No surprise: an Auburn girl is on top. (Suck it, Jesse Jackson Jr!)

Alexis to Conquer, Never to Yield

#1 Alexis Latifi. The 24-year-old Republican graduated from Auburn in 2009, makes her own jewelry, practices seriously sweaty yoga, and currently serves on the staff of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

The name might sound familiar: her father, Alex Latifi, an Iranian immigrant, made national headlines in 2008 as the subject of a four year government probe that crippled his 24-year-old Huntsville business. The Feds had it all wrong, of course – Axion, as it turns out, was not sending top-secret designs for the Black Hawk Helicopter to China, as a disgruntled employee / embezzler alleged – and were forced to pay restitution. Supposedly, the injustice of it all is what led Alexis to swap her dreams of being the hottest doctor in training with dreams of being The Hill’s hottest lawyer in training. And now, probably, the most eligible. But careful, creeps – as hot… if you know what I mean… as those 105-degree bikram yoga poses might be, thankfully our girl seems a little too high maintenance for a sex scandal; the piece makes it sound like she splits all of her free time between buying fruit and drying it.

“Going to Whole Foods is like clothes shopping for me,” she said. “I’ll go to Whole Foods just to put myself in a good mood.”

The one thing she hasn’t quite figured out about being a raw foodist is how to be a good date.

“Poor boys,” she says, laughing. “I’ll get in the car, and they’re like, ‘Um, I looked for a vegetarian restaurant.’

It’s a shame she had to graduate before having the chance to loiter at Earth Fare!

War Eagle, Alexis! All the best… here’s to hoping the Huntsville Times picks up the story with the headline “Hometown Beauty rockets to No. 1.”

#5 Ben Dunham. This Huntsville-hailing boy bander-in-waiting (and former Ole Miss walk-on) apparently dated Mad Men’s January Jones, but really, who hasn’t? Take the lip-service to the environment out of it and his blurb reads like a Lonely Hearts ad (although his status is listed as “in a relationship” — obvious commitment issues). At least they didn’t discuss his lips along with his blue eyes, “soft, barely-there drawl,” and his “honest expression.” Overall, kind of more ick than swoon. Not necessarily his fault, though.

#6 Nichelle Williams. Finally, an Alabamian not from Huntsville (Mobile)… but she went to Bama. Gross. But she was named after Lieutenant Uhura! Awesome! And At least her blurb isn’t trying to get her a date (since she has a boyfriend). She comes across as serious but homesick. Sweet. You know as in “Sweet Home Alabama,” the subtitle they chose for her — it was bound to crop up.

As an aside #10, Anu Vakkalanka (not from Alabama) is awesome. She is a makeup blogger (“I’m Indian; I came out of the womb wearing eyeliner”) and her picture shows her wearing a red dress and (seemingly) flashing a bra strap. A conservative suit jacket is trying to tone down the wind-in-the-hair look. It just looks like censorship.

Cheap, good books.

The Gnu’s Room — the “lone reed, standing tall, waving boldly” in the vacant sands of Auburn Bohemia — is holding a giant book sale through the end of the week.

Paperbacks? Half price. Hardbacks? Two dollars off. All of them. And they’re already super-cheap. I got Douglas Coupland’s “Generation A” in paperback for $4 — that’s half the price of the cheapest used copy available on Amazon. Mine doesn’t even look like it has been opened.

Hours are 7 a.m. – 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. on Saturday. 414 S. Gay St. Next to Amsterdam Cafe. And yeah, there’s coffee, too. The best in town, some say.

And, of course, the Bo poster.

The now-concluded “Old Spice Guy” viral marketing campaign was / is apparently popular enough to have sparked actual debate on the impact of the Obama presidency and the future of some place called “Black America.”

But if we’re talking controversial sexual overtones (and, for some reason, I guess we are), for my money – and I’m sure the money of the old guys in the Wisconsin retirement community who Esquire polled to gauge the video’s effectiveness – nothing tops this Old Spice ad in I pulled from a 1970s issue of Time Magazine found many years ago in Opelika’s legendary Yard Sale Store. It stings our faces just looking at it.

