15(ish) Minutes of Game

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication album. For my money, and that of many critics, the video for Sabotage from that record is the greatest video ever released.



If you've got 14 minutes and 30 seconds or so, watch this documentary about the years that led up to the record, which features an interview with the surviving Beasties. Really cool stuff about Yauch's awakening as a person and about how much fun the group had together. They set it straight, this Watergate.

Avalanche of TR Content

Inspired by the tiny dictator’s last comment, while we await TR’s reviews of the Topps baseball card sets of the 90’s here is some TR content to hold you over.  Post count!!

Viva Abe

Happy Memorial Day, America. Long live our Abe Lincoln.

BONUS ABE PICS 

Juxtaposition

When I was in my 20s, I spent hours - probably numbering in the hundreds - laughing at the same scenes played over and over again. Tractor beam, sucked me right in.

So it was more than a little interesting this week when I saw this guy:



Saying this:



It's a hell of time, friends. I think I'll just buy a six-pack.

For Shame

Shame, boatloads of shame/Day after day, more of the same -- The Avett Brothers

Loath though I am to besmirch the good name of one of my favorite bands, that couplet does a nice job of describing the state of our once-proud nation. I've tried to refrain, with varying degrees of success, from running into this space to loudly rant about each degradation of our norms, each gross abdication of duty, each rationalization of egregious conduct in the name of power. But news comes this week of a potential act by the President* so beyond the pale, so outrageous, so disgusting, so damning in its indictment of his addled faux-macho worldview that I can't sit silently by.

According to multiple outlets, Corporal Bone Spurs is seriously contemplating issuing pardons in time for Memorial Day to several American soldiers and contractors (read: mercenaries) accused or convicted of war crimes. These brave war heroes are alleged to have stabbed an unarmed and injured Iraqi to death, shot young girls and elderly Iraqis with a sniper rifle, opened fire on a crowd of unarmed Iraqis, killing 14, and desecrated the corpses of enemy combatants by urinating on them.

Our best and brightest, as you can see.

War is, as the hoary cliche goes, hell. I can't for a moment imagine the adrenaline-fueled fury that rises in a person in the midst of active combat. I'll never stare down an enemy who seeks to take my life, and never know the guilt, relief, and anger that comes with living through a firefight. U.S. servicemen and women are often heroic, and nearly always driven by a sense of duty to a cause greater than their own. I witnessed a version of this daily growing up in an Army household.

That sense of duty extends to the way we fight our wars. We're taught that Americans have to be better, to uphold our nation's values, to fight with honor lest we lose our command of the moral high ground. By pardoning crimes like these, even those committed in the midst of the fog of war, the message to the rest of the world is that our word is not to be trusted.

And the message to the overwhelming majority of American servicemen and women who fight our wars honorably amidst the most challenging of conditions is perhaps even worse. National security journalist Jonathan Ackerman, who tweets as @attackerman, posted this yesterday: "Those without honor esteem those without valor, and consider those who didn’t dishonor their uniform to be irresponsible. To excuse war criminals is to insult everyone who survived war — war, which, when not a matter of liberation, is a crime — with their humanity intact."

Excusing the illegal, immoral, and cowardly actions of the few in the name of some misguided tough-guy might-makes-right ethos is the apotheosis of our Commander-in-Chief's abjectly irresponsible approach to policy. He dishonors us every day. But in this instance, he dishonors some of the best among us.

#aroyalteamtalk

The English FA, BBC, and Prince William have joined forces to make visible an issue that plagues many, yet is still so hard to talk about. From this partnership, a video entitled, 'A Royal Team Talk: Tackling Mental Health', follows. Featuring several noteworthy professional players, including Peter Crouch, Thierry Henry, and Danny Rose, as well as England manager Gareth Southgate, the video juxtaposes the image of successful athletes at the top of their game with the pressures, anxiety, and mental issues that come with so many aspects of modern life. The piece also features four 'regular' blokes who struggle with anxiety and depression. This clip details the meeting of the two groups.

“As a man, it’s almost forbidden to cry.”

Five of the biggest names in football and the Duke of Cambridge open up about mental health

#ARoyalTeamTalk  #MakeExtraTime pic.twitter.com/f6QiQalakF

— BBC One (@BBCOne) May 19, 2019

Important work being done here by HRH and the FA. More sunlight on this issue, more disinfectant, and perhaps less toxicity. A man can only hope.

