Fun With British Soccer Team Names

Watching "Welcome to Wrexham" has taken me even deeper down the sporting rabbit hole of the English soccer pyramid. The team, famously purchased in 2021 by Rob McElhenny and Ryan Reynolds, plays in the National League, the fifth tier of the football league system. It's famously known as the hardest league from which to earn promotion, as only one automatic advancement and one playoff ticket go to the 24 teams that comprise the division.

That's interesting and all, but that's not why we're here. Nope, we're gathered today because of Dorking Wanderers.

The Surrey side came to my attention as I perused the National League table recently. They're 20th in the table, perilously close to relegation. Wrexham topped them, 3-1, over the weekend. But that's not why we care. I mean, Dorking Wanderers!

Turns out, the story behind the name is kinda boring. Dorking is a market town about 20 miles south of London. And Wanderers is a relatively common suffix for English teams, generally referring to the origin story of a club that called several places home before settling on their final destination. So while Dorking is an amusing name, it'd probably get you punched in Sussex if you told them that. 

There are a total of 22 suffixes in use in English football, according to the folks at Football Stadiums. Many are self-explanatory to the point of lame - think Town, City, County, United. Rangers and Rovers are like Wanderers, given to clubs that took a minute to settle. Albion seems to be derived from the ancient name of Britain, somehow a reference to the White Cliffs of Dover. 

And then we've got the one-offs. Some fall back into that boringly simple category, like Forest, Vale, and Villa. Other, though, offer the color we're looking for in our weird sporting history. Take Plymouth Argyle, which takes its name from its historical association with a Scottish army regiment. Or Kidderminster Harriers, which survives from the club's founding as an athletic club. Leyton Orient is a curious moniker - seems the club was connected with the Orient Shipping Company back in 1886. 

The most famous unique name would likely be Tottenham Hotspur, so-called because Sir Harry Hotspur (from Shakespeare's Henry IV) owned the land the club came to occupy way back in the 14th century. 

But my favorite English club name sounds like it could also belong to a Nigerian prince. Accrington Stanley currently sit 20th in League One, just one place and two points above the relegation zone. They did make a valiant run in the FA Cup, falling to Leeds in the round of 16. The club's name came to be when Accrington FC (which was one of the 12 founding members of the Football League in 1888) folded and was subsumed by Stanley Villa FC. The Lancashire side play at Wham Stadium. I choose to believe that's somehow affiliated with the band.

So we'll close appropriately. If you're interested in esoteric English soccer stuff:

Playing Field, Tilted

As the calendar flips to March, many of us eagerly await the annual exercise in corporate welfare with jump shots. The NCAA basketball tournament is the best event in sports, three weeks of competitive drama so compelling and entertaining that it’s easy to overlook the fact that it mirrors much of American society because it’s heavily gamed toward the privileged. 

Thirty-two conference champions and 36 teams selected at-large make up the 68-team NCAA field. The Power 5 conferences – ACC, Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, Pac-12 – and Big East make up the bulk of the bracket. Teams outside the Big Six must be exceptional for four months, or catch a spark for a week in March to make the NCAA field. Even that might not be enough. 

Whereas teams within the marquee conferences need be only marginally successful to get invited to the party. Upsets are routine. A St. Peter’s or Loyola of Chicago or Butler or VCU makes a run and provides a whiff of inclusion, and the NCAA is glad you think so. 

In the past decade, 264 of the 326 at-large berths went to the Power 5 conferences and Big East – that’s 81 percent. The remaining 62 at-larges (19 percent) went to the other 26 conferences. Now, you might point out that marquee conferences have more good teams and deserve more berths. And you would be correct. But the system is also set up to ensure overwhelming representation for the Bigfoot leagues at the expense of lesser conferences. 

The NCAA has long used statistical measures to evaluate and compare teams and conferences. The current NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings are more comprehensive than the old Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which was weighted toward teams’ and opponents’ winning percentages. NET rankings account for game results, strength of schedule, location of games, and quality of wins and losses. Games and opponents are assigned to four quadrants, based on level of difficulty. Quad 1 wins are most valuable, Quad 3 and 4 losses most damaging. Different metrics, same results. 

Analytic profiles are used more often to include power conference teams and exclude teams from lower-rated leagues. A seventh-place team in the Big 12 likely has a better statistical profile than a regular season champion from the Mid-American Conference with 26 wins. Is the seventh-place Big 12 team better than the MAC champ? Maybe. But does any seventh-place team deserve to compete for the national championship, while the MAC champ is snubbed by the selection committee because the league is low rated and they lost in their conference tournament? 

Sports are often held up as pure meritocracy, where ability and performance erase class divisions. Tell that to kids and parents who cannot afford the time and expense of travel ball that identify and nurture prospects, to the legion of qualified minority coaching candidates, and to most of those in the ecosystem of college athletics. Quality mid-major programs cannot schedule their way into a better statistical ranking and the at-large discussion, because power conference schools often won’t play them. There’s little benefit. A power conference school might lose to a quality mid-major. Better to schedule winnable home games in November and December, a snazzy early-season tournament, maybe a matchup or two against a fellow Big Six program, and then your conference slate elevates your statistical profile. 

The analytics guys and selection committee look at the 26- or 27-win Big Sky champ that lost in the conference semifinals and say, “Sorry, but your league and strength-of-schedule are too low. Numbers don’t lie.” They don’t lie, but they do dance, depending on who’s playing the tune. 

