Saturday, May 17, 2025

Recurring Series Recurs

When we last checked in on the gay sports bar scene, we were celebrating D.C. best sports bar, Nellie's. Eight years between recurring segments is still recurring.

Today, we return to the topic in plenty of time for you to book your tickets to St. Paul. On August 9 in that fair city, The Black Hart of Saint Paul is hosting a Dildo Derby to raise money for Southside Harm Reduction, a local non-profit serving those fighting drug addiction. 

Though it may sound like it, the Dildo Derby is not a soccer match between Stephen Miller and Russ Vought. In fact, the event seems engineered to create (faux) outrage in MAGAWorld. It combines something draped in Americana (the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby) and something naughty (um, dildos). Participants build wheeled dildos and race them down a slanted track.

The host venue bills itself as "a neighborhood, queer, and soccer bar in the Midway neighborhood of Saint Paul", going on to note American soccer's historical support of the LGBTQ+ community. As the pub's website says, "Soccer fandom through the US, but particularly in Minnesota has a long tradition of proactively supporting progressive beliefs of inclusion and advocating for queer visibility in sports."

Located just blocks from Allianz Field, home of MLS' Minnesota United, The Black Hart will likely be packed all day, as the FA Cup final between Crystal Palace and Manchester City is taking place as I type this and the Loons host St. Louis this evening. Sounds like a fun place to spend a day, dontchaknow.

Minny-summit in August? Get your dildos ready.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

The Fall and Rise(?) of the Anti-Wrexham

If you're a sentient member of our society, you're undoubtedly aware of the truly fairytale story of Wrexham FC, the club from a down-on-its-luck Welsh* mining town that was purchased by a pair of American actors and subsequently went on a back-to-back-to-back run of promotions that's seen the club climb from the hinterlands of British football to the precipice of the world's most famous league. You're likely aware of all of it because the actors in question, Rob McIlhenny and Ryan Reynolds have parlayed their expertise in image-creation into a wildly successful documentary project that's followed Wrexham's rise.

* You will, undoubtedly, remember how fond the Welsh ladies are of your humble narrator.

You'd be forgiven if you were less familiar with the recent nightmare history of Sunderland AFC, a club based in a port city in the northeast of England. The Black Cats spent 2006-2017 in the Premier League, finishing a club-record 10th in 2011. They, too, were the subject of a well-made documentary, Sunderland 'Til I Die, which chronicled the club's relegation in 2017, and then again in 2018. The story arc took the team and the town from the lofty heights of the best league in Europe to England's third division, and introduced an increasingly sordid and incompetent band of owners and executives to the mix. 

Future Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson came up
through the Sunderland academy
Sunderland wallowed for a bit in League One, finally returning to the Championship (England's second division) in 2022. This season, they finished fourth in the division, which qualified them for the four-team tournament for the final spot in the 2025-26 Premier League (Burnley and Leeds qualified automatically by finishing in the top two).

The first round of the Championship promotion tournament is played over two legs. Sunderland won its first match on the road, defeating Coventry, 2-1. On Tuesday, they returned home to the Stadium of Light needing only a draw to advance to the one-match final at Wembley. They played like a team in search of that draw, and finally gave up a goal in the 76th minute.

The match went to extra time, with two 15-minute sessions to determine a winner, or failing that, a penalty shootout. Sunderland earned a corner at the 120+2 minutes, and on the last kick of the game, did this (go to the 6:45 mark).


Dan Bullard will never buy a drink on Tyneside again, as his header brought the Black Cats to the precipice of a return to Premier League glory. Sunderland will play Sheffield United on May 24 for a lot of marbles, and most people will root for them. Everyone but Marls.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Chrowdsourcing: On the Horns of a Coaching Dilemma

To try to win or not to try all that hard to win, that is the question. And it's a vexing one.

With a come-from-behind 2-1 win last night (the game-winner is posted below for your viewing pleasure - in both of our meetings against these guys, we've scored in the final three minutes to break their hearts) your Huskies clinched no worse than second place in the Dulles District and guaranteed at least one home playoff game. We have one more District game, against the team that's ahead of us in the standings, and which thumped us, 6-1, in our first meeting. 

That first contest was marked by a number of unsporting acts on the part of our opponent. In addition to near-constant chirping of the official by players (despite being warned about dissent during the coin toss), they celebrated a penalty kick goal (their fifth of the long-decided match) by doing the worm on the penalty spot. Their coach added insult to injury by leaving his starters in the match until five minutes remained. 

I would very much like to beat this team.