You Could Get With This or You Could Get With That

Approaching the point in the evening where I've had enough to drink to make impulse purchase decisions, and I'm calling upon the assembled League of Gheorghies to crowdsource my choice.

In this corner, the primary Ardillas Voladoras logo cap:

And in this corner, the alternate:

Make your case in the comments.

Gheorghe Explains the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary (in Song)

Sung to the tune of The Nails' 88 Lines About 44 Women, our tribute to the Democratic Party's clusterfuck of a Presidential primary, 44 Lines About 22 Candidates, Maybe 4 of Which Have a Snowball's Chance in Hell:

Beto was a hipster dad

Played punk rock and bounced around

Uncle Joe expects to win
Lays his hands upon your mom

Klobuchar is of the North
Winter's coming, she's below fourth

Jay Inslee, man, he loves the earth
Warren's EPA chief his berth

Mayor Pete's a boyish type
Way too smart for his own good

Gillibrand is smart and tough
Hard to break through all the noise

Bernie is a Socialist
Fucked up '16, back to wreak

Kamala prosecutes 'em
Woe to he who thinks her weak

This is Steve Bullock.
Or some dude from my office.

Cory Booker, he's a vegan
Beard is pretty, his chances not

Tulsi's carving her own spot
Shame it's Syrian, loves despots

Steve Bullock is...
Who the fuck is Steve Bullock?

John Delaney...man, really?

Wayne Messam is...once again, I don't even know who these people are. Wayne Messam? Is that even a real person? Why would you run for office if you're the mayor of Miramar, Florida? I guess we could ask Pete Buttigieg the same thing, now that I think about it. Fuck, the meter is all wrong on this line. But seriously, many of these vainglorious assholes serve the party and the nation so much better if they'd run for Senate and try to deny Mitch McConnell two more years of packing the courts with misogynist Trumpian fuckbonnets.

Hickenloopermentum!

Andrew Yang is interesting
Hates the robots, like Yoshimi

Tim Ryan is a typical white dude
Full of himself, not a clue

Swalwell, he is one to watch
Too moderate in this year of blue

Hickenlooper's fun to say
Buy his beer, but not his chances

Michael Bennet, generic white guy
Stick to the Senate, make them dance

Moulton is an arrogant prick
Nancy Pelosi handed him his...jock

Julian Castro, Obama's Hud Sec
Bucking for a better spot

Gravel is a likeable loon
Keep him in just for the fun

Warren always has a plan
Total package; she's the one

RIP, Tim Conway

Tim Conway, famed for his role on The Carol Burnett Show, passed away today at 84. I haven't seen that show in years, but I recall watching it as a kid, and laughing as much at my father nearly pissing himself as at the sketches.

Here's a famous one where Harvey Korman legendarily actually did piss himself at Conway's performance:



And here's Conway telling the story of that sketch to Conan O'Brien:

Hot Truth Filler

Amplify the truth. Shout down the voices of people who seek to profit from lies, episode one:

If You Can't Say It, You Can't Do It

It's been a big fucking week, my friends. In 2017, a groundbreaking study from Stanford University "...found a consistent positive relationship between profanity and honesty; profanity was associated with less lying and deception at the individual level, and with higher integrity at the society level".

Then, early last year, Emma Byrne published Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language, which extolled the virtues of colorful language, from enhancing workplace teamwork to increasing our pain tolerance.

Finally, this week, we moved more deeply into the golden era of the f-bomb.

First, in England, Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, at a loss for prosaic verbiage to describe his team's epic Champions League semifinal comeback, said this (the whole thing is great, but the money quote starts around 1:08):



Then, a day later, Golden State Warriors coach, after his team overcame the loss of Kevin Durant to beat Houston in Game 5 of their Western Conference semifinal series, channeled Klopp. Literally:



Both of those teams have mammoth games this weekend, and potentially through June. May their leaders bring their fucking 'A' games.

99% Week: Whimsy Up Your Ass

Earlier this week, Dave introduced you to 99% Invisible, the podcast hosted by the euphoniously-toned Roman Mars. As the G:TB staff knows, in accordance with our carefully curated editorial calendar, this post is the second installment in our new (and now ongoing) series of pod-reports on 99pi's offerings.

