Morgan released some videos detailing their new three-wheeler.
The model's website has lots of information and if you want to spend hours trapped in an automotive rabbit hole, they have a bonkers configurator.
There are many ways to spec this car and it's easy to screw it up. Any black, silver, or gray version is incorrect. For example, a murdered out Super 3 is stupid.
Matte battleship gray is better but still wrong.
Either way you can't see all of the car's details. And it's a fucking three-wheeler with no roof or windshield, there's no point in trying to be subtle. I see a few obvious builds.
First is green over biscuit with ivory side blades and matching wheels. They offer at least five different shades of green (six if you count the blue-green "Eden Blue"). I'm going with glossy Almond because it's solid, not metallic. Alligator would be better if it wasn't metallic, but that's life. The side blades are matte Sport Ivory, as are the wheels. I am not a fan of matte paint generally because it often hides the car's lines--my old neighbor had a matte black Audi A7 and it made one of the prettiest cars on the road completely two-dimensional. But the wheels and side blades have no lines, they are completely two dimensional so matte paint will only accentuate them. While I'm at it I'll take "zman" and "zwoman" callsigns on the driver's and passenger's sides respectively, American flags (they don't have that in the configurator so there are Union Jacks in the picture), a tinted flyscreen, Rich Tan interior, Zebrano wood on the dash, extra driving lights with protective cages all around, and because I'm an idiot I'll get body-matching luggage too.
That's a classically British car. The luggage is ridiculous. This is not a car you take on a road trip. It has no top for God's sake. But it looks cool in the picture so I included it.
It would also be correct to make the whole thing Sport Ivory and put a pop of color on the inside, like Cotswold Green. I would go with silver wheels to get some contrast and some WWI flying ace decals for fun.
Austin Powers would go full Union Jack with this thing.
That's Sport Blue with Sport Red blades, cowl, and wheels. Ivory seats with quilted red stitching and the Morgan logo between the seats. The exhaust pipe is white too. The brightwork is silver, the flyscreens are clear, and I only specced two driving lights to give the car less of a spider's face. I added the Union Jack decals to make it as preposterous as possible.
If I were plunking down my hard earned zcash, I would go with glossy Classic Blue and matte White Gold blades and wheels, Tan mariner leather with pleated seats and blue stitching, silver brightwork, a walnut dashboard and a big Momo wood steering wheel. I'd get the big flyscreen just to make it more livable, and a "03" decal on the blades.
Ideally the blades and wheels would be slightly browner and the body would be more of a robin's egg blue. They have an infinitely adjustable "special solid colour" widget but it's too hard to figure out.
With all that said, the previous 3 Wheeler was cooler. The exposed exhaust pipes running down the side were a major burn hazard but boy were they awesome to look at. Having the engine hanging off the front bumper was a goofy idea just from a physics and handling dynamics perspective but it was also very aesthetically pleasing. And the wire wheels were orders of magnitude more beautiful than these dog dishes on the Super 3. The digital dash in the new car isn't heresy but I'm not sure it works with the whole old-timey steampunk vibe they're going for.
It starts at £35,000 and every time you do something in the configurator it adds more to the pricetag. Sport Ivory paint is £595, for example. Any wheels other than silver is another £595. Any interior other than black vinyl and they start at £895. It's insane, especially for a car you can't drive far or often. It has no roof so you can't use it when it might rain (unless you don't mind ruining the interior). The flyscreens are clip-on pieces of plastic so I doubt they provide any serious protection from rocks, insects, or anything else that might fly into your face at 40 MPH. I cannot imagine driving one of these on a real highway--you would be invisible to, and thus likely run over by, an 18-wheeler or a Cadillac Escalade.
Naturally, I registered my interest on the Morgan website and Linda from Morgan Motors of New England already contacted me. I'm pretty sure I'm not stupid enough to buy a Super 3. Pretty sure.
This is a goddamn work of performance art. It's as if Andy Kaufman chose basketball as his milieu rather than professional wrestling. I can't look away.
December 2, 2008: In acknowledgment of our 1,000 G:TB post, the brains behind Gheorghe: The Blog brought you Gheorghemas I. The original. Teej in a "Simspon" jersey. Mustache photos. Breast milk. Videos that no longer work. Pictures of us from 1999. And Dennis!
December 31, 2008: I post the first of what will be a series of eventually redundant Day 12's, all focused around my appreciation for my life and what fills it, leaning heavily on you clowns. Set to my favorite tunes released that year.
It's interesting to look back on that post from 13 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. Turns out that one of those changed things is not my taste in music. And mired in the morass of the Great Recession, there was a general malaise, but a plea for optimism.
March 25, 2013:I drag my feet on closing out Gmas V until this hideously late date, cuing up the perfect Shel Silverstein poem in the process. My excuse? I got married that January! It's interesting to look back on that post from 9 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. (Spoiler Alert: that marriage didn't take.) We had come out of the economic doldrums by then (we, not I), but there was a long road ahead. Thank goodness for G:TB.
So here we are at the belated close of Gmas XIV, and I'm feeling much better than I did in either of those eras. As such, there's no reason to depart from the 12 Appreciations (with 2021's Musical Accompaniment) theme for Day 12.
I had the best Christmas in memory, perhaps ever, and certainly the best in nearly 20 years. Some of you may recall my Xmas Eve-Eve post in which I eagerly anticipated the holiday with my college-aged daughters for the first time since they were in elementary school. In retrospect, I put lots of hype and pressure on myself to have make sure it was great.
We crushed it. The holiday was an absolute blast. The Christmas Eve party was tons of fun, well attended by family and friends, and despite a lot of work going into, we had more even revelry than our guests.
The picture of the table doesn't even do the festivities justice, as there was a whole other table full of meatballs in the crock pit, bacon-wrapped scallops, pigs in a blanket with honey mustard/Tabasco ketchup/Chick Fil-A sauce offerings and more.
