ours right now, OK?

If you don't know Georgia fans, know this: We can worry about anything. I mean like you're up 21 against Vanderbilt at halftime and someone says, "But if they take the redshirt off that 1-star freshman, we could be in trouble. I hear he's fast. Plus, the ice is all melted in my bourbon."

So forgive me me if my heat skipped a little beat when I read this in today's Macon Telegraph.

When he retires from coaching, Richt will go into missions work of some kind, he said, and the whole family may be making another trip to Honduras soon.

Now, some background. Head Georgia Football Coach Mark Richt is a fine man and a great football coach. And he has always said he plans to be at Georgia for his entire football career... unless God calls him elsewhere. That's been in response to questions about him leaving Georgia for another coaching job. What with God being a Bulldog, that seemed taken care of.

Richt and his family just got back from a mission trip to Honduras. What if he feels the call of mission work? And am I going to hell for worrying about this?

Gameday to Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech's athletic department says ESPN's Gameday will open the season in Blacksburg to mark the tragic shooting that took place on the campus in April.

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill game versus East Carolina University. There are bigger games that day. But that's what you do. You remember things.

Back from the moon

I spent the last four days visiting a friend of mine in Colorado and catching Widespread Panic at Red Rocks. Posts about peace, hope, love and other hippie crap to follow.

Right now I've got a lot of work to do. Who the hell decided newspapers should be put out EVERY day, anyway?

But there are two things that must happen, both courtesy of the fine folks at Georgia Sports Blog.

The first is a wonderful idea of how to thank Larry Munson, whose retirement is eminent:

The Echo Cheer (I have no idea what else to call it) is the back and forth call from the North Stands to the South Stands of "Georgia/Bulldogs." In my life, I've heard the stadium call only two things..."Georgia/Bulldogs" and "David/Pollack" (vs. Kentucky his last year). I never heard the legendary "Herschel/Walker" or "Terry/Hoage" back and forth calls. And I don't remember it ever happening for Zeier or Vince Dooley.

But it should happen for Larry Munson. And it should be deafening. A round of applause and a long standing ovation just isn't going to cut it. We need a thunderous, multi-minute back and forth during each of the home games. It should be audible from other SEC venues. If you've got a contact with the cheerleaders....make this happen.

And afterwards, if you want to enjoy that Victory Cigar, drink another cold one or smile at another co-ed, then all the better. I think Larry would be into that.

And secondly, if you love Sanford Stadium, America or people who are badass, go watch this video right now.

And if you hate America, you're probably an Auburn fan.

Barbara Wells, rest in peace

I'm posting this to both blogs...

I wrote a story for today's paper that I hope people will read. It's about an 18-year-old girl named Barbara Wells that apparently drank herself to death a couple of months after the state shutdown a drug treatment program she was in. This is essentially what people who'd been through this program said would happen if the program shut down and was replaced by more out-patient type services.

Barbara was old enough to know better. Maybe her family should have taken better care of her. Maybe taxpayers shouldn't be forced to treat anyone with an addiction. Maybe that can be handled in the private sector and with charity.

It is so hard to keep people from hurting each other in this world, and it's even harder to stop them from hurting themselves.

But I look at the picture Barbara's mother sent us for the story I just think: "That girl needed help."

I hope that people, and particularly our elected decision makers, see people when they look at numbers. Every budget cut affects a real person. Every increase takes money from a real person's pocket. Government doesn't need to be abstract. It needs to be understood as a very real and very pervasive force in everyone's life, and the consequences of political decisions have to be acknowledged.

Like a lot of things, this story reminds me of a song, this one written by Michael Houser. In the song, Houser meets a homeless man, who asks him if he can "see the sun." The encounter makes him think about how much he's been given, what he owes others and whether one day he'll be made accountable. I've always liked the way the song ends:

I went to see my girl, told her about my day
She said sometimes life, it can be that way
But don't give up, don't give up, no
'Cause where there is love, there is hope

Tell me brother, can you see the sun
From where you're standing now
I've been up and I've been down
But I've never been to this part of town

Ramblin wrecked

How did I miss this yesterday? And why isn't it on the front page of every newspaper in the state so that everyone can laugh?

Techies wreck Ramblin Wreck, hold bake sale to pay for repairs.

Legendary Voice of the Bulldogs Larry Munson

I think we've all seen this coming, but in today's Telegraph long-time Dawgs play-by-play man Larry Munson says he's "almost 50-50" on calling this season.

My guess is he comes back for one last season, hunkers it down one more time, so to speak.

But either way, Larry Munson IS Georgia Football. He makes you FEEL a Georgia game. There is a waver in his voice, a hope, a fear, something just short of a prayer. By the end of a game, he sounds like I feel: Exhausted.

I was lucky enough to interview Munson a few years back. His middle name is Harry and he once played in a band with Frank Sinatra. I can guarantee you that he's worried about pretty much every game on the schedule this year, especially with all of our suspensions in the first couple of games.

You can listen to old Munson calls here. A good way to kill a week.

