The Sporting Life

Bowl me over

It's the new year, but college football is rumblin', stumblin' on

Late-night sports are gonna be the death of me. Today I had to practically pull myself up a staircase at work as a result of yet another post-midnight finish to a ballgame. Early in the fall, it was the baseball playoffs. Now, college bowls are to blame. Whether a chemical imbalance or the efforts of some tiny outpost in my mind, something won't allow me to give up on a good game and simply go to bed.

As the Orange Bowl entered the fourth quarter last night, I knew I was most likely in it until Paterno and Bowden shook hands at midfield. I was right.

Not all the bowls have been nail-biters, however.

Sometime late in the first quarter of the Capital One Bowl on Monday, I text-messaged a cousin of mine to find out which station was carrying the game. I thought I'd been watching it, but I began to think I'd clicked over to a replay of Auburn-Georgia Tech from the first of the season.

It had to be, right? DBs occasionally nowhere near receivers, costly turnovers, dropped passes, overthrown balls — I know the Tech game when I see it. But, strangely, the opposing team wore red and white.

A top-five finish and another 10-win season would've been nice, but Auburn fans shouldn't let the dismal performance vs. the Badgers destroy their enthusiasm about the 2005 season or hopes for 2006. As for me, I can't wait. No matter how it pans out, it's a great schedule, including home games vs. Washington State, Arkansas, Florida, LSU and Georgia.

But as a friend of mine said, it's over, and there's no sense in analyzing and bemoaning it. Our season is done, and it's time to turn to basketball and baseball.

As for that game tonight, I'm at a point where I no longer care. Sportswriters and analysts have slobbered so much over these two teams and this Rose Bowl that it's robbed the event of something for me.

I'm going to bed at the half. I mean it. Really. Leave me alone!

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Fair and balanced: To Lynnette Ruby, the woman who spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper about the awful revelation that the report of 12 survivors of the West Virginia mining disaster was false: Thanks.

Thanks for talking with a reporter. Thanks also to the three or four unnamed people I've seen who likewise gave good interviews. Rural folks with (as my mom would put it) walking-around sense usually steer clear of somebody with a microphone or a camera, which means the face of smalltown America — and particularly the smalltown South — is often left to the it-sounded-like-a-train, still-on-probation bystanders without whom Fox's Cops probably wouldn't exist. Your appearances on camera were the only positive moments in a story of absolute anguish.

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Your source for Auburn football? Hardly: This blog has to be a helluva big disappointment for the football-rabid visitors who arrive here from the list of blogs at CNNsi and at fanblogs.com. I'm not exactly sure how I made their lists since Auburn football is just one of many random things I ramble on about. My apologies.

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Countdown to first pitch now in days rather than months: No matter how it pans out, somebody please assure me the No. 4-ranked Cornhuskers won't return to Omaha. Their appearance last year was the only blemish on an other wise awesome trip to the College World Series, and I already have a hotel lined up for 2006. With Nebraska fans making it especially competitive to get seats, I think I used enough sunscreen for four people while standing in lines that turned back and forth outside the outfield like a queue at Six Flags.

Only one SEC team in the Top 10 and barely two in the Top 15? And why in the world is North Carolina overrated year after year after year? At least Georgia Tech has a more realistic ranking for a change. How many times have they started out Nos. 1, 2 or 3 and (as usual) not made it out of their own regional? Peruse all 40 of the teams in Collegiate Baseball's preseason poll and judge it for yourself.

What would the Pharisees do?: The Georgia Baptist Convention has cut all ties with its flagship university, Mercer. The straw that broke the camel's back? Why, gays, of course.

Related: The Rev. Adrian Rogers, one of the architects of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention 25 years ago, died Tuesday at age 74.

TiVo alert: If you didn't catch CNN Presents' "Undercover in the Secret State" on Sunday night, you have another chance this Saturday. The footage secretly shot inside North Korea is eye-opening.

Through a glass darkly: In this year's art and architecture issue of The Oxford American, out now, Erik Reece puts the photography of Shelby Lee Adams under scrutiny. Are his images of Appalachia harmful or only misinterpreted?

"What Louise Hall considers exploitation, Adams calls 'an exciting, dramatic lighting event.' Adams the formalist can't understand how Hall might be insulted by an image that portrays her sister as that most hated of mountain cliches — 'trash.'"

Sony side down: So Sony is pulling its products that load copy-restriction software onto customers' PCs. According to Wired, the damage has already been done.

