The New Style

Ignacia Fernandez is competing in the Miss World Chile pageant in her home country. Last week, she performed in the talent portion of the show. As you might expect, she's gorgeous. As you may not expect, she's the frontwoman of Decessus, a death metal band. So here's what television audiences across Chile saw on November 2:

Here she is with her bandmates. This is 'Dark Flames', from their newest album.

Books, covers, etc. Take this energy into your weekend, my friends.

Happy 22nd G:TBday

Greetings, gheorghies, on this fine and fair Friday that also happens to be G:TBday.  Remember, G:TBday?

It's Gheorghe: The Blog's Birthday!

This here blog turns 22 today. I remember my 22nd birthday, I was (still) in college (still) and was (still) drinking at the Greenleafe in Williamsburg. I remember thinking that I got as inebriated or more so than I even did on my 21st. Way to aim high.

22 years ago the country was mired in a lot of political and military doings that divided the country -- specifically, the war in Iraq. What a mess that was.

Oh, were it all that quaint and simple these days. It's like when Kyle Reese went back to the mid-80's to find and protect John Connor's mom -- yeah, L.A. was a dangerous and weird place then, but compared to the morass of the future, hallelujah.

Side Note: what about a mash-up where Reese and the Terminator overshoot the mid-80's and go to 1955 and encounter George McFly and Lorraine and Biff and Doc Brown? Could be amusing.

Aaaaaand I just now googled that. And of course it already exists. In more than one iteration! The robots are already taking over!

G:TB brains would've done that funnier, methinks.

Anywho... it's a silly and obvious understatement to say that the world is a different place than it was on November 7, 2003. I mean, 22 years prior to that day was November 7, 1981. When "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates topped the charts and Raiders of the Lost Ark was still big at the box office. And the World Series had recently been won by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Oh, wait...

Gheorghe: The Blog nostalgists often polish off Rob's memorable first post, the GTB mission statement and reissue it -- hell we did that when we first coined G:TBday in 2018.

But what about subsequent posts? The very second post is one worth looking at 22 years later. 

Take a peek:

I'd say it holds up pretty well. Kudos, tiny dictator. And nice mention of the Wiggles. (The Wiggles documentary is worthy, if sweet and void of gripping controversy.) 

Happy Double-Deuce, gheorghies! 

Turn the Volume Up

I harbor no illusions about how shitty the next year is gonna be with a declining and addled POTUS and his evil henchmen (are there any of the kind of henchmen) one mid-term electoral defeat away from an avalanche of oversight. But today we mark in celebration.

Zohran Mamdani has freedom that nearly every high-profile pol doesn't: he has no Presidential aspirations because he's ineligible to win the office. So he doesn't have to pander or triangulate. One of the remarkable aspects of his mayoral campaign in New York is the consistency of his messaging - perhaps matched only by his seemingly genuine affection for all the people of his city.

Here's the speech he gave after he won last night. You really should make time to watch it.

And for good measure, here's the righteous Billy Bragg sharing Woody Guthrie's evergreen message.

Prime's Time

My daughter texted me in the early hours of the morning, saying, "feels like freshman year". She was referring to yet another drubbing suffered by Colorado's football team, who fell at home to Arizona by a 52-17 score that wasn't even that close. The Buffs have been outscored 105-24 over the past two weeks, and fell to 3-6 on the year.

Travis Hunter ain't walking through that door. So what happens next for a program that's great at hype and proving to be less so on the field.

It's no secret that head coach Deion Sanders has dealt with a number of health issues over the past several years. He had two toes amputated in 2021 due to issues related to blood clots while he was the head man at Jackson State. Then, at the start of this season, cancer led to surgery to remove and reconstruct his bladder. The 58 year-old still gets around reasonably well, and his carriage reminds one of a man once one the world's most athletic humans, but those kinds of traumatic interventions must take a toll.

Sanders' kids are no longer in Boulder, except for his namesake who runs the Buffs' social media program (and runs it well). That same kid, Deion Sanders Jr. echoed online fan sentiment last night, reposting a fan's message on X that said "absolutely embarrassing" and adding a one-word statement of his own: "very".

Coach Prime has unquestionably been a boon for Colorado's athletic department, the university's public image, and even the local economy. But after this season, the Buffs will have one winning year in three to show for all the buzz. Sanders is a brilliant marketer and brand-builder. He's brought some talented athletes to campus, and a coterie of big-name assistant coaches. As the evidence continues to mount, however, it's becoming clear that he's a mediocre in-game coach, and that's probably being kind - the Buffs routinely mangle clock management, rarely make impactful adjustments, and don't ever come from behind to win games.

