RIP Norman Dale

 I might need to test the Caine-Hackman theory this weekend as long as George Clinton doesn’t show up at the house. 

Get Up

Pushing down that which should, by rights, be pushed off a cliff, because I feel like bustin' loose.

And speaking of Bustin' Loose, we're here to celebrate the grand opening of the temple of D.C.'s very own music. The Go-Go Museum and Cafe opened its doors just last week in Anacostia, 8,000 square feet of energy and homage. 

In his article in The Washington Post about the museum, Chris Richards writes, "For nearly 50 years now, Washington’s homegrown dialect of dance music has proved itself taut in execution and expansive in form, a densely woven continuity, a hyper-funky ongoingness that continues to consecrate a community’s bond."

If you're gonna write about music (or dance about architecture), I feel like that's a pretty good sentence. I think I'll leave it at that, and send y'all out with some ongoingness.

Fight, You Fucks

I could chronicle the litany of cruel fuckery currently being visited upon the land* by the band of twerps too dull to make the cut as John Hughesian losers, but that would be both depressing and repetitive. Nah, mate, I'm here to take aim at a different target: the feeble dipshits making up what passes as organized opposition during these dark times. And I come bearing a solution, or at least an idea.

* Check that story, y'all. An ICE prosecutor in Dallas runs a white supremacist X account and has for years. 

It is hard to know based upon current evidence whether the Democratic Party is incompetent or unwilling. And it's a real challenge to decide which would be worse, though I think the answer is the latter. The paucity of Democratic spinal stiffness at the present moment is infuriating and mind-bending in equal measure, and folks are pointing it out. This piece by the reliable excellent Dave Zirin is a case in point.

The people that brought us the neutering of Tim Walz (not over it, man) and the relentless tacking to the center are still at it, nattering on about norms and going on book tours in the midst of an honest to God crisis. If I never hear from James Carville, Chuck Schumer, and Rahm Emanuel again, I'll count it as a modest blessing, though I suspect that's too much to hope for.

No, I want more of this:

I want the Dems to talk about what they're going to DO about *waves hands* all the things. They could start by establishing the stakes and reclaiming the mantle of the champions of regular Americans, like the AFSCME did back in the 70s.

There are exceptions on the left, people who are doing their best to resist the onslaught and - probably more importantly - continue to speak loudly and often about what's actually happening and why it matters. The aforementioned AOC is at the forefront. Pete Buttigieg seems to get it. JB Pritzker's been vocal. But it's too few, too far between, too meek. In the face of literal Nazi salutes by Republican leaders, Dems can't seem to offer more than sanctimonious tut-tutting.

I want Nazi punching. 

At the very least, I want sustained, loud public condemnation, clarity about consequences, and a vision for how things might be different. I want the Dems to marshal the considerable comms acumen in their ranks (they own fucking Hollywood, for Chrissakes) and make some goddamn noise. 

Also, punching Nazis.

There happens to be a model for the kind of thing I prescribe, conveniently on offer not so far away, at least culturally. The notion of a shadow cabinet has a long history in the U.K., where the opposition party often names shadow ministers who make it their business to respond to the actions of their real-world counterpart and set up alternative options for public consideration. At the moment, for example, Kemi Badenoch is the Shadow Prime Minister, her Conservative Party out of power, but not meekly surrendering their agency.

My modest proposal, then, is that the Democrats take a page from the Brits and stand up their own Shadow Cabinet, made up of qualified (which in and of itself would shine in stark relief of the current Cabinet), opinionated, and eloquent spokespeople who can make the case over and over to whoever will listen. I've got some ideas about people who might staff such a body, since the aforementioned AOC is already operating as the Shadow President.

Attorney General: I really wish Barack Obama were more temperamentally suited to this kind of thing, because he'd be great. But he isn't, so we're tapping Marc Elias. The founder of Democracy Docket is a prolific thorn in the Administration's side, winning electoral legal case after case. He's also great at the optics and comms - check out this open letter he recently wrote to Elon Musk about that fucking idiot's anti-Semitism.

Department of Defense: We're going a bit conservative for our Shadow SECDEF. This role doesn't call for a bomb thrower (pun only intended after the fact), but a sober counterpoint to the idiocracy currently occupying the Pentagon. The fact is that Michèle Flournoy is better qualified than Pete Hegseth by several orders of magnitude, and that she's a woman is a glaring repudiation of the current administration's aggressive purging of non-white non-male leaders in the department. Fluornoy is the highest-ranking woman in the history of DoD, serving as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under Obama.

Department of Treasury: JB Pritzker is an unlikely populist, but we don't go to war with the army we want, we go to war with the army we have. The billionaire Governor of Illinois has the advantage of being an actually competent businessman in contrast with BPOTUS (the B stands for Bloated), and his wealth insulates him from the ham-handed intimidation tactics in vogue on the right. As noted above, Pritzker's been one of the few Dems who seem to both grasp the gravity of the current situation and understand how to address it.

Department of Transportation: Since there really isn't anything called a Shadow Vice President (and because the Dems would never agree on who to select in the first place), we're gonna run it back here with Pete Buttigieg. Listen here to what he recently said about the coming budget process. We'll give him a bigger portfolio than DOT, but he's really well-situated to give us the facts about how cuts to things like the FAA will impact Americans.

Department of Commerce: During the Biden Administration, Lina Khan was a particularly effective boogeyman for the right. As the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, she continued her public advocacy for robust antitrust enforcement. She's wicked smart, and highly wary of the aggregation of power in the hands of the few.

Department of Labor: If we're not getting a bomb thrower at Defense, we'll make up for it here. Shawn Fain rose to public prominence as the President of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union during its 2023 strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis. He's famously pugnacious, and he's unabashedly pro-Democratic agenda. Witness, for example, his speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Department of State: One of the most egregiously cruel, ill-advised, and plan assholish moves of the new administration's first month (it's only been a fucking MONTH?!?!?) is the demolition of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), normally responsible for 40% of the world's development assistance. Samantha Power was the Administrator of USAID under Joe Biden, and has a long record of international policy leadership. She's been criticized for being too militaristic in her role at USAID, and is a part of the very centrist wing of the party, but she's not afraid to speak her mind, and she's smart as hell. Big tent, y'all. 

