Corona Files: Unintended Consequences

State and local governments face massive budget shortfalls related to the multi-varied impacts of the shutdown of economies across the country. California has estimated a $54b hole in its budget related to COVID-19. Maryland says it'll be down $2.8b. In all Financial Times estimates that states may see as much as a $500b shortfall.

This will have massive consequences for the places we live, from reductions in services to increased taxes, to larger class sizes. There are, however, at least two silver linings, if you're a certain kind of degenerate.

States that need money can't tax their way out of the hole, at least not entirely. My friends, I have two words to share with you this fine day: Legalize It.

States were already moving to make sports betting and other forms of gambling more legal in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2018 backing of New Jersey's position in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association, which effectively struck down the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act and allowed states to choose to legalize gambling on sports. Eighteen states have already legalized sports gambling, and every state other than Wisconsin and Idaho has advanced legislation.

At the same time, 11 states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized marijuana.

We'll keep our analysis short and sweet, because we're a little bit tipsy. Legally. The economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic will erode political resistance to legalized gambling and weed, slowly, then all at once. States won't have a choice.

I look forward to toking with y'all while we place bets at OBFT XVIII. Whole. New. Ballgame.

Corona Files: Strange Bedfellows

We've been way out in front of the slow-motion crumbling of the edifice of collegiate athletics since at least last Thursday. Today, we go down a few levels, plumbing the depths of both the NCAA ladder and our readership's patience. Our OBX correspondent will try below to convince you that the Christopher Newport Captains will soon participate in the same league as the University of California Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. I've also asked him to feel free to send my some of that good, good Corolla kush. For medicinal purposes, obviously - still working my way back from these herniated discs.

I’ll try to keep this brief, since it involves small college athletics in my little corner of the world, and you are a diverse and widespread group that likely doesn’t give a blue fig about small college athletics or the school in question. On its face, however, this item pins the bizarre-o-meter.

Christopher Newport University, located in Newport News, Va., successfully competes in Division III athletics as a member of the Capital Athletic Conference. The CAC is a small, regional collection of schools – until Tuesday. The league announced that it will add six schools for the coming year: two in California, one each in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Massachusetts.

At a time when colleges are shuttering programs and whacking expenses amid a pandemic, a Division III conference that stretches from Virginia and Maryland to the upper Midwest to California appears batshit crazy.

As usual, there’s more to it. The move is an administrative necessity to preserve NCAA guidelines for  members to earn conference championships and NCAA championship bids. The CAC has been shedding schools for the past couple of years, and will do so again after 2021. If membership falls below a certain number of schools, conferences lose automatic NCAA bids for their champions. Earning NCAA berths becomes far more difficult as an independent or at-large entry in Division III, which has more than 440 colleges nationally and whose tournament fields typically are smaller than in Division I.

Now, logically you still might wonder why Christopher Newport couldn’t simply align with more geographically compatible mates in Virginia, the Land of 1,000 Tuitions. The problem is that nearly all of the Division III schools in Virginia are small and private. Indeed, 80 percent of the nation’s Division III schools are private. Many regional leagues view CNU, with its public status, enrollment of almost 5,000 students, and D3 upper-tier athletic facilities as philosophically incompatible with their schools. They want no part of admitting a school whose standards and emphasis they think, accurately or not, do not match their own and would make them a perennial contender in darn near every sport.

So Christopher Newport had to get creative. There will be no traditional conference regular season schedules, for obvious reasons – distance and cost. CNU will likely play nearby conference schools Mary Washington and Salisbury (Md.) multiple times during the season. There will be limited conference tournaments in most sports, at pre-determined sites. Absent traditional round-robin scheduling, tournament seeding often will be done by computer. Scheduling will be a challenge, because CNU will have to wangle more non-conference opponents who are in the midst of their conference seasons.

It ain’t perfect, but it preserves the athletic department’s competitive aims. And on the plus side, CNU is now in a league with UC Santa Cruz. Can’t be all bad with the Banana Slugs.

Filler for the Times

New Isbell record, predictably excellent. This song captures a whole lot about the time we live in and how we might respond.



Two for the price of one today... wait, it's three for one! The clip below has a couple of my favorite songs turned into one beauty of a two-fer from one of my favorite bands I've seen live.

Corona Files: Cleaning Out the Blogarage

The nesting instinct is strong in me as we head towards the end of the third month of pandemic-related self-isolation. I've cleaned out my garage, hung some artwork, steam-cleaned carpets, fired up the grill on multiple occasions, edged the lawn, contracted for landscaping, and bought multiple kitchen gadgets over the interwebz. Today, I turn my attention to this little website.

As a group, we have 232 posts in various states of draft. 156 of those are mine. I have told you before, on many occasions, that I am pretty good at generating ideas and pretty damn lousy at following through on them. I've never really been confronted by such stark evidence of my lack of execution. In 2020 alone, I've started and failed to finish 11 different posts, more than two a month.

