The Twelve Days of Gheorgemas: Day Twelve

On the twelfth day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

Twelve Lost Albums I Want to Hear

Eleven Months of Wisdom
Ten Things from Florence

Nine Games Worth Notice

A Moment of Rest

Seven Things for Reading

Six Old and New Musical Experiences
Five Roadsters You Can and Should Buy Right Now
FORE! An Overdue Update on LIV & the PGA Tour
Three Ways of Coping
Stories from Two...Three Strokes
And much needed hip mo-bili-ty

Day 12 is here!

Welcome one and all gheorghies to Day 12 of Gheorghemas. For the second year in a row, we’re finishing our Gmas run in January rather than, say, late March. I take that as progress.

As I posted earlier, I have moved past issuing 12 appreciations – but not the music that accompanied them. In these darker days, I appreciate even one simple word from my favorite bands that will ring the proverbial recess bell for fun and games. (Rob and Squeaker, that sentence was for you guys.) String a few words together with musical accompaniment, and I might even forget about the major morass created by one moronic ass leading this country.

So, let’s do a Whitney’s Dozen deep dive into a random subtopic in the world of music. Like really random. Please enjoy Day 12…

12 Lost, Unfinished, and Unreleased Albums of Rock History

It goes without typing that now more than ever, you can track down whatever album you want. Sure, on occasion it gets harder to do when someone goes all Neil Young on a particular platform, or when a band’s works suddenly and inexplicably vanish from a major outlet. Like, for example, the Housemartins recently getting removed from Spotify. Right when I wanted to sooth my anxieties by hearing “Anxious”! Oh, well – more room for Not-ify to do what it does.

If an album isn’t on Apple Music or Spotify or Google Play, it’s certainly on YouTube, right? Well, usually… but what if it never got released? Hmm. Then it’s a crapshoot. The game of the hunt, rare music-style, is something I engaged in for a decade and a half of tracking down the most obscure finds on compact dinosaur. And yet the game is still alive!

Over the last 60 years of rock and/or roll, there have been blue moon occasions when a highly anticipated record from a well-known act never saw the light of day. The reasons generally fell into one of these 10 categories:

1. The artists changed their minds and scrapped it
2. The label refused to release it
3. A creative control wrestling match turned it into something unrecognizable
4. Both of those
5. The tapes got damaged or destroyed
6. The tapes were stolen!
7. It never existed beyond rumor
8. It never got finished because the band imploded
9. It never got finished because the artist died
10. No one knows

Sometimes, after eons of dormancy, some musician or producer or relative or random janitor relocates and dusts off the material, and maybe just maybe that previously “lost” treasure gets the green light to reach the clamoring masses. Which is fun! Though often times that release then can’t clear the Dick Fosbury-height high jump bar of hype, and it’s a flop.

The number one such lost album in music history has to be the Beach Boys’ Smile. Riding the wave of Pet Sounds success back into the studio in 1967, Brian Wilson’s perfectionism and a host of distractions (in human and narcotic form) invaded the entire band, especially the one frustratingly labeled “genius.” Kablooey. After decades of universal lament, Brian and friends eventually cobbled together what may have been as close to a definitive version as can be created from old tapes and faded memories, and it was mass-released in 2004. Hype 1, Smile 0, though it’s a pleasant listen most of the way through.

Other famously “lost” albums that have been released over the past decade or two:

• The Beatles, Get Back (original version)
• Prince, The Black Album
• Marvin Gaye, You're The Man
• David Bowie, The Gouster
• David Bowie, Toy
• Buckingham Nicks, Buckingham Nicks
• The Stone Roses, Garage Flower
• The Velvet Underground, 1969
• Neil Young, Hitchhiker
• Neil Young, Chrome Dreams
• Neil Young, Homegrown

[Neil Young nearly warrants an entire post. It’s actually really cool the way he kept hours and hours (more like months and years) of old recordings for decades. You could argue that his issuing of these long-lost archival albums (some of which clearly overlap in content) is commercial and cash-grabby… and then you’d think about it for 5 seconds and realize who you’re talking about and how ridiculous that notion is.]

Oh! And one more!

• Guns N' Roses, Chinese Democracy

Not really quite the same, but worth a chuckle as I remember the GTB take on that debacle. 

There are too many classic lost, unfinished, and unreleased albums in rock history to compile an exhaustive list, but a few you might have heard of: 

• The Who, Lifehouse (insane concept album follow-up to Tommy)
• The Beatles, Carnival of Light
• Paul McCartney, Hot Hitz / Cold Cuts
• Joy Division, Warsaw (full release)
• Dr. Dre, Detox
• The Replacements’ reunion album
• A number of lost Beck albums
• Ryan Adams, 48 Hours
• Misfits, 12 Hits from Hell
• Nirvana, Sheep
• Zack De La Rocha’s solo debut
• Soundgarden’s final album
• Red Hot Chili Peppers’ shelved album after By the Way
• Mick Jagger and the Red Devils' blues albums
• Noel Gallagher with Amorphous Androgynous

And Beastie Boys, Hot Sauce Committee Part 1. Just kidding. And so were they. Part 2 was a joke, a la Surf II.

Bits and pieces may have come out here and there, but a proper issue from the artists has not. Tragic, in a few cases. Curious in others. Forgiving in some.

Okay, here we go now, on to the Big 12.

1. Bruce Springsteen, Electric Nebraska (1982)
Leading off with a bang. Yes, I do indeed love the stripped-down, four-track, just-Bruce-and-some-pretty-frickin’-dark-thoughts version with which he began and finished the Nebraska album creation cycle. I never did really love it until one night a few years back when I was down at the Martha Wood Cottage all alone. I popped it on after a handful of cold chilly-pops when the ocean could be heard but not seen. Stared out into the sandy darkness and soaked it in. Ran that sucker back a few times. It’s something.

But man, I’d still love to hear what the E Streeters did with it. Bruce made the call to go with the demo tapes as Nebraska, and he’s made the continuous call to keep those sessions under wraps since. Not saying it’d be better. But after 40 years, I just want to hear it. Max says the band did all the tracks and “it was killing.” Let’s find out.

Closest You Can Get: “Atlantic City” from Live in New York City is an amped up version. Still not quite there.

2. John Fogerty, Hoodoo (1976)
Springsteen stubbornly keeping that one album on the shelf goes against type for him. On the other end of the spectrum is John Fogerty. That dude is irascible. He recorded his third solo album (following an ugly CCR breakup) and released a couple of singles… then decided to have the label destroy all the tapes. Cue the odd duck at the bar in Erin Brockovich.

Erin Brockovich (YouTube): You were told to destroy those?
Charles Embry (Asylum Records employee): That's right… Of course, as it turns out, I wasn't a very good employee.

So we have some bootlegs out there, many in old-school bootleg quality. But those singles are worth a listen. I’m an easy mark; Fogerty’s voice is truly singular to my ears and I can never get enough. I’d love a clean shot at the rest of Hoodoo.

Closest You Can Get: The actually released singles, one of which is below.

3. Prince, Dream Factory (1986)
Speaking of stubborn… Back in the late 70’s, Steely Dan was known for three things, and one of those was studio perfectionism. In the mid-80’s, the Purple One was precisely the same way. Prince was also known as the most prolific of two pastimes, writing tremendous funky tunes and getting delirious with the era’s sexist M.F.’s. He’s shelved more killer tracks than many Top 40 hitmakers could possibly create.

