Zen and the Art of Skipping Stones

Kurt Steiner is the Roger Federer of skipping stones, an elegant, thoughtful artist. Russ Byars is the Rafael Nadal of the discipline, a physical force who blends technical mastery with brute strength. And this Outside Magazine article by Sean Williams about their pursuit of quirky perfection is one of the best things I've read recently. 

To hear Steiner tell it, stone-skipping (which is not at all the same thing as stone-skimming, you heretics) represents “undeveloped natural purity, a refuge against the consumerist, plutocratic, kleptocratic, fucking destroy-and-build-up-everything mentality.” He's nearly single-minded in his pursuit, telling Williams, “October through March is pretty much my psychic recovery phase. I will spend most of the next six months in super-isolation—no power, no heat, no water, no phone … getting high, maybe drunk … watching video, reading, writing, taking hikes … and crapping everyday in a bucket in the basement. All just trying to get myself centered for the next year."

Steiner holds the world record for the most stone skips with 88. (Englishman Dougie Isaacs holds the current skimming mark, the difference being that skipping focuses on the number of times the stone hits the water and skimming on distance. Isaacs' top skim spanned 399 feet - nearly a quarter of a mile.) Here's Sasquatch-quality video of Steiner's record-setter:

You might guess that a man with a nearly-singular focus on skipping stones would have taken an unconventional path through life, and Williams' story makes Steiner's eccentricities clear. But there's a purity to Steiner's intent and a clarity to his existence. I couldn't follow his footsteps, but I'm glad I know a little bit about him now. 

I'm fascinated with obsession, in particular with pursuits that offer far more psychic than financial gain. Kurt Steiner is damn near one of a kind. Hope you dig his story.

More zShazams

I haven't been carrying my weight around here lately so I'm posting the easiest schtick in my bag of tricks: zshazams.  You too can find stuff like this on WFMU, WFUV, and WBGO.  Here are a few recent gems.

"Viva Prado" by Stan Kenton

I played the trumpet in middle school and I was predictably bad at it.  I love the sound of trumpets played well, especially high notes.  They take on this weird smeary quality like magic markers or when you rub on a balloon.  You'll see what I mean around 2:45.  

"Controversy" by Prince

I saw Prince live once only because I blundered into free tickets.  He was amazing and at the time I thought about familiarizing myself with more of his catalog.  About 6 weeks later zson was born and I forgot about all that.  Maybe I will do so now--Controversy is some funky shit.

 

"Jackie Down the Line" by Fontaines D.C.

This sounds like a Bloc Party song.  I dig it.

"Cain's Heresy" by The Lounge Society

This sounds like a Bloc Party song until the switch at 2:40 when it becomes a psychedelic noodling guitar jam.

"Shombalor" by Sheriff & The Ravels

This is proto King Khan & the BBQ Show.  A quintessential Fool's Paradise song, except Toddophonic Todd played it.

"Hard Rock Potato" by The Cool Greenhouse

These guys are heavily influenced by Greasetruck and the Almighty Yojo, except the eschew heavy vocal distortion.

"Our Love Will Still Be There" by Big Blood

This sounds like a Troggs song because it's a cover.  I think it sounds like a Madonna song too, maybe "Ray of Light" which always reminds me of Mike Buddy because TR and I were at a Yankee game once and when he came to the mound they played "Ray of Light" and I said "Mike Buddy is like a ray of light" and TR laughed and so did I.  We were wildly overserved, it was a double-header and the first game went 18 innings or something stupid like that so we guzzled Coors Light from those flimsy wax-paper tallboy cups for 27 innings so that was a funny thing to say under those circumstances.

And those are the latest zshazams!

Expanding the Parameters

Like most of you, I learned to tie my shoes around the time I turned five. From that point forward, didn't give that particular daily chore much of a thought. 

A few weeks ago, I was told I'd been doing it wrong my entire life. And, indeed, I had. Let Terry Moore drop some science on you:

Moore is a curious fellow, his bio full of terms like 'thinker', 'business divorce attorney', and 'CEO'. He built a professional practice around the notion that people should seek to master simple skills as a building block for acquiring more sophisticated capabilities. The TED talk above fits neatly within that oeuvre. 