The oldest post in draft form is one started by TR entitled, 'Ranking Every Summer Job I Ever Had'. I'd read that one, which was started on June 22, 2011. A few months later, I started one with the headline, 'Towards a Social Psychology of Flatulence'. Apparently it was based on an article in The Atlantic by Andrew Sullivan.

In October 2012, I started a post called 'Things rob Leaves in Drafts', which I assume was meant to look at stuff I started and never finished. Pretty meta, that. Later that same year, Clarence (who I believe is Igor, but possibly Whitney) started but never published the 12th Day of Gheorghemas. Very G:TB, indeed.

Cracker-ass Cracker

Zman has a draft from March 2013 about what car Zman would drive. I think the world needs that one. There's one from the Teej three months later entitled 'Lindsey Graham Cracker Crunch'. Need that one, too. The Doofus Overlord doesn't get mad very often, but that one's got potential.

Marls started something called 'Poop Into a Wormhole' in January 2014. In February 2015, Teej began a post entitled 'Siri, remind me on July 31st to plan for the Palestra', which I believe was a reference to a plan we started to go see a college basketball game or two at that venue in Philly. Spoiler alert: we have not yet done that.

Dave has a handful of entries, one of which in August 2015 was called 'Weird Spooky Scary Awful Shit'. Knowing what kind of stuff lurks in the corners of Dave's brain, this could be just about anything.

Zman has multiple drafts in 2015-16 replete with copious tags, which means he probably got pretty far down the road before running out of gas. That's a shame.

Speaking of running out of gas, I'm getting tired of digging through all the years, so I'm gonna fast-forward a little bit. Most of my stuff is either political or centered around an article I found interesting. I've started no fewer than three posts that attempt to explains our current President. I have no more the stomach or that than he does for the basic duties of his job.

In 2020, I started two separate attempts to write a Scooby Doo-style mystery that featured Samantha Huge as the villain and saw Tony Shaver riding to Dane Fischer's rescue. It's a great idea. Hope it gets finished. Also started a drunken post about how much I love my dog. That'll be an amusing one to see. TR has a bunch in the recent past. He's on vacation now. Nothing but time to blog.

Just like all the rest of us.

TR Negron, Crab Legs and Risk

After letting my facial hair go unchecked for almost three months, I decided enough was enough. I was settled in at Hilton Head and didn't want to get funky tan lines from my Grizzly Adams beard.

So it was time to trim. And as any beard grower knows, half the fun of having a beard is trimming it into something ridiculous for a day or so. It is amusing to the whole family. Except the wife. I enjoy every beard trim experience. I always hope that I'll trim down to a mustache and miraculously look like Tom Selleck or Billy Crudup's Russell Hammond from Almost Famous. But I never do. I don't have a classic Kennedy jawline. When I grow a stache, it looks creepy.

When I was finishing up my trimming, I decided to trim down one last time to a Latino-style thin mustache. When I was done, I realized who I looked like. It was not Selleck. Or Russell Hammond. It was Taylor Negron. From Easy Money. When he played Julio. Who was trying to win back Jennifer Jason Leigh. That, my friends, is not an exciting fact to accept.

In non-stache news, there are few/no virus concern here in South Carolina. They have had only 400 deaths, so they are anxious to open their economy back up. They have restaurants operating at 50% capacity, and almost all retail shops are back open. Most folks do not wear masks in public, but employees (and my family and I) do. My summary advice to cooped-up families in the DC/NYC/Boston area is this: get an Outer Banks/Hilton Head house reserved ASAP and get yourself down in the south where you can let your kids finish the school year with remote learning while enjoying the sun and surf. 

My family got aggressive (in the pandemic sense) a couple nights ago. We ate indoors at a restaurant. It was a huge indoor room that was ~20% full. We couldn't keep all servers 10 feet away at all times, but we felt otherwise safe, due to washing our hands and distancing ourselves from other diners. Maybe we'll regret that decision, but it was nice to have a long-overdue return to normalcy. We ate at The Crazy Crab in Harbour Town, a family tradition meal during every HH trip. We all had crab legs. We've done it during each of our five trips here, and it's very fun now that my kids can fend for themselves.  

Deciding when/how to inch back to normalcy is a tricky personal decision every family needs to make. But after 9+ tough weeks at home in NJ, we took a deep breath and made one small step. My wife and I accepted a small amount of risk for a shellfish (and perhaps selfish) reward. I didn't buy the ingredients. I didn't have to cook them. And I didn't have to wash one goddamn dish afterwards. It kinda felt like this: 

The Commonwealth Conference

While mainstream sports media outlets discuss the return of major college football, Major League Baseball players debate the conditions under which they'll play, and Notre Dame changes its academic calendar to better facilitate a gridiron season, there are consequential decisions at the mid-major collegiate level that have more significant impact on athletes that may never play in front of tens of thousands.

A Zip no more

The Atlantic 10 announced changes to the competition schedule for seven sports in 2020-21, reducing travel and limiting the number of teams that qualify for postseason play. The Mid American Conference (MAC) changed basketball schedules and eliminated postseason tournaments entirely for eight sports. Of note, those changes are initially set for the next four years. That there is what we call a harbinger, kids. The University of Akron eliminated men's golf and cross-country as well as women's tennis (not to mention getting rid of half of the school's academic programs).