Here's where it gets weird. If we do beat them, it'll leave us in a flat-footed tie for the District title, with both teams on 6-1-1 records. The winner of the District regular season title automatically qualifies for the Regional tournament. If the winner of the regular season title makes the District tournament final, the other finalist also qualifies for Regionals.

In the event there's a tie for the District title, the tiebreaker is a playoff game. So if we beat the current first place team at their place, we'd be rewarded by having to play them again to earn the title. If we lose either game, we'd need to win a single home game to reach the Regional tournament - that game will likely be against the team we beat last night - we've beaten and tied them this season, though both games were taut affairs, and we had to come from behind in each to get a result.

Your Fightin' Huskies

To add some context, I think our opponent is slightly better than us. They've scored 27 and conceded seven in their six District games to date. We've scored 11 and conceded eight in seven games (only two in the six games against other schools). The 6-1 score was an anomaly, in my professional opinion, but beating them twice in a few days is a heavy lift.

So here's the question: do I push hard to try to win to set up a playoff for the regular season title, or do I let the chips fall where they may and conserve energy and focus the kids on the District tournament semifinal as our path to Regionals? 

What Would Emma Hayes Do?

Monday, May 12, 2025

Gheorghasbord: All the Filler That's Fit to Print

Howdy, Gheorghies. Trust you had a cromulent weekend. 'Twas a lovely weather pattern here in the National Capital Region and the wife and I checked out a new brewery/winery in the western part of our county. Overserving oneself on a Sunday seems fun at the time, less so in the cold light of day. Nevertheless, we move forward.

Some might say we range far and wide today in our pursuit of interesting content. Others would argue that we're all over the fucking place. The truth, as often, is somewhere in the middle. Closer to all over the fucking place, but still.

Careful observers of this space
know that I took two lawnmowers to the landfill over the weekend. I haven't had a working mower for over a year. I've been outsourcing the trimming of my lawn to a neighbor kid who's inherited a mowing business from his older brother when the latter went to college. The younger kid is a good egg, but he's working a job, doing offseason training for football, and wrapping up his junior year. As a consequence, the lawn, she was a mess. 

So I went out and bought myself an electric mower yesterday, an EGO Power+ 600 series, complete with a 56w battery, a 21" deck, and a sporty look. Got her up and running this morning before I started the workday. She's a beauty.

Might have to reward myself by hitting the most unexpected source of great craft beer in the area. Hat tip to Mr. KQ for turning me on to The Filling Co., a hybrid gas station/convenience store/fast service restaurant with three locations in the DMV. In addition to having really excellent food (my kid goes there for top notch deep-fried Oreos), TFC has an incredible selection of terrific beers that I've never seen anywhere else in the area. I've purchased stuff from The Veil, Benchtop, Lawson's, The Other Half, and several really collaborations that are unavailable elsewhere. Keep your eyes peeled for one coming to your area.

And finally, a reunion tour that's got me a bit historically feeling. Rilo Kiley, fronted by the great Jenny Lewis, just announced their first tour since 2007, though they officially broke up in 2014. They're getting back together and hitting the road starting later this month. On August 30 they'll play the Summer Stage in Asbury Park, NJ, and they'll be at The Anthem in Washington, DC on September 10. Don't mind if I do.


Sunday, May 11, 2025

Celebrate Mom

In honor of the day, here are some fun songs about moms. And a pair of terrible ones.






Thursday, May 08, 2025

Empty Journalism

If it’s a truism that people are skittish about change that doesn’t put more coin in their pockets or more flattering mirrors in their parlors, it’s even less comfortable for institutions. Businesses, sports leagues, legislative bodies, the local PTA, you name it. Disrupt the status quo and expect reflexive pushback and the inability to adapt. 

Major newsgathering organizations and political media aren’t immune from the stasis, as evidenced by recent interviews with Donald Trump on the occasion of his second first 100 days in office. The Disruptor-in-Chief sat down with correspondents from ABC and NBC for “exclusive” conversations about his actions and what’s transpired on his watch. They were, as you might imagine, disjointed exchanges laced with fiction, bravado and enough batshit crazy soundbites to fuel several news cycles. 

Trump has been at the center of American political life for a decade, yet it’s apparent that major news media remains ill-equipped or unwilling to recognize or to deal with him and his enablers and supporters in a meaningful way. As the site’s Media Grump, it’s alternately discouraging and infuriating that legacy media often doesn’t use its platform to speak plainly about the man. 

