About a week ago I started posting on redman dot dum for the first time in 10 years and only because everyone there was talking about me and I thought they deserved a thrill. About six posts in I got a warning for inappropriate language from an exquisitely stupid moderator called Ohio Fan who’s had a hard-on for me since 2016.
What happened was that I’d posted in a thread about hack journalist Zack Braziller’s recent pandering bandwagoneering article about Anderson that
“What else was [Zack] going to do, suck Anderson’s dick? He’d have to wrestle it out of Tim Brando’s mouth first”
That’s gold Jerry, gold.
Exquisitely stupid moderator Ohio fan flagged that reference to oral sex as inappropriate shortly after he himself had posted an alleged joke that referenced oral sex in an alleged humor thread.
“What’s old and wrinkled and smells like Ginger? Fred Astaire’s face.”
See? My reference to oral sex inappropriate. Exquisitely stupid moderator Ohio fan’s reference to oral sex appropriate and need I say HILARIOUS!
Whereas to me besmirching Fred Astaire’s character by insinuating that he had ever had sex with a woman is the much more serious transgression.
I suspect that my newfound adventure at redman dot dum will be short-lived. But it’ll be worth it, because pointing out the sanctimonious hypocrisy of dimwitted blue haired biddies is always worth it. See also Matthew 7.3
I wrote recently on an obscure website after last night’s disastrous victory over DePaul that
Mike “Coach Third Choice” Anderson has saved his job. This makes me very happy, because I root for St John’s to lose every game and St John’s will struggle to achieve mediocrity for as long as he’s coach.
A fan responded:
Why is this reason for celebration? We have to now go through another shit year next year with no tangible hope to be competitive and make the tournament in the near future. The goal this season was always to get Anderson fired as he continues to hold back the program. As far as I am concerned, the season was a failure because we did not achieve that goal.
Dear fan
Your assessment of Mike Anderson’s once and future tenure at St John’s is spot on: kudos. That said, the reason that Mike Cragg’s unwarranted extension of Mike “Perpetual Seventh Place” Anderson is a reason for celebration is because I hate St John’s basketball and despise St John’s basketball fans. I was for most of my lifetime a die-hard St John’s fan and in fact had a highly successful blog that examined in minute detail the team’s fortunes. Perhaps you heard of it: it comprised the best sports writing to come out of New York City since Red Smith. Unfortunately the respect and affection I felt for the program – and for the pantheon of greats who wore a St John’s uniform of whom I doubt you’ve ever heard: George Johnson, Glen Williams, David Russell, Reggie Carter, Boo Harvey, Walter Berry, Malik Sealy, Paul Berwanger and their ilk – has been beaten out of me. Because rooting for St John’s is like betting on the Indians in a John Wayne movie: there’s no money in it.
It was very early in the Anderson years that things changed for me – and admittedly my feelings had a lot to do with the ignominious firing of the great Chris Mullin by shovel faced moron Mike Cragg and the subsequent embarrassing coaching search, where first Cragg was played for an imbecile by the lesser Hurley brother Bobby and then played for a fool by a midwestern mediocrity called Porter Moser and then played for a complete fool by alleged basketball coach Jeff Capel, who advised Cragg that washed up never-was “Iron Mike” Anderson – and what kind of moron gives himself a nickname like that – would be a “home run,” Anderson being a home run in the same way that a ground out to short is a triple. Because Mike Anderson stinks and that’s me being uncharacteristically charitable. Because Anderson is a hack and a buffoon. Coach Third Choice is currently (approximately, because I can’t be arsed to go back and update this statistic, which I looked up last week) 26–40 (.40) in the BE coaching against hacks like floor slapping dope Steve Wojowhatshisname, and Pat “Choke” Ewing and Lavall Jordan and has never made the post season. Whereas the universally reviled Norm Roberts was 32–70 (.31) in the BE coaching against Rick Pitino, and Jims Calhoun and Boeheim, and Bob “do you know who I am” Huggins; the same Norm Roberts who made two post seasons in six years and recruited the best St John’s team in recent memory. Which seems about a wash to me.
<interlude>
One of the things the desperate no-hopers at the internet cesspool formerly known as redman dot com often have recourse to when discussing Iron Mike’s evident to everyone but his ball-washers flaws is his character: he is, they say, “classy.” Leave aside that those mutts wouldn’t recognize class if a class of classicists held a master class on The Theory of the Leisure Class in their colons. (And note that as I usually caution, if someone from RDC mentions “class” in your presence you should check to make sure you still have both your kidneys.) Pardon me, but what exactly is classy about Mike Anderson? Is it the way he blames everyone else for his failures? Is it the way he dog-houses kids and buries them on the bench? Is it his extensive collection of sweat clothes? His soul patch? I mean, I could spend pages describing Mike Anderson and the word “classy” wouldn’t occur to me. But then, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary.
</interlude>
So now I root against St John’s. My most fervent wish is that St John’s loses every game where the team flight does not crash into a mountain. And the distress of people like you – people who root for St John’s to win – makes it all the more betterer: your disappointment is to me sweet a elixir. From the whinging of paunchy geriatric one foot in the grave red and white club members riding the subway home in their stupid St John’s gear to the tears of disappointment shed by the grandchildren they have chosen to subject to decades of disappointment like those I’ve endured as a St John’s fan, all of it is to me delicious: I am drunk on your tears.
As you know, the multitude of fans that enjoyed your game recaps hope you will soon publish more editorials on BEB-The Dead Storm as yet another season spirals out of control and is ripe for your award winning humor.
Things have become so predictably boring after games that we yearn for comic relief. The leftist mob that now inhabits Redman Dot Com is much of the same old crapsters.
We know how busy you are shoveling snow in that God forsaken remote village you have chosen in the witness protection program, but please dip into your ink well and give us the insulting news we deserve for being St. John’s fans.
Your fan, Johnny Rotten
Well Johnny Rotten – if that is your real name – here’s the thing. I used to write my hilarious japes and monkeyshines about the disaster that is St John’s basketball because St John’s basketball made me miserable. It was way to let off anger, angst and frustration. Nowadays though I hope that St John’s loses every single game they play. And since they almost never win games – meaningful ones anyway – I am rarely doleful. Quite the opposite: rooting against St John’s is like rooting for Dook or the Yankees, fans of which I assume enter each season with the expectation (or at least the possibility) of a favorable outcome. Which is how I feel now that I root for the other guy: because the other guy invariably winning is now a favorable outcome. Call it foul weather fandom.
