New Perspectives - Art Filler

We have a very special intersection of pastime and profession on tap for you tomorrow, but until then, please enjoy this piece by Hokkaido-based artist Kenichi Nakaya. Visual Flood describes Nakaya's "Folklore" series thusly:

This ongoing project sees him transforming common, sometimes even quirky, Japanese rural crafts into fresh, modern works. Nakaya’s distinct approach breathes new life into items deeply embedded in the nation’s cultural fabric, offering a contemporary perspective on traditional aesthetics. His dedication to recontextualizing these familiar objects highlights a unique blend of preservation and innovation within his practice

Me, I was just tickled by the juxtaposition between what I first saw and what actually existed.

RIP Schlitz

The title of this post begs a pun involving the term "ripshit" but I'm feeling more maudlin over the discovery that Pabst Brewing Company will discontinue Schlitz beer.

When I was a younger man, there was a dive bar on Washington Street in Bergenfield that sold beer to go, no questions asked, and their cheapest was Schlitz.  I, accordingly, have a few memories of evenings that involve too much Schlitz.  We should pour one out for Schlitz but if you do I encourage you to pour out something other than Schlitz given that cans of Schlitz will soon be collector's items.  We will not be drinking Schlitz served by AI robots despite this predictive marketing:

Crazy Shit is Afooty

Today's English Football League Championship final is famously known as "the richest game in football". The winner of the contest between Hull City and Middlesborough stands to gain as much as $300 million next year as a member of the Premier League; the loser heads back to the relative coal mine and has to grind out another 46 league matches to try again for promotion.

That kind of windfall might tend to cause a team to do something really fucking stupid, as it turns out.

Middlesborough didn't expect to find themselves in today's match after they fell, 2-1, to Southampton to lose the two-legged Championship playoff semifinals by the same score. Southampton were installed as favorites to defeat Hull City and rejoin the Premier League in 2026-27.

Instead, the Black Cats were sanctioned by the EFL for spying on Middlesborough's training sessions in advance of the teams' May 12 match, and their victory over 'borough was vacated. Really sophisticated tradecraft on display, as you can see below (this is not a joke - that's really and truly a Southampton intern named Will Salt filming Middlesborough training on an iPhone from behind a tree):

The New York Times has a terrific tick tock of the events surrounding this entirely new version of Spygate, which are both corrupt and pathetic. Southampton's players, many of whom were due for 40% pay raises had they qualified for Premier League play, are contemplating a class-action suit against their employer. Southampton manager Tonda Eckert, a German, has claimed ignorance of the fact that such chicanery is illegal, saying that it's commonplace on the Continent. Other Championship sides, including Wrexham, are also discussing legal action, because it turns out Southampton did the same thing on multiple occasions earlier in the season, which could've impacted the standings even before the playoffs. It is, as the pundits say, a proper cockup.

No word from the UK regarding Connor Stalions' pending interest in the round sort of football, though that would make a bizarro Ted Lasso plot twist.

A Shtetl Too Far

The NBA Western Conference Finals is a gem, a matchup between the defending champ and the sport’s best team the past two seasons versus a young, promising group surrounding a singular talent. The Oklahoma City Thunder are a deep and versatile and tenacious bunch led by two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and positioned for several years of excellence thanks to canny player acquisition and a well-run organization. The San Antonio Spurs leaped into the league’s upper tier this season behind the continued rise of Victor Wembenyama, an alien placed here to demonstrate human limitations (personally, I’m willing to give our new galactic overlords a chance at Earth stewardship, though I understand anyone’s desire to ride out the string under the current species – devil you know versus devil you don’t, and all that). 

Wembenyama’s length and athletic gifts make him appear elastic at times. He’s capable of turning a basketball court into a kind of funhouse mirror, the way he distorts and occupies space and forces opponents to adjust like no one else. That he is far from a finished product and still developing is either thrilling or terrifying, depending on your vantage. 

Speaking of distortion, in the runup to this matchup, the Oklahoma City newspaper, the Oklahoman, ran a column the day the series opened that rests somewhere between provocative and WTF?!? The headline provides a fitting, if jarring, launch: “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated.” The premise is that success can breed outsized contempt by opponents and critics, particularly when the successful entity – be it an athletic team or a country – is outside the mainstream or a glamour setting. “As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew, the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is,” the author wrote. “Oklahoma City remains one of the NBA’s smallest markets. We lack the glamour of Los Angeles, the nightlife and beaches of Miami, Florida, or the finance and media power of New York City. Yet we built something remarkable anyway. Rather than buying relevance, we created it. Rather than following others, we reimagined our own path to success by relying on the resources and skills we had with discipline and our own brand of resilience. Israel’s story shares many of those attributes — a young, microscopic nation limited in natural resources, surrounded by hostility, perpetually under scrutiny, and constantly forced to justify its actions and existence. Israel nonetheless transformed itself into a global powerhouse of innovation, technology, defense, medicine and agriculture. Like the Thunder and even Oklahoma City, it has risen out of the ashes of a traumatic past despite all odds.” 

