I've spent a lot of time this week wondering how I'm going to space out blog entries this month. Hopefully you've noticed that for the past year I've been trying to post every three days. But because I always post the results of home UGA games that I attend, this will throw me off a bit for the next few months. And I don't know why, but it always seems that I have more to say during Batman and Football Month than in other months. (After all, Batman and Football Month was founded because I couldn't decide which I liked more: Batman or Football.)

Then I had an epiphany: it's my blog and I'll post when I want too. So take that, Calendar Man!

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. But I still promise at least one post every three days through the end of the year because that just the sort of guy I am. (I do try to keep all 14 of my readers happy.)

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As I mentioned, Georgia won their season opener and the pollsters responded... by dropping us to #2 in the national rankings. In fact, USC leapt from #3 in both polls to #1, overtaking UGA and Ohio State.

The conventional wisdom at work here was that Georgia and Ohio State toyed with easy cupcake Division I-AA (also known as the Division I Football Championship Subdivision) teams, Georgia Southern and Youngstown State respectively, while USC overcame a legitimate contender in Virginia. This makes sense if you don't think about it, and most coaches won't and most sportswriters can't.

Virginia plays in the ACC, which as a football conference has been collapsing under the weight of their own expectations for a few years. The four teams in the ACC that opened their 2008 season against Division I-A (also known as the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision) opponents all lost. The two ACC teams that had the misfortune of opening against SEC schools, NC State and Clemson, both looked like they were playing the game for the first time in lopsided beatings by South Carolina and Alabama, respectively. (Worse, Clemson is expected to be the best team in the conference and was beaten embarassingly by Alabama, an expected also-ran in the SEC.) Last year's Virginia squad struggled to finish 9-4, defeating only three teams (hapless 1-11 Duke, Dave Wannstedt's inexplicably overrated 5-7 Pitt, and the worst 5-7 Miami, Florida team in decades) by more than a single touchdown. Or to put it another way, the team was 18 points away from a 3-10 season and isn't expected to win more than 4 games this season.

Meanwhile, Youngstown State has won 4 national titles in Division I-AA competition, second only to the 6 won by... Georgia Southern. While these two programs haven't played at their peak in recent years, they're proud programs with a better history of winning than Virginia. (Virigina has never even won an outright ACC Championship, merely sharing the title twice with two other teams, including Duke, in the past 55 years.).

After Appalachian State University, a three time Division I-AA Champion, rocked the football world by defeating Michigan in last season's opening weekend, should we really be insulting these championship caliber "second tier" schools by considering them as "cupcake" opponents for Division I-A programs?

Oh, but what do I know? I'm neither a coach or a sportwriter. I just watch a lot of football.

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Yes, I know that I should have posted yesterday in order to maintain my "every 3 days" posting rule, but I omitted the post on purpose so that I could prepare for today's post, the early kickoff to my Annual Batman and Football Month!

Today was the kickoff for the 2009 University of Georgia Bulldogs, who start the season ranked #1 in both the coaches and sportswriters national polls for the first time in school history. It was also the first game for Loran's Best, newly baptized as Uga VII, the latest in a distinguished line of Georgia mascots.

Uga VII was introduced to the fans exactly 10 minutes before kickoff of today's season opener against Georgia Southern. And he remained pretty much the focus of the fans and the cameras for the remainder of the game. Even a brief appearance by Georgia Southern's live eagle mascot, Freedom, couldn't steal Uga VII's spotlight.

Like all season openers, the presentation had it's rough spots. The boosters failed to properly support the Georgia "G" flag that the player's typically run through following pre-game introductions (as seen on recent ESPN promotions), and as a result the flag tore in two long before the players ever reached it. The GSU Band apparently got lost on the way to the game, failing to arrive until mere minutes before their scheduled halftime performance. [Update 09/02/08: From my source in Statesboro: "It pains me to say that I have to correct the information I gave you a bit.  YES, the bus was broke down for an hour and a half and that was the main reason they were late... however, the mother fuckers did get lost. I found that out last night. So you guys guessed correctly. Still, the MAIN reason was the flat."] Even the grounds crew needs some extra practice this year. Note the drop shadow error on the "B" in the endzone "Bulldogs" below.

Despite the snags and the the melting heat of the early afternoon sun, we beat GSU 45-21. It was a foregone conclusion that we would win easily, and we did. As a result, Uga VII started his reign as mascot with a 1-0 record. That's the sort of tradition that I can get behind.

