EDSBS LIVE! BARNHART BARNHART BARNHART

Are we being graced with some TCOAN tonight? The coherence of female callership drops a full 80% when it’s just me and Texy.

Whew – I almost said Stepehenson, too. Typed it in, then revised.

I really would enjoy it, though I suspect he’d wind up making us all feel a little bit silly for liking sports.

The Lord of the Rings analogy in ‘Cyptonomicon’ is still among the most clever bits of writing in some time. That whole professor-dinner scene, in fact, is something worth reading a hundred times.

Don’t sell yourself short, love. It’s only a 77% drop.

1. Ron Morris, “The State” newspaper in Columbia, SC – I don’t know his bio, but that fuckturd must not have been accepted to USC. Why he chooses to screw the Cocks sans vaseline every chance he gets is beyond me. Must be a Vols fan.

2. I’m not sure I’m crazy about many.

3. The funny upbeat guy from The Motley Fool that makes me feel both like and idiot and better about my losses a few years back in Sun and Oracle.

4. Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up”, What’s the over/under on Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”?

I’ve never liked you.

1. Finebaum… if you can call what he does writing anymore

III. Howell Raines

. Fiona Apple, First Taste

That’s a lie and you know it.

You got me. Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat’ (Internets) Man.

1: Dinehart. His complete toolbagitude permeates everything he writes. I guarantee he took that Time Man of the Year cover with the mirror thing and hung it up on his Polly Princess Big Girl Vanity.
2: Shit, I hate all of them at some point.
3: Chuck Palahniuk (sp?) ala Fight Club and many other awesome, awesome books. Can you imagine what he would have done with Las Cronicas?
4: Anything, and I mean ANYTHING by Al Green. If I had one tenth the mojo of Al Green, I could get Nancy Pelosi to hunt baby seals with Dick Cheney.

1. Chip Brown of the Dallas Morning News.
 He’s a former tennis player for SMU who’s a rampant fan of texas, and doesn’t hide his bias in his writing. I don’t think the man knows what color eyes Mack Brown has; the man never looks above his waist or gets off his knees during his press conferences. Probably makes for some bad callouses on his knees, too.

 2. Sally Jenkins
 I just don’t think she is nationally appreciated as greatness.

 3. Daniel Silva

 he’d write much better coverage of what went down in Munich

 4. “You and me, baby, ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”

1. Peter King. Not hateful, just irksome like a small child who is stuck in a verbal for – next loop.

2. Richard Williams, soccer writer for the Guardian. People wait for posts on the Guardian sports blog solely to comment about what a twat he is; I think he’s pretty good.

3. Christopher Hitchens. A throwback to the days of permanently sozzled correspondents, and he is easily the rudest writer working in America today.

4. Higher than the sun, by Primal Scream – the dub version. The EP version is for vigorous undergraduates only; I suspect that if I tried that kind of malarkey these days I’d do myself a mischief.

1. Ah, God, that douche Stewart Mandel, the little weaselly nerd boy.

2. Terry Bowden’s column on Yahoo! Sports ain’t bad, and I can respect what that guy’s saying more than most of those turds who never participated in the game but write about it.

3. I don’t read the newspaper, so I don’t know any columnists. Old people and guys on the subway read the newspaper, not me. Also, I don’t read fiction.

4. We always heckled my friend that he was definitely going to lose his virginity to “The Electric Slide,” for no other reason than it was the worst possible song we could think of for that occasion. There has been no outcome on this as of yet, since said friend is still clutching the V-card tightly, though not going without SOME action, in his defense.

1. Jason Whitlock. Aggressive self-promoter and hates on the youth so badly.

2. I second the Sally Jenkins mention at #10.

3. Reading a David Foster Wallace attempt at a sports column would be personally entertaining.

4. The Afghan Whigs’ “Somethin’ Hot” off the album 1965.

“I got your phone number, baby; I’ll call you sometime. I think I might be out tonight, maybe give you a ride.”

1) Pete Prisco, who sucks worse than Finebaum (and I’m an LSU fan). Here’s why Prisco sucks more than Finebaum:
 - Being at sportsline, people actually read him.
 - His articles and opinions are beligerant plagarizm from watching gameday final. It’s like he’s herbstreits fat retarded uncle.
 - He makes shit up to support his claims

2) Tie: Stewart Mandel or Dennis Dodd. They both have the same act: write articles for the sole purpose of causing a disturbance. It’s like they have this attitude that pissing people off is collateral damage.