It was hard to get my digits to make the corrections necessary to apply this radical new method of shoe-tying, what with all the muscle memory and everything. But I haven't had a shoe come untied since I did, even the rounded, slick, nylon laces of my fancy hikers. And I discovered a different hack: I'd always gone right lace over left lace before intertwining them - when I started going left over right, the knot held much longer.

Turns out you can teach an oldish dog new tricks. Be on the lookout for my next post, featuring a whole new way of buttoning a shirt.

Assholes Gonna Asshole

I think I'm a far better man than I once was. I'm less prone to angry outbursts. I'm far more attuned to my privilege and so many others' lack thereof. I'm (a bit) less selfish. 

But I've got work to do.

I confess that I'm not above hate-rooting. The edge might've come off some of the garden-variety stuff, like the Yankees and Auburn and Manchester United. Still hate 'em, just don't get as easily exercised as I once did. But newly inflamed passion still has a way of getting into the quick of my emotional fingernails (what?), even when I really don't care all that much about the broader context.

To wit, I will root fervently against the Cleveland Browns* for as long as Deshaun Watson is on their roster. That has less to do with Watson himself (though, fuck that guy) and far more with the vocal minority (we must hope) of Browns fans who are willing to overlook the very credible allegations against the quarterback. 

Gleefully so, in the case of these fucking assholes:

We're tribal. We have a basic human need to belong. That makes us do incredibly stupid shit on occasion in the name of the group. I have personal regrets about some of that shit, as do most of us, I suspect. But when we fail the simplest test of decency, well, then we should be scorned, mocked, and cast out from the regard of polite society.

* With yet one more acknowledgement that I wish Johnny G were still alive so we could pillory him for the fuckery of his team's ownership (for signing Watson for a stupid amount of money when they were bidding against themselves) and fellow fans. His defense of the Brownies in this case would be half-hearted, like their effort in the fourth quarter against the Jets last Sunday.

Cream Rises

G:TB's been on the Becky Hammon bandwagon since 2014, when she joined the coaching staff of the San Antonio Spurs. Where others might've seen some sort of tokenism, we believed that Greg Popovich didn't play that kind of game - the best leaders seek better leaders, tradition be damned.

We were right. But more importantly, Pop was right.

Hammon's Las Vegas Aces beat the Connecticut Sun yesterday, 78-71, to win the WNBA Finals, three games to one. Hammon became the first coach in WNBA history to win the title in her/his first season as the big whistle (hat tip to OBX Dave for that sobriquet). 

The Aces were 26-10 during the regular season, winning the Commissioner's Cup along the way. Hammon was named Coach of the Year. A'ja Wilson was WNBA Player of the Year, and Kelsey Plum joined Wilson on the first-team all-WNBA roster. And with all that talent, Chelsea Gray won the Finals MVP. The Aces are deep, and talented, and it must be noted, well-coached.

In that piece about Hammon joining the Spurs, we wrote, "The NBA is a global business worth billions of dollars. Very few other global enterprises succeed without diversity of thought and innovation in leadership. This is in many ways a very natural evolution. All of this assumes, it must be said, that Hammon can actually coach."

As noted above, Pop was, and is, right. Becky Hammon is a champion. And should she want it, she'll take the lead on an NBA bench sooner rather than later. And unless I'm missing the plot, she'll be great.

It's Murder Out There for Reporters

There are numerous ways to get snuffed in Las Vegas: corruption, The Mob, questionable acquaintances, scorching heat, all the vices you can think of and some you can’t. However, I wouldn’t have guessed “being a reporter investigating a low-level bureaucrat.” 

Jeff German

As the site’s media grump, this hits close to home and troubles me. You may have heard, but Jeff
German, a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter, was stabbed to death outside his home on Sept. 2. Robert Telles, a Clark County public administrator, is charged with murder. 

German had written several stories about Telles, detailing mismanagement of his office. Subordinates alleged that he created a toxic work environment and carried on an inappropriate relationship with a female staffer, complete with a videotape of a rendezvous between the two of them in the back seat of her car at a parking garage. He denied the allegations and tried to explain away the car meeting as innocent. 

