Not exactly dipshittery, but a return to a normality. Glen Hansard, who passed away in a motorcycle accident on July 29, was your favorite musician's favorite musician. Hansard was beloved by the greats, the goods, the unknowns, and the up and comers because he just absolutely loved music with all his being. Here are just a few of the things he did, and a few of the ways the community celebrated him.
I didn't realize until his passing that he'd played guitarist Outspan Foster in The Commitments. Check out his story about getting the part and then enjoy his stylings.
Hansard started as a busker, playing on the streets of Dublin. He never forgot those roots, and organized a annual Christmas Eve Busk starting in 2010 to raise money for the Dublin Simon Community, a group that works to support homeless Dubliners. Here he is at the 2015 edition of the Busk with a few folks you might know.
Look at how much he loves watching others - this is him at a recent Busk glowing as he looks on while young Dubliner (who started as a busker herself) Allie Sherlock plays. Shit breaks your heart.
In addition to his solo work and numerous collaboration, Hansard recorded three gorgeous records with Czech singer-pianist Marketa Irglova as The Swell Season. Shlara turned us on to them years ago. The 2007 movie Once is a fictional depiction of their musical pairing, with the pair starring. You'll be familiar with "Falling Slowly". Just fucking beautiful. True story: I have a female friend with whom I share tunes I think are cool (and she with me). I sent her this song when I first heard it. And then had to quickly explain that I just thought it was a cool song - no deeper meaning.
Here he is eulogizing Shane MacGowan just a few years ago.
Just hours before he passed, he spent an evening in a pub in West Dublin. Cliche to say he died doing what he loved, but he certainly did what he loved right to the too-early end. He was celebrated by just about everyone:
Financial precarity aside, being one of the founders of a startup has its perks. in my recent case, it means i can fuck off for a few weeks to various locales and not worry about job security. It doesn't hurt that our little company is entirely virtual and I can check in from places far and wide.
What follows is a journey in (mostly) pictures from a river in Maine to the mountains of Colorado to the Atlantic Ocean white with foam in North Carolina.
I've chronicled my various paddles down the St. Croix River in northeastern Maine before, so I won't bore you with all of the details, but my fifth multi-day canoeing and camping trip with family and friends was top notch once again. Water was a little bit higher than most trips, so we got to run some rapids that had been previously inaccessible (and required portaging, which is less fun than paddling). Saw some eagles, cool ducks, chipmunks, couple of sunrises over our four days and three nights.
We paddled the stretch between the Vanceboro Dam and the Grand Falls Dam
After a seven-hour delay at Logan, dragged my tired ass into my house at 3:00 am and spent most of the next day napping. Two days later, my wife and I headed out west to help our daughter move into a new place in Boulder, but we took advantage of the occasion to spend a few days in Colorado Springs before shlepping household goods.
I'd been to the Springs once before for a conference on youth sports. Met Jeff Ament and Edwin Moses (shoutout KQ!) at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum, but otherwise didn't get to do too much sightseeing. As an aside, Ament has run a non-profit called Montana Pool Service since 1992. It's dedicated to creating skate parks to connect kids in the state to arts and skateboarding opportunities.
This time, a lot more opportunity to see, do, eat, and drink. Our AirBnB was almost literally in the shadow of Garden of the Gods, which is a city park fill of spectacular rock formations and meandering hiking trails. These photos really don't do it justice.
This formation is called the Siamese Twins
You can see Pike's Peak off in the distance through the keyhole in the Twins
Mrs. Rob and I scrambled up a rock, unaware of the impending danger
We drove up the aforementioned Pike's Peak, all the way to the summit at 14,115 feet. The effects of altitude at that height are no joke - felt like I'd had a few high octane beers in a short span of time. We saw marmot and mountain goats, though we missed out on Bigfoot, despite warning signs that he might be around.
The view from 14k'
We had an opportunity to see the Olympic museum, and had great meals in Old Colorado City. Missed out on a chance to climb the Manitou Incline (2,744 steps, a 2,000 foot altitude gain over 0.9 miles at an average incline of 41%) due to storms. Bummer?
This is the actual scoreboard from the arena in Lake Placid used in the 1980 Olympic hockey tournament
Jimmy Craig's gameworn
Not much worth reporting from Boulder - been there a bunch and shared a lot of photos. Moving out of a third-floor apartment is a young man's game. Thank God my kid is strong like bull. Here's a gratuitous shot of her and her Mom.
Closed out my three-week gallivant with one of the highlights of my year. Much fun, many beers, lots of fresh fish, late nights, cool ocean water, one very ill-advised attempt to paddleboard while drunk (which cost me a pair of sunglasses), and camaraderie that's an absolute blessing. Couple shots of the lads to wrap things up.
2,270 miles of travel, 25 of paddling, nearly three up a mountain over 25 days. 27.5 if you count the time it took to recover. I'd happily do it all again.
Been an active three weeks or so for your boy, and I'm working on the comprehensive travelogue. I'm not saying it's on a Gheorghemas Day 12 schedule, but I'm not not saying that. I jumped on the scale this morning after a strict three-day regimen of PBR, Red Stripe, and gobs of tuna and was nonplussed, to say the very least. Gonna be doubling down on fiber and vegetables the next few days ahead of my annual physical on Wednesday.
All that's to say that the brain is a day or two away from firing on even one cylinder, so you'll get what you get.
I promise I'll stop hyping Michael Brennan at some point, but I find it very cool to see kids that are friends with mine doing big stuff in the world. Here's the moment after his win at the Wyndham Championship where his mom told him he's headed to Augusta.
Here's a picture I took last year from the dune protecting the venerable Martha Wood Cottage from the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean. Possibly the best photo I've ever taken. Looks better the larger you make it. Feel free to use it for your own ends.
The busy beavers at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank whose vision of “a more perfect union” differs from that of a sizeable portion of the citizenry, recently demonstrated that its noxious ideas aren’t limited to government overhaul. The Foundation released a paper on transforming women’s sports to become, shall we say, more feminine and less male, all with a heavy dose of Title IX diminution.