The COVID-19 pandemic will have lasting impacts on nearly all areas of our society. Since we only care about a few of those areas and we know things about even fewer, we're focusing our energy today on intercollegiate sports. So what follows are a few predictions based on logic and almost no research, as well as an idea that's so crazy it just might work.

First, the predictions. Every college will be impacted by revenue shortfalls and increased expenses related to lower enrollments and preparing campuses to deal with the new reality of bringing hundreds of young adults together in a world where no vaccine or treatment is likely to be ready for market in the next 12 months. A significant number of those colleges will choose to reduce or eliminate the costs associated with their athletic programs.

Minnesota Duluth has won the past two NCAA
Hockey titles. They compete in Division II
in every sport other than hockey.

And so, we'll see an exodus of mid- and low-major Division I athletic programs to the cozier and more cost-realistic confines of Divisions II and III. We'll also see a relaxing of NCAA rules to allow schools to compete in just one or two Division I sports, just like we see in Men's Volleyball, Hockey, and Lacrosse today, for example. If Hofstra wants to play Division I basketball but compete in Division III in everything else, that'll be an option. They'll still get beat by Daniel Dixon.

We'll also see the consolidation of the current power conferences into a single mega-league with regional divisions. As the Power 65 is no longer constrained by the smaller schools that sought an equal voice at the table, and television networks realize they have even more leverage than before, a semi-pro option becomes reality. The NCAA Tournament keeps its format, because even the Power 65 realize the value of the tradition, but it's even harder for non-Power 65 schools to get in.

All the other schools that still want to play some sort of Division I athletics scurry to join a regional league that allows them reasonable competition and significantly reduced costs. The Sun Belt, which today stretches from Conway, South Carolina to San Marcos, Texas, is toast. So, too Conference USA with its unwieldy Norfolk to El Paso configuration. Our own little Colonial Athletic Association? Well, Boston to Charleston ain't exactly compact.

Which leaves with a modest proposal. ODU has no home if Conference USA implodes. VCU, George Mason and Richmond can't be thrilled with the reduced competition in Olympic sports that's coming for the A-10. W&M and JMU don't have a home in a CAA that doesn't exist. All six of those schools, notably, once competed against each other in the old Colonial. Add a couple of others to get to a round ten (say, Radford, VMI, Towson, and George Washington) and we've got a league with eight Virginia teams and two schools from adjacent jurisdictions.

W&M's getting its first bid to the NCAA Tournament as the auto-qualifier from the Commonwealth Conference. Just might take a while.

Corona Files: The Horse Beating Shall Continue Until the Jockeys Learn Their Lessons

I have thoughts about the following, a typically thoughtful offering from our colleague in name but not yet in technical fact (come on already, Teej), Dave Fairbank. Specifically, I'm embroiled in an imbroglio related to our local soccer club's handling of the cancellation of the Spring season and I spent an hour on a Zoom call with the editor of our town's weekly. Intersection of interests and institutions I'm inclined to support, with a twist. I've had media training, and I think I did a pretty good job of presenting one side of a complicated story, but I have no idea how the story's gonna get written. At the same time, I'm completely in the camp of the media generally. Fascinating times, these.

Not withstanding that, I also think the pandemic will materially change the landscape of college sports. I think Division II and III will swell with refugees from Division I who probably flew too close to the sun in the first place. We're a lot closer to a 65-school mega-conference and micro-regional leagues in everything but hoops and football. But you didn't come here for my bloviation. Eh, you might've, but this is better.

In any case, please enjoy OBX Dave's latest:

As the death toll climbs toward 100,000 in the U.S., and millions suffer physically, mentally and economically, collateral damage from the pandemic is both immediate and long-term. I’m more fortunate than many, which permits me to beat two dead horses, umm, address subjects close to my heart: journalism and sports.

The coronavirus’s impact on sports is obvious. Postponements and cancellations, as people try to
figure how to compete safely. The Bundesliga and NASCAR re-started in empty venues. Korean pro baseball has been up and running for a couple weeks, minus fans. While it’s nice to see live competition again, the vibe is weird – like televised scrimmages or practice sessions.

More discouraging is the number of colleges that have whacked sports programs due to financial hits. University of Cincinnati men’s soccer, Old Dominion wrestling, Bowling Green baseball, several programs at Akron. As of last weekend, a former newspaper colleague tracked 93 programs cut, impacting more than 1,400 athletes at all levels nationally. Expect more sports to be cut, as revenue streams dry up and financial straits become clearer.

If there’s a silver lining, it might be that the pandemic will force schools to reconsider geographically distended alignments and needless expenses. Schedule locally. Limit trips. Quit housing the football team in a local hotel the night before home games.

