The other USC has some explaining to do...

Seems the NCAA may finally bring the hammer down on the other USC as their coach calls it quits.

drugs don't pay

Today MLB announced that Manny from Mannywood will be suspended for 50 games for violating the baseball drug policy.  

 

This was supposed to be the Dodgers year.  They are on a 13 game winning streak at home and have already jumped out to a nice lead in the NL West.  Now that there big hitter is gone for the next 50 games, let’s see what happens. 

The Cow Whisper says "find the boobie"

Clemson will do anything to sell tickets!

Could Alabama hate UT any more

Finebaum blisters UT and Kiffin in this article from the AL.com.   Kiffin has pretty much gone after every SEC coach and thinks that with what he has at Tennessee he is going to compete next year in the SEC.  I have a feeling a lot of the veteran coaches are going to be gunning for him this upcoming football season.  It also means SEC media day should have some drama brewing.  

Smelley to start but look for some new guys to get a chance

Looks like Spurrier is going to shake things up and get some new players on the field Saturday, which is a good thing. Maybe even the 6 year old above who is showing our receivers how to catch a ball will get to play some...seriously this kid was catching everything thrown his way last Saturday. He is kinda like our WRs as they just need a QB to get the ball to them and I am not talking about triple coverage.

Smelley will get the nod at QB to begin with but coach Steve Spurrier said Garcia will get some reps....this is good. And in reading this article - here- seems some others are getting some well deserved 'PT.'

Breakdown of new blood -

• Sophomore Brian Maddox will start at tailback for Mike Davis, one of four players suspended for violating the athletic department’s class attendance policy
• Terence Campbell will start at right guard for Heath Batchelor, who also is suspended
• Joe Hills and Jason Barnes will start at WR
• Larry Freeman will start at tight end along with Jared Cook if USC opens in a two tight-end set
• Clifton Geathers will start at defensive end for Jordin Lindsey, who also is suspended

Update - USC left tackle Jarriel King is doing better...good luck King!

Time to throw down some bills

This story has nothing to do with sports or South Carolina football, but I thought it was a pretty good story.

Showgirl and men's magazine model Raffella Fico, 20, told an Italian magazine: "I can't wait to see who's going to pull out the money to have me."

Raffella is selling her Virginity to buy a house in Rome and take acting classes. When her family was asked how she could still be a virgin, they said "She's never had a boyfriend. I swear on my mother's grave. She's a devout Catholic and prays to Padre Pio every night," her brother told the magazine.

Raffella isn’t the first person to sell their virginity for money, a 18 year old San Diego college student told Howard Stern last year that she would sell it for 1 million dollars to pay off her college debts.

Something to think about if you have some extra cash laying around. It would probably be cheaper to just watch porn on the internet but what fun is that.

What a risk

As a reward for beating the cocks last weekend in Columbia, UGA gets to go out west to see this. South Carolina has to get some teams on the schedule in the near future with fans that look like this. I have to say that ASU might be able to give Ole Miss a run for the money for hottest coeds. Granted I have never been to either school but just from pictures, ASU has my vote this week. I will have to ask our favorite Memphis Talent scout what he thinks when he visits Ole Miss in a couple weeks.

BCS soaps

Forget Texas- Southern Cal, lets talk about who is banging Brady Quinn’s sister. Oh yeah that would be the guy that pretty much had a field day against Notre Dame on Monday. A. J. Hawk

I think ABC ended up showing more shots of Laura Quinn in the stands then the actually football game. Is this story really that big a deal?

And the trivia question answer will be posted tomorrow morning, so get your answers in. And Dev you can answer if you want

Hey Crabman

My name is Earl is moving to Thursday night, for some crazy reason.

Sad day for Donuts

Vale died Saturday in New York City of complications from diabetes, according to son-in law Rick Reil.

Vale's long-running character, "Fred the Baker," for the doughnut maker's ad campaign lasted 15 years until he retired in 1997.