Personally I hope Anderson never gets fired, because he sucks and his stupid Fugazi system sucks and St John’s will suck for as long as he’s the coach, and St John’s sucking makes me happy. I’m mean sure, do I sometimes get the urge to pound out 2000 words rubbing the suck in the faces of smug dopes like Lawmanfan and the rest of the former seventh grade girl AAU coaches that comprise the Anderson / Cragg fan club at Redman dot dum. Of course I do. And maybe someday I will. But not today: because tomorrow’s game day, and St John’s is going to lose, and that’s going to make me happy. Relatively speaking obviously.
And so another season in the books, it being early March before Selection Sunday, on which Sunday St John’s fans will anxiously await the announcement of the NIT bracket, because another SJU season is well over. Welcome to the autopsy.
As have been most St John’s years since around 1990 this one was a failure; frustrated fans will question the absence of the word “abject” preceding failure in that sentence; and the histrionics among you will call it humiliating rather than abject. But longtime fans know that as humiliations go this one was lesser than countless others SJU has endured through the decades.
SJU entered the season on the come (wait for it), returning the presumptive BE player of the year Julian Champagnie, freshman of the year turned sophomore Posh Alexander, and reigning Coach of the Year Iron Mike Anderson. Preseason it seemed like this just might be the year that wait till next year bums came true, finally justifying the annual October delusions of the ignorant fans who inhabit the internet sewer known as redmandotcom (RDC). Instead, SJU left the season having been cummed on. (And there’s the pay-off: entered on the come, left cummed on. Your welcum.) I’d have said butkaked but besides ruining the joke that would have befuddled the geriatrics at RDC: Paultzman would change his forum avatar to some oriental whore being showered in sperm and Paul would add a Japanese banner to the site and bloviating gasbag LawManFan (LMF) would write a tight 7000 words on why Mikes Anderson and Cragg are just the right guys to lead the program through vesuvian fountains of jizm and then stupid would pile upon stupider and even stupider until the thread was locked by some drama-queen moderator for being off-topic relative to posts about the nuanced virtues of various Suffolk County fine dining restaurants that put Miracle Whip on lobster. And we wouldn’t want that.
<Interlude the first>
You have to hand it to the redmandot dumbers. They’re currently in the midst of a three-month 1700 post thread trying to determine whether Mike Anderson – 22-33 in conference, no post season appearances after three years – is “the guy.” Note to those dopes: he’s not. Here for example is the aforementioned gaseous blowhard LawManFan’s take from a couple of months ago:
I am completely satisfied that the program is in the best hands it has been in for over 20 years with A.D. Cragg and Coach Anderson… It seems to me that this staff has a clear idea of how they want to build the program and how each season fits into that plan [and] Anderson seems to have a clear vision of what sort of players he wants to add to the program, how to develop them, and what sacrifices he needs to make to [bring] in players with fewer stars next to their name and [turn] them into studs in Year 2 or 3.
Did you get that? Mike Anderson has a “clear vision” of the “sacrifices” he needs to make to “bring in players with fewer stars,” which strategy encompasses a seventh-place year three finish as an integral part of a plan carefully crafted to people St John’s with burgeoning 2-star studs who will return SJU to its rightful place in the college basketball landscape.
The stupid, it burns.
Even when slapped in the face by reality – the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist as the kids say – poor LMF still doesn’t get it. Here’s him now:
The story of the season is that the team just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… Team wound up with a whole lot of close losses because it just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… Hopefully next season will offer a more well-rounded roster that will get over the hump
TLDR: this team “just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump… just didn’t have quite enough to get over the hump.”
But why belabor this. Me, I’m gonna go get the papers, get the papers.
</interlude the first>
Speaking of Miracle Whip, this year SJU feasted on preseason cupcakes (albeit some of the gnosh comprising bitten nails), beat two teams it wasn’t expected to – Seton Hall fresh off losing its best player and a Xavier team in the midst of its usual end of season collapse – and otherwise sucked, losing several it should have won in comical fashion, including a humiliating loss to Pitt, which Pitt is the same Pitt coached by the same Jeff Capel who assured shovel-faced hack AD Mike Cragg that hiring the then recently-fired Mike Anderson was a “homerun,” the obvious question being a homerun for which, Pitt or Saint John’s. All of which culminating in a last second loss in the BE tournament to Villanova, in a game in which St John’s blew a 17-point second-half lead on their world’s most famous arena, purportedly their home court.
TLDR: this year SJU beat no one of consequence and lost to everyone of consequence.
I’d like to say that I can’t imagine the disappointment that St John’s fans feel after this season, but I can, having until recently been one. I can absolutely understand your disappointment. Which makes my delight in your suffering even more so, empathy being a whole other matter.
Instead of your fanboi distress consider my anti-fan elation: having grown finally to hate SJU I actively root for them to lose every game where the team flight hasn’t plowed into a mountain, which conflagration would leave me erect. This year SJU squeaked by various preseason patsies – scheduled to preserve Iron Mike’s sole accomplishment, his precious he’s never had a losing season streak, which shut up, nobody cares – lost to every out of conference major team it played (Kansas, Indiana and Pitt) and stunk in conference (thank god for Georgetown amirite? shout out to Butler), losing winnable games in every absurd which way imaginable. For us haters – and we are st john’s legion – this season couldn’t have been sweeter. Add to that fructuous mix Mike Schrewshrenski’s exit from Cameron over the weekend past and this might be the most enjoyable CBB season I’ve experienced since Marcus Hatten last passed a drug test. Because this year – much as I predicted – Saint John’s was an abomination, nightly ill-prepared and awful. They can’t shoot – from the floor, from the free throw line or from three – they don’t rebound, and their half-court games both defensive and offensive are laughable. And all of this landing firmly on the womanly shoulders of Mike “Home Run” Anderson, whose complete lack of strategic and situational awareness belies a peculiar misunderstanding of the rudiments of basketball, a sport he purports to coach.
TLDR: Mike Anderson stinks – he’s a hack strategist with a fugazi system designed to not get the best out of his mediocre recruits – and St John’s will stink for as long as he’s coach.