Most people have a Munson story, so I'll tell mine. A few years back, on the Sunday before the Florida game, my buddy The General called into the day-after call-in show to talk to Coach Richt and Munson.

He was the last call of the day. In fact the wrap-up music started playing during his call.

The General was just calling to say we'd played a good game the day before, and to let Coach Richt know he was packing up the car and heading down to Florida for the Cocktail Party.

This was on a Sunday. The game was not for six days.

Said Munson, as only he can: "My God! You'll be dead by Thursday!"

Sewing Machine

I caught up with 2002 and got an iPod today. If you don't have one of these things, and you're not my parents, drop everything you're doing right now and get one. Or kill yourself, because life's not worth living.

And if anyone at Apple wants to send me a check for saying that, you can find me at The Macon Telegraph, in Macon, Georgia.

In a related piece of "news," I'm headed to Colorado Friday to see Widespread Panic at Red Rocks and visit a buddy of mine. All reports point to the band being as dirty as ever. In fact, if this setlist is any indication, I'm pretty sure they destroyed a small piece of Tennessee at Bonnaroo last night, leaving dead, smelly, dread-locked hippies burning in their wake.

Talk about your win-win situations. There are even unconfirmed reports that Dave Schools went backstage before the encores and stabbed Sting in the lung.

All this means that several posts this week are liable to be little more than song lyrics.

Suck in your gut, clench your fist
You just finished scaling a big black fish
On a bench out behind the tool shack
In a patch of poison sumac

Mama ordered us some catalogue jeans
She made the cuffs on the sewing machine
Sewing machine
Sewing machine
Sewing machine
Sewing machine

Coach Richt and The General

So this is a good friend of mine.

Todd Unzicker, not Coach Richt. Coach Richt's just a guy who calls me for advice all the time. I always answer with "sprint draw."

Anyway - the change in Todd's life over the last few years is nothing short of phenomenal. He went from being one of the rowdiest people you can imagine (yes, I'm toning it down for the Internet) to being a missionary in Honduras.

He got malaria at one point down there. And I've never seen him happier.

Life's unexpected. By the way, we call Todd "The General" because he likes to tell people what to do. I could fill an entire new blog with stories about this guy.

Bloggers of the world unite!

Then, once you're all in one room, I'm going to set it on fire.

It seems a reporter/blogger got booted from an NCAA baseball game for live-blogging. Nothing like a little new media First Amendment issue (if in fact that's what this is).

By the way, I picked this story up from The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer's exceedingly fine Bulldog Blog.

Planet Earth is blue

If they've stuck to NASA's timetable, American astronauts are walking in space right now, installing trusses for some kind of a solar array on the International Space Station.

They are in a state of constant free fall around the Earth. If they look over one shoulder, they see the planet they live on. Over the other, it's infiniti.

And this is happening right now.

So much of life is geography.

Go to Hell, Florida

I doubt any of the Gators who showed up last week to dismiss the notion that they wear jean shorts are still coming around, but just in case:

Perfect.

By the way, just in case it's not abundantly clear, The Macon Telegraph doesn't necessarily want Florida to go to Hell. That's all me.

In fact, the powers that be here probably don't care what Florida does (though if they knew just how evil UF is, they'd probably be with me on this).

Section 318, you might be in trouble

I got a call from the Georgia Athletic Association today. After several years of donating to the Georgia ticket fund I finally have enough points to actually get tickets.

Section 318, rows 16 and 17, seats 1 and 1.

At least I think that's what she said. It was pretty early this morning.

I'm moving up in the world. Literally and figuratively.

Today's lucid idiocy

At lunch I saw a blind kid with his family. He was wearing a T-shirt that said:

Genius by birth
Lazy by choice

Spurrier, beaten and burned

I guess I could lie and say I'm practicing and just want to see whether I can actually post video here. But, truth be told, if anything my friends and I have ever done deserves to be on the internet, this is it.

It's a Georgia tailgate. And, yes, that is a Steve Spurrier pinata filled with tiny bottles of whiskey.

I laugh every time this girl misses. Every time.



And here's a still image taken after it was, perhaps inevitably, set on fire.


Thanks to Gary Battles for the video and, quite possibly, the picture

By this, and this only

You know how you get into a funk sometimes, and the oddest things can break you out? For whatever reason reading The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot, did it for me a few years back.

I believe I was worried about getting older. And a girl didn't like me. Ain't those always the problems?

Any way, it was actually four lines of the poem that flipped the switch. The thing is wicked long.

So in case you have nothing better to do today.

Best. Poem. Ever.

On Georgia Women

Someone wrote something inappropriate in a comment to a post below. I deleted it. I don't know what kind of person it takes to anonymously insult women on a stranger's blog, but the word trash comes to mind, regardless of school affiliation.

I've had a long love affair with the women that gravitate toward the University of Georgia. I have said, more than once, that I'd throw a rock into the student section on game day and, if it hit a girl, marry her in happiness.

Of course, I'm a little old for that now. And she might not be willing, with or without the rock.

