Father's Day Gift Guide

Father's Day is nigh upon us and you will probably say "I don't know" when asked for gift ideas to commemorate the occasion, or maybe you don't know what to get one of the dads in your life.  This post aims to alleviate that problem.

Men in Love and/or the Trainspotting collection

If you read G:TB you were probably born between 1968 and 1978 which means you are of exactly the right age to have seen, and been absolutely blown away by, the movie Trainspotting when it came out in 1996.

Barry!  The book on which it's based is just as good and it got me into other works by Irvine Welsh including all the sequels and prequels involving the same group of radge jakeys which are available on Amazon as the "Trainspotting collection."  This does not include the latest installment, Men in Love, which takes place shortly after the end of Trainspotting and before Porno.  This means the new book is a sequel and a prequel.  As a fan of the series I enjoyed it greatly.  I guess you could come to it cold but I suspect you'll enjoy it more if you already read the other books, or at least Trainspotting.  I've cited some favorite Welsh quotes before--my top choice from Men in Love is from Sick Boy (natch) and it's at least tangentially related to Father's Day:

Pah-pah, Papa: even a broken clock is right twice a day.  I thank God that out of the billions of retard sperm that this miasmal mongol hound shot from those festering hee-haws intae my ill-omened mother (and countless Leith hoors), that it was the solitary, exceptional, perfect bastard that managed to penetrate her egg and furnish this saintly woman with her only son.

Onlae a dozy bam couldnae relate to that!

Syitren R300 CD player

zwoman got me one of these small modern CD players for my birthday.  It has AUX and optical jacks and Bluetooth so it works with AirPods or any other Bluetooth device.  More importantly, it justifies keeping all my CDs, especially the ones that are currently only on Notify (like Done By the Forces of Nature which was removed from Spotify because I suspect it includes exactly zero cleared samples).  I dig the Scandinavian vibe of the walnut version.  Who doesn't dig Scandinavian vibes?

Patagonia R1 Air Hoodie 

zson borrowed my softshell to clean out stables in the rain and a horse bit the zipper off (don't ask) so I went to REI to replace it during their recent 25% off sale.  They didn't have anything that fit the bill, but I spend a lot of time in fleece jackets and two of them are close to crapping out so I perused REI's selection and discovered Patagonia's new (at least to me) Air Fleece.  I'm not sure how it works but it keeps you warm without getting too warm (unlike their Better Sweaters) and the medium fit me perfectly.  They are wildly overpriced, even at 25% off, but it's replacing two fleeces (one of which I bought about 12 years ago) and zson is about my size so he can wear it too (so long as he avoids the zipper-eating horse) so I justified it to myself and I'm hoping it will last a long time.  I went with the hoodie version because who doesn't like hoodies?  

A subscription to The Atlantic

There might not be a better source of content outside G:TB than The Atlantic.  It's chock-full of think pieces from deep thinkers, cultural observations from cultured observers, and short fiction from non-fictional writers of all heights.  Notable writers include Tom Nichols, Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Robert Kagan, McKay Coppins, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Chait, Adam Serwer, Derek Thompson, Annie Lowrey, Jamele Hill, George Packer, Eliot Cohen, Alexandra Petri and a boatload of other Washington Post defectors.  They put out new stuff online daily and offer a web-only subscription but for an extra $10 you can get also get the dead tree version mailed to your house along with a tote.

Huskies Playoff Preview

[And now for something completely different: a professional sportswriter interviews an amateur high school soccer coach and cranks out 600 words on a deadline. Up the Huskies.]

Listen to Rob Russell and the Tuscarora High soccer team’s trip to the regional playoffs is both reward and opportunity. The Huskies navigated a challenging season marked by injuries and player absences to advance into the postseason, where they have momentum and begin with a clean slate. 

“I told our kids that our goal was to be playing our best soccer at the end of the season and I think we’re doing that,” said Russell, the Huskies’ second-year head coach. “I think we’re in as good a spot as we’ve been all season.” 

The Huskies, who face Heritage High in Leesburg this evening at 6:00, enter the playoffs on an uptick. Though they finished 6-8-2 overall, they were 6-5-1 in Region 4C and tied for fourth after winning three in a row to end the season. The late surge can be traced to a jolt of offense and stability at goalkeeper after a couple months of uncertainty. 

Injuries compounded the uncertainty. Five starters missed multiple games due to injury, and Russell guessed that he was never able to start the same eleven more than twice, which led to both lineup and tactical tweaks. But the return of last year's leading scorer and honorable mention All-Met striker Emmy Tchou three games ago provided a boost to the offense, though she is at less than full strength as she rounds into form.

At the defensive end, talented freshman Laurel Francis, a natural midfielder, has settled in as relief goalkeeper and become much more comfortable in the past couple of weeks. Goalkeeper was a concern for much of the season after the Huskies’ all-district freshman keeper a year ago was forbidden from playing high school ball by her club team coach, so what appeared to be a strength heading into the season became an issue until recently. That, in turn, put added pressure on the Huskies’ back line, an experienced, talented group that has held up remarkably well. 

Backs Maddy Crew and Sydney York are first-team all-district, and senior captain Rosemary Stewart has been steady and solid, in addition to filling in at goalkeeper at times. Senior defensive midfielder Vicky Rojas is second-team all-district and the Huskies’ free kick specialist. 

Senior midfielder Kirran Holt is the team’s engine, Russell said, a tireless competitor who is first-team all-district and was all-region as a junior and is also all-state in track and cross country. She runs marathons and routinely logs five- or six-mile training runs before practice. She’s tied for the team scoring lead with seven goals and an assist, and Tchou’s return has helped create space for her and sophomore wing Kiya Philson, who also has seven goals and an assist. 

Tuscarora’s goal differential is a mite misleading, as early games were against stout competition when the team was still gaining its footing and dealing with myriad injuries. But the breakdown – 8 goals for, 14 against in first six regional matches; 18 goals for, 10 against in final six matches – indicates improvement. 

Despite the early struggles, Russell said the players’ commitment never wavered. “The girls have been awesome,” he said. “It’s a good group that really enjoys being around each other.” 

Russell wouldn’t go so far as to predict a postseason run. If the Huskies get past Heritage, their likely next opponent would be defending state champ Loudoun County High. LCHS is 14-1 and beat Tuscarora 5-0 in April. The Captains have scored 56 goals and allowed just four, according to the school’s website. 

“We’d like the opportunity to see if we can slow them down, but they’re really, really good,” Russell said. “It would be an upset, but it’s sports; who knows.”

Up the Huskies

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?