Speaking of awful recruiting, imagine you’re a coddled five-star teenage athlete with dreams of playing in the NBA and Mike Anderson and his nephew or whoever that guy who sits next to him on the bench is come to your house to try to convince you and your handlers that the road to Springfield starts with playing in a no-trick pony system that emphasizes a full-court helter-skelter defense that no one above middle-school AAU plays, which is one that doesn’t flatter your talent, or your skills, or your ambition. Look what I did for Julian Champagnie MA could say: I took him from a near-certain second round NBA pick with a guaranteed contract and coached him up into the Croatian lottery. Question: who’s going to sign up for that? Answer: Montez Mathis. Everyone else is going to Seton Hall.
Because Mike Anderson’s system isn’t designed to benefit his players, it’s designed to flatter Mike Anderson: when St John’s wins a game it’s because of Mike’s skillful implementation of 40-minutes of hell and when SJ loses it’s because his players didn’t want it enough or get after it enough and ended up leaving something out on the floor. Either that or it was the refs fault or the sun was shining in Iron Mike’s eyes. The other day he said after an eight point loss that “the free throw [was] the big difference” in a game with a six free throw differential where his players missed six free throws. I’d say you couldn’t make this guy up but it turns out you wouldn’t have to.
<interlude the second>
One of the things the no-hopers at RDC often have recourse to when discussing Iron Mike’s evident to everyone but his ball-washers flaws is his character: he is, they say, “classy.” Leave aside that those mutts wouldn’t recognize class if a class of classicists held a master class on The Theory of the Leisure Class in their colons. (And note that as I usually caution, if someone from RDC mentions “class” in your presence you should check to make sure you still have both your kidneys.) Pardon me, but what exactly is classy about Mike Anderson? Is it the way he blames everyone else for his failures? Is it the way he dog-houses kids and buries them on the bench? Is it his extensive collection of sweat clothes? I mean, I could spend pages describing Mike Anderson and the word “classy” wouldn’t occur to me. But then, I have a pretty extensive vocabulary.
</interlude the second>
I read on Twitter some fan talking about St John’s being a sleeping giant needing only Rick Pitino to awaken it, this being a sentiment often heard among delusional St John’s followers. Me, if I’m Rick Pitino – and who’s to say I’m not – the crowning achievement of my career would be telling St John’s to go fuck itself when it comes hat in hand begging me to resurrect its moribund program. I mean sure, Pitino seems like a guy who’s not adverse to sloppy seconds or even thirds, but even he must have some sort of minimal standards.) Newsflash to those dopes: St John’s is not a sleeping giant. St John’s is a fat bald old man in a red and white sweater lying in a hospital bed with a DNR tag hanging from his toe. And @MikeCraggSJU is Dr. Kevorkian.
For Cragg to fire Anderson at this point – and Anderson needs to go, his shitiosity is evident to anyone with four functioning sense of five – he’d have to admit to the sort of incompetence that renders him unfit for the first real job he’s had in his adult life. He’d have to resign in disgrace and that’s not happening: bunglers like Cragg don’t fall on their swords, if they did they’d never have gotten to where they’re at. Instead he’ll invest in diversity training and trans-inclusive initiatives and tweet about the girls fencing team and do anything else to distract from the fact that he’s failed at his only real job, which was to return to excellence to the flagship program of a failing commuter university in a crumbling suburb of dying city.
Exit question re Cragg: does anyone believe he was more disappointed by St John’s season-ending losses to Marquette and Villanova than he was by Coach K losing the final home game of his career, and to North Carolina no less. Which event do you think moved Mike Cragg more: seeing Screwskrekci weeping like a big girl’s blouse upon entering Cameron for the last time in front of an emotional crowd comprising his former players aka a herd of NBA draft busts or watching Julian Champagnie and Posh Alexander and Aaron Wheeler play their last games in St John’s uniforms. (And what stupid uniforms the new uniforms are – I don’t doubt that Cragg called Cherokee Parks for advice on the design.) Because I know which way I’m leaning. And it’s not south.
<interlude the third, comprising random LMF stories>
1. LMF once announced that he was going to be coaching a team of middle schoolers and among the five things he was going to make sure they learned was the 2-3 zone. I opined that if he was going to be teaching young people basketball – a subject about which he knows fuck-all – the first thing he should teach them was how to lose gracefully. That comment was deleted by a moderator, presumably because I was being a meanie acting without class. I suspect the moderator was LMF, but the site has about as many moderators as it has regular posters, so it’s hard to be sure. My current favorite is the guy who sits with his finger hovering over the button so he can lock the game thread just as the buzzer sounds. Because RDC is a fetid cesspool, sure, but at least it’s neat.
2. A couple of years ago during the off-season LMF created March Madness type bracket on RDC that pitted poster against poster in a contest relative to their rhetorical skills and basketball knowledge. Your humble narrator went out in the first round. (Which perhaps explains my bitterness.) Whereas LMF, being a modest sort, had himself losing a tough one in the semi-finals to the eventual champion. Poor LMF: he just couldn’t get over the hump, get over the hump.
</interlude the third, comprising random LMF stories>
Tradition dictates that at this point in the post-mortum we grade the players, but who cares, none of them were very good and I doubt that between graduation and attrition any of them will be here next year anyway. Still:
Julian Champagnie seems like a nice kid – some might say classy – but last night’s airball with the game on the line epitomizes his career. He reminds me of no one so much as Kyle Cuffe, albeit softer. He’s the poster boy for players who came back for one more year when taking the money that was on the table was a much better option. Good luck in Serbia. Soriano is softer than Champagnie. (I bet you wouldn’t say that to his face, internet tough guy. No, I wouldn’t, he’s enormous. Doesn’t make me wrong though.) I like Wusu, he’s a good kid, but he’s crazy, he’s a cowboy, he’s got too much to prove. You gotta watch out for kids like this. (Prediction: Wusu has a Dom Pointer-esque senior year.) Montez Mathis is charitably described as a liability. And other than Wheeler the bench of misfit toys is so bad that Anderson’s scared to put them in the game. Posh I love, how can you not, but he’s always hurt and he’s always going to be hurt because of his size and the way he plays. I wouldn’t be surprised if he enter the portal and you shouldn’t be either. Although maybe he comes back, maybe he likes being a 2-guard who comes off the bench, who knows.
TLDR: to the extent that St John’s has “studs” they’re leaving and next year the rebuild starts once again.
And so that’s that. Another failed basketball season and all that’s left to look forward to now is the Triple Crown, after which the great sports desert looms. As I always say at this juncture: here’s to the losers. See you in the funny papers.
