Monday, May 18, 2026

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.

Friday, May 15, 2026

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.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

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. 

Monday, May 11, 2026

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.

Friday, May 08, 2026

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"

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— 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.

Thursday, May 07, 2026

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



Tuesday, May 05, 2026

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.