When in Rome. Or Athens.

TWER columnist and contributor Kenny Smith has launched a personalized (i.e. better) extension of Auburn’s War Eagle Moments campaign with his usual aplomb.

Kenny has so far logged WEMs in Athens (Greece), Pompeii, Rome, the Celebrity cruise ship Equinox, San Francisco (twice), and New Albany, Indiana.

Here’s the photo from of his largest, sexiest ever, taken in Pompeii.

Auburn fans - students, actually - all of them.

The dwarfish, green-skinned up-skirter at the bottom was likely a Bama fan.

Kenny Irons - post-ACL tear, pre-Bengals waiver... is this what they have in mind?

Auburn athletes are always pimping (whoring, whatever) themselves on Facebook. Ben Tate wants me, and everyone, to “like” him. Now, I like Ben Tate, but I don’t “like” Ben Tate, not after repeated invitations (me and 5,000 others) to meaningless meet and greets and days held in his honor. Yep, Ben Tate Day is July 17 in Berlin, Maryland.

I like and respect Ben Tate the Player, but Ben Tate the Public Relation Trainee Gone Horribly Wrong is getting on my damn nerves. Go win Rookie of the Year or make a Pro Bowl or circumcise some Filipinos and then you will be a brand — Ben Tate of the Commercial Appeal.

Anyway, that’s me being prematurely aged. You damn kids and your Facebooks – that was supposed to be a lead into the real story, the primo info, the nut graf, which is that Travis “T-Will” Williams is having an open rap video shoot July 17 (suck it, Ben Tate). That’s not necessarily exciting in and of itself. “Get Low” isn’t a bad song, and I like T-Will’s flow, but the producer used too many effects; it’s all auto-tuney. Give me some gritty, raw sound.

No, what’s interesting, what makes me wish I could attend, is he who sent the invite: David Irons.

This is your boy David Irons. Make sure yall come out to the VIDEO SHOOT for my boy T-WILL hit single “GET LOW.” Awwww man this is gonna be off the chain!!! Ladies where your best bikini or whateva fits a POOL SCENE! THANKS!

He had me at “whateva fits a POOL SCENE!” Not to mention the “THANKS!” Who loves you, ladies? David, but also… Kenny. (Aside: Read this interview and try to not like Kenny Irons.) Kenny and David Irons by a pool full of mostly-naked girls… hide the little people.

Part of the overly-excited, wine-fueled e-mail I sent Jeremy last night:

Rhetorical question: Does it get any better than a day at the pool with the Brothers Irons and pool-scene-appropriate ladies of no doubt dubious and negotiable affection, with the rapping of T-Will sounding in fits and starts as a backdrop, with gyrating and sweat-inducing booty dancing filling the eyeballs? God, I would start preparing for the journey now but my dad’s going to be down that weekend to play golf. Do the world a favor and go. THE QUOTES. SWEET JESUS THE QUOTES.

I think we’re going start a band named Pool-Scene-Appropriate Ladies. First single – “Negotiable Affection.” I am managing, Jeremy’s got the drums, Kenny is singing and David’s got lead guitar. (Publicity contact – Ben Tate.)

In the meantime, if you want to support T-Will (because the dude can rap), listen to the Brothers Irons do what they do, or ogle pool-scene-appropriate ladies, be in Dacula, Ga., July 17.

Ben is a student at Auburn University. Most of his time is spent doing as little as possible, eating, and controlling manageable vices. He will one day graduate with a degree in journalism and maybe find a job. Fingers crossed. Write to him at thepigskinpathos@yahoo.com. (Did you read his story ‘The Mysterious Auburn Man”? It was reprinted in the winter issue of Auburn Magazine).

Sambo, 1944-2001.

The Oxford American recently revisited (by posting online a lengthy feature from it’s print archives) the legacy of Samuel Mockbee, god of Auburn Architecture, whose spirit rises annually on the wings of pig smoke (once to the beat of mine own snare!) above the gnarley pods of the Rural Studio in our western settlement of Newbern.

