Spotify recently served up a song by the Texas Gentlemen and it was really good so I surfed over to the full album, "TX Jelly," and it was really really good. Turns out they've been around for almost ten years and I missed it.
Some songs are straightforward southern rock.
But then they have some Pet Sounds influenced stuff like this song that includes fellatio from a ghost.
And they have a funky instrumental bop serving as the title of the album.
They also have some old school country and western songs.
I encourage you to take 49 minutes out of your life to listen to TX Jelly. Based on the foregoing videos they clearly don't take themselves too seriously and I suspect their live shows are fun. They are playing at the NorVa on June 14. If only we had someone local to go see them to verify their Gheorgheness.
Similarly old and new is of Montreal's new album aethermead. I say "old" here because it's their twentieth album--they've been around for thirty years! As I mentioned in G:TB's one-and-done "beers bands and bars" podcast (which I can't find), of Montreal cannot be categorized musically. They're all over the place. As is this album, in terms of quality. It's hit and miss. I won't embed another litany of videos but this one song stood out to me as the answer to the question "What would it sound like if Steely Dan enlisted Greasetruck Studios to produce a song?"
I am thoroughly in the tank for the World Cup. The idea of it, anyway. I've seen five World Cup matches - two on the men's side in 1994 (including Mexico/Italy during the heyday of lunatic goalkeeper Jorge Campos) and three in Montreal during the 2015 Women's World Cup. I love it all - the passion, the coming together of the world's fanbases, the stress, the wall to wall soccer.
I love it all. Except for the people that run it. FIFA has always been a disgrace - a venal, corrupt vampire sucking treasure for its own ends. It may have met its match in Donald Trump, peas in a greedy, bloated, gilded pod.
As we get closer to the start of the 2026 event (Mexico hosts South Africa a week from yesterday), the global federation's veneration of gold over all else threatens, if not the integrity of the competition, certainly its reputation. The tournament's expansion to 48 teams was always a cash grab, but it doesn't seem that FIFA's higher-ups considered the fact that nobody in North America gives two shits about shelling out $400/seat to watch Curacao play Ecuador or Qatar take on Bosnia and Herzegovina.
They definitely didn't anticipate Trump's Gestapo holding up entry visas for global stars like Switzerland's Breel Embolo (who had no problem entering the U.S. for friendlies just last year) or half the South African team. Lord knows what's going to happen if Iran and/or Iraq advance. That's just the athletes and coaches - we already know that foreign fans are staying away in droves. The BBC reports that 70% of hotel rooms reserved by FIFA in advance of the tournament for traveling supporters have been cancelled. We've never seen winning like this. The best winning. The hottest country.
The upshot for me is that I'm still really excited about the matches, disgusted by the organizers, and expecting the worst from our despicable administration. My personal compromise: I'll watch, but I won't put a dollar of my own money into FIFA's coffers. A girl's gotta have standards.
You didn't come here for my crisis of conscience, though. You're here for cogent analysis and pithy previews. (I'm being told that's not necessarily accurate. Onward.) We'll get to that. But first a handful of the things we're watching:
The Fodder:
As noted above, expansion from 32 to 48 nations in the World Cup Finals is fueled by naked greed, regardless of how FIFA spins it as an expansion of opportunity. It is that for European and South American teams - seven of the 10 CONMEBOL nations are in the tournament, and fully one-third of all qualified nations are from Europe.
The 2022 World Cup featured 63 matches, including the 15 knockout round tilts. Only three of those were decided by a margin of more than three goals. We're gonna get a cornucopia this year - 104 matches to get from 48 group stage qualifiers to 32 knockout participants and on to the final. It says here that we're gonna get blowouts a lot more than 5% of the time.
So while I think it's amazing that Cape Verde and Curacao and Haiti and Uzbekistan get the chance to share the spotlight with the global powers at the top of the game, I won't be holding my breath for underdog runs.