Canton, Massachusetts-based Dunkin' Donuts said in a statement that that Vale's character "became a beloved American icon that permeated our culture and touched millions with his sense of humor and humble nature."

Vale was born in Brooklyn and studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop in New York City with classmates Tony Curtis, Ben Gazzara and Rod Stieger.

A veteran of the Broadway stage, film and television, Vale appeared in more than 1,300 TV commercials.

Small town boy with some class, in a classless society

Article for a phil. newspaper.

Eagles' Sheldon Brown, wife Jenny already planning for life after footballBy DANA PENNETT O'NEILoneild@phillynews.comSHELDON BROWN stood outside the Sage Diner on a rainy morning, waiting for his agent to pull up. Just roused from bed, he wore an old black sweat shirt, the hood pulled tight to keep the rain off his head.
Inside, his wife, Jenny, held a table.
Two businessmen walked by outside, did a double take at Sheldon and then sat down inside, at a table alongside Jenny where she easily could hear their conversation.
"I think that's Sheldon Brown outside," the one businessman said.
Incredulous, the other said to his friend. "Do you really think Sheldon Brown would eat here?" he said.
"When Jenny told me that, I couldn't stop laughing," Brown said. "Where else am I going to eat?"
As the Eagles still pick up the shrapnel from the fallout with their former prima donna wide receiver who lived in his requisite $4 million mansion and strutted like the peacock you've come to expect of men who bring home paychecks the rest of us can't fathom, it's important to remember that not everyone who pulls in an NFL salary lives like the Sultan of Brunei and behaves like Paris Hilton.
Some, like Brown, are ordinary folks who just do extraordinary things on Sundays.
Make no mistake, Brown makes a very nice salary - he recently signed a 6-year extension worth a reported $24 million - but the only time you'll find him on the front lawn is when he's shooting baskets in his driveway with neighborhood kids.
He lives quietly, another guy in another house on the block.
And his new home in Marlton, N.J., purchased about a year ago, is certainly good-sized, but it is far from a gilded palace. On a recent tour, Brown had some accoutrements that not all of us can afford - an outdoor kitchen that would make Emeril salivate, a closet the size of a small bedroom - but as he made his way through the house he made it clear that this is the home of a regular guy.
"Isn't this a great vanity?" he said as he peaked around a first-floor bathroom. "We got it at Target."
Yup, Target.
Next to Bed, Bath & Beyond, it's the Browns' favorite haunt.
"My mother will look at something in our house and be like, 'Oh that is so nice. I wish I could afford something like that,' " Jenny said. "I'm like, 'Mom. We got it at Target. We brought it home in a box and Sheldon put it together.' "
The Browns aren't cheapskates. They're smart.
Wiser than his years, Brown realized as a rookie that the good life he's living now won't be around for a long time. NFL players have a shelf life shorter than a loaf of bread and Brown recognized quickly that living for today means extinguishing tomorrow.
"I'm living for my future," he said. "I know I'm unusual, but I've seen other guys struggle. They never expect the money to stop coming in, and when it does, they can't make it.
"I won't be like that."
Friends from their days at Lewisville High in South Carolina, Jenny and Sheldon Brown have been together forever - "If it wasn't her sitting here, it would be no one," Brown says of his wife.
They struggled as everyone does, eating their fair share of Ramen noodles in college and squeezing every last dollar out of what little budget they could string together.
"I'd go to McDonald's on my way to work and he'd call and say, 'You couldn't eat something at home?' " Jenny said.
Even after Brown was drafted, as a second-round pick, nothing was guaranteed. The couple lived in an apartment for 6 months until they were certain he'd make the Eagles and then spent their first 3 years fixing up an old house.
They sold that in the offseason and once the ink on the new contract dried, went shopping for something new.
When they found the home they eventually purchased - a former model home - they had to be talked up to the asking price.
"Our financial adviser said you probably need to spend a little more to get what you want," said Jenny, who is pregnant with the couple's first child, a boy due in January who will be named Sheldon Dion but will be called Dion, as his dad always wanted to be known.
"I panicked. I didn't think we could afford it."
Lest anyone get the impression that these two are living a thrifty lifestyle on a shoestring budget, there are at least a few stops on the house tour that quickly erase that myth.
For starters, every room - even the master bathroom - has a plasma television hung in a corner.
Baby Dion's room is in the process of being hand painted by local artist Donna Sinno. The room has two bold red and black stripes running around the top border of the wall, the University of South Carolina Gamecocks logo on one wall, the school's USC letters on another and a crib with custom black gingham bedding on the way.
"I always wondered how kids were just raised Carolina fans," Brown said. "Now I understand. My son has no choice."
The real giveaway that this isn't your typical Ozzie and Harriet house is downstairs.
"This is the only room that we really designed, or I designed," Brown said as he walked down the stairs to his basement lair.
It is a sports fan's fantasy. The walls are lined with framed photographs of Brown in his playing days at both South Carolina and with the Eagles.
On one wall, his entire Super Bowl uniform is framed, complete, Brown points out sheepishly, with the dry-cleaning tag on the belt that he forget to remove.
On another are framed and autographed jerseys from Brown's boys, Bobby Taylor and Troy Vincent, taken literally after the two played their final Eagles game, grass stains and all.
Tucked into a nicely set up workout room is Brown's locker from South Carolina - saved from the garbage pile when the school was remodeling and stuck in storage until just recently.
And in another space is an in-home theater, complete with 110-inch, drop-down projection screen and 11 comfy suede recliners (each with its own cupholder).
Brown is like a proud kid when he shows off the room, and he's proud of the whole house, as he should be.
This is, after all, his personal castle.
But really Brown is prouder to show what his house isn't. It is not an ode to excessive living or a status symbol to make sure everyone knows he's a Somebody Who is Very Important and Very Rich.
It is by every definition a home, not a house.
"We could have gotten a bigger house and spent all our money on that, but why?" Brown said.
"Who do we have to impress? We're happy the way we live, and we know we'll still be happy in the future."