An excerpt:

Samuel Mockbee—“Sambo” to anyone who knows him at all—architect, painter, chair maker, so-far cancer survivor, father, husband, and teacher, received a “genius grant” in June of 2000 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Foundation, based in Chicago, has handed out 588 of these grants since 1981.

It’s impossible to apply for a MacArthur; there’s not even an interview process. The Fellows are chosen by a thirteen-member selection committee from a list prepared by a slate of anonymous nominators who change yearly. At fifty-five, Sambo was the oldest of the twenty-five winners and the only Southerner. “Some of those people do things in the sciences, and they really are geniuses,” he says.

The Fellowships have gone to twenty-seven biologists, twenty-one physicists, and thirty-four poets. Eight astronomers are MacArthur Fellows, as are three primatologists and now, with Sambo’s inclusion, three architects. “MacArthur Fellows are chosen for their exceptional creativity, record of significant accomplishment, and potential for still greater achievement,” said Daniel J. Socolow, director of the Fellows Program. Winners, he added, are a “wonderful collection of extraordinary minds in motion.”

The grant gives Sambo—who has taught architecture at Auburn University since 1991 while periodically lecturing at Yale, Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Virginia—a hundred thousand dollars a year for five years. There are no strings attached to the money, no papers to write, no lectures to give, not even a requirement that the money be accounted for in any way. The Foundation Web site says such confidence in the recipients is the “underpinning” of the program and that “the Fellows are in the best position to decide how to make the most effective use of the Fellowship resources.”

“They told me the only requirement was that I deposit the check,” Sambo says. “I told them I wasn’t going to deposit it. I told them I was going to take it down to G.B.’s Mercantile store in Newbern, Alabama, and cash it and that it better not bounce.”

TWER officially recommends Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency, which documents the genius of Mockbee and showcases the fantastically innovative work his students undertook in the late 90s and early 2000s in poor, poor, poor Hale County. Maybe it’s me, but there is just something about the photos in that book…

Terrifying.

The latest podcast at Offbeat Auburn is an interview with the folks of Auburn’s Southeast Raptor Center, who will be releasing Barred and Eastern Screech Owls into the leash-less wilds of Keisel Park in a bring-a-picnic event tomorrow night.

Turns out nothing was ever actually wrong with the owls… beyond the trauma of being bird-napped. The owls were brought to the center by well-meaning folks who happened upon them and didn’t realize they were, in fact, healthy fledglings who sometimes chill out on the ground for up to a month while learning to hunt. But now they’ll able to participate in an educational presentation prior to the release aimed at informing folks when it’s right to rescue a raptor and when it’s not.

No harm, no fowl.

"You know, Tom, Harper Lee ain't smart enough to write a character like you."

Wall Street Journal columnist and friend of the site Allen Barra took the 50th anniversary of the publication of “To Kill a Mockingbird” to commit what plenty of Alabamians would consider an even greater sin then shooting an actual  mockingbird: he shot “To Kill a Mockingbird” all to pieces.

“It’s time to stop pretending that ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is some kind of timeless classic that ranks with the great works of American literature,” Barra wrote last Friday in a WSJ column that also claims that – despite the PR blow to Alabams’ literary heritage – Harper Lee should not be included among the ranks of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor (whom he quotes in reducing the value of “Mockingbird” to that of a nice children’s book) and other great southern writers claimed by our neighbors.

Fans of “To Kill a Mockingbird” seem ready to lynch Barra – when The New York Times is reviewing your review, you know you’ve struck a nerve. Yet he refrains from the even greater sin of referencing the persistent rumor (not-so-irrefutably refuted by Auburn’s Wayne Flynt in a 2006 NPR interview) that Lee’s lifelong – and much more prolific – pal Truman Capote actually penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Pat Dye, in a recent interview, does not.

Not that he was aware of it.

Dye’s “friendship” with Harper Lee, arranged (via relatives in Monroeville) after he was re-smitten with “Mockingbird,” has recently supplanted the legend of The Pants as the angle of choice for blurbs on Coach in retirement community newsletters and small-town feature sections.

