A few observations on tailgating in Athens:

–Athens happens to be a bit more eclectic and hipster-friendly than most college football tailgates period. Pop open a cooler and you will see foofy craft beers. Open an ear and you will hear something other than lite-country and pop-hop, like the fantastic Commodores/Ministry/Run DMC combo we heard across from us in Tent City. Unlike many SEC burgs, football seems to pull in the townie crew in Athens. They refuse to wear the red pants sure, but they still show out in their own way.

–Everything across the board in the Classic City seems to be at a B-plus or B across the board. The food, while not up to the Roman Orgy standards of Baton Rouge, is excellent across the board. The gear, while not on the mobile dining room standards of the Grove or Alabama, is nevertheless acceptably extravagant. (Quoth Paul Westerdawg: “If you can put it on wheels, we’ll do it.) While they don’t splash out on alcohol quite like Florida fans do (and note that this is the only thing Florida fans really go balls-out on, the booze, booze, booze,) the brands are mid to top range and poured with a shamelessly liberal touch, especially the brown stuff.

Like a well-managed NFL salary cap team, Athens’ tailgating necessities are all economically chosen to maximize potential enjoyment, making the scene the king of no single category but the master of the total array. Across the board Dawg fans are the most well-rounded tailgaters we’ve seen, quick with a bottle opener, adept with rapid satellite television array setup, and just menacing enough when you reveal your status as an opposing fan to be amusing.

–Scenery. We’re not just talking about the lascivious kind, either. It’s a beautiful campus with splendid weather, pleasant architecture, and proximity to bars. Trees surround the stadium. Attractive people of both genders are everywhere, so it’s not just the one-sided gawkfest every SEC lady has been through when visiting a place like Alabama. It’s a hair thing, mostly. Ladies can stand a lot of things, but bad hair will throw a woman on the hunt off the scent of even the most majestic mantelope. Like we say in the video: at least Athens offers a lot of different kinds of bad haircuts for one to choose from. As for the women, they are stunning. That is all we can say without sounding like a creepy old bastard any more than we already do.

PS. Check out the Alphabetical comments for the best Cincy/Chick-Fil-A logo illo EVAR.

Holly: Huzzah, Homecoming!

Orson: Northwestern@ Iowa. Mediocre thing to match: Push-ups. Insubstantial, cold, and frustrating because after all that pushing and licking, it’s really just z-grade corn syrup, carageenan, and fake citrus flavoring all jammed in semi-appealing package. Iowa will be the nub left at the end, the little useless plastic wheel you’re left with at the end. We know where this season is headed, and it is sad Push-Up territory.

Holly: That you can’t quite suck all the orange froth out of. Although, don’t get me wrong, a transitive loss to Syracuse would reverse my desire to burn Ricky Stanzi as a witch.

Orson: Right. Neither team wears orange, but that would wreck a barely passable metaphor.

Holly: (I love push-ups. Sorry. Be grateful you left the parallelogram. They’re like currency here.) Virginia at Miami mediocre thing: Virginia football fans?

Orson: Or Al Groh, a mediocre coach for mediocre fans. Which came first? We have an ontological problem here.

Holly: Which came first? According to Miami fans, it’s…I’m sorry, this is just a drawing of an ibis calling me a fag.

Orson: They hand those out pretty liberally.

Holly: Wisconsin at Indiana.

Orson: Wisconsin is going to destroy Indiana. They beat Purdue 37-0 last week, and Indiana is so star-crossed this year they couldn’t win a game where Iowa handed them five turnovers just to amuse themselves. That is Crom laughing double hard at your ass.

Holly: What the hell does beating Purdue count for this year? I like Bill Lynch and his softshoe.

Holly: Speaking of which: Dancing with the Stars. Less talky, more spandex. America’s Best Dance Crew owns your filler-packed ass.

Orson: I pair this game with Wisconsin’s own Miller Lite. Miller Lite: you’ll probably drink it, because it’s beer.

Holly: Sakerlina at Arkansas.

Orson: Ooh, ooh! I’ve got it. Jimmy Dean Microwave Biscuits.