Department of Education: Here's how Perry Bacon, Jr. opened a recent Washington Post story about the President of Wesleyan University: "Many college presidents and deans are issuing mealymouthed statements, ending long-standing programs, removing content from websites and otherwise cowering in the face of the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education. Then there’s Michael S. Roth." Roth has been one of the most vocal private sector opponents of the current fuckery. He said this in an opinion piece in Slate, "“Leaders in civil society shouldn’t be ‘demure’ in the face of authoritarian attempts to align all power with a president’s agenda, civil society be damned.” A-fucking-men.

Department of Interior: Deb Haaland is running for Governor of New Mexico, and Joe Biden's Secretary of the Interior would use the platform offered by the Shadow Cabinet to her and our advantage. She's an outspoken defender of preservation and sane land use. 

This does not look like someone to trifle with

Department of Energy: One of the loudest anti-Trump voices currently in Congress, non-AOC division, is Texas rep Jasmine Crockett. A member of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, Crockett has both the policy credentials and the requisite willingness to get in good trouble. Crockett got into a heated argument with Nancy Mace (R-Loony Toons) on the floor of the House in January. She's proper pissed off.

Department of Health and Human Services: Ranging a bit far afield for this one to bring in an innovative mind with serious technology chops. Todd Park was the HHS Chief Technology Officer (CTO) under Barack Obama, where he led efforts to open government data to the public and build accessible technology platforms for citizens. He's wicked smart, funny, and relatable, despite being a really wealthy serial healthtech entrepreneur. Also, I've met him, so he'd help burnish my personal brand. Winning!

Department of Housing and Urban Development: HUD is gonna take a beating under the DOGE doofuses. It'd be great if the Shadow Cabinet had someone willing to take on Elon Musk's jackassery. California rep Robert Garcia called the Boer Bore a "dick" on live television last week. That's a promising start. But Garcia's more than just a dirty-talking face. He's also one of the founders of the YIMBY Caucus, focused on increasing access to affordable housing.

Department of Veterans Affairs: Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth has been a staunch defender of the nation's Vets since she joined Congress as a Representative in 2013. Duckworth is a retired Army National Guard Lieutenant Colonel who lost her right leg at the hip and her left below the knee when the helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents. She's been highly and righteously publicly angry at the proposed cuts to the VA and DoD.

Department of Agriculture: Last, but by no means least, we're bringing former Senator Jon Tester back to the spotlight to tell the Dems' story on the Ag front. Tester is famously a farmer from Montana who deeply understands the work the Department does and its impact on American families. Plus, he looks like your town's football coach, which'll help the Dems connect with a certain demographic.

Our Shadow Cabinet is a group of highly-qualified, serious-minded, patriotic Americans from a wide range of backgrounds. They look like America, something the nation's current leadership seems to despise. And they've all shown a penchant for a fight, which the Democratic party sorely lacks as an institution at the moment. C'mon, Dems, let's get this done. Show us some spine.

And seriously, more Nazi-punching.

Self-Serving Gifts

Did you screw up your Valentine's Day gift?  Don't worry, I have you covered.  Multiple people have told me I'm good at giving gifts.  I'm also good at giving self-serving gifts and you should be too.  

Self-serving gifts are gifts you will enjoy as much as the recipient.  Vacations are great self-serving gifts.  For example, I took zwoman to California early in our relationship.  We hung out with friends in San Francisco where we ate well and drank deeply, then we went to San Diego where we also ate well and drank deeply and went to a Padres game and the zoo and the beach and had a great time.  Tickets to concerts and sporting events are smaller gifts but can be equally self-serving.

At this stage in our lives, vacations often aren't gift-tacular because we have to bring our kids with us and they tend to make things harder than they need to be.  And zwoman would rather go to bed early than go to a concert these days.

Up until recently I was still able to rely on some of my lesser but still wonderfully self-serving gifts.  But no longer.  The last time I gave zwoman some lingerie she held it up and said "What am I going to do this?"  I can't blame her, last time I saw myself naked I exclaimed "What the hell happened to me?!"  I've started hanging a sheet over the bathroom mirror so I don't accidentally catch a glimpse of myself coming out of the shower.  It's like I'm sitting shiva over here.    

Similarly, she still uses the gift cards to the waxing salon but not necessarily where I intended.  On Monday morning she told me she was going over there and I guess she saw the hopeful expression on my face and tone in my voice when I said "Oh?" because she replied "Don't get excited, they're waxing my mustache."  Such is life in our sixth decade.

Perhaps you're in the same boat.  You can still find a gift that serves you as much as your loved one.  This year I got zwoman a bread maker for Christmas and it paid off tremendously.  She really enjoys making bread.  I enjoy eating warm, fresh, homemade bread.  Everyone wins.  And she's been a bakin' fool with this thing, at least three loaves a week.  Whole wheat, French, rye, white, gluten-free, you name it she's baked it.

Maybe you and your lady can't take vacations like you used to, or go out like you used to, or fornicate in naughty attire with clean-as-a-whistle delicates like you used to, but you can still eat fresh bread every day.  Go get her a bread maker.  You'll thank me later.

Fitter Filler

I've got a doozy of a post in the offing, in which I reflect upon the times we live in ("dark times", according to Dave, master of understatement) and offer a bit of advice to the inexplicably limp Democratic Party. I say it's a doozy because there's *waves hands* SO MUCH SHIT HAPPENING, and it's nigh impossible to contain it in one cogent post, so do not expect cogency. 

Zman's efforting a post that's likely much more interesting, though less profane, so be excited about that, too. 

Today, though, just a bit of filler. Nothing fancy. Trying to keep y'all fit as we make our way through this fuckery, seven minutes at a time.