Conference realignment and consolidation will make it even more difficult for quality mid-majors to schedule up. Big Six leagues are moving toward 20-game conference schedules, which reduce openings for non-league games. That’s why coaches such as Tony Bennett at Virginia and North Carolina’s Hubert Davis deserve some credit. Bennett has scheduled home-and-home series with James Madison and VCU in recent years. Davis scheduled games against College of Charleston and UNC Wilmington, two of the Colonial Athletic Association’s best teams, and JMU this season. All at home, but still better than many.  

The 2011 Connecticut team is cited by some as justification for more power conference schools in the tournament. The Huskies finished tied for ninth in the Big East that season and had lost four of five heading into the conference tournament. Counter to form, they won five games in five days to capture the title and the league’s automatic bid, then all six NCAA games – 11 straight – for the national championship. However, that’s as much an outlier as VCU’s run to the Final Four. UConn at least earned its way into the NCAA field by winning the conference tournament, same as any scuffling conference mutt that gets hot in March. But the Huskies as plucky underdogs? Please. They and their Big Six brethren have access to money and resources of which most programs can only dream. 

There’s discussion of expanding the field to 96 teams, a truly wretched idea that falls into the category of “if some is good, more is better.” Critics argue that a larger field will devalue the regular season, though I’d point out that the regular season is already devalued to some degree. Many power conference teams that finish fifth or sixth get a mulligan and a trip to the NCAAs, while one-bid leagues know that one week in March decides it all. 

Advocates say that more deserving mid-majors will be included in a larger field. That’s almost certainly true, but I have no confidence that current proportions won’t persist, and we’ll see a bunch of 10th- and 11th-place teams from power conferences in the field. 

Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said that he thinks an expanded field would allow more coaches to keep their jobs, a specious argument. Ask Rick Barnes how annual 20-win seasons and NCAA trips solidified his tenure at Texas. 

I don’t advocate revolution or even equal representation, you filthy Bolsheviks, but merely a few tweaks in the present system. A little less deference to the gated communities, whose residents already have plentiful advantages, and a few more rewards for those that merit. The changes wouldn’t impact more than a handful of teams per season. Any regular season champion with, say, at least 25 total wins gets into the NCAA field, even if it loses in the conference tournament. A team that did exemplary work all season shouldn’t be penalized for one off day or hot opponent in March, a more exacting standard than power conference teams face. 

Twenty-five wins may seem arbitrary, but no more arbitrary than an algorithm that inflates a team’s profile based on a few “quality” wins and the neighborhood in which it resides. Twenty-five is also a lofty enough number that it would eliminate many leagues’ champs from consideration and limit the howling from predictable corners. And if a one-bid league manages to get a second team into the NCAAs, the committee must choose between teams from the Big Six – separate the resumes of the fifth-place SEC team and seventh-place Big 12 team. No cherry-picking from the relatively few mid-majors on the bubble. 

These suggestions have approximately zero chance of being implemented, as committee members and decision makers are well aware on which side their bagels are schmear’d. Far less blowback for kneecapping Stephen F. Austin than, say, Indiana. Showcase marquee conferences and big brands. Just enough representation for lower-rated leagues to appear fair. Competition takes care of itself. Most folks are entertained and go home happy. As the kids learn, who gets screwed can make the how and why much more palatable.

Peaches, from the President of the USA

With the lights about to go out in Gheorghia, at least for President Jimmy Carter, there seems to be a lot of nice things being said about the man. Appropriately.

Hospice is about palliative care, making someone feel good with the time they have left. Do you all want to feel pretty good? Watch this.

During my music documentary marathon, I checked this one off along the way. It's worth a return trip. 

Don't Go In The Water

Several of us are getting together this weekend to catch the Cocaine Bear documentary in a local theater. It's been a long time coming - we first mentioned cocaine bear here in January 2011 in a post by Mark about the college football national championship game. It's immensely gratifying to see our hard work and dedication pay off.

Now that we've taken the bear to the masses, it seems we've got a new mission.

In early February, authorities in New Zealand seized more than three tons of cocaine wrapped in water-tight bales and floating in the Pacific Ocean. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern resigned. Coincidence? Almost certainly. 

The coke was meant to be picked up by distributors and smuggled into the country. With an estimated street value of $315m (U.S.), the volume was enough to supply Australia for a year (and New Zealand for three decades - the Kiwis need to up their blow game).

In and of itself, the bust is noteworthy, but I wouldn't be writing about it here without something else causing me to sit up and take notice.

A couple of years ago, Mexican authorities found a ton of cocaine stuffed into frozen shark carcasses.

At first glance, these two law enforcement actions don't seem particularly connected. Until I came upon this genius bit of filmmaking.

Bears are scary enough. But friends, be very wary the next time you head to the ocean. We're talking fucking cocaine sharks! Cocaine. Sharks. I don't even wanna know what kind of carnage will follow.

Not Just Another Tuesday

Happy Mardi Gras!

Carnival, as it's known down in the Crescent City, is in full swing. This wasn't so just two short years ago, when the city pretty much closed down for Fat Tuesday. That year my good friend Ned (a NOLA local for 30 years) and I scratched out a song that he recorded and set to a video. (And I posted here.)