The Yanks:
One of the significant differences between 2026 and the last time the U.S. hosted a World Cup in 1994 is the substantially heightened interest in the game here and the correspondingly elevated expectations for the USMNT. In theory, Mauricio Pochettino could field a starting lineup where every field player is a starter for a team in one of Europe's major leagues. (He probably won't, because at least one of Tim Ream and Miles Robinson will start in the back, and both of them currently play in MLS.)
Despite a roster with real, proven talent, the U.S. is an enigma. Only half the team was rostered in 2022 when the U.S. advanced out of its group and got exposed by the Netherlands in the first round of the knockouts. The Americans have had strong performances in friendlies - witness a 5-1 demolition of World Cup-bound Uruguay - mixed with desultory efforts (hello, Japan!). Tomorrow's final tuneup against Germany will either reveal a lot or tell us nothing, depending on how we decide to spin it.
I don't envy Pochettino's task of selecting a roster - it's a good problem to have that we left out a number of very good players. My primary quibble with the final 26 is more makeup and less talent. I don't think we have enough redass quotient.
The best U.S. teams in terms of performance haven't necessarily been the most talented. The 1994 team famously beat heavily favored Colombia before taking eventual champs Brazil to the wire in the knockouts. More than half of that team didn't even play for a professional club, as U.S. Soccer decided to have them train together as a group in hopes of building togetherness. It worked, and it didn't hurt that we had brawlers like Eric Wynalda, John Harkes, Tab Ramos, and Earnie Stewart on the squad. In 2002, the U.S. roster featured five players on top-flight European teams, most of whom didn't play much. Our best player was Landon Donovan. And the U.S. reached the quarterfinals and were legitimately better than Germany in that match, victimized by a handball by Torsten Frings that prevented a U.S. goal that went uncalled in the pre-VAR era. That squad had lunatics like Frankie Hejduk and Clint Mathis, and physical forces like Brian McBride, DeMarcus Beasley, and Eddie Pope.
The 2026 side? Other than Tyler Adams and maybe Weston McKennie, I don't see it. The biggest omission to me with respect to this particular attribute is that of Diego Luna. The Real Salt Lake attacking midfielder isn't pretty, but he fights his ass off, and he's very skilled with the ball, picking out passes that unlock defenses and making intelligent runs to create space for himself and others. Dude's a menace (complimentary) - that's him at right playing on after breaking his nose against Costa Rica in 2025. He stayed in that match and picked up an assist on the game's first goal. Poch chose Giovanni Reyna over Luna, picking an undeniable talent who was a locker room pariah in 2022 and gives privileged prima donna energy. I worry.
The Underdogs (Natch):
Only eight nations have lifted the World Cup trophy over the tournament's 22 editions. Only five other nations have made the final over that time. It's an elite club. Non-European and South American countries need not apply. 88 teams have appeared in semifinals since the tournament's inception in 1930. All but three of those were European or South American nations (U.S.A. (1930), South Korea (at home in 2002), and Morocco (2022)).
Here are the "outsider" sides Vegas thinks have the best chance to break that stranglehold:
Japan (+4500 - 12th-best odds)
Morocco (+5000 - 13th)
U.S.A. (+5500 - t14th)
Mexico (+5500 - t14th)
The African sides, other than Morocco, with the shortest odds are Senegal (+15000), Ivory Coast (+17500), and Egypt (+35000). Canada clocks in at +22500, pretty long for a host.
I think all of these squads have good to very good chances to advance from the group stage. I like the cut of the Mexicans' jib. El Tri are unbeaten in seven matches dating back to November 2025 and have only lost one of their previous 16. Javier Aguirre's side has a good mix of youth and experience (including Fulham striker Raul Jimenez, pictured at left), and features a number of players battle-tested in Liga MX, one of the world's most physical and competitive leagues. Combine that with group stage matches at home, and you could find a worse longshot.
Whew. That's a lot of words. It's almost as if this blog could use an editor.
I could wrap it up with a prediction, but that's exactly what They expect. Instead of one, you'll get three - the multiverse of G:TB World Cup outcomes.