Episode 351, released on April 23, 2019, tells the story of Isamu Noguchi. Born in 1904 to an American mother and Japanese father, Noguchi found himself caught between two cultures as a young man. His blue eyes marked him as an outsider in Japan, and his skin tone and facial features the same in America. His lonely childhood would inspire his life's work. From the podcast, "He started to think of a concept for a giant public sculpture, and in his mind, it took the form of a massive pyramid. Try to imagine a cross between a Mayan temple and a mountain. It pushes out of the earth with a long slide sloping down with steps on two of its faces. Essentially, it’s like an asymmetrical Egyptian step-pyramid. Noguchi thought of it as a playground, and he called it Play Mountain."

After building a career as a sculptor of busts of prominent people, Noguchi sought ways to bring his ideas about play and form to broader audiences. In the early 1930s, he received an audience with famed New York parks commissioner Robert Moses. The latter envisioned a massive park-building program across the city, and Noguchi pitched Play Mountain, his whimsical, free-form monument to non-directive play. Moses favored the four S's - swings, slides, see-saws, and sandboxes, and summarily dismissed Noguchi's fanciful idea.

Noguchi went on to live a roller-coaster life, gaining fame as an artist and designer (the Noguchi coffee table is one of the most famous furniture designs of the 1950s), while also being interred briefly during World War II with other Japanese-Americans. But he never forgot about Play Mountain and his notions of the importance of non-directive play.

Ironically, while he never saw his vision executed in America, his growing fame in the art world led other designers to develop playgrounds that borrowed heavily from his ideas, even as increasing concerns for safety spurred new standards for playground equipment and influenced much of the bland sameness we see today in our parks.

It wasn't until 1988 that Noguchi got a chance to build the park of his dreams. Sapporo, Japan commissioned him to develop a 454-acre parcel of land to his whimsical specifications, called Moerenuma Park. Sadly, while he designed the project, he died in December of that year, and his collaborator Shoji Sadao oversaw its construction, which took 17 years. The finished product is "this huge green swath of land, tucked into a bend in the river. There are forests of his candy-like play equipment, mounds and pyramids and swooping paths, an enormous conical hill to climb, a huge fountain that cycles through an hour-long water show."



We'll give Roman Mars the final word on this Gheorghie artist:

"Isamu Noguchi was never able to take in the view from the peak of his creation. The sculpture he’d spent his whole life dreaming about., like a mountain teleported from the wild alien planet of his mind. The one place he ever felt he really belonged. Noguchi wanted us to see the world as if we were visiting for the first time. To move our bodies through space as if the simple facts of gravity and contour were brand new delights. To look around with wide eyes, to feel with outstretched fingers, and imagine infinite possibilities. In other words: to live like kids on a playground."

Audio Up Your Ass (Squirrel Edition)

Aloha Gheorghies! As yesterday's report card can attest, I haven't been writing much of late. Instead of churning out my award-winning sentences and opinions, I've been listening to podcasts and recording audio, but I recently stumbled upon some pressing squirrel related material which I just had to relate to y'all. But once I finish this post, I'll probably go back to the audio. I just don't have the attention span to sit still. This is actually getting worse as I get older (I thought it was supposed to fade). Perhaps audio is the right choice anyway. I'm almost fifty, and there's certainly a greater chance that I'll go deaf-- or at least suffer some serious hearing loss-- before I go blind (there should be odds on this). So I'd better enjoy the audio while I still can. 

And no doubt, it's a great time to enjoy audio. All the music is available. It's what my generation imagined when we were kids, spending our hard earned money on CDs (only to sell them back to the local record store weeks later). In addition to this vast array of streaming music, we're also living in the Golden Age of Podcasts.

Our audio cup runneth over.

And one of my favorite podcasters, Roman Mars-- he of the golden mellow baritone-- has recently informed me that amongst all this abundance, we are also living in the Golden Age of Squirrels.

Yes Rob, The Golden Age of You. What a time to be alive.

The new episode of 99% Invisible is cleverly titled "Uptown Squirrel," but a more apt description might be: 

"Everything You Wanted to Know About Squirrels But Were Afraid to Ask (or wouldn't even think of asking, because no one ever thinks about squirrels . . . though we do occasionally think about Squirrel."

Rob, I urge you to listen to this thing.

I learned so much about squirrels during this podcast. Mainly, I learned that though I have constant (and rather embattled) daily contact with squirrels (my dog Lola wants to eat all of them) I know very very little about these furry critters.

Squirrels are always underfoot, but despite their ubiquity, we don't even know the basics. For example, how many squirrels live in Central Park? 