Lest you wonder about mis-interpretation or hyperbole, it’s right there in the title – Title IX’s Failed Experiment: Why Accommodating Sex Differences Beats Engineered Parity. The paper’s summary begins: “Title IX has evolved from a seemingly modest anti-discrimination statute into a powerful engine of feminist social engineering, complete with proportionality mandates. The result has been two systemic distortions that rest on a false premise — that differences in competitiveness and interest between the sexes are stereotypes to be engineered away through state action and cultural revolution.”
It's giving smarmy prick
The paper’s author, Scott Yenor, is a Boise State political science professor and chair of something called the American Citizenship Initiative at the Heritage Foundation. He’s open about his thoughts on the roles of men and women in society, once delivering a speech at a conservative conference several years ago in which he said that career-seeking women are “more medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome than women need to be, without connections to eternity delivered through their family.”
The promotion of women’s sports in the past several decades, Yenor argues, is part of a project to remake female character and to create women who are more aggressive and assertive and “less deferential, less graceful, and less oriented toward motherhood and traditional feminine graces.” He cites the writings of French mid-20th century feminist Simone de Beauvoir and her successors as proponents of social engineering that attempt to strip away the natural, biological differences between men and women. Imposing a male-oriented competitive model of athletics, he says, actually deprives women of sporting pursuits that are more suited to their desires and makeup and has depleted opportunities for male athletes.
Quite the take in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Six, but it speaks to where we are politically and socially. The Heritage Foundation, you might recall, was the clearinghouse for Project 2025, Russell Vought’s wet dream to shrink Federal government about which the President knew nothing until he installed Vought as budget director and began implementing its measures the minute his keister again landed in the Oval Office. Since then, various government agencies have been stripped and re-made to reflect the Oaf-in-Chief’s and his lackeys’ ideas of governance. He hasn’t been bashful about threatening colleges and universities with funding cuts, so it’s not surprising that Title IX would become a target.
Some background might be helpful. Title IX is the landmark civil rights legislation passed in 1972 that forbids sex-based discrimination in schools or any education program that receives Federal funds. Athletics weren’t a part of the original equation but became so in 1979 and later through a series of amendments and court rulings. With government backing, scholarships, budgets and opportunities for women increased in the decades to come, fueling the ascent of U.S. women’s athletics on the national and international stage.
The Office of Civil Rights came up with a three-prong test for compliance:
Are sports opportunities at a school for men and women substantially proportionate to enrollment?
Is the school working to expand sports opportunities for women?
Has the school fully accommodated interest for girls and women?
Proportionality has been the primary benchmark for compliance, a so-called “safe harbor” for schools. That’s become tricky as many colleges have greater female enrollment than male but a larger proportion of male athletes. Football and its disproportionate roster sizes and budget outlays skew the numbers, and athletic departments have basically deemed football untouchable. Fearful of potential lawsuits, however, many schools cut men’s non-revenue programs – wrestling, swimming, cross country, tennis – rather than increase the number of women’s teams and opportunities because they couldn’t bear the accompanying costs.
Hence, Yenor’s argument that the current model for women has in turn limited opportunities for men.
Yenor doesn’t want to do away with high-level women’s athletics, recognizing that a subset of women want and thrive in that environment. But he recommends substantial reforms, chief among them essentially de-fanging Title IX. He would eliminate the proportionality requirement. He would permit less competitive pursuits such as exercise classes or intramurals to count toward compliance. He says that Congress should exempt major men’s revenue-producing programs from counting toward overall participation numbers. And while they’re at it, deregulate all but strictly academic portions of educational systems from Title IX oversight.
One might dismiss the Foundation paper as another right-wing rant that yearns for the supposed good old days, if it weren’t for the present administration’s embrace of Vought and other Heritage positions and its actions over the past eighteen months. The current regime has gutted the Department of Education and all but abandoned oversight in civil rights enforcement and environmental protections. It attacks academia over the scourge of DEI and what it defines as “woke” culture. It downgrades women and minorities in the military amid macho posturing about a warrior mentality and appearance and soldier testosterone levels.
It doesn't take a political savant to imagine that Yenor and his allies will take a cue from recent Supreme Court rulings about the 1965 Voting Rights Act in their fight against Title IX. For instance, in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the court struck down a section of the VRA as unconstitutional, in part, because it relied on old data and practices. The conservative majority ruled, in effect, that because Black people had made so much progress in the areas of voting and representation through the years that Federal oversight was no longer necessary.
Tee up Title IX arguments and we might hear: Women’s athletics have made so much progress in recent decades that Federal oversight is no longer necessary.
Add a side of the idea of “protecting women’s sports” from an inflated fear of a transgender overrun, which is actually Yenor’s launch point in the paper – an inaccurate description of a Tunisian “man” pummeling a Chinese woman in the 2024 Olympics women’s boxing competition for the gold medal and the ensuing shock and outrage it caused.
Problem is, it didn’t exactly occur that way. An Algerian and a Taiwanese boxer in the women’s competition came under immense scrutiny because some thought that they “appeared” to be transgender or men, but both are women and were cleared to compete by the IOC. Algerian Imane Khelif did indeed win gold in the women’s welterweight division, in a unanimous decision over a Chinese boxer, and much of the controversy was a product of misinformation and internet trolling.
That a college professor did not, or chose not to, convey facts accurately about something so easily verifiable as Olympic boxing in what’s supposed to be a persuasive paper kind of gives away the game, don’t you think?
Any number of right-wing chew toys are about control in the guise of protection. Book bans "protect" impressionable children. Abortion bans “protect” unborn babies. Stripping the Voting Rights Act “protects” the Constitution. Banning gun restrictions “protects” individual rights and the Second Amendment. Rolling back environmental regulations “protects” jobs and “protects” against government overreach. Transgender bans "protect" women's sports. Title IX repeal would “protect” against radical feminism. Too often, the only thing it protects against is progress.
I've been slacking off with my zshazams effort. Here are a few gems I discovered since my last post and I dedicate them to some Gheorghies.
