I treat Spotify like the radio--I set it to a vibe I'm feeling and let it spin the tunes. A few days ago it spun up "Certain Kinds of Trash" by Chain and the Gang, a song I'd never heard from a band I'd never heard, and when I saw it pop up on the nav screen I assumed they would use the word "trash" in a New York Dolls sort of way.
But no! They use it in a literal Mad Men sort of way.
In something like a spoken word approach, they reminisce about all the garbage you don't see anymore like cigarette holders, magnetic tape stuck in a tree, typewriter ribbons and so on.
I became wistful when, at the very end, the second to last kind of trash they enumerate is porno mags, because I remember in fifth grade when my friend Chris found an exceedingly waterlogged issue of Hustler in the gutter during a rain storm, and he brought it home and nurtured it like a wounded bird until it dried out, at which point it became the size of a phone book and the ink flaked off the pages in some spots but it was still his pride and joy, his dirty magazine that he rescued from becoming trash. Sure, our friend Jesse's father had a huge stack of pristine noodie books in the basement,
but this battered copy of Hustler was like manna from heaven for Chris.
I've found some pretty gnarly garbage in my day and I don't miss the filthy sidewalks of the 70's and 80's, littered with dogshit, gum, broken glass and all the other flotsam and jetsam one encountered on urban walkways. Unfortunately I don't recall finding anything as personally meaningful as Chris's Hustler, but maybe you do. Join me in the comments--what trash do you miss and what's the most important trash you rescued?
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.
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".
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
Demonstrating once again that nothing will be left alone if privileged people think they benefit from change, the NCAA is in the process of finalizing one of the worst ideas in sports: expansion of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
According to reports, the field in both events will increase to 76 teams next season, up from the current 68.
Details must be worked out and rubber stamps inked and thumped, but the meat of it is that there will be eight play-in games rather than four, and the winners will advance to the regular Goldilocks field of 64 for the tournaments’ opening weekend.
Understand that this isn’t about increased opportunities or more of a good thing, it’s power conferences exerting control over as many areas as they see fit, and a mostly neutered NCAA attempting to remain relevant, or at least not be further kneecapped by said conferences. Longtime ESPN snoop Pete Thamel wrote that tournament expansion is driven by the power conferences wanting more at-large bids for their teams. Because clearly, eight or ten or twelve teams from a league aren’t enough. Certainly, an extra low- or mid-major team with an exceptional record will make the expanded field, but it’s a safe bet for anyone but Brendan Sorsby (too soon? [ED: Never!]) that six or seven of the new eight at-larges will be from the Bigfoot conferences.
Thamel also wrote that expanded tournaments aren’t expected to provide a financial windfall for the NCAA and member schools, but sources said there would be profits. No, he wasn’t talking about Fan Duel and Draft Kings. Decide for yourself if it’s mere coincidence that NCAA officials and media partners are negotiating a new deal, whose current terms pre-dated the present bloat and conference demands for even more elbow room at the trough.
I’ve written previously about tournament expansion and the notion that it’s football, not basketball, that moved the needle. The Big Ten and SEC became 18- and 16-team mega-conferences, respectively, and capitalized on massive financial deals for football, forcing the ACC and Big 12 to follow suit or get left behind (raise a glass for the late, lamented Pac-12). In turn, that meant five or six teams from a league getting into the basketball tournament went from reasonable representation, percentage-wise, to underserved in their estimation.
Advocates for tournament expansion cite examples such as Texas advancing from the play-in rounds to the regional semifinal this past March as proof that power conference schools deserve greater representation. I’d argue the opposite. Where was that Longhorns’ team the previous three months? They finished tenth in the SEC. I maintain that no team that doesn’t finish in the top half of its league merits an invitation to play for a natty. Alas, that’s not the way it flies today, when P4 leagues, particularly the Big Ten and SEC, understandably equate resources with clout.