To wit, Dream Factory. Prince’s time with and tolerance for the Revolution were fading in 1986. They put this album on tape but not on wax yet (industry jargon). The label said, “We’re set to pop here, honey.” Prince said, “Uhhhh... hang on, sloopy.” Back into the studio, a little of this, a little of that, rework, rewrite, re-record, scrap this, toss that, dash of pepper, all new album of different songs with different people, mostly himself, call it Sign O’ the Times. Here ya go. Platinum seller. That all happened in a preposterously short period of time. Dayummmn. And that was the end of the Dream… Factory.

Closest You Can Get: a “fan-edit” (what does that mean, beyond the self-evident???) bootleg release gets close, if you accept that their selected track listing and order plus (minus) diminished sound quality are part of it. Check it out here.

4. Marvin Gaye, Love Man (1979)
Marvin Gaye, also a wealth of talent not afraid to shelve an album. See You’re the Man, referenced above, or the sweet slow jam long-play called Vulnerable, a 1977 recording that made its way to us long after he had left us.

So the late 1970’s were a tough time for The Prince of Soul, thanks to his big D (divorce, you lout), his love for Charlie, and the fiscal fallout that we know comes with both of those. His move further from his pure Motown beginnings into early 70’s soul, then funk, and ultimately disco tracks led him to record a full album of such material called Love Man. And then ultimately ditch it. He redid a few of the tracks for In Our Lifetime?, which hit the streets in 1981. He got his life together by ’82 for Sexual Healing, and then it all got taken away from him. Really shitty.

Closest You Can Get: Dig it. The super disco breakin' lead single from Love Man, "Ego Tripping Out." Its flopitude made him abandon the rest of the record. Missing from this version below is the spoken lines at the start, an early (to my ears) musical inclusion of the term “homeboy.”

5. Green Day, Cigarettes And Valentines (2003)
Sometimes the problem isn’t the artist or label’s whimsy – it’s the damn security guard! In 2003, Green Day was putting the finishing touches on their 7th album (4th major label), a record called Cigarettes and Valentines. 

And then… just like Keyser Soze… just like that… it’s gone. Swiped from the studio.

According to Billie Joe:

“I’ve never heard that ever happening to anybody. It was a bummer, for sure. We put a lot of work into it, but at the same time, it was a blessing. We were like, ‘Let’s just start from scratch. Let’s try this over again.’ Maybe it’s just a sign that maybe we made a crappy record and we should make a better one.”

And they did. American Idiot. Super strong record.

Closest You Can Get: Some demos are out there, and the song “Homecoming” was the lone carryover to American Idiot.

6. Jimi Hendrix, Black Gold (1970)
Let’s take a step into the weird, shall we? As gifted as they came, Jimi had already hit it big thrice over in the studio and worldwide on the stage by 1970. He was having fun. His creative contributions to come were tragically cut short when he died in September. You can listen to “Night Bird Flying” to get a sense of it, but what you’d miss is his stuff that transcended the blues and rock. Like a bunch of tunes he wrote and demoed for something he called Black Gold.

“It's mostly cartoon material. I make up this one cat who's funny. He goes through all these strange scenes. You could put it to music, I guess." --Jimi Hendrix

Cartoon material? Intriguing. Well, the tapes were lost, naturally, and found, supposedly, 20 years later by Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell. But never released. If the one released song that purportedly came from this work is any indication, it’s far less weird and interesting than Jimi described. As teasers go… this was not one. Hoping the real thing was too bizarre for commercial success. And that we hear it anyway.

Closest You Can Get: That one released song... Suddenly November Morning. No cartoons. Not funny.

7. Weezer, Songs from the Black Hole (1996)
This one’s been talked about quite a bit, if only because Weezer gets talked about quite a bit, even on SNL. Case in point, Weezerpedia! (Whitneypedia was around first... I think.) Here is Weezerpedia's entry on Songs from the Black Hole, the original slate of songs to follow up their 1994 debut (blue) album. It was conceived as a space rock opera. Yep. Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo:

"There's this crew - three guys and two girls and a mechanoid - that are on this mission in space to rescue somebody, or something. The whole thing was really an analogy for taking off, going out on the road and up the charts with a rock band, which is what was happening to me at the time I was writing this and feeling like I was lost in space."

So, Star Wars. Look, here's what we know: Rivers Cuomo is a brainy guy, and the overwhelming life that young success afforded/forced on him was way too much. He also had surgery in 1995 "to correct a congenital condition that caused his left leg to be 2 inches shorter than his right. The surgery involved breaking his femur and fitting it with a metal brace." Yipes. All that, and he was enrolled at Harvard.

So, as Crash Davis said, we're dealing with a lot of shit. So a 17-song demo about robots and rescues in space is about the mildest mental meltdown Cuomo could've had. Eventually, though, he bagged the idea and wrote new or reworked SftBH songs to create Pinkerton in 1996... which, Dave will tell you, is their masterpiece. The Deluxe version of which has some SftBH tunes. You can also find some of those demos on a latter-day solo release called Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.

Closest You Can Get: Of all the tunes that didn't cross over into Pinkerton, the one I enjoy most does not, oddly, feature Cuomo on lead vox. Rachel Haden, the singer from a band called That Dog, slides in perfectly on the very Weezer track "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams."

 

8. Pink Floyd, Household Objects (1974)

You want something even weirder? You got it. Talk about going off the deep end after a big success. Pink Floyd has always worked to incorporate weird, unorthodox, non-instrument sounds into their music. Along the way, Roger Waters led the charge to make an entire album minus the instruments and exclusively featuring... yes, the title spoiled it... household objects. That would apparently consist of items such as appliances, hand mixers, rubber bands stretched between two tables, etc. They had toyed with it before, but after the sonic boom of Dark Side of the Moon in '73... it was a go.

Well, not really. Apparently there is only so much you can do without a guitar, or keys, or any musical instruments. Even for those creative guys. Household Objects was abandoned. 

Closest You Can Get: One track, "Wine Glasses," was finished (I guess?). Running fingers around the rims of wine glasses has always been fun. Who knew it could be prog-rock? Floyd fans will recognize it as having been later adapted into the intro for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." How fitting that that looney song was a tip of the cap to madcap Syd Barrett.

9. Madness, Unreleased Madness album (1987)

We haven't had a reason #8 yet! (It never got finished because the band imploded.) Well, here we go. In 1986, Madness were coming off a long world tour and an album (Mad Not Mad, 1985) that both reviewed and sold poorly. They were just three years from the international megahit "Our House" and a slew of tunes that did great abroad. Doesn't matter. As another Brit once penned (Oscar Wilde, perhaps?), "Fame, fame, fatal fame. It can play hideous tricks on the brain." So... exhausted and bereft of winning ideas, the nutty boys nonetheless trudged back into the studio, sketched out 11 tracks, and laid down a pair of cuts.

What happened next? Just as they were set to announce the album and its track listing in the fanzine, they busted up! Called it quits. Ska-daddled. Skattered. Skatastrophically. (Ska bands love the wordplay.) Madness went out UB40-style. No, not brother against brother like the Campbells. Instead, four of the seven went one way (forming the very different-sounding band The Madness) and the other three went a different way. Like in UB40's divide, those bands didn't go very far. 