To ascertain this, you need to take a squirrel census.  The squirrel census will eventually be plugged into a wildlife counting formula and reveal the coveted "squirrel abundance number." Roman Mars claims that the method of reaching the "squirrel abundance number" was created by "mid-century Danish-American squirrel biologist Van Fleeger." 

I googled the shit out of this guy and could find nothing on this person. Nothing related to squirrel biology, nothing related to the squirrel abundance number, nothing nothing nothing. I don't even think "Van Fleeger" is a name. While I generally trust Roman Mars . . . probably because of that trademark mellow baritone, I think the 99% Invisible interns may have fabricated this Van Fleeger. Roman Mars demanded some cutting edge squirrel research and they had to produce. Van Fleeger the Danish-American squirrel biologist? Sounds legit. Who's going to check up on that?

Regardless of the existence or nonexistence of this particular squirrel biologist, there's plenty of good, verifiable stuff in this episode.

Such as this shocker: once upon a time, squirrels were reclusive creatures. You could only find them deep in the forest. They avoided humans. In the 1800s, rich folks kept them as exotic pets. In 1856, a Manhattanite's squirrel got loose and climbed a tree and police had to disperse the crowd that assembled to gawk at the agile little critter. These days it would take a whole troop of monkeys to galvanize that kind of crowd. But in 1856, it only took a squirrel.

At first, squirrels had a hard time in the city. There weren't enough trees. But once we started preserving larger natural spaces within city bounds, and planting more trees, the squirrels could make it. They had to be introduced. This is mind-blowing. Cities were once squirrel-less. Philadelphia was the first city to add squirrels (in 1847). People enjoyed feeding them. Like pigeons, they were cute peaceable animals, and city-dwellers anthropomorphized them: they were regarded as wonderful animal citizens. Those were the day when it was perfectly acceptable to shoot a hawk or an eagle or a wolf or a coyote . . . because they were mean, vicious predators. Meanwhile, people were loving the squirrels and pigeons. Then crows and raccoons and possums moved in, and people revised their opinions on predators. They realized they were necessary. Now peregrine falcons and red-tailed hawks nest on skyscrapers and cull the exploding squirrel population. It's a much healthier and biologically diverse situation.

BUT the squirrels haven't given up all their power. They are still more dangerous than Russian hackers and wily terrorists in one regard: their attacks on our power grid. There's a web site devoted to this: CyberSquirrel1.

If you don't feel like listening to a podcast about squirrels, you could check out two newish tracks I put up on Soundcloud. Listen to the audio before you go deaf!

One of the great things about audio is you can't tell how ugly a space it was recorded in. For instance, I work in this lovely studio:

Greasetruck Studio

Right now I'm calling my music project Park the Bus (the same as my blog) but I'm looking for a new, cooler sound name. Something that evokes the future while embracing our hirsute analog animal past. I'm taking suggestions. Winner gets a prize.

The first of my newish songs is a combination of Willie Nelson and Cormac McCarthy's take on "the road."



The second song is a shorter and better remix of a song about simians that I've been monkeying around with forever.



Both songs are SFW and I appreciate the listens. I think soon enough our man in the field Whitney is going to post some audio as well. He needs to post a picture of his studio, as it looks far nicer than mine (but after we have our giant garage sale, I'm really going to clean my studio up. It's going to be beautiful . . . absolutely gorgeous. I've got a real eye for that sort of thing).

It's Report Card Time Again

Every 69 posts or so, the G:TB powers that be (doofus overlord and tiny dictator) are always pressing for the latest stats. They're been delivered, possessed, and stewed over.

While Teejus will hit us with a new ghooghles post soon, supposedly, here's your GTB Report Card for the first third of 2019:

Keep up the solid work, my friends.

Some of you thrive in Comments rather than posts.  Working our interns to see if we can get those stats. In the meantime, remember rob's mantra: "postcount over punctuation"

Until the next time...

Of Mics and Men

About six years ago I wrote what I consider to be one of my best posts here--a long rambling description of my old Subaru as an introduction to a meditation on the 20th anniversary of "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)." Simply put, you can never have too much Wu-Tang.

To that end, I encourage you to watch "Of Mics and Men," a four-part series about the Wu-Tang Clan that will start May 10 on Showtime. Here's the trailer.



I think it will be eye-opening. The Wu is just like us! Who can't relate to a story like this, for example.



Bong bong.

via GIPHY

Brothers Don't Shake . . . Brothers Fight

Tommy Boy had it wrong.  For once.