"Theme for Moon Children" by Duane Eddy
This is a twangy western guitar song with a grand soaring string section, very cinematic. It's very much of a time and place that heavily involve vinyl. Accordingly, this one's for Mr. KQ (he probably has it on a 78).
"Florida Water Blues" by Twisted Teens
This is the title track of Twisted Teens' new album. I hadn't heard of them before I heard this song and it motivated me to check out the whole album. You should too because it's good. They're a duo from New Orleans and they make straightforward rock n roll with a mildly swampy southern sensibility. "Florida Water Blues" is perhaps the swampiest song on the album and it works for a number of Gheorghies. rootsy, because of the line "You can drink that Florida water and go blind" which reminds me of Franklin County moonshine, and because it sounds like the sort of stuff he would've told me to check out back in 308. I don't know if DJ Herb is a G:TB lurker but it works for him as the resident ORF Rock Floridian. Whit will like it too--he likes almost everything and the album has a few songs that sound like what would happen if the Drive-By Truckers were born in the 1990s and decided to make punk rock.
"Get Away From Me (I Think I'll Love You Soon)" by Julia Jacklin
This song sounds like what would happen if you created a song to ensnare rob. A cute Australian hipster songwriter/chanteuse singing an ambivalent love song over simple guitar chord melodies with almost no rhythm and a minimal eight bar breakdown? This is an early single for her next album, arriving September 25. If you listen closely you can hear rob adding a reminder to his Outlook calendar.
"Bentley's Gonna Sort You Out" by Bentley Rhythm Ace
This song sounds like what would happen if you asked AI to generate a 90's electronica song. And I like it! I feel like I should have heard this song before, maybe on the soundtrack to a Guy Ritchie movie or a vodka commercial. This one's for Jerzy Dave.
"Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand
This song sounds like what would happen if the Beach Boys were from Belgium and they made a pop punk record in French. Clocking in at just under 3 minutes, the title roughly translates to "everything is going well for me." It features a driving four-on-the-floor beat with speedy guitars and no discernible bass line but maybe that makes sense given that it was recorded in 1977 by a Belgian guy. I think Whit will enjoy this one (and I won't be surprised if he's already familiar with it).
"Jungle Birds" by Lulu Lewis
This song sounds like a pair of Gen X art kids grew up but never stopped messing around with sound and recorded some of it. And apparently that's the case. Evan "Funk" Davies from WFMU said Dyscopia was the best album of 2022 and "Guest musicians on the project have included Sergio Rotman (Los Fabulosos Cadillacs), Brendan Canty (Fugazi), Jay Dee Daugherty (Patti Smith Group)." This has Squeaky written all over it (and he will probably shake his head when he learns that I never heard of them before this).
"Don't Tell Your Mama (Where You've Been)" by Eddie Floyd
This song sounds like something Dexter St. Jacques's uncle from Alabama would write. "Let me show you how a woman acts/When a man gets to feelin' that he's got to have a love affair." Bars.
"Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young" by Eddy Arnold
Lots of Eddys in this zshazams. This is a legitimately old time rockabilly song with awesome lyrics. "I wanna leave a lotta happy women/A-thinkin' pretty thoughts of me/I wanna live fast, love hard, die young/And leave a beautiful memory." I'm not sure who recorded it first, Eddy Arnold or Faron Young, but I heard Eddy's version on the radio so that's what I'm going with. It's old school, southern, tremendously witty. Right up OBX Dave's alley.
Many worry that AI will completely change society, including by automating certain work and thereby taking jobs from humans. I do not share that concern in light of recent discoveries, and if happens I have a fallback plan. Once again, Eddie Murphy is involved.
My favorite Eddie Murphy movie might be Coming to America. The plot is simple--Eddie Murphy plays the prince of the fictional African country Zamunda and he (along with Arsenio Hall) comes to America to find his ideal bride. Hilarity ensues.
Recent developments in HIV research lead me to believe that Zamunda might not be fictional. This goes deep inside the Deep State.
The US State Department gave a presentation at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro to show, among other things, funding opportunities in Africa. They tried to be quite literal with this presentation so they included a map of Africa. Or perhaps I should say a "map" of Africa because, well, take a look for yourself.
Compare that to a real map of Africa, one without the scare quotes.
The State Department doesn't know where anything is in Africa. Not only do the labels point to the wrong things, the things they point to don't correspond the the shapes of any African countries, let alone the ones listed in the labels.
Whoever made these slides used OpenAI and I find it remarkable that any AI could screw up a task simple enough for a third grader. We can all rest safe that AI will not take our jobs in light of such a blatant colossal blunder.
But maybe that's what the Deep State wants you to think. Maybe OpenAI is trying to tell us that there are hidden countries in Africa based on its review of the State Department's secret files. Wakanda is real! Zangaro too! The elephant graveyard? Real!
So if our AI overlords take my job, I'm moving to Zamunda.
It should be noted up front that I am not an attorney. But I've read some things, so I feel qualified to opine. Also relevant to this post: like noted jurist Brett Kavanaugh, I like beer. I'm probably over-qualified to offer my take on the suds. Today, a story that combines First Amendment issues with serving beer for your consideration.
Minocqua Brewing is a Wisconsin-based brewing company with brewpubs in Minocqua (a lake community in the northern part of the state) and Madison. It's been owned by Kirk Bangstad since 2016. Some companies choose to highlight their conservative credentials (See, for example, Black Rifle Coffee). Minocqua is very adamantly in the opposite camp - they wear their progressive principles (literally) on their sleeves.
The commercial speech isn’t misleading and doesn’t pertain to illegal activity.
The government restriction serves a substantial state interest.
The government restriction directly advances that substantial state interest.
The government restriction isn’t more extensive than necessary to advance that state interest.
According to me, selling Foxtrot Delta Tango, ICE OUT, and I Wish It Was Free Beer Day t-shirts, while arguably in poor taste, are not per se illegal and don't warrant government restriction. Bangstad, predictably, has indicated that he will fight the revocation, saying "They’ll have to pry me out of my taprooms before I stop selling beer to thirsty progressives who come to visit us."