People love underdog stories, said the writer, but when underdogs consistently triumph that appreciation "mutates into skepticism and distrust. ... The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system. They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives." Hoo buddy, much to unpack. 

Nowhere in the column does the writer mention that the Thunder’s “traumatic past” included OKC businessman Clay Bennett shortly after purchasing the franchise moving it from Seattle to Oklahoma City after failing to extort $500 million from the state of Washington for a new arena complex. Nor does he mention that just a decade ago the Thunder had a nucleus of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and 6-11 Serge Ibaka and was oh-so-close to a title. Nor does he mention that plucky underdog Israel and its admittedly kick-ass military have been bankrolled and backstopped by the U.S., or that systematically squeezing the Palestinian people and targeting opponents across borders might prompt some justified scrutiny and criticism. 

To be fair, the Oklahoman piece wasn’t by a staff writer, but a guest column by an Oklahoma native businessman who transplanted to Chicago. You might think that a piece submitted by an outside source would come under greater examination than from a staff writer. One frequent casualty of the corporate strip-mining of newspapers, however, is editorial oversight. Fewer people to raise red flags or put the brakes on flawed writing. The Oklahoman did pull the piece later that day amid questions and backlash. Still, never should have run in the first place. Equating a basketball franchise's place in the sporting zeitgeist to a nation whose history and actions significantly impact the geopolitical sphere is a reach that even Wembenyama can’t match.

Certain Kinds of Trash

I treat Spotify like the radio--I set it to a vibe I'm feeling and let it spin the tunes.  A few days ago it spun up "Certain Kinds of Trash" by Chain and the Gang, a song I'd never heard from a band I'd never heard, and when I saw it pop up on the nav screen I assumed they would use the word "trash" in a New York Dolls sort of way.

But no!  They use it in a literal Mad Men sort of way.

In something like a spoken word approach, they reminisce about all the garbage you don't see anymore like cigarette holders, magnetic tape stuck in a tree, typewriter ribbons and so on.

I became wistful when, at the very end, the second to last kind of trash they enumerate is porno mags, because I remember in fifth grade when my friend Chris found an exceedingly waterlogged issue of Hustler in the gutter during a rain storm, and he brought it home and nurtured it like a wounded bird until it dried out, at which point it became the size of a phone book and the ink flaked off the pages in some spots but it was still his pride and joy, his dirty magazine that he rescued from becoming trash.  Sure, our friend Jesse's father had a huge stack of pristine noodie books in the basement, 

but this battered copy of Hustler was like manna from heaven for Chris.

I've found some pretty gnarly garbage in my day and I don't miss the filthy sidewalks of the 70's and 80's, littered with dogshit, gum, broken glass and all the other flotsam and jetsam one encountered on urban walkways.  Unfortunately I don't recall finding anything as personally meaningful as Chris's Hustler, but maybe you do.  Join me in the comments--what trash do you miss and what's the most important trash you rescued?

Gheorghasbord, Young and Dumb

We live in crazy-ass times. Let's explore the most recent examples of absolute batshit insanity our increasingly unbalanced species has been up to, young dipshit male edition.

Let's start with a real headline from a Vice.com article posted on May 5: "Inside Ballmaxxing, the Niche Practice of Inflating Your Balls to Cantaloupe Size".

Where to start, my friends. 

If you're not familiar with the 'maxxing' phenomenon, first let me congratulate you on escaping that knowledge. You may wish to stop reading now.

It started with looksmaxxing, and we'll let Wikipedia explain that to us, at least from an academic perspective:

Looksmaxxing is an online self-improvement practice focused on the process of maximizing one's physical attractiveness. The term is a neologism which was coined on incel message boards in the 2010s. Previously, the phrase had limited usage on obscure internet forums, but was popularized on TikTok by primarily male content creators in the early 2020s. The term has commonly been associated with the black pill ideology, which espouses that female sexual selection is primarily based on external physical qualities such as height and attractiveness, while qualities such as kindness and personality are ignored or even cause rejection. Looksmaxxing is very broad in the methods used to improve appearance; they can range from benign practices such as skincare routines and gym use, to more extreme interventions, such as invasive cosmetic surgery and usage of anabolic steroids.

Another notorious looksmaxxing practice is literally hitting oneself in the jaw with a hammer in an attempt to create chiseled cheekbones. When I was a young(er) man, we did some dumb peacock shit to try (and mostly fail) to get women to notice us, but I feel like we've failed this generation.

Which leads us to ballmaxxing, wherein one injects saline solution into one's testicles in an effort to increase their size, for...reasons. In a scientific survey I conducted in my home last night, 100% of women questioned said, "Why the fuck would you do that? Does any woman care about what your balls look like?"

Lifetime ballmaxxer Marcus is not deterred by the science. As noted in the Vice.com piece, he "got his scrotum stuck in a toilet once after a two-liter session. The skin tore. He’s still healing. His next move is adding 30 cubic centimeters of Surgilube to the left side and 20 to the right. “That should be ‘perfect,’” he says."

