Long have we yearned for the right measure of praise for the Economist, our favorite magazine in the universe. After all, they combine airtight prose with ruthless cold sense and snarkily captured pics: everything we aspire to be and will never, ever be. They also make covers like this, for which we love them and would willingly massage all of their black-socked feet:

Someone has beaten us to it. If that’s the price to pay for being well-informed, then too fucking bad. SIR–this rules. Thank you, Orson Swindle, Atlanta, GA USA.

Whilst Patrick is sporting immense celebratory lip coverage over at Thirty-Five Seconds, we’re prepping for some margaritas with our favorite tri-cultural hero from south of the border: Die schnellste Maus von Mexiko!

Enjoy your Cinco. We’ll see you tomorrow.

The offseason survival guide would like to help you through this long, football-free offseason. In order to speed up this process, we’re all going back to 1979 to learn to be smooth. Crack open the champale and get your SMU jersey out. It’s about to get smoother than you ever imagined, albeit in a non-football way.

A Smooth House. The whole idea of smooth is to pretend you’re living on a houseboat in California, or in a ski house in Vail. (Not Aspen–that’s so 80s, man.) If you don’t have a houseboat in California, that’s fine: purchase a houseboat somewhere else. The houseboat should come equipped with a hot, lanky woman who wakes up in a bikini on it four or five days a week. She should be a marine biologist, or failing that,

If you can’t find a houseboat equipped with a hot, lanky woman in a hip-hugger two-piece, or just can’t find a houseboat, you must consider purchasing a home in the woods. The home should be made of pine cut into boards set at 45 degree angles, and it should feature wraparound decks, huge bay windows in geometric shapes, and an irregular offset roof with a window across the top. It should be decorated in mostly browns, feature lots of rugs and wicker furniture, and have a hot tub you can go into naked with some pink champagne and a brunette majoring in ecology or some shit like that.

Oh, and a fireplace with a rug in front of it, because that’s where you get your smooth lovin’ on. It’s as key as blow, backgammon, and Dallas on Friday nights.

Fondue. No class smoothness can happen without fondue. It’s important if you’re classing up to the Smooth Life to have a primo fondue set. (more…)

..no matter what them latte-drankin’ yuppies at Forbes say! You just have to like college football. We’re off to get a latte, now. A manly one, served in a skull and topped with the froth of our enemies. And we won’t be paying for that, by Crom’s beard, we won’t.

(Our fave Conan quote: “Conan, why do you pray to Crom?” “Because he always answers my prayers. He always says NO!”)

The ad doesn’t even attempt to solder together what beer and the ability to block someone have to do with each other, but we respect that kind of naked dialectical linkage in our advertising: no need to couch it, we like our consumerist propaganda neat.

So…they went and had beer afterwards? And then made passionate love? Kroeter, we must know what happened to you after you discovered the 190 pound offensive lineman could read.

We’d like to ask our readers: do you know anyone who lives in Beijing? And would be willing to have a writer/blogger type pay a fair price to crash on a couch, bed, heated kang, hammock, or square of filthy floor? And in do not tell me that “yeah, everyone I know is leaving town and getting out and you’re right bullfucked when it comes to accommodations,” because this is not helpful, and then we’ll just have to tell you to go fuck to adjust the area.

China: rocking you like a hurricane since a billion years B.C. You’re welcome for the kites and gunpowder, btw.

More fine Chinglish at the Chinglish pool. (Via Bethei.)

It may not be SEC speed, but the Big Ten has toughness in Costco-sized flats, sir.

Witnesses driving on the West Shore Bypass, or Route 422, saw the driver of the minivan climb out the driver’s side window and onto the roof. The vehicle swerved and crashed into a concrete median.

“They were shocked when he got back onto the road,” Brown said, adding that the man had a foot-long gash in one side and his internal organs were exposed.

Did we mention the victim was naked? Anyone seen JoePa in the last two hours or so? (HT: TCOAN.)

Call the police, there’s a madman around!,

You’re not going to like it when I say this…

Furman Bisher is very, very old: 89, in fact, and still writing columns for the AJC. To be very, very honest, we respect his longevity but have never particularly enjoyed his work, making him the Bob Dylan of Atlanta sportswriting: around, allegedly legendary, and never really doing anything for us. Then again, when we were growing up he was already sixty, so admittedly we’ve never seen him close to his fastball.

The rule at the AJC has been, since time immemorial: Cut Bisher and die. This seems an immensely stupid rule for anyone, since if you line up at a typewriter every day you’re bound to make mistakes. (See our corrections, or perhaps this entire blog for examples thereof.) However, it might be time for someone to begin at least proofing what the guy types before entering “RUN” or whatever command publishes on the FORTRAN-rigged website the AJC has:

“Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati. Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.”

Gadzooks: not only does Bisher anachronistically invoke the Rising Sun paranoia of the late eighties (The japanese will own your brain! They’ll own everything!), he…he says that. Rather than fire up the facile righteous indignation wagon, we simply sent a tattered rising sun flag and this note in an envelope to Bisher at the AJC this morning instead.

Deal Westeln Devir,

Lieutenant Hideo Takeda
Japanese Army
Zambales Mountains, Philippines.

When Furman Bisher takes the red-eye to Manila later this week with a flint-lock rifle, a canteen, and a map in hand, and you hear laughter emanating from the Atlanta area, that would be us.

Or at least his chute did, possibly, maybe, sorta. Whatever. Someone finds a buried parachute, we’ll assume DB Cooper, the man who hijacked a plane in November of 1971 and jumped from the same plane with $200K in cash, made it off the plane, and hightailed it to Mexico to bathe in tequila, mujeres, and bathtubs of pesos.

We’ve been fascinated with the case since Unsolved Mysteries–your nightmare fuel of 1988 that couldn’t film a man walking down a road without ominous low synthesizer notes and a smoky filter–did this segment on him.

He ordered two bourbon and waters during the hijacking: that’s Kenny Loggins/Michael McDonald smooth there. Part two is after the jump. (more…)

…a case study in differences by Kanu.

UGA wins again. And yes, this is the last time we’ll talk about Vegas.

BTW: If there were, say…a concerted effort to do this again for the first Thursday night game of the season…who’s game?

Over at the Sporting Blog, we asked Bruce Pearl to “point at the camera and look awesome.” He did, thus reaffirming his awesomeness.

Good to see that Jenn Sterger’s still getting work. Well, we don’t actually care if she’s employed or not anyway, but for the good fo the faltering economy we’re happy to see one less person on the streets. Seriously we’re just trying to get to a 35 Seconds plug here. Yup. Any second now. Without saying anything too bad about poor Jenn…

SHE BLENDS IN BECAUSE WITH HER FOUNDATION SHE’S ALREADY ORANGE!!!

Faux-queen remark typed and therefore expelled, we may now move on to two things. One, despite coaching for Tennessee, Bruce Pearl rules. (”There’s a difference between Pat and I. She has talent, and I have no shame.”) Two, Patrick’s doing fine work over at 35 Seconds, and you should read it if you’re into bas-ket-ball. We’ll be really into it in a few minutes, since we’re heading down to the SEC tournament at the Dome shortly.

Again, if you get political about this, we’ll kill you all with a cattle gun. We were watching CNN’s story on Oklahoma lawmaker Sally Kern, who thinks that homosexuality is a bigger threat to the United States than “Islam or terrorism,” when we spotted NCAA sports gear during the “let’s interview the twanging commoners” portion of the story.

The woman’s nothing remarkable, and doesn’t say anything totally guffaw-worthy like “Gays shouldn’t be allowed to eat flatmeats off mah plates” or anything; she just says that the woman does have a right to free speech. We have a right to free speech, too, and would like to say that whatever sex ninja moves she knows must be spectacular, because she’s married the sexiest man in the Central Time Zone. Hellooooooooooo, Mr. Earp…

This puts Auburn well ahead of Florida and Ohio State, two schools whose gear was featured in a tasing and the world’s greatest incident of public masturbation ever, respectively.

(BTW, if you do watch the CNN clip, the only clear and present danger to our national security we see is Sally Kern’s hair. GAY BURRRRRNNNN!!!)

…is no more, sadly. Chris Leak, the CFL has Kerwin Bell’s roster spot ready and waiting, baby.

We had no idea what a momentous day this truly was. We figured it’s the usual, right: wake up, eggs, too much coffee, crying jag around 9 o’clock due to anxiety caused by the herd of caffeine bulls running through our defenses, deep pondering of old Dangermouse videos, watch a few basketball highlights and consider what life would be like if we’d been born 6′10 (poor Mom!)…

…when suddenly we get this email in our inbox:

Hi EDSBS,

Account Personladychick

That third Chinese symbol means “HEARTBLEEDSPLOSION” That’s the best translation, really

HOLY HELL WOULD I? It’s the twentieth anniversary of the Blooming Onion, people! Those of you not immobilized by your own fatness or currently not trapped under toppled obese people, get off your asses and dance, for it is feast day. At no point in American history have we ever had a more ingenious or charismatic combination of batter, onions, and salt–and that’s counting Charles Barkley and Charles Durning, who like many fat men are in fact just large puddles of those three ingredients lit into life with the application of high voltage by mad scientists in rural laboratories.

Not only did Outback have the audacity to take a 27 cent onion, slice it in an innovative flower shape, coat it in no more than two cents of batter, salt, and pepper–oh, and their secret blend of yuMmy Spices and inGredients!– and baptize it in the sweet roiling fury of a deep-fryer, friends. No, Outback goes a step further and charges you over twenty times what they paid for it in the first place and serves it with mayonnaise, motherfucker.

Oh, and bitch about the ingredients all you like, hater. You just don’t want to see me shining. From the grease. On my beard. The numbers aren’t bad, man. In fact, health nazi, what other dish can you name that in addition to being deliciously tasty, can feed a good-sized adult male for a day?

Calories: 2310
Total Fat: 134 grams
Carbohydrates: 241 grams
Protein: 35 grams

Not only do you get your fat for a week, but you calories for the day and Gigantor amount of protein simultaneously. Fuck just eating one: down the whole thing and another, and you’ll be eating protein like a Pumping Iron-era Arnold in his prime. Plus you’ll have so much fat running through your system, a car will become unnecessary, as you will skate along on your own stream of yellow excreta leaking from your ass. Whoa, did someone say new cardio sensation? We did: ONION SKATING. Eat two of these a day, and we’re out there running laps on concrete wearing socks and patented Outback Outdoor turbo chaps, the official sport of dedicated Double Onioners like me, man.

So happy birthday, Blooming Onion. Even though you were born in Tampa, you’re truly Australian: bold, zesty, and if you eat the whole thing, you’ll probably die, just as you would from eating most things in Australia. Bonzer, mates! That’s Australian for diet-induced incontinence.