"Should the average person write software that took control of a computer at the system level without a user's knowledge and distributed that software across the world, there are plenty of laws that would put him behind bars. But what happens when Sony does this, ostensibly to protect its intellectual property?"

Cat in the hat? Maybe not such a good idea: Esquire's latest issue includes an article about one researcher's findings that point toward a surprising source for schizophrenia: that feline curled up in your lap.

Also, in its annual "Best and Brightest" section, the magazine gives readers a good look at the work of Banksy and the man behind it. Note to the guy plastering Atlanta with a rip-off of the Pac-Man monsters: His sort of work is interesting and creative. Yours isn't.

The sound of music: Musical peformances and interviews at NPR I've recently enjoyed include Steven Page, Nickel Creek, Simply Red and Jerry Douglas.

Coming soon: Here's hoping Be Here to Love Me, the new movie about Townes Van Zandt, makes its way to one of the art house theaters in Atlanta.

More than double the number of women 18-44, 11.5 percent, are experimenting with bisexuality than they were a decade ago, according to the findings of a survey by the CDC released today.

In a related story, CDC phone lines have been jammed throughout the day as a result of a barrage of requests from men 18-44 for access to the database storing contact information for the 11.5 percent of the respondents, in hopes of finding their wives and girlfriends on the list.

Here and there

Random comments on life and links found online

• "Business casual" is interpreted so liberally by my fellow employees that I've begun taking bets on when someone will show up in only a thong. I've seen people arrive at work in pajama bottoms and house slippers. My former boss swears to me that a punk woman once showed up wearing jeans with "F**k" written on her right knee and "You" written on the other in ballpoint ink. It was only a coincidence that the CEO's quarterly meeting was the same day. So it's rare for attire to surprise me any longer. But this morning I entered the building at the same time as a guy wearing low-riding jeans and a sleeveless, fitted T-shirt. Maybe he drove here directly from Jungle.
• Nice try, Georgia: Bulldogs develop fiendish plot in hopes of putting Boise State on probation. In future news ... Gamecocks face bowl ban, scholarship limitations after NCAA discovers kidney donor to father of South Carolina football player is Clemson alum.
• You chop off your hair and take a Greyhound across the country to bail on your wedding. A nationwide manhunt ensues. When you finally call home, you claim you were kidnapped by minorities. Your punishment for lying to police includes mowing grass — and news outlets both national and local consider it so important they cover it with not only a story but also photos. What's the old phrase? "They will take us over without firing a single shot"? Sounds about right.
• New Indymedia reality series "Scripting the Dictator" continues.
• Tired of Terrell? Palmeiro played out? Frank Deford reminds us of one of pro sports' most likable legends.
• Guantanamo interrogators put up their "Dukes." Apparently "Not Another Teen Movie" and "View from the Top" weren't working. Kenneth Turan goes a little easier on it, simply calling it a "cosmic void where a movie's supposed to be."
• Pfffft. Typical Auburn. Trying to pad its always-easy schedule with another I-AA creampuff.
• "Uh, well ... Bush is Hitler! No blood for oil! Yeah."
• You got a book published. You picked up a gig as a columnist. Now you're the lead character in an upcoming movie. You lucky bastard.
• Donald Trump is to Amarosa as Morgan Spurlock is to _______.
• I have to admit I, too, feel as if I'm loading an 8-track whenever I have to fax something.

Flushing queens

Finding myself in a New York state of mind

In 1989's "When Harry Met Sally," Sally's friend Marie quoted a magazine article, stating, "Restaurants are to people in the eighties what theater was to people in the sixties."  Little did she know it was written by Harry's friend Jess, who was sitting across the table from her. Jess was amazed and said it was the first time anyone had ever quoted his work back to him.

Today Paul Katcher should be similarly flattered. I think.

On Saturday, while in downtown Chattanooga with two friends of mine, nature called — urgently. I wasn't sure whether to blame Friday night's Six Feet Under, Saturday morning's Chick-fil-A or Saturday afternoon's Sticky Fingers. But in that moment, it was far from my greatest concern.

As I picked up the pace to almost a sprint, trying desperately to weave through the throngs of tourists to reach the men's restroom at the visitor center next door to the aquarium, words of the (semi) renowned blogger flashed across my mind: "Every time I see people in line for stalls at Yankee Stadium I think, 'This has to be the worst day of your life.'"

So congratulations, Paul. We've shared a moment. Considering the circumstances, I'm not any happier about it than you'll be.