Less than perfect, the story of another young, dumb, lost man. Dalton Eatherly is a 28 year-old Tennessee native. He makes viral-hopeful videos under the name Chud the Builder. Clever, perhaps not so much. The white Eatherly's schtick is nearly as clever as his nom de dipshit. He seeks out confrontations with black people, using racial slurs and other offensive language to provoke them into video-worthy "content".

On Thursday, the finding out met the fucking around. Eatherly was booked on charges of attempted murder, employing a firearm during a dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon after he shot a man outside the Montgomery County, TN courthouse. He got into a fight that led to him shooting multiple rounds, hitting his opponent while also shooting himself in the leg. 

May the Lord have mercy on our collective souls.

Must Be On The North Facade

We are nothing if not celebrators of unfinished murals. Case in point, this amazing work in progress in Terre Haute, Indiana I clocked on one of my cross-country trips with my kidlet:

We dive back into muralology today with news from the heartland. Why embellish when the headline itself is perfect: "Downtown Milwaukee is getting a 100-foot-tall Bob Uecker mural".

Local artist Mauricio Ramirez (and seriously, check out his work - he's terrific) is adding the Uecker mural to a portfolio that includes a sweet 55' tall Giannis Antetokoumpo in downtown.

If you look closely, you can see that the Uecker mural is, in fact, in the front row. Of the parking lot.

Football Is Life

When we first met Cristo Fernández, he came bounding from the Richmond AFC locker room like a golden retriever in the guise of Dani Rojas, a new signing from Mexico for Ted Lasso's side:

As is the case in many (most?) sports movies, the actors portraying players in Ted Lasso generally have middling footballing skill. Couple of them seem to be able to play a little bit - Phil Dunster (Jamie Tartt) is useful, as is Toheeb Jimoh (Sam Obisanya). Moe Hashim (Moe Bumbercatch) played low-level professional ball in England. 

Cristo Fernández, though, he's a real-live footballer. Before taking up acting, the Guadalajara native played for several years in the second and third divisions of Mexican soccer. And as of yesterday, he's once again drawing a paycheck to play the beautiful game.

Fernández signed a contract with El Paso Locomotive of the USL Championship, the second division of U.S. soccer. The deal came after the striker completed a two-month trial with Locomotive, who currently sit in fourth place in the Western Conference.

In the clip below, he picks up a couple of goals (and a deserved yellow card) in a friendly with Chicago Fire II. Dude knows what he's doing.

Locomotive play my home side, Loudoun United, in August. Alas, the match is down in the West Texas town of El Paso, so I don't think I'll see it in person. But rest assured we'll be following this story to keep you in the know. 

Anti-Bullshit Missile

We missed this on Friday, but it's big to gentlemen of a certain age. Social Distortion released their first studio album in 15 years, entitled "Born to Kill". And the boys sound pretty, pretty good.

Make It Run on Bullshit

Among the seemingly endless and relentless litany of fuckery our bodily politic is infected with in the current time, one of the most egregious is the constant and blatant lying emanating from Administration officials. One case (of dozens, just this week) in point comes to us from Secretary of Transportation and perpetual reality show performer Sean Duffy.

While being interviewed by FOX News, Duffy claimed that "we're in a good place" with respect to fuel prices, and that Americans should take road trips this summer.

With gas at $4.55 a gallon, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says "we're in a good place" for fuel prices, and urges Americans to drive this summer, saying "we encourage all Americans to take a road trip"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 7, 2026 at 10:49 AM

For the record, USAA reports that the current average price per gallon for regular unleaded is $4.558. A year ago, the average was $3.154. That's an increase of 44.5%. If you have a 20-gallon gas tank, you're paying $28.08 more per trip to the gas station. I paid $65 to fill up the 13-gallon tank in my goddamn MINI last week.

Duffy's obvious nonsense reminded me of a song by one of William & Mary's own. Scott Miller and the Commonwealth released "8 Miles a Gallon" in 2006 as part of the terrific "Citation" album. Among the lyrics: Invent a big engine/Make it run on bullshit/Put it on the highway/Buddy, it'll never quit.

There's certainly no shortage of that bullshit flowing freely in the Nation's Capital these days.

Further We Meander, Musically

Harry Styles and I have a history, as readers of this blog know. And every time the dude does something, it hits. I'm a fan of that young fella. 