First, hearkening back to the primary reason this Cup has such a greasy, gross sheen, let's imagine the most amazing, MAGA-brain-breaking version that has at least a modicum of realism. It might be magical, but let's play along, shall we. Here's what happens in that version:
The U.S. is bounced in the group stage, falling to Türkiye (this could definitely happen) and losing a shocker to Paraguay in the opener.
Both Iran (possible!) and Iraq (not so likely) go through to the knockouts.
Canada advances to the quarterfinals, sparking gleeful rallies in Toronto calling for the U.S. to be the 10th Province.
Mexico dance through the bracket, making it all the way to the final, where they eventually fall to Spain. Spain hates us at the moment, for obvious reasons.
Four African teams make it to the round of 16, and two (Morocco and Senegal) reach the semifinals.
The next outcome imagines a tournament that what would suck because the results were so goddamn boring. This one breaks down like this:
Eleven UEFA teams reach the final 16 and six get to the quarterfinals. This could definitely happen.
The host nations advance to the knockouts but all get bounced without a win.
No African teams make it past the round of 32.
Fabulous, flowing France loses to Germany in the round of 16.
South Korea and the joyous Son Heung-Min exit early.
Germany, Spain, England, and Portugal comprise an all-Euro semifinal.
And Portugal with that asshole Cristiano Ronaldo lift the trophy.
Finally, here's the definitive G:TB prediction. This is what will happen:
The U.S. does enough to advance, but Türkiye win our group.
It's a pretty chalky group stage, and there's not a ton of upset-related drama throughout.
The USMNT goes out to Argentina in the Round of 32, Poch leaves for AC Milan, and another four-year cycle of doubt and recriminations ensues.
The Turks make a run to the quarters, where they fall to Spain.
Mexico is the only host nation that wins a knockout match, but they fall to England in the Round of 16.
Mo Saleh takes Egypt on a run to the quarters.
England take out Brazil and Argentine on their way to the final.
France bests Spain in an epic semifinal.
England finally reach the top after trying and failing for 60 years. It's coming home! The Three Lions are massively talented, and they're coached by a brilliant and insane person in Thomas Tuchel.
***EMERGENCY UPDATE***
GET A LOAD OF THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF THE NORWEGIAN NATIONAL TEAM! I CHANGE MY PREDICTION. ERLING HAALAND AND HIS BAND OF MERRY VIKINGS ARE WINNING IT ALL! HEIA NORGE!
I like to think I'm generally fairly clued-in to the pop culture zeitgeist, at least for the parts of it I care the most about. Namely, sports and certain types of music. I have no idea who most actors or pop musicians under the age of, say, 40 are. I know way too much about politics - that shit is slowly breaking my brain. Perhaps not so slowly, if you listen to my wife.
Today I'm sharing a trio of things that I've become aware of recently, though others got there well before me. One of them's a dramatic series, and the other two should've been in my wheelhouse.
For my money (not much to speak of), Cillian Murphy is the best actor going. He was terrific in Oppenheimer, which is the first time I really became aware of him. Turns out the Academy Award-winner has done some other stuff. So now I'm three episodes into Peaky Blinders, and friends, Murphy's portrayal of up-and-coming Irish gangster Tommy Shelby is spectacular, all simmering rage and cold calculation. Turns out it ran for nine damn years and they made a feature film. Who knew? Guess I've got some catching up to do.
About six months ago, the algorithms started pushing a somewhat oddly-affected musician into my feeds. Stephen Wilson, Jr. is a 46 year-old musician who blends country and rock in ways that hit the chords I like. The Indiana native sounds like nobody else, though. His playing is sublime, and his voice is haunting, emotional, rasping and raw. He's been making music since he left his job in research and development in Mars' food science department in 2016. Can't believe it took me this long to hear about him. Wilson is playing The Dome in Virginia Beach in late July, if you know anyone in the area.
