A Shtetl Too Far

The NBA Western Conference Finals is a gem, a matchup between the defending champ and the sport’s best team the past two seasons versus a young, promising group surrounding a singular talent. The Oklahoma City Thunder are a deep and versatile and tenacious bunch led by two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and positioned for several years of excellence thanks to canny player acquisition and a well-run organization. The San Antonio Spurs leaped into the league’s upper tier this season behind the continued rise of Victor Wembenyama, an alien placed here to demonstrate human limitations (personally, I’m willing to give our new galactic overlords a chance at Earth stewardship, though I understand anyone’s desire to ride out the string under the current species – devil you know versus devil you don’t, and all that). 

Wembenyama’s length and athletic gifts make him appear elastic at times. He’s capable of turning a basketball court into a kind of funhouse mirror, the way he distorts and occupies space and forces opponents to adjust like no one else. That he is far from a finished product and still developing is either thrilling or terrifying, depending on your vantage. 

Speaking of distortion, in the runup to this matchup, the Oklahoma City newspaper, the Oklahoman, ran a column the day the series opened that rests somewhere between provocative and WTF?!? The headline provides a fitting, if jarring, launch: “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated.” The premise is that success can breed outsized contempt by opponents and critics, particularly when the successful entity – be it an athletic team or a country – is outside the mainstream or a glamour setting. “As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew, the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is,” the author wrote. “Oklahoma City remains one of the NBA’s smallest markets. We lack the glamour of Los Angeles, the nightlife and beaches of Miami, Florida, or the finance and media power of New York City. Yet we built something remarkable anyway. Rather than buying relevance, we created it. Rather than following others, we reimagined our own path to success by relying on the resources and skills we had with discipline and our own brand of resilience. Israel’s story shares many of those attributes — a young, microscopic nation limited in natural resources, surrounded by hostility, perpetually under scrutiny, and constantly forced to justify its actions and existence. Israel nonetheless transformed itself into a global powerhouse of innovation, technology, defense, medicine and agriculture. Like the Thunder and even Oklahoma City, it has risen out of the ashes of a traumatic past despite all odds.” 

People love underdog stories, said the writer, but when underdogs consistently triumph that appreciation "mutates into skepticism and distrust. ... The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system. They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives." Hoo buddy, much to unpack. 

Nowhere in the column does the writer mention that the Thunder’s “traumatic past” included OKC businessman Clay Bennett shortly after purchasing the franchise moving it from Seattle to Oklahoma City after failing to extort $500 million from the state of Washington for a new arena complex. Nor does he mention that just a decade ago the Thunder had a nucleus of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and 6-11 Serge Ibaka and was oh-so-close to a title. Nor does he mention that plucky underdog Israel and its admittedly kick-ass military have been bankrolled and backstopped by the U.S., or that systematically squeezing the Palestinian people and targeting opponents across borders might prompt some justified scrutiny and criticism. 

To be fair, the Oklahoman piece wasn’t by a staff writer, but a guest column by an Oklahoma native businessman who transplanted to Chicago. You might think that a piece submitted by an outside source would come under greater examination than from a staff writer. One frequent casualty of the corporate strip-mining of newspapers, however, is editorial oversight. Fewer people to raise red flags or put the brakes on flawed writing. The Oklahoman did pull the piece later that day amid questions and backlash. Still, never should have run in the first place. Equating a basketball franchise's place in the sporting zeitgeist to a nation whose history and actions significantly impact the geopolitical sphere is a reach that even Wembenyama can’t match.

Certain Kinds of Trash

I treat Spotify like the radio--I set it to a vibe I'm feeling and let it spin the tunes.  A few days ago it spun up "Certain Kinds of Trash" by Chain and the Gang, a song I'd never heard from a band I'd never heard, and when I saw it pop up on the nav screen I assumed they would use the word "trash" in a New York Dolls sort of way.

But no!  They use it in a literal Mad Men sort of way.

In something like a spoken word approach, they reminisce about all the garbage you don't see anymore like cigarette holders, magnetic tape stuck in a tree, typewriter ribbons and so on.

I became wistful when, at the very end, the second to last kind of trash they enumerate is porno mags, because I remember in fifth grade when my friend Chris found an exceedingly waterlogged issue of Hustler in the gutter during a rain storm, and he brought it home and nurtured it like a wounded bird until it dried out, at which point it became the size of a phone book and the ink flaked off the pages in some spots but it was still his pride and joy, his dirty magazine that he rescued from becoming trash.  Sure, our friend Jesse's father had a huge stack of pristine noodie books in the basement, 

but this battered copy of Hustler was like manna from heaven for Chris.

I've found some pretty gnarly garbage in my day and I don't miss the filthy sidewalks of the 70's and 80's, littered with dogshit, gum, broken glass and all the other flotsam and jetsam one encountered on urban walkways.  Unfortunately I don't recall finding anything as personally meaningful as Chris's Hustler, but maybe you do.  Join me in the comments--what trash do you miss and what's the most important trash you rescued?

Gheorghasbord, Young and Dumb

We live in crazy-ass times. Let's explore the most recent examples of absolute batshit insanity our increasingly unbalanced species has been up to, young dipshit male edition.

Let's start with a real headline from a Vice.com article posted on May 5: "Inside Ballmaxxing, the Niche Practice of Inflating Your Balls to Cantaloupe Size".

Where to start, my friends. 

If you're not familiar with the 'maxxing' phenomenon, first let me congratulate you on escaping that knowledge. You may wish to stop reading now.

