Because Cam asked for it: here's CeCe's new playmate, Cydney!

Cyd is pushing five months and, as you can see, she is still a fluffy puppy with a personality to match. I'd've mentioned her sooner, but I was supposed to be keeping her a secret so that Mom didn't get too mad at her sister for helping her ex-husband get another dog. Oops.

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The other day before running errands, I apparently waited a little too long after the garage door opened before putting the car in gear, causing Mom to ask, "What are you thinking?" My honest answer: "I'm trying to remember the full chorus of 'Breakout' by Swing Out Sister." Mom had no follow-up questions.

Breakout

Don't stop to ask. And now you've found a break to make at last. You've got to find a way. Say what you want to say. Breakout.

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The headline in today's The Athletic begins: "Ted Ginn, Jr, ex-NFL receiver and UFL coach...". Ted Ginn Jr? Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.

Ginn, for those of you who haven't wasted the past few decades following the rotting corpse of a once great football team called the Miami Dolphins, was the 9th overall pick in the 2007 draft. He played his college football for Ohio State, where he set a record for scoring on punt returns. I presume that's why GM Randy Mueller (who had been installed as something of a figurehead GM during Nick Saban's head coaching tenure only to find himself in over his head when Saban abruptly skipped town) drafted Ginn as high as he did. Ginn had great foot speed but hands of stone. He was an immediate bust.

I happened to be in the stands when Ginn finally scored his first NFL punt return touchdown following the Eagles' opening drive in week 11. The Dolphins were to that point winless on the season, and I had already soured on Ginn. My brother, an Eagles fan, knew it. So when Ginn scored, he immediately taunted me with "Who's your fav-rit play-er? Ted Gin Jun-ior!" He would repeat that whenever Ginn's name came up in NFL broadcasts in the following years.

Admittedly, the 2007 coach and roster Mueller assembled didn't do Ginn any favors. (Can you name any of the three quarterbacks who started for the Dolphins in 2007? There will be a quiz later.) But after just three years in Miami, he was traded to the 49ers. Thereafter, he spent equally short terms with the Panthers, Cardinals, Panthers (again), Saints, and Bears. That's actually a pretty good career by NFL standards, and he wouldn't be widely considered as a bust if he hadn't been drafted so high by a team that needed so much help.

Anyway, all that is what I think of when I read the rest of that headline: "...arrested on DWI charge in Texas." I have to say that it's nice to know that some things don't change. Nearly twenty years later, Ted Ginn, Jr. continues to disappoint.

Pop quiz, hot shot! The Miami Dolphins 2007 quarterbacks: Trent Green (5 starts), Cleo Lemon (7 starts), John Beck (4 starts). Lemon was the only QB on the roster when Ginn was drafted. Later-career Trent Green was signed in June on a one-year deal to shore up a terrible roster. John Beck was the rookie QB taken after Ginn with the 40th overall pick, after JaMarcus Russell, Brady Quinn, and Kevin Kolb. There's a reason 2007 is considered one of the all time worst QB classes.

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DAD: Do you think they'll play all Elite Eight NCAA basketball games in one day this weekend?

ME: No. They'll spread them over two days as usual.

DAD: I suppose they want us to be able to watch them all?

ME: Yes, but your viewing pleasure is a secondary concern. The NCAA is primarily interested in maximizing the broadcast window so that they can increase advertising revenue. Sports broadcasting decisions are all about the money.

DAD: You mean to tell me that if they broadcast a meteor falling to earth, the money caused that?

ME: No. That's totally different. No one is paying for meteor strikes.

DAD: So broadcasting decisions are not all about money.

ME (raising voice): No! I mean, meteors are not sports. Those are Two! Different! Subjects!

DAD: Now you're yelling. That's my fault. You don't take it well when I point out when you are wrong.

...

I don't wonder why some children abuse their parents; I wonder why more don't.