Some of you exercise regularly. Zman's got a 3,000 day Peloton streak going. Danimal's a damn dolphin, what with all his swimming. Dave is a polymath, or at least a polymove, playing hoops and soccer, rollerblading (insert joke here, and in the comments), among other things. I do some yoga, some Peloton bike and strength, a bit of soccer - I like to move it move it.

But some days I don't have even 30 minutes, especially now that the soccer coaching season has started. (Have I told you that I lost my three best players before tryouts even started? Not great, Bob. Gonna find out how my X's and O's stack up without my Jimmies and Joes.) So I was happy to see a feature in The Washington Post (soon not to get my subscription dollars, what with Jeff Bezos' knee-bending) about a scientifically-proven way to maintain strength and flexibility in a short window.

Exercise physiologist Chris Jordan created a seven-minute, 12-exercise circuit designed to raise one's heart rate and work a broad range of muscle groups. After testing it extensively, a 2023 study in the National Library of Medicine by a group of researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that the workouts raised the inexperienced exercisers’ heart rates enough to improve their fitness over time. The study also suggested that the circuit was more enjoyable than other exercise, making it more likely that adherents would continue to exercise.

You can find the workout here. And if you follow along, you get to work out with this fella:

We're No. 69! Rams Edition

Less than a month until NCAA Selection Sunday, so the final push for teams to bolster their cases for inclusion and to prevent the entire Southeastern Conference from en masse invitation. Compelling cases abound for the 68-team field among programs from marquee leagues and so-called mid-majors. 

 

Personally, I have a soft spot for teams from lower rated leagues that excel over middle-of-the-pack teams in blue blood conferences that possess numerous structural and financial advantages already. Reward teams that enjoy outsized success, rather than brand name programs that benefit from the neighborhood in which they reside (looking at you, Georgia and Nebraska, among others). 

With that in mind, several bracketology noodlers have VCU (that’s Virginia Commonwealth University, for the Mid-Atlantic impaired) among the first four teams omitted, which means that the Rams can still play their way into the tournament, either by winning the Atlantic 10 Tournament and earning the league’s automatic bid, or stockpiling wins as the season winds down and presenting the selection committee with a convincing case for one of the 37 at-large bids (Correction: in a previous post, I mistakenly wrote that the field is comprised of 32 conference champs and 36 at-large bids; I forgot that the demise of the Pac-12 removed one league champ and thus added an at-large berth. Management regrets the error). 

Let’s dig into the Rams. 

Recent History: Pretty fair, for a program outside the Power Conferences. The Rams have made the NCAA Tournament 13 times since 2004 and have won at least 20 games seventeen times in that span, under six different coaches. VCU famously made the Final Four in 2011 under Shaka Smart as a member of the Colonial (now Coastal) Athletic Association, advancing from the First Four and upsetting Georgetown, Purdue, Florida State and Kansas. Their .712 winning percentage in conference play since joining the A10 in 2012 is the league’s best. 

Mascot/Nickname Profile: Rodney the Ram originated in 1963 under the Richmond Professional Institute and replaced an early mascot known as the Green Devil. RPI merged with the Medical College of Virginia in 1968, after which the school changed colors to the current black and gold. 

Home Arena: E.J. Wade Arena at the Stuart Siegel Center, often referred to as The Stu, downtown Richmond (cap. 7,637). Darn fine small arena. School’s pep band is a banger and contributes greatly to excellent gameday experience. Legit homecourt advantage. 

Notable Hoops Alumni: Bones Hyland, Vince Williams Jr., Kendrick Warren, Eric Maynor, Larry Sanders (no, not that one), Briante’ Weber, Treveon Graham, Mo Alie-Cox, an athletic marvel who after a college career as a rebounding and shot-blocking monster neatly transitioned to pro football and became a tight end with the Indianapolis Colts. 

Recent photo of 
Briante' Weber

Current Season: Rams are 20-5 overall, 10-2 in A10, in second place behind George Mason, under second-year head coach Ryan Odom, son of longtime Wake Forest coach Dave Odom and who played for former William and Mary head mustache Tony Shaver at Hampden-Sydney. You might recall that Odom, who replaced Mike Rhoades, was head coach at UMBC in 2018, when the Retrievers became the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1, blasting Virginia in the first round of the NCAAs. 

Reason to Believe: Rams are a veteran bunch with size and depth, and they defend the starch out of opponents. Six of their top seven are grad students or seniors, led by 6-4 guard Joe Bamisile (15.8 ppg) and 6-5 Max Shulga (15.1 ppg, team-high 97 assists). They are top-25 nationally in defensive efficiency, top-10 in effective field goal percentage defense. They’re among the national leaders in blocked shots and opponent turnover rate at more than 20 percent. VCU is No. 32 in Ken Pomeroy’s team rankings and No. 34 in NCAA Net Rankings, as of last weekend. They average better than nine 3-pointers per game. 

Reason to Fade Them: Little room for error. The Rams’ non-conference strength of schedule (301) doesn’t help the cause. The A10 is rated only sixth or seventh among conferences, with VCU and Mason the only teams among the top 70 in NCAA Net Rankings. Losses from here on are more likely to hurt its statistical profile more than wins will benefit. The Rams get their lone crack at Mason on Feb. 22 and finish the regular season vs. Dayton on March 7, both at home, in what are their best chances to enhance the resume’ before the conference tournament. If VCU can reach 26 or 27 wins, even without winning the A10 Tournament, it might be enough to sneak in, provided there are few at-large bid thiefs come March.

Gheorghasbord: UniFun

Howdy, friends. Battening down the hatches and drugging my dog in expectation of 50-60 mph wind gusts this afternoon and evening. And serving some scorching hot blog content for your amusement.

It's a new MLS season, which means we get new kits for each of the 30 teams, all of which are outfitted by adidas. I'm generally a fan of the brand with three stripes, but the template they designed for this year's kits evokes 80s hoops style. This is not a compliment. 

Nonetheless, there are a few jerseys that stand out (ESPN ranks all 30 here). In particular, and close to home, D.C. United's alternate pays homage to the city's Go-go music culture with swirls of color against a cream background.

