There is a LOT to cover as we sweep out the cobwebs of my meager brain and dump the contents into your interweb experience. We'll start with the weirdest, and then...I mean, they're almost all superweird. So let's just start.
This is a hard headline to resist: Priest arrested for having threesome with corset-wearing dominatrices on church altar. The actual story is pretty true to the concept. If you're gonna break your vow of celibacy, you might as well go for it.
This headline, on the other hand, wildly underplays the most important part of the story: Trump Makes First Public Appearance Since Leaving Walter Reed. In fact, the paper of record waits until the 16th graf to give us this stupefying anecdote:
"In several phone calls last weekend from the presidential suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Mr. Trump shared an idea he was considering: When he left the hospital, he wanted to appear frail at first when people saw him, according to people with knowledge of the conversations. But underneath his button-down dress shirt, he would wear a Superman T-shirt, which he would reveal as a symbol of strength when he ripped open the top layer. He ultimately did not go ahead with the stunt."
Closer to home, and - unbelievably - weirder still, can I offer you a story about hairy, venomous
caterpillars in Virginia? Called the puss caterpillar (bunch of perverts, you lot), this bizarre-looking beast features spine-like hairs that can cause "excruciating pain" for up to 12 hours. I think I'd prefer that to another week of Trump.
How about a musical palate cleanser before we push forward with the week's oddities and ephemera? Jack White was called into emergency duty as the musical guest for Saturday Night Live, and he proceeded to tear the place down:
Multiple outlets, led by The Athletic, are reporting that Jill Ellis is a candidate for DC United's open head coaching job. On the one hand, she's massively qualified, would be immediately respected by the players, and is as good a candidate as one could find to be the first woman to coach a men's professional team at the highest level in the U.S. Becky Hammon notwithstanding. On the other, I have a decent amount of direct personal experience with DC United's management, and they're either woefully undercapitalized, cheap as hell, or not all that great at the whole 'management' thing. If the club does choose the W&M grad who's done a couple of other things in her career, my fear is that she'd be set up to fail. Kinda like Bob Bradley at Swansea.
Finally, and because I don't want to spend 10,000 (more) words on this topic (though I inevitably will), a few thoughts on l'affaire Huge. I commend to your attention this well-reasoned piece by a neutral party about W&M's athletic misadventures. The key point the author makes is that the entire notion of focusing on football and basketball to the exclusion of seven sports (which is effectively the crux of Samantha Huge's strategy) completely misjudges the cultural value the W&M community places on the prominence of student-athletes as an integral part of the social and educational experience. Doing so without engaging the faculty and students in the process doubles down on that original sin.
I had friends who were track/cross-country athletes, gymnasts, soccer players, baseball players, football players, swimmers (female, anyway - the male swimmers were preening douchebags). I don't know that there are very many schools with competitive Division I programs where so many athletes are so close to their 'normal' peers. Samantha Huge missed that point from the beginning, which ultimately cost her.
Still to be resolved, though, is the question of whether W&M's Board of Visitors understands the culture of the school over which it presides. Huge didn't make the decision to cut sports on her own, or at least didn't greenlight it herself. The next few months will be interesting in that regard. I look forward to rocking my Liquidate Littel t-shirt, courtesy of Marls.
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We also were friends with some of the wrestlers. They lost their sport when we were in school. And some former lax players who fell to the same fate just before we enrolled.
I agree with the stance you echoed 100%. The College of William and Mary is many things. It also isn’t just as many. Knowing that and not treating that fact like a concession (a lamented, wistful “we’ll never be...”) but rather a deliberate strength should be a prerequisite for the person making such decisions at our alma mater.
And I wonder what would have happened had they hired Pres. Rowe before AD Huge.
I went to a W&M game over Labor Day w/e in 2019. It was a laugher vs Lafayette. What struck me was when the W&M captains came out to the field for the coin toss, President Rowe walked out with them. That struck me as odd and, frankly, wrong. It's like she was feeling herself and was really stoked about this rise to athletics glory story that Huge had fed her. Maybe she was trying to impress Bruce Hornsby. I have no idea. But it was tone deaf and not warranted.
This has nothing to do with her being a female, so don't cancel me. I would've been equally as irritated if it was a dude.
The one passage in the article I would have reworded to underscore the point:
William & Mary is a school that already has an identity. It’s a smaller school, with a mostly residential campus, in a smaller town and media market, that’s been doing things a certain way for decades.
Decades? Dude, they have been doing things that way at W&M for over three centuries. I know the media market may be what you meant, but it’s simply a school whose literally ages-old foundation imbues itself into most of what they do there. I griped about the “curriculum at the cutting edge of 1890” when I was there 100 years later, and the sleepy ‘Burg ain’t what I could have experienced at another school, but I have come to appreciate the College for its rather uniquely Brigadoon-like “from another time” component. Anyway, knowing who you are as a 50-year-old person or a 327-year-old university helps you do your thing on a daily basis. So I hope they figure it out soon.
Bring back Gene Nichol, and bring back the on-campus sex workers show!
This recap of that ill-fated event says it all: "A woman named Dirty Martini, who weighed more than 200 pounds, did a striptease in a G-string and pasties, while a woman named Cono Snatch Zubobinskaya gave an anti-war performance that included a dildo shaped like a gun."
Pasties might be the best idea ever. Don’t forget our fraternal fencer, another sport the school dropped over a decade ago.