Even Southern Living decided to take advantage of it, wrapping up a July feature on Monroeville’s commemoration of its famous hermit with a story from Dye about his catfish supper with ‘Nelle’ in 2008. Dye took the opportunity to tell her in his folksy, roundabout way that it had to have taken heart and soul to write “To Kill a Mockingbird,” not just brains.

“I told her, I said, ‘you know, ma’am, you ain’t smart enough to write a book like that,’” Dye said. “She looked at me kinda funny a little bit, but not too bad. She was looking for the next sentence.”

We’ve all been looking for that next sentence.

Original / better title: Jimmy Buffett Sang: Let’s Get Drunk and Screw (Up My 1st Year at Auburn)

He was. For one year.

Last month, I went to see the movie “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson” and was surprised to see Jimmy Buffett interviewed. “What? WHAT?!?” was my initial reaction.

I’m not a big fan of Jimmy Buffett’s generic beach rock. And I still have a hard time imagining Buffett hanging with one of my literary heroes: Hunter S. Thompson. But for full disclosure, I did go see Buffett perform in at the Starwood Amphitheater in Nashville in 1993, but I swear (please believe me!) it was because a girl that I liked in high school invited me to go with her and her friends. I hate to say it, but I had a great time.

Anyway, Jimmy Buffett often hung out with the Good Doctor Thompson in Key West and other tropical locations in the ’80s. They were friends. I still can’t figure out if it drags Thompson down or elevates Buffett.

But the movie got some wheels turning in my head, and I thought back to rumors at Auburn University where I heard that Jimmy Buffett attended and failed school.

I have been told by countless people that Jimmy Buffett attended Auburn University for a year. He was a busy man living here and there if you were to believe all the urban legends. I was told by a person that he lived in a hidden shack on Glenn Avenue. I was told by another that he lived in a shotgun house on Ford Court (an alleyway with five houses behind The Brick Oven Pizza Co. on Gay Street). Both were wrong.

But thanks to an exhaustive biography by Steve Eng entitled “Jimmy Buffett: The Main from Margaritaville Revealed,” I finally know the truth.

The Beach Bum’s Early Years

James William Buffett, Mobile, Pre-Law.

Jimmy Buffett’s first and only year at Auburn was in 1964. He decided to major in public relations/journalism. He was a Sigma Pi pledge.

Where did he live? Well, Steve Eng’s book finally cleared it up for me.

That fall Jimmy enrolled at AU and stayed in the Plainsman Apartments. Years later, the resident manager said that Jimmy “lived like a bum in his apartment. He was always smoking dope, always drinking beer, and never went to class. And always playing his guitar, late at night.”

When told that Jimmy Buffett was famous, the manager replied “Uh-uh. This guy was a bum.”

[Ed. note - a few years ago, I was given an impromptu, guerrilla tour of the grounds at a hidden antebellum home with a crazy name I can't recall. It was kind of off Shug Jordan Pkwy. or something, buried but still bangin'. There was a shed in the back. "Jimmy Buffett used to squat there," said my guide.]

It seems that Buffett wasn’t all that interested in class work either, devoting his time to other pursuits. A rumor that I heard and decided was also a myth actually is true according to Steve Eng’s book: Buffett got his start playing the guitar for real at Auburn.

Jimmy’s mother said that “Auburn is where [Jimmy] learned to play guitar,” which Jimmy confirmed: “Women are more attracted to guys with guitars than guys with typewriters.”
…
At a social event, all his fellow fraternity “pledge swaps” sat around and “scratched their asses” — but the girls all kept their distance, while haughtily straightening their brassieres. The only classmate to win their attention was Johnny Youngblood and he earned that with his guitar. He explained to Jimmy that all it took to entice a girl was just three chords. “Teach me,” pleaded Jimmy. “And that was the start of my professional career. For no other reason than to meet girls.” Three weeks later he was entertaining the girls with G, C and D.

Of course, he had already begun picking in high school, but he played enough at Auburn to change his college priorities. “He flunked out,” Jimmy’s father said beaming, but his mother amended: “He was on academic probation when he left.”