A re-released old Madness song hitting the charts in '91 was enough of an emotional reminder of what was important in life to these crazy kids from Camden Town: money. (I'm sure there was the spirit of camaraderie in there, too.) The umpteen (like way too many) Madness compilation albums weren't enough, and I for one am glad that they didn't rest on those royalty laurels. They reunited in 1992 for a festival and have never looked back. To wit, and squeak, we saw them last May in Boston! (They're super fun.)

Closest You Can Get: Remember I said they laid down two cuts? (I sure hope so, it was all the way back two paragraphs ago.) Well, the lead single was this: "(Waiting for the) Ghost Train."

10. The Clash, Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg (1982)

Speaking of bands on the brink of break-up... The Only Band That Matters was about to become dark matter. Let's review:

1. The Clash forms in London from the ashes of the 101ers and other acts, taking cues from the Pistols... and then running right by them.
2. They release The Clash and Give 'Em Enough Rope in '77 and '78. Well received. Great stuff.
3. London Calling in 1979. Not much will ever beat that. Big fame.
4. Sandinista! in 1980. Whoa, dogie. Sprawling. Colossal. Experimental. Chancy. Not well received. But great stuff.

Although I will vehemently defend the crazy 3-LP "something for everyone" party train that is Sandinista!, I will also acknowledge that it's a massive aural undertaking. As such, I have trimmed the rougher edges and provided a salve for those seeking more taut rock. It's part of my Spotify "as a Single LP" series. Give it a spin:

So... that's where Joe, Mick, Paul, and Topper were in 1981. A crossroads. Mick Jones, the mastermind behind much of The Clash's best music, wanted to go further. Take the meanderings of Sandinista! and go deeper into studio wizardry with fringy instruments and a mélange of musical styles. World music in a blender. Meanwhile, Joe, the heart and soul of the band, wanted to get back to basics. He brought back Bernard Rhodes, #3 band manager/damager behind The Colonel and Malcom McLaren, to steer the ship back into safe harbors (i.e., pop charts). It was like mixing Jack Daniel's with Jose Cuervo. Don't try this.

A such, in 1981 Mick took the band to Electric Ladyland Studios in the Village (presumably where Jimi would have recorded the rest of Black Gold), where he served as producer and mixer and swami and got down with his bad self. They recorded a goodly number of tunes, many of which were Gheorghian in length (the man, not the blog, though this post emulates Mr. Mureșan.) It would be a double album called Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg. 

Oh, but then Joe's man Bernie hired Glyn Johns, he of Desperado and Slowhand and a bunch of Who records and much more. The safe bet. And that side of the gulley went in and tweaked, smoothed, cut, finessed, and neutered Mick's work. Voilà! Combat Rock. Both versions had the most popular songs, albeit in either very slightly or rather noticeably different forms. But the soul of the record was a different offering entirely. 

So Joe Strummer won. Combat Rock came out in 1982 and did exceedingly well. And not for nothin', he sacked Topper and Mick to boot. Bernie hired a few randos to replace them, but it was like having Buckethead instead of Slash. Billy Burnette instead of Lindsey Buckingham. Kenney Jones instead of Keith Moon. Anyone instead of Dave in Random Idiots. That's not the band I know. Or want. They released a since-disowned album of mostly crud and said cheerio.

Closest You Can Get: A few of the Rat Patrol tracks have popped up on box sets and other compilations here and there. But a couple of years ago, the full boat got posted on YouTube. Hallelujah. Give it a listen. Like I said, it's a sprawling, swirling, messy assortment of goodies and grime from The Only Band That Mattered.

11. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Human Highway (1974)

You might have assumed that The Clash and their Rat Patrol debacle would be the genesis for this post, but instead, it was this one. I went down a 3-month rabbit hole on this stuff, and I cannot remember exactly how. 

If there was ever a band suited to break up before they got the good stuff down, it was CSNY. How lightning rods like Croz and Neil ever co-existed in a studio, much less in a band, is a minor miracle. And don't give too much of a free pass to Nash and Stills. Sleeping with and/or dating exes, forming mini-factions (hard to do when the band is just four dudes, but boy these guys are pros at it), and generally being disagreeable about what songs go where and how they're supposed to sound. Add in success, money, fame, with the ego and expectations therein. Oh, plus piles of cocaine that resembled the salt hills in Egypt. What could go wrong?

Unlike Madness, they had a title for the record right away. Human Highway. Graham Nash still thinks that title was aces. And with the Neil title track in tow, they were on their way. In 1973, they met in Hawaii, and then at Neil's Broken Arrow Ranch in ("I've been to") Redwood. Tunes were penned and many parts were laid down. But it fell apart for reasons the quartet can't even agree on. Throughout '73 and '74 they played CSNY shows to keep the groove alive and the bank accounts full. They even played at Foreman Field in Norfolk, three blocks from where I was living!

In 1974, CSNY regrouped at multiple studios in multiple cities to record multiple songs in hope of a single album to generate from their work. Ultimately, three things happened:

1. Some really, really great music got recorded. The harmonies are exquisite, to put it in a way that my punk rock self snarls at.
2. Nobody could agree on much of anything, and they got sick of it. And each other.
3. Shit went down like people stripping certain others' vocals off a track and releasing it as a faction fragment. See The Stills-Young Band, Crosby & Nash, and of course, CSN.
4. Songs featuring all four -- truly where the magic is with these guys -- did pop up on solo records and compilations over time.

And that was that. It fell by the wayside, and everyone moved on. There never was a Human Highway album. Later in life, each member said something to the effect of "What a shame."

Closest You Can Get: Because of that item #4 there, it is possible to do what these four singer-songwriter-sourpusses could not. Assemble something cohesive featuring tracks with the full foursome and call it Human Highway. 

Alas, friggin' Not-ify. A couple of tracks are not on the platform. So I have cobbled together 7 songs from these sessions that feature the whole team and added 3 YouTubes to make it a whole 10. Best I can do in these crazy times. No matter who it says the artist is, these tracks have the full complement in tow.

A perfect one to end on. I have been playing this stuff ad inifinitum. Pretty great sounds.

12. Random Idiots, the original session (1989)

Four young men come together topwrite and record stirring music that recounts the sagas of their lives in gritty terms with a D.I.Y. punk sensibility. No, not in London. Williamsburg, VA. The lottery that brought this quartet of friends to reside for 9 months in small rooms whose doors were 10 feet from each other was random. They were idiots. Random Idiots was born. 

One night in '89, one bottle of bottom-shelf vodka down, the band began to ink some lyrics. Seems they messed up the order of that. They regrouped. Mo Lester and Death teamed up for a handful of compositions formally attributed to Lester-Pellicane. This was the backbone of what would be their debut album: Bloodfinger. Highcheese came back to the regroup with nothing, Not one word. Doug E. Fish came back with a song. The band came to wish he'd come back with nothing.

The seeds that were sown that night (nothing weird, fellas) were the stuff of legend, nearly incomprehensible and yet clearly higher plane material. A cassette tape captured it all. And then... people along the hall borrowed the tape to play, and to laugh at these Random Idiots. As Idiots, there were no copies of the cassette made. Nobody took the five minutes to do the fast-record thingy everyone used to do with cassettes. 

