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Life in the SBC (southern Beaufort County)

So it doesn't really rival The O.C. — though I did contemplate throwing down a patented Ryan Atwood turn-back cold-cock on a bish the other night, but that's a story for a more private forum — but we have our share of drama. A few anecdotes.

• The big story right now is that of Carol Z., a 26-year-old woman in an SUV who hit a 59-year-old Vietnamese woman on a bike and killed her. While awaiting charges, Carol Z. thought it wise to use the message boards on my paper's Web site as a sounding board. This started a ridiculous war of words that has become quite comical. The message board battles escalated last week when Carol Z. was charged with "driving too fast for conditions," a charge that would add two points to her license. I think some people are about to start a lynch mob.

Read all about it here.

• In other news, this part of the county is overrun with old folks, thanks in large part to a development called Sun City. It's basically a little gated town for old people. Now these people have some moderate to serious dough, and they're old, so they think they can get whatever they want whenever they want it. Around here, we call them an "old man/woman with a mandate."

On such fellow was at the Ford dealership's service department at the same time as me the other day. They told this Wilford Brimley-looking dude they wouldn't be able to finish fixing his car that day, so they offered him a free loaner. He was none too pleased, but begrudgingly accepted (I don't think he had a viable alternative, but that doesn't concern these codgers). When he signed the loaner agreement, he showed the first signs of just how strong his mandate is.

Cashier: I just need you to sign this.
Old man: (signs paper)
Cashier: What did you just sign? Why don't you read it while I'm typing this up?
Old man: I don't want to read it.

So he didn't. Finally, they led the old dude to his 2005 Lincoln Town Car, and he went on his way. But moments later, I see him pull up on the other side of the building and begin arguing with one of the service dudes. Eventually, they come inside, where it is explained to the old man that they do not have a detailing facility, and therefore, they cannot WASH HIS LOANER VEHICLE for him. Apparently, the old bastard found his free loaner a bit too grimy for his taste.

• Finally, we'll end on a good note. For the first time since moving here in July, I hit the golf course twice in the past four days. I know that sounds crazy — living here for six months without playing golf — but I haven't had the time or the money. But Monday's experience reminded me precisely why living here is the shizzle.

On Dec. 12, I played 18 holes of free golf on the vaunted Harbour Town Golf Links, home of The Heritage Classic. It was 60 degrees and sunny. As close to a perfect day as one could ever experience. And when it was over, and I drove over the HHI bridges with my sunroof open, I was reminded why we put up with the crazy bastards who live here. This is a glorious place.

Hope y'all aren't snowed in too deep!

NCAA chaos theory

Sometimes sports need a little spicing up. When our teams suck (see: Missouri Tigers), we have to add a little seasoning, so to speak, to keep our interest.

For some people, the best recourse is gambling. They lay points, bet against spreads, play the parlays, etc., and the games are interesting again.

Maybe it's sadistic of me, but I stay piqued by cheering for people and systems that suck to suck to the point of their ultimate demise.

There's a point in each college football season at which no team I give two shits about has a shot at playing in the BCS "national championship" game, so I begin to root for a combination of results that will lead to the BCS' demise.

For example, as recently as two weeks ago, I was a big fan of Alabama, UCLA and Virginia Tech, in hopes of as many as four teams finishing the regular season undefeated. When that pipe dream passed me by with 'Bama's loss this weekend, I became a fan of every one-loss team in hopes that either SoCal or Texas (preferably SoCal) will join them in the ranks of the once-beaten, and BCS chaos will ensue.

As I kept one eye on the running box score for Missouri's season-opening basketball game against Sam Houston State on Monday — flashes of Winthrop, Centenary and Houston dancing in my head — I came to the realization it might be time to root for the Tigers' future, rather than their present. And speaking of the present, glancing at the box score brought to mind a line from the classic film "Major League" — Who're dese fuckin' guys? Leo Lyons, James Douglas? I never hearda halfa dese guys.

It's no secret Quin is in danger of being canned, or more likely lynched if he keeps losing home games to teams named not only after people but after people no one ever heard of — quick, what did Sam Houston do (and if his nickname was "The Raven," why not make your mascot the Ravens?)?