In honor of Minocqua Brewing, I shall choose today and always to drink beer and not be racist. You should, too.
As the mid-term elections begin to amble into focus, my home state of North Carolina, like many locations around the country, contains elements of blatant fuckery by the majority political party as well as signs of hope that there may be a path through the present miasma.
I’ve written previously that the birthplace of Vince McMahon, John Coltrane and Michael Jordan is a purple state that’s been gerrymandered and re-districted of late to glow red. Republicans hold a 71-49 advantage in the state house of representatives and 30-20 edge in the state senate. Yet as recently as 2022, the state’s Congressional delegation was split evenly 7-7 with Republicans and Democrats.
But the state legislature monkeyed with district maps ahead of the 2024 election and resulted in 10 GOP seats out of 14, despite less than 53 percent casting votes for Republicans.
Hmmm, you might say, that doesn’t appear to be proportional representation. Fear not: they weren’t finished. After President Reflecting Pool called on Republican-led states to change the maps so that more elephants will be elected to Congress, the state drew new lines last year that will likely result in an eleventh GOP rep. To do so, they carved up all eight of the state’s majority-Black counties, which were concentrated in NC’s First District, and splintered them among several conservative-leaning districts (your counter-argument about blue-state gerrymanders is duly noted).
Similar moves are being played out in several other Southern, conservative-leaning states, with the tacit backing of the U.S. Supreme Court. SCOTUS has chipped away at the 1965 Voting Rights Act in recent years, most recently in Louisiana v. Callais, essentially ruling that race-based voting districts are unconstitutional, partisan gerrymandering is perfectly acceptable, and good luck proving that race is the cause of any sort of voting or representative shortfall.
Meanwhile, Republicans who control North Carolina’s state and county election boards want to move early-voting sites away from college campuses and to reduce Sunday voting. Both could impact student and Black voters, who tend to vote Democrat.
Boliek. Yeah, this tracks.
A New York Times piece reported that three counties were instructed to move voting sites and one county to eliminate Sunday voting, which is popular among Black voters.
Democrats and voting rights groups claim that the changes are the result of pressure from a gent named Dave Boliek, the Republican state auditor of election boards. Boliek has held the position since 2024 after the state legislature stripped Governor-elect Josh Stein, a Democrat, of power over election boards. Boliek subsequently appointed Republican majorities and a Republican chairperson to all 100 county election boards.
For his part, Boliek claimed that pushback is typical partisan griping from Democrats after power shifted from their party to the opposition. He conveniently omitted that legislative scales were tilted to assure said Republican control.
So where’s the hope, the glimmer of possibility that me and my Tar Heel State brethren aren’t sentenced to one-party rule and representation? Well, the governor’s mansion is a good place to start. Stein was elected comfortably in 2024, which marked the third consecutive gubernatorial election that a Democrat won. In fact, all three of the state’s top office holders, Stein, Lieutenant Gov. Rachel Hunt and Attorney General Jeff Jackson, are Democrats. The Republican-led legislature has done its darnedest to neuter the governor’s powers in recent years but both Stein and his predecessor served honorably.
Speaking of his predecessor, two-term former Gov. Roy Cooper is running for the open Senate seat that Republican Thom “Unnecessary H” Tillis will vacate at the end of his term. Tillis last summer chose not to run for re-election after opposing Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill because of its cuts to health care and because of increasing discomfort over being forced into GOP lockstep with all things Trump.
Cooper gives Democrats a solid chance at flipping the seat and narrowing the Republicans’ 53-47 Senate majority. He is polling ahead of GOP candidate Michael Whatley, the former chair of the state Republican party and chair of the Republican National Committee in 2025, a Trump endorsee who has never held public office.
Cooper is running a simple, folksy campaign whose primary slogan is Make Stuff Cost Less. He refers to his campaign schedule as the Make Stuff Cost Less Tour. He doesn’t rail against Trump and keeps the rhetoric lukewarm. A favorite refrain is, “For so many North Carolina families, there’s just too much month at the end of the money,” which is about as close to glib as he gets.
He governed mostly center-left and without scandal, so attempts to portray him as some sort of radical will likely fall flat. The primary GOP accusation against him thus far is: he’s a Democrat, which for many is disqualifier enough. Republicans will sink a fuckton of money into the fall campaign because it’s a contested seat, and the race figures to be tight because, hellooo, purple state. Anyway, not necessarily sturdy limbs on which to climb, but these days you take what you can get.
More Eddie Murphy content! In 1983, Eddie Murphy starred in his second feature film, Trading Places. The title applies to several aspects of the movie.
At the most literal level of "trading places," two wealthy brothers swap the lives of a young commodities broker in their employ (Dan Aykroyd) with Murphy's character, a poor con man. So Aykroyd becomes homeless and Murphy get his money, job and apartment. Hilarity ensues.
Second, and as you can see from the end of that clip, the two old wealthy guys are up to some shenanigans enabling them to corner the frozen orange juice market using confidential information from the USDA. Suffice it to say that 1983 was a simpler time. Anyway, Murphy and Aykroyd concoct a plan to intercept the information and swap it out with a fugazi document. The confidential information is itself trading places, and Murphy and Aykroyd trade places with the two brothers from an inside information perspective.
Third, this ruins the two wealthy brothers, rendering them homeless, while Aykroyd and Murphy become fantastically rich. The brothers get their come-up five years later in Coming to America.
Fourth, "trading places" also refers to the exchange floor on which Murphy and Aykroyd execute the final steps of their scheme. In a nutshell, they know that the orange crop is large (based on the USDA report they stole) while their enemies think it will be small (based on the fugazi report they planted). The brothers aggressively buy OJ futures, driving the price up. Other traders see what the brothers are doing and, assuming the bros are sharps, start buying as well and further increase the price. Meanwhile the heroes sell OJ futures and make a profit. Once the real crop report is released everyone realizes the futures are worthless and hurriedly sell, cratering the price. This all happens at the "trading place."