Christmas Day was beautiful. I overdid it on gifts for them, because of course I did. They were all smiles. And hugs. And gratitude.
And then it was over. But I still feel like I'm basking in the last embers now. Happy to have waited on Day 12 if only to extend this warm feeling just a little longer.
As some of you know, my girls go to the University of South Carolina. Had you asked me five years ago to put odds on where they'd be going, those odds would have been super long on USC. I'd have bet on a Virginia state school, maybe a DC school, maybe College of Charleston or even Rollins College.
Sometimes shit just works out well. I'm knocking on wood here, since I only have a freshman and a sophomore there, but wow, did I get it wrong... and they got it right. They both got 4.0's as first-year students, and when their grades came in during Gheorghemas, they shamed my my undergrad performance. They've made wonderful friends. They love Columbia and the campus, and football
games, and now women's basketball, and just good times. Plus they're together, which has meant more than I even realized it would.
If anyone wants to join me there for a road trip for weekend, saddle up. Last weekend Widespread Panic played there and I was a late scratch (owing in part to needing to save some scratch), but more shows are on the docket. And sports. And southern hospitality and cheap suds. Ask Mark.
Also, if you go, sometimes things like this happen:
Since just before Gmas started, I saw a football game in a large stadium. (Clemson 30, USC 0. Not good. more recently, I saw a concert in a fairly large arena. (Billy Strings. Fantastic.)
So either I'm phenomenally irresponsible or the the world is returning somewhat to semi-normalcy. Or
both, most likely.
Here's hoping there's more of this in our immediate future. Rob and I have tickets to a They Might Be Giants show in DC that was originally scheduled for 2020. (I just realized that they rescheduled it for the third time for March 5, which is not enormously convenient.) I made the tough call to forgo JazzFest this year and instead take my girls and gf and her kids to the City That Never Sleeps in May. That should be a good one.
More to come, but for now, with 2020/21 in the rearview, it's a joy.
Building on that, in December I was invited to a shindig at one of my favorite spots, the local and historic Naro Cinema. I've posted before about times I spent there with Jerry, Fred, and Seth & Scott on the screen in recent years. But many moons ago, I used to hit the Naro every few weeks or so for their Friday Night Late Show at 11:30pm. When I was in high school, the Late Show rotation looked a bit like this:
Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Song Remains the Same
Pink Floyd: The Wall
Stop Making Sense
They'd mix a few others in on occasion, but that was usually it. And our gang of friends was good for being there for the latter two a few times a year each. I still remember getting busted trying to walk in with a jean jacket full of wine coolers at age 16. (They only took half of them... score!) The Wall still gets under my skin after some papal ballots, especially the scene where the orphaned kid (Roger Waters as a lad, presumably) gets rejected trying to hold another mom's hand on the playground. Yeesh.
And Stop Making Sense. So good. My buddy Dave yakked in the downstairs bathroom where I currently reside when we were sophomores post-SMS. Ruined a nice hand towel. But it was still great fun.
Anyway, they only play Rocky Horror at the late show these days, sad to say, but smack in the middle of Gmas, a good friend rented out the Naro and aired Stop Making Sense. I bought O'Connor beers instead of smuggling Bartles and Jaymes. We drank and danced and watched one of the great rock films of all time. Total blast. Let's do shit like that again, please!
You know what else came back during this time? ORF Rock! Our little college radio show peaked some years back, and the past few years have presented a series of hurdles that have precluded us from getting into the studio at WODU. For a little while, my co-host Penny Baker and I definitely considered ORF Rock to be a thing of the past.
Fear not, faithful fans. We have returned at long last to dominate the internet airwaves for one hour a week with 14 or so rock songs typically not getting radioplay and some goofy banter. Oh, and some music trivia and theme contests. We're now on the air on Tuesdays at 7:00pm. Tune in if you're otherwise unoccupied. We usually kick it off with the ORF Rock theme song:
And sometimes one thing leads to another, and worlds collide. We're friends with a "real" radio DJ with an even goofier DJ name than Les Coole. "Woo Woo" has been one-half of the morning tandem on local 94.9 The Point for many years. And on 2/22/22, a mash-up for the ages happened.
Okay, so it was a lot cooler for us than for her and her co-host Mike. They humored us for 30 minutes of storytelling, silly banter, and talk about music. It was a lot of fun, and they promised to do it again soon.
In high school I was an intern for the on-air guy at the local public radio station, WHRO. In college, once or twice Dave and I sat in with our buddies Ethan and Dan at WCWM. (I mean they played Random Idiots, for Pete's sake.) I've been interviewed for work on Norfolk State's radio station and a couple of others around the way. But this was different, a half-hour out of their show dedicated to our little radio show -- and some shameless plugs for Les Coole and the Cukes. Loved it.
In December, the aforementioned one of the several G:TB house bands, Les Coole and The Cukes, released our ninth single. This one continues the "beauty of modern technology" phenomenon. The bass track came from a buddy I grew up with, and the guitar work that serves as the basis of the song came from the man who serves as the inspiration of the lyrics, our William and Mary crony "Mayday" Malone, aka Mr. Misanthrope Haiku. Even though I saw neither of them in person in 2021. Pro Tools, Dropbox, etc.
Here's some more egregious self-promotion... Mayday.
Also to be filed under "Crawling Out of COVID," I went to see a feature film in a movie theater for the first time since... well, I honestly cannot remember. I'm reasonably sure that, apart from seeing a few documentaries at the Naro, I haven't seen a movie in the theater since The Hangover in 2009. That's saying something, right?
I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home. Neither a graphic novel geek nor an art house goon who eschews superhero films, I highly enjoyed it. And the way they intertwined old Spider-Men? Well, I'm a sucker for that. I half-expected to see the version of Spidey that I watched the most eagerly in my life... the one seen below. (Name the future star at 1:26.)