Telles was first elected to the office in 2018, but lost his bid for re-election in a June primary. He blamed the newspaper stories for his loss. Vegas police almost immediately identified him as a “person of interest” in its investigation. Surveillance video of a car registered to his wife near German’s home on the day of the killing and DNA evidence found on German linked Telles to the scene and prompted officials to charge him with murder. 

German’s colleagues said that he didn’t view Telles as dangerous. After all, German had been with the paper for 40 years and investigated crooks and mobsters and gang members and very bad people – lots of folks more likely to threaten and harm those that got in their way – and was never deterred. 

The Telles pieces were fairly low on the investigative food chain. No crimes, no graft; just incompetence and poor management by a county administrator with no criminal record. And yet, here we are. Review-Journal executive editor Glenn Cook told the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple: “It’s terrifying for the staff to understand that this is possible, and it is alarming to journalists everywhere that the person that you would least expect to be capable of something like this actually might be.” 

 

Journalists are under attack around the world – 1,125 killed since 2000, and 552 in the past decade, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of those, though, were in war zones or authoritarian countries, where simply stating facts can get reporters threatened, jailed or killed. 

The U.S. still has among the free-est of free presses. Only 10 journalists in the U.S. have been killed since 2000, according to the CPJ. Four of those were in June 2018 during an assault at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md., that killed a total of five. 

Reuters' Danish Siddiqui was killed in
Afghanistan in 2021

However, those stats don’t begin to tell the story of reporter harassment. Shuttering newspapers and shedding staff provide those with power and status the chance to act with impunity or silence dissenting voices. Increasingly contentious social discourse fuels conflict. Social media provides a cloak of anonymity for those affected or who may simply disagree. I would argue that there’s also a through line from a certain former POTUS – Mr. Fake News and the Press is the Enemy of the People – to those who feel emboldened to attack reporters. 

German’s murder isn’t a template and that’s what makes it chilling. There’s inherent danger for reporters covering a shooting war or poking about the affairs of criminals and despots and the powerful. But a county government official seeking retribution, or an aggrieved citizen shooting up an Annapolis newsroom because of a story that described his harassment of a high school acquaintance are another level. Reporting has plenty of unique challenges in the best of times, which this isn’t. Reporters now must be even more attuned to threats and the possibility of violence from anyone who fancies themselves a victim.

All-Black Black Day

The finals of the 2022 women's and men's Rugby Sevens World Cup played out in Cape Town, South Africa on Sunday. New Zealand competed in both matches; the women tackled Australia and the men squared off against Fiji.

Soundgarden provided the backing track for the Kiwis.

The ladies match was a doozy. The Matildas overcame an early deficit to lead, 24-10, late in the second half. The Black Ferns fought back ferociously, scoring a try and a conversion, then another try at the death. All that remained to send the match to extra time was a reasonable routine conversion. Watch from the 24:00 minute mark to see what happened, and send good thoughts to Tenika Willison.

The men's match was far less dramatic, but historic in its own way. Fiji dominated the opening half against the All-Blacks to take their first World Cup title since 2015, 29-12. There were tears down Fiji way.

Camilla Loves Chachi

 I wish I could find out who did this so we could credit them but it was sent to me without attribution.  All I know is that someone brought Teej’s joke to life and it is glorious. 

Dare You Write Your Names On That Page

If you're one of the bazillion people who follow Rex Chapman on Twitter, you'll have already seen this, but it's so good that the entire Gheorgieverse needs to witness its glory.

During the Sky Sports gameshow 'A League of Their Own', host Romesh Ranganathan asks Welsh actor Michael Sheen to improvise a motivational speech for the Wales soccer team ahead of their World Cup clash with England in November. To which, this stemwinder:

MICHAEL SHEEN is truly MAGNIFICENT.

Get a LOAD of THIS. pic.twitter.com/zZh5k3jcSs

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) September 9, 2022

Lambs of Suburbia

I joined a Zoom call with a colleague yesterday afternoon to find her giggling uncontrollably. I've known her for more than 20 years, and I can attest that she's not the giggly sort. So it gave me great joy to see my friend enjoying...whatever it was to such a degree. There's been a good deal of stress in our organization of late, so finding things to laugh about is a welcome respite.