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Info-tainment: the following is a lesson in how I learn things.

As I am prone to doing when I get depressed or bored (which I equate to pretty much the same thing), I was looking at pictures of the dilapidated and mostly abandoned urban settings. In this particular case, I was investigating the United States Pavillion at Canada's Expo 67. (World's Fairs are great examples of amazing structures designed for temporary use and then abandoned.) The US pavilion -- a giant geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller and containing the "world's longest escalator" simultaneously promoted American progress in the two most important endeavors in world history, the space race and the movie industry -- was gutted by a fire in 1976. It turns out that by the end of the 70s, the entire remainder of the Expo was in such terrible condition, that it was used as the backdrop for an episode of a Battlestar Galactica set on a post-apocalyptic world ("Greetings from Earth").

Searching the internet for scenes of the Galactica episode in question, I found a flickr page that had jumbled a bunch of vintage Expo 64 and Expo 67 pictures. There I saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex statue that had been displayed at the Sinclair Dinoland exhibit. (Amusing, I think, that an oil company would have an exhibit consisting of life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs. That's like a glue factory showcasing an exhibit of horses, isn't it?) Following the history of that T-Rex, I discovered, and here I quote the website of Dinosaur World, a dinosaur attraction with parks in Florida, Kentucky, and Texas:

Of the many movies in which T. rex (the all-time movie star among dinosaurs) has appeared, old T has been brought down only by Superman in The Arctic Giant (1942) and by a Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III (2001).

So in the end, what have we learned? That's right: the only person to beat a Tyrannosaurus Rex on film was Superman! (Funny, I thought, that I should start with the movie-centric contents of the US Pavillion from Expo 67 and end with movie trivia. But that's how life works, isn't it? I mean, when it's not giving you bone cancer and killing you in house fires, that is. And, let's face it, America is pretty obsessed with Hollywood culture.)

Moving fluidly from point to point through the sea of information that is the internet. That's why we call it "web surfing," James. And that's how you win on Jeopardy!.

P.S. That T. Rex statue in question now resides at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX, alongside the Sinclair Dinoland Brontosaurus. And yes, they do know that there was no such thing as a Brontosaurus, but they don't care. That's just how how Dinosaur Valley rolls.

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As a UGA alum, I've received these University of Georgia bookstore catalogs for years. This year, however, in the so-called "'08 Playbook," something seemed not quite right. Sure, there was the obligatory image of Mark Richt sporting his official Nike sideline gear, but the rest of the images seemed a little extra... generic. In addition to all of the models being WAY too old to be college kids, the backgrounds were all wrong. I'm very familiar with UGA's campus, and none of the buildings visible are in Athens. But what really spoiled the charade was on page 7:

Clearly, the people at Follett Higher Educational Group who produced and photographed this year's catalog have never even been to Athens. It's one thing to have a guy showcasing polo shirts and swim shorts featuring Uga produced in Martha's Vineyard (catalog numbers 0950807F $68.00 "Piqué Polo" and 0950807G $75.00 "Surfside Swim Trunks" from Vineyard Vines®), it's another altogether to have him pulling a surfboard out of his 2004 Scion xB in the presumed campus setting of glorious landlocked Athens, GA. Even worse, it's a Surftech Roxy soft top surfboard. Roxy is Quicksilver's line for girls. Good choice, brah.

I can't help but wonder how many other college and university bookstore catalogs feature a similar image with different apparel. You know, we can do amazing things with computers these days.

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Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water: Michael Phelps is the new spokesman for Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes cereals, and the media wants you to be very upset about it.

Apparently -- and this was news to me -- everyone in the world (except the clever bastards at Kellogg's) wanted Phelps to endorse General Mills' Wheaties, a cereal with much less sugar content and the iconic real estate to which Americans look for their annual re-definition of their sports role-model. (Olympic decathlete Bob Richards was the first athlete to appear on the front of a Wheaties box in 1958, and it's pretty much been a who's who of sport stars-of-the-moment for the 50 years since.) It seems that the Wheaties cover means something to people, and failing to appear on Wheaties must represent some sort of failing on the part of Phelps. (Nevermind that Kellogg's has already paid well over $70 million this summer alone to sponsor the Olympics and Team USA while Wheaties has spent nothing.) Worse still, Phelps' endorsement of Frosted Flakes (once called Sugar Frosted Flakes) is by many considered an endorsement of shoveling cane sugar into America's already obese children. How dare you make America more fat, Mr. Phelps?