I mean, if any institution is built to withstand the whiplash and commotion he causes, it should be the media. They pivot daily, sometimes hourly, from one story to the next. They’re trained to seek truth, if not always justice. They’re equipped to explore multiple facets of people and topics, though to be fair the strip-mining of journalism resources now makes that more difficult. Yet far too often, major political media trades truth for access and equivocates in the name of supposed fairness or objectivity. 

Media has gotten better about calling out Trump’s lies and false claims and extreme actions from his days as a political novelty and throughout his first term. Yet we still get descriptions of his “unpredictable governing style” (NPR) and headlines such as “Trump is pursuing a radical agenda. Does he have a strategy or is he winging it?” (The Washington Post). 

Christ on crutches, there is no agenda, there is no governing style. Trump no more wants to govern than to ride rollercoasters. He wants to be in charge, to give orders, to make others knuckle under, and to make money. That’s it. Full stop. He and his justice people arrest and deport immigrants because he thinks it makes him look tough. Likewise, his imposition of tariffs despite warnings about their effects. 

So, Trump sat down with ABC’s Terry Moran and, as usual, tried to buffalo his way through the conversation. The border with Mexico is 99.9 percent closed to illegal crossings now; the U.S. had a daily trade deficit of $3-5 billion that he’s stemmed; there was no inflation during his first term, compared to record inflation under Joe Biden. Trump also sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker for a comparably choppy interview that aired on “Meet the Press.” This time, the border is 99.999 percent closed; gas is under $2 a gallon in some places (it’s not); auto manufacturers are moving plants to the U.S. (they’re not); the 2020 election was rigged (it wasn’t); Elon Musk and DOGE found $160 billion in waste, fraud and abuse (they didn’t). Oh, and Trump said he was responsible for good economic news and results, and Biden was responsible for poor news and performances. 

He could be lobotomized. You don't know.
Honestly, the transcripts, with the interruptions and fragments of thoughts and often talking past each other, read like lobotomized David Mamet. One of the illustrative parts of Trump’s conversation with Moran regarded illegal immigrant arrest and deportation in general and Kilmer Abrego Garcia specifically – the Salvadoran man in Maryland who was arrested and deported back to a notorious El Salvador prison, which was according to a judge and to Trump’s own justice people done illegally and without a hearing. Trump said that Garcia was a criminal and had gang script MS-13 tattoos on his hand. When Moran politely pushed back and said, no, he had symbols on his hand and the MS-13 was photoshopped and the photo circulated, Trump insisted that Garcia actually had MS-13 tattooed on his knuckles. Moran tried to re-direct and move to the next topic, but Trump wouldn’t let it go, finally saying, “… they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doin’ the interview. I picked you because – frankly, I never heard of you but that’s okay – but I picked you, Terry, and you’re not being very nice.” 

Never mind that Moran has been an ABC senior national correspondent for seven years and a national and foreign affairs reporter since the 1990s. Trump was doing him a favor by sitting down and talking to him, and he expected proper deference. Similarly with Welker, when she brought up inflation and price increases and the possibility of a recession due to tariffs and economic uncertainty, Trump called it a dishonest interview. He didn’t like the way she framed questions – not positively enough in his favor. 

That’s the thing about Trump. He gripes about unfair media, yet his ego craves the attention – Mussolini looking for a balcony, as it were. Interviews with him are journalistically and informationally worthless, because he constantly lies, deflects and blames. Reporters and network executives know that, but because he’s the President, there’s an entrenched desire for him to sit in front of their cameras and audio recorders. Clicks, eyeballs, ratings. Unfortunately, they crave the attention, as well, much to the detriment of the audience and population in general. 

The vacuousness of Trump appearances and interviews also distract from the important stuff. They cause reporters, and by extension, regular folks to focus on what he says and not what he and his circle do. Annex Canada as the 51st state. Take over Greenland. Rename the Gulf of Mexico. Bring back Columbus Day. Greatest economy ever. Third term. Whatever crosses his mind or just saw on Fox News or Newsmax or an aide handed him. 

It harkens back to the days when the President’s words mattered almost as much as his actions. Trump didn’t understand the presidency on his first go ‘round, but he’s always understood media and what draws attention. He doesn’t necessarily understand the presidency any better this time, but he learned enough to bend it to his will and to go full bootlick and put people in position to do his bidding while he plays the same toxic tune he always has. Too many continue to dance to it.

Tuesday, May 06, 2025

Emergency Fashion is...Something Post

Andre 3000, genius or megagenius? 


His Met Gala appearance came just minutes after the musical polyglot dropped a new 16-minute record called 7 piano sketches.