I’d say after the week that was that I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a St John’s fan but I can, because I used to be one. First the team goes up to Storrs and despite Uconn’s nonchalance plays like absolute garbage, somehow claws its way back into the game, hits a miracle three for the lead with 4 seconds left, gets called for a phantom foul at the buzzer leading to a tie and then falls completely apart in overtime. What a kick in the balls. And then they play arguably their best game of the year, except it’s against worst team in the Big East Georgetown – they’re just atrocious – and besides which it’s up against the Cowboys playoff game, so to the extent that anyone watched SJ play its best game of the year, no one did. Even I was flipping back and forth. On the bright side the win has resulted in many Johnny fans crawling off the ledge, meaning their disappointment will be that much more acute when the inevitable happens and another Anderson team proves itself almost good enough but not quite.
During Sunday’s interminable display of atrocious basketball the once competent Tim Brando – who should retire, it’s over – mentioned that the highlight of Mike Anderson’s playing career was starting as point guard on Nolan Richardson’s 1981 NIT champion Tulsa Golden Hurricanes. (In another of a string of Louie’s masterful post season showings a St John’s team featuring David Russell, Wayne McKoy, Billy Goodwin and Kevin Williams was bounced from the NIT that year in the first round by Alabama, in a home game at Alumni Hall. I might even have been there.) Considering which maybe Iron Mike’s plan is to recreate his 1981 triumph by building an NIT champion right here in Queens. Because if he’s doing something other than building a middle of the bottom tier Big East team, he’s doing it wrong.
***
A read writes:
Fun
I love it when you take the piss out of the dopes at redman dot com. You should make a regular feature of it.
Your pal
Marco Baldi
Well Marco – if that is your real name, it sounds made up – believe it or not I’ve kicked around the idea of doing a weekly or so retrospective of the opinions of the worst most ignorant sports fans on the internet. I enjoy making fun of stupid people and finding creative ways to call them cunts and there’s certainly no dearth of fodder on that site. The drawback is that I’d have to read their drivel on a regular basis and think about it and then deliver 500 words on how dumb they are. Because searching for a cogent opinion compellingly expressed at redman dot com is like searching your toilet for an intact kernel after a hearty meal of corn on the cob. Even I have better things to do with my time. I’d be remiss though if I didn’t point out that delusional posters there have identified Ron Linfonte as a frequent contributor, evidently he’s spending his golden years anonymously imparting inside scoops to the 14 regular RDC posters. (Ron Linfonte – who I only went to follow on Twitter because he owns horses – has for some reason blocked. Jarvis has me blocked, I get that. Lavin too, for obvious reasons. But Ron Linfonte? What could I have done, mocked his unguents?)
***
Today is Martin Luther King Day, which strikes me as something of an odd holiday. Not because I’m a right wing troglodyte – although I am – and not because I think civil rights and MLK’s contribution to their advancement unworthy of celebration.
But he’s the only individual with his own US holiday – the presidents share one, which was created as part of 1971’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act, part of an ambitious effort by to generate more three-day weekends for government workers. What MLK Day does is resign to the back of the bus the sacrifices so many others made in the cause of freedom: ten million Africans slaves; half a million woke white men who died in the civil war; and various individuals who dedicated their lives to the same cause MLK did: Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Justin Smolleee, Tawanna Brawley. Nobody asked but I’d be much happier with civil rights day that celebrates the struggle for everybody’s freedom – negroes, broads, orientals, queers, everyone – and the blessings of liberty, with which we would have been endowed by our creator if we had one, which probably we don’t.
I don’t see that celebration of our collective rights and liberties coming to pass. Today we live in an Orwellian dystopia under a rapacious government that works relentlessly to diminish freedom and personal autonomy, based upon a myopic vision of what comprises the public good, which fuck the public good even if it could be defined it, which it can’t. We’re halfway down a very slippery slope, at the bottom of which are the rice paddies that your grandchildren will be toiling in. They’re going to be slaves and to the extent that any of them realize it a great many will embrace the yoke.
***
Finally, a bit of fluff about the diaspora.
The European slave trade started more or less with Henry the Navigator in the 15th century and was run for 400 years in approximate order by the Portuguese, Spanish, Germans, Dutch and then finally the English, all under papal aegis. For hundreds of years various eurotrash sailed down the west African coast, traded trinkets and rum to African slaveholders and transported those slaves to South America to work in sugar cane fields; white indentured servants, while ubiquitous, died too quickly, not being accustomed to the heat.
Of the 10 million or so Africans transported, 7 million were delivered to Brazil and 2 million to Cuba; a scant 500,000 to the United States: most US slaves were, as civil rights activist Jimmy the Greek astutely noted, domestically bred. So to recap: the slave trade comprised mainly Hispanics purchasing blacks from blacks and selling them to Latino landowners who worked them to death. Which means that when the US gets around to finally paying reparations Gisele Bündchen is going to owe Pele a lot of Tom Brady’s money. Happy civil rights day.
I watched yesterday for the first time in a long time nearly a whole St. John’s game, which, predictably, St. John’s lost. (I say predictably because they stink.) In the old days I’d have probably been disappointed in the result and to alleviate my funk written a bit of a gambol about the free throw discrepancy and then spent an enjoyable 20 minutes looking for just the right bit of cheesecake with which to festoon it. These days though I actively root for St. John’s to lose and so was delighted, both in the outcome and also in the fan base’s reaction to it, because the tears of St. John’s fans are to me Veuve Clicquot.
I don’t have much to say about the game itself: Anderson is a lackadaisical recruiter with a one trick pony fugazi system designed to not bring out the best in his better players and St. John’s will flirt with mediocrity until he’s ridden out of town on a rail. As such, the details of it don’t matter much at all, except to the purists among you. And anyway I’m only writing this to get the the important stuff at the end. Feel free to skip ahead. But first a couple of observations.
* Does Coach Third Choice ever take the blame for anything? When he’s wins it’s a credit to his system and when he loses it’s always someone else’s fault. Yesterday someone else was once again the referees: “The thing I was really disappointed in was the free-throw discrepancy, that was awful … They made 26 out of 30 free throws, we made eight out of 17. That’s a big difference in the game.” Because that’s how classy individuals like Iron Mike respond to adversity: they point the finger at someone else. Perhaps he thinks that an undisciplined team that presses full court on one end and chucks up random threes (4-22 yesterday) on the other is going to shoot a lot of FT’s? Where’s this guy think he is, dook?