This cover of 'Stand By Me' from a year ago or so is the first thing I heard him perform:
And here's his single, 'Gary':
Turning to sports, check out this statistical excellence: 20 pitching wins and 20 homers in consecutive college seasons, the first time that's ever happened; career record of 91-17, with a 1.29 ERA and 937 strikeouts in 687 innings; career batting line of .514/.842/1.356; led Nebraska to its first College World Series since 2013, homered in their final game while also taking a no-hitter into the sixth inning of an eventual loss to Texas.
Oh, and that last game? She did that while she was pregnant.
I give you Jordy Frahm, friends. The Nebraska native started her career at Oklahoma, where she was a standout pitcher for the powerhouse Sooners. She came home to help lift the moribund Nebraska program (the NIL money she got certainly did not hurt, if we're being fully transparent) and got to hit and pitch - that's where her 20/20 feat took place over the past two seasons.
And after the Huskers lost to Texas and were eliminated from the Women's College World Series, Frahm and her husband Trey announced that their family was about to grow.
Big doings and a crazy coincidence from Virginia's capital city next weekend.
Yes, at week's end in Richmond, there will be a nice little assortment of music at the city's Maymont Park. A 100-acre green space in the heart of town adjacent to the James River, Maymont is celebrating a century of existence with some fun for all ages.
On Saturday night, Carbon Leaf is playing; we've touted the virtues of my old buddy Barry and his band here before. Terrific dudes playing ear-pleasing music at clubs across the country.
Leaf Barry with some gheorghies
Here's a Carbon Leaf tune ("Desperation Song") from a quality Richmond venue from a decade ago. Go check' em out!
Before that happens, though -- check this shit out.
On Friday night, a pair of local tribute acts share the bill. Full Moon Fever kick things off at 6pm; they're a killer Tom Petty tribute band that some of you may recall played my wedding 2 years ago.
FMF, Prabir and Les Coole
Prabir and his Petty-playin' cronies are good eggs and do more than justice to that catalog. Be a face in their crowd.
At 8:30pm, after my old wedding band clears out, stay tuned for the next act: Three Sheets to the Wind. They're a killer Yacht Rock tribute band that some of you may recall played my wedding 13 years ago.
Smooth all over
The canvas can do miracles, and so can these guys. Smooth music is their milieu. Topper Dandy, Capt. Max Power, & Co. are super good guys and deliver a bevy of yacht rock tunes. They should be missed... is what a fool believes, Kenny.
But seriously, what are the chances that this event features a pair of musical acts, and both bands played my weddings 11 years apart?
I'd say not strong. (I also got married in Richmond in 1997; I'd say we should see if we can find Fat Ammon or the Rhondels to play some beach music on Saturday like they did for me that day back then... but they've mostly passed on.)
Add to this unlikely odds that my old friend's band is playing the third show, and it's quite the cosmic feat.
Alas, I will be busy Friday night with my stepson's 8th grade graduation festivities. Otherwise, it'd be nice to see the old gangs and marvel at this weirdness.
Father's Day is nigh upon us and you will probably say "I don't know" when asked for gift ideas to commemorate the occasion, or maybe you don't know what to get one of the dads in your life. This post aims to alleviate that problem.
If you read G:TB you were probably born between 1968 and 1978 which means you are of exactly the right age to have seen, and been absolutely blown away by, the movie Trainspotting when it came out in 1996.
Barry! The book on which it's based is just as good and it got me into other works by Irvine Welsh including all the sequels and prequels involving the same group of radgejakeys which are available on Amazon as the "Trainspotting collection." This does not include the latest installment, Men in Love, which takes place shortly after the end of Trainspotting and before Porno. This means the new book is a sequel and a prequel. As a fan of the series I enjoyed it greatly. I guess you could come to it cold but I suspect you'll enjoy it more if you already read the other books, or at least Trainspotting. I've cited some favorite Welsh quotes before--my top choice from Men in Love is from Sick Boy (natch) and it's at least tangentially related to Father's Day:
Pah-pah, Papa: even a broken clock is right twice a day. I thank God that out of the billions of retard sperm that this miasmal mongol hound shot from those festering hee-haws intae my ill-omened mother (and countless Leith hoors), that it was the solitary, exceptional, perfect bastard that managed to penetrate her egg and furnish this saintly woman with her only son.