What I will say about these guys is that they differentiate between fact and opinion, and they admit it when they’re wrong, so all in all, not that bad in my opinion.

3) Non Sportswriter? Jim Puplava — this relatively unknown financial writer lives to poke holes in stories and viewpoints of the mainstream media. He could be like the ESPN ombudsman (are you listening hotz and herbstreit?) He also has in-depth reports on both sides of an issue, so he’d be pretty level.

4) Wipeout. It’s quick, chaotic, and ends in much worse than it started off. Just like Nick Saban’s tenure at Miami.

Damn you Signal!

That was my sexy time musical choice!

1. Which sportswriter gets under your skin the most?

Podunk CFB beat writers who serve as leak sheets for the coach without questioning anything they’re told.

2. Tell us a sportswriter you like who others seem to underrate and/or unfairly bash?

I’ll echo the vote for Sally Jenkins.

3. You get to pick one writer who doesn’t currently cover sports to become a sports writer.

Tony Kornheiser. He used to be pretty good at writing.

4. Because our show is so dependent on juvenile humor, the obligatory sex question: What’s your lovin’ song?

Aspirational? Barry White (or “Rebirth of the Cool” to pick another Whigs song). Actual? Probably more like “Blister in the Sun.”

1) Gregg Doyell (same boat as mandel and bayless—just love to be the turds in the punchbowl). I wonder if he even likes sports.

2) I generally still enjoy Simmons (but I’m a closet case NBA fan self-loather)

3) Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, great recent book on convergence of media, markets, and technology.

4) Yeah Yeahs Yeahs for rude times, Lee Hazlewood for bourbon and silk pajamas evenings

1. Def’ly Mandel
2. meh
3. Douglas Adams, God rest his soul – hilarity would inevitably ensue
4. Tom Petty, Breakdown: “…break down, go ahead and give it to me…”

1) Bill Platsche – Evil, misguided, talentless and just plain wrong. But not that any of that keeps him from being full of his fucking self.

2) Soccer commentators. Every English-speaking person has such fun making light of their tendency to yell “GOALLLLL!” but these guys are 100 percent into the sport they cover. The cynical horse manure American sportswriters pass off as “depth” is decidedly absent. Also, they tend to actually talk about what is going on on the field.

3) David McCullough. His historical analysis is sorely needed in a sport where most folks barely remember back a single generation.

4) Muse – Knights of Cydonia

#13-Believe it or not, David Foster Wallace did write a tennis column on Roger Federer. It’s the best piece of tennis writing (admittedly a small genre) that I’ve ever seen. I believe DFW was a ranked tennis player when he was a kid.

1) Peter King. Self righteous pencil di@k. He loses some weight, then goes on to blast all people living in the south as being lard arses. Rutgers football may be his only college gameday experience.

2) Stew Mandel. I actually look forward to his offseason columns, even if he is a crap weasel from Northwestern.

3) Tom Wolfe. Spent 10 years researching The Right Stuff. Would have his facts straight.

4) Al Green. “Take Me to the River”.

Three shout-outs for Sally Jenkins? Who writes for the Wash Post? Seriously? Takes all kinds, I suppose.

1. Yeah, Peter King. When your column has grown so self-indulgent that you have a regular feature relating what you just had at Starbuck’s, it’s time for your employers to be putting you in Time Out, if not a padded room.

2. I don’t have that much of a problem with Mandel, either, and at least in the Atlanta area, Mark Bradley seems to be a guy who can do no right as far as a lot of people are concerned, but I think he’s a good writer.

3. TBogg.

4. “Baby One More Time,” because it seems like I haven’t had sex since that song was popular. But Air’s “La Femme d’Argent” is pretty good for some late-night enfreakening as well.

Signal to Noise for the win on question number four. That song would prompt immediate bad behaviour out of my ex.

iluvtexasgal, you’re a Horn and a Tiger?

1. Jay Mariotti. I hate that guy.

2. ennh

3. Malcolm Gladwell

4. Flight of the Bumblebee. Gotta have music for cuddlin’

1. Mike Lupica: just a preening turd from the word “go”

2. No such animal….if they get paid to take shots at people, they should be men enough to get a few themselves

3. Loved DC Trojan’s choice of Hitch, but I’d kill to read a weekly sports commentary by Joe Queenan.

4. “Flight of the Valkyries”….what? No one elses?