Check out this terrific cover of Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World":

And then watch these two professional musicians react to it:

@twerkethicshow This cover with the Horns is something else! @HSHQ join us on Patreon for more reactions! Link in bio! #twerkethic #reaction #harrystyles #bbcradio1 #tearsforfears @CooleyOnDrums ♬ original sound - The Twerk Ethic Show

A Meandering Post that Almost Comes Together at the End

I started reading Tim Lawrence's book Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979 despite my general apathy towards non-fiction, because The Atlantic included it in their list of "Five Books About Going Out That Are Worth Staying In For."  They said:

Versions of this story have been told before, but what distinguishes Love Saves the Day are the more than 300 interviews Lawrence conducted with promoters, partiers, and legendary DJs such as Frankie Knuckles. It’s full of wisdom from the elders of American club culture: how to stagger straight and gay crowds on a Friday night, how to find the next great floor-filling single, how to build a DJ set like a furnace that can burn all night. Lawrence also folds in a number of select club “discographies” so you can reproduce Jimmy Stuard’s set from 12 West, circa 1976, at home (on nice speakers, perhaps, or an iPhone placed in a cereal bowl). 

so I said "Why not?"  I'm about halfway through and I'm not sure that I'll finish, I'm so bored by non-fiction that I haven't taken a history class since high school.  And my main motivation to finish the book--compiling a playlist of all the mentioned songs--was obviated when I learned that someone already did it.

I am not, however, bored by podcasts about non-fiction and I recently stumbled across the One Song Podcast, a show where DJs Diallo Riddle and Luxxury break down the backstory to a song or album.  This isn't just stories about the first time they heard the song or why it's one of their top ten songs, there's some serious music theory.  Here's Luxxury explaining why the bass line to Nas's N.Y. State of Mind sounds so menacing:

The whole episode is great but many of you aren't into Nas and probably don't care who DJ Premier sampled and how he looped it.  Here's an episode I suspect most of you will enjoy.

But the real reason I'm posting all this drivel is their interview with Fab 5 Freddy.  It's two parts and only the first one is out yet, but they talk about some of the clubs and records from Love Saves the Day, so if you don't want to read 400-plus pages of non-fiction just listen to Fab 5 Freddy talk about the good old days of the NYC disco scene, how DJing was invented, the making of Wildstyle, and lots of other interesting stuff.

Deceased Nag and Cudgel Alert: NCAA Edition

Demonstrating once again that nothing will be left alone if privileged people think they benefit from change, the NCAA is in the process of finalizing one of the worst ideas in sports: expansion of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. 

According to reports, the field in both events will increase to 76 teams next season, up from the current 68. Details must be worked out and rubber stamps inked and thumped, but the meat of it is that there will be eight play-in games rather than four, and the winners will advance to the regular Goldilocks field of 64 for the tournaments’ opening weekend. 

Understand that this isn’t about increased opportunities or more of a good thing, it’s power conferences exerting control over as many areas as they see fit, and a mostly neutered NCAA attempting to remain relevant, or at least not be further kneecapped by said conferences. Longtime ESPN snoop Pete Thamel wrote that tournament expansion is driven by the power conferences wanting more at-large bids for their teams. Because clearly, eight or ten or twelve teams from a league aren’t enough. Certainly, an extra low- or mid-major team with an exceptional record will make the expanded field, but it’s a safe bet for anyone but Brendan Sorsby (too soon? [ED: Never!]) that six or seven of the new eight at-larges will be from the Bigfoot conferences. 

Thamel also wrote that expanded tournaments aren’t expected to provide a financial windfall for the NCAA and member schools, but sources said there would be profits. No, he wasn’t talking about Fan Duel and Draft Kings. Decide for yourself if it’s mere coincidence that NCAA officials and media partners are negotiating a new deal, whose current terms pre-dated the present bloat and conference demands for even more elbow room at the trough. 

I’ve written previously about tournament expansion and the notion that it’s football, not basketball, that moved the needle. The Big Ten and SEC became 18- and 16-team mega-conferences, respectively, and capitalized on massive financial deals for football, forcing the ACC and Big 12 to follow suit or get left behind (raise a glass for the late, lamented Pac-12). In turn, that meant five or six teams from a league getting into the basketball tournament went from reasonable representation, percentage-wise, to underserved in their estimation. 

Advocates for tournament expansion cite examples such as Texas advancing from the play-in rounds to the regional semifinal this past March as proof that power conference schools deserve greater representation. I’d argue the opposite. Where was that Longhorns’ team the previous three months? They finished tenth in the SEC. I maintain that no team that doesn’t finish in the top half of its league merits an invitation to play for a natty. Alas, that’s not the way it flies today, when P4 leagues, particularly the Big Ten and SEC, understandably equate resources with clout. 

No small number of power conference coaches favor expansion, as well, reasoning that NCAA berths help with job security. I might argue that an expanded, diluted NCAA field may not provide the shield they think (see: Davis, Hubert, turfed by North Carolina despite four NCAA appearances in his five seasons; and Barnes, Rick, canned at Texas in 2015 despite 16 NCAA trips in 17 seasons). In the present landscape, administrators and Big Checkbooks may not be satisfied with mere invitations to the party; they will want results in the form of deep runs and hardware. But those will be campus taffy pulls. In the grand scheme, we will get a format that few people want with several more undeserving entrants packaged as an upgrade, all because those with their hands on the levers will never let a potential advantage go to waste. Way of the world.