Instead, the young manager who'd applied for and been awarded the role of Band Manager... we'll call him Obray... took the tape and played it for a friend late one night in a drunken haze. Here's the only truly (truly) amazing part: he ended up recording his dimwitted conversation over the music... BUT you could hear BOTH the music AND the conversation AND some high-pitched shrill noise over it all.  Bizarre, but that was the high tech world of 90-minute Maxells back then.

As Idiots, they recorded a "studio" version of the songs (i.e., sober) minus Highcheese and Doug E. Fish and plus Obray on backup vox: seems he got a promotion for his idiocy, fittingly enough.

We will never get back the recording of the original magic. I mean, Mo and Death have been playing together off and on for 36 years now, so it must really have been something. But we can imagine it...

Closest You Can Get: A few of Random Idiots' songs' masters were transferred to mp3 sometime in the late 1990's/early 2000's. The re-record of Bloodfinger is digitally available. And the compilation album The Best of Random Idiots / The Worst of Random Idiots 1989-1999 contained one tune salvaged from Obray's trashing and the dumb-assed re-record over the originals. It's below, and uh... it's rough. You can't say you weren't forewarned. It's the lone Doug E. Fish contribution. 

Les Coole & The Cukes · Random Idiots - I'm a Glom

In 2025, the original cassette was rediscovered by yours truly. I can only listen to it on a Walkman I still happen to have, pack rat that I am. Right now I am listening to the conversation between Obray and a lunchbox about my girlfriends. It's worse than the music playing beside it on the recording. I'm still fascinated at how this could have happened, technologically speaking. Stay tuned for digitizing. 

*  *  *  *  *

May what is lost be found someday, and may what is found live up to the longing hype that came before it. Happy listening, and happy trails on the human highway.

Well there you have it -- the end of the list, and the end of Gheorghemas. Enjoy the rest of this holiday season (Gheorghemas lasts until midnight of the day Day 12 goes up). As always, I thank the gheorghies for allowing me to close out the season every year, and for their patience to wait for it, even when it's overlong and yet underwhelming in its arrival. 

Cheers!

Gheorghasbord

Really thought we'd have Day 12 by now, what with the teaser and all. Ah well, live and learn. And 'sbord. 

Dave wanted to know about my soccer coaching formation and tactical approach. I'm thinking we start with something like this. I love entertaining soccer, and I'm not afraid to experiment.

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A notice for all of you interested in cartooning. Nominations are now open for the Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award 2025. Cartoonist Rights and the Freedom Cartoonists Foundation offer the award bi-annually in recognition of the contribution made by cartoonists exemplifying the spirit of free expression and continuing to work despite difficult circumstances or direct threats to their human rights. In 2023, the award went to Abel Bellido Córdova – ABECOR – of the Página Siete news outlet in Bolivia.

 

And returning to the pitch, today is the final matchday of the group stage of the UEFA Champions League. This season's tournament is the first with a radical rethinking of the process. All 36 qualified teams play eight matches as a part of the group stage, with the top eight teams advancing automatically to the Round of 16, teams 9-24 playing off in two-leg matches to advance to the Round of 16, and teams 25-36 being eliminated from the competition (some of those will be dropped into the Europa League - it's confusing).

Of note, Liverpool and Barcelona have already guaranteed a place in the elimination round, while big names like Real Madrid, PSG, Bayern Munich, and Juventus seem destined for the playoffs. Manchester City, the defending champion, sit in 25th ahead of today's match with Club Brugge. They should win, but if they don't, the unthinkable happens and the Citizens are eliminated in the group state.

All 18 matches will take place simultaneously, a true feast for the footie fan. 

Jay Cool

I am famously a former fan of the Washington football franchise. [Did he say famously? Forget it, he's rolling.] Even went a couple of seasons without watching more than a handful of NFL games. But while I'm not likely to return to rooting for an NFL franchise, a confluence of factors have me at least interested in the league more than I have been in recent years.

Obviously, the departure of the odious Dan Snyder and the Pigpen-esque cloud of scum that hung over everything he touched was a significant event as it relates to my feelings about the local franchise. And my family-driven affinity for the University of Colorado's football program brought the game closer to the top of my rooting mind.

But of late, there's something else that's captured my interest and attention. I think Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels might just be the coolest player we've ever seen. I don't mean "cool" in the Joe Namath, Joe Burrow, Clyde Frazier sense, though he's got some of that. I'm talking more about the way Daniels' makes every move look unhurried, effortless, and controlled. Smooooth. Extra o's intentional and obvious. Nineteen games into his NFL career, and dude is out here with a heart rate lower than a Florida iguana, current state.

He doesn't just look the part, he's putting up plaid numbers. In the history of the NFL, rookie starting quarterbacks have recorded three games where their team had no turnovers and no punts. All three of those games happened for the Commanders this season. Those three games engineered by Daniels are more than Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, and Patrick Mahomes have tallied combined in their careers.

Daniels' 891 yards rushing are the most ever by a rookie quarterback, and his 69.0% (nice) completion percentage is also tops amongst rookies all time. He recently surpassed Andrew Luck's mark for the most total yards in a season by a rookie, playoffs included. He's completed more postseason passes than any rookie in history, and he's six yards short of the rookie playoff record in that category. His back to back games completing more than 85% of his passes in weeks three and four of the season marked the first time any passer had ever done so. In the first four games of his career, he set an NFL record for highest completion percentage over that span - for everyone, not for rookies. I could go on, but Fairbank has commandeered all of the research interns.

Jayden Daniels has the makings.

So consider me a fan. Of the man. I think the Iggles have too much for Washington this afternoon, and I placed a wager to that effect. But it wouldn't break my heart to lose that bet if it means Jayden Daniels becomes the first rookie quarterback ever lead his team to the Super Bowl.

Gheorghemas Day 12: The Trailer

Well, it’s always good to close out the Gregheorghian calendar before the end of January. Lord knows it doesn’t always happen. Last year I threw a bunch of lists at you to finish off this month and Gmas. It was silly. This year it’s the traditional just a single list. Sensible. 

Although we all know that Lester trends Silly.

Marls recently commented on Day 8 that I am the “sentimentalist” of the G:TB masthead. When I inquired further, he explained, “Your appreciations post is one of my most looked forward to traditions, even if it sometimes arrives in March.”

Good News: It’s only January!
Bad News: I’m not doing my 12 Appreciations.

Sorry, buddy. The thing is, I went back and reviewed those appreciations from yesteryear, and there was so much redundancy that it essentially melded into one 15-years-long tradition of the reading of the same list.

To wit, I love and appreciate, in no particular order:

• My children
• My wife
• You people
• All my friends
• Not losing more friends
• Live music
• Good music
• New music
• Traveling the world
• Martha Wood
• The OBFT
• My job
• My sports teams fandom
• Good times
• Good people
• Goodness, this is all the same

I still love and appreciate all of those. A hell of a lot. But it’s not new. And it’s not news.

Although… you know... one is new, and worth highlighting:

• My sports teams fandom

Unbelievably, things have turned around for the two teams I have rooted for in mostly abject vain for as long as G:TB has been around. It’s been a whirlwind x 2!

GTB readers followed along with us as rob and I chronicled the last quarter of the MLB season, and way off brand, Misery Loves Company saw a season-ending Sox slide… and a Mets surge!!

The National League Championship Series??? Even those of us who bleed blaze (NY Giant) orange and royal (Brooklyn Dodger) blue didn’t see that party bus comin’. Lindor, Alonso, OMG, and Grimace. What a fun ride. And although it ground to a halt in the penultimate series, we will remember that for years.