This is a scar on Missouri's NCAA Tournament resume that likely won't be removed without 20-plus wins or a Big 12 title, both of which are about as likely as my mid-October night's dream of as many as six undefeated college football teams.

No, this team will do well to post a winning record and earn another first-round NIT loss, but that won't be bad enough for me. Because that might be just good enough for Slimy Mike A. to keep his boy Quin hanging on for one more year. He'll point to the divorce, Kleiza's early departure and the team's youth as the culprits for this lackluster season, and he'll focus on the inevitable late regular-season charge toward mediocrity as evidence that Quin has them on the cusp of something great.

I don't think I can find it within myself to root against the Tigers, but if and when they suck, I'll be able to see the silver lining and know it's all for the best in the long run. And if things start to go badly, let's all hope they go badly enough to get both the snakes canned.

Weekend at Myrtle Beach — The Rich Man's Branson

MYRTLE BEACH — It's been said (by me) that what happens in Myrtle Beach stays in Myrtle Beach. But I quickly corrected myself that, no, what happens in Myrtle Beach goes on my blog. Especially when it's as awesome as the past weekend was.

Having been assigned to cover a playoff football game in Marion (more on Marion later) on Friday night, I suggested to my lovely wife, Megan, that she kick off from work early Friday and we make the trip together. When we discovered the remarkably low off-season hotel rates in The MB, we decided to make a full weekend of it.

We made the four-hour trek to The MB on Friday afternoon, and we were surprised to find it was nothing like our beloved Hilton Head Island area. On the contrary, this place was all glitz and glam, with enough neon to make the XXX shops on I-70 cringe and more discount beachwear shops than 10 Lakes of the Ozarks combined.

And chain restaurants ... my lord does The MB love its chain restaurants. In HHI, we have one: Applebee's. In The MB, they have 'em all. Hell, they have a ginormous complex called Broadway at the Beach — which incidentally isn't anywhere near the beach — devoted to chain restaurants and shopping.

We quickly dubbed The MB, "The Rich Man's Branson," an assessment that would be confirmed later by the inimitable Notorious PMG, a resident of the tourist mecca who would join us for much of our weekend of debauchery. A weekend that would include the Gay Dolphin, a red-headed stepchild, a creepy dude with a shovel, Megan and Garv doing shots, cruising Ocean Blvd. with the windows down and the music blaring, and the obligatory big breakfast the morning after.

But all that would have to wait, because I had a game to cover before our junket could officially begin. So we checked into the hotel, unloaded our luggage and gasped at what $59 a night got us simply because it's November. Our suite was among the finer hotel rooms we have frequented, complete with a full-on kitchen (range, microwave, full refrigerator, dishwasher), a washer and dryer, king bed, sofa bed, two TVs, and OCEAN VIEW! For $59 a night.

But, alas, we couldn't enjoy it for long. Back to work.

After a brief stop at Wendy's, where a deranged old woman held some teenagers hostage talking about her cute little granddaughter (note to self: don't get too goo-goo, gaa-gaa about cute little kids, or their wacky grandmas might strike), we were on the road to Marion.

Places like Marion are precisely why I love covering road games during the high school football playoffs. You go to a wholly unfamiliar town where everything shuts down at 7 p.m. Friday night and the entire population filters into the football stadium to watch their boys. These folks aren't used to having media at their games, so they treat you like royalty.

Unfortunately, these towns often have newly constructed high schools (for which you MapQuest the address), but still play their football games at the stadium across town at the middle school (which incidentally is the old high school). So you have to stop at the gas station (often the only one) to ask for directions. When in rural South Carolina, the exchange goes like this:

• Megan: Can you tell me how to get to the football stadium?
• Country-bumpkin female gas station attendant (in slow, Southern drawl, not that there's anything wrong with that): Go left. Go about ... four stoplights. Make a left. It's on your right.
• Megan: Do you know the name of the street we turn left on?
• C-BFGSA: Blahblahblahblahblah. (unintelligible).
• Megan and JJ: Thanks.

We found it, and upon seeing the name of the street, I immediately recognized the seemingly unintelligible stream of words C-BFGSA sputtered back at the gas station. With four minutes to spare before kickoff, we assumed our spots in the press box and settled in for the ride.