Creative yankee's

While eating dinner last night I was flipping thru the channels and stop on the food network, where they had a special about a restaurant in Rochester, NY called Nick Tahou's. When I saw this monster plate of macaroni salad, hash browns, baked beans or French fries topped with Chili, and either hamburger, cheese burger, Italian sausage or hot dogs. After looking at tick’s plate from the other night on www.summerofdev.blogger.com, I was wondering how much of this garbage plate ticket could eat. I have seen him eat 9 full plates of Chinese food one time in Daytona Beach, Florida. I have seen him eat an ass load of hard boiled eggs; He also made cornbread with jalapeño, tuna concoction. If you can think of the most disgusting food, Tick will eat it.

Here is what the crazy yankee’s have to say about the garbage plate.
A Garbage Plate is a wonderful thing! The original Garbage Plate was created at Nick Tahou's in Rochester, NY. In the meantime, there have been many imitations with many different names, such as Sloppy Plate, Trash Plate, Dumpster Plate, etc. A typical plate (see above) comes with two items piled on a plate, such as home fries, macaroni salad, beans, or french fries. Then the meat of choice, such as cheeseburgers, hamburgers, or hot dogs, are placed on top (bread is usually served on the side). Optional onions, mustard, hot sauce (the hamburger-based kind), and occasionally relish are piled on top. At Nick's, if you order a cheeseburger plate, you'll automatically get home fries and mac salad with everything on it (the best options, IMHO). There are also many different ways to eat a plate. It can be eaten like a normal meal, but my preferred way of eating plates is to cut up the cheeseburgers, add tons of ketchup and whatever red hot sauce is available, and mix everything together so that it truly looks like a garbage plate. The bread is used to scoop up the remainder of the plate, whatever that is (chemical analysis still needs to be done on it).

Scared for life

Scared for life

Say you are making out with your girlfriend on a Friday night after a high school football game. The front of your 1993 Honda accord is heating up, all of the sudden you girlfriend goes into shock and then dies. Well this happened last week in Canada, when a boy kissed his girlfriend after eating a peanut butter sandwich.