The Aspen Institute, the think tank and advocacy outfit, has tried to address pandemic effects in many areas, sports included. The institute’s Sports and Society program conducted a national survey in early May, gauging people’s thoughts on sports and re-starting. Among the findings: almost 50 percent of all parents worried that their child would get sick when they resumed playing a sport, and 46 percent worried that they would become ill themselves; 18 percent of parents said that their child was unlikely to resume playing sports when restrictions are lifted; 54 percent said that their finances had been negatively impacted; more than 20 percent said it will be too difficult to transport their kids to play sports; and 25 percent are uncomfortable with their children playing elite-level travel sports that will expose them to outside communities and people.

The pandemic has disrupted most lives, including those whose job it is to report on it. Journalism, particularly local journalism, has been reeling for years due to staff cuts and shrinking ad revenue and corporate vulturism. The coronavirus is another gut punch, on steroids. The New York Times estimated that approximately 36,000 people who work in media have been laid off, furloughed or had their pay cut during the pandemic. Admittedly, that’s a drop in the bucket when national unemployment claims are north of 36 million in the past three months. But I’d argue that reporters, especially local reporters, perform an outsized service to their communities, not just during a national health crisis, but daily.

Difficult as it is to do the job well in the best of times, it’s now increasingly perilous. You may have recent video of a Long Island TV reporter who was harassed when he covered a re-open rally. The group that organized the rally later issued an apology, but that doesn’t address the initial encounter. Nor does it help that the Tweeter-in-Chief praised the rally attendees and called out the reporter. I get that people are critical of Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson because their political views don’t align. I also get that a lot of folks are crispy around the edges due to lengthy quarantines, economic anxiety and coronavirus exhaustion. But we’re entering dangerous territory when local reporters are targeted and harassed for asking questions and doing their jobs, with the same rhetoric used for gasbags at the national level.
seen the

The crisis within local news is such that a group of 18 U.S. Senators sent a letter to Congressional leadership arguing that any future stimulus packages include money for local journalism. Among the signees were Virginia’s two senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Sheldon Whitehouse. All 18 are Democrats, so given the present power structure, spotty oversight of aid packages thus far, and sudden reluctance about further stimulus measures, I’m not holding my breath. But it was a nice gesture, albeit a decade late.

No one knows what normal is gonna look like. If we can get sports back safely and keep local newspapers alive for another 20 minutes, I’ll take it.

Corona Files: Here I Am Now, Entertain Me

TR and Whitney have shown us little glimpses of their personal Corona habits (and we're thankful that it's only been little glimpses, for obvious reasons), and since we love a recurring bit, I'm happy to do my part.

I've been binging a ton of comedy of late, which seems a fairly obvious response to a time of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. If you aren't familiar with it, the show runs about 20 minutes per episode, and features Jerry driving a different (usually old) car to pick his guest and take them for coffee. As the title might suggest. I'll post the definitive list of best episodes when I've completed the series. Spoiler alert: Jerry and Patton Oswalt don't have great chemistry.
darkness and uncertainty. I don't claim to be original. I've made it through about half of the episodes of Jerry Seinfeld's series,

In addition to Seinfeld, I've enjoyed the work of Hasan Minhaj, John Mulaney, Neal Brennan, Mike Birbiglia, Bo Burnham, Tig Notaro, Sarah Silverman, Aziz Ansari, and Ellen Degeneres. I did not enjoy the work of Tom Papa.

All of that stuff is on Netflix, as is Abstract: The Art of Design, which is a series of mini-documentaries on different creative professionals and their processes. Mark and Zed will enjoy the episode on Tinker Hatfield, Nike's lead shoe designer. My favorite thus far has featured Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect, who designed VIA 57 West in Manhattan, among other things. Because I'm a 12 year-old, I enjoyed the fact that his website address is big.dk.

The English Game is also on Netflix. It's a six-episode fictionalized telling of the story of the first workingman's team to win the English Football Association (FA) Cup. The story pivots around two men: Fergus Suter, a Scotsman who becomes one of the first professional footballers, and Arthur Kinnaird, an Old Etonian blueblood who chafes at some of the strictures of his upperclass lifestyle while fighting to retain the Cup. It's directed by Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, and it's similar in its observations of the differences between upstairs and downstairs, societally speaking. It's a fast-moving series, and a fun distraction. Kinda like sports. I miss sports.

But I did get to watch three Bundesliga games this weekend, which was nice. And my wife is so starved for novelty that she willingly turned on a NASCAR race today and is excited about the final two episodes of The Last Dance this evening. She ain't much of a sports fan, but Corona makes for strange bedfellows.

In addition the things that have entertained me via screens, I've been making a weekly trip to Vanish Farmwoods Brewery to stock up on 32 oz. crowlers. At three for $28, they're a bargain, and if I can support my favorite local brewery while ensuring I have enough high-octane tipple to get me through a week, all the better.

Some people have gotten into DIY projects to fulfill their nesting instincts. My wife has gotten into buying patio furniture and hiring our landscaper to do a bunch of new projects. I shouldn't complain, because we're so very fortunate compared to many, and so I won't. Our back yard looks awesome, and will look even more so by the end of the week, when we're having a bunch of new work done in time for my daughter's high school graduation party.