How Not to Spend This Weekend... But Maybe

Have we already written about this? Goodness gracious.

This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people.

Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects.

 --Rick Aschmann

If you’ve ever wondered why someone from Squeaky’s Massachusetts neighborhood sounds like they’re permanently auditioning for a role in The Town while someone from North Dakota sounds like they’re politely asking a casserole for permission, then welcome—truly welcome—to the delightfully insane universe of the North American English Dialects. This is not a sleek, minimalist, “click here for three fun facts” kind of website. No, this is a commitment. It’s the internet equivalent of opening a drawer and discovering it leads to a fully cataloged museum of vowels. And honestly? Respect.

The main event is a sprawling, gloriously overwhelming dialect map of North America, which divides the continent into eight major dialect regions and an alarming number of subdialects that seem to multiply the longer you stare at them. The boundaries aren’t random—they follow historical migration patterns, especially the westward spread of English from the East Coast, which is both fascinating and slightly humbling if you thought your accent was just “normal.” Spoiler: it is not. None of ours are. We are all linguistic snowflakes, except instead of snowflakes, we are vowels doing interpretive dance.

And speaking of vowels—this site is obsessed with them. Not in a creepy way (but yeah), but in a deeply earnest, linguist-with-a-hobby-that-got-out-of-hand way. The focus here is pronunciation: how people actually say things, rather than what they say. You’ll encounter concepts like the “pin–pen merger,” which sounds like a Zman review post but is actually about whether those two words sound the same in your mouth. The site makes it clear that these tiny differences are not tiny at all—they’re basically geographic fingerprints, revealing where you’re from whether you like it or not. It’s like linguistic CSI, but instead of fingerprints, it’s how you say “bag.”

Now, here’s where things get fun: the audio samples. Hundreds of them. Possibly more than you emotionally prepared for. The map is linked to a massive collection of recordings—many pulled from YouTube—so you can click around and hear these dialects in action. This transforms the experience from “huh, interesting map” into “oh no, I’ve been clicking on accents for 45 minutes and now I’m judging strangers based on how they pronounce ‘roof.’” It’s immersive. It’s educational. It’s a mild personality shift.

The site itself feels like it was built in an era when the internet was powered primarily by enthusiasm and possibly Colombian "coffee." It is dense. It is text-heavy. It occasionally looks like it might have been formatted during a long weekend in 1998. But that’s part of its charm. Rick openly discusses updates, corrections, and the avalanche of emails from equally fascinated visitors, which gives the whole thing a slightly chaotic, very human energy. This isn’t a corporate product—it’s one person saying, essentially, “I collect dialects,” and then proceeding to absolutely go to town.

What sneaks up on you, though, is how thoughtful the whole thing is beneath the visual clutter. The site quietly dismantles the idea of a single “correct” English, showing instead that language is shaped by history, migration, and community. It even highlights differences between American and Canadian English—like the fact that Canadians generally merge “cot” and “caught,” while many Americans stubbornly refuse to. Suddenly, accents stop being quirks and start being stories. This is gheorghiness.

By the end of your visit, you’ll likely emerge slightly dazed, mildly more informed, and deeply suspicious of how you pronounce everyday words. You may start testing friends. You may say “orange” out loud several times in a row. You may question everything. And that, I suspect, is exactly what this site wants. It’s not just a map—it’s a gentle, vowel-filled reminder that language is messy, regional, and wonderfully human… even if it occasionally makes you realize you’ve been saying “milk” wrong your entire life.

Enjoy. 

Footy Chaos

On Tuesday, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint Germain took a look at the forthcoming chaos in the British football landscape and paid homage. The two titans turned footy into basketball on the Parc de Princes turf in Paris, scoring a combined nine goals in the first leg of their EUFA Champions League semifinal. Observers needed cigarettes after the match. It's possible that's just because they're French.

Over in the Isles, the drama is extended as seasons draw to a close. Across England, Scotland, and Wales, there's action this weekend and over the next several that'll have fingers gnawed and knuckles white(r).

From least to most well-known, then, we'll dive in.

Since Sir Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen side lifted the trophy in 1985, no club other than Glasgow Rangers or Glasgow Celtic have finished atop Scotland's top division. With four matches to play in the season, Heart of Midlothian (commonly known as Hearts) lead Celtic by three points, with Rangers one point behind their hated rivals. 

If Hearts are going to break the Old Firm stranglehold on the Scottish Prem, they'll have earned it. In their final four matches, they play Rangers at home in Edinburgh and Celtic away, in addition to hosting Falkirk and traveling to Motherwell. Up the Jam Tarts!

There's only one matchday left in the English League Championship, one division below the Premier League, and we've already got a storybook ending and a bitter pill for a side close to home, G:TB speaking. And there's a ton still to play for.

At the top of the table, Coventry has clinched first place and promotion to the Premier League. The Sky Blues last played in the top division in 2000-01, having fallen all the way to League Two (the fourth division) in 2017. Chelsea legend Frank Lampard manages Coventry, finding his footing as a manager after a few missteps in his first few appointments.