No small number of power conference coaches favor expansion, as well, reasoning that NCAA berths help with job security. I might argue that an expanded, diluted NCAA field may not provide the shield they think (see: Davis, Hubert, turfed by North Carolina despite four NCAA appearances in his five seasons; and Barnes, Rick, canned at Texas in 2015 despite 16 NCAA trips in 17 seasons). In the present landscape, administrators and Big Checkbooks may not be satisfied with mere invitations to the party; they will want results in the form of deep runs and hardware.
But those will be campus taffy pulls. In the grand scheme, we will get a format that few people want with several more undeserving entrants packaged as an upgrade, all because those with their hands on the levers will never let a potential advantage go to waste. Way of the world.
Have we already written about this? Goodness gracious.
This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people.
Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects.
--Rick Aschmann
If you’ve ever wondered why someone from Squeaky’s Massachusetts
neighborhood sounds like they’re permanently auditioning for a role in The Town while someone from North Dakota sounds like they’re politely
asking a casserole for permission, then welcome—truly welcome—to the
delightfully insane universe of the North American English Dialects. This is
not a sleek, minimalist, “click here for three fun facts” kind of website. No,
this is a commitment. It’s the internet equivalent of opening a drawer
and discovering it leads to a fully cataloged museum of vowels. And honestly?
Respect.
The main event is a sprawling, gloriously overwhelming
dialect map of North America, which divides the continent into eight major
dialect regions and an alarming number of subdialects that seem to multiply
the longer you stare at them. The boundaries aren’t random—they follow
historical migration patterns, especially the westward spread of English from
the East Coast, which is both fascinating and slightly humbling if you thought
your accent was just “normal.” Spoiler: it is not. None of ours are. We are all
linguistic snowflakes, except instead of snowflakes, we are vowels doing
interpretive dance.
And speaking of vowels—this site is obsessed with
them. Not in a creepy way (but yeah), but in a deeply earnest,
linguist-with-a-hobby-that-got-out-of-hand way. The focus here is
pronunciation: how people actually say things, rather than what they
say. You’ll encounter concepts like the “pin–pen merger,” which sounds like
a Zman review post but is actually about whether those two words sound the same in
your mouth. The site makes it clear that these tiny differences are not tiny at
all—they’re basically geographic fingerprints, revealing where you’re from
whether you like it or not. It’s like linguistic CSI, but instead of
fingerprints, it’s how you say “bag.”
Now, here’s where things get fun: the audio
samples. Hundreds of them. Possibly more than you emotionally prepared for. The
map is linked to a massive collection of recordings—many pulled from YouTube—so
you can click around and hear these dialects in action. This transforms
the experience from “huh, interesting map” into “oh no, I’ve been clicking on
accents for 45 minutes and now I’m judging strangers based on how they
pronounce ‘roof.’” It’s immersive. It’s educational. It’s a mild personality
shift.
The site itself feels like it was built in an era when the
internet was powered primarily by enthusiasm and possibly Colombian "coffee." It
is dense. It is text-heavy. It occasionally looks like it might have been
formatted during a long weekend in 1998. But that’s part of its charm. Rick openly discusses updates, corrections, and the avalanche of emails from
equally fascinated visitors, which gives the whole thing a slightly chaotic,
very human energy. This isn’t a corporate product—it’s one person saying,
essentially, “I collect dialects,” and then proceeding to absolutely go to
town.
What sneaks up on you, though, is how thoughtful the whole
thing is beneath the visual clutter. The site quietly dismantles the idea of a
single “correct” English, showing instead that language is shaped by history,
migration, and community. It even highlights differences between American and
Canadian English—like the fact that Canadians generally merge “cot” and
“caught,” while many Americans stubbornly refuse to. Suddenly, accents stop
being quirks and start being stories. This is gheorghiness.
By the end of your visit, you’ll likely emerge slightly
dazed, mildly more informed, and deeply suspicious of how you pronounce
everyday words. You may start testing friends. You may say “orange” out loud
several times in a row. You may question everything. And that, I suspect, is
exactly what this site wants. It’s not just a map—it’s a gentle, vowel-filled
reminder that language is messy, regional, and wonderfully human… even if it
occasionally makes you realize you’ve been saying “milk” wrong your entire life.
Posts