Day 3 of this Gmas featured the much-heralded Zman bestowing upon us another round of what has become a recurring feature. (BTW, Z has done a really nice job of keeping multiple such features actually recurring, when this blog previously had a long history of launching recurring features destined never to recur.) The one I refer to was the gift suggestions for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Christmas/Gheorghemas gifts.
I, for one, listen to Z. For Gheorghemas:
I went in on a Peloton bike with the gf. It's at my house, since she'll travel to work out and I won't. I've hit a slowdown of late, but I'll get it back.
I also bought her some Glerup slippers. She digs 'em. (She also digs her Ember mug.)
I got both of my parents out of the dark ages and into Spotify subscriptions. Right before Neil Young and Co. made that seems less cool. (Not Les Coole.)
The Bonobos weren't available in my size, Maybe next time!
Speaking of whom, if I'm reviewing the appreciations I had during Gheorghemas, the love of a good woman is up there. It was just three years ago that I described my romantic state of affairs in a not-so-appealing way during Gheorghemas XI. Anyway, another flurry of wonderfully thoughtful gifts came my way courtesy of mi inamorata. (She tried, but both the Bonobos and the '69 Butternut Yellow convertible Impala weren't available.) Among other great presents was a chunklet-style (also called Chick Fil-A or Sonic style) ice maker for my kitchen. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend you picking one up.
We also made a formidable team (along with the young folk) for the banner Xmas Eve party... and then she treated us to an oceanfront hotel suite for NYE. Beyond the generosity, there's an element of being about the most decent person anyone's ever been to me, so I got that going for me. And I appreciate the hell out of it.
I can't thank the Gheorghe team enough for giving me Day 12 every year... and then letting me drag my feet and abuse the privilege. Feel free any time to allocate it differently next go-'round.
But in the meantime I have sincerely appreciated the honor. Cheers, friends.
Normally, I would close with the appreciation above. But some things are special.
We already spent some Gmas time memorializing our friend, both here and in Williamsburg. And when we did the latter... well, there's nothing quite like the visual. All I will say is that we dusted off a couple of our tried and true moshables from the late 1980's and early 1990's to appropriately usher our man Johnny into the great beyond.
I'm afraid, friends, that the time has come to ask an important question about our Wrens.
Wrong school. Right emotion.
As I type this, W&M is playing its final home game of the season. They'll likely lose to Delaware to fall to 5-24 on the season. If it wasn't for Northeastern have a nightmare of a season due to COVID and injury issues, the Tribe would be DFL in the CAA. As it is, they're relegated to the conference tournament play-in game, where they'll likely be bounced in the first round.
The squad is unquestionably young. 77% of W&M's points have been scored by freshmen or sophomores. The young kids have also grabbed 80% of the team's rebounds and handed out 89% of its assists. Those numbers hold at least the hint of promise for the future.
The present, though, not great.
Dane Fischer had a stellar debut year, blending Nathan Knight and Luke Loewe with some excellent transfers and salvaging the wreck of the program left in the wake of Samantha Huge's administrative malpractice. That 2019-20 team went 21-11 and finished second in the CAA before losing a terribly disappointing game to Elon in the first round of the conference tournament. Last year was a write-off - no coach should be evaluated on his team's performance during the insanity of the COVID season.
Soph Ben Wight has been a bright spot
But now, it's fair to ask whether Dane can coach at this level. He seems by all accounts to be a terrific guy, a role model who operates with integrity. But there's no escaping the fact that this team is poor, and it hasn't improved over the course of the season. The Tribe has lost six in a row, all but one by double digits. They've been outscored on the season by an average of 9.9 points per game, have 125 more turnovers than assists, and allow opponents to shoot 46.4% from the field.
The 2021-22 Tribe will have the school's worst season since 2011-12, which was Marcus Thornton's freshman year. If they lose all four of their remaining games, they'll set a program record for most defeats in a season, and at W&M, that's a damning record to hold.
Tony Shaver had the Wrens in the CAA Tournament final within two years after that dismal 2011-12 campaign. There's no Marcus Thornton on this roster, so I'm not counting on Dane Fischer repeating that feat. He might not even get the chance if next year isn't a substantial improvement on this one.
Samantha Huge's salting the fields of W&M hoops may take a generation to undo.
A little bit about money and inequality. I’ll keep it brief, since what I don’t understand about money and finance fills libraries. One of the few things I know about money is that having it is beneficial, while not having it is troublesome.
The pandemic drove that home.
The well-heeled and the wealthy are getting weller-heeled and wealthier. [Note: I appreciate that we've convinced our most-accomplished professional scribe to adopt the informality of our tenuous relationship with the language.] America’s billionaires increased in both numbers and wealth – from 610 at the start of the pandemic to 745 as of October 2021; from totaling just shy of $3 trillion in combined wealth to more than $5 trillion, according to Forbes and Inequality.org. In just the first three quarters of 2021, the wealthiest one percent saw their collective fortunes increase by $13 trillion, to $43.94 trillion, and they controlled nearly one-third (32 percent) of the country’s wealth, according to numbers from the Federal Reserve.
Meanwhile, those at the lower end of the economic spectrum mostly feel the heel pressing on their sternum. They’re more susceptible to disease and unemployment and hardship. Though job creation numbers are trending up and unemployment numbers down, as of last November there were still 3.5 million fewer workers in the labor force than before the pandemic. A survey of several thousand people by Capital One Insights Center found that 40 percent of low-wage earners in two-paycheck households reported that at least one person lost their job or had to leave their job during the pandemic.
Whatever gains from changing jobs or holding out for higher pay are now being eaten up by inflation. Consider that the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population (165 million people) possess 2.5 percent of the nation’s wealth, according to the Fed.