Vulture reposted Chuck Klosterman's article ranking all the Van Halen songs after Eddie died. I have read too many dimwitted, half-hearted, ill-informed, and just stupid lists in the same vein. This, however, is a real piece of writing. Terrific stuff from a real fan.
https://www.vulture.com/article/best-van-halen-songs-chuck-klosterman.html
Amusing bits in the intro like "I’d also like to apologize in advance for using the word “riff” 14 times in the forthcoming 11,148 words, but there just isn’t a practical synonym that adequately reflects what a riff is, and writing about Van Halen without analyzing the riffs is pretty much impossible. It would be like trying to rank the 131 best deciduous forests in North America without repeating the word tree."
And great write-ups for each track. From the scathing:
"The reason 'Once' is better than 'Year to the Day' is because it’s 52 seconds shorter, meaning it’s only four and a half minutes too long. I do think it could have been salvaged if (a) a few of the lyrical passages were rewritten and (b) it had been sung by Enya. That probably seems like a joke. I’m not joking. It’s right in Enya’s wheelhouse.
To the praising:
"...any free-thinking person must now begrudgingly concede that VH’s simulation is marginally superior in every debatable dimension, much in the same way any free-thinking person must now begrudgingly concede that LeBron is marginally better than Jordan."
I like "And the Cradle Will Rock..." a lot more than Chuck does, same with ATBL. But he's mostly spot on and het gets it: "This list was compiled by one person sitting alone in a dark room, so it’s obviously subjective and ephemeral (and I’d be skeptical of anyone who agrees with all 131 entries)."
A great read that made me dig into the catalogue again.
i don't have the patience to rank the songs of any band that's made more than three albums, even the ones i love. kudos to klosterman.
That would be a lot of effort. I'd rather design some GTB branded pasties.
don’t ruin the surprise for everyone, rootsy
I ranked my Top 37 Clash songs in this space, and that winded me
Zman is an XXXL in pasties
Michael Anthony looks a whole lot like Costanza in the picture in that Vulture article. He looks like he walked off the set of DC Cab for that picture.
“Zman is an XXXL in pasties” ... I LOL’ed...again. Nothing quite earlyish morning Zed smoking shirtless on the Unit M balcony to give the ladies leaving Sigma Chi a rush.
how is the hernia, whit?
like TR, i also had hernia surgery when i was a baby.
Like TR and Dave, I also had hernia surgery when I was a baby. That is unquestionably a better stage of life for this shit.
I'm staying mostly horizontal today. Taking my meds. Chilling. Here I am now, entertain me.
TR's comment is still entertaining me. He said what I was thinking with eloquent brevity.
I always liked "Poundcake" just because I never saw anyone employ a power drill to play a guitar before.
I love Klosterman's theory about how every single American male goes through a phase where they think Led Zeppelin is the coolest band ever. Could be a week, could be three years, but every guy seems to have had an LZ phase.
I did not have a Led Zeppelin phase and am thus the exception that proves the rule.
The return of vinyl makes it easier for me to find turntable slipmats, which I convert into pasties.
Sounds hot!
Possible correction Zman - you haven't had your LZ phase YET. It's coming.
Speaking of "exceptions to the rule," one of my favorite VH songs comes in at a Klosterman #18. Though in the summer of 1982, I thought the chorus said "Etch-a-Sketch." I still may.
And I'm still thinking of a band with super meager output whom I know and like well so that I can rank all their songs. I can't even do that with Greasetruck's catalogue.
turns out gators are allergic to covid
Glad to see the penis armpit come back into my life. I will say no more for now.
A Rootsy approved string band, the Roanoke Jug Band, was active in the Star City from 1925-35. In October,1929 they recorded two 78rpm records in Richmond, VA, a total of four songs. I can rank those four, but the order of preference changes with my mood.
My kids both do tackle football in the same program. They practice 3x per week. Two of the practices are 2.5 hours. One is 2 hours. The field is 0.5 miles from my house. It is pretty glorious to get them the F out of the house that long and have some peace.
Can't get caught up on all the comments right now.
But Rob thanks for the gift in the mail. Well done.
T-shirt arrived in today's mail. It's excellent. Gracias, mi amigos.
ahem, dave
Neutral Milk Hotel had two albums. Stone Roses also had two. My Bloody Valentine has three but one might not count. Nirvana had three. You can do this Whit.
led zeppelin phase! 7th grade. but it lasts a lifetime. i can still listen to houses of the holy. i tend to forget about them, but when i listen with fresh ears i really dig those guys.
except for kashmir. that song is a shitshow.
I love Kashmir and will play it around Dave when I can because I know it bothers him. Reminds me of Fast Times.
And Z, I’ll figure out some band(s) to rank while I’m prostrate.
I still hate the Titans.
Trump campaign is airing their commercial that misrepresents Fauci in NJ. Seems like suboptimal capital allocation. Maybe his Bedminster buddies want to see the ad.
thinking about a christmas-time trip to asheville, nc with the fam, covid-permitting. anyone spent any time there? and if so, any recommendations?
I’ve been there and it’s great. I have a number of brewery/bar and restaurant recommendations. I’ll email you.
Asheville is great!
There’s a cool old bookstore/coffee shop/bar that has lots of rooms...you can drink your cocktail while browsing old books. I’ll try to find name of it.
Great chocolate/confectionary shop downtown, too.
And it’s about 25 minutes to Black Mountain, which is about the quaintest small town around.
That Bill Burr SNL monologue is something. I loved it.
i thought whit had a hernia, not prostrate trouble . . .
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