24 months and a lot of healing later, rather than repost that, I'm selfishly posting the version with our high school chum Matt on bass and me on vocals. (With Ned still chiming in here and there.)

Hope you and your krewe are all happy, healthy, and far better off than you were in 2021.

The Wisdom of Barbers Redux: Fox is Toast

I've written about the wisdom of barbers before when, after getting a haircut in August 2020, I opined that covid-19 "will soon run its course, turning into nothing more than a relatively routine but life-threatening infection like measles.  I predict this will happen around mid-October."  I was maybe a year too early with that prediction but that's where I think we are.

I got a haircut on Friday at that same barbershop and when I walked in the older guy, Johnny Cap, was vigorously holding forth about the Fox News defamation suit.  He read the texts and emails and was (and still is) livid that Fox reporters knowingly lied about election fraud.  He was all-in on Trump until January 6, now he's all-out.  After completing several tours of duty in the Middle East as a Marine mortarman, his son is now a National Guardsman and was deployed to the Capitol for something like two months after the riot.  Suffice it to say that blood is thicker than spray-tan, and he's pissed that Trump and his supporters ginned up a bunch of nonsense that put his son in harm's way.  Sort of like W and his supporters did--I sense a pattern here but that's something for a different post.

John is now of the view that you can't trust the news because it's all entertainment.  He parenthetically carved out the local news from that conclusion, "but that's all car accidents and murders."

This is a long-winded way of saying that we've reached a tipping point.  If Johnny Cap turned against Fox then a lot of other people have too.  Fox is toast.

For the sake of completeness, you can review the Delaware (that's where Dominion sued Fox) civil pattern jury instructions here.  I already did this so you don't have to.  Here's what the jury will be told about defamation:

Defamation is a communication that tends to injure a person's "reputation" in the ordinary sense of that word; that is, some statement or action that diminishes the esteem, respect, goodwill, or confidence in which the person is held and tends to cause bad feelings or opinions about the person.  Defamation necessarily involves the idea of disgrace.  In this sense, a communication is defamatory if it tends to lower the person in the estimation of the community or if it deters third parties from associating or dealing with the person defamed.

But defamation occurs only when the defamatory information is communicated to someone other than the person to whom it refers.  In the law, this is known as "publication."

Del. P.J.I. Civ. § 11.1.  Dominion's reputation absolutely suffered based on Fox's coverage.  I'm also willing to wager that a lot of municipalities don't want to do business with Dominion because (1) they believe that Dominion machines are rigged, or (2) they don't want to deal with constituents who believe that Dominion machines are rigged.  Looks like defamation to me.

Here's how the jury will be instructed about "the truth" as a defense to defamation:

It is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation that the alleged defamatory statements were substantially true at the time the statements were made.  Thus, even if you find that [defendant's name] made defamatory statements about [plaintiff's name] that proximately caused [him/her/it] injury, you cannot award damages if you find that the statements were substantially true.

The alleged defamatory statements don't have to be absolutely true for [defendant's name] to successfully assert this defense.  Substantially true statements are not defamatory.  To determine if a statement is substantially true, you must determine if the alleged defamation was no more damaging to [plaintiff's name]'s reputation than an absolutely true statement would have been.  In other words, if the "gist" or "sting" of the allegedly defamatory statement produces the same effect in the mind of the recipient as the precise truth would have produced, then the statement is "substantially true" and you cannot award damages to [plaintiff's name] for the statement.

To prevail on this defense, [defendant's name] bears the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the alleged defamatory statements were true or substantially true.

Del. P.J.I. Civ. § 11.12.  I think it's pretty clear that Dominion's voting machines did not flip votes to Biden; Hugo Chavez wasn't involved either.  Chris Krebs told us that.

via GIPHY

So what does Dominion have to prove to beat Fox?  I think they qualify as a "public figure" so it's a relatively high bar:

[Plaintiff's name] has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence facts necessary to establish each of the following elements of [his/her/its] claim:  

(1) that [defendant's name] defamed [him/her/it]; 

(2) that [defendant's name] published the defamatory matter; 

(3) that [defendant's name] intentionally or recklessly failed to determine the truth of the defamatory matter; and 

(4) that the publication of the defamatory matter caused injury to [plaintiff's name].

Del. P.J.I. Civ. § 11.7.  We established a defamatory statement above, that's element 1.  And we have publication--Fox news said it over and over on TV, that's element 2.  

For element 3, Fox knew these statements were untrue.  For example, Sean Hannity said "that whole narrative that Sidney [Powell] was pushing.  I did not believe it for one second."  Dana Perino said this story was "total bs," "insane," and "nonsense;" much like most people, she also pondered "Where the hell did they even get this Venezuela tie to dominion? I mean wtf?"  Even Rupert Murdock said "It’s been suggested our prime time three should independently or together say something like ‘the election is over and Joe Biden won,’” and that such a statement “would go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election [was] stolen.”

via GIPHY

As to injury, the fourth element, Dominion notes that "Where a defendant's statements are per se defamatory, the plaintiff need not prove damages to establish liability Instead, in per se defamation cases, 'injury is assumed.'" Celle v. Filipino Rep. Enterprises Inc., 209 F.3d 163, 179 (2d Cir. 2000).  A statement is per se defamatory "if it (1) charges the plaintiff with a serious crime; [or] (2) tends to injure the plaintiff in her or his trade, business or profession." Kasavana v. Vela, 172 AD3d 1042, 1044 (2d Dept. 2019).  I suspect Dominion can show that they lost contracts which would establish prong 2 (and damages).  Election fraud is, of course, a serious crime.  So we can check off element 4 as well.