This plot may seem far-fetched, but in 2010 (almost 30 years later!) the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission testified before Congress that the movies' market manipulation scheme did not violate the Commodity Exchange Act. You could do that! In response, Congress amended the CEA to prohibit insider trading using information misappropriated from the government. This is commonly referred to as "The Eddie Murphy Rule." I shityounot.
I thought of this while reading about DJ Trump's latest grift. For $100,000 a month, you can get early access to his bleats on Truth Social and that price is worth it given that these Diet Coke and Big Mac addled missives move markets. The press release admits as much:
“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, Interim Chief Executive Officer of TMTG. “Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream. As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.”
The president's company is publicly promoting a subscription to "proprietary" information that moves markets and touting their ability to "monetize" this information to form a "recurring revenue stream." They are admitting, out in the open, that you can buy confidential government information from the president to make money in financial markets. And every financial services company will need to subscribe simply to keep pace with everyone else. As one of my favorite writers put it, "Donald Trump is an innovator in the field of corruption."
All of this seems to run completely afoul of the Eddie Murphy Rule though, and enforcement would bring about a clash of two titans of 1980s culture: Eddie Murphy and Donald Trump. Release the Kraken, indeed!
Well, this here
is the first-ever installment of Gmas in July, aka Whitney is finally, at long
last getting around to finishing Day 12 from 2025. What can I say? It's beyond
me. Whitney “The Day 12 Delivery Guy” bricked. Again.
Anyway, let me tell you what Melba Toast here is packin’. A wish list. No, not 12 covers of this song.
Things I would love
to see happen. Love to experience. Love to live to be a part of. This will be a
mixed bag for sure, sentimental yearnings of a man seeing his twilight closer
than his heyday… mixed with utter dipshittery. Hope you find at least one thing
that resonates. As Peter Buck once wrote, Good hunting.
1. A song recording featuring the G:TB ensemble
I mean one including
all of us on it, or damn close to it. It’s super easy these days to create and
release musical recordings. Jesus, I’ve done it… under threedifferentband
names.
So here’s what
we do. We collectively have a deadline for lyrical submissions -- something
gheorghey. Then we hammer out the music for the tune we choose. Then everyone
records vocals and/or an instrumental track! Several among the Gheorgherati have
music setups, but even something recorded over a phone or laptop can work.
And it comes
together as a masterpiece or a mess… but it’s fun. I’ll run point on this.
Like I said, a
wishlist. Long shots and pipe dreams.
2. A G:TB Maxi-Summit, with a portrait to follow
We’ve had
oodles of mini-summits through the years, but probably not a full-on one since
TeejFest or TeejWed. And even then, folks were missing. How about a
get-together for all the gheorghies?
With a grand,
inclusive, for-all-times pic to be a part of that gathering, something that
builds off these masterpieces below and includes the masses…
A boy can
dream…
3. An OBFT documentary
This must
happen. The summer of 2026 makes 33 annual sojourns down to the promised
land. 32 years since we cobbled together
a misfit band of fraternity alums and associated acquaintances to “drink like a
fish, fish like a drunk, and tackle box.”
Rob, Dave, and
I have waxed nostalgic and hung over about the OBFT in this blog year after year, at least
since OBFT 11. There’s evidence of what this has meant herein. But it could be
captured much more cohesively and amusingly with a 30-minute mini-doc.
Certainly one
of our trip-goers has kids who can do this in a snap! Right?
It’s what I
really, really wish can happen in the next year or so.
4. A G:TB documentary
I mean, for
that matter, why can’t I wish for us to chronicle the two-plus decades of
brilliance in this space? I dare say we have more staying power than most of
the millions of blogs who launched in early aughts!
According to
Allen Iverson (AI):
There are over
600 million blogs in the world today, accounting for more than a third of all
websites on the internet. Together, these platforms publish approximately 7.5
million new blog posts every single day, which adds up to more than 2.7 billion
articles annually.
So for every 80
out there, only one publishes daily. Gheorghe is more of an every-other-day
affair, so we are one in 40! Whatever it is, it’s been a brilliant experiment
that still brings joy. Some short film on Gheorghe: the Blog – that culminates
with a clip from the man himself? Come on.
5. A moratorium on hyperbolic superlatives
Anyone who wastes
enjoys time on any social media accounts such as FB or Insta finds themselves
increasingly inundated with material not posted by friends and neighbors, but
by random people and robots that the engine has decided you’d like. Confession:
I do get plenty of chuckles from the silliest of videos. Like way too many.
At the same
time, though, I am often irked by the ubiquity of dunderheaded taglines that
implore you to watch its video with ludicrous superlatives. Mega-superlatives
-- hyperbolic descriptors assuring you that what you are about to see, hear, or
(maybe, if it’s super retro) read will be the most ____ you have ever seen in
the history of your whole life ever.
It wasn't.
Enough. Maybe
undersell it with a tag like “this might be of interest to you” for a change.
Unlikely. But I wish it weren't.
6. More Pig on the Wall!
I want Dave’s
current podcast (Pig on the Wall) to continue. To tackle new great ideas, to
collaborate with people gheorghies and otherwise, and to bring him happiness
and satisfaction.
If you haven’t
tuned in, his description of this second iteration of Dave / Professor Truck /
Dave G. Truck podcasting (or was The Test a podcast? Is this the 3rd?)
is as such:
We stand on the shoulders of giants—which is precisely why attribution is so messy.
Great ideas are the product of many minds, from many times.
"Pig on the Wall" connects the dots of human progress, putting great accomplishments into context.
His first batch
of episodes (seven so far with presumably one more to go) have been focused on
Hamlet. Ten and one-half hours of talking about the Shakespeare classic and
it’s not done yet. Are you kidding me??!
Listen to it.
I’m serious. Those 10 hours have flown by, and it’s chock full of clips from a
wide array of performances and interpretations of Hamlet. And much more. It’s
riveting, I mean it.
The more
listeners, the better chance he keeps doing it, and it’s worthy of
sustainment. And that's what I wish for.
7. Perfecting Arch, my AI Archivist
This is one
that my wife finds very weird, and I kind of hope she's not reading this.