zwoman got me one of these small modern CD players for my birthday. It has AUX and optical jacks and Bluetooth so it works with AirPods or any other Bluetooth device. More importantly, it justifies keeping all my CDs, especially the ones that are currently only on Notify (like Done By the Forces of Nature which was removed from Spotify because I suspect it includes exactly zero cleared samples). I dig the Scandinavian vibe of the walnut version. Who doesn't dig Scandinavian vibes?
zson borrowed my softshell to clean out stables in the rain and a horse bit the zipper off (don't ask) so I went to REI to replace it during their recent 25% off sale. They didn't have anything that fit the bill, but I spend a lot of time in fleece jackets and two of them are close to crapping out so I perused REI's selection and discovered Patagonia's new (at least to me) Air Fleece. I'm not sure how it works but it keeps you warm without getting too warm (unlike their Better Sweaters) and the medium fit me perfectly. They are wildly overpriced, even at 25% off, but it's replacing two fleeces (one of which I bought about 12 years ago) and zson is about my size so he can wear it too (so long as he avoids the zipper-eating horse) so I justified it to myself and I'm hoping it will last a long time. I went with the hoodie version because who doesn't like hoodies?
There might not be a better source of content outside G:TB than The Atlantic. It's chock-full of think pieces from deep thinkers, cultural observations from cultured observers, and short fiction from non-fictional writers of all heights. Notable writers include Tom Nichols, Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Robert Kagan, McKay Coppins, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Chait, Adam Serwer, Derek Thompson, Annie Lowrey, Jamele Hill, George Packer, Eliot Cohen, Alexandra Petri and a boatload of other Washington Post defectors. They put out new stuff online daily and offer a web-only subscription but for an extra $10 you can get also get the dead tree version mailed to your house along with a tote.
[And now for something completely different: a professional sportswriter interviews an amateur high school soccer coach and cranks out 600 words on a deadline. Up the Huskies.]
Listen to Rob Russell and the Tuscarora High soccer team’s trip to the regional playoffs is both reward and opportunity. The Huskies navigated a challenging season marked by injuries and player absences to advance into the postseason, where they have momentum and begin with a clean slate.
“I told our kids that our goal was to be playing our best soccer at the end of the season and I think we’re doing that,” said Russell, the Huskies’ second-year head coach. “I think we’re in as good a spot as we’ve been all season.”
The Huskies, who face Heritage High in Leesburg this evening at 6:00, enter the playoffs on an uptick. Though they finished 6-8-2 overall, they were 6-5-1 in Region 4C and tied for fourth after winning three in a row to end the season. The late surge can be traced to a jolt of offense and stability at goalkeeper after a couple months of uncertainty.
Injuries compounded the uncertainty. Five starters missed multiple games due to injury, and Russell guessed that he was never able to start the same eleven more than twice, which led to both lineup and tactical tweaks. But the return of last year's leading scorer and honorable mention All-Met striker Emmy Tchou three games ago provided a boost to the offense, though she is at less than full strength as she rounds into form.
At the defensive end, talented freshman Laurel Francis, a natural midfielder, has settled in as relief goalkeeper and become much more comfortable in the past couple of weeks. Goalkeeper was a concern for much of the season after the Huskies’ all-district freshman keeper a year ago was forbidden from playing high school ball by her club team coach, so what appeared to be a strength heading into the season became an issue until recently.
That, in turn, put added pressure on the Huskies’ back line, an experienced, talented group that has held up remarkably well.
Backs Maddy Crew and Sydney York are first-team all-district, and senior captain Rosemary Stewart has been steady and solid, in addition to filling in at goalkeeper at times. Senior defensive midfielder Vicky Rojas is second-team all-district and the Huskies’ free kick specialist.