And now, against way, way, way longer odds, the Washington Commanders are still alive in the playoffs entering the last week of January!!

The National Football Conference Championship game??? Even those of us who have bled, and I mean bled out at times, burgundy and gold for 50 years didn’t see that crazy train rollin’ down the track. Even if we flame out before the big one like the Mets did, there will be nothin’ left to do but smile, smile, smile, as Jerry told us.

I only have to go back a year for the bad old days. Gmas 2023 Day 12 List #3: 

New York Mets. And then... it all broke down. Old guys looked decrepit, young guys looked lost. Stink. Final Record: 75-87, 4th place
Washington Commanders. Oh how I root, root, root for the home team. If they don't win, it's the same. Disappointment. Final Record: 4-13, last place

 But the same was true back 14 years ago, another appreciations list I recently re-perused. 

New York Mets: 77-85, 4th place, ownership ineptitude, Madoff implications, one of the faces of the franchises defected to Miami, not getting better any time soon
Washington Redskins: at best they will meet my 6-10 prediction, ownership ineptitude, embarrassments galore, Rex Grossman, not getting better any time soon

It was the same appreciation or lack thereof most every year. While the Mets spiked in 2006 and 2015, there were doldrums and depths abound elsewhere. Fans of Washington footballers, meanwhile, were utterly starved out by their spineless leader for more than two decades. It seems like just yesterday, but it was only 18 months ago next week that that unlovable loser sold the franchise. And yet it also seems like 10 years, since the turnaround has been so extreme.  And so very not coincidental. As rob recently fired off:

I really am quite enjoying the "fuck dan snyder" aspect of the Commanders' playoff run.

Amen, buddy. Amen.

[Of note as I write this: my marriage in May was new, and I sure as hell love and appreciate her. But the Commanders in the NFC Championship game???! Come on! It's insane!!]

Well, Day 12 is a-comin’ soon, fear not. But it won't be the same ol' same ol', Marls. It will be everything you ever wanted in a Gheorghemas post. And less. Way less.

Native Recognition

We’re well past the point of accepting the lessons many of us learned as schoolkids about the American origin story. Or we should be. Slavery wasn’t merely an unfortunate chapter in the nation’s history. Settlement wasn’t peaceful interactions with Native populations in the east and hardy pioneers enduring vast open spaces and bravely fighting off savages as the nation grew westward. It’s a little more complicated and less flattering. 

Slavery was woven into the colonial and national fabric for 240 years and jump-started the economy of a fledgling nation that had no guarantee of success. Much of that expansion and economic growth occurred because settlers pushed off, killed and stole land from its original occupants, often with government and official backing. Slavery’s role in U.S. history has received increased attention, due to a wave of scholarly studies and accounts in recent years. The Native American experience in the country’s formation and its role in how and where we are is comparatively light. 

A group of writers and historians aim to change that, arguing that U.S. history that doesn’t include Native or Indian experiences and influences is incomplete at best, negligent and flat-out inaccurate at worst. One addition to the catalogue is “The Rediscovery Of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History,” winner of the 2023 National Book Award for non-fiction. Author Ned Blackhawk is a Shoshone and history professor at Yale, and his work is exhaustively researched and footnoted. 

The book opens with a fastball, high and tight: “How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world’s most exemplary democracy?” He writes: “For centuries America and the New World have been ideas that convey a sense of wonder and possibility made manifest by discovery, a historical act in which explorers are the protagonists. They are the drama’s actors and subjects. They think and name, conquer and settle, govern and own. They are at the center … just as Native Americans remain absent or appear as hostile or passive objects awaiting discovery and domination.” 

Blackhawk starts with Spanish settlers in the 16th century and works his way through to the end of the 20th century and the Indian sovereignty and power movement. The book includes many developments that people are aware of: diseases brought by European settlers and livestock for which Natives had no immunity and that killed millions; forced movement of tribes away from traditional lands; the staggering number of treaties that government entered into and later broke with Native peoples; state-sanctioned violence against and measures to exterminate Indians, such as troop raids of Indian homesteads and massive bison kill-offs; removal of thousands of children from their homes and placement in government-run Indian boarding schools, many of which had appalling records of abuse. 

But Blackhawk also gets into less trod upon areas such as Native influences on the American Revolution and language of the Constitution. He shows that early treaty-making with Indian tribes was essentially training wheels for the new nation and informed later negotiations with foreign governments. He points out that the country quickly grew beyond its ability to control people and borders, so settlers and local militias in inland areas often took matters into their own hands, either with or without government approval. Government agreements and treaties with various tribes were broken or ignored by settlers. 

Discontent with government by those who lived hundreds or thousands of miles away pre-dates the nation’s founding and was an animating force in our development. He discusses how gold and mineral discoveries in the west and accompanying settler booms, as well as the military ramp-up surrounding the Civil War, accelerated Native death and displacement. 

Blackhawk provides links between the nation’s settler colonialism practices toward Indians with imperialistic measures such as intervention in Latin America and even far-flung examples like U.S. involvement in the Philippines as part of the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th century. For example, Pres. Theodore Roosevelt said in a speech at Hampton (Va) Institute in 1906: “The reasoning which justifies our having made war against Sitting Bull also justifies our having checked the outbreak of (Emilio) Aguinaldo and his followers.” If the U.S, he said, “were morally bound to abandon the Philippines, we were also morally bound to abandon Arizona to the Apaches.” 

Orville Platt, kind of a racist dick

A thread that runs throughout the book is the nation’s inability to enact or maintain consistent policies toward Native peoples. Sovereign and independent? Paternal wards? Assimilation? Marginalization? Elimination? Always with a side of racism and white supremacy. Blackhawk explains, for instance, that Union soldiers and government-backed militias in California and the West during the Civil War were far more motivated to kill Indians than to defeat the Confederacy. A San Francisco paper wrote in the early 1860s: “While we believe the manner in which the Indians are being exterminated is perfectly horrible, we are disposed to make every possible allowance for our own people.” Connecticut Senator Orville Platt, whose tenure spanned 25 years and bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, once said, “The red man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect, and … no treaty or contract with him is binding."

Blackhawk writes that the romanticized history of the nation took hold after the Civil War and in the period around the centennial celebration and toward the end of the century. The idea of providence as an elemental part of America and Americans dates to the Puritans. The elimination of slavery had atoned for its primary sin, he writes, and the country’s burgeoning wealth and prosperity and place on the world stage validated its actions. Dealings with Native peoples were sanitized, justified or ignored in the telling. 

Blackhawk’s book is a worthy read, though I wouldn’t recommend it for everybody. It’s more textbook than narrative, which is understandable from a historian. There are compelling characters, incidents and descriptions throughout, but they’re often presented without flourish, arguably to the book’s benefit because the message never descends into a polemic. Facts and references tell the tales. Not always an easy read but accounts such as his are necessary ones if we want something more than myth.

22 Days?

We've made it three weeks into the new (Gregorian) calendar, though we haven't yet completed last year's Gheorghian version, and we're yet to drop a single filler-centric post. Well done, Gheorghies, and also, what's your glitch?

Enjoy this little earworm as recompense.