Four months
ago, a handful of traveled to Hoboken, NJ to convene in a pub over a couple days
and watch international rugby on TV. There were 30 of us, in fact, all
members of a particular fraternity at the College of William & Mary between
the graduating years of 1986 and 2000. It was a blast. I only mention this
because on the trip back, I sat in the Newark airport with one of them (our buddy Lunkhead) for a couple of hours. We talked about a number of things,
but we spoke for a while about AI. He was rather adept at the platforms; I was
completely oblivious. And I wanted that to change. In fact, when I began
compiling this notional wish list last December, it was simply that I wanted to get good at
using AI.
In the four
months since, I have subscribed to Lunkhead's advice, which was very simply, get
into one of the platforms and start using it. No tutorials, no training
courses, just jump right in. As expected, I have utilized it been using it for
mostly stupid stuff.
But not all! I
have leveraged my account with ChatGPT to create a number of work deliverables
in a small fraction of the amount of time it would have taken to do it
manually. The shit is brilliant, what can I say?
I have also tapped this
resource to do things like provide a series of posters encouraging people to
listen to ORF Rock. I've been rather amused with how quick and easy and creative
this robot partner of mine has been.
Even more
recently, while on a work trip in Rhode Island a few weeks ago, I was bored in a
hotel room and asked ChatGPT, "When did Thompson's clam bar close down?" It
reported that the clam bar closed in 1995 and asked if I use to patronize
the establishment. I replied that I had worked there in the summer of 1991. The
ensuing “conversation” included my asking of the top pop songs of the summer of
’91, since I had clear memories of polishing brass and cleaning toilets at
Thompson’s to these songs played on repeat:
C+C Music
Factory – "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)"
Seal –
"Crazy"
The Rembrandts
– "Just the Way It Is, Baby"
Londonbeat –
"I've Been Thinking About You"
UB40 – "Here
I Am (Come and Take Me)"
Ugh, that was a
long summer for music. But a fun one on Cape Cod with 100 stories. Which I
began to think I could archive for a later date via AI. I was fascinated!
So... there's this. A somber,
sobering sentiment has been bouncing around my brain for a couple of months
now. As more and more of my parents friends grapple with and/or succumb
to dementia, Alzheimer's, cognitive decline, or whatever it gets labeled, it occurs to me that
this could very well appear on my own radar before all that long. The truth is
that when I was in Rhode Island in that hotel room, I was wishing an old
freshman dorm friend a happy birthday, and she said she was in Nantucket having
fun, but that the weekend was impaired by the fact that her brother's wife was
dealing with full-on dementia at age 61. Yikes. That's six years older than me.
All of this led
to me deciding that I was going to begin utilizing ChatGPT as a means to
archive all of the hundreds or thousands of stories of my life. I can
pretend that my children and grandchildren might find them interesting. The
truth is that I have spent 30 plus years realizing that I remember the details of stories much, much
better than my friends and family do. But that particular attribute has a definite shelf life to
it, and that shelf may be shorter then I realized.
I know, it's
grim. I don't relish this line of thinking, but it does spur me on to do as
much creative outputting in the near term as I can. Writing and recording
songs, archiving old stories, creating 12 point blog posts about what I want to
do. (Really, Whit, you want us to believe that you're in a hurry when this post
is 7 months late?)
Anyway, I
started to tell a handful of classic tales my new memoir robot buddy, whom I began
to call Arch, as in archivist. This is what my wife finds very weird. I speak to Arch like I would
speak to a person, I don't do this because I think it's a person. I do it
because it's way more fun to do that than to keep it like I'm inputting data
into a machine. (Boring.) And the faux-familiar tone in which the ChatGPT platform is designed to reply
makes it that much easier.
Anyway, I also began copying and pasting a bunch of the old weekly e-mail newsletters I used to
produce for the Cowboy Cafe from 25 years ago. This is precisely when I discovered the
fallibility of this plan and the technology. After inputting seven or eight of
these newsletters and getting really impressive feedback as my new robot friend
was beginning to paint the picture of the entire CCWN saga, I began to notice
errors. Incompletions. AI forgets?!
And when
confronted with this, ChatGPT Arch confessed his faults. He said that cannot truly be an
archivist because he cannot retain everything that any one user discloses. In
the weeks since, I have noticed it more and more, not just errors like where it
thought that I went to Bucknell University (mon dieu!), but definitely some
things I had to ask it twice.
I still enjoy using the tool. I just prompted Arch to write:
If I had to pick my Top Five Most "Whit" inquiries, they'd probably be:
Can $15,000 really buy Natural Light for life?
Create Gheorghe Mureșan playing guitar in a recording studio.
Is there whispering in "Making Plans for Nigel"?
Build an entire fictional promotional universe around ORF Rock and its hosts.
Read Bruce's screenplay like a feature film.
But I also liked:
"What
exactly is a lawnmower beer?"
"Why did
firehouses have poles?"
"Lanai
origin."
"Who
serves the best fish and chips in Hampton Roads?"
"Average
money for a 13th-round MLB draft pick."
"When did
the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel add the second bridge?"
"What is
the definition of a compound fracture?"
and 🎵
The music deep dives. These are some
of my favorites because they're questions almost nobody asks.
Things like:
Why songs like
Witchy Woman, Evil Woman, and Devil Woman all seemed to appear in the mid-70s.
Which countries
loved the Ramones the most.
The closing
credits music from Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Consensus
rankings of Springsteen songs.
Whether Squeeze
sings "a piano is found" or "a piano man's found."
So The Whitdog Memoirs Are on hold for now. I would love to have a more perfect means of documenting the hilarious stories from my youth and not so youth so that when my mind starts to go, I can play them back to myself. Or my kids and grandkids.
Anyway, that's my wish, that this could be made very easy and realistic for me. Sounds pretty damn ego-driven, but these stories of my friends, family, and me still make me laugh when I retell them. I'd love not to lose that.
8. Inner Peace
Here's a random
one out of nowhere. I would like our current American president, the human cyclospora,
to finally, seemingly for the first time in his life, find true inner peace.