Our march down this plutocratic path has sparked discussion. Is protecting citizens of the planet’s wealthiest nation limited to weaponry and defense? Should it include affordable, accessible health care? Infrastructure that doesn’t crumble beneath our feet? Clean air and water? Climate change mitigation efforts? Living wages?
Among measures discussed are Universal Basic Income and Guaranteed Income. UBI is a payout from the government to everyone, and it was a cornerstone of fringe presidential candidate and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang's policy framework. UBI is likely DOA in state and national circles, as nothing gets tagged “socialist” faster than governments giving money to individuals – though notorious “lefty” Richard Nixon seriously considered implementing a nationwide UBI as part of the War on Poverty before he was dissuaded. Guaranteed Income, on the other hand, is payouts to specific groups, and programs have sprouted up in recent years.
According to Business Insider, there are at least 33 programs around the country amid or recently concluded providing a guaranteed income to groups of people, nearly all at or below the poverty level.
In Alexandria, Va., a D.C. suburb, officials allocated $3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and will pay 150 households $500 a month for two years, no strings attached. St. Paul, Minn., launched a program that will pay 150 families affected by COVID $500 a month for 18 months. In Tacoma, Wash., a tech company geared toward worker empowerment co-founded by Shaquille O’Neal is footing the bill for 110 people to receive $500 a month for a year. In Shreveport, La., 110 families will receive $660 a month for 12 months. Richmond, Va., will use funding from the Federal CARES Act and the Robins Foundation to pay 18 working families that do not qualify for benefits but still don’t earn a living wage $500 a month for 24 months.
One program in Gainesville, Fla., will target formerly jailed people, with an aim toward breaking the cycle of poverty and incarceration. It will pay them $1,000 the first month and $600 per month for 11 months afterward and track their spending and behavior. Organizers point out that the U.S. spends $182 billion per year jailing people and has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Florida’s incarceration rate is even higher than the national average, with almost two of every 100 Floridians (391,000 people) either jailed or under criminal justice supervision. Because of the costs of incarceration and supervised release to prisoners and their families, they coined a phrase: too poor to be free.
Several programs cite former Stockton, Calif., mayor Michael Tubbs and the program he launched in 2019 that gave 125 residents $500 per month for two years. The program, mentioned in this space, helped stabilize recipients’ lives and did not result in a spike in the purchase of so-called “temptation goods” (alcohol, drugs, tobacco). Nor did it disincentivize people from working, as critics of government payout programs often claim. Tubbs lost his bid for re-election and relocated to Los Angeles, where he serves as an advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsome and recently launched a non-profit aimed at broadening the state’s safety net and addressing inequities in housing, wages and spending.
Tubbs’ fingerprints also are all over the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition, a group of dozens of mayors around the country already overseeing GI programs or exploring implementation. One of MGI’s mantras is: Everyone deserves an income floor through a guaranteed income. Tubbs himself was quoted about his non-profit: “I would argue that the government has a responsibility not to give everything to everybody, but to make sure the rules and the laws and regulations are just — so that the outcomes are just.”
Most of you know that I am, metaphorically, a basketball junkie. A huge part of that dependency was AAU basketball. If you came up playing basketball as a teenager in the 90s, you were a part of the early stages of the explosion of AAU basketball. That meant games and tournaments all spring and summer. All over the state and, if your team was really good, all over the country. The team I played for was good but not national tournament good. But, I live in Florida and Florida is a very attractive spot for a tournament for teams from all over the country to travel to. These days, the National Championships take place at the Milk House at the Wide World of Sports on Disney property. But back in the mid-90s, the U19 National Championships often took place right near where I currently sit. Melbourne, FL. Which is where and how this story begins.
I was 16 and about to be a junior in HS. I was about to hit a growth spurt (relatively speaking) and become a decent player. I was constantly playing AAU basketball once my high school season ended. So when my AAU coach asked if I'd like to work the National Championships, I, of course, eagerly accepted. My first assignment was a game at the local college (Florida Tech). I was assigned the task of taking tickets and needed an adult to work and handle the money. My Dad agreed because he's an awesome dad who did just about anything his kids asked, especially when it came to sports.
So we signed up to work the first game of a triple header. The first game was the headliner that evening. That's because one of the highest-rated, fastest-rising recruits in the country was playing. His name was Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The gym was packed with fans and, more significantly, college head coaches. Bobby Cremins, Coach K, Rick Pitino and many, many more. Since my Dad and I were working the door, we didn't get to see much of the game. Shareef balled out, his team won and many of fans and coaches headed for the exits.
After the conclusion of the first game, my Dad and I were off the clock. But I wanted to stick around and watch more basketball. Game 2 was a team from Pittsburgh vs. the Charlotte Royals. Pittsburgh featured a bruiser named Danny Fortson, and the Royals featured an unheralded recruit by the the name of the Antawn Jamison. Quickly, it became clear that Jamison was way better than advertised, as he hit shots from all manner of angles in very unorthodox ways that we'd also see him do successfully for many years to come. And, true to form, late in the second half, Fortson got into it with an opposing player, followed by a verbal altercation with a ref, and he got tossed as the Royals pulled away to victory.
At this point, my Dad and I would've been more than happy to go home having earned a little extra bread and having watched some good ball. But again, I could not get enough basketball at that point in my life. So we decided to stay for the nightcap. And that decision to stay for game 3 changed our lives.
The third and final game featured the #1 ranked team in the nation. They were from Memphis and boasted top 10 recruit Lorenzen Wright (RIP) and were coached by his father. They looked the part of a top AAU team. Big, long, athletic, and very well outfitted in some sweet Nike uniforms. Memphis was matched up against a nondescript team from Cleveland. When Cleveland came out they looked rag-tag to say the least. Their uniforms were old and well worn (reversible jerseys with faded, cracking numbers) and the were led by what my Dad and I thought was the coach's kid when they came out for layups. We may have even laughed at the scene of this small guard who couldn't be much more than 5 feet leading the team out for warmups (I was 5'6" at the time so I didn't have much room to judge someone on size). I can only imagine what Memphis was thinking.