I can't believe this is my life

Longtime readers know that I am a huge fan of Toto washlet toilets, so much so that when I moved I brought my Toto with me.  Twas a toilet transplant--I swapped the standard toilet from my new house into the bathroom where my Toto resided in my old house.  Life is good.

The Toto is a beast when it comes to flushing.  It never backed up in seven-plus years of hard use, despite the insane amount of toilet paper the distaff members of zfamily require daily.  So I was very surprised when zwoman reported a clog.  I busted out the plunger and fixed it pretty quickly.  But the clog reappeared later in the day.

This recurred for a few days so I made an appointment with a plumber.  In the interregnum I plunged a number of clogs.  And eventually a hex-head bolt appeared in the bottom of the bowl.  I put on rubber gloves and fished it out.  Then I consulted my owner's manual to see where it came from.  It turns out the inside is the same as any other toilet, it's just a porcelain S-shaped tube.

There should not be a bolt in there.  It did not take me long to review my mental Rolodex of Toto users to identify the likeliest candidate to flush a bolt down the toilet.  But zson swore up and down that he didn't do it, asserting that he knew this would piss me off to no end and would thus never screw with the Toto.  This makes sense--he loves his devices too much to jeopardize them so stupidly--and one of his donkey friends had been over recently so I mentally blamed the donkey.

The plumber showed up, augered the toilet, and a few hundred bucks later all systems were go.  Until the Toto clogged again.  I made another appointment, which was $0 because it was a revisit to resolve the unresolved problem, and when the plumber got there I asked him to take the toilet off the floor and see whatever other nonsense was flushed down there.

The guy balked.  He hemmed and hawed at me for 15-20 minutes about how much this would cost, how it would be cheaper to buy a new toilet, and all sorts of stuff that might've made sense in different circumstances.  The toilet wasn't the issue--it was the foreign object lodged deep in the bowels of the bowl--so finally I started clapping really loud like a football coach and said something like "That's great, but let's do this!  I'm willing to roll the dice here!  Let's get this crapper off the floor!  C'mon now, let's go!"  The pipeman pursed his lips and reluctantly trudged up to the salle de bain, only to find that one of the screws holding my pride and joy in place was stripped.  Not a perfect transplant.  So I had to order funky replacement screws which took a few weeks to arrive.

The poor crapped clogged regularly while I waited.  I swore at it daily, stabbing away with my plunger, cleaning up foul fluids that splashed out from my vigor.  The new mounting hardware arrived just in time for the holidays when I had a houseful of visitors lodging all manner of excreta and giant wads of paper in my wounded commode.  The plumber finally emerged from his holiday cocoon, ready to spread his wings and tackle tough issues.   

He arrived with a helper, a veritable Mario and Luigi situation.  And again he hemmed and hawed about the expense, condescendingly telling me that he already augured the thing and it must be the toilet itself, the price of a toilet vs. the price of his work, and so on.  He did not understand my argument that buying a new Toto is wildly more than the price to remove the old one, and that I'd have to pay for that anyway if I got a new shitter.  When my patience ran thin after 10-15 minutes I repeated my old ball coach approach and harangued Leaky Pete up the stairs.  About 6 to 9 minutes later he called down to me, "Uh, sir?  You should see this."

So I went upstairs.  The toilet was off the floor, and where the hole in the floor should've been was a giant lump of shit and toilet paper.  Scooping this mess clearly wasn't part of the pipe whisperer's job, so I again donned some rubber gloves and retrieved the turd with a dog poop bag.  This is what I found twixt the dung and the drain.

For the uninitiated, that's a fidget spinner.  Some jackass flushed a goddam fidget spinner down my beloved Toto.

Incredibly, I didn't explode.  Maybe I'm older and calmer.  Maybe I'm resigned to the fact that I've been stripped of all dignity and can't have nice things.  But I didn't get upset.

And I was magnanimous towards the reluctant drain weasel.  I told him "I knew there was something stupid stuck in there.  There's nothing mechanical to the drain, but there was clearly something moving around that I could lodge loose with the plunger.  Had to take it off the floor to get to it."  He simply nodded.  After I paid, on his way out the door he opined "You were like a dog with a bone with this thing."  I smiled and shooed him out.  I'm mellowing in middle age.

Later that day I interrogated everyone who both (1) lives in zhome and (2) uses fidget spinners.  That's an n of 2 people.  zson realized the enormity of the situation, likely fearing for his life, and said "I didn't do it!  That's [zdaughter's] fidget spinner!"  I noted that ownership isn't relevant here--maybe zwoman flushed zdaughter's fidget spinner.  zson didn't think that story made sense but eventually saw my point.  And of course zdaughter plausibly stated "Why would I do anything that stupid?"  

So I'm blaming zson's aforementioned jackass friend.  On the bright side, the Toto flushes like a champ again.  This cost me close to four figures, but what's money?

A few days later, zdaughter came home with a huge smile on her face, walked into my home office, and said "You won't believe what the para gave everyone in class today."  She reached into her backpack and pulled out a little case, then she pulled back the lid as one would pry open a box while proposing on bended knee to reveal ... a new fidget spinner.

We’re #69! Gheorghetown Edition

As of the starting of this post, Georgetown men’s basketball is ranked #69 in the Ken Pomeroy College Basketball rankings.   Sitting at 12-6 overall and 3-4 in a middling Big East, Ed Cooley’s Hoyas are currently outside the NCAA tourney bubble, but at least are in spitting distance of making the dance.  (Note: they have since fallen after yesterday’s games even though they did not play. Take note, this feature may end up being a jinx.)

Recent History: Over the past few seasons, the Georgetown basketball program has been a lot more like Jonestown (too soon?) than the juggernaut that was Georgetown of the 80s & 90s.  In related news, Guyana is going to open the Jonestown site to tourists for anyone that has a morbid interest in 50 year old cult mass suicides.   

The once proud program has been rattling around at the bottom half of the Big East for most of the last decade.  Since the 2014-2015 season, the Hoyas are 135-179 (.430) overall and 54-129 (.295) in conference.  In the past three years they have won 4 Big East games (FOUR!) including the 2021-22 Patrick Ewing led team that went 0-19 in the conference. Ooof.  

Mascot/Nickname Profile:  Georgetown’s mascot is Jack the Bulldog with the current iteration being the 9th live English Bulldog playing the role of Jack.  According to the good folks over at BulldogWorld:

Because of the English Bulldogs build, it makes it difficult and dangerous for them to mate. Their stocky, front-end heavy bodies can mean that the males are unable to mount the females, and even if they are able to mount the female, they are at risk of injuring the female with their heavy bodies. This is why an English Bulldog should be artificially inseminated.

This fact reinforces the bulldog as the perfect mascot for Georgetown.  

As for the nickname, back in the day, fans of opposing teams at the Big East Tournament should chant, “What the hell’s a Hoya?”   I’m still not sure I know.  According to the Googles and the Wikis, it comes from a combination of the Greek “Hoia” and Latin “Saxa” to create the not nerdy at all popular sporting chant “Hoya Saxa!”   Beloved by fans of the classical languages, “Hoya Saxa!” translates loosely to “What Rocks!”.  Yeah, I don’t know either.  

Home Arena: Capital One Arena (Cap. 20,356) As Mr. Fabulous said in The Blues Brothers, “It’s a Fucking Barn”.  