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For the last few years, we've had a Jeopardy! page-a-day calendar. This year, Mom opted for a History Channel This Day in History calendar because she got a great price on it... in February. I'm starting to think the price markdown was for more than just the expiration date.

This Day in History for March 5, 1770, was the Boston Massacre. Maybe you've heard of it? It's pretty famous. According to the calendar, British Private Hugh Montgomery "slipped and fell, discharging his musket into the taunting crowd." Though this makes it sound like an accident, eyewitness testimony at the trial indicated that Montgomery shot only after recovering his dropped rifle and regaining his feet. That, plus the fact that he more or less confessed, is surely why Montgomery was one of only two of the eight soldiers found guilty of manslaughter.¹

The calendar also explicitly states that "John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr.² defended the colonists." Both of those men would like to assure you that they defended the prosecuted soldiers. In point of fact, there were three trials related to the massacre, the first two against soldiers (Rex vs. Preston and Rex v. Wemms et al.) and the third, much lesser known, against colonists (Rex vs. Manwaring et al). There were no defense attorneys in the third trial, so the calendar is flatly wrong.

(Technically, I suppose, so long as we're being pedantic, we should say that there were four trials related to the Boston Massacre, as according to the 1771 summary of the trial published in The Trial of W. Wemms, J. Hartegan, W. McCauley, H. White, M. Killroy, W. Warren, J. Carrol, and H. Montgomery, Soldiers in His Majesty's 29th Regiment of Foot, for the Murder of C. Attucks, S. Gray, H. Maverick, J. Caldwell, and P. Carr, the sole witness for the prosecution at the third trial, Charles Bourgat, was found not credible and was later brought up on charges of perjury. I don't fault the calendar for omitting this fact. But it is a fun bit of Americana legal trivia.)

Now that I've caught This Day In History making these mistakes, I'm doubting the accuracy of everything it tells me. Sure, these may have been honest editorial grammatical errors, but in this day and age where Google's terrible search AI is giving me factually incorrect answers to everything,³ I think it's more important than ever that the people who claim to be authorities in their fields know what they're talking about. Why should I learn facts about history from people who don't know the facts of history? If you can't trust a discount page-a-day calendar, who can you trust?

¹ Montgomery's punishment was having the letter M "for murder" branded on his thumb,⁴ which is very The Scarlet Letter indeed.⁵

² These days, it seems historians usually refer to the father of 15th Harvard University President Josiah Quincy III as Josiah Quincy II. However, when the son published a posthumous biography cobbled together from father's "journals and letters" in 1825, he titled the book Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Junior, of Massachusetts Bay: 1744-1775. And who is the History Channel to argue with a former president of Harvard?

³ DO NOT READ GOOGLE AI RESULTS FOR ANYTHING. Seriously, people, I cannot tell you how unhelpful Google AI responses were in researching this topic, a famous incident in American History that has been extensively researched and documented. The responses were so astonishingly wrong, you're just as likely to get correct responses to queries if you asked the teenager at the window of your local Burger King drive-thru. Which, I suppose, does mean that in all the ways that matter, Google AI successfully passes the Turing Test.

⁴ According to Wikipedia, the "benefit of clergy" defense used to save Montgomery from the gallows was abolished in the United Kingdom 1827 and from United States federal law in 1790, though the possibility exists that it may still be recognized in some state courts. I recommend consulting a lawyer before trying it yourself.

⁵ Though it takes place in the 1640s, The Scarlet Letter was published March 16, 1850. I've already peeked ahead; March 16, the calendar tells me, marks the day in 2006 that the "First Lady of Drag Racing," Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, was inducted into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, which at least fits the National Women's History Month theme. Weirdly, despite explicitly mentioning four other Halls of Fame she belongs to, Muldowney's Wikipedia page does not mention this induction, though the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing which sponsors the IDRHoF does. Why does the calendar endorse this one in particular? I guess that's just another one of history's mysteries.