Senior midfielder Kirran Holt is the team’s engine, Russell said, a tireless competitor who is first-team all-district and was all-region as a junior and is also all-state in track and cross country. She runs marathons and routinely logs five- or six-mile training runs before practice. She’s tied for the team scoring lead with seven goals and an assist, and Tchou’s return has helped create space for her and sophomore wing Kiya Philson, who also has seven goals and an assist.
Tuscarora’s goal differential is a mite misleading, as early games were against stout competition when the team was still gaining its footing and dealing with myriad injuries. But the breakdown – 8 goals for, 14 against in first six regional matches; 18 goals for, 10 against in final six matches – indicates improvement.
Despite the early struggles, Russell said the players’ commitment never wavered.
“The girls have been awesome,” he said. “It’s a good group that really enjoys being around each other.”
Russell wouldn’t go so far as to predict a postseason run. If the Huskies get past Heritage, their likely next opponent would be defending state champ Loudoun County High. LCHS is 14-1 and beat Tuscarora 5-0 in April. The Captains have scored 56 goals and allowed just four, according to the school’s website.
“We’d like the opportunity to see if we can slow them down, but they’re really, really good,” Russell said. “It would be an upset, but it’s sports; who knows.”
We have a very special intersection of pastime and profession on tap for you tomorrow, but until then, please enjoy this piece by Hokkaido-based artist Kenichi Nakaya. Visual Flood describes Nakaya's "Folklore" series thusly:
This ongoing project sees him transforming common, sometimes even quirky, Japanese rural crafts into fresh, modern works. Nakaya’s distinct approach breathes new life into items deeply embedded in the nation’s cultural fabric, offering a contemporary perspective on traditional aesthetics. His dedication to recontextualizing these familiar objects highlights a unique blend of preservation and innovation within his practice
Me, I was just tickled by the juxtaposition between what I first saw and what actually existed.
The title of this post begs a pun involving the term "ripshit" but I'm feeling more maudlin over the discovery that Pabst Brewing Company will discontinue Schlitz beer.
When I was a younger man, there was a dive bar on Washington Street in Bergenfield that sold beer to go, no questions asked, and their cheapest was Schlitz. I, accordingly, have a few memories of evenings that involve too much Schlitz. We should pour one out for Schlitz but if you do I encourage you to pour out something other than Schlitz given that cans of Schlitz will soon be collector's items. We will not be drinking Schlitz served by AI robots despite this predictive marketing:
Today's English Football League Championship final is famously known as "the richest game in football". The winner of the contest between Hull City and Middlesborough stands to gain as much as $300 million next year as a member of the Premier League; the loser heads back to the relative coal mine and has to grind out another 46 league matches to try again for promotion.
That kind of windfall might tend to cause a team to do something really fucking stupid, as it turns out.
Middlesborough didn't expect to find themselves in today's match after they fell, 2-1, to Southampton to lose the two-legged Championship playoff semifinals by the same score. Southampton were installed as favorites to defeat Hull City and rejoin the Premier League in 2026-27.
Instead, the Black Cats were sanctioned by the EFL for spying on Middlesborough's training sessions in advance of the teams' May 12 match, and their victory over 'borough was vacated. Really sophisticated tradecraft on display, as you can see below (this is not a joke - that's really and truly a Southampton intern named Will Salt filming Middlesborough training on an iPhone from behind a tree):
The New York Times has a terrific tick tock of the events surrounding this entirely new version of Spygate, which are both corrupt and pathetic. Southampton's players, many of whom were due for 40% pay raises had they qualified for Premier League play, are contemplating a class-action suit against their employer. Southampton manager Tonda Eckert, a German, has claimed ignorance of the fact that such chicanery is illegal, saying that it's commonplace on the Continent. Other Championship sides, including Wrexham, are also discussing legal action, because it turns out Southampton did the same thing on multiple occasions earlier in the season, which could've impacted the standings even before the playoffs. It is, as the pundits say, a proper cockup.