I once tried to write a poem about Georgia women. It was pretty much a drunken train wreck. But the sentiment was there:

"Oh, I have to be a Georgia girl today"
And you revel in it, and never hate it
though I know, know your feet hurt

Like a playing card with a sharp, hard edge
like Athens itself
And which one of you makes the other
I do not know

See what I mean? Those are actually the two best stanzas.

So let me just say that in Athens our women have always been the best of us. If they fail, I have no faith.

From the comments

Couple of things here:

Paul Westerdawg, who has a great Georgia blog that's linked over on the right there, notes that the picture below is from the South Carolina game. That sounds about right.

And whoever posted this (anonymously) is hilarious. I'll have to track him down and kill him, but funny is funny:

"So let me get this straight if UF is to Bolton, then UGA football is to a comet, comes around about once every 30 years??? right?? Sucks for you."

I think he (no way it's a woman - she would have had the guts to post under a real name) takes some liberties with the facts here, but it's funny.

Gratuitous Sanford Stadium photo

Not sure what game it's from, but a few years ago. Only 88 days until kickoff, people.

Damn you, Michael Bolton

To quote Lewis Grizzard, let's get this straight from the start: I'm Bulldog born and I'm Bulldog bred, and when I die I'll be Bulldog dead...

The latest reports have Billy Donovan, he of the Eddie Munster haircut and multiple national titles, wanting to get out of his agreement to coach the Orlando Magic. He would return to the cesspool that is Gainesville Florida and the University of Florida basketball team.

Coverage of this potential kick in the stomach to all that is holy is here.

A few days ago I was toying with the idea that the University of Florida is the Michael Bolton of college athletics. Stay with me on this.

Just like Michael Bolton, they have a confusing lack of style. Just like Michael Bolton they repeatedly reap success for no apparent reason.

And can't you picture Michael Bolton wearing jean shorts, gold chains and an orange and blue tank top?

Remember that movie Office Space? There's a character in that movie named Michael Bolton. And he's mad because there's a singer named Michael Bolton. I got this exchange from a copy of the script here

SAMIR: Michael, there's nothing wrong with that name.
MICHAEL: There was nothing wrong with it. Until I was about nine years old and that no-talent assclown became famous and started winning Grammys.
SAMIR: Well, why don't just go by Mike, instead of Michael?
MICHAEL: Why should I change it? He's the one who sucks.

Here's where I bring this home: The SEC has always been a great conference. For many years it was dominated by traditional powers Alabama, Tennessee (I'll put my hatred of them aside for a moment) and Georgia, with Auburn showing up every few years.

Florida was terrible. Now these no-class assclowns win everything in sight. And even when something bad happens — like their all-everything coach leaving for the NBA - it looks like it will turn out well for them, too.

How did this happen? I don't know, how did Michael Bolton win all those Grammys? There's just evil in this world.

Welcome to Lucid Idiocy

Rants, humor and tragedy as it occurs.

It's a trick: There's two of them!

I think I'll start with an old Lewis Grizzard joke. And thanks to my buddy Mike Donila for suggesting that.

I remember listening to Lewis' comedy tapes in the car with my parents. He's just a hell of a writer and a story teller.

And, for the record, I don't hate yankees. But I have a friend who does.

General Sherman is on his way out of Atlanta after burning it to the ground. He's heading out I-20.

When he gets to Stone Mountain he sees a lone Confederate soldier up atop it, cussing him and the entire Union Army.

"We can't have this," Sherman says to his command staff. "I mean, we got CNN with us, The New York Times, and this rebel is making us look bad."

So he turns to a sergeant and says, "Sergeant, send our best man up there to get that rebel off the mountain."

So the guy goes up and a few minutes later he comes flying off the mountain and lands in a bloody clump at Sherman's feet.

Says Sherman: "Send 10 men up there."

All 10 are killed and thrown off the mountain.

Says Sherman: "Send 100 men up there to get that Confederate."

One by one, 99 Union soldiers are thrown, dead, off the mountain. The last one crawls back down the mountain to his general, bleeding from every point of his body. He looks up and says:

"It's a trick, sir. There's two of them."

And dance for all the joy

I was at a coffee shop in Atlanta, on a Monday evening before the sun went down, going through the Atlanta sports section for a second time. I saw the inside-page story, short, a Macon man dead in a football game.

I’d just been through a few weeks, a month, that I’d prayed as hard and as much and as meaningfully as I ever had. They’d found another lump in my sister’s throat. It was probably cancer and they took it out that morning.

“Lord, please be with my sister,” I’d prayed. That and really nothing else.

That morning she had the surgery and the news came back as good as we could have hoped. That’s what my Dad said. Non-malignant.

My heart sang and she was in good spirits, happy that the scar on her neck was just a little longer than it was the first time they went in and took something out a few years back.
Doped up and in a hospital bed that evening, she was 22.

And I read that story and it broke my heart for his family. Al Lucas, dead at 26. Where were my prayers for him the last few weeks?

Is it true that for every rise there is a fall? Does balance in this world give cause for guilt?
A billion bad things happened Tuesday and likely a billion good.

Dear Lord, thy will be done. And let us pause for all the sorrow in this world, and dance for all the joy.