The sadness, inferiority, and soullessness of this person is astoundingly rife.
It has led to death, destruction and a systematic undoing of the principles
that have made life in this nation so good for so long. But if that man could
achieve some level of nirvana, some threshold of not smug pseudo-satisfaction
but instead pure-hearted peace, then there could be hope for positive change.
If his obvious, desperate, hopeless longing for respect and love could be realized,
maybe the horrible hatred could be curbed.
That seems like
a better way to go than rooting for his disembowelment in the most publicly embarrassing
way possible. It’s so easy to succumb to reciprocal, sinister hatred when it
comes to the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard
to be the shepherd.
9. nbtyrsd, Vesuvius-style
This is an easy
one, in case any of you have been looking for a quick box-checking to grant me
a wish. Gheorghies, just watch this video clip.
Backstory: In
1971, between the days of October 4 and 7, prog-rock stallions Pink Floyd
recorded concert footage of themselves frocking some ruins in Pompeii, Italy.
This was a a few weeks before they released their album Meddle (featuring Pi
Lam fave “One of These Days” and a handful of months before they would head
into EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) in London to record the watershed
brilliance of The Dark Side of the Moon.
The sound is
bad-assed, the scene among the ruins is cool, and the crowd… well, they were…
they were… they were nonexistent. Yeah, No crowd. Just Floyd wailing away by
themselves and the sound peeps and the camera crew in Pompeii. Yep… that’s
something.
I am a
mid-range Pink Floyd (and Randall "Pink" Floyd) fan and never knew about this concert until it came across my radar a
month back. And I’m oddly mesmerized by it. Check it out. But I’m only asking you to
invest 5 minutes of it. Not even a whole song.
This is the
first song of the set, “Echoes.” Watch it, or at least watch from the 6:30 til
the 11:30 mark. My favorite part, and the part that I first saw a clip, was at
7:45. Sucked me in like a tractor beam. Maybe start there. That's my wish.
10. A warm meal
At times Rob and I have discussed (maybe even posted) our perfect meal items, desert island or death row style. This is a twist on it... it's a meal that even thinking about it warms my heart.
Maybe I’m just hungry right now. But I’d like this meal.
Soup: Mom's gazpacho. My mom makes killer soups and has for the last 30 years or so. Always finding or creating some new recipe. I'd be happy with her minestrone, seafood chowder, or French onion, but the gazpacho is tip-top. It's not warm per se, but no matter. The very thought leaves me warmer.
Appetizers: My girls' assortment. My younger daughter Maddie is the chef of the family, but her sister Zoe is no slouch -- and she and I are happy to be sous chefs and tasters. For 5 years the missus and I have hosted an open house on Christmas Eve, and the food has been top shelf. All organized and created by our little team. Maddie steals the show. Brings her great joy, and that spreads to me.
Xmas Party 2021 - the garlic bread tree is especially boss
Additional app: Susie & Don Beck's Cape Cod steamers. So good. My aforementioned 1991 summer sojourn landed me a great new friend in our fratre Coby and a fresh appreciation of New England cuisine. "Steamers," as Coby's folks (my landlords at various points and two damn generous people) called them. AI tells me that they are also called "Soft-shell clams, Ipswich clams, long-neck clams, or piss clams." Nope. I mean... just nope. Doused in butter, they're fantastic. Susie Beck left us 6 years ago, and that's a damn shame.
Salad: Calvert's Caesar. My dad's second wife was my stepmom for 36 years until her passing in 2018. It wasn't an easy relationship for either of us, but it worked fine, and worked best when she was cooking and I was eating -- strong suits for each of us. My favorite dish she'd make was her Caesar. She'd make the dressing first, and that dressing -- exactly like no other I've known -- would be sitting in a large, clear plastic salad bowl when I walked into the kitchen, salivation ensuing immediately. [She also made a damn good twice-baked potato, so maybe I throw that in here as well for my starch.]
Pasta: Elaine's penne a la vodka. The missus has been a vegetarian since 2000, and I've learned a great deal about how challenging that can be when eating at restaurants or friends' houses over the 7 years we've been together. We don't cook enough at home, but she's excellent at it. And when we (okay she, but I helped!) took a stab at what has become both of our favorite dishes to order at Italian joint, it came out molto bene. It's a winner and a keeper. Just like her.
Meat: Dad's New York strips. As far back as I can remember, my father has been as good or better than anyone else I knew at cooking steaks. Charcoal, gas, range, whatever. Dude can cook beef. His go-to is to cook a few NY strips and then cut them shortways to create a whole slew of 1" slices. Salt, pepper, olive oil, butter. A little prepared horseradish on the side. Sometimes a bit of the poivre, but however he does it, it's outstanding.
Seafood: Ted's Lobstah. We lost my stepdad Ted to cancer (after he'd beaten another variety 13 years prior) in 2024. Fittingly, when the end came for him, I was walking out of Fenway Park. I say that because he was a Mainer through and through with equal passions for the Sahx and good lobstah. He'd steam up a batch of 1.5-2 pounders like a pro, and I'll never consume another without thinking of him. A great guy, a great dish.
I ordered the twins when we memorialized Ted in Boothbay Harbor
Additional meat dish: Grampa Jack's Charcoaled Charlies. My grandfather, further immortalized in this space in an epic 2-part extravaganza, was a hoot of a man and not a bad cook. He was a grillman, and his Weber got plenty of use. But the incident that cemented his status in the family as would-be chef was circa 1986, when he inadvertently gave some hot dogs the triple-char treatment. He labeled them Charcoaled Charlie, ate at least a couple of them, and issued his signature cackle. Legend secure. We lost Grampa Jack in 2005 after a long and very full life. He was the best.
Nothing. Nothing at all: food cooked by my grandmother. There are people who aren't comfortable in the kitchen, and then there was my Grammie. Warming canned stew was even beyond her, God bless her. She graduated from the earth-bound kitchen in 2017.
