Live from Peshawar!!!

So last night I tried calling in to EDSBS radio... Unfortunately, when they called me back, I was rolling along in the single worst spot in the metropolitan area of Atlanta for my celly to receive reception (there's a hole in coverage at the confluence of Ponce and Scott Blvd. right under the railroad track bridge). I tried calling back again, but I totally understand only getting one bite at the apple.

I did have some answers to the 4 questions...

1) What I know about my team... I was planning on taking this a different route. My team is Georgia, but there are far better bloggers that track the Dawgs much better than I do. So I was planning on instead talking about the "team" I probably write the most about in the Fall - the on-camera crew of pundits on College Gameday. And here's what I know about my team: Nothing is going to change. Sure, there might be a few new quirks or sponsored bits (like a field goal kick for scholarship money or something). But for the most part, there'll be nothing different. Expect the same lack of analysis, baseless predictions, biases worn on sleeves, and, of course, loads and loads and loads of cross-promotion.

2) What I don't know about my team... Well, this is also only tangentially about that. What I don't know, and really don't understand is why no other television network creates a competitor for College Gameday. Last year it was plainly evident that ESPN had taken a pro-cross-promotion view towards the show. Chris Fowler admitted as much in a column and on-air. If you are a television executive at CBS or Fox Sports Net (or even TBS), you had to hear loud and clear that ESPN will no longer be covering your products as well as they used to. Basically, ESPN was begging someone to create their own show. But so far, nobody has stepped up. And the main thing is that College Gameday isn't that good! Yes, it set the bar, but others can definitely go above it. A competing show can focus on things lots of fans care about - like actual analysis, weather reports, injury reports - things gamblers want to know about. Things that NFL pregame shows do a pretty good job of. If CBS put on a serious minded show, with good production values and relied on news and analysis rather than personalities, I honestly think they'd draw a sizable audience.

3) Offseason coping mechanism... I'm polygamous when it comes to sports, so I don't get bothered by March Madness, baseball, etc. I actually like them. Also, I dig on foreign sports, so I follow the premiership and international soccer. This summer I'll be following the America's Cup hard core too. Oh yeah... I sometimes even talk to my wife.

4) Badass death... I had two, but both are kind of long. If I had to cut it short, I would've just said the way Lt. Frank Drebin wanted to go: having your nuts chewed off by a Lapplander. The other options:

(A) The setting: smoky, black and white Texas heat of an old Jim Thompson novel. I've fallen in with a woman. A dark, mysterious, sultry woman. The kind who would let the pork chops burn while she was building your appetite. The kind of dame whose powers of persuasion were unsurpassed. She might've led me on, but what's a schlub accountant in a town like this supposed to do? Anyway, I did her taxes, she did her part. It was a mutually beneficial relationship until her ex husband rolled into town. She needed something to happen, and when she needed something, my own needs didn't get met. We worked together on a plan. A dark plan. A twisty plan. But when push came to shove, I was the one who had to pull the trigger, and the one who had to mix the metaphors. My accounting skills moved the cuckhold's cash into the right nooks and crannies, and the dame made sure I was in the right spot to hook the noose around the ex's neck. But surprisingly enough, when the noose tightened around his neck, I felt a choke myself. Turns out that the angles played by this angel weren't just in my favor. The big brute of a sheriff rolls in at the right time, just after one final roll in the hay with the dame. Finally I realized where the cash was flowing, and who exactly was benefitting. They pulled a pound and a half of lead from my gut, placed there from the biggest barrel on a sidearm any lawman in Texas is allowed to carry. I can't say it wasn't worth it though. She was the kind of woman you knew was too good for you, but how can you say no? The scam worked perfectly, just the mark wasn't who I thought it was. Course, that sheriff's kid ain't who he think he is either. [Fade out from bleeding dude half naked on bed.]

(B) Glastonbury. Darkness. 800,000 in the crowd. Storm clouds gather in the distance. The original lineups, all reunited. GnR, Crue, Van Halen (not Van Hagar), and Metallica featuring the reanimated corpse of Cliff Burton. Naturally, they invite me on stage to take over on the skins. After a face melting, boner inducing 24 minute drum solo (during which Tommy Lee announced his retirement from drumming and Lars Ullrich hanged himself out of pure exasperation in knowing that they'll never rule as hard), the storm grows closer and more violent. 800,000 arms in the air, having been rocked so hard they've gotten sober, drunk again, and had their eardrums explode. Finally, I build to a climax on the solo. Hitting it so hard people are losing their minds. I build to the back of the set, with the sticks trained on the massive, double gong on what used to be Tommy Lee's set. At the exact instant I strike both gongs, sending a massive pulse through the crowd that instantly causes 800,000 people to quiver in ecstasy at once, 13 strikes of lightning slam into the stage at once. Luckily, the sheer force of the gong strikes draws all lightning away from the other people on stage, who have either passed out in rapture or are unable to move because they are stultified by my awesomeness. 13 strikes of lightning and thousands of volts of electricity instantly congregate on the gong I am currently banging. The confluence of electricity explodes at my last strike - and the full amount of force channels into my bones. Since the strikes knocked out the power on stage, the lightning is the only light seen by the crowd. The current travels into me, lighting up my bones like a fluorescent skeleton. For 3 minutes, I continue the drum solo as an electric skeleton on the dark stage, again building to the gongs, for the finale, I strike both gongs at once. This channels all of the electricity back into the gongs, and the sound waves send the electricity back to where it came from. The lights come back on, the transfixed crowd comes out of their trance. I lie on the ground slumped over. A casualty of rock.

Apologies for not coming through in the clutch and for making the show less good with my terrible phone and all.