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My latest painting:

I wanted a photo of me punching that Mystery Box, and I couldn't take it myself, so I enlisted Mom's help. She has never played Super Mario Bros., and she didn't quite understand what I was after or, apparently, that you can keep pressing the shutter button on my phone to capture a whole bunch of images (because, you know, there's not actually a roll of film inside the phone). And that is how you get an expression like that on my face.

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Let's go ahead and put these three together:

6/2576. Francis (1950)
11/2581. Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
18/2588. Francis Goes to West Point (1952)

Once upon a time, one of my grandmothers expressed surprise that I'd never seen the Francis the Talking Mule movies. (Honestly, I don't remember which grandmother, and they're both long gone now so I can't ask. If I had to guess, it was probably Granny; she was a lifelong devoted fan of the "picture shows," even if she thought they got too coarse from the 1970s onward. In hindsight, I think she had a point.)

Thanks to TCM, I finally made the effort to watch the first three. (There are seven in all, but Donald O'Connor and Chill Wills are only in the first six.) I'm happy to report that these three are indeed quite enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed the talking mule providing secret assistance to the West Point football coach. The highest complement I can pay is that they make me want to read the book that inspired them.

More to come.

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Mom shares her New York Times digital subscription with me, so I assumed that was why the algorithm thought I could use an ad linking me to this:

While my appreciation for spandex is well documented, what struck me about this particular advertisement was the obvious modesty-preserving panty liner the model was using. That crotch bulge seems so familiar....

Oh, right. It's how Dan Jurgens draws male superhero crotches.

Superman #123 limited edition "Glow-in-the-Dark" variant, May 1997

Maybe that ad was targeting me after all.

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Flower

I first heard of Phair in 1993 in the Mazda Miata with Mom during the afternoon rush hour commute between Emory University and Newnan when Phair's debut Exile in Guyville album was reviewed on NPR.

Thanks to the Internet, I can tell you that day must have been Tuesday, July 20,¹ when Ken Tucker reviewed Exile in Guyville, released in June 1993, for Terry Gross's Fresh Air. That was the summer before my freshman year at Emory, so what was I doing in the car? Was I working part-time in the Pediatric Infectious Diseases office with Mom before my work-study position started in August, or was I just killing time driving the convertible around downtown Atlanta while Mom was working? Could have been either.)

The Internet also makes it possible for me to transcribe Tucker's praise for this song in particular:

There's a thin quality to Exile in Guyville. It ends up making you think that Liz Phair is something of a dabbler, that If this rock thing doesn't work out, she'll take up painting or maybe just use her trust fund to live in Paris for a while. But there's a core of about four or five songs here that are really first rate, and one in particular, called "Flower," that I can't play on the radio but which is as fine and bold a song as I've heard about sexual obsession.

Obviously, I had to have any album with that kind of recommendation. I probably bought the cassette at the Tower Records behind Lennox Mall, and I recall playing it quite a bit during the long commutes between Atlanta and Newnan. Listening to Phair always made me feel rebellious and cool, as good rock music should. "I'll take you home and make you like it," indeed.

Thanks, Internet!

¹ The Internet tells me July 20, 1993², was the same day that the press box caught on fire at Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, which 90s Atlanta Braves fans will recall as the day that Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff made his debut for the team, in his third at-bat hitting a home run to drive in Ron Gant to tie the game at 5-5 in the 6th inning. The fire didn't start until 6, so I think we found out about the fire after we got home. The fire delayed the game start until after 9; I might have watched it, but I don't have any memory of that.

² You know what else happened on July 20, 1993? Some guy named Vince Foster committed suicide. And no one ever uttered his name again.

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This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm frequently irritated by the things I say and do. A little voice inside my head judges and tells me that it was pretentious or dull or cruel or any number of other words it looked up in a thesaurus under "wrong." I've been told that I shouldn't pay too much attention to that little voice, that I should be kinder to myself, but some days it's harder than others, and right now that voice is making it very hard to post anything that doesn't make me want to slap myself.

So instead, here's a picture I took this afternoon while the poodles were playing in Dad's backyard.

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