* Some fans are asking what happened to Stef Smith, who many had penciled in as a third team all BE player. What happened to Smith is that after averaging 13 points a game over his career at mighty Vermont he decided to test his mettle against stronger competition in the Big East and his mettle was found wanting. Expecting Smith to average 15 ppg in the BE is like expecting a guy who hits .280 in double A ball to hit .310 in the majors. What happened to him is: he’s not that good. Unfortunately for SJU fans not that good is good enough if you have Coach Home Run’s faith in his genious system. Which let’s face it has only worked a handful of times since the Reagan administration and when it worked for Nolan Richardson his 40 minutes of hell featured Scotty Thurmond and Corliss Williamson, whereas Anderson’s version features Montez Mathis and O’Mar Stanley.
* Finally, congratulations to Ed Cooley’s diseased head on his 300th victory. Congratulations are also in order because Cooley’s no longer the most hideous coach in the Big East, that honor having devolved to Tony Stubblefield. Jesus I saw that guy for the first time the other day, he’s a fucking gargoyle.
And now the important bit.
There was a thread this week over at Redman dot com – home of the worst most ignorant basketball fans on the internet – asking about the continuing viability of another Saint John’s fan site, this one called Johnny Jungle. (Which yes, Johnny Jungle is a completely stupid name). The thread devolved as threads at RDC often do into shout-outs of increasingly desperate and obscure references. Like if there’s a thread at RDC called “SJU Top 5 Bigs” the list will start out reasonably enough with Zendon Hamilton and Bill Wennington, and then someone will say hey you left off LeRoy Ellis or George Johnson or Mel Davis or whoever, fair enough, but by the third page some dummy will drag poor Rudy Wright or Ed Searcy into it and another dope’ll chime in with don’t forget Paul Berwanger until finally some drooling geriatric mentions a random golem like Archie Oldham and the whole thread collapses under the weight of its own absurdity.
So it was with “Johnny Jungle.” After the introductory whatever-happened-to-JJ talk, the conversation turned quickly to me (a sporadic JJ poster), I being a legend still spoken of reverently at RDC despite the fact that I stopped posting there when Lavin was coach. One poster said gee I miss fun and a conga line of others chimed in
his posts were hysterical.
I miss Fun the most
One of a kind and hysterical … I wish he’d come back.
He’s still twisted and witty.
Which this last one I don’t know how I feel about the word “witty,” it’s kind of ghey. Oscar Wilde was twisted and witty. I’m fucking hilarious.
So anyway the JJ thread devolved into whatever happened to this or that guy of ever increasing tangent until someone called Monty (not his real name) said hey does anyone remember a person screen-named CRGreen. Now, CRGreen was a UCLA alumni who migrated to the #SJUBB boards in the early teens after Lavin got hired: he was a deluxe fanboi. I didn’t put much credence in CRGreen’s opinion and we clashed often – despite all available evidence he maintained that Steve Lavin was a competent basketball coach, of which opinion I was forced to repeatedly disabuse him – but the thing about CRGreen was that he was a walking CBB encyclopedia. He knew knew more about CBB than me, and I know more about CBB than any 10 of you combined. But this guy, he knew everything.
In 2013 it came to light that CRGreen was facing various health challenges: esophageal cancer — which is essentially a death sentence — and because he was a fat bastard tipping the scales at near 400 pounds, heart failure and diabetes. (Note to any fatsos reading: put the donuts down, you’re killing yourself.) Eventually CRGreen passed and was mourned.
And like Marlowe he’s been dead lo these many seven years.
All of which to get here:
In the JJ thread, what this Monty guy (again, not his real name) said was:
I did think that [CRGreen] was a plant by Lavin or a family member. The timing of his illness and alleged demise was awfully coincidental. If I remember correctly, it was right around the time that Lavin was, ah, terminated, that CR Green announced that he departure was imminent. Now, I do not mean to make light of the situation … [if he] was in fact terminally ill and about to meet his demise, but the whole story just smelled fishy to me.
Yes, we wouldn’t want to make light of someone choking on their own putrescent flesh while dying a slow agonizing death from throat cancer, we here at RDC are far to classy for that. It’s just that like Lazareth, CRGreen’s corpse stinketh of fish (John 11:39). (Ed. note: if someone from RDC uses the word “classy” in your presence check to make sure you still have your wallet. And both your kidneys.)
Leave aside the to-the-best-of-my-recollection factual inaccuracies and consider the tacit premise: Steve Lavin, a recent cancer survivor suffering from an acute case of narcissistic personality disorder, in the midst of being exposed as a coaching fraud whilst simultaneously being cuckolded by his famous actress wife because his once proud Irish penis refuses to stand at attention and perform its husbandly duty, that guy’s sending spies to an obscure corner of the internet to refute the opinions of 30 or so active RDC posters, most of whom can’t read and those that can can’t figure out the forum’s quote function and all of them basketball ignoramuses nearly to a man. That seems an unlikely course of events to me. A more likely scenario is that Steve Lavin’s never heard of you and if he had wouldn’t piss on you if you were burning even if he still had control of his bladder, which seems dodgy.
And for those reasons I correct the record.
The Roanoke Times (Virginia)
December 1, 2013 Sunday
Metro Edition
Craig Green, of Blacksburg, died on August 26, 2013, from medical complications following a long period of illness and declining health. He was 59 years old. In his last years he put up a hard battle against three serious diseases: esophageal cancer, heart failure, and diabetes.
Craig was born in Glendale, Calif., and grew up in nearby West Covina, where he graduated from Edgewood High School. He studied at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif. His life’s work was in the field of computer technology. His early career in the 1970s began as an employee of Wang Laboratories followed by employment as a computer specialist in the banking industry. He formed his own computer consulting company in the early 1980s. In 1993 he founded the company VCS Computers which he moved from Indiana to Blacksburg, Va, in 1995. He was President of VCS Computers from its inception to the time of his death. VCS built, sold, maintained and serviced computers for the local community and members of many incoming classes of Virginia Tech students. He was an ardent follower of his beloved UCLA Basketball Bruins and became an enthusiastic fanof Virginia Tech sports after his move to Blacksburg. He loved to sing and had a lifelong passion for playing the guitar. Craig was a fine and decent human being who enjoyed the loyalty and admiration of his friends. He is much missed.