Whether you go with a seat-of-the-pants/man-on-the-street hot take or a reasoned review of the legal standards, Fox is screwed.  Fake news indeed.

via GIPHY

True Love

In honor of my nephew's wedding this afternoon, please enjoy this lovely story from Stephen Colbert about meeting the love of his life.

And the warmest of wishes to Max and Dani.

Notify, Volume VII

Notify is back after a bit of a hiatus. You're welcome.

A Notify Update! 

Spotify has listened to our pleas / ridiculing and has reinstated (or just instated) the following:

• Smithereens, Especially for You, featuring "In a Lonely Place," "Behind the Wall of Sleep," and "Blood and Roses"
• Total Coelo, "I Eat Cannibals"
• Kiss My Ass: Classis KISS Regrooved, featuring the stellar Garth Brooks cover of "Hard Luck Woman" and Toad the Wet Sprocket deconstructing "Rock and Roll All Nite"

That there is what mild success looks like, gheorghies.

We received 2 recent entries in reader mail from a "Zman" in "New Jersey."

-- The Beatnuts album Stone Crazy, featuring "Off the Books"

-- The Walkmen, "Greasy Saint"

Keep those requests pouring in... like The Clash's "Pouring Rain," still not available on this mass music streaming platform. 

On to the Notify show!

I was in the Windy City last month, and I went to the Art Institute solo. So choice. Though I dressed up as Ferris last Halloween, I was Cameron on this outing, spending some time in my thoughts gazing at A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Mesmerizing. 

And yes, I was tuned in on the phone to the Dream Academy's cover of the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," but for authenticity, I wanted the instrumental version. Notify.

Is there any good reason this song isn't everywhere? The answer is No. 

Ray LaMontagne's rendition of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy."

This dude is another Zman dig-on. I saw him co-headline with Isbell a couple of years ago. Zed shoulda joined me!

It's understandable why this rando cover outtake isn't widely available. But it still should be. 

Father John Misty, "The Suburbs."

Finally, this one goes out to my good old buddy rob.  Lucky even to locate this long lost gem.
Bruce Greenwood & Circle the Wagons, "2 Ft. O' Butt Crack"

Real World Mad Libs

I've dabbled with the notion that we're living in a simulation as a thought exercise from time to time. Even wrote about it in these here pixels a while ago. Thought about it a lot more recently, and I've come to what seems to be an inescapable conclusion.

We are, in fact, living in a simulation. But it's more than just a garden-variety matrix. That'd be too simple. No, my friends, we're actually living inside the Mad Libs of a smart, slightly-deranged teenaged god. Think an adolescent Mark Leyner with the power to control an entire universe.

Leyner himself (or perhaps the ur-Leyner that's pulling the strings) has alluded to the reality of our existence in his work. For example, this quote from The Tetherballs of Bougainville: “We have nothing in this life of suffocating obligation but our motherfucking impudence!” Or this bit of worlds within worlds wink and a nod, “Even those who consider all this total bullshit have to concede that it's upscale, artisanal bullshit of the highest order.” 

I could go on. Okay, one more - this, from The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, “fate is the ultimate preexisting condition.”

The case is pretty solid. And our teen god overlord has been on a heater of late. George Santos is a particularly inspired bit of comedyparodypathos. Classified documents strewn across the various living quarters of a succession of senior political leaders, a nice touch, especially the back and forth to the point of stereophonic barking of the partisans on both side. Tucker Carlson going after M&M's for being gay and getting Mars to change the characters' costumes and roll out Maya Rudolph in what has to have been a bit where all the principals dutifully played their parts. Fucking balloons that might be aliens engaging in dogfights with F-22 aircraft all over the North American continent!

The mass shootings, though, that'll bring you back to "reality".

Ladies' Night: This Week in Wrenball

OBX Dave has obviously elbowed me out of the Tribe men's hoops gig, so I had to find a new angle. And I only had to go a few doors down in the bowels of Kaplan Arena to discover a story that's been years in the making.

If it's possible, W&M's women's hoops program is worse than the mens'. Since the CAA was founded in 1983, the Lady Wrens have never finished better than third in league play. They've made one CAA tournament final, and a mere five semis. The team is 13-37 all-time in the CAA tourney, and has four winning seasons in conference play. No coach in program history that's been on the bench for more than 40 games has a career winning record. It ain't been pretty.

Sunday afternoon, the W&M women went on the road and handily beat North Carolina A&T, 79-64. The win allowed the Wrens to leapfrog the Aggies to take over second place in the conference standings. After starting the conference slate 0-2, W&M has gone 9-2, winning four in a row and eight of their last nine.

Long-time head coach Ed Swanson was let go after going 10-20, 5-13 last season. Athletic Director Brian Mann took a gamble on Erin Dickerson Davis, giving the Wake Forest assistant and Northwestern grad her first head coaching gig. Worked so well on the men's side, how could it go wrong?

I snark, I snark.

And to date, after a bit of a slow start, it's going really well. The Lady Wrens got smoked at Towson, 75-43, on January 13 and faced a game against Drexel, the league's top team. The won that by 16 and haven't looked back. 