(Montreal, Canada-AP) Dec. 1, 2005 - An allergist in Canada says friends and relatives of a teen-aged girl should have been told about her peanut allergy.
A friend of the Canadian teenager who died because of an allergic reaction to peanuts last week says others who knew Christina Desforge didn't know about her allergy. That includes her boyfriend.
Desforges' allergy was triggered after she kissed her boyfriend, who had eaten a peanut-butter sandwich.
A Montreal allergist says the case is very rare, and says the allergy reaction varies greatly from person to person.
A memorial for Desforge was held Saturday. There's an autopsy being performed Wednesday.
About one and a-half million Americans are severely allergic to peanuts. Peanut allergies account for 50 to 100 deaths in the United States each year.

Small school basketball

How about the Winthrop Eagles being one of the best mid-major teams around. SI is calling the Eagles the next Gonzaga. With 5 NCAA births in the last 7 years, that puts them atop all the other schools in SC. GO Eagles

Oh they are at it again

Oh those crazy morman's are at it again, read this..........................

Until 1963, interracial marriages were illegal in Utah. Residents who suffered chronic epileptic seizures and were not sterilized also were barred from marrying in the state.
And, until 1993, anyone who had syphilis, gonorrhea or HIV could not make that walk down the aisle.
Now, in 2005, three Utahns who want to unite as husband, wife and wife say their preferred form of marriage also should be allowed.
They are asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal judge's rejection of their challenge to state prohibitions against bigamy and polygamy.
"The fact [that] much of American legal culture is based on monogamy does not justify a ban on polygamy," their attorney, Brian Barnard, of Salt Lake City, wrote in a brief filed this month with the Denver-based appeals court.
Barnard argued that a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas law that prohibited sexual conduct between same-sex couples "provides individuals with protection from state intrusion as to intimate relationships."
On Dec. 22, 2003, G. Lee Cook tried to obtain a marriage license from the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office to wed a woman, identified in court papers as J. Bronson. Cook's legal wife was identified as D. Cook. G. Lee Cook wrote on the application that he already was married and told clerks that he wanted to legally marry a second wife. The clerks refused to issue a marriage license and refunded a $50 fee.
The three - who are all more than 45 years old and say polygamous marriage is a requirement for their exaltation and eternal salvation - filed suit in federal court against the clerks. The legal action seeks to overturn an 1879 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, Reynolds v. United States, that upheld Utah's ban on polygamy.
In February, U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart rejected the argument that the prohibition on polygamy is an unconstitutional violation of religious and privacy rights and ruled that the state has an interest in protecting monogamous marriage.
Stewart also ruled that even the 2003 opinion in Lawrence v. Texas over the sodomy law did not grant a right to plural marriage, noting that the laws against bigamy and polygamy do not preclude private sexual conduct.
Under Utah law, Barnard says, married people living in a sexual relationship with someone who is not their spouse is guilty of bigamy, and deceit or a second marriage ceremony are not required elements of the crime. But although that provision makes it illegal for a married man to live with a girlfriend before his divorce is final, the law has been used to target polygamists, he contends.
There is no compelling governmental interest that makes the prohibition against religious polygamy constitutional, he argues in the brief.
Utah also officially abandoned plural marriage, in part, lawyers for the state say, because of social problems associated with polygamy; the exploitation of women and girls; and the encouragement of responsible procreation.
Barnard counters that the state does not regulate exploitative relationships between other couples, and if there were a compelling reason to promote responsible procreation, Utah would step into all family situations. Yet, there are no sanctions against an unwed mother who rears children alone, and there is no statute barring parents from divorcing and raising their children in separate households.
"The state does not restrict nor ban 'serial polygamists,' individuals who repeatedly marry, conceive children and divorce a series of spouses

come again

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- "Y'all" isn't welcome in Erica Tobolski's class in voice and diction at the University of South Carolina. And forget about "fixin'," as in getting ready to do something, or "pin" when talking about the writing instrument.