The game was quick and painless. Lots of running plays and the team I cover lost, saving me a return trip to The MB next weekend. We only saw one old woman smoking in the bleachers, a lucky mom won the $300-plus 50/50 drawing, the Palmetto bugs didn't make their presence known until the second half (during which I had to kill four to keep Megan from flipping out) and the temperature was at that perfect level at which you don't get hot, but you don't get cold.

I rode in the backseat and wrote my story while Megan drove Mr. Daisy back to the hotel (obscure early-90s rap song moment) where I filed said story and the weekend officially began.

After a good night's sleep, we awoke to the sound of crashing waves and a beautiful day in The MB. We called our main man PG and got directions to pick him up at his apart-ma-ment because his car, Harvey, passed away last week. Harvey's death was unexpected, as he died from a blown gasket. He was 9.

So we picked up Garv and rolled to Broadway at the Beach, the ultimate tourist destination complete with umpteen billion restaurants and eleventy hundred shops that sell keychains with every name from Amber to Zed. And a Gap. We grabbed some lunch at Tripp's, which serves a damn-fine crab cake sandwich, and set out to explore Broadway at the Beach.

It just so happens there was a festival of some sort taking place at Broadway, so we made the rounds. In true festival fashion, there were many things that were painted that didn't need to be including a VW bug. No painted saw blades, though, which was a bit disappointing. We scanned the crowd for festival mainstays such as mullets, fem-mullets, mustaches, women wearing shirts they shouldn't be wearing and men wearing shirts they shouldn't be wearing. And then we shoved off, feeling somehow fulfilled.

We traversed the massive complex, passing Dragon's Lair adventure golf, the Imax theater and Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and eventually returned to our car, which was parked next to the pyramid-shaped Hard Rock Cafe.

Feeling as though we had fully experienced Broadway, we moved on to the next attraction, an area along Ocean Blvd. that's known as The Pavilion. PG described it as "sort of like the boardwalk area in the movie 'The Lost Boys.'" He was right.

While looking for a parking space, we saw the Gay Dolphin, which apparently is the largest "gift cove" on the East coast, whatever that means. It would later be referred to as "homosexual marine life." There also is an amusement park at The Pavilion, but we were disappointed to find it closed for the season, at which point I punched a talking moose in the nose, bought a pellet gun and took a fat man hostage, demanding that he open the park and take us on the roller coaster.

Not really.

Instead, we went to the Family Fun Zone, which was on the opposite side of the street from the creepy guy that came out of the booth at the Ripley's Haunted House and dragged a shovel across the sidewalk towards us. Megan made a big loop out into the street to get away from him, and I thanked my lucky stars he only had a shovel and not an axe or chainsaw. Otherwise we might have left The MB right then and there.

But I digress. Packed with ancient arcade machines that clearly haven't been updated since before the bicentennial, the Family Fun Zone can only be described as a redneck casino. Somewhere, someone is clinging to 19,863 tickets in the hopes of one day returning to The MB to win 137 more tickets and redeem them all for a grandfather clock (or four switchblade knives in a case that dons a confederate flag and states 'The South Will Rise Again'). What a glorious day that will be.

We spent a fair amount of money playing skee ball, that pinball-like baseball game where you control the pitcher and the batter, and one of those things where you slide the quarter in and hope it knocks off more quarters when the thing pushes it into the fray. We combined to win a whopping 36 tickets, which we could have used to get six Jolly Ranchers or saved in h0pes of amassing 75 tickets for a jumbo super ball.

But instead we found the first kid we could find, a little red-headed redneck child, and gave our tickets to him. He might have crapped his pants, and his redneck mother demanded almost angrily that he thank us, which he did. Hopefully that gave them a good start toward the 4,000 tickets they need for that smoke alarm in case daddy falls asleep with a cigarette again.

Since the Family Fun Zone didn't have a fortune-telling machine at which we could wish we were big, thus changing our lives forever, we headed back to the car. Plus, it was almost time for The Great Garvino to go to work, and we wanted to get him there early so we could get a quick tour of the Sun-News newsroom.

We dropped PG at work, and he showed us around the digs. Then it was off to a sports bar to be named later to watch the Mizzou game. We went back to Broadway to hit a place called Louie's, but after a quick walk-through, we determined the place was dingy and gross. So we proceeded to drive 15 miles to the brink of North Carolina to watch the game at Buffalo Wild Wings. This turned out to be an excellent decision, because we had forgotten the extreme to which mini corn dogs please the tastebuds. And BW3 also had the new strawberry Bacardi drink, which brought pleasure to Megan's tastebuds.