Then it came time for the tip and the "coach's son" walked out on to the court. I'm quite sure that my Dad and I weren't the only people thinking "What the fuck is going on?" I'm also quite sure that all of us quickly realized what the fuck was going on. The tiny guy (5'3") dominated the game from tip to buzzer, He was a one-man press. Hounding the Memphis guards all over the court and repeatedly taking the ball from them as they tried to advance up the floor. He was running the offense for his team and setting his teammates up all for easy buckets. He also managed to drop 40 points in the process while leading his unknown Cleveland team to a comfortable victory over #1 Memphis. At some point late in the game while my Dad and I guffawed over the game being played by this amazingly talented little guy, my Dad spotted a guy a couple rows from us (the stands were pretty empty at this point in the evening) wearing an Eastern Michigan polo in the stands and said, "I bet you'd like to have him." It just so happened that the guy was an Assistant Coach at Eastern Michigan. He calmly replied, "His name is Earl Boykins and he's playing for us next year."
From that point on, my Dad and I had a new favorite player who we made a point to keep track of during his collegiate career. We followed him at EMU as he became a two-time all conference point guard that led his team to the NCAA Tournament and eventually finished second in the NCAA in scoring during his senior season. And then we lost track of him for a bit. Until my time in college when Earl made it to the NBA. I sent my Dad the ESPN article about him making the league and we followed his career intently from there out. Earl would go on to play 13 seasons in the NBA, even averaging double figure PPG for 5 straight years (a career high 15.2 PPG in 2006-2007 for the Nuggets) and bring my father and me much joy while doing so.
I bought my Dad an Eastern Michigan Basketball shirt for Father's Day a couple years ago and he wears it all the time. I'm not sure what the point of this story is. Never judge a book by its cover? Little moments between a Father and Son mean more than you ever realize in the moment? Bite me, Randy Newman? Yeah, that's probably it.
You know how they say that couples that have been together for a while begin to meld into one another, finishing sentences, sharing memories, even in some cases looking more alike. That latter case, not operative here, as you'll soon see.
Here in the Gheorgheverse, some of us have been together, bloggily speaking, for more than 18 years. That's a long time in blog years. And over that time, we've learned each others' quirks, tastes, and go-to comedic rhombii fillers.
We had a glorious coming together on Twitter today that illustrated my point perfectly, and gave me and the Teej a great deal of joy.
First, @kiaspeaks kicked off a conversation:
And then I got to proposing a bit of a test of Gheorghian single-brainery:
Then, in our final act, Teej offered this:
WHICH WAS EXACTLY THE SONG I WAS THINKING OF!!!
Here it is, in all its gawdawful glory:
God bless the Teej. God bless G:TB. And God bless friendships that share a brain.
I graduated from college without a job so I moved home to zmother's house. After about six to nine weeks I got a job at the aforementioned union shop so I commuted there from the Neck. This involved driving on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, locally known as the Palisades or, more affectionately, the Pip (but not thePip).
Although I have a handful of fond memories from the early 1990s relating to time spent in cars on the Rockefeller and Alpine lookouts, the Pip might have been the worst stretch of highway in the Northeast back then. Neither New Jersey nor New York would invest any money in it, both asserting that the Port Authority was responsible for its maintenance. It had so many potholes that it was like driving on the surface of the moon. People would routinely get flat tires, so there often were cars on the side of the road. And it's an ancient road with no shoulder or acceleration lanes, so people bomb onto it with a full head of steam. It has a 50 MPH speed limit and tons of hidey-holes for Johnny Law so it's easy to get a ticket. And it spans the NY/NJ border so, of course, many of the drivers who use it are raging assholes.
I had many bad experiences commuting on the Pip. Some people drove below the 50 MPH limit because the road was so chewed up and it was not uncommon to get stuck behind two cars driving 47 MPH side-by-side in both lanes. It was just as common to deal with maniacs doing 80 MPH, perhaps in a hurry to get to White Castle. These maniacs liked to tailgate, and I would get out of the way when I could but sometimes there was simply nowhere to go--I was boxed in by the other cars and had to deal with being tailgated.
The Pip is a scenic road. As the name implies, it rides atop the Palisades Cliffs so it has great views of New York City. This means that it's right on the Hudson River so there are times when the cliffs, and thus the Pip fill with fog. There were two or three occasions where the visibility was almost zero (even worse than that ride back from JMU in the snow, a reference for only two of us). It was not fun.
All of this is to say that driving on the Pip sucks. They've since repaved it so it's better, but it still has no shoulder, a 50 MPH limit, and NY/NJ assholes driving on it.
As a result, this Jalopnik article did not surprise me. I recognized the Pip after not more than 5 seconds of video, and this is exactly what it was like commuting to work.
Here's another angle.
Yes, people drive like this on the Pip. And yes, people who drive on the Pip cheer when other people crash on the Pip.
I'm sure TR will opine that I was an aggressive driver in my youth and I will agree, I drove faster than I should've. But this is next level idiocy by everyone involved. And this is how I used to start my day! Luckily TR's homeboys' Aunt Fanny had a place to rent so we moved to Money Earnin'. But then I had to commute on the Sprain which might have been worse. Foreshadowing! Postcount!
If you did pop art, sports, comic books or any combination of those things, you'll geek out on Pop Fly Pop Shop. Words don't really do it justice, but the proprietors describe their wares as One Piece of Nostalgia at A Time for One Week at A Time. Pretty simple concept: they post one work at a time, and it stays online for week, never to return again.