Riley Casey

Senior guards Riley Casey and Sidney Wagner (from Phoenixville, PA, home of Mike Piazza and the far more celebrated Evan Lloyd) pace the squad with 17.8 and 15.8 points per game, respectively - the pair both shoot better than 87% from the line. Senior forward Bre Bellamy grabs 6.0 boards to lead the team, along with 7.2 points. Aussie Junior Rebekah Frisby-Smith chips in with 7.2 points and 5.5 rebounds. 5'8" freshman guard Alexa Mikeska leads the team with 76 assists. 

The Tribe has a challenging run in to the CAA Tournament, facing rematches with Drexel (in Philly) and  Towson before closing with winnable games against Elon, Hofstra, and Monmouth. I'd say we should start booking our tickets to Towson to see the Wrens play in the conference tournament, but Whitney and I will be in Edinburgh. So the rest of you should go and cheer on the best hoops team at William & Mary.

More zShazams

 I'm back with more zShazams.

1. "Bloke on the Run" by Dennis Cometti

A straightforward garage rock song about a guy who escaped from an Australian prison in 1861.

2.  "Gorilla" by Little Simz

British hiphop with a 1990's vibe.

3. "Denim & Diamonds" by Nikki Lane

The video is like watching Meg White cover Sheryl Crowe.

4. "Black Skinned Blue-Eyed Boy" by The Equals

A very funky protest song.

5. "Love is the Way" by Thee Sacred Souls

Old school soul that sounds like it should be on Daptone.  This one has been played quite a lot over the past few months so it might be in your zShazams too.

6. "Oh Yeah, Oh No" by Add N to (X)

I don't know how to describe this.  Maybe Neutral Milk Hotel doing electronica?

7. "Two Ways" by Weeping Icon

Sounds like something from A Place to Bury Strangers.

Superb Owl Open Comment Post

For more photos of superb owls, check out this piece in The Atlantic. Enjoy the game. Chat your shit in the comments below. 

The Gheorghe List: Accents of the English-Speaking World

I've been down a rabbit hole for several weeks thanks to Jacinda Ardern.

The former Prime Minister of New Zealand announced her resignation on January 19 after five and a half years in office. In normal eras, the affairs of the Kiwi government wouldn't register much in these parts, but Ardern was noteworthy because of her age (when she took office at 37, she was the youngest head of state in the world) and her acclaimed handling of a number of major crises, including the Christchurch shooting and the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Ardern is certainly worthy of acclaim, I didn't get sucked in by the political moment. Rather, the occasion meant that I heard a lot of Kiwi accents on various newscasts. And so the rabbit hole in question had a soundtrack of liltingly transformed vowels.

[This bit with Stephen Colbert and Ardern has a lot of Colbert's American non-accent, too, but it's quite amusing.]

As I was digging in on New Zealand's accents, I stumbled across a really interesting series of videos curated by Erik Singer, an American dialect coach. In them, he and several other experts travel across the country virtually, slipping effortlessly in and out of regional accents while explaining the linguistic and historical intricacies of our American (and a bit of Canadian) tapestry of speech. It's fascinating, and if you dig diphthongs, glottal stops, and vowel shifts, these videos are for you. (Singer also bears more than a passing resemblance to Carbon Leaf lead singer and noteworthy FOGTB Barry Privett.)

The most fascinating bit of the first video is historian, linguist, artist, and teacher (polymath, really) Sunn m'Cheaux's exposition on the Geechie language of the Gullah people, which remains largely intact in parts of the lowcountry South. I think it strikes me so much because it's such a distinctly different version of English than the ones I encounter on a regular basis. As a Virginian descended from New Englanders who grew up in Alabama for a spell and who's spent a lot of time in Minnesota over the past decade, I've heard a lot of American English. I have not, however, heard many native Gullah speak. Or in the case of m'Cheaux's video below, sing.

I made a list of the accents I find the most appealing, and then stumbled across this article from the New Zealand Herald celebrating the fact that the nation's accent had been deemed the sexiest in the world in a poll conducted by Big 7 Travel in April 2019. The poll's top three (Kiwi, South African, and Irish) were all among my top five, so I'm either totally conformist, or clearly able to tap into the zeitgeist. The latter, I think.

Without further ado, then, here's the definitive Gheorghe List of the top five English accents in the known world:

1. New Zealand/Kiwi

2. Irish

3. South African

4. Jamaican

5. Nigerian

Honorable Mention (and a nod to Mr. KQ's wise counsel) - here's Len Pennie reciting a poem she wrote to support Scottish sports.

We Defy Augury: Inevitable Video Game Themed Cross Promotion

I recently read Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which is a novel about friendship, collaboration, and video game design (among other things). 

This book sent me down a bit of a nostalgic/reflective rabbit hole. 

I haven't played video games with any regularity since 1993-- when I completed every level of Road Rash on the Sega.  Road Rash was a motorcycle racing game, but the twist was that as you raced, you also fought people with chains and clubs and nunchucks and crowbars. Very fun. Once I got through all the levels, I got to this weird bonus level that consisted only of cops-- and cops pull you over and end your ride. So you ride for a moment and then the game just ends. It gets all blocky and fizzles out. 

I was kind of disappointed with this finale-- I wanted some kind of digital trophy or a screen with a secret address-- and if you send a postcard to the secret address, then the game designers mail you a special t-shirt that reveals you conquered the game. 