This still sounds like fiction to me and “Johnny Youngblood” is totally a made up name. (What a kick-ass name!) What is that guy doing now?

Also, I like to imagine Jimmy’s first few frat house performances got a similar reception:

Changes in “AUttitudes”

So, it seems that Jimmy Buffett spent his year at Auburn just like the Plainsman Apartments manager described. Steve Eng dug up some review of a 1979 show from The Plainsman that adds a nice postscript to Jimmy’s college year.

Jimmy set the record straight in April 18, 1979, telling an Auburn concert crowd (dressed in Hawaiian shirts and straw hats) that “I left here with a 0.32 overall, and I haven’t been back since.” At, least he earned a nice, honorary, postgraduate headline from The Plainsman: “After Flunking Out in ’64, Buffett Gets High Marks From Audience.” Journalist Ford Risley said, “We can only hope, as Buffett said, that it will not be another 15 years until he returns to Auburn again.”

From the 1980 Glomerata.

…
At least Jimmy Buffett’s legacy to Auburn is social, if not scholastic.

“I had flunked out of school earlier — Auburn — and I had been banished to Poplarville [Miss.] and gone to Pearl River [Junior College],” Jimmy said in 1989. “And I said, ‘Hell, I’m going to join the Navy or the Army, and get out of here. I’m useless.’ Just about that time, I started playing music … and it probably saved my life.”

From the 1990 Glomerata.

This Weekend: The Buffett Bowl?

Since it is the week of our matchup with the University of Southern Mississippi, I should mention that Jimmy Buffett did eventually graduate from there in 1969. I’ve held off posting this until this week because of that fact.

In Eng’s book, Buffett said he followed some friends and musicians to Hattiesburg in 1966 and formed a folk trio that wore “navy blue shirts and matching belts and ascots.”

“We played little fraternity things and coffee houses in Mississippi at this time.”

And supposedly his “Peanut Butter Conspiracy” song (1973) is about his time shoplifting in Hattiesburg while at school.

Eng also wrote this about Buffett’s time at Southern Miss:

Southern Miss’ best classroom contribution to his music career was poetry. He studied poetry “just for rhyme schemes and things like that,” he told dopezine interviewer Bob Anderson of High Times in 1976. “I’ve always been interested in poetry. If I ever studied anything in college that I retained, it was that. Poetry.”

Buffett studied guitar and girls at Auburn. He studied guitar, girls and poetry at Southern Miss. A Renaissance man!

If Southern Miss and Auburn played each other every year, imagine the possibilities for a “Buffett Bowl” or a tradition of playing for the Ol’ Rum Barrel.

But, sadly, the mayor of Margaritaville doesn’t seem to have much loyalty to the football programs of the two schools — he was or is a Bama fan. In a Tom Arnold sort of way, i.e. wishy-washy.

Check out this interview from last year’s music-themed Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue:

SI: Did you grow up rooting for a particular sports team?

Buffett: I was an Alabama fan and then I became a Florida fan later on. The rest of my family were Auburn fans so just for spite I just rooted for Alabama. Later on I became an LSU fan when I dated a girl from LSU. My allegiances were not cemented.
…
SI: How often do you come across athletes who are fans of yours?

Buffett: It happens a lot. Ken Stabler and I were friends from our high school days and still remain friends.

Stabler? The Snake? Say it ain’t so Jimmy!

That really takes the wind out of the sails doesn’t it?

I'm trying to scale back on the 'War Damn ____' gimmick, but crikey - it was calling me.

I assume – as does reader Hardin Lovett who who brought it to our attention – that it was the shared partnership with UnderArmour that brought Auburn and Chris McCormack together. And that Competitor.com thought that footage of the professional triathlete and former Ironman World Champion running and being Australian on the Auburn campus (scaling the steps of Jordan-Hare, jogging past the football team on the practice field) was as good for a featurette on “Macca” as they could get anywhere else.

That’s the only explanation I have, anyway.

But whatever the reasons, however it happened — and despite that the focus is obviously on the dude’s training regimen, etc. — the results are great.

Watch here.