1. Kevin Scarbinsky – Birmingham News. Wishes he could be Finebaum. Isn’t even close.

2. It’s a tossup between Finebaum and Mandel. Both seem to piss a lot of people off, but if you can step back and be somewhat objective, they usually speak the truth.

3. I second Howell Raines.

4. If you can’t get laid to Barry White, you can’t get laid at all.

I think it’s Ride of the Valkyries. But it’s appropriate – ‘smells like victory.’

1. Scott Wolfe, LA Daily News. Not horrible, but he has too many excesses.

2. Bob Ryan – I remember his great tribute to Chick Hearn.

3. Robert Fisk – great journalist, brilliant writer. 2nd, Alexander Cockburn.

4. Distant Lover – Marvin Gaye (there is no better).

DC Trojan,

Which Christopher Hitchens, pre- 9/11 or post? I’ll take the former, I abhor the latter. But I have to admit, either one would be good at pissing off modern day athletes and coaches.

Los Angeles and National Media Responses Dept:

1. Which sportswriter gets under your skin the most?

National: Frank De Ford
Los Angeles: Scott Wolf (USC grad who needles USC football in the LA Daily News.)

2. Tell us a sportswriter you like who others seem to underrate and/or unfairly bash?

National: SI’s Mandel
Los Angeles: TJ Simers from the LA Times.

3. You get to pick one writer who doesn’t currently cover sports to become a sports writer.

Los Angeles: Quentin Tarantino (screenwriter)

National: Maureen O’Dowd (I have some sort of crush on that commie liberal’s prose.)

4. What’s your lovin’ song?

Almost anything by Angela Gheorghiu.

1) Local version, Dan Bickley from the Arizona Republic. Writes condescending columns simply designed to piss off the locals by complimenting every other city and every other team in America, while looking down his nose at everyone in Phoenix. Bastard.

2) Still like Simmons and Mandel, although Bill is much more likeable when his teams aren’t winning. Absolutely insufferable when they are though. Clay Travis is shooting up the charts as well, he could be the new Simmons at this rate.

3) Sadly, since I gained a family I’m so far behind on my non-sports reading that I can’t come up with a good answer for this one. It’s a shame how much non-productive time you lose when you’ve got responsibilities, dammit.

4) Most anything by Dave Matthews Band. Rapunzel, Two Step, Crush…ahhh, good times.

1. Pat Dooley

2. meh.

3. Are we resurrecting the dead? What would de Tocqueville have made of all this?

4. Anything by Bryan Ferry, up to but NOT including the most recent album. Doing it to “Hiroshima Mon Amour” makes me feel all Bright Lights Big City.

Oh, this one is easy-peasy:

1) Tie: Mitch Albom and Drew Sharp. The Free Press has the worst columnists, and the sports desk rarely covers anything outside of the Detroit-UM-MSU axis.

2) Another vote for Sally Jenkins over here. I don’t always agree with her, but her writing is as good as one gets in major newspaperdom.

3) Me.

4) Anything out of the PJ Harvey, Portishead, Orb or Liz Phair catalogs.

1. John Romano, St. Pete Times – Self-Important blowhard, very Mandelish, just without the fat guy charm or the sense to own up to misakes (he’ll never buy your ass a hot dog).

2. Bucky Brooks or Gary Zimmerman. Both very sound technically, and explain a lot more than Peter King’s hokey ass stories.

3. Moses. College football has that grand feel to it anyway, so why not bring in the master of the old-school, old testament writing style.

“And the Lord said, let there be TOUCHDOWNS!”

4. Here, personal experience on this one . . . Tenacious D, “I’m gonna fuck you hard”. Don’t ask me any more details.

I am indifferent to LSU, as I am a Clemson man, incidentally, OOC, Ron Morriss is the shiznit, but why don’t you ask Barnhardt about that article he wrote when LSU hired Saban.

He said that LSU was foolish to pay Saban all that money and there was no way LSU could could compete with Alabama, Auburn, and the rest of the SEC because there was not enough talent in Louisiana, and LSU could not recruit the neighboring states.