Notable Basketball Alumni: Sleepy Floyd, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, Allen Iverson and many others.  However, it has been 12 years since the Hoyas have had a player drafted and there is only one alumni currently playing in the NBA. (For those that like to play at home, I’ll put their identity at the end)

While basketball alumni that went on to play basketball get most of the headlines, it’s also fun to dive a bit deeper into the media guide and see what other notables suited up for a team.  Georgetown being Georgetown, they have a few.  These include Henry Hyde (Rob feel free to toss tomatoes or pee on the grave of this political opportunist), and former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue who averaged 11.3 points per game as a 3 year letterman from 1960 -1962, including his senior year when he was elected team captain and student body president.  

Most notably for a certain subsection of the G:TB readership, attorney William Shea was a Hoya cager from 1929-1931.  Shea was instrumental in getting an expansion baseball team awarded to New York in 1962.  When the New York Metropolitans Baseball Club built their new stadium, they named it in honor of William Shea, later indirectly leading to the naming of my cat. 

Current Season Results: As noted above, the Hoyas fortunes are vastly improved this year over the past few years.  They have winning record overall and are 10-3 at home, but have begun to struggle as they face the teeth of their Big East conference schedule.   For the degenerates out there, they are 10-8 ATS.  

Reasons To Believe: Ed Cooley can coach.  The 2022 Naismith College Coach of the Year has turned the program around after the bleak Patrick Ewing years.  They have more talent on the roster now and have a coach who can get more out of them.  Even the best teams in the Big East this year have proven that they can be beaten so anyone in the top half of the conference will have a chance to run the table at the Big East Tournament and get in to the NCAAs.

Reasons To Fade Them:  They have zero “Quad 1” wins so far this season and the Big east is not strong enough so they won’t get too many in conference opportunities to improve the quality win category.  They have lost four in a row and just lost at home to DePaul who had lost 39 consecutive Big East games and had not won a road conference game since 2022.  At this point an at-large bid looks to be a loooong shot.

If I had to bet, I’d bet against G-Town making the NCAA tourney this year, but it does feel like Cooley has this team headed in the right direction.  Big John Thompson is not walking through that door, but there is no reason why G-Town can’t be a power again. 

Hoya still in the Association: Jeff Green.  At 38 years old, the Cheverly, MD product has been a consistent contributor, made over $100M in the NBA and has himself a ring (Denver).  

We’re # 69! A Possibly Recurring Gheorghe: The Blog Feature

College basketball used to be much more of a featured subject around here.  The golden age William & Mary basketball under Tony Shaver combined with lots of great “mid-major” hoops stories made for fertile ground for the scribes of G:TB.  

However, somewhere along the way - maybe at the crossroads of massive conference realignment, the transfer portal & NIL making senior laden mid-major teams a thing of the past, and the Samantha Huge hatchet job on Tony Shaver that led William & Mary basketball back into the wilderness - college hoops lost a bit of its luster for me and many others.   This point was driven home to me earlier this season when W&M started the conference season 3-0, leading me to peruse the overall CAA standings.  

I was aware that in 2023 the CAA conference had renamed itself from the Colonial Athletic Association to the Coastal Athletic Association, I guess because most of the teams are along the East Coast (as they always have been - not sure if league leadership realizes that all of the schools are located in original 13 colonies).    What I had not realized was the motley bunch of schools were now members of the CAA.   Monmouth?  NC A&T?  WTF?  Why isn’t the Tribe applying for admission to the Patriot?  Clearly I had not been paying as much attention to college hoops as I had in the past.

Given that W&M is now 5-0 in conference and my grad school alma mater is threatening to be relevant again for the first time in almost 25 years (at least until the wins are vacated for recruiting violations - Wait, are there recruiting violations anymore?), I have committed to paying a bit more attention to college roundball.   Having a 6 year old at home will limit my ability to be a true hoops junkie like I had in the past, but baby steps…

But how to jump back in?  One thought I had was to focus just on possible NCAA tournament teams.  For my money, NCAA Men’s D1 Basketball Tournament remains our greatest collective sporting event.  Notwithstanding all the upheaval in college sports, the month-long spectacle still retains much of its past charm.  68 of the best college basketball teams in the country competing for a national championship.  Doesn’t matter what conference you are from or how blue your blood is, you win and you advance.  

Now, given all the lowly conference champs that will get automatic bids, bracketologists will tell you that the actual bubble for “at large” bids to the tourney is team ranked in the mid-50 or so in the various computer rankings (NET, Ken Pom, Etc.) but here at G:TB I think its more fun to embrace the juvenilia and (like Gronk) focus on #69.

So, this is my commitment to the tens (ones?) of people reading this. Over the next few weeks, I will do my best to profile some of the 69th ranked teams fighting for a bid to this year’s NCAA tournament.  Also, to make Rob happy and drive post count, I will hold the first edition until at least tomorrow!  Unfortunately, the payoff will likely be less than the lead up and that is not saying much…

Rhymes With 'Skews,' More to Choose, May Need Booze

As we await the adventures of the upcoming Presidential administration, groups of reporters and media types decided that there are better models for delivering news and information. Traditional media, they say, isn’t up to the task of covering present society, particularly a past and future president whose m.o. essentially is to ravage the buffet table and belch into a megaphone. Newspapers and news organizations have been strip-mined of resources and staff. Many of those who are still at it chase profits and clicks at the expense of reporting. Corporate overlords, and investors, value their bottom line over an informed citizenry. 

Niche media efforts have sprung up in response. Among the latest is an outlet called “The Contrarian,” which will be helmed by attorney and former U.S. diplomat and government official Norm Eisen and Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who walked away from her gig after sixteen years. “Our goal,” she told CNN, “is to combat, with every fiber of our being, the authoritarian threat that we face.” 

On her way out the door, she also delivered this bouquet: “The Post, along with most mainstream news outlets, has failed spectacularly at a moment that we most need a robust, aggressive free press.” 

The Post has impressively managed to irritate people both inside and outside the building for months. Gazillionaire owner Jeff Bezos nixed publication of an endorsement of VP Kamala Harris shortly before the election, reasoning that such political support presents the appearance of bias and that it likely doesn’t sway voters anyway. There was much in-house grumbling, and the Post lost a reported 250,000 digital subscribers in the aftermath of the decision. 

Part of the spiked Ann Telnaes cartoon

Since then, Amazon, Bezos’s cash cow and primary source of his staggering wealth, contributed $1 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund (show of hands: who thinks the caterers and musicians see a dime of that money?). Amid the surge of plutocratic fawning over the next Prez, Post editors recently scuttled an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer winner Ann Telnaes showing Bezos and other business leaders supplicating themselves before the Orange Guy. The Post’s opinion editor called it a “sound editorial decision,” as recent columns and pieces had called out Bezos and others, and that the cartoon was “overkill.” Telnaes walked, as well. 

The departure of a cartoonist and op-ed writer isn’t quite the United Mine Workers strike of the 1940s, or even the Amazon delivery hub drivers walkout last year. Nor does it begin to fix what ails journalism. Journalists can be tediously thin-skinned for folks whose job is to hold others to account. And they love some self-righteous posturing, particularly as it relates to their own work. That said, concerns within the profession about the tone of coverage and accountability are valid, starting with the guy at the top and those around him. 