Portland's kit is dope, too, with a deep forest green primary color and a design echoing tree rings emanating from the badge honoring the Timbers' name. 

I honestly don't love any of the others. Real Salt Lake is going with a checkerboard pattern, which will stand out as unique. L.A. Galaxy have a gorgeous purple alternate, but I hate them, so we won't talk about it. There are a bunch of middling options, like Atlanta and Montreal's vertical stripes and Houston and Toronto's one-toned blah. And there are a couple dogshit entries. Starting with New England's alternate kit. Get a load of this loud mess.

San Diego joins the league this season, and given that town's vibrant culture and the NWSL Wave's dope look, one would think the team would offer up something cool. One would be wrong. San Diego will open up in one of the blandest kits I could imagine.

Let's work on things for next year, shall we, adidas?

Maybe the Germans could take a road trip to Minot, ND and get some inspiration from the Minot State University hockey program. The Beavers sported the uniforms below last week to honor the state's farmers. Fannntastic.

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A post shared by The Hockey House (@hockeyhousepod)

And finally, because these posts require three different topics, lemme show you this dope rugby shirt I just bought. I'm headed to Cardiff with Whit and a bunch of FoGTBs in March to watch Wales host England (or, more accurately, watch Wales get boatraced by England) in a Six Nations match. Gotta show out for the home side, and since I can't wear red in the U.S. these days, I found a place I can do so.

 

I Think He's Writing

Twenty five years ago today, the final Peanuts strip was published. The great Charles M. Schulz had passed away the day before.

Stuff I Saw

There's a new chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, one of the crown jewels of our nation's performing arts community. You're likely familiar with him, as he seems to suck the oxygen from...all the things. As with everything that chairman touches, I expect the Kennedy Center to devolve into a celebration of the gauche, a debauched shell of her former elegant self. I'll miss her.

I'll have my memories, though. Here's what I believe to be a complete list of the shows and events I took in at that impressive building hard by the Potomac River.

Took both kids to see a free They Might Be Giants early evening show in the Grand Foyer in October 2010. The occasion was a celebration of the comprehensive redesign of ARTSEDGE—the Kennedy Center’s national K-12 arts education web site. Which is probably fucked. There's a video of the (impressively long and predictably fun) show available here.

In January 2013, I took my little one to see a joyous and high-energy celebration of the 40th anniversary of Schoolhouse Rock at the Millennium Stage. Turns out Shlara was there, too, though neither of us realized the other was in the house.

2016 was a big year for us and the KenCen. Started on New Year's Day with Matilda in the Opera House. Dark and funny. And dark.

It's a great venue. And it ain't gonna look like this for a while.

My then 15 year-old dancer and I attended a premiere of The National Ballet of Canada's 'A Winter's Tale' later that January. My company at the time was headquartered in Toronto and a major sponsor of the ballet's tour, so we got VIP tickets which entitled us to backstage passes after the show. My kid has never been speechless before or since, but she was that evening meeting the cast.

We went as a family to see Fiasco Theatre's incredibly inventive production of Into the Woods in December of that same year. Here's a snippet from a glowing review by Andra Abramson: "The updated Into the Woods directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld is so fresh and innovative and so superbly acted that I was immediately swept up in the action and transported to a fairy tale world of witches, bakers, princesses, giants, and mysterious men." It really was one of the most captivating stage plays I've ever seen.

The exact date has escaped my recollection, but I took my college-aged artist to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre perform Revelations. I've grown to appreciate all forms of dance, and other than my kid's first full piece of choreography, this was the most moving version of the form I've seen.

Lost to time, as well, the date of a holiday-time performance of Les Miserables, a huge, ambitious staging full of big sound, complex sets, and wild lighting. 

My wife and I saw Hamilton there in October 2022. It wasn't the room where it first happened, and it wasn't the original cast, but it was still unlike anything I've seen on stage before.

I hope very much to get back to that venerable building. But as long as That Fucking Guy has anything to do with it, I shan't lighten its doorstep. Like a great many things at the moment, it's a shame.

I can't believe we need a Paul Engelmayer tag

This is my third Paul Engelmayer post so I created a tag for him.  To recap, he's a judge in the Southern District of New York, which is the federal district court for Manhattan.  I've described his accomplishments previously.  On Saturday he granted a temporary restraining order requested by several state Attorneys General:

enjoining the defendants [Donald Trump and Scott Bessent] during the pendency of this action from granting to political appointees, special government employees, and any government employee detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department access to Treasury Department payment systems or any other data maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information .... 

It's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order bars appointees and employees from outside the Treasury Department--the part I bolded modifies the preceding three categories of people.  He then further clarified this statement by writing:

the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems, if any ....

Again, it's pretty clear that Engelmayer's order only applies to people outside of Treasury, and to people inside of Treasury who haven't gone through all the vetting and training required to handle confidential information.  And if these types of people have this particular confidential information, they should destroy it.

But we live in the dumbest timeline of the MAGA cinematic universe so stupidity ensued.  DOGE's doofus overlord called for him to be impeached.  Of course, Trump offered the opinion that Engelmayer is "crazy" for temporarily restraining an unelected, unconfirmed ketamine addict working at a fictional government department from having unfettered access to the United States' money supply.

And then there's this:

Tom Cotton and Adrian Vermeule got their undergraduate and law degrees at Harvard.  JD Vance graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State and got his JD at Yale.  All three of these guys can read and understand Engelmayer's order.  

They know it doesn't bar Bessent from accessing Treasury systems unless he hasn't completed the required background checks and training, in which case it likely maintains the status quo--you can't do that job and access all the secret stuff until you've completed all the security requirements.  

And they know this isn't judicial interference, it's a TRO.  It's temporary.  This means the requesting party showed they will suffer irreparable harm so the judge made the other party pause to maintain the status quo for a few days while we figure out what the hell is going on. 

Most importantly, they know this is exactly what the judiciary is supposed to do--determine what the law says and whether any particular act conflicts with it.  It's been this way for over 200 years, we learned that in high school.