Yeah, about that.

META FILLER: PART 2

After posting his killer Bonnie Tyler pie chart yesterday, Teejay got curious about a GTB staple, the amorphous Filler tag.

I know when we first used the "Filler" tag, as I was not too lazy to look it up. It was in this post:

For your amusement, here is every different filler label ever put on a GTB post. All 145 of 'em. Enjoy.

• 69 Filler
• 80's Movie Filler
• Abe Vigoda Filler
• actually recurring filler
• Afternoon Filler
• Alan Parsons Filler
• All Filler No Killer
• all filler not made equal
• and you think filler is lazy
• armaggedeon filler
• bear filler
• beer snob filler
• best filler ever
• birthday filler
• Bo Knows Filler
• Brit filler
• careless filler
• Championship Sunday filler
• chat filler
• Classic Rock Shootout filler
• Clown Filler
• Confused Filler
• Cougar Filler
• COVID filler
• danimal filler
• dog filler
• Earthquake filler
• earworm filler
• Easter filler
• eight days in a row filler
• election filler part one
• election filler part two
• epic filler
• Evil Muppet Filler
• falconry filler
• Fanilow Filler
• fast food filler
• Fat Tuesday Filler
• fenomenal filler
• Ferrari Filler
• festive friday filler
• Filler
• filler filler
• filler for rob
• filler for the zman
• filler knows no language boundaries
• filler time
• Filler Up
• filler week
• fillerest filler ever
• fillery filler
• fillllllller
• film filler
• Finale Filler
• five carat filler
• floyd filler
• football filler
• footy filler
• Fred Gwynne Filler
• French Clown Filler
• French filler
• Friday Filler
• Friday Foreign Filler
• frog filler
• Frosty Filler
• Gheorghe Filler
• Gheorghemas Filler
• GIFiller
• gold medal filler
• google image filler
• greasy filler
• Greg filler
• hobo filler
• Holiday Filler
• holiday lunch filler
• honeymoon filler
• hoops hangover filler
• Hovitos filler
• humpty filler
• Igor and Teej Filler
• iller filler
• intangible filler
• Ironman Filler
• Is this filler? Meta-filler
• JaMarcusian effort at posting filler
• kq filler
• layzman's filler
• laziest filler ever
• literary filler
• mark filler
• Marls Filler
• McRib filler
• Monday Filler
• more filler
• Mupeepets filler
• Muppet Filler
• muppets filler
• music filler
• musical filler
• NCAA Tournament Filler
• new filler
• New Jersey Filler
• new year new filler
• OBFT filler
• odd filler
• OJ Filler
• olympic filler
• overqualified filler
• pain filler
• popcorn filler
• pug filler
• Really quick filler
• Spiller Filler
• squirrel filler
• Stormy Sunday Filler
• stupid filler
• stupid rambling filler
• summer filler
• Sunday Filler
• Sunday NFL Open Thread Filler
• superhero filler
• Teej filler
• teej is very busy filler
• there is filler and then there's this
• This post even insults the Filler tag
• Thursday Night Football Filler
• TR Filler
• trailer filler
• Tuesday Filler
• Unbelievably lazy filler
• unicorn filler
• Unit M Filler
• voted worst filler ever
• Wait this filler is ALL killer
• wet filler
• Whitney's next stop; Wednesday filler
• Work Jerry filler
• WTFiller
• xmas eve filler
• xmas filler
• zfiller
• zombie filler

META FILLER: PART 1

I don't quite know when we first used the "Filler" tag, and I'm definitely too fucking lazy to remotely try to look it up, but after posting my killer Bonnie Tyler pie chart yesterday I got curious about a GTB staple, the amorphous filler tag.

For your amusement, here is the first batch of filler tags you find when clicking Labels on a GTB post. Enjoy.

Gheorghies, I made a thing

Graphic design is my passion

pic.twitter.com/xLhXZHbNRY

— Tony Orlando and Red Dawn (@gheorghetheblog) May 13, 2020

These Are a Few of My Favorite (Quarantine) Things

This quarantine has made for a smaller life for me and the fam. We wake up, pray for sun and then muddle around the house amid dirty dishes, dirty laundry and Lego pieces (I really need my kids to outgrow them). Breakfast, dishes, remote learning assistance, job search, lunch, dishes, recreation time, cocktails, dinner, dishes, scotch, scotch, scotch.

My wife has shockingly gone on a DIY run. She has spackled and painted walls and spray painted furniture. I have gone on a cleaning/organizing binge - closets, garage, shed and. And I'm trying to train myself to read again. I've also been doing all of the dinner cooking. And when cooking a lot, I want good food and good gadgets to facilitate the process.

So while I have held back on many dumb discretionary purchases during the age of corona, I have made some smart purchases to help me cook and help me pass the time. I thought I would share some ideas with you fine folks.

