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Handmade Tales

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Published 3/15/2026, Substack Some thoughts on AI, Harvey Pekar, and giving stuff away Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist -Pablo Picasso One of the ways I save ideas about topics to post on Substack is to create animation using AI, to capture the essence of the idea I wish to post about. They’re like sound notes on a phone; some go to trash; some become songs. Anyone reading this or who has bothered to peruse my posts will see this quite clearly. They are meant as thumbnails; to highlight the content in a way that might pique interest to read it. Nothing salacious, gimmicky, or false-in other words, I’m trying not to create the dreaded “S-word.” And this made me wonder about some work from the past-how they came to be, how they were perceived at the time, and how they now sit in the culture. One person who I’ve been thinking a lot about recently with regards to the use of AI is Harvey Pekar. Watch the film, American Splendor or any of his appearances on L...
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Does Italian Football Have An Immigration Problem?

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 Published 05/12/2026, Substack For all the reasons assigned to explain the malaise, one seems absent. I have watched every World Cup from 1978. And one of the revelatory aspects of soccer during the pre-globalization era, was the idea that when you tuned in to watch the games, you would get a flavor of each national side-many of the teams had a certain look and style of play (even if often viewed and described by pundits in a stereotypical way). This was especially true for Italy. There has always been something akin to a sporting bella figura watching an Italian national side enter the pitch for the anthem and pennant exchange by the captains. The hair, the track suits, the look. And perhaps some of the Azzuri problems may lie in the fact that in the Europe of 2026, it still looks a lot like Vittorio Pozzo’s winning side. Of all of the big traditional sides, Italy seems to be the slowest in incorporating immigrants of color into it’s national side. They have of course, had black ...
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Brass Rings & Sliding Doors

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What happens when you pick the wrong door? See Condoleezza Rice Better three hours too soon than a minute too late- William Shakespeare One can understand why strivers and high achievers might take this line from The Merry Wives of Windsor to heart. One never truly knows how long or short your life will be; if opportunity will only knock once. But one has to wonder what Condoleezza Rice would have thought about those words in the context of her life on February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. It’s hard to think of another public person so trained for this moment, and now so outside the arena. What must she be thinking now about her professional life-or more to the point, her life as an academic. That life was a life devoted to be ready and able to serve for just this moment in history.  The education section of her Wikipedia page brings the point home clearly: She obtained an M.A. degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 197...
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The Family Business

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Published 02/05/2026, Substack  And if you decide to go, don’t come back and say the reason you didn’t make it is because your are Black. You know before you leave it’s not gonna be fair. You got to be better -Former Grambling football coach Eddie Robinson. The recent firings and hirings of NFL coaches has as expected brought out the usual suspects decrying the lack of black head coaches given serious consideration or actually hired. It has become a regular part of the background noise that comes with “Black Monday,” the day the ax falls on the those coaches whose losing records have put them on the chopping block. It would be naive to think that race doesn’t play a part in the current number of black head coaches in the NFL; there is one area where I  do  think it plays a role, and I will elaborate on this in a bit. But what is so striking now and what is hurting black coaches most in my opinion is nepotism. The word carries negative weight- I get that . You want to soft...
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That 70's Show

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Published 02/10/2026, Substack One of the benefits of age is there are moments when one can pull rank. “You had to have been there,” is the mantra. It is sometimes abused in a smug condescending way; other times it is a way to acknowledge that while you may have gotten the facts right, your account might be missing a few bits of flavor and context. This was the case listening to the   It Was What It Was  episodes about the North American Soccer League. The show (hosted by Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper) is a favorite of mine. And in these episodes they do an excellent jobs recounting the ups and down of the NASL. And yes, while they do make mention of the state professional sport in the US during the 1970’s, Wilson in particular seems to view the league and its failures too tightly through the prism of an English football historian.  Shambolic . Why didn’t they build the league bottom-up, why all the gimmicks, why the bucking of Fifa with regards to the laws of the game? ...
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