Holly: They make biscuits? (I guess that answers my question.)

Orson: They suck because even when you’re choking them down you can taste that they’re made of pork asshole and sawdust. Even that realization doesn’t keep them from being little miracles of prepackaged crack you can heat up in seconds in your microwave. (Food that requires this little effort has to make you die.)

Holly: So, the Hawgs are patty-fied, you’re saying. (Also, they make your hands greasy. Hope SC’s worked on ball control since they lost to Lane Kiffin.)

Orson: I’m saying that if you put Arkansas into a microwave for thirty seconds, something’s gonna die. And if you apply the heat of the South Carolina defense to them…same result.

Holly: You know what, we should’ve given each of these games a matching abomination, because now we have to cover Navy at Notre Dame, which reminds me of nothing so much as the impending Red Dawn remake.

Orson: Oh, it’s gonna suck. Just drop your pants and get ready for the cornholing of your happy childhood memories.

Holly: I’ll avenge you, Harry Dean Stanton. I’ll avenge you.

Orson: It will have CGI monsters and bad product placement by the bushel, like when the CGI bear cavalry drops from the sky, get distracted by the prominently placed Chipotle, and then emerge, gums coated with guacamole, to chase after a glistening new Ford Escape Hybrid.

Holly: Shivers. The bad kind.

Orson: Appropriate for this game, because with the return of Michael Floyd all Weis is going to do is call jump ball left, jump ball right all fucking day long

Holly: LSU at Bama. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD A FOOTBALL GAME.

Orson: This deserves a pairing with something allegedly mediocre which is not in fact mediocre at all.

Holly: Bubba Sparxxx?

Holly: (NO YOU SHUT UP)

Orson: I’ll take it. Bama wins this football game because Gary Crowton decides to run the Maryland I the entire game “Just because I can.”

Holly: Ohio State at Penn State is clearly Comedy Central’s new horrorshow The Jeff Dunham Show, because it’s patently terrifying and full of skeletons and lost art forms but there’s nothing else on.

Orson: I have nothing to add to that because this game between two REAL DEFENSES will be horrible to watch. I pair it with Jim Tressel’s handling of Terrelle Pryor, where mediocre is too kind a word to use here.

Holly: Washington at UCLA. Does this even rate a Locker appearance? If not I won’t even click over on commercial.

Orson: We can just pair this game with itself for a proper taste flavoring, like a bolognawich: bologna, with thicker slices of bologna to be used as bread.

Holly: And Miracle Whip. Goddamn Miracle Whip. Vandy at Florida. Counterpart: Paul Oakenfold, because it’s going to be sweaty and loud and repetitive and headlined by a perpetually annoying martyrish type.

Orson: Mackenzi Adams can be such a prima donna.

Holly: Oh, well struck.

Orson: We both grab Florida there, no? Because we’re breathing, yes?

Holly: Yeah, I know Vandy gives y’all fits, but this ain’t the year. They can’t even give themselves fits.

Orson: We didn’t make a pick for UW/UCL. I take mediocre thing Washington, because UCLA doesn’t even make it to Meady Oaker Territory.

Holly: Washington, because what UCLA’s doing as a favorite baffles and disgusts me. Holly: USC at Arizona State. Hoku!

Orson: I DO NOT LIKE THIS MEDIOCRE SONG GET OUT OF MY HEAD CHARLES.

Holly: Because I once extemporized this entire song and changed all the lyrics to praise Vontaze Burfict, with dance moves, in my boyfriend’s kitchen and he didn’t murder me. That deserves recognition.

Orson: nothin’s standing in my waaaaaaayyyy

Holly: Dennis Erickson’s red hell-glasses figured prominently. BURFIIICT DAAAAAAY. That said, I’m not taking ASU.

Orson: USC’s not losing this game. Holy shit, I would wager a body part on it. Not an important one, but you know, like a quarter lobe of brain or my spleen or something.

Holly: They lost to GEORGIA.

Orson: Right, making them more Georgia-ish than Georgia. That’s a big ball of suck to lug around on the end of your suck-chain.

Holly: Plumbing the depths of absolute zero, Lord Kelvin.