Their stuff is generally baseball-themed, asking the visual question of what ballplayers might look like as comic book heroes. For example:
I'm kinda partial to this one:
And I wish I'd seen this one in time to get it for Whit and Marls:
The artists have posted about 70 works to date. Peruse them at your leisure while we wait for the end of Gheorghemas. Any day now.
Speaking of Monkees, as we were, it seems that everything old is new again.
When I was 16, The Monkees' first renaissance started with MTV doing what it does, and playing old episodes of the "band's" comedic television show. It hit me right in my silly teenaged pleasure centers. At least in one of them. I wore out the greatest hits record they released to take advantage of the phenomenon.
Man, it really doesn't hold up that well, does it? Here's a little palate cleanser. Bubble. Gum. Pop.
The Monkees popped into my conscious this morning when I saw news of another band that takes me back. When I was in my early 30s and raising little girls, I was exposed to a lot of grating kids' music. But there were some artists doing palatable kid-rock. They Might Be Giants was an obvious choice for me. Laurie Berkner, for sure. Dan Zanes. The cool World music compilations from Putamayo - I liked that stuff as much as my kids did.
One band, though, was our joint favorite. We loved The Wiggles. Me, because they had a bit of a pop sensibility (they sang with Split Enz, for Chrissakes) and they absolutely took themselves less than seriously as people, if not as artists. The kids because they were silly and bright and fun. I mean, c'mon:
We saw them live as a family, and in fact they've played to more than one million people each year of the 2000s. They were Australia's highest-grossing musical act for four years in a row in the early 2010s.
And like The Monkees did in 1986, The Wiggles are experiencing a most unusual come up.
Triple J, which is a youth-oriented radio station in Australia, hosts an annual listener poll called The Hottest 100. Since its inception in 1989, the list has been topped by Nirvana, Kendrick Lamar, Oasis, The Cranberries, and Mumford and Sons, among others.
In 2021, the poll's voters chose The Wiggles' cover of Tame Impala's 'Elephant'. With a little bit of a 'Fruit Salad' riff in the middle. For real.
As you might imagine, this tickled my whimsybone just right. Long live The Wiggles.
After a few years at my job in the union shop, I took a new job in a different facility. It was a bizarro version of my previous job. The facility was at most 10 years old. It was not unionized. Everyone hated the Yankees. They also hated the parent company--the site was an independent company and was acquired about a year before I joined. This was stupid, in my view, because all the senior people became highly placed in the parent organization and made so much money in the buyout that they all could afford to buy a house on Nantucket and their own plane to fly there (seriously, I know at least one person who did that) and they took care of their people to the detriment of the rest of the organization. Everyone at every level in the company did well in the buyout. While the Environmental Health and Safety guys at my previous job drove F-150s, all the EH&S guys at the new place had F-250s and some even had a dually.
But a lot was the same because Metro Boston is a lot like New Jersey. North Shore/South Shore debates are much like Taylor ham/pork roll. The majority of people spend their entire lives in a bubble with a 25 mile radius, including college. New Hampshire is Rockland County. The accents are not sexy. No one cares about college sports but many people are overly passionate about their favorite pro sports teams and decorate everything with the teams' logos, including their faces.
The new facility was similar to the old one in that it was in the middle of nowhere and somewhat self-contained so going out to lunch was almost impossible, trapping you there all day and forcing you to eat the same crappy food all the time. The EH&S guys were similar too. There was one EH&S guy in his early 50's with a bushy handlebar mustache, engineer boots, tattoos, a chain tethering his wallet to his belt, and a leather vest (a "cut") bearing various insignias from his NH-based motorcycle crew. He swaggered around like a badass but he was 5'4" so it was a little silly. One day he shaved his mustache. A few hours later I saw him again and he had the mustache again! I asked my boss if I was losing my mind and he laughed and said "No, dumbass, Peter shaved his mustache but Paul didn't." Turns out there were two of this guy--they were twins. So just like my old job, the EH&S guys literally came in twos.
The new site also similarly had manufacturing, quality control, research, development, and a big animal facility. My new job involved developing new formulations and part of that involved testing the formulations in animals so I spent a significant amount of time in the animal facility.
It was some of the worst time of my life. One of my primary tasks was gamma scinitgraphy. We labeled the proteins we studied with iodine-125, or "I-125," a radioactive element, so that we could measure how long the proteins remained where we put them in the animals' bodies. Everyone referred to the radioactive material as "hot." As in, "we got more hot protein" or "we're out of hot" or "be careful with that syringe it's full of hot" or "watch out for that spill it's hot." We made the measurements using a gamma camera, a massive device driven by a Unix computer. I would design the formulations, mix in the hot proteins, and a veterinarian or a veterinary technician would implant the formulation in the animals. Then, while the animals were sedated, I would make measurements using the gamma camera over time.
This was bad for many reasons. Iodine naturally binds to your thyroid--it's often added to salt to prevent people from getting goiters so that's typically a good thing. It's a terrible thing, however, if the iodine is radioactive like I-125. I-125 also has a long half-life, which means that it sticks around forever. So working with the radio-labeled proteins was serious stuff and I had to wear lead gloves to handle it, and spilling any on myself would've been a nightmare because they I would've had radioactive iodine stuck in my thyroid for 25 years. I had to be vigilant about this all the time.
To enter the animal facility you had to don a bunch of proper protective equipment or "PPE". There was minimum amount of required PPE, much like flair. It varied depending on who was running the animal facility, and that person varied with surprising frequency. The guy in charge when I first got there was fired when they discovered he was sneaking into the ketamine, an animal tranquilizer that you might know as Special K. It was that type of place. Anyway, the PPE offered in the airlock to the animal facility was a hairnet, face mask, surgical gloves, booties, and Tyvek lab coats. This was all disposable and thus great for the environment. Because I worked with radioactive material I had to wear all that PPE. When I hear people complain about wearing a mask I laugh--I used to have to wear one all day plus a whole bunch of other more uncomfortable stuff.