These Ivy League schmucks need to watch more Schoolhouse Rock.

Or maybe they watched it and took the circus metaphor too far by staffing the endeavor with a bunch of clowns.  

Maybe I'm the clown.  Remember when I said elections have consequences?

Super Bowl Open Thread

Commence to talking about the large game before the concert below. 

 

Unsightly, Un-Saintly

[Ed. Note - As always, we cover the world's major sporting events like no other outlet. In that spirit, please enjoy our coverage of Super Bowl LIX, starting with this heartwarming tale from our Man in the Sand.]

In the realm of inconvenient news, the New Orleans Saints email dump is a dandy little listeria outbreak next to the food tent at the county fair. As the NFL and a sizeable chunk of the sports media world descended on the Crescent City for the Super Bowl, it was revealed that the Saints’ front office worked closely with the city’s Catholic church to minimize damage from a scandal involving predatory priests. Team officials regularly counseled church hierarchy on public relations efforts and were far more involved than they previously admitted, according to internal emails obtained by the Associated Press. 

The scandal came to light in 2018 when the Archdiocese of New Orleans released a list of priests accused of sexual abuse after hundreds of claims of molestation, many among minors and children, that stretched back decades. The AP first reported in 2020 that Saints’ officials had advised the archdiocese, but owner Gayle Benson denied that anyone associated with the franchise “made recommendations or had input” on the list of identified priests and had only minimal involvement. 

The Saints’ internal emails, however, reveal a year-long effort that included the names of priests on the list before they were made public, and the team president provided talking points and a list of questions that Archbishop Gregory Aymond should expect from reporters. Also, the team’s communications vice president regularly provided updates to his bosses about church business and interviews. He called in favors with local media and urged media members to “work with” the church during the scandal, while signaling that team and church leaders were aligned. 

After the AP’s current report, the Saints released a lengthy statement that criticized the media for using “leaked emails for the purpose of misconstruing a well-intended effort.” No one within the Saints’ organization condones or wants to cover up the abuse that occurred, the statement said, and any perceived partnership between the team and archdiocese no longer exists. Translation: You nosy snoops are being unfair to us about something that happened waaaaay back in the last decade. 

NFL commish Roger Goodell earlier this week essentially sidestepped the issue when asked about the report and the Saints’ more extensive role in the fallout of the scandal. He said that Benson and the Saints are very involved in the community and “great corporate citizens.” He mentioned Benson’s Catholic faith and deep church connections (Aymond introduced Benson to her husband and the team’s longtime owner, the late Tom Benson, and has been a frequent guest in the locker room and on the owners’ private jet).

 

Goodell said the matter was up to the FBI and local and national law enforcement, and he praised Benson’s transparency concerning the emails. “I leave it to (the Saints), but I am confident that they are playing nothing more than a supportive role to help be more transparent in circumstances like this.” 

Amid the remarks about transparency, he omitted the part where the Saints went to court to prevent their emails from becoming public. NFL teams engage in public relations in their sleep and forever attempt to finesse and manipulate the populace and its representatives – publicly financed stadia, tax breaks, sponsorships, media rights, broadcasting, licensing, merchandise. Some we see, much we don’t. It’s probably an upset that more ill-considered, if not disgusting, decisions and activities don’t come to light. 

The combination of great piles of money and civic adulation mostly keeps the expensive suits pointed in the same direction and minimizes boardroom pie fights. It’s reprehensible for an NFL franchise to help massage the image of an organization that covered up a sex abuse scandal it was aware of for years, but you knew this is how it would be dealt with. Goodell is nominally the commissioner, but the truth is that he works for the owners, and he isn’t about to say or do anything that might rankle the billionaires without permission. A largely compliant media will nibble around the edges of unpleasant topics but prefers to focus on things such as a Chiefs’ three-peat or The Legend of Saquon. 

In a just society, the Saints would be punished and vilified and held up as an object lesson in how not to behave. Instead, they’re lauded as “great corporate citizens” trying to lend support and beneficiaries of the notion that wealthy organizations must be protected and are more important than people. An NFL franchise and the Catholic church is one hell of a tag team. Would that either actually lived up to the image they project.

The Latest EO's -- Your Excremental Orders from the Great Leader

BREAKING NEWS

WASHINGTON, DC – This just in from the Ovaltine Office. Your man in the know, El Whitdoggimus, whose AI-deemed pseudonym is "Whitney," has gotten ahold of the next batch of Executive Orders from the once and future President for Life, Lord God King Bu-Fu Donald John "Don's Johns" Trump. As a service to gheorghies and G:TB readers worldwide, we are leaking these 11 soon-to-be-issued orders on this venerable blog.

Here we go.

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By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the well-being and future success of America, it is hereby ordered:

1. Roy Cohn Day. A previously issued executive order banned activities related to Juneteenth, Black History Month, and every other ethno-cultural recognition event, including Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Accordingly, MLK Day is now replaced with Roy Cohn Day. Roy Cohn Day will be held every February 20 to commemorate the birthday of the man who helped shape the mind that started this amazing train in motion. McDonald's will have free ice cream cones all day on Roy Cohn Day. Patrons need only ask, "Where's My Roy Cohn?" (Only available in vanilla.) They'll call them Cohn's Cones. It'll be tremendous. 

2. Lunar Labor Camps. A previously issued order began the aggressive arrest, holding, and immediate deportation of undocumented migrant residents and any non-citizens. This order is being amended to assign these individuals to SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) and deploy them on the moon. Forced labor camps are being set up on the moon to build Mar-a-Luno, a five-star Trump property. It's gonna be great. Best in the galaxy. You're gonna love it. 

3. Repurposing of Mosques and Other Non-Judeo-Christian Religious Buildings. The takeover of Gaza by the Unites States expected to happen by Roy Cohn Day 2025, and the relocation of 1.8 million Palestinians currently residing in Gaza to humanitarian countries or to U.S. Lunar Labor Camps via SpaceX, will render unnecessary the divisive, threatening, unAmerican religious buildings those people also inhabit domestically. Any structure in the United States that has until now been a congregation center for religions other than Christianity (and in some smaller, high-profile, press-happy, photo-op cases, Judaism) will be seized by Federal agents or the military and repurposed into free-market hubs of commerce and capitalism. 