Orson: Yeah, USC gets revenge on Oregon by beating the teeth out of ASU’s head.

Holly: We’ve all been there.

Orson: Not sure how that works, but the math is too complex to explain here.

Holly: BONUS MID MAJOR PICK: Houston at Tulsa. Houston can’t play defense but Tulsa can’t play offense without Malzahn, but their mascot is a resurrected and sponge-bathed Powdered Toast Man. What to do?

Orson: Ahem.

Orson: I think I just reminded all of us which way to go here thanks to GI, Shazam, and Dino.

Holly: And scene.

The five “sideline student safety zones” outside the stadium are places where fans can get help — any kind of help. “Maybe their phone has died or they’ve lost their group or they need directions or they need to take a nap. We have a bevy of services available,” Langston said.

If the the safety zones are truly “safety zones,” then the organizers of the Coke Orgy have done the worst thing they could have possibly done: turned the rest of the event into one huge DANGER ZONE. There’s only one acceptable way to get to said DANGERZONE, and that is running one step ahead of the DANGER ZONE’S most initimidating resident, GALACTOHOCKEYBEAR.

Be sure to stay in front of him if you do make it, because falling behind him was the Moon’s first mistake.

*We bet three people have died at the Kroger closest to our house in the past decade. Most likely in the dog food aisle, because there’s no cell reception in that part of the store and it would be easy to get lost and stranded.

One: Inanity in Governance: (EDITOR’S NOTE: We assume all politicians of all parties to be evil, soulless lizards walking around in human suits masquerading as people. At night, they dine on pickled infants and watch Two and a Half Men, a uniform preference explaining the show’s inexplicably high ratings. Any expression here is one of purely personal distaste, and not DURRR POLITIKS fodder.)

Florida Florida’s governor is an allegedly closeted gay man with a basted ham-toned, George Hamiltonish tan you suspect continues uninterrupted around his entire body. Like anyone with the dimwitted ambition of being governor, he’s not particularly bright and could probably be shot into space without any discernible effect on the overall well-being of the planet as a whole. He also failed the bar twice and sounds suspiciously like Brick Tamland when talking. Naturally, being insubstantial, dim, and tan, he has been mentioned with some seriousness for the Presidency.

Georgia: Sonny Perdue burrows even lower into the warm humus of gubernatorial stupidity, however, by opposing the lifting of the Sunday alcohol ban. Correct, non-Georgia readers: if you want alcohol on Sundays in Georgia, you must first drive to a bar, then pay a fifty percent markup over wholesale, and then wait until you sober up before you drive home because some turkey-wattled Baptist eighty miles away in Hookwormville thinks Crazy Old Testament God is going to turn him into a pillar of salt if the citizens of Atlanta get drunk in the safe, warm, and undoubtedly godless confines of their own house.

Oh, but you could just buy on Saturday. It’s not a big deal! THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT THE GHETTOS OF WARSAW, COMMIE. We could just close church on Wednesdays to make things even. You only go on Sundays, after all, and you could just take a Bible home and pray there, right? A bar’s not a church? Tell that to Nick Nolte and see if you come away with a both eyes and your dignity, Reverend.

Sonny hates freedom, and for that he and Hookwormville can go fuck themselves with a bottle opener. Sonny also publicly prayed for rain during a drought, adding “shaman-in-chief” to the list of public responsibilities the Governor of Georgia holds. This would be cool if it involved more theatrical animal sacrifices and headbanging bad girls in fur bikinis, but it doesn’t, and is therefore not.

Loser: Georgia, but the exact width of a prayed-over wine cork.

Two: Trash:

Georgia: Georgian trash of all colors tops Florida’s in one of the ultimate sports adored and practiced actively by the American chav substrata: giving each other STDs. How, you ask, can the Peach State lead Florida in this category? The clear answer: more Floridians step directly out of the soiled bed of their infectious tryst and directly in the mouths of sharks or alligators.