Something for the effort. 

Anyway, that was pretty much it for me. My wife and I certainly played some Dance Dance Revolution (but we had to give it up when our first child started crawling . . . you don't want to stomp an infant's head while playing DDR, which is certainly possible, because you're jumping around, looking at a screen and meanwhile there's a little kid with a soft skull crawling around your feet and if you kill your firstborn while playing DDR it's obviously tragic but people will still laugh) and I played some MarioKart and Wii with the kids . . . I even tried to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild with my son Alex, but it gave me motion sickness. Mainly, I retired from gaming. 

But this novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow got me thinking about all the games I missed over the last thirty years. I also read Simon Parkin's Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline and "Dead Space Only Gets Better with Age" by Lewis Gordon. The non-fiction put a lot of what I missed in context.

I get into all of this in the new episode of my podcast: "Tomorrow, I Will Play Video Games, Tomorrow."

It's a good episode-- I'm proud of it. It gets pretty deep. 

I'm trying to condense these podcasts down into posts on my newest blogging endeavor . . .

 We Defy Augury; Thoughts (Loosely) Based on Literature

We'll see how it goes.

In the end, though, Zevin's novel is less about video games than it is about creative collaboration . . . and just how rare that is. If you get to the end of the podcast-- and it's a long one-- I wax poetically about how lucky I have been with collaborators.

When my wife and I lived in Syria, I hit it off with our neighbor and colleague Matt McEwen. We played a bunch of music together, at various venues (including the Marine House) and we learned a shitload of songs together. We had a fabulous time.

When I got back from Syria, I was lucky enough to run into Cunningham and Powers at my place of work, and we made over 100 episodes of a podcast together and we collaborate all the time on lesson plans. We work really well together.

And, of course, I'm still collaborating with Whitney and we met over thirty years ago-- on our freshman hall. Thrown together by chance, with Rob as well (who enjoyed a brief stint as our drummer). Random idiots, one and all. We both had no business making music, but together we made something bigger (and more crass and disgusting) than we could have made separately. 

Though the content of our songs has gotten grimmer-- a number of them are tributes to friends that have passed away . . . the last one was commemorating the life of our good buddy Johnny G-- the fact that we can still get together and make something is a testament to the power of creative partnership.

But what I did not mention in the podcast was this blog, which is something of a miracle of collaborative effort. This is the place where I get my internet news and gossip, catch up with friends, receive positive encouragement from Marls, and often read something thought-provoking, funny, or fascinating. 

And it's been that way for a LONG time . . . nice work, Gheorghies!

Thoughts From a Hospital Bed

How would you handle an accident or medical situation that suddenly and severely curtailed your life? Defiance? Bitterness? Depression? Grace? Acceptance? Perseverance? It’s an unknowable answer unless one has experienced it. 

British novelist, playwright and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi provides an extraordinary window into that very circumstance almost daily. He suffered a serious fall Dec. 26 in Rome that left him without use of his limbs and where he has remained hospitalized. He responded with thoughts on himself and his condition, dictated to his wife and son, who then post them on Twitter and on the writer’s Substack page (subscription). His chronicle has grown to more than 10,000 words, and he shows no signs of slowing down. 

Kureishi’s thoughts understandably are all over the map. Early dispatches were full of despair and fears that he would be consigned to live as “a vegetable.” As he gradually became accustomed to his condition, he seemed to embrace the creative thoughts that came to him amid motionlessness. Not that he’s exactly happy about it, but lemons and lemonade, and all that. 

In a recent tweet thread: “But what still makes me despair is the idea that I can’t walk up the front path of my house, open the door, and step back into my old life – lie down on my sofa, with a glass of wine and the Premier League. It seems unbelievably cruel that I cannot do such a simple thing.” … “It’s as if I have been plucked off the street by four anonymous policemen and been taken to a strange school, an irrational persecutory alternate universe. I have to find a way to survive, like we all did when we were children.” 

Details about the incident are a bit muddy. Kureishi tweeted that he recalled sipping a beer while watching the Liverpool-Aston Villa soccer match at a piazza and then returned to the apartment where he and his wife were staying. He began to feel dizzy and leaned forward and put his head between his knees. He awoke several minutes later, he wrote, in a pool of blood with his neck in a “grotesquely twisted” position and his wife alongside him. He was disoriented and believed he was going to die. He credited his wife with saving his life and keeping him calm. 

He wrote that he has some sensation in his limbs, but cannot move them and has no control of his arms and legs. He underwent a spinal surgery. 

A tweet: “A strange thing happened to me, I went to Rome with my wife for a few days at Christmas and now I will never go home again. I have no home now, no centre. I am stranger to myself. I don’t know who I am anymore. Someone new is emerging.” 

Kureishi has written (dictated) about sex from the vantage of someone whose body can no longer perform sexually. He has high praise for the doctors and therapists who work with him and others. He wants to be a good patient and engage with hospital staff, to learn about their lives. He admits envy of fellow patients who can do simple things such as wave and scratch their heads. He reminisces about his father teaching him cricket (his father is Pakistani, his mother British, and he was born in suburban London), though he confessed that he wasn’t a good prospect and was a bit afraid of cricket balls hurled his way at 100 mph. He delivers reflections about writing and other writers. 