Very specifically they will all become units of TrumpTowne™, exclusive clubs for real Americans where citizens can buy Trump™ brand products: collections of coins, T-shirts, hats, thongs, ascots, false teeth, tiaras, crocs, mullet bands, cummerbunds, and prophylactics all emblazoned with Make America Great Again™ or TRUMP PRESIDENT FOR LIFE™. 

This will end the long-standing pattern of death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck, that these people have had and have caused in America. 

4. Late-Night Comedy Regulation. All late-night American comedy television programming will be regulated and replaced at the discretion of the President. You see these terribly unfunny, not funny at all people on television such as Jon Stewart, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Maher, and many others, occasionally Jimmy Fallon though he made a lot of fun of Joe Biden and that was very good. These unfunny people will be replaced by Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly and some merit-based Trump family members with musical guest Ted Nugent in a new show everyone's gonna love that makes fun of Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Fauci and Hunter Biden. Network writers who are found through federal investigation to have written jokes that insult President Trump or Minister of Propaganda Musk will be forcibly commissioned to the Executive Office to help creatively explain the wisdom behind all of these executive orders. 

5. Confederate Statue Replacement. Every site that had a confederate statue criminally removed, which served as a terrible tragedy standing in the way of our historical recognition of some very fine people on both sides of that war, will now have that statue replaced. It will be replaced with a statue of President Donald J. Trump dressed in the traditional attire of General in Chief, which was Robert E. Lee's title until he surrendered, which President Trump never would have, he was a great man, but the President would have done things differently. This uniform is the purest tribute to the Confederate States of America but also being reimagined by Barron Trump, he has taken some Civil War reenactment fashion classes and he is very good, very, very good. 

6. Department of Education Exceptions. After the U.S. Department of Education is dismantled, the federal government will leave it up to states to ensure English is the only language being taught and that some math is in the curriculum, that's always important in business and those things. History books and history lesson plans, however, must be approved by the President's elite guard of political soldiers and super smrt people. They will only accept the proper accounting of historical American names, to include: Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Slick Willie, Obama bin Laden, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s uncle. COVID will be removed from history because everything is totally fine now because President Trump made it go away and we don't need to talk about it. 

7. Roadway Regulations. All roadways, from neighborhood streets to interstate highways, have a new right-of-way pattern. Right-of-way will always be granted to the larger vehicle with additional right-of-way privileges for Cybertrucks™, limousines, flatbeds, disproportionately large tires, dangerously extended trailer hitches, emissions violations, horns that play Dixie, Florida or Texas plates, TRUMP VANCE stickers, and/or truck nuts. Hybrid vehicles will never have any right of way and should be dropped off for demolition. 

8. More Holidays. January 6 will forever be regarded as "a date which will live in famy" and will be another federal holiday, along with Cohn Day on February 20 and Billionaire Day on April 1, commemorating the date in 2006 when President Donald J. Trump became a billionaire even though Forbes and Bloomberg were falsely reporting assets to be much lower because they're jealous of amazing success. Oh, and President's Day is now President Trump's Day. Buy a Trump™ mattress, you'll never sleep so good as you do, it's tremendously comfortable springs and cushion stuff in there.

9. Alcoholic Beverage Commission Regulation. Bud Light is now illegal. 

10. Correcting Radical, Wasteful Terminology. (a) Private equity firms must now be called private moneymaking firms. (b) Diversifying your portfolio must now be termed mixing things up. (c) The Department of Transportation is now officially termed the Department of Portation. This should fix a lot of things, it will make many, many people very, very happy. 

11. Title. President of the United States is not a title courageous and powerful enough for a man of Donald Trump's stature. While in power, Idi Amin had as his official title: His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. This is very good but too long, people will get it wrong, and plus the Africa stuff and fishes, we don't need that. Mr. Trump will now be called forever more: 

His Excellency, President for Life, Feel Marshal Super Good Doctor Donald Trump Daddy, MD, PhD, BMOC, PG, VSOP, Handsome Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Conqueror of the Democrats in America and the World, Amen. 

Idi Amin also claimed to be the uncrowned King of Scotland. 

Donald Trump is also the King of Greenland. 

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Wow. Seems like a lot of stuff, wonder if he can get them all implemented without any pushback. Okay, well, hope everyone's doing super-spectacular in 2025!

Whitdog, OUT

Self-Care

I've been trying to write a post about *waves hands* all the shit happening in our country at the moment, but every time I start, some new monkey feces gets thrown at the wall by the gleeful fascist gibbons running the place and I have to formulate a new theory. Let me note for the record (for at least as long as the internet remains plugged in) that I think we're deeply fucked for at least some period of time - not so much because of that those in power are doing, but because the response of the opposition party and media has been and continues to be so abjectly inadequate to meet the moment. 

Bygones.

So instead, a bit of artistic good news to keep the content train moving while the good monkeys bang away at keyboards for your amusement. Jason Isbell's first solo record in 10 years, Foxes in the Snow, will be released on March 7. Here's the first track from the fully acoustic album to hit the free world, "Bury Me". It's stripped down storytelling, very Isbell, and very good.

We're # 69!!: Demon Deacons Edition

NCAA Tournament selection is six weeks away, but bracketology never sleeps. There are several ways to rank teams and their chances of making the 68-team field. Sometimes they coincide, sometimes they don’t. For instance, Kansas State is No. 69 in Ken Pomeroy’s ranking system as of Feb. 1, while Wake Forest is No. 69 in the NCAA’s Net rankings. However, that doesn’t mean either is on the cusp of making the tournament or the first team omitted. 