Georgia pan-racial trash also leads Florida’s in another category, that of throwing trash from their cars at an alarming rate. We only have anecdotal evidence to support this claim, but motorists in this state maintain the pristine state of their own cars by ejecting refuse from the windows of their cars at a rate that would shame the motorists of the 1950s. This used to enrage us, but now is a game of Dada sequence-guessing: what’s next, jacked-up pick-up truck obviously lost and driving 25 miles an hour down Memorial Drive? A whole fish dinner with fries and condiments, tossed on the road in its styrofoam container? A whole book of CDs? Decided that you really got tired of that Sticky Fingaz CD, eh? BLACK TRASH IS A CLASSIC, SIR!

Florida: Florida trash, unlike Georgia trash, come in a dizzying variety of shades, abilities, and cigarette preferences. Florida has Midwestern Bucktard Juggalo Trash lurking around Tampa and Orlando defacing late-90s American cars with all varieties of things written in either the “NO FEAR” font or the industry standard Gothic Lettering. (Because everything looks tougher in “Oktoberfest Germanic.”) Jacksonville offers a thick, heaping slice of white and black tragic livin’, while Tallahassee and Gainesville combine college-town squalor with the miasmic theft-based economies of most lower-class Southern cities. (Both have booming, vibrant stolen goods markets.)

You can’t even begin to tussle with the Trash-topus offered up by South Florida. Miami has Haitian, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Dominican, Midwestern, Southern Cracker, and assorted Caribbean trash, a Minoriteam topped by transplanted New Yorkers, who set the tone by importing Night at the Roxbury tactics of EXCITING DANCEFLOOR RAPE SIMULATION to clubs and using copious amounts of gel and manscaping to put an edge on their razor-sharp broadsword of insecure masculinity walking. Combined with the Latin influence, Miami is a perfect firestorm of Unified Trash Theory come to life like no other, and that’s before we mention the Grand Dukes of Trash, the Russian Billionaires’ Club, who see Miami as their seaside, corpse-strewn Babylon. Like Milton Berle in a cock-off, we’ll only pull out just enough to win, since you don’t even deserve to see the whole thing. Don’t attempt to compete, Georgia. This one is ours.

Three: Natural Disaster:

Georgia: An epidemic of truck nuts doesn’t count, so tornadoes and the occasional flood will have to do.

Florida: Hurricanes.

Hurricanes are really just a deity’s eviction notice, and like many Floridians themselves, the state keeps getting the notices and chucking them in the garbage with the rest ah them jibbery-jabbery lawyer writins. You can’t really compete on this front either, Georgia, unless you have the very hand of Neptune himself smack a third of Savannah off the map in a single swipe. Bonus side effect of hurricanes? Chainsaws and shotgun sales go through the roof just before and after one, making Florida the state most prepared for a zombie invasion. Even the people have fangs, spikes, and thorns in the state.

Winner/Loser: Florida.

Four: Things That Will Kill You

Things that will kill you in Georgia: 18 year olds with guns, AIDS, A God Enraged at Your Purchase of a Nice Merlot on a Sunday Afternoon, Rennie Curran, rattlesnakes, the state, chunks of batter lodged in your heart, obesity.

Things that will kill you in Florida: Serial killers who only kill serial killers who only kill other serial killers but sometimes you in a pinch, 13 year olds with guns, the state, hurricanes, lightning, rattlesnakes with herpes, wild and huge Burmese Pythons in the Everglades, planes falling from the sky, cars running off the road and into your house without warning, shark attack, rogue stingrays, rogue waves, heatstroke, malaria, Channing Crowder, Channing Crowder’s pet gator Ted.

Winner/Loser: Florida by a bloody mile.

Five: Movie Summing Up The Entire State In A Single Film:

Georgia:

Florida:

Winner/Loser: Tied.

Clear Winner: Um…we’re not really sure if anyone won this exercise. Except sadness. Sadness clearly came away with a massive victory here.

Oooh he’ll just have to cry into his millions! Sure. Money comes and goes. Crushing defeat is forever. Good morning!

