We’re sneaking in a quick EDSBS live before a mid-week July 4th attempted barbecue O.D. Catch us before we founder and die from overserving ourself at the buffet line tomorrow.

What: EDSBS Live! online radio. ACC/Mediocre edition.

Where: At NowLive, where you can chat with each other and the show hosts throughout the broadcast in the online forum (the best part of the show, frankly). To phone in to the show, just call (310) 984-7600.

Who: Tonight’s special guest is Bruce Feldman of ESPN.com. Oh, and the spirit of Liberty, of course.

Four Questions: As always, our four questions for the night.

1. What, if anything, do you know about the ACC heading into 2007?

Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Wake Forest won the conference last year. That’s not an anomaly; that constitutes a communal cry for help.

We do suspect, however, that NC State under Tom O’Brien will go 8-4, because that’s just what Tom O’Brien teams do, and that UVA will mush along at 5-7/7-5 until someone realized Al Groh is really just a postman who accidentally found himself in the NY Jets lockerroom after a long night at Scores, grabbed the first clothes he could find, and was then mistaken for the head coach of the team…and then rode it to riches.

2. To honor Reggie Ball as CFB’s worst four-year starter of all-time, please share with us your school’s worst multi-year starter.

Since Noah Brindise is out, we have to pick on poor Doug Johnson, who though not inept made up for his relative competence by being a total dickhead as a student/athlete. That’s an ad hominem attack (blog foul, five points!–ed.), but we’ll take the penalty just to say it. Fuck that fucking dickhead forever. (ten points!)

Johnson, seen here ignoring Spurrier and thinking about cars ‘n babes ‘n shit.

3. Now say something nice about the ACC.

Bud Foster and Virginia Tech’s defense need no tragic inspiration to be completely and atrociously impolite to whomever comes to Blacksburg: Xavier Adibi, Vince Hall, Brandon Flowers, and Victor “Macho” Harris all return for VT, and Bud Foster stands with Mickey Andrews of FSU as one of the Most Coveted Henchmen in all the land, defensively speaking. Perhaps Sean Glennon’s occasional meltdowns can be explained by the soulbeating he takes from Tech’s defense in practice.

4. What’s your most mediocre performance?

Our wedding night. No further questions, other than to say that if you’ve had ONE HUNDRED COCKTAILS and so has the bride, you should just cash the night in and make it up on the honeymoon.

We couldn’t help but snicker when Aerobab, longtime reader and listener to EDSBS live, wrote this in the comments below the Hendrix anthem:

I sincerly hope that in the gates of Heaven, Francis Scott Key kicks Jimmi in the Jimmy every fuckin time this blasphemous rendition is played here on Earth.

Oh, you want anthem blasphemy, we’ve got it, motherfucker. But first some overdue linkwhoring.

–Reader AtomicDog informs us that Mike Hunt, Ole Miss Miss State recruit, may not have crushed the ACT into limp submission like Mike Hunt should have, and will therefore be ineligible for school in the fall. Mike Hunt really needs a good, firm drilling in class here, and a fair one, too, unless you want the NCAA nailing Mike Hunt hard along with Ole Miss Miss State for bending the rules just to get the chance to play with Mike Hunt. Because Mike Hunt is just that special.

Mike Hunt: needs your help.

Please, let him make the grade. Four years of this would complete us as a human being.

–The Wannstache understands his popularity is tied directly to his mustache, and admits as much publicly, even citing the source of his mustache-generating desire: Charles Bronson.

–Darren McFadden wears dresses. We’d let him wear a negligee and pumps if he wanted to as long as he kept running, though that might draw salacious text messages from Houston Nutt. We have a Vera Wang number in mind for the Heisman ceremony, actually, a lovely candlelight off-the-shoulder thing. It can’t possibly look gayer than this.

–Last year, it was former Marine Cam Brewer. This year it’s former Ranger and Iraq/Afghanistan vet Derek Baldry who gets a shot at making Florida’s roster as a walk-on, despite not playing football in high school.

–Help give John Smeaton ONE HUNDRED COCKTAILS plus nine hundred more for good measure for literally kicking terrorist ass. DC Trojan has more on a real Scottish hero…

–A Tulane grad stumps shamelessly for Georgia votes by inveighing against an attempt to sell Florida Gator tags in Georgia.

A Gator tag will cause accidents. Gator fans cannot drive or read traffic signs. A car up on blocks cannot move.

OHHHHHH A/V CLUB QUALITY BURRRRRRN!!! from a legislator partially responsible for the state with some of the worst graduation rates in the nation who went to motherfucking Tulane. Florida at least graduates fifty-five percent of its incoming ninth-graders…scoreboard, bitches, scoreboard!

–Ragin Cajun Rebel once headbutted Jack Del Rio. No, really, he did, and if you don’t read about it, you’re cheating God by wasting their gift of eyes on you.

And now, ultimate anthem blasphemy, including Bobby Vinton’s vivisection of the anthem during the 1990 NLCS.

The last guy may not hit the note, but at least he owns it like he bought it in cash.

Back before country music fans hated them, nobody could question their pipes. On par with the classic Whitney performance, we give you the Dixie Chicks.

Our next choice: Jimi Hendrix, when not ruining groupies for sex with other men for the rest of their lives, sometimes played the national anthem. Erase the four decades of rusty Boomer hagiography, and it’s still exactly what it is: an awesome black dude on acid in bellbottoms taking a sledgehammer to the anthem in only the most loving and compassionate of ways.

It’s an EDSBS tradition (two years=tradition!) to post our favorite variations on our national anthem the day before the 4th, which we will spend drunk and full of barbecue.

Therefore, we present Bruce Gaston and his amazing farting hands, our first version of the anthem.

From Michael Shermer’s Skeptic column in this month’s Scientific American, we find a bit of science no football fan can disagree with reasonably.

Specifically, most people will reject the proposal of a 50-50 probability of gaining or losing money, unless the amount to be gained is at least double the amount to be lost. That is, people feel worse about the pain of a loss than they feel better about the pleasure of a gain. Twice as badly, in fact. (emphasis ours)

South Carolina rolls into the Swamp last year and spends the better part of four quarters giving the Gators shaken-baby syndrome: back with the draw and counter plays, forward with the quick slants and screens, back with the draw and counter plays…until we’re sitting there in the stands, close to literally sick with nausea as Ryan Succop lines up for a long but entirely possible field goal in the still-liquid humidity of a rapidly cooling nighttime Swamp.

And then, improbable, blameless fate strikes in the form of Jarvis Moss’ arms.

(If you wondered why Florida fans worship Nelson, watch the streaking figure in blue who runs to the stands immediately after the block. That’s Nelson rushing to the front row to jump in and hug whomever wanted some love and affection.)

Even afterwards, though, the threat of loss stayed with us; not the joy, palpable as it was, but the shadow of near-catastrophe, a dizzying narcotic of having your head shoved over the cliff’s edge and then pulled back by inexplicable mercy. Children’s museums used to be fond of a cheap but effective exhibit where one placed hands on alternating copper coils of hot and cold water. Your brain, trying to interpret the signals but unable to, simply signals “BURN!,” causing the hands to jerk away.

That’s precisely what watching that clip is still like. Part of us watches that clip just to get the live unease the pre-snap roar evokes: complete and uncontrollable uncertainty, underscored by its loyal intoxicating companion “animal fear.” It’s what put us on the obsession hook in 1994 with the single stab of a Patrick Nix pass to Frank Sanders in the Swamp. It’s what will keep us pacing in front of flickering electrons for four months straight, as well.