Turns out that she'd just been talking to another colleague of ours who's been vexed by a pernicious silkweed infestation in his yard. After receiving a quote from a traditional landscaping service that approached $1,000, he sought a more cost-effective solution.

The answer, my friends, is Babydoll Southdowns.

According to the North American Babydoll Southdown Sheep Association and Registry (NABSSAR), "BABYDOLL Southdown sheep are known for their docile dispositions. For this reason, they are often kept as pets, but they are also used in a variety of ways such as grass mowers and weed eaters in vineyards and orchards and 4H projects. They are small in stature and are easy to handle."

Some goddamn genius has raised a flock of sheep here in Northern Virginia and hires them out to homeowners and businesses as a natural alternative to chemical and/or expensive lawn services. Branded as Lamb Mowers, they advertise themselves as the "Safest and Cutest weed-control Services in the DMV". And as the photo below attests, they don't appear to be wrong.

I reckon this isn't all that revolutionary a concept down Rootsy's way, but up here in the land of tract homes and manicured yards, it's a damn joy. 

Get your giggle on, friends.

Music Heard While Rambling

Observers of the G:TB comments section know that my wife and I spent this weekend (our first as empty nesters) in the Laurel Highlands, mingling with the country folk and visiting several Frank Lloyd Wright architecture. Most will be familiar with Fallingwater, and it's spectacular, but I enjoyed Kentuck Knob more. The former is basically architecture as sculpture, while the latter was designed to be lived in. It's a 2,200 square foot home built - literally - into the side of a hill, with expansive views from the rear deck and copious sculptural elements in the surrounding forest and meadows. Really dug it. 

Really, though, this post is an excuse to post some new tunes I came across and dug as we drove all over SW PA cranking SiriusXMU. Do enjoy.  

Sudan Archives is the stage name of Brittney Parks, a Los Angeles-based multi-talented musician. She's got a new record entitled Natural Brown Prom Queen coming out this month, and SiriusXMU has been banging the hell out of 'Selfish Soul'. 

Arctic Monkeys are also releasing a new album soon. The Car drops on October 21. The first single from the record is 'There'd Better Be A Mirrorball', which is a louche, slinky number that evokes a really good lounge act.

Katie Crutchfield from the brilliant Waxahatchee teams up with Jess Williamson to comprise Plains. Their first single is an aching ode to lost love entitled 'Abilene'. I could listen to this one for days.

And last but not least, Gorillaz' new collab with Tame Impala and Bootie Brown is a certified banger.

Utter Dipshittery, and Brilliant

This amuses me.

Gheorghe's 6-Pack: Spoon

We have Labor Day weekend coming up. Get out there, hit the beach, and grab a 6-pack. Ah, that reminds me of a recurring segment...

In the interest of spreading the love of good music, we will throw out six suggested songs by certain bands you may or may not know much about. Not much of a time commitment, just a little something to get the flavor and get you going.

When I lived in DC 20 years ago, I used to exchange music ideas with a good friend, a WandM Kappa named Jill. She was always a half-step ahead of me, and she introduced me to a number of bands and albums I still enjoy.

Jill still sends me recs. Here's a wacky one she sent 2 days ago. It's also helpful if you wondered what ever became of TR.

And now onto the sixer...

Gheorghe's 6-Pack: Spoon

Vitals
Where: Austin, TX
When: 1993–present
Who: Britt Daniel, Jim Eno, and a bunch of guys who have rotated in and out

Spoon was one of the first recs Jill shared with me. Their Merge Records debut Girls Can Tell is a very solid listen, and I bought it on her advice in 2001. I still spin that sucker now and again.

Here's a good smattering of Spoon. Surface level warranting a deeper dive. That's what 6-packs are for!

Enjoy.

"Everything Hits at Once," Girls Can Tell, 2001

"The Way We Get By," Kill the Moonlight, 2002


"I Turn My Camera On," Gimme Fiction, 2005


"You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb," Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007


"Hot Thoughts," Hot Thoughts, 2017


"Wild," Lucifer on the Sofa, 2022

Mark. Your. Calendars.

I enjoy the musical stylings of Al Yankovic as much as the next guy. Which is to say I find them modestly amusing, and I like his persistent bursting of self-important bubbles. But I haven't given Weird Al much thought in decades.