He is survived by his mother, Nellie Thurman of West Covina, Calif.; his brother, Glenn (wife Karen); and step-nieces and nephews.
Requiescat in pace CRGreen and condolences to his mother Nellie. It’s always sad when a parent outlives their child. Unless Lavin planted the obituary as part of a diabolical plan to outwit Monty obviously, in which case fuck her.
In the wake of St John’s humiliating defeat in the ridiculously named Empire Classic – which is as far as I can tell is the Holiday Festival with a head injury – a reader writes:
Fun:
What’s it like to be right all the time? Last year when you wrote that
Coach Homerun is plummeting downward. I’d say we’re rapidly approaching Willie Mays getting plonked on the head after circling under a fly ball in center field circa 1973 except Willie Mays was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived, whereas Mike Anderson is Jeff Capel’s idea of a good idea, and Jeff Capel is an imbecile. If only shovel-faced AD Mike Cragg had called former NBA superstars Cherokee Parks or Shavlik Randolph for advice, things might have turned out differently. Oh well.
I thought you were crazy. Whereas it turns out that you were as usual prescient.
Your biggest fan
Aubie.
Well Aubie – if that is your real name, it seems made up – being a super genius isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Consider: if someone with an IQ one standard deviation above genius goes to the grocery store and has to deal with a clerk with an above average IQ, that’s like a person with an above average IQ going to the grocery store and dealing with a clerk with an extra chromosome. It’s no wonder I drink like it’s my job. If I had a job that is.
So the answer is: being right all the the time is exhausting. It’s like that Twilight Zone episode where Jesse Cardiff (Jack Klugman) beats Fats Brown (Jonathan Winters) at billiards and ends up playing one tomato can after another in a dingy pool hall in Sandusky Ohio:
“Mr. Jesse Cardiff, who became a legend by beating one, but who has found out after his funeral that being the best of anything carries with it a special obligation to keep on proving it. Mr. Fats Brown, on the other hand, having relinquished the champion’s mantle, has gone fishing. These are the ground rules in the Twilight Zone.”
But it’s true, I am almost always right, thanks for noticing. With which comes a special obligation. Which is why I’m glad I wrote for example last year of Coach Iron Mike Anderson’s fugazi system that
If throwing a bunch of two and three star recruits onto the court to play 40 minutes of pressure defense was a winning formula (a) at least one other person would do or have done it and no one has or does and (b) it would have worked for Anderson more than twice over the course of his long career and at least once this decade. Whereas Anderson’s last real and almost only success was in 2008, when he made the Elite Eight at Missouri.
concluding that
Good players and good basketball have been inevident over the past two years and I fear will continue to be inevident for as long as Mike Anderson is coach. Because if you look at this basketball team, this much is evident: the half court offense stinks, the half court defense sucks, and the players are mediocre, and if his recruiting thus far is any indication they’re likely to remain so.
Not to mention that I was spot on about dopey Mike Cragg.
We have to thank for Coach Third Choice shovel-faced Athletic Director Mike Cragg. Or more properly Jeff Capel – a wunderkind 30 and 36 in his first two years at Pitt – who Cragg called for advice after his first two head coaching choices – former dookie Bobby Hurley and a Midwest mediocrity called Porter Moser – played him for a fool and laughed in his face, respectively. Capel allegedly told Cragg that Anderson would be a home run, although whether for Saint John’s qua Saint John’s or for Capel’s NYC recruiting prospects is anyone’s guess. Having been so advised, Cragg pounced. That that pounce saved Saint John’s from head coach James Jones is cold porridge.
Regarding whom (Cragg) I chastised his relentless ball-washers at Redmen.com, or as I like to think of it, home of the worst most ignorant basketball fans on the internet:
Cragg’s entire professional success is based upon his ability to parrot “Yes Coach Screwshrenski, of course Coach Schewshevsky, whatever you say Coach Kruszevsky.” Because having stepped into a dynasty at dewk Cragg’s signature accomplishment was not fucking it up by having anything approaching an original thought, which is why it’s fitting that his major accomplishment in his tenure at dook was overseeing the 18 million dollar construction of the Mike Ksrushevski Athletic Center, 18 million being 17 million more than Redjedef paid for the Sphinx at Giza.
I could go on, but modesty prevents me.
So to recap.
1. I was right, as usual.
2. Being right all the time is both boring and exhausting.
3. St John’s sucks and will suck for as long as Coach Third Choice is coach, which he will be for a very long time, peter-principle imbecile poster boy Cragg having rewarded his 15–22 (.405) in conference record with a five-year “extension for St. John’s turnaround” (quoting here the idiot @NYPost_Brazille) worth about 15 million dollars.
4. If you think it’s bad now, wait until next year, after Posh transfers to Nebraska.
For the love of god stupids, stop emailing me. I don’t want to be pen pals.
For the record, here’s the explanation for my absence. Several months ago I contracted the Covid 19 deadly Corona Virus and spent several weeks in the hospital on a ventilator and am just now starting to feel myself.
Hah! Just kidding. The deadly Corona Virus Covid 19 pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by globalists to destroy America’s economic and social fabric with the endgame of transferring wealth and power to the cabal of pedophiles who rule the world and forcing your uneducated socially malformed children to slog through rice fields meeting a rigorous daily quota imposed by some over educated art history major cum under-secretary of Rice Paddies in the newly formed Department of Homeland Rice Paddies. Anyone with half a brain can see that, which means that most of you should be able to figure it out.
What really happened was that when St John’s played Villanova at the beginning of February I couldn’t watch the game because my cable company doesn’t carry CBS Sports. In times past I’d have signed up for a free trial of something or other to watch it but this time I figured fuck it, why bother: they’ll probably lose and if they don’t a bunch of St John’s fans will be elated and their happiness will only serve to make me miserable, so instead I went to bed early, and by went to bed early I mean drank Belvedere from the bottle into the wee small hours of the morning.