The War Between the States was known ignominiously as casting brother vs. brother in the field of battle.  It wasn't the only time such a stage was set. Fratres who share DNA and Greek affiliation alike don't always get along, and when they don't, it can be especially ugly.  

Especially in rock and roll.  A few notorious brother battles:

The Fogertys (John and Tom)

Creedence Clearwater Revival 

The Fogerty sons weren't so fortunate, as it turned out. Little brother John rose to prominence as the band's leader, and he both behaved despotically and also led them into one of the classic 60's/70's awful record deals. Tom couldn't stop John's reign, so he bolted, and it all blew up. Someday they would make amends... except Tom died 30 years ago, so someday never came.  John's solo act rolls on after four decades.

The Davies (Ray and Dave)

The Kinks

London scrappers Ray and Dave are well respected men with an illustrious career but have never, ever gotten along. They fought onstage and off, and they shitcanned The Kinks decades ago. When Dave had a stroke some years back, there was hope of a reconciliation, but better things between them have not materialized.  They each keep playing, just never together.

The Gallaghers (Noel and Liam)

Oasis

As chronicled a decade ago, these boys can be real douches.  Despite a rise to popularity, they spend their lives wallowing in look-back anger and vitriol for the world, especially each other.  Their bands are now Beady Eye and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. I'll let you guess whose is whose. I cannot vouch for either.

The Robinsons (Chris and Rich)

The Black Crowes

The early days of the Crowes were filled with drunken on-stage antics and stories of Chris being hard to handle.  They subsequently morphed into a great Southern rock band, but like the others on this list, there has been no remedy for the fraternal in-fighting. They now play in the Chris Robinson Brotherhood and Magpie Salute.  I've seen the former and heard good things about the latter. Maybe this is better for both of them.

There are other examples, but I draw your attention to one of the most inane.  I obviously can't comment on the behind-the-scenes drama that goes back a generation or two among siblings, but a band that used to have some street cred, then got popular, then cashed in and coasted but was at the very least a fun, lively, talented band to take in . . . well, they've imploded and now there are two separate bands that represent a hole far less great than the sum of its parts.

The Campbells (Ali and Robin)

UB40

This dispute bubbled over in 2008, with lead singer Ali leaving presumably for dollars-and-cents reasons. So now there is UB40 . . . and UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell, Astro and Mickey Virtue (a couple of other original members).  Each singing their "own songs," the old stuff.  You all know how I feel about fragmented bands touring under their original names.  This is doubly dumb.

Lawsuits abound, and there is no end in sight. Brothers have disowned each other. There's a documentary about the split. Can't we all just get along?




Seriously. One of the acts (the one without parenthetical clarification) now has a song called "What happened to UB40."  Have a listen if you dare.



Lyrics:

What Happened to UB40

Say what happened to UB40 now
Some off them think dem bigger than Bob Marley WHOA!
Who's who in a the party now
Gould's lurking in the corner now

Some of dem flimsy some of dem
shallow, want dem money in a Wheelbarrow
Dem mind is weak dem mind it Narrow, Little after dat them get para
Three Yoko Ono's so craving, dem want new house new car and tings
Spangles and bangles and Diamond rings,
you can hear them coming dem a J'lingaling

Say what happened to UB40 now
Some off them think dem bigger than Bob Marley WHOA!
Who's who in a the party now
Gould's lurking in the corner now

One Man try fe go Solo, like the explorer Marco Polo
The attendance weak de attendance low
Him have fe stop cause him woulda bruk fe sure...
Your best friend could be your worst
enemy, him a backbiter tun spy tun thief
Him pride broke down say him a creep creep
Oh gosh me bredrin you done know we have fe weep...

Say what happened to UB40 now
Some off them think dem bigger than Bob Marley WHOA!
Who's who in a the party now
Gould's lurking in the corner now

That's . . . something. To all you who said Bob Marley and Yoko Ono would never be name dropped in the same song . . . there you go.

Look. I saw UB40 in 1988 at the Boathouse.  Tip. Top.  They were damn good musicians playing great reggae harmonies.  The decade or two that followed for UB40 featured an over-reliance on watered-down covers of old standards, but their more politically-minded material of the early 80's was good reggae. These guys should get it together -- literally -- and channel their angst into the more spitfire sound of their youth.

Anyway, do NOT go see either version of them until that happens, but in the meantime, be kind to your brothers (and sisters), and check out UB40 below, when they weren't a soft reggae-lite factory of dreck. My preferred tunes of theirs, in order...