So we're left with a proud man in physical decline who has admitted he doesn't like to recruit and increasingly looks like he's not up to the gameday demands of big-time football, but is clearly an asset that supports the university's broader aims. A modest proposal, then.

Make Coach Prime CEO Prime.

Colorado AD Rick George should create a new role for his rainmaker, letting him lead the program as chief executive while hiring a coach to manage the details in practice and during games. This would reduce Prime's physical workload, allow him to focus on the things he's best at, and give the Buffs a better chance to compete in the Big 12. 

The job would appeal to a certain type of young coach who wants someone else to deal with the public-facing responsibilities of the job so he can focus on football. Boise State's 37 year-old Spencer Danielson is 21-6 as a head coach, and says he's happy out of the limelight. He fits the profile, though.

George has shown a willingness to take big swings and call plays not in the standard AD manual. He's tied himself at the waist with Sanders, and he's got to see that the current situation is growing untenable. Plenty of people have disregarded G:TB's advice (looking at you, Democratic Party) to their detriment. Rick George would do well to heed it.

Beautiful Autumn Saturday Filler

NPR calls the new project from Waxhatchee's Katie Crutchfield with her sister Allison "far better than your standard side project". Recording as Snocaps, the sisters released an eponymous new record yesterday. It's a vibe. Hat tip to the Squeak for hipping us to it. Turn it up loud as you roll out into the sun-dappled autumn leafscape to enjoy a sublime East Coast Saturday.

Gheorghasbord: Yin

Got a selection of odds and ends for you over the next few days. Gonna do a bit of yin-yanging, if you will. Even if you won't. Not stopping me. 

Today, we'll start with the bleak, the dark, the cowardly buffoonery that's helping to enable it.

Sarah Kendzior is a journalist, author, and researcher. She's studied and written extensively on the rise of Donald Trump and his coterie of ghouls - and the cultural conditions that enabled it. She writes a newsletter on Substack, and posted a beautifully stark piece yesterday, which included the following thought: 

A government shutdown was always the goal. The premature ending, the stripping for parts, the theft without pretense of duty. The open abandonment of the public good. The apathy at abandonment and the avarice in apathy. The slaying of seasons, the torture of time, the collapse of chronology: when promises turn to premises and premises to pixelated dust. There is honor in real dust: this is not that.

When you are ruled by a technocratic death cult, the concept of leverage changes. A general strike does not pose the same threat to the powerful when their goal is to destroy the national economy. A protest does not have the same impact when officials are devoid of shame. A spectacle does not hold the same power when AI lies are generated with a whisper to a soul-stripping robot. A vote is an illusion when elections lack integrity. Calling your representative is a grim farce when your representative serves transnational oligarchy — and sells it American sovereignty.

We'll follow up that softly-whispered damnation with a more forceful condemnation from Ta-Nehisi Coates. Speaking at an event in Minneapolis, Coates offered this measured and typically cutting critique of the institutions and individuals whose cowardice has defined this era:

@mikosataylorcoaching Just saw Ta-Nehisi Coates live in Minnesota and y’all… his words were a balm to my soul. No fluff. No filter. Just truth. 🖤 “You don’t have to fix it all—you just have to be human where you stand.” That part. 🎤 Thank you @StKates + The O’Shaughnessy for this space. 📚 Support Black authors. Listen when they speak. Share their work. #TaNehisiCoates #msp @St. Catherine University #SupportBlackAuthors #BookTok #BlackWritersMatte ♬ original sound - Mikosa Taylor | Business Coach

I might've chosen any one a dozen other fucking things to close with, but here's one that gives us tragedy and comedy in equal measure. Last week at a protest in Oakland, an ICE agent appears to have shot a tear gas canister into the face of local minister Jorge Batista, the aftermath of which you can see below (there's video, but it's not a fun watch).

A different angle of the confrontation reminds us that ICE and its agents aren't some unbeatable monolith. Rather, they're largely undertrained, scared, and overmatched. See, as an example, what certainly appears to be the urine stain on the shooter's pants, right where it would be if one were to piss oneself in fear.

We're gonna beat these losers. Because there are more of us than there are them, and because the cause of righteousness will bring more and more people to it as time goes on. In the meantime, keep calling out their cowardice, disgraceful un-Americanism, avarice, and general goddamn weirdness.

Wrenball Preview

Year One of the Brian Earl Experiment at William and Mary showed promise, as the Tribe debuted a new coach, an entertaining, up-tempo style of play and a return to the top half of conference standings. 