I say America, make up your mind. Do you want Phelps as hero (world-conquering, invulnerable super-athlete) or Phelps as angel (life-affirming, affable boy-next-door)? Kellogg's wisely will take what they can get. After all, they have some experience with the original dual-identity sponsor, Superman, who proudly promoted their product during the televised Adventures of Superman starting in 1952, years before Wheaties began promoting athletes on the front of their box.

If Frosted Flakes is good enough for Superman, then it damn well ought to be good enough for Michael Phelps. If you need an orange Wheaties box to tell you who your heroes are, I think you've got bigger problems than even Michael Phelps can fix.

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Urgent announcement: I've found religion! And his name is Michael Phelps.

In the past week, I've heard how Phelps has overcome a childhood broken home and a crippling illness (ADHD) to become the greatest swimmer Olympian human being in the history of mankind. Did I say history of mankind? I meant ever. Anywhere. In the Universe. Who needs to walk on water when you can swim through it so fast? He even wins events despite his water-tight goggles filling with water. It must be a miracle.

On NBC, the anchors have coined such phrases as "an achievement of Phelpsian proportions" (in regards to the women's diving competition) while praising Phelps in a manner reminiscent of some religion based in Rome, including asking whether we weren't "underestimating Phelps amid all the hype." The most devoted of Phelps' Phollowers (I believe they call themselves Phelps Phans) is Chris Collinsworth, who moments after the completion of the 400 medley relay told gold medal-winner Jason Lezak that his greatest claim to fame would be helping Phelps win the relay events. Meanwhile, ESPN says that Phelps is the savior of the Olympic Games. ESPN wouldn't lie to me, would it?

All right, fine. Sign me up. If Michael Phelps is the greatest thing since Jesus, I want on board. I'll watch him as The Bachelor. I'll buy the products that the first mom, Debbie Phelps, the Official Mother of the Olympic Games, pitches for Johnson's. Heck, I'll even dash out and buy a pair of tighter-than-skin Speedos to wear while talking on my AT&T Wireless Phone on historic Ellis Island. That's what the Olympics are all about, right?

By the way, I just heard that Phelps' urine cures cancer. Maybe that's why everyone seems to have his dick in their mouth.

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Found on the internet: a blog about confectionery fiascos. I especially appreciated the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas birthday cake for the 4 year old.

And if you're in that sort of mood, you may also appreciate the "blog" devoted to "unnecessary" quotation marks. I did.

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Football season is almost here, and I'm struggling to decide whether I'll be able to cheer for the Miami Dolphins this year or not. I supported the team throughout last year's one-win debacle, but this weekend may have been the last straw: Bill Parcels signed Chad Pennington. That's right, THE Chad "I Can't Throw 20 Yards" Pennington who was CUT by the Dolphins' arch-rival New York Jets when they agreed to solve the Green Bay Packers' problem by taking Brett Favre off their hands.

It's not that I hate Pennington, I just don't see him as the answer to any of our many questions. He's old, his naturally weak arm is practically nonexistent after several operations, and he was unable to provide enough leadership in New York last year. The entire move smacks of cronyism. Who drafted Pennington for the Jets? That's right - Bill Parcels! (Again proving the old adage that it's not what you throw, but who you know!)

So now the Dolphins, who have started 12 different players at quarterback since Marino retired in 2000, will likely have a 13th. (Oh, Great Marino, why have you forsaken us?) And having a weak-armed, aging quarterback is unlikely to help the Dolphins' running game. When every player on defense knows that the ball can't go more than 20 yards downfield, they're unlikely to provide much room for the running-backs to maneuver.

With an unproven rookie, there was at least the illusion of hope. Pennington comes already loaded with the stench of loser. Phew!

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Great news! The Olympics are now underway in China. Why is that great news? Because that means that in 3 weeks they'll be over, and I won't be bothered by them anymore.

Maybe I'm a cynic ("maybe"?), but it seems to me that a giant competition feverishly promoted and sponsored by multi-national corporate conglomerates where competitors are aligned by arbitrary political entities isn't really going to give me the best product in regards to quality. It's not that I mind that the games are driven by the odd coupling of capitalism and jingoism, I just wish they'd be more honest about it. I don't think it's possible to build a better world through bullshit.

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