Clay Travis :: ClayNation

Clay Travis has a new book hitting the shelves August 2009. Click here to check out his new book On Rocky Top.

Home Books Mail Bag ClayNation Blog Archives About Contact

All That And A Bag Of Mail: Beaver Pelt Trader of the Week

Friday, October 24, 2008

I'm going to be leaving for Knoxville in the next hour or so. As I've said before, UT will win this football game. Book it. And if you decide you need to blame someone for the season, I'll be on the Vol Walk and on the sideline for the game again. Without further ado, let's roll into our mailbag. Our beaver pelt trader of the week is Ja'Larry Byrd. You're about to know why and where that picture comes from.

Ward writes:

A friend of mine works for Prattville High in Prattville, Alabama. They play Sidney Lanier High School out of Montgomery coming up this weekend. Well he just got the roster and told me about it. I have found the roster on the web and have provided the link.

The football team has some players with the random apostrophe name: D'Kyndre Davis; D'Maeques Purnell; Ja'Michael Green

But none of those compare to one person. Please check out #66 on the roster and #1 in our hearts, an offensive lineman for Sidney Lanier: Ja'Larry Byrd

Case closed, winner. Enjoy.

You know how occasionally a sports announcer doesn't say anything and just lets you listen to the roaring crowd because he thinks that's more powerful. Well, this is that moment in ClayNation All That and a Bag of Mail.

Okay, I couldn't resist writing something. I googled Ja'Larry Byrd and what should come up but his myspace page. Uh oh. Here it is. You guys can review it for pertinent details. All I can tell is that Ja'Larry Byrd and Larry Bird seem to have a lot in common.

Maybe we can interview him to see what the view looks like from the top of the ClayNation Apostrophe Rankings.

Matt writes:

I am disappointed with you. You said, "Maybe I could be Mike Hamilton and Fox could go as Fulmer's broken contract? Or I could be Arian Foster and Fox could be a football. Although I don't want to have to fumble him that often."

You should have said that you could be Arian Foster and Fox could be a Pterodactyl. I mean, the squeals that Fox makes would be awfully close to Pterodactyl talk. Just a thought.

Several of you wrote in and suggested that Fox should have been the pterodactyl to my Arian Foster. I missed this idea. You're all geniuses. I'm, not surprisingly, a fool.

Chris Alexander writes:

C'Lay -

I'm wondering what happens when 2 apostrophes show up in one noun. We can take Dont'a Hightower's name as an example. He is a freshman linebacker at Ala-f'ing-bama who played at Marshall County (TN) in high school. I can see it now:

Saturday Night - Knoxville, TN - Neyland Stadium:

Mike Patrick: "Oh my god, who's head is that laying out on the 40 yard line? Eric Berry literally took that guys head off. Is that Hightower?"
Todd Blackledge: "Yes, Mike. I believe that is Dont'a's head... Eric Berry has displaced his head... and partial spine... and the entirety of his soul. My prayers go out to Dont'a's family."

My question is: Does the mere utterance of a word with two apostrophes signal the great rapture? Does CERN's Large Hadron Collider suddenly create the black hole that was so eloquently explained on this week's episode of The Hills and engulf the earth?

side note: Do you think "Dont'a" is the correct way to spell his name? Maybe Don'ta or Daunt'a? I mean who knows really. I would have gone with "Daunte". Confusion is me. I'll just have to go and grab me about 17 Scotty Hopson's Friday night at Cool Beans and discuss among friends.

All our apostrophes have clearly given google a headache. So I've gone with the bold as opposed to the italics to see whether they show up better in bold.

As for the double apostrophe, I'm not going to lie, my apostrophe obsession has started to get in my own head. Like, I can't figure out possessives anymore. Nothing looks right. I was one of those spellers and grammarians who merely did things based on feel rather than paying a lot of attention to rules. Generally this was fine for me because I read so much. But now I've got apostrophes appearing everywhere in my writing, and I have no idea what's normal anymore.

The other day, I swear to God, I spent ten minutes trying to figure out when to use who's vs. when to use whose. I wanted to use who's for everything. I wrote, "Who's pants are these?" the other day in an email. Yep, I'm r'attled.

John writes:

Clay,

While looking towards Saturday's game against Bama, I was struck with fear thinking about what Javier Arenas could do to UT's always terrible punt coverage, which led me to the following question. Who is the most dynamic return man in Alabama history? Javier Arenas or Forrest Gump?

Well, first things first, not only did he survive everything else, but Forrest Gump had sex with Jenny when she had AIDS, procreated, and neither he nor the boy was infected. So his penis has as good of fortune as the rest of his body.

Honestly, as a UT fan, there isn't any one punt returner that scares me more than any other, I'm terrified of anyone. For instance, has Brandon James done anything on punt returns since he scored atainst Tennessee? Of course not.