After another disappointing performance from the alma mater, we went back to Ocean Blvd. to hit a place called Bumstead's, which Notorious describes as his "new 'Berg." This place has a "tour of beers," which consists of a list of more than 100 beers. If you drink them all in one year's time, you get your name engraved on a plaque in the back of the bar. Garv is No. 71. If you take the tour twice, you get an individual plaque. Three times, your name is engraved on a bar stool with the title "Professional Beer Drinker," and anytime you come into the bar, you can pull rank and toss someone out of your chair (unless it's a hot girl, which should go without saying). We can only speculate what four times gets, but we suspect it's either a new liver or an all-expense-paid trip to rehab.

We settled in a booth with a personal flat-screen TV showing the Miami-VaTech game and waited for Garv to call and tell us he was off work. Meanwhile, Megan started the tour of beers and we indulged in some crab cake hushpuppies. PG finished with work around 9 p.m. and I went to pick up his high-school-freshman ass (dem's jokes PG).

Back at Bumstead's, Garvin tore up some Woodchuck and Yuengling, and Megan plugged through six beers on the tour while the 'Canes ripped the Hokies a new one and we waxed about TV, music and politics.

Megan was pretty much three-sheets-to-the-wind when the theme song from "The O.C." came on the Sirius satellite radio in the bar, prompting Megan and Garv to scream like school girls and we all indulged in a sing-along. Garvin ordered shots called "The O.C.," which consisted of cream and orange-flavored liquer.

The chronology is a bit fuzzy, even though I was sober, but at some point during the evening, Megan declared PG her "new best friend" and PG worked in a reference to "Ralphie May heavy" when describing a particular beer on the tour. Nice.

We finally departed Bumstead's around 1 a.m. and headed back toward the hotel, but I decided we were having too much fun rolling down Ocean with the windows down and Kanye bumping, so we made a few swoops down the strip. Megan sang along at the top of her lungs, often leaning out the window to serenade passers-by.

My favorite such moment came when we passed a hotel parking lot in which a family was standing, and Megan shouted, "Ain't got no money, ain't got no clothes, ain't got no car, ain't got no hoes," with the last line coming just as we passed the mom, dad and two kids.

When I decided my cheeks hurt too much from laughing to make another swipe along the strip, we parked the car and went up to the hotel room, where we watched a 70s music infomercial for about 10 minutes.

Megan declared the Bee Gees "gay," and quickly added, "but I don't mean that in a bad way," to which PG responded, "hey, I know a lot of guys who have done some boy-on-boy humping to the Bee Gees."

When I, acting as the lone sober person, realized we had wasted 10 minutes watching an infomercial hosted by Greg Brady and some unknown chick, we switched over to Laguna Beach and introduced PG to another television passion.

Finally, we turned in a little after 2 a.m. and slept one off. We hit a pancake house for breakfast and dropped Garv back at the apart-ma-ment, said our goodbyes and shoved off for HHI. As we drove the seemingly endless strip of bargain beachwear stores, seafood buffets and pancake houses, we appreciated The MB for what it is — Branson on the Beach — but we realized how happy we are to live in B-Town and the HHI area, where neon is a dirty word and we like our fast-food restaurant signs like we like our women, made out of wood.

I'll take the creepy King

OK, I know I'm a one-trick poster lately, but here's more on the burger King from Drizzle my nizzle.

My opinion: You've gotta go with the skill-position player. Never build the franchise around a lineman. But then again, the King might have to go on injured reserve when someone like Nick punches him in the junk. So what do I know?

You go, King

I've made it clear from day one that the King in the Burger King commercials creeps me out — big time. This is especially true in the one where the dude from the "put the lime in the Coke, you nut" commercial wakes up and the King is in his bed.

But this is even creepier. Move your cursor over the "sold out" sign in the upper-left-hand corner. Ahhhh.

So long, so long summer

For the first time since we've been here, the high today is supposed to stall out below 70. High in the mid-60s today. Hooray. At last, summer is over.

Now if we could just put a stop to hurricane season. Jeez.