It started with looksmaxxing, and we'll let Wikipedia explain that to us, at least from an academic perspective:

Looksmaxxing is an online self-improvement practice focused on the process of maximizing one's physical attractiveness. The term is a neologism which was coined on incel message boards in the 2010s. Previously, the phrase had limited usage on obscure internet forums, but was popularized on TikTok by primarily male content creators in the early 2020s. The term has commonly been associated with the black pill ideology, which espouses that female sexual selection is primarily based on external physical qualities such as height and attractiveness, while qualities such as kindness and personality are ignored or even cause rejection. Looksmaxxing is very broad in the methods used to improve appearance; they can range from benign practices such as skincare routines and gym use, to more extreme interventions, such as invasive cosmetic surgery and usage of anabolic steroids.

Another notorious looksmaxxing practice is literally hitting oneself in the jaw with a hammer in an attempt to create chiseled cheekbones. When I was a young(er) man, we did some dumb peacock shit to try (and mostly fail) to get women to notice us, but I feel like we've failed this generation.

Which leads us to ballmaxxing, wherein one injects saline solution into one's testicles in an effort to increase their size, for...reasons. In a scientific survey I conducted in my home last night, 100% of women questioned said, "Why the fuck would you do that? Does any woman care about what your balls look like?"

Lifetime ballmaxxer Marcus is not deterred by the science. As noted in the Vice.com piece, he "got his scrotum stuck in a toilet once after a two-liter session. The skin tore. He’s still healing. His next move is adding 30 cubic centimeters of Surgilube to the left side and 20 to the right. “That should be ‘perfect,’” he says."

Less than perfect, the story of another young, dumb, lost man. Dalton Eatherly is a 28 year-old Tennessee native. He makes viral-hopeful videos under the name Chud the Builder. Clever, perhaps not so much. The white Eatherly's schtick is nearly as clever as his nom de dipshit. He seeks out confrontations with black people, using racial slurs and other offensive language to provoke them into video-worthy "content".

On Thursday, the finding out met the fucking around. Eatherly was booked on charges of attempted murder, employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon after he shot a man outside the Montgomery County, TN courthouse. He got into a fight that led to him shooting multiple rounds, hitting his opponent while also shooting himself in the leg. 

May the Lord have mercy on our collective souls.

Must Be On The North Facade

We are nothing if not celebrators of unfinished murals. Case in point, this amazing work in progress in Terre Haute, Indiana I clocked on one of my cross-country trips with my kidlet:

We dive back into muralology today with news from the heartland. Why embellish when the headline itself is perfect: "Downtown Milwaukee is getting a 100-foot-tall Bob Uecker mural".

Local artist Mauricio Ramirez (and seriously, check out his work - he's terrific) is adding the Uecker mural to a portfolio that includes a sweet 55' tall Giannis Antetokoumpo in downtown.

If you look closely, you can see that the Uecker mural is, in fact, in the front row. Of the parking lot.

Football Is Life

When we first met Cristo Fernández, he came bounding from the Richmond AFC locker room like a golden retriever in the guise of Dani Rojas, a new signing from Mexico for Ted Lasso's side:

As is the case in many (most?) sports movies, the actors portraying players in Ted Lasso generally have middling footballing skill. Couple of them seem to be able to play a little bit - Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt) is useful, as is Toheeb Jimoh (Sam Obisanya). Moe Hashim (Moe Bumbercatch) played low-level professional ball in England. 

Cristo Fernández, though, he's a real-live footballer. Before taking up acting, the Guadalajara native played for several years in the second and third divisions of Mexican soccer. And as of yesterday, he's once again drawing a paycheck to play the beautiful game.

Fernández signed a contract with El Paso Locomotive of the USL Championship, the second division of U.S. soccer. The deal came after the striker completed a two-month trial with Locomotive, who currently sit in fourth place in the Western Conference.

In the clip below, he picks up a couple of goals (and a deserved yellow card) in a friendly with Chicago Fire II. Dude knows what he's doing.

Locomotive play my home side, Loudoun United, in August. Alas, the match is down in the West Texas town of El Paso, so I don't think I'll see it in person. But rest assured we'll be following this story to keep you in the know. 

Anti-Bullshit Missile

We missed this on Friday, but it's big to gentlemen of a certain age. Social Distortion released their first studio album in 15 years, entitled "Born to Kill". And the boys sound pretty, pretty good.

Make It Run on Bullshit

Among the seemingly endless and relentless litany of fuckery our bodily politic is infected with in the current time, one of the most egregious is the constant and blatant lying emanating from Administration officials. One case (of dozens, just this week) in point comes to us from Secretary of Transportation and perpetual reality show performer Sean Duffy.

While being interviewed by FOX News, Duffy claimed that "we're in a good place" with respect to fuel prices, and that Americans should take road trips this summer.

With gas at $4.55 a gallon, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says "we're in a good place" for fuel prices, and urges Americans to drive this summer, saying "we encourage all Americans to take a road trip"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 7, 2026 at 10:49 AM

For the record, USAA reports that the current average price per gallon for regular unleaded is $4.558. A year ago, the average was $3.154. That's an increase of 44.5%. If you have a 20-gallon gas tank, you're paying $28.08 more per trip to the gas station. I paid $65 to fill up the 13-gallon tank in my goddamn MINI last week.

Duffy's obvious nonsense reminded me of a song by one of William & Mary's own. Scott Miller and the Commonwealth released "8 Miles a Gallon" in 2006 as part of the terrific "Citation" album. Among the lyrics: Invent a big engine/Make it run on bullshit/Put it on the highway/Buddy, it'll never quit.

There's certainly no shortage of that bullshit flowing freely in the Nation's Capital these days.