Kureishi, 68, has an ample body of work. Among his notable pieces are the Oscar-nominated screenplay for “My Beautiful Laundrette,” a well-regarded Stephen Frears film about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in London in the 1980s; the novel “The Buddha of Suburbia,” which won a British award for best first novel; the novel “Intimacy,” which was adapted into an award-winning film; the screenplay for the film “Venus,” which earned Peter O’Toole best actor nominations by the Oscars, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globes. He has written nine novels and 15 plays and screenplays, as well as several story collections and four books of non-fiction. 

A couple of thoughts came to mind as I scrolled Kureishi’s threads. One, hope that through time and therapy and medical advances that he regains at least some movement of his arms and legs. Second, gratitude. Not that I wasn’t grateful previously. I’m increasingly appreciative of my good fortune as I grow older. I try to thank those who bring me a decent meal (or prepare it, if I have access to them) or bag my groceries or open a door for me or write something I enjoy. I’m grateful for each day with my wife, for meet-ups with friends, for walks with the dog, for trips to the beach, for the simple act of typing. The ability to do and go as I please. Kureishi’s situation reminds me that we are guaranteed nothing. Nothing. 

And that life can turn in an instant.

Happy International Clash Day

This is a public service announcement...with guitars. And damn don't it resonate as much today as it did when it was released in 1982.

Gheorghasbord

Checking in on a few of the things I've done while sucking on the teat of the state, or something. 

I mentioned in a previous comment thread that I played a mediocre round at the Old Course. Which is sorta true, 'cept that I did it from Leesburg. A joint called Tap In just opened in my town, and I went with a buddy yesterday evening to try it out. 

The concept is simple, and neat. They've got seven bays where patrons use golf simulators to play a round from any number of courses around the world. Players hit a ball against a screen, and a couple of cameras in the bay calculate the speed and spin of the ball and generate a result that's shown on the screen. 

One could quibble a little bit about the accuracy of the calculations, but only a little - the tech is amazing. If you're in the rough, your distance and control is compromised, which is particularly challenging in the gorse that's all over the Old Course. Chipping takes some getting used to, and once you reach the green, you get the algorithmic average of a tour pro's results from your location - if you're 15 feet below the hole and a tour pro would make that putt 39 percent of the time, so would you. My friend got a much better tour putter than I did yesterday - he made a couple of 18-footers while I "missed" from six, nine, and 10 feet. In fairness, he's a much better player than I (one over on the back for an 83 - stout), so he deserved the benefit of the doubt.

Before the round, I was required to complete a liability waiver, which struck me as odd. Right up until it didn't. Somewhere around the turn I pulled a three-wood and teed it up. Got under the ball quite a bit, and smashed it towards and over the screen (see the black area above the image in the photo below). It hit the wall behind the screen and rocketed directly back at me, missing my head by inches - I felt it before my brain processed that I'd seen it. My friend, who's an attorney, told me he thought he could beat the waiver in court if necessary, and that he'd see to it that my family was taken care of, so we kept playing. 

We managed to get through 18 holes in just under two hours while drinking beers from a well-appointed bar. It was a fun experience, though I'll probably bring a helmet next time. 

The view from the tee box at The Road Hole. I hit it into the
hotel. Waaaay into the hotel.

Those of you that subscribe to SiriusXM radio know that the company frequently stands up specialty channels. Sometimes they're devoted to a single band or artist. Other times they celebrate a certain type of music. This month, those beautiful radio nerds dropped one that's right in my wheelhouse. Entitled Y'allternative and located at channel 55, it's dedicated to alt-country tunes. 

My experience thus far has been a little bit mixed. It seems to me to lean more to the y'all and less to the ternative. And there have been bands like Black Pumas, Pinegrove, and Bright Eyes that seem to stretch the definition, even as I dig 'em. But they've programmed a bunch of Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell, and Wilco, and I've been exposed to artists I didn't know before, so two paws up from this kid. Just hope they decide to make it permanent.

Since I have free time, I've tried to do at least a little bit of self-improvement. (I know what you're thinking - hard to improve on me, but I feel like I should at least make an effort.) I've read several interesting business books, as well as some recreational reading. I'm currently working through Roman Mars' and Kurt Kohlstedt's The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design, which is a really interesting compilation of vignettes about the things we may not notice in the built world around us and how/why they came to be. I'm also reading Cormac McCarthy's newest, The Passenger, which is predictably impenetrable, spare, and riveting.

Given that it's Black History Month, I've decided that I'm long overdue for learning more about that history. And Open Culture has a really interesting course from Yale entitled African American History: Emancipation to the Present, taught ten years ago by Jonathan Holloway, who's now the President of Rutgers University.

I hope I'm not graded. But I am paying attention.

Current Events Filler

Welcome to the weekend, boys and girls. Recent events in the news reminded me of this song, which gave me great joy.

Wrenball Update: CAA Second Half

It's been really relaxing now that I've outsourced Wrenball to an actual professional. Herewith, a look at the CAA from our man at the beach:

We interrupt your pursuits, large and small, for a glance at Where Dreams Run into Bridge Abutments, otherwise known as William and Mary hoops, and the Colonial Athletic Association. The conference season just passed the halfway point, and while plenty of games remain, conclusion jumping is never out of style. 