Tobolski's class is all about getting rid of accents, mostly Southern ones in the heart of the former Confederacy, and replacing them with Standard American Dialect, the uninflected tone of TV news anchors that oozes authority and refinement.

"We sort of avoid talking about class in this country, but clearly class is indicated by how we speak," she said.

"Many come to see me because they want to sound less country," she said. "They say, 'I don't want to lose my accent completely, but I want to be able to minimize it or modify it.'"
That was the case for sophomore Ali Huffstetler, who said she "luuuvs" the slow-paced softness of her upstate South Carolina magnolia mouth but wants to be able to turn it on and off depending on her audience.

"I went to New Hampshire to visit one of my best friends and all they kept saying was, 'Will you please talk, can you just talk for me?'" Huffstetler said. "I felt like a little puppet show."

Across the fast-growing South, accents are under assault, and not just from the modern-day Henry Higginses of academia. There's the flood of transplants from other regions, notions of Southern upward mobility that require dropping the drawl, and stereotypes that "y'alls" and "suhs" signal low status or lack of intelligence.

But is the Southern accent really disappearing?









Related Stories
Definition of South, Southern Is Changing
Many Blacks Take Pride in Southern Roots

Yes, Ma'am, There Is Pride in Politeness

Whither the Southern Accent?

Northerners Make Powerful Inroads in Va.

Great Literature Amid Illiteracy

Country Comedy Is an Evolving Tradition

Kentucky's Struggle Stems From Civil War

Will Fajita Become the New Moon Pie?





INTERACTIVES
Southern Accents




That depends what accent you mean. The South, because of its rural, isolated past, boasts a diversity of dialects, from Appalachian twangs in several states to Elizabethan lilts in Virginia to Cajun accents in Louisiana to African-influenced Gullah accents on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina.

One accent that has been all but wiped out is the slow juleps-in-the-moonlight drawl favored by Hollywood portrayals of the South. To find that so-called plantation accent in most parts of the region nowadays requires a trip to the video store.

"The Rhett-and-Scarlett accent, that is disappearing, no doubt about it," said Bill Kretzschmar, a linguist at the University of Georgia and editor of the American Linguistic Atlas, which tracks speech patterns.

"Blame it on the boll weevil," he said, referring to the cotton pest. "That accent from plantation areas, which was never the whole South, has been in decline for a long time. The economic basis of that culture started going away at the turn of the last century," when the bugs nearly wiped out the South's cotton economy.

Even as the stereotypical Southern accent gets rarer, other speech patterns take its place, and they're not any less Southern. The Upland South accent, a faster-paced dialect native to the Appalachian mountains, is said to be spreading just as fast as the plantation drawl disappears.

"The one constant about language is, it's always changing," Kretzschmar said. "The Southern accent is not going anywhere. But you have all kinds of mixtures and changes."

For a long-term study on whether the Southern accent is disappearing, University of Georgia linguists went to Roswell, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is just the kind of transient place that leads to the death of indigenous dialects. It's packed with strip malls and subdivisions with no cotton patches or peach trees in sight.

"I don't hear it," 21-year-old Roswell native Amanda Locher said of the accent. She's never lived outside the South, but even Northern newcomers question her Southernness. "People tell me I sound like I'm from up North. To hear a true Southern accent, you'd have to go deeper south than here."

Adam Mach, a 25-year-old tire shop worker who moved to the Atlanta suburbs from Lafayette, La., has got a noticeable Louisiana lilt. But he said his accent seldom makes conversation because the area is such a melting pot of newcomers.

"Everybody I meet's not from here," he shrugged.

North Carolina State University linguist Walt Wolfram said it's a misconception among Southerners that Yankee newcomers are stamping out traditional speech. More likely, he said, is that newcomers pick up local speech patterns.

"When people move here and don't think they've changed at all, they go home and people say, 'Wow. You've turned Southern.' They pick up enough to be identified as Southern. So it's still there, still strongly identified with the South," Wolfram said.