That just changed:

Weird: The Al Yankovic story comes out on The Roku Channel on November 4. If you happen to be in Toronto a week from Friday, you can see it live at the Toronto International Film Festival. Judging by the trailer, and several reviews, Weird does for biopics/hagioraphies of musical personalities what its titular character did for pop music. Which is to say it's gonna be delightfully deranged.

Balancing Act

Well into the third year of a global pandemic, we are stressed and stretched in ways that are obvious and that we’re just beginning to understand. Leave it to those hardy, contented Swedes to provide a potential path forward. 

First, some numbers and observations. The workplace is among the pandemic’s visible effects. Office work all but shut down for an extended time and is just starting to return. Almost 48 million people quit their jobs from March 2020 through 2021 during the so-called “Great Resignation,” and more than eight million quit in the first two months of 2022, according to the jobs and career website Zippia. 

The health-care field is among the hardest hit. As of late last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that starting in Feb. 2020 health care lost almost a half-million workers. The survey research outfit Morning Consult reported that 18 percent of health care workers quit, often citing pandemic burnout, and another 12 percent were laid off. Elsewhere, the accommodation and food service industry lost 892,000 workers, almost 6.9 percent of its total workforce, in 2021. The sectors of leisure and hospitality, retail trade, and professional and business services all lost more than 700,000 workers last year. 

Among reasons cited for quitting, again from Zippia, were low pay and lack of advancement opportunities (both 63 percent), feeling disrespected at work (56 percent), child care issues (48 percent), and lack of schedule flexibility (45 percent). 

Back to the Swedes. A foundational point of Swedish society is a concept called “lagom.” It’s pronounced LAR-gohm. There’s no direct English translation, and it loosely means “just the right amount” or “everything in moderation.” It’s being satisfied with what makes you and your family comfortable, without constantly striving to acquire more. 

Lagom doesn’t preclude hard work, but it preaches balance between the professional and the personal, that you aren’t merely your job, your financial wealth, your possessions. Sixty-hour work weeks and clawing your way to the top of a profession are viewed as neither desirable nor healthy, by individuals or if expected by companies. 

Adopting a similar concept here may be a hard ask, given the American tendency to conflate work and wealth with virtue and achievement, as well as a relentless consumer culture that must be constantly fed. Pandemic upheaval, however, may lead the idea to take root. 

A recent movement among workers called “quiet quitting” has received attention. It’s a misnomer, because it’s not actually quitting, but a kind of employee disengagement. Recognizing that they’re often underpaid and overworked, some workers no longer buy into the grind and instead do only the bare minimum of their job descriptions for the prescribed number of hours. They seek work that’s more fulfilling or accommodating, if not more lucrative, hence the large numbers of people who quit or changed jobs in the wake of the pandemic. Without getting rewarded, either financially or personally, they believe that so-called “hustle culture” has become a myth. 

Sweden is a more social democratic country than the U.S., with robust national health care, strong labor unions, worker protections, and the tax structure to support it. Its citizens don’t seem to mind. In the World Happiness Report of 2021, Sweden ranked seventh (FWIW, five of the top eight happiest countries are Scandinavian). The U.S. was 16th. 

The WHR measures six categories: gross domestic product per capita; social support; healthy life expectancy; freedom to make life choices; generosity of the general population; and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels. In Freedom House’s 2021 report measuring political rights and civil liberties around the world, Sweden, Norway and Finland tied for first with perfect scores of 100. The U.S. scored an 83, just ahead of Trinidad and Tobago, and just behind Croatia, Mongolia and Monaco. 

All that said, I’m not advocating that the U.S. go full Sweden. Meatballs and pickled herring are non-starters for me. IKEA furniture is an instruction manual for self-torture. A surfeit of ABBA in a country where half the population is already obese or pre-diabetic is just asking for trouble. I defer to Zman on the merits of Volvos. Larger point being, as tragic and life-altering as the pandemic was and is, it also provides an opportunity. We should have discussions about health and work and education and income and personal and social responsibility and sustainability. About improving ourselves and our nation. If we treat the pandemic as a one-off and an interruption, and simply try to return to “normal,” then we’ve compounded the tragedy.

Baby Buff

Here's some filler masquerading as a preview for y'all.