Subway follows the exploits of those living in the Paris Metro, a subculture of misfits, artists, social outcasts who do outrageously French things like walk around filthy sewers wearing avante-garde fashion and holding flourescent light bulbs for hours at a time. You’re not really supposed to be down in les egouts, but that’s the point, just like you’re not supposed to be in alleys in Athens, Georgia. Okay, rephrase: just like you’re not supposed to every come out of an alley in Athens once you go into said alley. There, that’s better.

Georgia junior cornerback Vance Cuff was arrested Tuesday by university police on misdemeanor charges of having a suspended license and emerging from an alley.

We have no idea what Vance Cuff was doing going into an alley in the first place, but we can only assume it was to find his lost love, trapped by the cruel vagaries of poorly written civil code with the lovable, filthy outlanders who live in the alleys, forming terrible rock bands, making filthy love in the dumpster suites they’ve constructed from what “society” can’t use, and smelling artfully horrible. If that is what he was doing, then fight on, Vance. You remain a lonely but brave voice for those afraid of paying the fifty, possibly seventy-five dollar fine to emerge from those alleys, in addition to the suspended license charge.

That charge doesn’t matter either, though, right Vance? The courageous need no license for anything, something those people who see the sweet freedom of the sun every day won’t understand like the alley people do. Keep up the fight, brother. One day the big men in City Hall will pay for what they’ve done, and they’ll pass a law cutting through the bonds of alley-based prejudice as swift as a Jonathan Crompton pass through your secondary. Until that day, though: don’t let the bastards grind you down, warrior.

[click to embiggen]

Once you get past the shock of seeing a guy painted all-white standing in his undies in the middle of Sanford Stadium, you realize: he’s got excellent mike skills, like Shawn Michaels or the Nature Boy himself in his prime. “SPURRIER? GRRRRRRRRRRRR….YOU THINK VISORS ARE COOOOOOOOOOL!!!!”

(HT: Brandon Cox’s Vagina.) (We have the best commenters.)

/applies eight layers of sunscreen

/underthrows deep ball to A.J. Green by five yards

Keep guessing, fools, for the Ginger Ninja is forever ahead and behind you, watching with an invisible eye and an arsenal of cunning. Now, watch as he disappears in a cloud of mysterious NINJA SMOKE!

/walks off screen muttering profanities to self

(Yup: the Ninja will be in the building Saturday as starter.)

Photo: Mark Bradley, AJC.

The guide has the 45-42 Tech victory last year in Athens as a 42-42 tie. Please note that the Florida score is accurate, and still registers a full, sexy 39 point margin of victory. Mark Bradley also mentions the differing tallies between Tech and UGA in the series, and takes pains to mention Jasper Sanks’ fumble/non-fumble in the ‘99 game and thus double-Rochambeau Dawg fans. Remember this when you’re kicking Bradley in the balls in person, and feel justified.

I hope if dogs take over the world, and they choose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.

Lack of protection may be an issue for the Georgia offense, especially up the middle.

From,
The Internet (all of it)

It’s very noble that you think you’re trying to save lives. Really, it is. We admire that. Every day, we see people run over by careless drivers, shot by hooligans, and barbecued by roving cannibals on our streets and do nothing about it. In fact, sometimes the thought of “Why don’t I stop and do anything about it?” pops into our head as we’re enjoying a well-cooked slice of one of the unfortunate victims slathered in a rich, tangy barbecue sauce. Where is our Dark Knight, we ask?

Answer: you, Bernie Machen, who sees what other people don’t see in two Florida students falling down stairs and off a parking garage: a plague! A trend, a connection between your curious distaste for demon rum and another University of Florida-related event, another chance to protect people from themselves. Kudos to you for stepping in again to protect people from themselves.

What we’re asking is that you take care of the most serious threat at Florida games:The Bastard Sun.

Are you aware that there’s something on fire right up there? And that this thing can give you cancer? Now what if I told you that it was going to appear at every single day game Florida plays this year. You’d do something, right? Especially with that many lives at risk? WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, BERNIE MACHEN??? Did you not hear that it’s on fire RIGHT NOW?

Wait, let’s try this: sometimes the sun, which is on fire all the time, makes people hot, and then they get thirsty, and…wait for it….wait….they start drinking alcohol.

Look at him run! That’s one nimble dentist there.