Starting Five
1. Notre Dame Mean Machine, anyone? (Start printing those “Convicts vs Convicts” T-shirts for October 6)
2. We have 90210 reasons why this story will intrigue you. (Twins Brandon and Brenda Walsh are not pleased. Not. Pleased.)
3. Paterno is No. 1. Penn State? Don’t hold your breath.
4. Flori-duh: Body parts found in a storage unit in Pensacola (but we thought Dexter lived in Miami?)
5. Condoleza Condoleeza Condoleezza Rice is invited to join Augusta National and speaks at the GOP Convention, both in the Deep South. How’s your month going?
The Bench
Yankees lose game, and series, to last-place Toronto at home. The Pinstripes are now 18-21 since July 18. Joel Sherman of the New York Post tells them to get their act together.
The problem with Allen Pinkett’s suggestion is that only white-collar criminals would pass the admissions office’s stringent standards. Do the Irish really need an embezzler at defensive end?
Notre Dame unveils Incarceration Series unis (all irony in this photo is FULLY intended)
Welcome back, foo-BAW! South Carolina visits Vanderbilt tonight in an SEC clash. College football preseason mag Lindy’s writes (pg. 36) “It’s insanity to bet against the SEC winning its seventh consecutive national title.” We’ll take insane plus the points.
Quotable: “My playlist, it starts with AC/DC and it ends with Zeppelin.” –Paul Ryan, Republican Vice President nominee, at GOP convention
Not to be an insufferable New Yorker (which means I am about to be an insufferable New Yorker), but the ESPN U.S. Open promo, with the times (1 p.m. and 7 p.m.) done as subway lines, is a nice touch. However, just for accuracy’s sake, the colors should be red for 1 and purple for 7. Both are currently in yellow.
The immensely talented Seth MacFarlane will host the Saturday Night Live season premiere with musical guest Frank Ocean. The next two hosts: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Craig (apparently SNL will wait until Tim Tebow throws his first touchdown pass before extending an invite). Here’s the thing about MacFarlane: You look at Matt Groening, and he’s a genius and all, but you sate yourself by saying, “Well, he looks like Matt Groening.” MacFarlane is a comic genius, good-looking, an A-plus talk-show guest, and the dude has a classic set of pipes. (We may have some issues, here, we fully cop to that).
Your SNL season premiere host
“My brakes failed,” says the 100 year-old driver whose car struck 11 school children in Los Angeles. Preston Carter was driving a powder-blue Cadillac. Niiiiice.
Friend of MH (and she does not even know it yet) Ann Mecca’s reaction to the real-life Dylan-Kelly romance: “David Silver is going to sit down at his synthesizer and totally write a love ballad for them.” You know he will.
FooBAW: Georgia is not the best team in the SEC, but the Dawgs are the only upper-tier SEC squad that avoids Alabama, Arkansas (No, that is not an Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros reference, but as long as we went there….) and LSU. That is why the Dawgs have the best chance of going undefeated.
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: Why do they remind us of a Sept. 15 SEC showdown?
There was a wind-related casualty in Tampa this week at the GOP convention, but it had nothing to do with Isaac. Instead, Yahoo! News bureau chief David Chalian was terminated after he quipped that the Romneys were “happy to have a party with black people drowning.” A live microphone caught Chalian’s remark on-air.
If you have not already left for tonight’s South Carolina-Vanderbilt and New Orleans Saints-Tennessee Titans games, which will take place concurrently just 3 1/2 miles apart, you’re probably screwed. Television: a fine alternative.
Just another place where Notre Dame finds itself outside the Top 25. Thanks to both SI.com and Chris Huston, alias “The Heisman Pundit“, for this.
Another word on this from someone who both attended Notre Dame and covered the Irish between 2006-2010: No players were more articulate and well-behaved (and well-dressed) after a loss than the Fighting Irish in the past half-decade. And, alas, they had a surfeit of opportunities to showcase these traits. And, granted, the difference between their behavior immediately following a loss to Syracuse…. or Pitt… or Navy… or U Conn (all at home) and after the cooling-off period, when they meet the media, may be immense. Still, as well as they represented the school, there was something so, well, polite about them. The one player who never fit that mold? Tom Zbikowski. And he was a well-off kid from the Chicago suburbs who only wished he’d been born and raised on the South Side.