We live in anxious times, when an increasing number of people seek confirmation rather than information, and any unpleasant or inconvenient reporting is labeled “fake” or dismissed as biased. The Contrarian joins a handful of other outlets trying to gain traction in this fractured media landscape, such as The Bulwark and Zeteo. 

The Bulwark is a conservative-leaning, anti-Trump outlet founded in 2019 by political strategist Sarah Longwell and longtime opinionators Bill Kristol and Charlie Sykes, who has since departed. Its website says it was founded “to provide analysis and reporting in defense of America’s liberal democracy. That’s it. That’s the mission.” 

Zeteo, which comes from the Greek word meaning to seek or search, was launched last February by left-leaning rouser of rabble Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist and author with stints at Al Jazeera, MSNBC and The Guardian. It promises independent and unfiltered journalism. Both sites feature veteran, respected heavy hitters as correspondents and contributors. Both have some free content but are subscription sites, and they hope folks will spring for the full menu. 

One problem with the harrumphing and torch waving among the niche sites and start-ups is that they’re planting flags as much as committed to providing relevant information. They report and gasbag through their own filters and are unlikely to appeal to anyone who isn’t already in their camp. It's increasingly difficult to find unbiased news and opinion sites, though I’d argue that some degree of bias is inherent in the process. The Nation, MSNBC, the New York Times and Washington Post skew left. Fox News, the National Review, Wall Street Journal, Newsmax skew right. Closest to centrist or middle-of-the-road might be outlets such as the old, reliable Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, Reuters and Forbes. 

One interesting addition is 1440, a news site that pulls from numerous sources and bills itself as “curated by humans, not algorithms.” It’s focused on fact-based pieces, not opinions. Its name is a nod to Gutenberg’s first mechanical printing press, which he built in the year (approximately) 1440, and the fact that there are 1,440 minutes in a day; the site’s honchos pledge not to waste people’s time with filler and opinions. A noble aim, for sure, though I think the next four years will require some distractions from whatever fresh guano crosses our paths. Vigilance and goofballery in equal measures. Buckle up.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas, Day Eleven

On the eleventh day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me...

11 Months of Wisdom*

Ten Things from Florence

Nine Games Worth Notice

A Moment of Rest

Seven Things for Reading

Six old and new musical experiences
Five roadsters you can and should buy right now
FORE! An overdue update on LIV & the PGA Tour
Three Ways of Coping
Stories from two three strokes
And much needed hip mo-bili-ty

* Not guaranteed to contain wisdom

And away we go, friends, for a whirlwind tour of last year's content, and what's always my favorite post to write. In 2024, we started fast, finished with a flourish, and were reasonably consistent in the middle (except for July. We're gonna have a talk with July). We wrote a lot about our usual suspects, but we added a pop-up baseball blog for several weeks in September and October, and 2024 MVP OBX Dave reliably chimed in with high-quality musings on a broad range of subjects, including sports and media, and media about sports.

To illustrate the months this year, we chose to feature Minneapolis Public Radio The Current's top 11 songs of 2024 in reverse order, so you get some formatting break and some cool tunes. You're welcome.

As the Muppets say, on with the show this is it.

January

You'll be shocked to learn that we started the year with filler and whimsy. Our first "real" post extolled the virtues of posting on G:TB. Sorta.

WCSAGD returned, now with regional curation!

Whitney came home, follicularly speaking.

OBX Dave dropped the first of many deep thinks on college sports.

Z's original car post triggered a run on automative efforts. Like this one. And this. This, too.

Posted about stuff I'd take with me if I had to. Which touched off a mini-run. Here's z's version. In light of the current conflagration in L.A., it all seems a bit melancholic.

The Twelfth Day of Gheorghemas 2023 started on January, 31, 2024. And it was an accurately-labeled extravaganza, taking up a full 12 posts. One of the best uses of postcount in recent memory.

February

The increasing ubiquity of gambling is problematic.

We became Robbie Avia stans. Because of course we did.

We lost Mojo Nixon.

But we found Caitlin Clark.

History came to Colonial Williamsburg.

We lost the Lefthander, too. And Richard Lewis. Tough month for legends.

March

Cole Brauer, pint-sized badass.

We felt the first tremblings of what was to come, politically. It is a goddamn burden to be this right this often.

Far too late to the Joey Votto party, G:TB was.

Some words suck.

OBX Dave dissed March Madness.

The Curse of G:TB, vanquished.

NJ Dave cross-promoted.

Gheorghe's Six-Pack made its 2024 debut with a bit of misdirection.

Closed the month with a bit of inside baseball, journalism category.

April

(In case you were wondering, this was my favorite song of the year.)

My kid is a problem (complimentary).

I published a book!

Notify featured de La, Toad, and Garth.

I was interviewed for a podcast! By Augury Dave! Cross-cross-promotion.

A freewheeling journey to...COOKY PUSS!

May

College sports and money. Money and college sports.

Weird and whimsical. Trainspotting edition.

Dance, Marucci!

The Z nattered. A nation didn't listen.

Witnessed a real, live high-speed pursuit in Ohio.

Pokey LaFarge!

Whit got married. Zed met a new friend.

June

The best Sports Illustrated covers, up to 1979.

Go consumerism! 

The 12 cars of Whitney.

OBX Dave went looking for a bar fight.

Time. Is Marching On.

In retrospect, we were a bit too naively optimistic.

July

For a month with the fewest posts (13) since April 2023, we managed some heft. Multiple robust explorations of various topics. And a Muppet post. Well played, lads. 

We invented the dumbest quiz game. So far.

OBX Dave examined himself.

We played against some people way better than us.

Party like it's 1994.

Back to the future?

Gheorghe explained Project 2025, and now, well...fuck.

The greatest sports photo ever taken.

August

Bill, Ted, Vladimir, Estragon.

OBX Dave endorses. Nuking the electoral college.

There is another Z-man.

Caw!

Whitney had a great idea. It didn't end great. At least for one half of Misery Loves Company.

And here was the first pop-up MLC post.

Tony Hawk and The Mystery of the Suited Skater.

In which I coin the phrase "incellectual dorks" and exhort my father to haunt the MAGA movement.

September

In praise of TOOTBLAN.

Our man at the beach hates chain gangs.

My brain is dumb.

San Marinnnnooooooo!!!

Ed Sheeran seems a top lad.

Distinguished Teej Filler!

Our elder statesman weighed in on NIL.

October

Mets win! Mets in!

Magic, Bird. Angel, Caitlin?

We celebrate pop and lock. Very on brand.

We enjoy it when OBX Dave brings the shade.

A deep sigh the size of Grimace.

We lost Fernando.

Fuck remains the fucking best.

November

New Big Whistle in the Burg get it going.

Gheorghe Predicted the Election. Gheorghe is an idiot.

G:TB can legally drink!

Give you one guess which Gheorghie wrote a post about dildos.

Chronicles of an Aging Gheorghie.

One of us has a wee crush on Mike Schur. And Ween.

Our guy Joel Dahmen kept his card. By the skin of his teeth.

As God is my witness, a late Thanksgiving meant the last post of the first 11 months was a classic.

And that's all we wrote, friends. A rollicking good year full of joy, whimsy, baseball, tunes, and laughter, with a soupçon of agitated ranting and melancholy. I am, as always, biased, but I do believe we packed more quality into our 200 posts this year than usual. Maybe we're getting the hang of this blogging thing. In any case, love y'all. Here's to 200 more in 2025.