There's a giant scrum below first place, as Ipswich Town, Millwall, and Middlesborough all have a chance to finish second and secure automatic promotion and Wrexham, Hull City, and Derby County can all grab sixth place and the final spot in the four-team playoff for the third Premier League promotion spot. Wrexham going up would make it a first-ever four promotions in as many seasons, and cap the absolute Hollywood story Rob McIlhenny and Ryan Reynolds have been cooking up.

Here are the matches to follow on Saturday:

Hull v Norwich (ninth place, no chance to advance)

Wrexham v Middlesborough

Millwall v Oxford United (already relegated)

Derby County v Sheffield United (15th, nothing to play for)

Ipswich Town v Queens Park Rangers (14th, nothing to play for)

At the other end of the table, sad news for Lester's Leicester. Ten years on from winning the Premier League title, the Foxes are already assured of suffering a second consecutive relegation. They'll be playing their football in League One next season.

Finally, to the wealthiest (but arguably not the most interesting, at least football-wise) league in the world. There are battles all over the table with four matches to play. 

Arsenal have led the way nearly all season, but they've stumbled a bit of late, allowing Manchester City back into the picture. City trail by three points, but they have a game in hand. Arsenal have arguably the easier run in, but only just. Could very easily come down to the final matchday.

England's top five teams qualify for the 2026-27 Champions League. That number rises to six if Aston Villa finishes fifth and wins this seasons Europa League - neither of those would be a shock. There are seven teams within four points of sixth at the time of this writing (including Fulham! and Dave's Bees). Look at this madness:

And down below, the possibility of an unthinkable outcome is very much alive. Tottenham Hotspur won last year's Europa League and participated in this season's Champions League, advancing to the knockouts. Back home, though, they've been moribund. Their dismal 1-0 win last weekend against relegation-bound Wolverhampton was Spurs' first victory in 2026.

Spurs are currently in 18th place, which is in the drop zone. They're two points behind West Ham United and five points in arrears of Nottingham United. Seeing one of the richest clubs in Europe drop to the second division would be utterly shocking, and their run in is no picnic.

Grab your seat and buckle your popcorn. Lots of footy fun right around the corner.

Brotherly Love

Matt Fitzpatrick is one of the best golfers in the world. The 31 year-old Englishman won the 2022 U.S. Open and has 15 other wins worldwide to his name, including three PGA TOUR wins already this season.

His brother Alex is an accomplished golfer in his own right, having won the DP World Tour's Hero Indian Open in March for his first win at that level. Until last weekend, though, he'd yet to earn a permanent place on the PGA TOUR. 

The brothers teamed up last weekend to play in the TOUR's unique Zurich Classic of New Orleans. The two-man format features best ball (fourball) in rounds one and three and alternate shot (foursomes) in the second and fourth rounds. 

After a scorching third round that saw the pair birdie or eagle 14 of the 18 holes en route to a 15-under 57, the Brothers Fitzpatrick led the event by four strokes. If they won, Alex Fitzpatrick would join his brother as a full member of the PGA TOUR - but only if they won.

A couple of loose shots on the back nine led to a double bogey on 12 and a bogey on 14, and the pair found themselves in a three-way tie as they headed to the 18th and final hole. Older brother Matt split the fairway on the par five 18th, then Alex hit his approach into a greenside bunker. The boys needed to get up and down from a challenging spot to win and earn Alex his card through 2028.

And they did this:

That's the good shit right there. For Matt to hit that shot with his brother's career progression on the line is all kinds of onions. After the round, Alex said, "It won't sink in. It's amazing to be here with him, my mum and dad. It's a lot of hard work and I can't believe we've done it It's as good as it gets."

Gheorghe Does Foodstuffs, Disgusting Version

When I first read the headline of this story, I assumed it was April 1st. It was not. Try to comprehend this without vomiting:

"Great Wolf Lodge debuts Ranch Milkshake topped with carrots, celery and chicken nuggets"

I wouldn't even subject Marls to that monstrosity, which apparently is an actual thing. According to a spokesman for Great Wolf Lodge who wouldn't identify himself (we know it's a dude because women have more common sense than to allow themselves to be associated with fuckery of this nature),  “The shake starts with a vanilla ice cream base, so it’s still sweet and creamy, while the ranch adds a tangy twist that creates a surprisingly delicious combination."

To which we say, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.

NFL Draft Open Thread/Up the Huskies

Creating space for running commentary on Mendozapalooza. And it's Husky Gameday, so a filler twofer for your social media pleasure. Kids go on road to Commanders great (and current Bengal) Jonathan Allen's alma mater (in the same town as the Commanders' training facility) to take on a foe from a larger classification. 

Our Huskies are pretty chill, but do enjoy these huskies doing husky things.

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Mission: Impossible

Ten years ago today, Prince passed away at his Paisley Park complex in Chanhassen, MN. One of the best things I read at the time was written by Bomani Jones from a hotel room in Paris. 