The Tribe sits in the muddied middle of a league in the middle of the Division I landscape – 18th out of 32 conferences, ahead of the Mid-American, Southern and Patriot leagues, behind the Ivy, Sun Belt and Missouri Valley. Preseason expectations have mostly played out, though it’s worth noting that league records are unequal in a 13-team conference playing an 18-game schedule. 

Some schedules are pricklier than others, depending on time, travel and the scheduling algorithm’s sadism level. College of Charleston has had the best season so far and sits atop the league, though just a game ahead of Towson and Hofstra, and two games up on UNC Wilmington in what appears to be a three-tiered setup. The Tribe is among a pigpile that includes Drexel, North Carolina A&T, Delaware, Northeastern and Stony Brook. Elon and newbies Hampton and Monmouth are at the bottom. 

The Wrens (9-14, 4-6) already matched last season’s conference win total and nearly doubled their total wins, so progress? That said, they have played mostly to type. They’ve beaten only two teams currently with winning records (Army and UNCW) and have been bounced regularly by teams higher up the food chain, as well as folks at their own trough. They shoot reasonably well (third in the league in FG percentage, first in 3-point percentage), though curiously not from the foul line (11th of 13 teams). They defend poorly (11th in FG percentage defense) and commit more turnovers than they generate. 

Some of it may be due to roster churn, as the program incorporated nine new players. The one-year lease of guard Anders Nelson has been a positive experiment. The former D3 All-American from St. Thomas in Minnesota is the leading scorer (11.9 ppg) and leads the conference in assists (104). He’s a 48.5-percent shooter and would lead the league in 3-point shooting (.465) if he had enough attempts. He's totaled 49 on 15-for-16 shooting in the past two games. Forward Gabe Dorsey, a 6-6 soph who began his career at Vanderbilt, is the No. 2 scorer and a capable shooter himself (45 percent overall and from 3). Junior forward Noah Collier (Pittsburgh) is the league’s No. 2 rebounder. In fact, the transfer portal appears to have been a benefit, as four of the top five scorers are imports. 

The remaining schedule sets up favorably, as they face only two teams above .500 in the league, Towson and the Dubs - both at home. Eight or nine wins are not an unreasonable goal. However, that doesn’t sniff the top of the conference. Charleston (21-2, 9-1) is an interesting study. The Cougars were unbeaten in the league, ranked and sporting a 20-game win streak until a loss to Hofstra last weekend. Coach Pat Kelsey obviously knows what he’s doing, having averaged 20 wins over nine seasons at Winthrop before relocating to the Town That Sparked Sedition. He overhauled the roster with transfers and recruits, and has taken off in year two. They space the floor, launch a ton of 3-pointers, rebound enthusiastically, and still get to the free throw line. They’re top 25 in scoring nationally (80.1 ppg). Five guys average between 10 and 13 points per game. They lead the nation in 3-point attempts, are 10th in made 3-pointers per game, and 48 percent of their shots are from behind the arc. Seven guys have made at least 17 treys. Yet they also have made more free throws (344) than their opponents have attempted (313). 

Hofstra didn’t so much provide a blueprint for how to beat the Cougars as demonstrate how such a game likely must play out. First, it didn’t hurt to have defending Player of the Year Aaron Estrada and his vitals. The Pride made half of its 3-point shots, which helped offset Charleston’s 31-8 advantage in free throw attempts, and the Cougars made just 5 of 31 shots from 3, half of their per game average. If they had shot poorly instead of miserably, they would have won. 

Peculiar result aside, going undefeated in the conference wasn’t going to happen. No CAA team has done so, and only three teams have finished with one loss: two of David Robinson’s Navy teams and a late ‘80s Richmond squad under Dick Tarrant. CofC also presents an intriguing possibility for the CAA getting two teams into the NCAA Tournament. The league last had multiple teams in the NCAAs in 2011, with Old Dominion, George Mason and VCU, and the Rams went to the Final Four. 

Say the Cougars go 7-1 down the stretch, which would make them 16-2 in the league, 28-3 overall. If they lose in the CAA tournament semifinal or final, that would make them 29 or 30-4, with an NCAA NET ranking in the 40s or 50s (they’re currently 61) and an attractive at-large candidate. Could happen. 

The Cougs are good, but hardly unbeatable, as Hofstra demonstrated. Towson carried them to overtime, and they edged UNCW by two. Towson, the preseason favorite, is the league’s hottest team, winners of six in a row. The Tigers (16-7, 8-2) are seasoned, balanced and physical, led by the trio of all-conference wing Nicolas Timberlake, Cam Holden and 6-7, 245-pound Charles Thompson, who combine for 42 points and 18 rebounds per game. Like Towson teams from way back, they'll bounce you around like a cement mixer.

Hofstra (15-8, 8-2) has won three in a row and eight of 10 and is the league’s best shooting team. They’re fueled by the 6-3 Estrada, who leads the league in scoring (21.3 ppg), fellow senior guard Tyler Thomas and mellifluously named 6-8 forward Darlinstone Dubar. UNCW (17-6, 7-3) has an abundance of guards and wings, led by 6-6 soph Trazarien White (13.4 ppg, 5.7 rpg). Seven Seahawks average between five and 14 points per game, and they’re the league’s most statistically effective defense. Quality players capable of heating up for a game or two are sprinkled throughout the league, but if at least three of the current top four teams don’t make the conference tournament semifinals, the train has jumped the track. Wager accordingly.

[So you're saying the Tribe doesn't have a chance. Tough but fair.]