The tournament structure, by which lower-rated teams and leagues earn automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments, means that higher-rated teams with statistically better profiles are bypassed. Thus, unless Kansas St. goes on a heater or wins the Big 12 Tournament, there’s no chance the Wildcats are even considered for the NCAAs. Wake Forest, on the other hand, can make the field but has work to do. 

Patrick Stevens, Sexy MF

Which brings us to the humans weighing the data, or at least the ones attempting to divine what the NCAA Selection Committee will or should do. Patrick Stevens, a Washington Post contributor, is one of the best at parsing and predicting tournament fields. He’s done it for years. He routinely misses no more than one of the 36 at-large bids, and many of his seeding predictions are on the screws or within a line of where the committee actually seeds them in its bracket. Where there are discrepancies, his reasoning is often superior to whatever the NCAA committee says. Stevens’ latest projection has the Deacons as one of the first four teams out, so they’re obviously able to play their way in. 

So, let’s become acquainted with the Deacs. 

Recent history: Lean, at least in terms of national recognition. Once an NCAA Tournament staple under former coaches Dave Odom and the late Skip Prosser, Wake hasn’t made the NCAAs since 2017, its only trip since 2010. The Deacons played in the NIT in 2022 and ’24. Coach Steve Forbes (not the magazine publisher and former Republican presidential candidate) is in his fifth year and has gained traction while mining the transfer portal after the meh tenure of Danny Manning. They finished sub-.500 in the ACC in 10 of 11 seasons, from 2011-21, but are on pace for a fourth consecutive season of .500 or better. 

Mascot/Nickname Profile: The Deacons, or Demon Deacons if you prefer your piety laced with menace, goes back to 1923, according to Wikipedia. The school newspaper’s editor referred to the football team as “Demon Deacons” in a story, in recognition of their "devilish play and fighting spirit." The football coach and school officials liked the description and it stuck. The mascot first appeared in 1941, when a student dressed up in a tuxedo and top hat and roamed the sidelines, like an old-school deacon, and the image endured. The athletic department has had a student in an oversized costume Deacon for years. 

Home arena: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum (cap. 14,665), Winston-Salem NC. Opened in 1989. Named for Lawrence Joel, a Winston-Salem native who in 1969 was the first African-American Medal of Honor recipient since the Spanish-American War, for his efforts during a firefight in Vietnam. Quality venue. The joint jumps when it’s near capacity and the Deacons are good. 

Muggsy Bogues, Sexy MF

Notable Hoops Alumni: Chris Paul, Tim Duncan, Randolph Childress, Muggsy Bogues (who remains one of the damnedest ballers I’ve ever seen), Rodney Rogers, Josh Howard, Billy Packer (yes, *that* Billy Packer), Len Chappell, Dickie Hemric. 

Current Season: Wake is 16-6 overall, 8-3 and tied for fourth in the ACC behind Duke, Clemson and Louisville. The Deacs were picked to finish third in preseason behind Duke and North Carolina. They’re led by All-ACC guard Hunter Sallis (18.3 ppg) and generally go eight-deep, with five of them coming in via transfer. 

Reason To Believe: Veteran team, heavy on wings and versatility, with six in the rotation between 6-4 and 6-7. Sallis is the standout but six others average between five and 13 ppg, including 6-4 English import Cameron Hildreth (13.6 ppg) and 6-7 App State transfer Tre'Von Spillers (10.1 ppg). They defend – second in the conference in FG percentage defense (.391) and first in 3-point percentage D (.306). 

Reason To Fade Them: They have no bad losses, but only one Quad 1 win (1-6). Can’t shoot from the perimeter. Last in the conference in 3-point percentage (.287) and 3-pointers made per game (6.0). None of their regulars shoot better than 33 percent from deep. Third from the bottom in rebound margin, at minus-1.62 per game. Also, fact that ACC is down this season – fifth in the latest conference rankings – means they’ll have fewer opportunities to burnish the résumé. All that said, if Wake continues to hold its place – win the games it should, avoid losses to the league’s bottom tier, win a game or two in the conference tournament – the fourth-place ACC team with 23 or 24 wins should be in pretty fair shape for an NCAA berth. The SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 can't hog all the at-large invites.

The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 13

On the 13th Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe gave to me:

The knock-off Chinese large language model AI program DeepSeek, powered by cheap NVidia chips and (most likely) plenty of copyright infringement.

Note: the existential angst and futility of this post might be exacerbated by the fact that I haven’t been able to drink much lately– because I had a stomach virus, then my wife had the flu, and now I am at the tail end of a (very mild) case of COVID. I did have a few drinks yesterday afternoon while watching Rutgers lose another close one– but said drinks gave me a headache, so I guess I’m not completely recovered from COVID yet . . . although the nurse practitioner said my vitals are great and I’m probably not going to be very sick because I got the most recent COVID vaccine– so suck it, RFK.

So if you haven't fucked around with DeepSeek yet, go do so . . .

As an educator, at first, this large language AI was just annoying as fuck. Some of my students used it to write their papers, but they often got caught. Turnitin– the platform where they submit their essays, has a decent AI detector. And you could just tell.

I did a whole podcast on this.

But now AI has gone beyond annoying. It’s gotten creative, and if you prompt it correctly, it might be undetectable. And this is making me feel pretty shitty. Kind of outdated and outmoded. Or something.

Let’s use AI to refine my thoughts. Here’s what I fed DeepSeek.

Write a paragraph about a blogger, English teacher, and podcaster named Professor G. Truck, who is facing an existential crisis because he feels his creative thinking is being replaced and outdone by cheap Chinese AI. Include some dystopian sci-fi and musical references, such as Pink Floyd and Radiohead.

Here is what DeepSeek produced:

Professor G. Truck sat at his cluttered desk, the blinking cursor on his screen mocking him like a scene from a Philip K. Dick novel. A blogger, English teacher, and podcaster, he’d always prided himself on his creativity, but now cheap Chinese AI was flooding the internet, making his work feel obsolete. It was as if the world had become a dystopian mashup of Brave New World and 1984, where algorithms outthought him at every turn. Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine” played in the background, its lyrics a haunting reminder of his fears. At night, Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” echoed in his mind, the title’s irony twisting his stomach. Was this the future he’d been warned about—a world where creativity was commodified and humanity reduced to a footnote? Professor G. Truck wasn’t sure, but he wasn’t ready to surrender his humanity without a fight.