But that doesn't mean that population change in the South isn't chipping away at old-timey dialects, especially in cities. Wolfram said the "dearest feature" of the Southern accent - the vowel shift where one-syllable words like "air" come out in two syllables, "ay-ah" - is certainly vanishing. Other aspects - such as double-modal constructions like "might could" - are still pervasive.

Kretzschmar, who has recorded Roswell speakers for three years, said his suburban Atlanta studies have backed up his suspicion that the Southern accent is morphing along with the urbanizing South.

"It's not really disappearing, but the circumstances of living make it different," he said. "People don't have connections with their neighbors to maintain their way of speech.

"The circumstances of how people get together and talk in the cities have changed; they're not constantly talking to people who talk just like them. But in the South outside the cities, you have a lot of similarities."

Georgia-bred humorist Roy Blount Jr. understands that people with strong Southern accents are often perceived as "slow and dimwitted." But he thinks it's "sort of a shame" that people should feel the need to soften or even lose their accents.

"My father, who was a surely intelligent man, would say `cain't'. He wouldn't say `can't.' And, `There ain't no way, just there ain't no way.' You don't want to say, `There isn't any way.' That just spoils the whole thing," Blount said.

"I just think that there's a certain eloquence in Southern vernacular that I wouldn't want to lose touch with ... you ought to sound like where you come from."

But never fear. There are still plenty of professions that thrive on a good Southern twang - from preachers to football coaches to a certain breed of courtroom litigators.

And South Carolina's Tobolski, an Indiana native who came south eight years ago, can help there, too. As a private coach she has even taught a politician she wouldn't name how to ratchet up his Southern accent to make him appear more folksy before certain crowds - a technique she calls "code switching."

"He didn't want to lose his dialect entirely. He just wanted to be able to adapt."

"I don't think that any regional accent is going to be eliminated," she said. "There's still people who want to hang on to how they sound. That's who they are. That's their identity. And that goes from New Jersey to Minnesota to Wyoming to Georgia."

Don't drink and Die

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- A 32-year-old Norwegian bartender was sentenced to six months in prison Wednesday for serving a customer so much tequila that he fell into a coma and died.

According to a district court in the southwestern city of Hokksund the bartender, whose name was withheld, pleaded guilty to serving 34-year-old Leif Henning Nilsen 19 shots of the strong Mexican liquor in 90 minutes at the Spiseriet restaurant in May 2004.

Nilsen lost consciousness and died three days later.

The court said it could not hold the bartender accountable for the death itself, but sentenced him to prison for illegally serving alcohol to a clearly intoxicated person.

The ruling said the bartender intentionally contributed to the excess by drinking shots of water, tricking the victim into what he thought was a drinking contest.

"In the court's opinion, it is hard to imagine a more serious case of excessive alcohol serving," said the ruling, which also revoked the bartender's right to have any job that involves serving alcohol for five years.

The restaurant was in Vikersund, about 35 kilometers (20 miles) west of the capital, Oslo.

Best time of the Year

Today is the start of my second favorite college sport, College basketball, at midnight major basketball programs will have there annual Midnight Madness celebration practice. So the Kentucky, Kansas, Syracuse, North Carolina, and Duke fans can forget for a few hours about football season here in October. Giving these dominate basketball schools hope for the spring, when all this practice in October will pay off. So while you are either watching in a packed gym or over a webcast, or on ESPN U. Here is to the college programs have a reason to practice at midnight.

Texas football at its best

Baylor on the road in the Big 12
Baylor won its first Big 12 road game ... ever. The 23-13 win over Iowa State makes the Bears 1-37 on the road since the league began ten years ago, and makes them 4-1 so far this year with only an overtime loss to Texas A&M.
And people in South Carolina complain about bad football, this is ridicules. It took 10 years for the Bears to pull off a road victory. Granted the Gamecocks can’t beat the good teams in the SEC, but at least we beat the crappy one on a regular basis.

Oh this truly is Texas football at its best

oh the Utah state fair is going to be fun

http://jakehilton.com/2005/09/02/napoleon-dynamite-videos/