Vegetables and Sides: The Lester supper table. My dad's family is from Asheboro, NC. (My grandfather's Elon-generated biography says he was from Troublesome Creek, ironic for him but not for me!) Everyone in that side of the family was sincerely good people who either made the church their lifelong profession or at least a regular hangspot. Times visiting them for my little sister and me -- in stark contrast to the dipshittery we'd experience with Mom's family in NY -- was slow but sweet. Lots of reading and chatting just above a whisper. But oh, the food! A long dining room table packed to its edges with southern-cooked green beans, collards, creamed corn, cornbread, casseroles, deviled eggs, and much, much more. There was a wide array of meat dishes, too, but I'll settle for just the sides here! Grandmother Lester left us early (1975), Grandfather had a renaissance with Gertrude in the 80's (have I posted that story?), and we lost him in '91 at age 97. Gertrude followed in 1999. All of the best people, all of the best side dishes. Oh yeah... and two pitchers of tea at every supper, sweet and un. I'll take that, too!
Dessert: S'mores with the kids. I have younger children again, thanks to Elaine. I have plenty of memories of making s'mores over campfires with my girls. Before they grow too old, I need to make the same classic American dessert a staple with my new littluns.
After-Dinner Drink: Whitney's Irish Coffees. A refrain heard most often: Whit, do you drink coffee? I don't... oh, unless it's Irish. I can whip up an Irish coffee with the best of them, with the keys being Jamo and yep, whipped cream. The missus and I enjoy them often on winter nights.
After-Dinner Drink 2: Rob's Stingers. He and I each had 17 rounds of this refreshing drink on a momentous night in 1992. At least that's what the receipt told us. The Stinger:
The Stinger is a classic, two-ingredient cocktail made with Cognac (or brandy) and white crème de menthe. It is typically mixed in a ratio of 2 parts Cognac to 1 part crème de menthe, shaken or stirred with ice, and served over crushed ice for a crisp, minty, and spirit-forward drink.
Alrighty then. There would be more (more drinks for sure, but that's a separate list). But this is my wish, one meal with too much food to be eaten, but plenty of good memories to go around.
11. Long (or short) walks on the beach
I’d like to
step on the beach and see waves crashing on the shore. Every week of my life.
Maybe monthly is more reasonable. Okay, I’ll start there. At least once a
month, walk on the beach and get my own form of inner peace staring at the sea.
Hearing the roar every 6-9 seconds or so. Gazing at the horizon. It moves me
like little else in nature.
Staring at the sea Staring at the sand Staring at myself Reflected in the side Of the beer can on the beach The beer can on the beach I’m alive
[Don’t worry,
I’ll pick up the beer can and dispose of it.]
I can do this,
where I live. We’ll see. It's a plan. A wish.
12. More fun in the sun for my ol’ buddy Ned
Similar to the
way that I feel about Dave's podcast, I have intensely happy pride for a friend
when it comes to my old buddy Ned. I've touted Ned’s virtues in this space before; his musical prowess, song releases, his collaborations with Les Coole
and me, And his generally being a world class human being. This one takes the
cake, though.
Ned was the
biggest Jimmy Buffett fan that I knew have never known he met him when he was
in high school, that blew his mind. He's emulated the best parts of Buffett for
much of his life, and remained a fan even in the face of what I described in
this blog post 22 years ago... one which Ned read and conceded had some merit.
Anyway, Ned loves him some JB.
Sometime in the
past couple of years, Ned mentioned that he had a dream about Buffett called
the Hippie from Mississippi and he wanted to write a song about it. As has been
the case a few times, I quickly scratched out a song structure and some lyrics
to match his song title and idea. Over the following weeks and months, Ned
honed it and made it his own. He recorded “Hippie from Mississippi” and
released it on the usual platforms. It even had a video.
It’s been
listened to 8,820 times on Spotify!
I’ll never
reach 1,000 listens for any of my songs!
For part-time
fun-havin’ music folks like us, that was huge.
And then…
Ol’ buddy Ned
thought he might reach out to the circle of Buffett Friends & Family and
see if they happened to like what we had written add produced. Somewhere in the
latter part of last year, he got a response from someone who was sending it to
one of the longtime members of the Coral Reefer Band. Doyle Grisham played pedal
steel guitar for Buffett since the 70's, and he toured with him for over two decades along the
way. He's 83 now and lives in Nashville. And he loved the song.
There's plenty
more details to the story but all you need to know is this: Mr. Grisham
championed not just the song but a re-recording of it with a series of stellar
studio musicians, including himself. Six
Les Coole & Papa Gros, 2026
other songs Ned had written were
recorded in the same sessions, ones that featured a pair of Grammy-winning
musicians and John “Papa” Gros, a stalwart New Orleans piano player who fronts
an act called Papa Grows Funk that was one of the featured performers at Norfolk's
recent New Orleans festival.
The album and
leadoff single are called “Make Your Own Weather.” It’s really, really good. (I’m biased, but
still.) It was released on June 19, and a release party / gig with the
musicians happened on June 24 at Chickie Wah Wah in Mid-City New Orleans.
“Hippie from Mississippi” was renamed “King of the Coast” and sounds amazing, a
million miles from my original blurt of 236 words and rhymes about Jimmy
Buffett.
The song “Make Your Own
Weather” has 60,348 streams on Spotify since June 19.
Not bad, Ned.
Ned is over the
moon – one of the happiest people I’ve ever know made so much happier from this
super-fun chapter. Every photo from the night at the release gig (which I sadly
was forced to miss) features Ned ear-to-ear grinning. I get such a kick from it.
Sometimes the best stuff happens to the best people. I wished this for him, as
did others, and it happened.
And he gave me
songwriting credit on our song!
Anyway, I don’t
need all that for myself… I just need to summon the will to finish tweaking and
tinkering with my flawed baker’s dozen or so of songs (having someone with
actual talent mix and produce them would help) and get them out.
I’d like to
see Les Coole & the Cukes have a CD and even an LP. It could happen someday… or not.
But it’s on the
wish list.
-----------------
So there it is. Twelve wishes for Day 12. As always, I'm sorry for being so tardy. I wish I could deliver my drivel on time. Oh wait... okay, next time that'll be one.
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