I awoke bright and early the next day to a message in my inbox, which message had been sent at 11 PM ish the night before. It informed me of a comment on this blog, which at that point had been dormant for half a year – two posts since July – demanding that I “say something nice” about Coach Third Choice, which good luck with that, because he stinks. What struck me was that the commenter’s first thought immediately after his beloved St John’s Red Storm had defeated the third ranked team in the country wasn’t one of celebration or elation, it was of little old me. It turns out that this particular cunt used to send me private messages on various fan boards when I’d mock him (I’ll do him the courtesy of not calling him out by name) – and believe me he deserves mocking, he’s a fucking imbecile – telling me that the mean words I’d typed in an obscure corner of the internets had kept him awake all night tossing and turning with heart palpitations because I was such a brute, wah wah wah. What a little bitch, ammirite? Various other emails followed, as did I’m informed by some of my many moles and fans various responses to posts then weeks old in those very same obscure interweb corners. At least one guy went so far as to call my house, which I would have picked up if I was here because he’s a good guy, but still, people are calling my house. I got an email yesterday for fuck sake. Please stop it. I don’t want to be pen pals. In my entire adult life I’ve had two friends, one of whom’s dead and the other of whom I can’t stand. Please leave me alone. Except AH of the tribe, he can call whenever he likes.
The other thing I noticed other than that I live in a lot of people’s heads was that I didn’t give a shit one way or another whether St John’s won or lost. It occurred to me that: I just don’t care anymore. I don’t care if they win, I don’t care if they lose; I don’t care if they make the tournament; I don’t care if Lebron James has some eligibility left and he and Russell Westbrook decide to come to Queens to play for Coach Iron Mike Anderson. I just don’t care.
And so I resolved to stop. Which I did, cold turnkey. I haven’t watched a second of a St John’s game since January and I don’t miss it a whit. I have not posted on a fan forum. (I’ll cop to poking my head in a couple of them when St John’s got ignominiously bounced from the BET by Seton Hall but even the wailing and gnashing of teeth didn’t bring me pleasure.) The fact is that I don’t miss any of it, not any of it at all. I don’t even miss calling people cunts and giving them heart palpitations and sleepless night. I don’t miss any of it.
So unless things change, you’ve heard the last of me. (Danger, You Haven’t Seen The Last Of Me! No, But The First Of You Turns My Stomach!) The domain registration for this blog expires in 29 days and I’ll probably not even renew it, despite the fact that when it disappears so will the archives of the finest sports writing New York has seen since Damon Runyon puked on Red Smith. If you’re interested in owning http://www.bigeastboards.com/, hit me up. The previous owner gave it away for free and I’d be happy to pay it forward. Just don’t call me, unless you’re a member of the tribe obviously.
***
One last thing. I’ve looked at the NCAA tournament pairings and see various outcomes that would give even the most stoic St John’s fan palpitations. I append them here.
Norm Roberts wins yet another national championship
Arkansas win a national championship
Georgetown win a national championship
Connecticut win a national championship
Syracuse win a national championship
LJ Figueroa wins a national championship
Rutgers makes the Sweet 16
Iona makes the Sweet 16
Mikey Dixon makes the Sweet 16
Porter Moser (aka Coach Second Choice) makes the Sweet 16
That’s a lot of bad outcomes. I wish as many of them as are mathematically possible on all of you.
So see you in the funny papers. And speaking of hearts that can’t stand the strain, enjoy Chris Mullin’s bestie’s wife, Mrs. John McEnroe, she’s hot as fuck. Or at least she was. And still it remains, goodbye to you.
Presented without comment, Mike Anderson’s career record across time
UAB 89–41 (.685)
Miss 111–57 (.661)
Ark 169–102 (.624)
SJU 23–21 (.523)
Okay I lied, I have a comment. Coach Homerun is trending plummeting downward. I’d say we’re rapidly approaching Willie Mays getting plonked on the head after circling under a fly ball in center field circa 1973 except Willie Mays was one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived, whereas Mike Anderson is Jeff Capel’s idea of a good idea, and Jeff Capel is an imbecile. If only shovel-faced AD Mike Cragg had called former NBA superstars Cherokee Parks or Shavlik Randolph for advice, things might have turned out differently. Oh well.
I think it fair to say that as years go 2020 has been one for the dogs. It started here in the US with ridiculous impeachment theater, then careened into a hysterical reaction to a mundane virus – coof! coof! coof! – which reaction was designed to destroy this country’s economic and social fabric with the endgame of transferring enormous aggregates of wealth and power to the global elite, wandered through six months of riots that saw mostly peaceful fascists alternately burning down cities and building their own urban utopias, and ended with an election so obviously corrupt that even the people who engineered it can’t help but giggle when defending the outcome. Unless of course you’re such a rube that you believe that this guy
got 15 million more votes than Obama the light bringer, who healed the planet and slowed the rise of the oceans. In which case I don’t know what to tell you.
The endgame of this all is evident and ordained. You will wear the mask. You will live in the pod. You will take the vaccine. You will exist on line. You will not fuck. You will denounce your neighbors. You will eat the bugs. And, most importantly: you will not ask questions.
Considering which I thought: what better way to end this shittiest of years than with a few dystopian observations about the past and future of the obscurity that is Saint John’s basketball. Which past is increasingly murky and which future is, I think, none too bright either.
There’s no need to rehash in detail the conga line of shit sandwiches geriatric SJ fans such as myself have had to endure over the years: Brain Mahoney, the Jarvae, poor Norm Roberts, mentally-ill Steve Lavin; even the great Chris Mullins failed us. Neither myself nor Mrs. Fun are professional football fans – I’ve followed the Detroit Lions for 30 odd years and she’s a former Jets season ticket holder – but other than those two moribund [sic] franchises you’d be hard pressed to argue that the Saint John’s basketball program is not the most inept, bungling futile team in the history of sports, the St. Louis Browns be damned. Which brings us to our latest trainwreck in waiting, Iron Mike Anderson. About whom two things.
(1) If throwing a bunch of two and three star recruits onto the court to play 40 minutes of pressure defense was a winning formula (a) at least one other person would do or have done it and no one has or does and (b) it would have worked for Anderson more than twice over the course of his long career and at least once this decade. Whereas Anderson’s last real and almost only success was in 2008, when he made the Elite Eight at Missouri. Since then he’s not made it past the round of 32 in 12 years.
What strikes me about Anderson’s fidelity to his alleged discovery is that it suggests an extreme sense of self-regard: he seems to think that he’s figured out something about basketball that the greatest minds in the game – and obviously that’s a relative thing, as most good basketball coaches are vaguely retarded and most great ones are autistic – have to the extent that they considered it found it wanting. Other than Nolan Richardson – who coached during the administration of Bush the Elder – no one has had any sort of success with 40 minutes of hell in 40-odd years. The fact is that most coaches press only out desperation, at the end of games that are almost lost causes: Anderson though, he does it as a matter of course, which suggests that all of his games are lost causes. Despite which cavalcade of failure he does the same thing the year in and the year out – the definition of insanity – and all he has to show for it is an in-game graphic noting that like Tom Izzo and Mark Few he’s never had a losing season. Which is where the comparison between Anderson and Izzo and Few ends.