Following a successful run at Cornell, Earl convinced a handful of key contributors on a roster that had scuffled along under previous coach Dane Fischer to stick around and to give him and his system a chance. The holdovers and a wave of transfers produced the program’s first winning record since 2020 and the Before Times, pre-Covid, when Tribe all-timer Nathan Knight roamed the landscape. William and Mary finished 17-15 overall and a spunky 11-7, good for fourth place, in the distended patchwork that is the Coastal Athletic Association. 

The Tribe’s calling card was pace and perimeter shooting. More than half of their shots were 3-point attempts. They were third in the nation in 3-point attempt rate (.517). They were fifth nationally in 3-point field goal shots per game and tied for 15th in 3-pointers made per game. Seven players attempted at least 80 shots from behind the arc. They were also 45th in “pace” – the number of possessions per 40 minutes – and second in the CAA in scoring (77.7 ppg) (Brief aside: I’m well aware that “Tribe” is a singular nickname and therefore an “it” and not a “they;” I adhered to that inconvenient propriety for 30 years in my previous life and I’m thankful that management here at the digital tree fort is more grammatically lenient). 

Encores and continuity are tricky in the new era of NIL and rampant player transfers, components that prematurely drove away championship coaches Jay Wright at Villanova and Tony Bennett at Virginia. By nature, transfers are upperclassmen and sometimes graduate students with one or two years of eligibility remaining. Coaches often aren’t simply filling a few roster spots with a transfer or a couple of freshmen recruits, but bringing in a vanload of fresh faces who see opportunity and are happy to wear the school laundry for a season or two. 

Such is the case in Williamsburg. The Tribe cycled out eight players from last season’s team, including five of the top seven scorers. They lost 80 percent of their scoring and almost 70 percent of their rebounding. Earl brought in eight new players – seven transfers and a freshman, nearly all of whom are guards and wings with perimeter chops and decent shooting eyes. Returning leaders are a trio of seniors, 6-4 Kyle Pulliam (9.9 ppg, .313 pct from 3-point range), 6-5 Chase Lowe (8.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg) and 6-2 Kyle Frazier (4.7 ppg, 33 pct 3-point shooter). Newcomers who figure to contribute include 6-7 junior wing Tunde Vahlberg Fasasi from LaSalle (5.9 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 34.8 pct 3-pt shooter), 6-6 graduate student Jo’El Emanuel from Fairleigh Dickinson (11 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 36 pct from 3), 6-6 graduate student Cade Haskins from Dartmouth (9.6 ppg, 3.5 rpg), 6-4 junior Reese Miller from Blinn CC (41.6 pct 3-point shooter) and 6-0 graduate student Jhei-R Jones from D2 Winona State (10.9 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 3.1 apg). 

Two additions who may have outsized importance are junior transfer Kilian Brockhoff, a 6-9, 235-pound German making his third stop after seasons at UC Santa Barbara and Saint Louis, and Kaleb Spencer, a 6-8, 225-pound freshman from, believe it or not, here on the sandbar and who did a year’s prep work at highly regarded Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. 

For all of Earl’s reliance on a quick pace and perimeter shooting, his system requires a solid post presence for offensive balance and rim protection. It’s not a coincidence that the Tribe limped home last season, losing its last four and six of its last nine, after a season-ending injury to productive 6-8 forward Noah Collier. Without a consistent backup, opponents took advantage at both ends, extending their defense to challenge W&M shooters and working inside on offense. 

Earl’s frequent all-court pressure is designed more to goose pace than to turn over opponents and generate easy offense; the Tribe committed almost as many turnovers as they forced last season, and though they scored a lot, they also allowed a lot (76.4 ppg) and their field goal defense was in the bottom half of the conference. Makes for interesting viewing. 

The Tribe opens at home Nov. 3 vs. Georgian Court University, which I believe houses the athletic department for Downton Abbey, and has non-conference dates against state rivals Richmond, Old Dominion, Radford and Norfolk State. There’s a trip to Queens, N.Y., to face Rick Pitino and St. John’s, as well as road games at George Washington (G:TB Northern Va. chapter alert!), Duquesne and Bowling Green, and a date versus Texas El Paso at a Jacksonville, Fla., tournament. 

William and Mary was picked fourth in the CAA behind Towson, defending tournament champ UNC Wilmington and College of Charleston. Earl set a worthy standard in his first season, but again he must identify a cohesive rotation from among a slew of newcomers and returnees eager to make a significant impact. If the “bigs” develop, the Tribe has a chance to build on last year and not simply hoist and hope.