I was reminded of that last week when Bo recorded a pair of podcasts remembering the Purple One. And I remembered listening to Prince on SiriusXM with my kids on a long car ride - was likely their first extended exposure, and the first time in more than a decade that I really dug into the genius' catalog.

Jones' podcasts got me thinking about Prince's music. In particular, my favorite of his songs. The ones he recorded, not the ones he wrote - that list is far too long to contemplate. So I set a challenge that's described by the title of this post. I decided to pick my five favorite Prince songs.

I'll get to the list in a minute. Couple of explanatory notes first. My faves are gonna tilt heavily to his early records (one in particular), or at least from "1999" forward. That's when I was turned on to his stuff, and when I spent the most time with it. I leaned hard into progressive tunes when I first heard The Smiths' "Louder Than Bombs" in 1987, and didn't get back around to Prince until much later. And I never really got into his post-"Love Symbol" records. So we're really only talking about "Dirty Mind" in 1980 through the aforementioned Symbol in 1992 as the consideration set. 

And it's still fucking hard to pick just five songs.

For fuck's sake, the list doesn't include When You Were Mine, Uptown, 1999, Delirious, Let's Go Crazy, Darlin' Nikki, Purple Rain, Raspberry Beret, Pop Life, Kiss, Sign O' the Times, U Got the Look, If I Was Your Girlfriend, I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man, Gett Off, Erotic City, and Sexy MF, among a lot of others.

If you're a connoisseur, you could probably figure out my top five from the omissions above. Because I'm a man of the people, I'll make it easy for you.

In no particular order, my top five Prince songs:

In the fall of 1984, I was a painfully naive young lad coming to terms with my utter inability to talk to/attract girls at the same time that I was completely enamored of them. In the basement of a friend's house, a mixed group danced to "Purple Rain", and the girls went nuts when I Would Die 4 U came on. That was the very first time I ever danced with a girl. It left a mark. Music as memory, as we've discussed at length here before. (And I was this week old before I realized it was about Jesus.)

I'd heard Little Red Corvette many times before I caught onto the way its fundamental raunchiness masked the vulnerability of a dude not quite sure he was gonna measure up. But when I got it, I certainly got it, though it didn't help with that previously noted naïveté with the ladies. Corvette edges out its thematic cousin Raspberry Beret because it's just that much sexier.

The chronologically latest song on my list hit me out of the blue in 1992 upon the release of the "Love Symbol" album. 7 didn't sound like any Prince tune I'd heard before, but its chorus got me right in the tuning fork in my chest. It's definitely the wild card on this list.

I'd argue that Prince's guitar virtuosity was an under-discussed topic until relatively recently. Folks focused on his hypersexy lyrics, funky grooves, brilliant live shows, and prolific musicianship. But "Purple Rain" is a guitar-forward record, and the opening lick of When Doves Cry is a damn call to arms. 

Returning to a theme for our final tune, Purple Rain showed that shy and clueless young man a glimpse of something entirely new. In the short term, it accelerated feelings of longing for amorphous but assuredly sexy and sweaty and not at all dorky possibility. Take Me With U felt like that kid asking a more mature, experienced and cute girl for a favor. And that seemed very real at the time.

This version has a naaaasty guitar solo. 

And as a lagniappe to keep the groove rolling, get some of his 1985 live show from Syracuse. It's fucking bonkers. In the best way.

More New Old Stock Music!

We might need a NOS music label because I have another NOS album for you.  Dave wrote about Zamrock previously, here and at SOD, after spending eight hours in a car with me listening to lots of different music.  And I wrote about new old stock music a few weeks ago.  As luck would have it, Now-Again Records (remember the Whitefield Brothers?) just released a new old stock Zamrock album from Ngozi Family, "Gate Crash '78."  Here's the story:

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Here's the music:

And here's the tracklist:

1. Apongozi

2. Jealousy

3. Poem Writer

4. Munzanga

5. Gate Crash

6. Easy Baby

7. Bukoko

8. Tikonde Alendo

Songs to Know and Love

I sing the body eclectic this fine Sunday morning, with a trio of tunes I've heard and liked recently.

The first one's gonna be smack in Rootsy's wheelhouse, but all of y'all rock and rollers owe the artist a debt, because he inspired just about everyone in the game, directly or not. In 1936 and1937, Robert Johnson laid down 29 tracks across two sessions with producer Don Law. Most of us have heard the scratchy recordings of those sessions that survive to the modern day.

But recently, someone discovered a metal master of "Cross Road Blues" that may have been pressed in 1940. And it's crystal clear. Here's some musical history for you:

Veering wildly to the modern day, someone I owe a debt to went to the lab and created a band tuned perfectly to my frequencies. I give you Chicago's own Ratboys.

And back, somewhat, to the middle. An appreciation of an artist I came to through my youngest who I very much enjoy. Harry Styles' new record is both grown up and backwards-looking. My kidlet says this one sounds like One Direction (complimentary).