And I did this in a tiny room with a massive machine that generated lots of heat. As some of you know I am a ridiculously sweaty guy so all that PPE coupled with the heat from the gamma camera had me soaked with sweat after 20 minutes. I was in that room for hours. Also in that room was a machine that sterilized equipment using ethylene oxide, a really nasty chemical that can kill you several ways. It was a relatively small device but disturbing given its deadly nature. It sat in the corner of the room, silently threatening to kill me. I think they stuck it in the gamma camera room because we had the space for it and everyone figured the gamma camera guys were screwed anyway, what's a little ethylene oxide exposure when we already had thyroid damage.
Prior to this role I had never spent any time with rats or rabbits, and through it I learned that I am severely allergic to rats and rabbits. Rats are actually pretty friendly creatures but they do have fingernails and if one of them scratched my skin the least bit the scratches would turn into welts. Their dander made my eyes itch and water, my nose congest, my throat constrict, and my lungs cough. They can also be mean so you had to watch out for the occasional biter. Rats are typically used for early studies because they are small and cheap and thus a good model for a large sample size. As a result, I typically spent 3-4 days a week in a room full of radioactive rats, carefully guarding my thyroid from radiation and the rest of my body from rat dander. Once dosed with I-125 the rats were "hot rats" but remarkably no one I worked heard of Frank Zappa.
For anything larger than a rat I would have vet tech support so they handled the rabbits. I think I'm more allergic to rabbits than rats, at least as far as my respiratory system goes. I'm convinced that my chronic cough is due at least in part to four years of exposure to all these animals.
My days in the animal facility involved retrieving the rats, wheeling them into the gamma camera room, pulling them out of their boxes one at a time and dropping them into a large bell jar hooked up to this octopus of an anesthesia machine that pumped a mix of oxygen and an anesthetic gas (I can't remember the name). Once the rats were knocked out I would put three on the gamma camera's imager and stick their noses into these little nose cones at the end of one of the octopus's tentacles. This kept them asleep while I imaged them for 3 minutes. Essentially I photocopied radioactive rats. Then I would put them back in their box and turn to the next set of rats. This could take hours depending on the size of the study.
At the end of the study I would "sacrifice" the rats, which means I killed them by dropping them into a box hooked up to a tank full of carbon dioxide. Then I would empty the rats' boxes (full of bedding and radioactive rat excreta--after the animals' bodies metabolized the protein, the I-125 would be freed and excreted through the urine and feces, I had to deal with literal hot shit) and carcasses into a plastic bag which then went into a special radioactive storage freezer. Every once in a while we did a study without radioactivity, and in those cases I had to dissect the dead rats to retrieve whatever I implanted in them for histological analysis. You have not smelled nastiness until you've smelled the insides of a dead rat.
The gamma camera was a cantankerous device and its Unix operating system was indecipherable. There was only one IT guy who knew Unix, Steve the Eunuch (because he knew Unix, not because he didn't have a penis, at least as far as I know), so if the Eunuch was on vacation and the gamma camera acted up I was screwed. My group leader was completely humorless and very tightly wound so when I once told her "I can't get the data out today, the gamma camera is frozen and the Eunuch from IT is out" she thought I was disparaging Steve and gave me a stern talking-to. The gamma camera computer wasn't compatible with our network so I had to manually transcribe all the data into my lab notebook and then enter it manually into an Excel spreadsheet back at my desk. I never made any errors, nothing to worry about there.
My fellow employees often added to the degree of difficulty. Many were, perhaps rightfully, terrified of I-125. Rats are natural escape artists and although their cages are designed against this there was the occasional jailbreak. No one was happy with me when one of my hot rats got loose, leaving a trail of hot shit and hot piss behind it. It was discovered by the guy with the Special K habit and he kept it in a box on his desk until I told him how I-125 works and the bit about the pee and poop and that he thus might not want to keep it near his morning coffee and danish. Then he handed it to me and told me to put it back where it belonged.
Some people were of the view that they shouldn't have to work near radioactive material and they were always looking out for people in my group to slip up and get some where it didn't belong. This happened once, I don't recall how, but as a result they reported us for allegedly being sloppy and two EH&S guys (not the twins) rode shotgun with me in the gamma camera room for a day to see what we do and to recommend better practices. They had to suit up in all the PPE and sweat it out in the hot (puns!) room with all the boxes full of rats and their excreta. About an hour into the day, one of the occasional angry rats bit my finger pretty badly. It went through both gloves (I wore two gloves on each hand just in case I got a rip) and there was a lot of blood. My allergies kicked in almost immediately and my index finger swelled up like a salami. The EH&S guys were excited. They sprung into action to administer first aid, whisking me over to a sink to wash the wound. I told them to "Get the fug offa me!" but they insisted on treating my injury. I joked that Spider-Man got his powers from a radioactive spider bite so maybe I'll turn into Rat-Man with my radioactive rat bite. They didn't see the humor but they had sympathy for my plight, and they were delighted that they got to use their walkie-talkies to radio my injury to the nurse's station.
This all sounds pretty miserable, right? It pales in comparison to working with monkeys. They are terrifying. We used cynologous monkeys, which are also called crab-eating macaques or "cynos." If given the opportunity they will rip your face off because they are exceedingly angry.
Our cynos came from the wild. Someone out there might breed them but our supplier got them from the original source. Imagine you're a monkey out in the jungle, handling your monkey business. You might have a girlfriend or two, maybe you have a family. Maybe you're a young guy and you still live with your parents but you like to sow your wild oats. Life is good. One day you're over by the swamp, trying to catch some crabs for lunch when BLAM, you get hit in the ass with a tranquilizer dart. You're instantly woozy, then some human throws a net over you and drags you over to a box, throws you in and you can't see anything. You pass out. When you wake up you're in a cage by yourself, but surrounded by many other cages with a cyno in each. You're all put on a boat and shipped to Massachusetts. All you have to eat is whatever monkey chow they give you and some fresh fruit. You live in a cage for the rest of your life, away from your ladyfriend and your homeboys and your family. You're poked and prodded and used in all sorts of experiments. You would be angry. Angry enough to rip the fingers off the hand that feeds you.