But I think I'm going to have to go with Forrest on this one. The exploits of fictional characters are always more impressive than real-life people and many more people, sadly, associate Alabama football with Forrest Gump than associate it with Javier Arenas. Better question, how in the world does Gilbert Arenas' cousin (isn't the family British?) end up playing football at Alabama?

Kerry writes:

That guy didn't get fired for ordering three drinks, he got fired for ordering three fucking Tom Collins'.

Well played, Kerry, well played.

Joshua writes:

So on the topic of Arnold Palmer and John Daly... A JD is an AP with citrus vodka and triplesec. This has never sat well with me.. Personally, I make sweet tea, lemonade, and bourbon or whiskey. Not only is it more inside of the parameters of what a real man would drink, but especially indicative of what the man, the legend, JD would drink.

On a side note... I was at this charity concert in Orlando, and Hootie and the Blowfish were going to play.. so I got a few beers, couple dogs..(hot dogs, not corndogs) and relaxed for a while listening to Hootie... so a few songs in, I look up and there's this fat white guy with a bad blonde haircut singing instead of Hootie and in a mocking tone, I turn to my girlfriend and say, "What the fuck? I didn't know John Daly was in the band." Well, to my shock, after the song was over Hootie came back out and was all like "John Daly, everybody!" Crazy.

One more thing, How do you feel about straight up sweet tea and bourbon?
Even though it's being called the Bourbon Meyer now, I think its a combo you should try if you haven't already.

I'd like to say I'm shocked that John Daly is a huge Hootie fan, but, honestly, I completely expected that. Just like when I went to the Masters a few years ago and drove by the Augusta Hooters and saw that John Daly was going to be signing autographs there.

As for the Bourbon Meyer, as a Tennessee fan I'd prefer not to sample it. Inevitably, I would get drunk after one sip, work like heck to stand back up, fall down again, and not wake up until the next morning when Brandon James was urinating on my face in a back alley.

Zach writes:

Clay,

I thought I would let you know that your website has been identified by the corporate internet filter where I work and is now blocked. This should up your notoriety and 'street cred' at least somewhat. Now, I just have to figure out something else to do while at work.

Also, I have been BGID for about 2 weeks now in preparation of the Alabama game. I will not be surprised if JPW clips off a portion of his Bama bangs at halftime and glues them to his face to resemble a 5 o'clock shadow.

Nice to know the corporate behemoths are already trying to keep a brother down. Try to go in through the back door (no homo) and use the mailbag as a destination as opposed to the front page.

At least the beardout is alive and well.

JD Terry writes:

Over the past several years, I have been trying to explain to many of my Auburn friends that God truly hates Auburn University. Even though I have always taken the time to ridicule my friends on the other side of the state of Alabama, I believe this one has been the hardest for them to swallow; and its extremely easy to explain and understand. It is simply this:

I, along with most people throughout the Southeast (and for the most part, the entire country) believe that the SEC is the best and strongest conference in the nation. Because of this, I really cannot fathom an SEC team going undefeated, winning the SEC Championship, and not making it to the BCS National Championship. However, this exact scenario happened to Auburn in 2004. Although I was born an Alabama fan and, as such, truly hate Auburn University,

I could not reason how or why this happened. And then it hit me:

GOD HATES AUBURN.

There is no other logical explanation that comes to mind – not counting USC or Oklahoma. For the past several years, Auburn fans have relished in the University of Alabama’s downward slide. Yet, what Auburn fans don’t realize is that the University of Alabama are the Jewish people of the college football world; God may punish us for our sins by sending us into the desert for a few years, but we are still His people. So don’t try to say – Auburn fans – that the Alabama Nation is just proud we got out of the desert; we always knew we would come out and return back to the promise land and that Auburn would always take its place as the “Cow College” of the State. Auburn fans, its destiny; don’t let the past few years let you forget that.

This makes more sense in light of the West Virginia game last night. Question though, if God truly hates Auburn, isn't giving them a quarterback named Kodi the ultimate slap in the face? Any quarterback whose named ended in -i- would be laughable but combine it with a girl's name and it's brutal. Can't you just see Kodi Burns sitting down to eat his lunch and he's constantly approached by snickering girls from Vestavia and they're all like, "Oh, my god, Kodi, my name's Kodi too." It's no wonder the guy sucks. Don't even get me started on the likelihood of a black athlete being named Kodi. It's almost beyond the pale of knowledge. Too bad it's not Kod'i.

Labels: Ja'larry byrd beaver pelt trader of the week

Posted by Clay Travis at 12:47 PM
Permalink Digg this Post Email this Post

1 Comments:

svanbeekvi said...: If it makes you feel any better, I decided to try the sweet tea and bourbon cocktail on my own before I realized that it was called a Bourbon Meyer. I had already dubbed it the S.E.C. or Southeastern Cocktail. As a Florida fan, I also toyed around with calling it a Tebow Tea, but ultimately decided that A. I didn't want to name an alcoholic beverage after a guy who doesn't drink and B. It sounds gay.; October 25, 2008 8:22 PM