It was on Thanksgiving, I want to say, in 1999 or so.

I remember it because he compared LSU to Clemson, saying that neither could win big consistently without violating NCAA rules.

While we have not exactly blown up, Saban certainly bitch slapped Mr. Southern College Football.

Oh, and I like balling chicks to Susuddio, but the great Phil Collins.

It is helpful when there is a side mirror in the room so I can watch myself flexing my biceps.

SeaTrojan @ 30

Post 9/11 if only to give him something else to talk about – but as you say, either would wreak havoc. It’s something he could probably do as a part time job, say while he’s having a couple of hair-of-the-dogs and sweating a bit in the morning…

1. How.

Have more people.

Not mentioned.

Bill Plaschke in this spot?

Seth Davis and Peter King receive honorable mention.

2. I can’t think of a single sports writer whose inevitable bashing I would deem “unfair.”

3. I guess they already cover sports but the world would be a better place if the guys from firejoemorgan could get some major circulation.

4. “I Believe” by Stevie Wonder

I got cut at the end, but it was well worth it as th rest of y’all were so enjoyable and Ma Swindle absolutely knocked it out of the park.

Anyhow, here are the insignificant ramblings that were missed:

http://dodgyatbest.blogspot.com/2007/05/edsbs-radio-raises-bar-and-best-music.html

I woke up to a cold sweat at 3 a.m. with the answer to #4:
Strokin’ by Clarence Carter.
Taaadddoooowww!

1) Mark May and Merril Hoge. We all have our biases but if you’re going to be a talking head, you have to at least pretend to be objective. Assholes.
2) Eh, they all suck.
3) Rick Bragg. Nobody does southern gothic quite like Bragg. His dangerously purple prose would descend into over-written trash in the hands of a less talented writer.
4) Marvin Gaye. Not any one song. I can get nekkid to the man’s entire catalog. If you can listen to “Sexual Healing” or “Let’s Get It On” without fighting the urge to at least engage in public frottage, then you, sir or madam, are dead from the ankles up. “Untitled” is a good cut, too, but as my wife has often, at great length and shocking detail, expounded on the many, many filthy and possibly illegal things she’d like to do to D’Angelo, my feelings on that song are a little complicated.

Re #40: Vonnegut would be an inspired choice as a sportswriter, but he’d have some troubles making the copy deadline these days.

DevilGrad: Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips, fuck you! Next time I’ll call Robert Ludlum!

#4. “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails. If you get laid to this, it will be a painful and pleasurable, wonderfully twisted experience.

Yeah, in addtion to that….

“Caress me Down” by Sublime WOW. IF a girl knows the words to this spanish dub about BJs OR “closer” then you know she’s a closet freak for real!

Im gonna have to give a shout out to “Love in ya’ mouth” for #4. I was just floored when some really good looking and fairly proper UGA girls started singing that word for word.

Cosign #46.

As to the rest:

1. Mariotti: moron, and utterly predictable.

2. Whitlock just gets better and better.

3. DF Wallace already wrote an 1100 page book re: a tennis academy (among other things). he could probably write the most epic of post-game recaps for Sunday mornings. Although it’s slightly off-point, I’d really like to hear cycling commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen do a Georgia football game someday.

#13/#20

DFW – was a nationally ranked tennis junior, and also still writes frequently about the sport, including aforementioned federer piece and various Tennis Magazine features

his essay on tennis in the midwest as a junior, something like ‘tennis/tornadoes/something’…cant remember title… is excruciatingly good. Is in a number of his collections

well, two things that we learned last night were 1) orson cannot protect his sandwich and 2) the police’s “be my girl sally” deserved a nomination for lurrrve music.

TCOAN, TCOAN? Did she anwer the four questions on the radio show yesterday? What did she say?

HW-

Sadly, TCOAN did not appear on the show last night. But Mama Swindle’s call to end the show was truly epic.

37,

 Glad to see I’m not the only one who likes to act out ‘American Psycho’ ;-)

 re: #44

 DevilGrad,

 Vonnegut worked as a sportwriter for Sport Illustrated for approximately one day. He admitted to not knowing anything about sports, but they hired him anyway.
 They gave him a picture of a horse hopping over a fence at Remington Park, and asked him to caption it.
 He wrote, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence.” got up, left his office, and never returned.