(b) All coaches have systems – which I guess should be self-evident but maybe it’s not. Dopey Steve Lavin had a system. Chris Mullin had a system. Even Norm had a system. But whatever schemes they run for the best of them – Schrewshrinski, Boehiem, Izzo, Bill Self, Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, whoever – an important part and perhaps the most important part of their systems is that they recruit the best players possible. In fact, they find getting the best players so important that they all cheat to get them and some like Wade Wilson and Sean Miller to the point of risking prison. Mike Anderson though – who hasn’t won anything at the major college level ever and whose only real accomplishment is a self-serving statistic – he thinks he can recruit vaguely competent players and beat better coaches than himself equipped with better players than he has based on a fugazi system designed to confuse morons who haven’t prepared for it adequately. The bad news for Anderson is that there’s only a few morons coaching in the Big East (see also Leitao, Dave, who despite his obvious intellectual handicaps will make an NCAA tournament before Anderson does, precisely because he recruits better than Anderson does) and we’ve seen how so far that’s worked out: SJ was five and 13 in conference last year and this year they’re dead last in the BE (or at least they were when I started writing this) and a couple three lucky bounces away from 3-7. Which carry the one is not particularly good, even if it is only year two.
Speaking of his players, for all the credit CTC is given for making them better, the evidence for that is scant. Other than Williams – who’s on the sort of normal trajectory for improvement that one would expect in a four star recruit – who’s improved? Last year Heron and Figueroa – SJ’s two best players by far during the Anderson years – got worse, and half the players Anderson brought in – Sears, Steere and Rutherford – were abject failures on a last place team. Champagnie – Kyle Cuffe with a functioning cerebral cortex – is seemingly a nice four-year player who came to school more or less fully formed. As well Posh Alexander, who although he seems like he’ll be a nice four-year player has been exposed as a freshman against more mature Division One talent. Rasheed Dunn is the same player he was last year, which is not much of one. As promising as Earlington looked last year he’s regressed, as have Caraher and Roberts to the extent that they’ve had the opportunity to demonstrate that they’re getting worse by the minute. Exit question: who’s Anderson and his crack staff developed? Exit answer: no one.
According to his mindless ball washers at redman dot com, SJ is lucky to have CTC. They explain, paraphrasing, that huzzah, SJ finally has a coach with a digestible system, which by they mean a system that morons such as themselves can understand, which paraphrase I agree with to the extent that most posters there are to a man morons. What I disagree with is: I don’t want to watch a coach’s system and especially this one. What I want to watch in the few miserable years I have left on this planet is good basketball players playing good basketball, which good players and good basketball have been inevident over the past two years and I fear will continue to be inevident for as long as Mike Anderson is coach. Because if you look at this basketball team, this much is evident: the half court offense stinks, the half court defense sucks, and the players are mediocre, and if his recruiting thus far is any indication they’re likely to remain so. And the moral is: it’s still early and it’s only going to get worse; and the prediction is: next year there will be no in-game graphics comparing Coach Iron Mike to Tom Izzo. Because under Anderson this program will continue its long swirl downward toward the MAAC.
We have to thank for Coach Third Choice shovel-faced Athletic Director Mike Cragg. Or more properly Jeff Capel – a wunderkind 30 and 36 in his first two years at Pitt – who Cragg called for advice after his first two head coaching choices – former dookie Bobby Hurley and a midwest mediocrity called Porter Moser – played him for a fool and laughed in his face, respectively. Capel allegedly told Cragg that Anderson would be a home run, although whether for Saint John’s qua Saint John’s or for Capel’s NYC recruiting prospects is anyone’s guess. Having been so advised, Cragg pounced. That that pounce saved Saint John’s from head coach James Jones is cold porridge.
Naturally the dumb as fence posters over at redman dot com are enamored of Cragg, on the grounds that by hiring him Saint John’s had finally shed the mom and pop mentality that had led it to its dire straits, nabbing a professional AD who knows what it takes to win at a big time program. Newsflash for those bozos: Cragg’s entire professional success is based upon his ability to parrot “Yes Coach Screwshrenski, of course Coach Schewshevsky, whatever you say Coach Kruszevsky.” Because having stepped into a dynasty at dewk Cragg’s signature accomplishment was not fucking it up by having anything approaching an original thought, which is why it’s fitting that his major accomplishment in his tenure at dook was overseeing the 18 million dollar construction of the Mike Ksrushevski Athletic Center, 18 million being 17 million more than Redjedef paid for the Sphinx at Giza.
So that’s that. I wish there was some good news, but there isn’t. Because for Saint John’s fans the new normal is the recent past.
So to recap:
You will wear the mask.
You will live in the pod.
You will take the vaccine.
You will not fuck.
You will denounce your neighbors.
You will eat the bugs. Oh yes, you will eat the bugs and thank you sir may I have another.
And most importantly: you will root for losers. Because the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Ho ho ho.
* * * *
Tonight is Saint Sylvester’s Day, or as you heathens call it, New Year’s Eve. (Sylvester was a 2nd century pope who converted Constantine and his mater to the true faith before achieving sainthood by miraculously saving Rome from a dragon.) On this night custom dictates that revelers gather with friends and acquaintances to carouse in an atmosphere of forced gaiety, accompanied by the mellifluous strains of Guy Lombardo, with narration by such luminaries as Cathy Griffin and Ryan Seacrest, who’s terribly butch and not at all a tortured closeted homosexual. Needless to say I’ll be fucking off to bed early, because I don’t drink with amateurs, even virtually. And this year so will you. Fuck off to bed early I mean. Because in 2020 celebration is verboten, our darkest days being ahead of us, at least according to our senile child molesting president in waiting, you know, the one who got more votes than any other candidate in the history of what used to be the republic. So this year there will be no parties, no Times Square, no wassail, no party hats and noise makers, and especially no balls dropping (except perhaps at Seacrest’s house). So happy new year and welcome to the great reset; enjoy the new normal and may god have mercy on your souls. But first, a little sugar:
The center cannot hold. And neither can the point guard.