No word from the UK regarding Connor Stalions' pending interest in the round sort of football, though that would make a bizarro Ted Lasso plot twist.
The NBA Western Conference Finals is a gem, a matchup between the defending champ and the sport’s best team the past two seasons versus a young, promising group surrounding a singular talent.
The Oklahoma City Thunder are a deep and versatile and tenacious bunch led by two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and positioned for several years of excellence thanks to canny player acquisition and a well-run organization. The San Antonio Spurs leaped into the league’s upper tier this season behind the continued rise of Victor Wembenyama, an alien placed here to demonstrate human limitations (personally, I’m willing to give our new galactic overlords a chance at Earth stewardship, though I understand anyone’s desire to ride out the string under the current species – devil you know versus devil you don’t, and all that).
Wembenyama’s length and athletic gifts make him appear elastic at times. He’s capable of turning a basketball court into a kind of funhouse mirror, the way he distorts and occupies space and forces opponents to adjust like no one else. That he is far from a finished product and still developing is either thrilling or terrifying, depending on your vantage.
Speaking of distortion, in the runup to this matchup, the Oklahoma City newspaper, the Oklahoman, ran a column the day the series opened that rests somewhere between provocative and WTF?!? The headline provides a fitting, if jarring, launch: “Like Thunder, Israel is an underdog that has become hated.” The premise is that success can breed outsized contempt by opponents and critics, particularly when the successful entity – be it an athletic team or a country – is outside the mainstream or a glamour setting.
“As both a fiercely proud Oklahoman and a Jew, the parallels between the Thunder and the nation of Israel are difficult to ignore. Neither was supposed to become what it is,” the author wrote. “Oklahoma City remains one of the NBA’s smallest markets. We lack the glamour of Los Angeles, the nightlife and beaches of Miami, Florida, or the finance and media power of New York City. Yet we built something remarkable anyway. Rather than buying relevance, we created it. Rather than following others, we reimagined our own path to success by relying on the resources and skills we had with discipline and our own brand of resilience. Israel’s story shares many of those attributes — a young, microscopic nation limited in natural resources, surrounded by hostility, perpetually under scrutiny, and constantly forced to justify its actions and existence. Israel nonetheless transformed itself into a global powerhouse of innovation, technology, defense, medicine and agriculture. Like the Thunder and even Oklahoma City, it has risen out of the ashes of a traumatic past despite all odds.”
People love underdog stories, said the writer, but when underdogs consistently triumph that appreciation "mutates into skepticism and distrust. ... The Thunder are not hated because they somehow gamed the system. They are hated because they mastered it. Israel is not obsessively scrutinized because it failed, but due to its success despite deeply-rooted envy and darker historical motives."
Hoo buddy, much to unpack.
Nowhere in the column does the writer mention that the Thunder’s “traumatic past” included OKC businessman Clay Bennett shortly after purchasing the franchise moving it from Seattle to Oklahoma City after failing to extort $500 million from the state of Washington for a new arena complex. Nor does he mention that just a decade ago the Thunder had a nucleus of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and 6-11 Serge Ibaka and was oh-so-close to a title. Nor does he mention that plucky underdog Israel and its admittedly kick-ass military have been bankrolled and backstopped by the U.S., or that systematically squeezing the Palestinian people and targeting opponents across borders might prompt some justified scrutiny and criticism.
To be fair, the Oklahoman piece wasn’t by a staff writer, but a guest column by an Oklahoma native businessman who transplanted to Chicago. You might think that a piece submitted by an outside source would come under greater examination than from a staff writer. One frequent casualty of the corporate strip-mining of newspapers, however, is editorial oversight. Fewer people to raise red flags or put the brakes on flawed writing. The Oklahoman did pull the piece later that day amid questions and backlash. Still, never should have run in the first place. Equating a basketball franchise's place in the sporting zeitgeist to a nation whose history and actions significantly impact the geopolitical sphere is a reach that even Wembenyama can’t match.
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.
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