High quality meat thermometer (insert joke here, Zman)
We had an old fashioned meat thermometer. It sucked. I recently bought a good electronic one on Amazon. It gives temps in a couple seconds. Has been helpful as I cook bone-in chicken breasts, pork chops and thick steak cuts on the grill. Here's the one I bought (link here):

Empire of the Summer Moon
Yeah, so iPhones and iPads pretty much took away my ability to read books. The realization hit me a couple years ago. I start and rarely finish books. I just struggle to disconnect from my connected e-life for 20+ minutes at a time. But I found a good read you all might like. This book talks about the all-powerful Comanche tribe on the central US Plains in the 19th century, and how the US finally battled them into submission. It's an amazing look at the tribe. They were no saints, but they had a code. And it's a deep-dive into how and why Manifest Destiny-emboldened Texans pounded all American Indian tribes into submission. Not one of America's proudest moments. Link is here.

Lifeline Power Wheel (ab wheel)
I have been pretty good about the exercising thing. I have a makeshift basement set-up, complete with a coffee table functioning as a bench. And an old purchase - the Bowflex adjustable dumbell set - has been a godsend. I try to get out regularly as well to bike and run. My 10 y/o and I have run as much as 3.25 miles together, which is as good as bonding gets. But when working out in my basement, nothing crushes my abs/core like the ab wheel. The first week of soreness is brutal and humbling, but I find it orders of magnitude more effective than crunches. It also doubles as comic relief b/c your kid(s) will try to use it. And they will fail and fall and you can point at them and laugh while shooting video on your phone. Link is here.

Rubber-edged tongs
We have nice pots and pans we use for cooking. And we're using the shit out of them these days. I found a deficiency in my utensil arsenal: rubber-edged tongs. They're a god-send when gently flipping breaded chicken, bacon, chicken tenders and more. I hate that tight-rope of avoiding scratching a frying pan with a metal tong. These bad-boys have gotten heavy usage in the last two months (link is here):

Smores Kit
This is a no-brainer family fun purchase if you don't have a fire pit. Plenty of options under $30. We have one that uses a small sterno. Not keto-friendly but damn delicious as a treat. And who doesn't love a flaming marshmallow? It indulges every boy's pyrotechnic leanings in a safe, family-friendly way. One option is here. There are electric and sterno options. Ours is sterno, but it has a covering so you can't put the marshmallow too close. It's possible that the sterno is toxic and dangerous, but then so is New Jersey.

ESPN+
We pulled the trigger on this for the $5/month cost. Now I can read all the Kiper stuff! But the jewel is having all of the 30 for 30 docs on demand. I have chugged through a ton with my kids: Bo Jackson, June 17, 1994, The OJ doc series for a second time (with the wife), the Hank Gathers doc, the Laettner doc, the Hillsborough doc (that was a heavy one) and The Two Pablos come to mind. We are getting Disney+ for free from Verizon for now, but I know we're going to get sucked into the Hulu/ESPN+/Disney+ troika for $13/month soon.

Bone-in pork chops
This fell off our radar screen a while ago. It's a contentious food item in my house b/c the wife thinks any pinkness will kill us, despite the multiple credible articles I send her saying pink pork is fine. Here's one of many examples. I can't stand a dry, overcooked chop. Cooking a nice, thick pork chop makes that meat thermometer all the more important! Cliff Notes version: Pull your chops from the grill at 140 degrees, let them rest under foil for five minutes and they'll heat to 145 degrees. That's what you want. I found a good simple marinade for chops that only need an hour or two to make an impact: 2 parts soy sauce, 1 part honey and some minced garlic and red pepper flakes.Salty and sweet. Like Marls after four drinks.

Corona Files, The Grooming

My hair, as you will see momentarily, was as long as it's been in my adult lifetime when I woke up the morning. You saw evidence last week, and it didn't get any shorter. I might've from carrying the weight of all that hair and product.

I'd long ago grown tired of looking at myself on work video calls and seeing Ed Grimley, I must say. So yesterday, I took a risk.

My eldest daughter ordered barber shears and a comb from Amazon, which arrived on Friday. She watched at least one YouTube video tutorial on cutting men's hair. She's an artistically-inclined kid, talented in a number of visual forms, so I trusted her sense of shape and balance. And I allowed her to cut my hair.

For your enjoyment, a story in six pictures:

I looked like fucking Teen Wolf

Sexy (from the) back

Action shot!

The result, prior to application of product

Can't do anything about the face, unfortunately

Mother's Day

When I moved my grandmother into a nursing home in January 2019 I knew it would be the last time I moved her, so I wasn't surprised when I got the phone call that she was dead. She died in her sleep, in her own bed and pajamas, as opposed to a hospital gown with tubes down her throat and for that I am thankful. She was 97--she had a good run and was remarkably sharp until the last 12-18 months of her life. Unfortunately I wasn't able to give her the send-off she deserved. I'd appreciate it if you would let me do so here.

Janet was a force of nature 45 years ago. You know what I mean if you've ever lived in a home where your grandmother was the head of the household. She was the sole breadwinner for her, her daughter, her mother and her grandson. We moved in when my parents divorced, I was about 12 months old so my earliest memories are from living with her. Sometimes she was my grandmother, spoiling me. Other times she was a second mother, settling disputes between my mother and me. Not infrequently she was like a father, explaining the rules of baseball, taking me fishing and showing me how to fix a leaky faucet. She did it all.

She was a proud card-carrying member of the Telephone Pioneers of America, a non-profit volunteer society of telecommunications workers. I mean literally card-carrying, I just pulled this out of her wallet:

She was also a proud union member. In addition to a meager pension, the union provided preposterous health insurance, picking up whatever Medicare didn't except for a $50 yearly deductible. You can see why some folks don't want universal healthcare, they practically have it already.

Janet was also a proud Democrat. She never voted for a Republican ever "because of FDR." I can't imagine any presidents of my lifetime inspiring this much loyalty 75 years after their death. They don't make 'em like they used to.

She, perhaps unsurprisingly, hated Donald Trump, so I found it tremendously ironic that on the day she died she received a letter from him notifying her that she received a $1200 stimulus check.

She was progressive too, probably from living in Hackensack and Teaneck her entire life. I remember her saying to me "You know what my problem is with Jim McGreevey?" and holding my breath for the next sentence, which was "I don't care that he's a gay, I just don't like that he lied to his wife for all these years." I realize that "gay" should be used as an adjective and not a noun, but at the time she was an 85-year-old woman with a high school education and the spirit of her words are what count.

Along similar lines, she once asked me "Do you still work for that Chinaman?" I told her "No, I don't work for Dr. Kuo anymore, but more importantly you shouldn't call him a Chinaman. He's Asian." Miffed, she retorted "If he was from England I'd call him an Englishman. If he was from France I'd call him a Frenchman. If he was Dutch I'd call him a Dutchman. He's from China so I call him a Chinaman." You can't teach an old Jersey girl new terminology.

Remarkably, she and my mother lived together for all but about 12 years of my mother's life, and she only lived in two different houses for the first 95 years of her life. When my mother had a stroke in May 2018 I had to move my grandmother to assisted living and she went downhill quickly. It killed me but there was nothing else I could do. Eight months later she had to be in a nursing home and luckily I live around the corner from an excellent one. It was the second-to-last nursing home in New Jersey to have a covid-19 infection. As soon as it happened I braced for the worst. She died about three weeks later.

I don't blame the virus. She was too strong to fall to that nonsense. The death certificate says heart failure, which is plausible, but I don't see anyone using a precious covid-19 test on a 97-year-old corpse so who knows if she had it. I think it was loneliness that killed her. Starting March 6, the state banned all visitors from nursing homes. As a result she couldn't see my mother, and being apart from her after being together for so long was too much to bear. That's what I think at least.

This is the worst part for me. I didn't see her for the last two-plus months of her life. She had friends in there and the staff provided tremendous care, but they can't replace time with family. Her hearing and vision were too bad to FaceTime. The one time I tried she said "Who the hell is that and why is he waving at me? Give this to someone else so he can wave at them." I feel like she died alone.

It took eight days for the funeral home to have an opening for her service. That's a really long time. The days run together as it is, but it was hard to pass time while grieving. I wanted closure badly. And the service was limited to not more than eight people in the room at a time. We ended up not inviting anyone so the service was just an hour for my mother and me to say goodbye to her. I ended up hugging my mom a lot, I knew I shouldn't but I had to, watching her sob in an otherwise empty room.

Then we got in the same car (she and her husband rode in the back seat, albeit less than 6 feet away from me) and followed the hearse to Hillside Cemetery in Cortlandt, New York. My great-great-great-great (maybe a few more or less greats than that) grandfather bought two dozen plots back in the mid 1800's. You can read about him and the rest of the crew here. My grandmother's family settled that part of New York about 400 years ago and we used to go up there to visit my Uncle Irv. He's buried there along with my great-grandmother and now Janet too. I never understood why she wanted to be buried so far away, where it would be hard to visit her, but I got it once was started driving. She got one last drive up the Palisades Parkway, along the Hudson River and over the Bear Mountain Bridge. It was a bright clear day, perfect for one final trip to the old ancestral home.

I'm writing this more for myself than anything else. I'm not looking for condolences or attaboys. I just wanted to give Gram a better farewell.

Jaguars' Best Product in Years

I really needed to get on the GTB post count board. Though I had nothing to do with it, I'm full of pride right now. 

Enjoy. Happy Saturday. And take care of those mom's tomorrow as I'm sure you will.

Corona Files, Loosely

A funny and poignant reminiscence from our man in the OBX, with a very timely reminder at the end. The kicker, in the parlance of the ink-stained wretch.

I’ll try to keep this brief, since I’m an adjunct member and most of you know me only marginally or through this digital tree fort. I thought some of you might appreciate it.

On May 1, almost 20 of my college classmates got together for a Zoom call, where we caught up a bit, but mostly remembered and mis-remembered our rampant dumbassery and questionable decisions. The occasion was the 40-year commemoration of our graduating class. May 1 was also the 42nd anniversary of my former roommate’s arrest and brief incarceration for streaking through town, a May Day campus tradition that went sideways that particular evening and was a highlight of our call.

We attended Washington College, a small, liberal arts school in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The school is notable as the first college chartered in the sovereign United States – George Washington lent his name and served on its first Board – and for the largest literary cash award to an undergraduate in the country. The Sophie Kerr Prize, more than $63,000 this year, is awarded annually to a graduating senior who shows the most promise in the literary field.

Two days after my roommate’s arrest and the absurd aftermath, the story landed on A1 of the Washington Post, what’s referred to in newspapers as a “bright” – a quirky, unusual piece intended to counter more serious news. The story was then picked up by news outlets along the East Coast, including my roommate’s hometown of Miami. It’s an amusing story, with a great kicker. A side note: one of the authors was a young reporter named David Maraniss, who’s still at the Post and who over the next 40 years won two Pulitzers and wrote books on Clinton, Gore, Obama, Vince Lombardi, Roberto Clemente, the Vietnam War and the Tokyo Olympics. We like to think that my naked roommate helped springboard his career and are certain that the story is listed prominently on his curriculum vitae. (The story is available in all its glory at this link.)

The episode seemed to be of a piece within our group, a loosely based fraternal bunch in the late 1970s and early ‘80s whose membership was based on proximity, irreverence, sports and an inclination to color outside the lines. We dubbed ourselves the BOF (Brotherhood of Freshmen) Chi, and though part of the name was taken from the Greek alphabet and campus fraternal system, we intentionally pronounced it “chee.” There were no dues, no recruitment or pledge obligations, and minimal service to the campus and community. Students awoke unaffiliated one day and members the next. Scholarship was optional. Our contributions consisted of the occasional dorm party and a Bizarre Bazaar that included events such as a cat food-eating contest (moist, of course) that drew more contestants than it should have. During one Homecoming parade, our float was a wagon rolled down the street from which we tossed chunks of cheese to the crowd (BOF cheese, get it?).

There were eight charter members, maybe twice that in total before the vibe fizzled. Several of us transferred, a few others left school for academic or personal reasons. We’ve maintained contact off and on through the years. Some of us stay in touch regularly, others we hadn’t seen in decades before the May 1 call. Like I said, loosely based.

Which is why the G:TB community and things such as the OBFT and various informal get-togethers you all arrange are treasures. Our Zoom call was a blast, but as several of you know from your own virtual meetings, it’s kind of a tease. I eagerly await the times when people can commune again. Maybe there’s masks, maybe there’s distance. But it’s human, and that’s the best we have.

It's Report Card Time Again... Again

What with the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world in which we're living, and the abbreviated / tossed-on-its-ear school year, it's Report Card Time again!

How'd we do so far in 2020?

Not bad. Not bad at all. For reference, in 2019, we posted on 53% of every day of the year. This year, thus far, it's 66%. Two out of every three days, you get new G:TB content. We can live with that.

Here's the report card from this time a year ago.

Of other statistical note, in 2019 Rob was responsible for 57% of all Gheorghe posts. This year, he's at 34% -- technically even less now. As of this posting, he's at exactly 1/3. Gotta keep the founder from burning out, people.

Now is the time, quarantine and all, for these numbers to continue surging. There will be a tailing off once everyone can go back to work, spend all day outdoors in the park, and drink in public places once more.  Keep it rolling. 

We are currently on pace for our best year of Postcount since 2015. Those were, by many standards, better days. Hey. Ho. Let's go.

I am Heat Miser. Heat Miser is Me. Dammit.

The second in what I hope is a long series of self-deprecating posts comes to you courtesy of my children, who profess to love me.

I don't think I've gone this long without a haircut (6-7 weeks, give or take) in my adult life. My hair starts to get a bit bushy if it gets much longer than it is right now, which is why I generally keep it on the shorter side.

My daughters think I look like this guy:

That's ridiculous. My hair isn't the least bit red.

Upside of Lockdown

Good morning, gheorghies. How about some new music for you to get your Saturday rolling?

First couple of tracks from the upcoming Les Coole and The Cukes album, Upside of Lockdown.

Les Coole & The Cukes · Love Gone By

Les Coole & The Cukes · Over the Lines

I am Patricia. Patricia is Me. Dammit.

I often grow beards during Winter/Spring months. I am also usually employed during Winter/Spring months, which means I make an effort to keep the beard under control. But this is no ordinary Winter/Spring, given the virus and my unemployment. And as a result, this is now no ordinary beard. For the first time ever, I have refrained from any trimmage/maintenance. I'm just letting it go. And it's going. And greying, sadly.

I did not realize just how much my beard got away from me until my 12 y/o told me the other day that I looked like Lions coach (and ex-Patriots coordinator) Matt Patricia.

That, my friends, is a gut punch. He could've told me I looked like Kliff Kingsbury. Or Kyle Shanahan. Shit, I would've been okay with Joe Judge. But I got Matt Patricia. This guy.

My kids suck. I don't see the resemblance at all.