Standards, Mostly Double

Reporting has never been glamorous, no matter how many exotic locations Christiane Amanpour broadcasts from, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman movie portrayals, or how smart and clever Katharine Hepburn was in “Woman of the Year.” The work is challenging and rewarding – though usually in ways not tied to earnings – as well as time consuming and tedious. Information is vital for a functioning society, but being nosy for a living has no shortage of detractors. 

The news business has been under assault for some time, with newspapers strip-mined and shuttered, and the corporate enshittification of various news outlets in service to profits and power. Discouraging as outside incursions are, it’s the “own goals” that are often more galling. Which brings us to the Dianna Russini-Mike Vrabel contretemps. 

Russini is the former Bigfoot NFL reporter-turned-insider for The Athletic, Vrabel the coach of the Boston-based Kraft Family Football Collective. The New York Post ran photos of them holding hands, hot tubbing and hugging at a luxury resort in Sedona, Ariz., late last month, and a source said they were on a private bungalow rooftop and that they briefly danced together. 

Russini and Vrabel both denied that anything tawdry occurred and said that both were there with and around other people, though none were seen in any of the photos. Further complicating matters is that both are married, though not to each other. Russini’s boss vigorously defended her in the immediate aftermath but started an investigation into the episode. When she tried to get back to her job and floated a piece of NFL news, she was swamped with disgusting replies. Earlier this week she resigned. 

In a letter to her boss that went public, she admitted nothing and leaned heavily into the idea of separating herself from the runaway train of speculation by outsiders. She wrote that she resigned “not because I accept the narrative that has been constructed around this episode, but because I refuse to lend it further oxygen or to let it define me or my career.” She decried media speculation “unmoored from the facts” and a media frenzy “hurtling forward without regard for the review process” and “I have no interest in submitting to a public inquiry that has already caused far more damage than I am willing to accept.” 

Notably absent is a sentence in which she takes responsibility for the unprofessional appearance of the situation, or a straight denial that anything illicit took place. A resignation letter full of righteous outrage that highlights “process” and personal insult falls short of persuasive. 

Access is oxygen for reporters. There’s all manner of gaining access to sources, ethical and unethical and many shades of gray in between. The best reporters, I’d say most reporters, cultivate it through scrupulous work and fair and knowledgeable treatment of subjects, often over years. There are plenty whose standards are lower, who play favorites and trade flattering stories or planted pieces for nuggets and scoops. Still others debase themselves ethically and essentially pay for stories and access in numerous ways. 

I’m in no position to judge what kind of reporter Russini is, only that she’s done the job for years for prominent shops and that people talk to her. She comes across as personable and engaging. What I’m comfortable saying is that she did the profession, and particularly female reporters, no favors. Even if she didn’t violate the cardinal rule of “Don’t Fuck Your Sources,” she provided fodder for misogynistic troglodytes who generally think women must have slept their way into high-profile jobs. Parenthetically, she also provided an example of the double standard applied to men and women in a symbiotic work environment, particularly one that’s male dominant. 

Russini resigned from her job, and might have been turfed after the Athletic’s investigation, while it’s likely that the only repercussions Vrabel will endure will be from Mrs. Vrabel. The NFL has made it clear that it cares about the character and behavior of players and coaches only when it damages The Shield and its image. A few suggestive pics of a coach and reporter barely move the needle. 

Not that there's anything wrong with that. McVey is 
a handsome fella.

I think it’s safe to say that the fallout would be different if pics surfaced of Adam Schefter and Sean McVay holding hands and gazing longingly into each other’s eyes over a shared bruschetta (apologies for that image). [ED NOTE: We'll add here that the aforementioned Schefter admitted to sharing a draft of a story with a source to allow for editing, which is a fairly egregious breach of standards, as well. He kept his job.] That said, Russini, and reporters in general, must be held to a higher standard simply because of the nature of the work. News outlets’ sole currency is credibility. Once that’s damaged or up for question, it broad brush compromises not only the reporter but the entire organization. If people suspect that an outlet went low to land a scoop, or if a subject or reporter has an agenda beyond simply providing information and insight, the gig is toast. 

Who and what else can no longer be trusted? Reporters’ favorability has been underwater for years. A 2024 Gallup Poll found that only 17 percent of those surveyed thought newspaper reporters had high honesty and ethics and 45 percent of respondents said those reporters had low or extremely low honesty and ethics. They fared slightly better than TV reporters, whose numbers (13 percent high, 55 percent low) were better only than members of Congress and lobbyists. Even Redford and Hoffman can’t help that. 

So, Russini takes a professional hit for, at the very least, incredibly poor judgment. Meanwhile, Vrabel goes back to prepping for the upcoming draft and footballing in general. Fair? Nope. They were co-equal participants in an indiscreet encounter. Questions about what exactly transpired and the nature of their relationship are valid, given the positions both hold – or in her case, held. What it becomes is another cautionary tale for women dealing with men in positions of power and another example of how the playing field is never level.