Pretty damn good. Aside from the whole "won't surrender without a fight." I am not a fighter. I’m weak and easily frustrated. I lose concentration. I like giving up and quitting, and this shit is making me want to give up all my creative endeavors (aside from getting stoned and making weird loops of instrumental music). 

How can you compete? Why go on? 

DeepSeek could produce this entire post in a fraction of a second, and it would be decent. Maybe even good. Comparable to whatever drivel I’m pumping out. So why am I bothering to type this by hand, when I could be prompting a supercomputer to do the grunt work for me?

I feel like no one who matters in the world of education is addressing this issue. My wife and I talk about it over coffee– and there’s plenty of speculation in the English Office, but this is all large-scale theorizing. Otherwise known as bullshitting. Then we go teach our classes.

This is not stuff that the high school administration wants to tackle– they care about things like absenteeism, lateness, the social and emotional health of the students, and how many kids you let out of your room to go to the bathroom (and if they have the proper ID lanyard). I think at tomorrow's meeting we're also going to learn about ICE and how to deal with that stuff. Admin doesn't want to get mired in a philosophical morass on exactly how much technology is beneficial to developing a human brain.

A few years ago, most schools tossed the kids some kind of computing device. The smart kids are using them– using them to replace their own thinking. And who wouldn’t? Especially if you are a kid on the competitive AP track . . . you’ve got a shitload of homework.

So eventually, we are going to answer these questions. Are we going to go back to the basics– paper, pencil, books? Or are we going to teach kids to sift through the AI answers and synthesize the best parts? Teach them to collaborate with our AI overlords?

Is knowledge going to be something stored on a computer, not in a brain? We are offloading more and more to the cloud, but we have to remember that the answer AI provides is shaped by the data it is trained on, which might not be perfect, and designed algorithms– so AI can avoid or hide certain kinds of knowledge. DeepSeek won’t tell you anything about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest. Who knows what kinds of guardrails Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg might include in their AI, to promote the values of the billionaire elite class?

There’s a real lack of common culture right now– kids do not know things that adults think they know, like the word “incumbent” or “arson.” But they know lots of memes and trends and stuff like that. Their knowledge is very fragmented. Maybe schools should just go back to the basics and try to provide a framework of knowledge about our nation that we can share– at least in Language Arts and History classes– although that can get political . . . are we going to teach the history of oppression, enslavement, and prejudice that black people experienced? Or is Trump going to strongarm the AI overlords into white-washing Black History Month?

If we're getting out answers from AI and we don't control the data, if we can't see under the hood, there's not much we can do. Like Donald Rumsfeld said, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

How a particular AI generates an answer is an unknown unknown. We don't know what it's leaving out, or what moral or political stance it is tending towards.

Right now, I’m just taking basic precautions, because I don’t want to read AI answers. I'm making kids write things on paper. Because AI has all the answers, believe me. Friday, I tested DeepSeek on my Creative Writing midterm prompt about the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

How does the film use unreliable narration to explore relationships, memory, and time? What does the film ultimately say about our identity, our perspective, and the way we get along with people?

No surprise, DeepSeek crushed it. Comprehensive and astute analysis. Stuff like:

Memory is central to our sense of self. As Joel's memories of Clementine are erased, he begins to lose parts of his identity. The film suggests that our memories, even the painful ones, are integral to who we are. Erasing them doesn't solve our problems but rather strips away a part of ourselves.

But students don’t write like this– if they turned in something like this, I would be skeptical. But then I asked DeepSeek to summarize all the material it generated about the film– and it was a lot of material– in two sentences and to use lots of profanity. Here’s what it produced:

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" uses its mind-fuckery of unreliable narration to show how relationships are a messy, chaotic clusterfuck of distorted memories and emotional bullshit. The film dives into the raw, fucked-up truth that love isn’t about perfect memories or clear-cut facts—it’s about the messy, irrational, and deeply human shit that keeps pulling people back together, no matter how hard they try to erase each other.

This is going to be hard to flag as AI. And you can tell DeepSeek to write like a seventh grader who can’t use commas, or whatever. So now anytime a smart kid has a computer, they might not have done the writing. It’s a dilemma.

I was also pretty amazed when I asked DeepSeek to do a line-by-line analysis of “Hotel California.” It did a fantastic job. Try it.

Ok, I tire of this– it's too big a problem for Sunday morning. I’m going to try to play indoor soccer, something AI can't do (yet). 

I'll have AI read the post and generate a conclusion . . .

The rise of AI like DeepSeek is flipping education and creativity on its head, and it’s not just about catching some kid copy-pasting from ChatGPT. I mean, AI can already write essays and analyze stuff like a caffeinated valedictorian, so what the hell are we even doing in school anymore? Should we just double down on making kids memorize pointless facts, or teach them to team up with AI like some kind of robot study buddy? It’s a giant mess, and let’s be real—schools are about as prepared for this as a goldfish in a shark tank. They’re too busy freaking out over attendance policies while the whole concept of knowledge is getting a software update.

But here’s the kicker: the real danger isn’t just AI doing our homework—it’s AI raising the next generation of thinkers. Imagine a world where kids think nuance is a brand of sparkling water and human experience is just a glitch in the system. If we offload all our brainy tasks to the cloud, we’re basically outsourcing our souls. We might end up with a future where people can’t even argue about pizza toppings without consulting an algorithm. The future of education—and honestly, human creativity—is hanging by a thread, and we’d better figure this out before Skynet starts grading our papers.

Now what if I told you that all the things in red were actually written by me, and all the things in normal font were written by AI? 

That's not true-- but if it were, this would be a genius-level post. Unfortunately, I just thought of that idea now and I'm not rewriting the whole thing. And what sucks is that AI would have probably thought of that from the start. Next time . . .