Cynos are expensive. In order to get into the animal facility I had to take a tuberculosis test every six months, the Mantoux skin test. The on-site nurse would inject a little nut of tuberculin between the layers of skin in my forearm and I would come back two days later. If the nut disappeared I was fine. If it was raised and inflamed I had TB, which meant they were very concerned for the monkeys and I would've gotten in trouble for exposing them to TB.
Cynos are pretty smart. When you walk into the cyno room they all angle the metal plate on the front of their cages so they can see you in the reflection, like prisoners in jail. Some of them are friendly enough that you can house two in a box, in which case they get a big cage. Some of them are not friendly and will kill whatever cyno you put in there with them.
As in any prison there has to be an alpha. Our alpha was Number 3. He was exceedingly large, twice as big as any other cyno we had, and he had a ruff of head on his hair like a mohawk. He had huge teeth and he rippled with muscles. He lived alone because he would destroy his roommate. All of the cages had a lever on the side that you could pull to make the back wall move forward, trapping the monkey against the wall so you could give it a shot to tranquilize it. Number 3 was such a badass that when he saw you coming he would turn and put his butt up against the bars so you could knock him out.
We always had to wear safety glasses but when we were near cynos we also wore face shields because they can carry the herpes B virus. You can get it from their saliva so you need to protect your eyes, nose and mouth. It has an 80% fatality rate, so a halfway sedated cyno can kill you even if he's too loopy to rip your face off, all he needs to do is spit in your face.
So when we had monkey studies, I was stuck for hours in a sweltering room, draped in layers of PPE, surrounded by thyroid-seeking radioactive material and a carcinogenic sterilizing machine, with an unconscious primate that might wake up and give me a deadly disease or bite my jugular.
And that wasn't the worst of it! After a day like that I had to go home to a woman who was a cross between the worst of Betty Draper (heartless high-maintenance ice queen from a fancy zip code who has a bad relationship with food) and Sammi Sweetheart (demanding mercurial Italian princess from the Tri-State area who has no sense of humor about herself).
So if you ever wondered "What the hell was zman up to around the turn of the 21st century," you now have your answer. And that's my story about working with monkeys.
As we relayed to you all a month or two ago, we lost our good buddy Johnny G to a bad ticker in December. A tough one, for sure. The William and Mary contingent decided to throw Johnny a reverent memorial in Williamsburg last weekend.
Okay a boozefest with equal parts camaraderie, old stories, and bourbon. God bless us for never straying from that modus operandi.
We did, however, add a tiny sliver of reverence amid the wistful fraternity party. Enjoy our speaking and singing (!).
If you're really good, maybe we'll show you the late night antics of three gheorghies and friends.
Brian Daboll probably isn't a genius and he probably won't save whatever franchise he goes to. This offense looks good because Josh Allen is phenomenal.
Leslie Frazier probably isn't a genius either. The Bills played a bunch of offensively challenged teams this year (Jest twice, Fish twice, Jags, Texans, WFT, Panthers, Falcons) and the defense starts six first-round picks. This helped him look good. His defenses in Tampa were not good and he had a 39.8% win percentage as a head coach in Minnesota. And he just gave up 45 yards and 3 points in 10 seconds to go to OT.
I miss Tre'Davious White. No one can stop Tyreek Hill but White would've done better than Dane Jackson.
Why was Dane Jackson, the 239th pick in the 2020 draft, on Tyreek Hill?
Allen is a bad man. When was the last time you saw a QB knock a defensive player out of the game? But I don't think this is a good way to build a lengthy career.
If they're going to continue to run designed rushing plays for Allen they should get a fullback.
At a minimum, they need to get a big thumping running back who can get 3 tough yards so that Allen doesn't always have to. Guys like Leonard Fournette don't grow on trees but he was available for peanuts two years ago. Guys like Alexander Mattison, D'Onta Foreman, Devontae Booker, Mark Ingram, Rex Burkhead and Carlos Hyde are always available.
The overtime rules are what they are. Buffalo couldn't stop KC when they needed to. If the Bills were playing the Colts or the Ravens it would've been different. That said, the outcome feels somewhat inequitable, the fans want something else so the league should respond. I have ideas.
Make OT a 10 or 15 minute period. Team with the most points wins. If they're tied play another 10 or 15 minute period.
Both teams get the ball once. If they both score TD in their first possessions, the next team to score any points wins.
Use the college OT system.
Have a FG kick-off, moving back 5 yards at a time until someone misses.
The head coaches wrestle Greco-Roman style at midfield. First guy to pin the other advances.
Each team designates one player to box at midfield. First guy to knock out the other advances.
Erect a cage at midfield and the punters have an MMA fight. Winner advances.
Each team designates one player to do the NY Times Mini. Guy with the fastest time advances.
A player is randomly chosen from each team. Both have 15 minutes to complete as many questions as they can from the Analytical Reasoning section of an LSAT (which is also randomly selected from a book of ten practice tests). Guy with the best score advances. If they tie, the punters have a knife fight at midfield, first guy to draw blood advances.
Romo was probably right that Buffalo should've kicked off short of the endzone to run off some clock with 0:13 left. I suspect, however, that McDermott did not want to be the second Bills coach to lose a playoff game on a kick return with no time left.
Only six punts, very few penalties, no gross injuries, receivers running free all over the place, QBs looking like superheroes, 5-5 combined on fourth down, lots and lots of points, defensive futility. This is what the league wants.
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