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In Katcher fashion, here's a list of links I found interesting and you may, too:

• If I had a million dollars, I'd wager it all that you the artists chosen to set Shakespeare to music for "As You Like It" wouldn't have been your first guess. Or second. Or third. And I'd be rich.
• Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but travel writing is at its finest when it entertains you and makes you interested in a place you previously hadn't given much thought. Cynthia Barnes has done so for me with Timbuktu. "The patio at the Amanar is clean and attractive, but what the rest of the town needs is my mother. I imagine her standing in the sand-swept streets, broom in hand. 'You, put on some pants and pick up that garbage. You, bring me some bleach. And for God's sake, someone bury that cat.'"
• Speaking of travel, if you're ready for a road trip to Labrador, I'm your man.
• Am I the only one who, on seeing John Bolton, recalls that sketch of Teddy Roosevelt releasing a captured black bear back into the wild?

Note-worthy

Even the smallest effort makes a difference overseas

Sometime before 1 a.m. EDT, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine who's serving with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan.

It was much the same as the others he's sent in the months since he first arrived in the Middle East. He asks a few questions and makes some comments about things I've mentioned in previous correspondence. He talks about weightlifting, as it's one of the only ways to fend off boredom during his limited free time. But as for what he's doing and what's happening to them, he doesn't talk much about it because he can't.

In this note, however, he said he had been on his first convoy and noted, "We didn't get shot at." He also mentioned that he and his group are relocating to a more remote site that has no amenities. Reading between the lines, I got the impression he will be performing more dangerous tasks in a more volatile area.

But one of his last comments stuck with me the most. "I got your letter the other day," he said. "Thank you. That is the most important part of the day, when you walk by the HQ office door and look to see if your name is on it for mail."

"E-mails are great, but hard mail is the best. People back home don't realize what it's like being over here and not getting mail."

It reminded me of a story I heard on NPR early in the month about the war and whether Americans feel any sort of sacrifice in their daily lives. The final interview of the piece, a worried mother whose voice trembles as she talks about her son, Terry Hollowell, is almost more than I can bear to hear. "They have organizations in the community that organize letter-writing," she said. "When my son was in the first Gulf War,  he said the soldiers would line up at mail call. Some that didn't get mail, their face was so disappointed. And the ones that got mail, their face just lit up really good." When asked whether there's anything else Americans can do to help military personnel, her answer was simple: "Pray. Pray like I do. I ask God to put angels in front of him every night. And of course to watch over every other mother's son who's over there. That's about it. Pray."

If you have any interest in writing to an active-duty soldier, please visit Military Mail.

Teen-aged boys hanged in Iran for being gay

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Update: Reports are surfacing that the two boys were guilty of sexual assault on a 13-year-old boy. While death by hanging seems an extreme punishment for minors, it's not exactly the same as being put to death just on the basis of sexual orientation.

Update II: Reports are also surfacing that the sexual assault may have been added to the story to soften the executions for Western readers.

Hey, kids! Wanna see a really big firework?

Wait 'til you see how Atlantans celebrate Halloween

From ajc.com:

"A tanker truck wreck that prompted the evacuation of a northwest Atlanta apartment complex was apparently caused by people throwing rocks, concrete and fireworks at the big rig ... Jolene Butts Freeman, spokeswoman for the Atlanta Fire Department, said that when firefighters arrived, 'people were actually standing on top of tanker once it was overturned.' She said she didn't know why the crowd of as many as 50 people climbed atop the flipped truck."

Atlantans engage in their favorite pastime

Off the top of my head, I can name these malls in Atlanta:

• Town Center Mall
• Perimeter Mall
• Phipps Plaza
• Northlake Mall
• Greenbrier Mall
• Cumberland Mall
• North Point Mall
• Lenox Square
• Mall of Georgia
• Gwinnett Place Mall
• Shannon Mall
• Southlake Mall
• Stonecrest Mall
• Arbor Place Mall

So I'm not sure why I was surprised when I saw that people were lined up for the opening of IKEA like it was the day before U2 tickets go on sale or the days after a hurricane when people collect their daily water rations. Please note: Yes, it actually does read "IKEA ROCKS" on the aqua-colored shirt of the girl in the foreground.

Even more frightening than people lined up in the heat and humidity to get into a furniture store? The local paper covering the event as if it were the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics.

Elsewhere
Chastain's Nouveau Riche: Shut up and show us your tits, Garrison!

(From Filibuster Cartoons.)