One week from today, at 10:00 EST, the University of Colorado hosts Texas Christian University at historic Folsom Field in Boulder. In one of college football's coolest traditions, Ralphie VI will lead the Buffs onto the field. (Ralphie, it should be noted, is a juvenile female, 'cause male buffalo are big, strong, and ornery.)

As the video below will show, Ralphie is generally accompanied by Colorado's cheer team, who are then followed by the football squadron. A number of the cheerleaders carry large flags, as well. And as it turns out, my baby Buff will be one of those carrying a flag. Because she's strong as fuck - her sister calls her a tank.

The aforementioned season opener will be telecast on ESPN, so you all know what you'll be doing next Friday evening.

Mr. Astley... the Other One

So, everybody, even the younger generation, knows about Rick Astley. I do not care for his music.

But what about Jon Astley?? Here's betting that less than 1% of Gen Z knows about him.

To any of you 80's music simpletons, here's a reminder. A one-hitter classic from 1987.

A ridiculous video for sure, but Jon Astley was also a producer and a master of mastering and remastering. He worked with The Who (even producing a couple of their albums), the Stones, and hundreds of others. He was a whole lot better at that stuff than the whole being a pop star thing. But he had his one moment in the MTV sun.

And I do like the song. More than I should.

And you where you might have also heard "Jane's Getting Serious"? This commercial from the same year the tune came out.

A ridiculous ad for sure, but it does make me want to grab a frank for lunch. And that particular actor, who's now reportedly worth $85 million, was in some other fine fare...

Nice to see Aguado from Ace Ventura getting some work.

And here's another 80's ad... with another friend.

But does it compare to this?

Alrighty. Your time has been sufficiently wasted in the very vein that this blog was built on, Teej-style. Now back to something with some actual merit. Who's up? Maybe something a little more serious.

I could get serious, too. I could get so serious. And I cannot believe that I would ever admit that I could take Jane seriously. Come around eleven, we're still on our way home, all dressed up and nowhere to go, but all along I should have really known that Jane's getting serious (Jane). Jane's getting serious. Jane's getting serious (Jane). And I could get serious, too.

Bark at the Moon

According to NPR, a pair of lunar shutterbugs met over social media and collaborated on a project to get the best picture of the moon ever... by creating it out of a whole lot of partial shots.

It took astrophotographers Andrew McCarthy and Connor Matherne over nine months to edit their final image. It's comprised of more than 200,000 shots pieced together to make a single photograph.

Pretty cool. As Cougar sang, check it out.

Where's Johnny?

In honor of our long-lost friend Johnny G, Dave and I dusted off our old band Random Idiots.

Here's what we created before the Fishing Trip.

Dave nitpicks and points out the flaws, but I'd say we did okay for whipping off a quick single from New Jersey and Virginia, respectively.

We performed and recorded a live version whilst on the trip... very Random Idiots. Messy but fun.

Stay tuned for more Idiocy coming your way before long...

Etymology in Action

It's hot out there, people. Without getting into a fight about whether our climate is changing at unprecedented scale because of human activity (it is) or some other reason, it seems obvious that the general global pattern is trending towards substantially increased temperatures. By way of illustration, here's a chart from NASA that illustrates changes in the global mean temperature from 1880 to 2020.

As the climate changes, humans are finding ways to adapt. While I was in Colorado last week, my friends who've been in Boulder for nearly 20 years told me that air conditioners weren't in wide use when they first moved to the air. They're nearly ubiquitous now. Anecdote isn't data, but we've got some of that, too. According to a 2017 article in Denverite, 40% of homes in the American West had air conditioning. By 2017, that number had risen to 75%, and it's almost certainly continued to rise over the past five years. (The impact to the power grid and electrical availability is the subject of a different post, altogether.)

Animals have been forced to adapt, as well, but they can't really afford air conditioning. Instead, they take a behavioral approach, as this squirrel demonstrates:

That, my friends, is called 'splooting'. Merriam-Webster doesn't acknowledge that term as an actual word, but it's obvious that it describes what that little dude is doing. Linguists suggest that it's a colloquial combination of splat, splay, and scoot. That seems logical.

What's also logical, and practical, is that it works. So if you're looking for me on a scorching day, please assume that I'll be here: