Amongst The Hedges

I really intended to write a story about every Georgia game this year. Other than two of our players were eaten by hedges, there just isn’t much to tell. I don’t mean they played between the hedges, I mean they we all up in the hedges. They were amongst the hedges; it took several people to get them out. Turns out our hedges were the best players on their team. It was a win and that’s all Forrest and I got to say about that. Making fun of them would be like kicking sand in the face of a blind guy at the beach. There is no way to feel good about talking trash about this game.

How to make Gator Etoufee

Place 11- 20 Gators in a large pot, Jacksonville Municipal Stadium will do. They having big heads matters little, since most of them do. Add the right ingredients, to include one ex-Georgia player who can jump enthusiastically for three hours and whine for one. Add one sprig of a quarterback, John B IV, who proves one of two things, Florida women have no imagination when naming their children or Florida men aren’t smart enough to keep up with which generation they belong to. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat, drop in 11-20 Bulldawgs, the best meat tenderizer in the SEC and let simmer for four hours.
After beating the mess out of them for that time, they should be nice and tender, crying forever more, when watching True Blood or Twilight. However, I doubt you’ll have much left, everyone knows once you beat the mess out of a Gator, well, there just ain’t much left and it certainly can’t taste good.
I watched the game at one of my cousin’s homes in Athens Saturday. Due to some sick twist of fate, more specifically some sick football pick thingy or maybe a bet gone wrong, his wife had to pull for Florida. She appeared wearing orange, determined to live up to whatever tragedy had befallen her. I know she had to pull for Florida, but she screamed, yelled and paraded back and forth in front of the TV throughout the first three quarters. I don’t know about you, but I got a Florida heart, sorry I meant a weak heart. I was sitting on the edge of my seat; my cousin couldn’t sit down at all. His wife was being a little too enthusiastic; I think she was making sure the Bulldawg Nation knew everything Florida was doing. Trust me we knew.
She danced, cheered and yelled. She even had one of those orange highway cones which increased the size of her mouth by the power of ten. Boy when she loses a bet, she does it with gusto. I must give her credit; she appeared from the house at the beginning of the fourth quarter dressed appropriately in red and black and went on to cheer us to victory. It’s a good thing; I took a deep breath, reset the safety on my gun and saved her life without her even knowing it needed saving, that my friend is gun control. Her evening reaffirmed why I don’t bet on sports.
The game wasn’t pretty, we missed some opportunities, the score should have been 96-20, but it was a win. We have a habit of letting games slip away in the last quarter, but our boys held on. I personally enjoyed the game, it being one of the sweetest victories I’ve ever tasted. We had shrimp and grits in Athens and our boys went on to enjoy a bowl of alligator over rice in Jacksonville Florida.
We took em out behind the barn. We sent em out to pick their own switch, my grandmother’s favorite and my least. We took em out to the woodpile. We tanned their fannies, hides and britches. We blistered their bottoms. We spoiled the etouffee and didn’t spare the rod. We beat em like redheaded step-children. We opened a can of whoop Alligator tail on em. We beat the tar, fire and Hades out of em. We beat em so bad John B’s mom felt it, so did his dad John B I and his two brothers John B II and III. I heard when the stadium emptied out; he was still sitting at mid field with his arms draped over his knees. Poor guy, we could have brought him back with us, Uga’s little dawg house is empty at the moment.
We have a season going and it’s pretty sweet, what we really needed was for those pesky Gamecocks to lose to Tennessee, but it wasn’t meant to be. Will Stevie ever go away? Doesn’t one of those Yankee teams need a coach? I think he’d do well in Minnesota, Iowa or maybe Quebec. Hey do they have college football in Chihuahua, Mexico? He could be a soccer coach, anything really, just run him out of the SEC. I’m kidding, don’t get your panties in a wad; hold on while I set that safety again, whew just saved Stevie’s life, I’m a hero. I’ll probably get hate mail from Mexico, Canada and most of the soccer teams in the world.
Now it’s time to get ready for New Mexico State. I think that entails hangin around the grocery store for a week harassing organic fruits and vegetables, then doing tons of elbow reps or beer curls. As long as our players can spell football, we should win this one. As long as their players can spell bus or airplane they should, at least show up.

Tannin Fanny

Mutual assured destruction is the system we used with Russia, for years. It wasn’t perfect, but they weren’t jumping on our friends, knowing we would, figuratively, take em out behind the barn and tan their hides.
Along the same vein, Kennesaw Ga. passed a law in 1982 requiring every head of household to own a gun, this in response to Morton Grove Ill. passing a total gun ban that year. The nation prepared for a resurgence of the old west in Kennesaw, predictions were made of the shoot outs and deaths to come, as the citizens of Morton Grove prepared for a life of peace and harmony.
Twenty-nine years have passed; the crime rate in Morton Grove has grown by 15% as the population dropped. In Kennesaw, just outside of Atlanta, the population has grown six fold, but can claim being one of the few places in America where the crime rate dropped. Not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting as a victim, attacker or defender. Try to get your mind around that. It’s a pretty good case for taking all the guns from the equation, right?
I can tell you what causes much of our problems; it’ll get me in trouble, its okay I stay in trouble. When we took the, I’m going to take you out back and beat the tar out of you, from the equation, the world was doomed. When we were kids, if you were walking down the middle of the street, someone else’s Dad might pull over, beat the tar out of you and make you understand just how stupid that was. Now kids will walk in the road and look at you like your crazy for expecting them to move. Really, they don’t have the sense to get out of the road and if you try to educate them, they will convey to you their total lack of caring with nasty words and sign language. They now have a class in the first grade which teaches them, not to care, how to call the police if you try to make them care and how to call social services if their parents attempt it. A child who cares is rare indeed.
Now those kids have started becoming adults. After getting everything they desired while growing up, it’s hard to adjust to having to work and do without as a young adult. Service has gone out the window. You can ask for something without mustard in a fast food restaurant, but don’t actually expect to get it. You can ask repeatedly, they take it as some sick challenge, if you ask more than once or get excited when they ignore you, well then you get to meet the manager.
Managers in fast food, convenience stores, auto repair shops, places where you pay bills or government agencies are there to handle the multitude of complaints generated by the multitude of worthless employees, who cause them each day. If you’re not happy with the manager’s resolution, which is doled out with equal amounts of nasty sarcasm, well then you get to meet with the nice policeman, who is just the next step in the complaint department.
At this point it would be advisable to just learn to eat mustard or get used to getting your card hit twice for your hot dog. Hey, paying 15 bucks for 2 dogs and a coke is bad enough, but paying 30 is crazy, still it’s better than a night in jail.
There is something to be said about the days when everyone carried a gun. When you walked into a saloon and ordered a sarsaparilla, by George that’s what you got and it was served with a smile. No one was going to insult your best girl, or be leanin on your horse when you came out. Back then the gunshot was 911 and the sheriff arrived to supervise the removal of the body. If you were wrong, that was why the sheriff had a gun too.
There was a time when the person behind the counter knew they had to treat the customers with respect or suffer the consequences, namely being taken out behind the barn, right there in the store. Now they don’t care what you want, how long it takes for you to get it or if you ever come back again.
We speed toward martial law only it’s not called martial law, the police, the criminals and the people who don’t want to work have more rights and we have less, the situation continues to worsen. The system must evolve to try to compensate for the total lack of respect, concern or anything resembling common courtesy. Yes sir, once you took out the, I’ll take you out back and tan your fanny from the equation, it’s been all downhill.

One in a Thousand Pictures, Tells a Thousand Words!!

A picture is worth a thousand words,
except when it’s not worth one.
Every picture tells a story,
except when it don’t tell none.
A heartbeat keeps the time of your life, if it can.
Every heartbeat, writes the story of every man.
When it’s over and the dying done,
all the pictures are lies, except maybe one.
All the smiles you gave away,
were simply lies you told each day.
Lies for the teachers, the preachers and the world,
lies from the broken, little boys and girls.
Pictures of happiness, fleeting moments at best,
covered the horror, covered the rest.
No pictures, no camera covers the worst,
no pictures, no camera can see the hurt.
Some go on, life on kodachrome,
It’s a life they only dreamed once,
It’s not a life of their own.
But they will live it, it may be they’re only chance,
for any chance they have is still a chance to dance.
Some will struggle through, unhappy to the end,
they’ll spread the word of abuse and let the cycle never end.
Others of us will overcome, do the best we can,
enduring the ability to see through the pictures, into the blackened heart of man.
The pictures at the beach, the pictures at the mall,
never tell the story, never tell it all.
One in a thousand pictures, tells a thousand words,
that picture is never seen, those words never heard.
A bruised and broken body, a shattered beaten face,
are tagged and cover then buried in their place.
Innocents in a cold, lonely room lying on a frigid slab,
Is the only real picture of an abused child that they will ever have.
Don’t worry, don’t despair, you never need know,
those pictures are for documentation, not one will ever show.
The mended ribs, the bruised thigh,
the hint of blood in the nose and ears, the dislodged eye,
makes the picture complete.
Wash them, wrap them, speak the last words they’ll hear.
I beg you make them sweet.

Ain't I Done told ya Woman

I swear, sometimes my wife thinks I’m twelve, but only when she’s being generous. Most times she thinks I’m nine, okay leave me alone, she thinks I’m six, there I admit it, I hope you’re happy. Most people know I’ve been quitting smoking for thirty days, today. I’m nowhere near as proud of myself as others seem to be, in fact I’d love to have a smoke with you and discuss it.
Still I’ve been walking and now riding a bike many times a day to burn off all the excessive energy that smoking took care of for so long. Since acquiring the bike last week, I’ve heard about one hundred and fifty times that I need a helmet. The worst part of this, for some reason the Spanish word for helmet is something very close to casket.
Bebe, (Baby to the rest of us) you need a casco, pronounced (casket).”
“No sweetheart you mean a helmet.”
“Yes Bebe a helmet, you need a helmet.”
“No way Baby, I’ve been riding bikes since I started walking, I don’t need a helmet.”
“Please Bebe.”
“No way Baby, I don’t mind looking like a girl, I just don’t want to look like the ugliest girl you’ve ever seen.”
Blinking her eyes innocently was her last plea.
“I’m not buying a helmet and that’s my last word on it, now let’s just go for a ride.”
When I was younger and would say something this stupid, I would whisper. Like I thought God couldn’t hear if I said it quietly. Now that I’m older it might be worse. I am still painfully aware that God likes to do things to me to make me eat my words, but now I state my words loud and proud for he and the whole world to hear.
After having a bicycle for a week or two, let me tell you a lesson I’ve learned. Wait you need a little more information first, that sentence should be the last one.
I’ve been running all over the area nearest my home acting like a fifty-one year old, fifteen year old. I’ve been jumping curbs, riding in and out of deep ditches, jumping crazy things, weaving in and out of traffic and flying down steep roads. I’ve attained speeds that make the front tire shimmy and shake.
All the while I’ve been riding ten times a day with no concern for my body and the knees that love it. I’ve been getting more tired and sore as it goes, but hey no cigarettes.
Saturday morning as I was leaving to take my first ride, I jumped on the bike, stood up on it and paddled to beat the band. I approached the curb on the other side of our parking lot, a curb I’ll jump and then shooting through a small piece of woods I’ll drop down a bank and jump out into the parking lot of a strip mall. I told you adventurous for a fifty-one year old.
I pushed hard on the pedal, jerked up on the handlebars, but had made a few miscalculations. The bike came up, but gravity is not a friend of mine and it came back down exactly on the edge of the curb. I am no physicist so cannot explain how it happened, but I flipped over the handlebars and was catapulted through the woods to the bank on the other side and tumbled out into the parking lot, followed closely by the cycle.
By Followed closely I mean it landed on top of me, good, at least I broke its fall, wouldn’t want to hurt the cycle. I wish I hadn’t been moving so fast, I wish I understood how I was thrown so far. I wish God wouldn’t try so hard to teach me stuff, I know a bunch of stuff already.
It’s funny how your mind works. The entire time, what seemed like two hours, I was flying though the air, I heard My Wife say, “Bebe you need a Casket.”
I then heard myself say, “No I don’t.” This went on until God was sure I got the message. After riding a bicycle for a week or two let me tell you a lesson I’ve learned, see I told ya I’d get back to this. I’ve learned that a bicycle will kill a fifty-one year old if he has no sense. It only took a broken toe to learn that one. It took fifteen minutes to figure out what was wrong with me; I should have been hurt much worse. The next time your wife tells you, you need a casket, please don’t make her mad or temp God, just shut up and buy one.

The Other Tennesseans!!

I was again unable to watch the entire game Saturday night due to scheduling conflicts. I really need to make enough money to ensure nothing interferes with my watching Georgia football. I did continue to sneak out of the other thing I was attending, to catch up on the game and see a few plays. Luckily both were happening at the Tate Student Center, on campus. There was a group of students watching the game whom brought me up to speed every time I returned. Thanks to that group of young, enthusiastic, female fans for all their help.
I’ve said it before, but it warrants repeating. If you’ve never been in Athens on a Saturday night, as a Georgia fan, then you haven’t lived. I arrived in the student lounge in time to watch most of the fourth quarter; it was packed and charged with excitement. Granted I nearly had a heart attack with 7 seconds to go and another with 1 to go. Why did Vandy decide to play its best game in two decades, last night and why did it have to be against us? I’ve got nothing but love for James Franklin and his Dores, what a game. With what happened in Tennessee over the last two weeks, it appears the SEC is about to get tougher.
Now for the fun stuff, the Commodores or the Dores as they’re called, got their name from a nickname given to the schools namesake. So their mascot is a hundred-fifty year old crusty, navy dude, complete with sideburns. I think he had the audacity to chase Uga around the field last night with his cutlass. In the end Uga had the opportunity to chew a little, old navy dude, rear end then came home with a chunk of it and little bits of black cloth, in his teeth.
This is twice now we’ve watched Tennessee teams pull out some crazy stuff, but it appears many teams are using unorthodox plays these days. Where is Vandy getting these plays? Did you see that half@&&, sorry halfback pass? Are their plays coming out of Cracker Jack boxes or coming wrapped around bubble gum?
Georgia is having a great season and it shows. Every week the crowd grows at the Tate Center and every week the atmosphere is more electrically charged, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. Different players continue to catch the fever and step up to make big plays, all of the team seems to be invested in this season.
Now we must prepare for Florida, for me the most important game of the year. Florida is a lame Gazelle, running blindly across the Savannah, on three legs, we are the lead Lion, it don’t suck. Still, we learned last night, anyone can surprise you, you better be payin attention. I’m proud of our boys. Goooooo Dawgs.
“At Vandy we’re going to compete with class and play with class. We lost to a good football team.” James Franklin 10/16/11

Georgia Finds a Season

I thought last week was like a bad episode of the Jerry Springer show. It was hard enough to speak of bulldogs without thinking of them as some sort of branch kin. Now I’ve got to make fun of a team with a close Bulldawg family member at the helm. Writing these stories isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I may say a lot of things in this story, but none of them will be about a certain little, baby, Dooley. Barbara will not be getting on me, I assure you.
So it turns out Georgia had a football season all along, it was simply hiding under a rock in Tennessee. The game was kind of a nail biter, but we really had it from start to finish. It was a little hard to watch seeing as how we didn’t know we had it, until we did. I didn’t breathe until Mark started across the field. There was that time early in the game where an official decided a leg touching the ball was more a sign of possession that two hands gripping it. Then in the forth, we were 4th and 57, I’ve never seen that before and don’t want to see it again. I almost started drinking, smoking and cussing again in a matter of just a few minutes. How about that Tennessee player who ran a football that had been dead so long it was decomposing, all the way to the goalposts, good Lord. Can’t say we didn’t have a chance to throw the game away, cause we did, I’m glad we didn’t take it.
There was never any doubt that Tennessee arrived to play football. I may joke about the caliber of a team’s players and or their cheerleaders. There was never a question which was which. Those boys played their hearts out, I salute them.
I was in the Navy years ago and learned that NAVY stands for never again volunteer yourself. Man, it feels good to say these next words, who wants to volunteer to have their behind kicked by Georgia? Well maybe their quarterback who is from California. Poor kid volunteered to move to Tennessee and then volunteered to have his behind kicked. I’ve got one word for ya Bray, NAVY.
The coaching staff for Tennessee probably started back to drinking, smoking or whatever vices they may have had, after last night’s game. Wait Barbara; before you get on me, I’m sure Derek never did all those things in the first place. I’m pretty sure he did everything right and stood outside the stadium after the game helping little old ladies cross the street.
I’ve got a feeling this game will get harder to watch each year, knowing the cloth Derek is cut from and the future he certainly has in the SEC. Let’s just hope it isn’t a future which includes a long winning streak against us, we’ve had enough of that.
“Can’t run the ball, if we can’t run the ball, we’re not going to beat good SEC teams.”
“We’ll get em, our time will come, we’re not there yet.” Derek Dooley
Is there any chance in the grand scheme of thing he’ll end up in Georgia one day? That’s about as likely as fast food restaurants getting your order right; it’s nice to think about, but just doesn’t happen. All the planets would need to line up perfectly and that only occurs once every million years or so. Besides we want Mark to have his chance to go down in Bulldawg history as a Bulldawg legend. Derek Dooley will have his day, in his way, somewhere in the SEC and you can tell his Mom I said so, please.
We got Uga or we’re supposed to, they have a dog too, Smokey, is a blue tick hound. Basically that’s an old dog who hunts, fishes, smokes, drinks, plays cards and has those funky redneck teeth. Was that about Smokey or the cheerleaders, I lost my place for a moment? Wait, wait, wait, I forgot his more important functions, he’s the teams math tutor, he’s the cheerleader’s make up consultant, he’s the faculty’s confidant and the team’s best shot at a Heisman trophy winner.
So now we need to get ready for Vanderbilt, which I think consists of eating a few Varsity chili dogs, drinking a few fruit smoothies, playing a scrimmage game against a high school team and getting our cheerleaders hair and nails done.
“I just want you to be nice and fair and know you probably got the greatest coach in the country.” Barbara Dooley. You go Barbara, when Mark is ready to retire and if we can’t have Derek when he’s gone, my vote is cast for you.