Category Archives: fascism

System of a Down

 

 

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.

If you need further evidence of Coach Third Choice’s (©) delusions about his own competence, look no further than his allotment of playing time: of the seven players this year averaging more than 20 minutes per game – so much for 10-deep 40 minutes of hell – only Greg Williams – arguably the team’s best player – was recruited by someone other other than Himself. Anyone reading this raise your hand if you think that Avery Patterson II aka Vince Cole and Dylan Wusu should be averaging 10 minutes more a game than Marcellus Earlington or that John McGriff should be playing the same number of minutes as Josh Roberts. It’s almost as if Iron Mike would rather lose with his own players than win with someone else’s. Which this year is almost the only thing he’s doing an adequate job of. Unless he’s already coaching for 2022, in which case make sure you renew your season tickets early, because wait until next year bums.

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:

Niagara Falls

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To no one’s surprise Saint John’s beat Niagara at Alumni Hall Tuesday night 70-57. Unless Norm Roberts is coaching – or Louie – that’s what usually happens: SJU has beaten NU 71 out of 99 times going back to the Woodrow Wilson administration. Coming off a close loss to a highly ranked opponent and with a showdown with an instate rival looming a different coach might have used the in-between cupcake game to work out some wrinkles in the zone offense or full court press. Not Steve Lavin though: he’s too smrat ® for that. What Steve Lavin did instead was break out a new rotation, benching his most talented player and starting a walk-on. Except as a reminder of what a numbskull Lavin is it didn’t matter much – Niagara is small and young and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn in the first half, during which SJ built a 10 point lead. As is their wont SJ then coasted on defense and chucked up a bunch of threes on offense and let Niagara back in it, to the extent that they pulled within one halfway through the second. Of course the outcome was never in doubt and when Lavin put his starters back in – well, not his starters, but his best 5 players – they put Niagara away, although not by enough to reward the suckers who laid 19. (Meanwhile out on the west coast Seton Hall’s freshmen were putting a 30 point beat down on Mount Saint Mary, much as their hungry coach Kevin Willard has put a beat down on Lavin on the recruiting trail. Saint John’s opens the BE season versus SH at the end of the month and speaking of beatdowns I don’t see much good coming out of that) …. SJU shot 50 percent from the field and 40 percent from three, although much of the credit for that goes to newly minted starter slash walk-on Miles Stewart. They failed to outrebound Niagara – Steve Lavin says rebounds are overrated so that’s not a problem – but the reversion to 60 percent free throw percentage might be, unless Lavin determines that FT shooting is not important either, in which case never mind … Other than his incongruous rotation (obviously a big other than) Lavin didn’t do anything particularly boneheaded, but that’s probably only because he didn’t do much of anything. In fact, if he hadn’t made an ostentatious display of subbing out offense for defense up by 12 points with 2 minutes left – and no doubt the rubes were all impressed – you might not have known he was there at all. We can only hope. On the bright side, having grown tired of being relentlessly mocked for dressing in layers like an insane homeless person, Lavin wore a shirt with a collar. Credit Morty Seinfeld.

PLAYERS: Harrison scored the 1700th point of his illustrious career with three minutes left to go in the first half and finished with 16 points and 9 rebounds. He should pass the great Glen Williams on Saturday in Saint John’s loss to New York’s team … Regular readers will recall that I wondered earlier in the year what Lavin was planning to do to mess with his current bugbear Rysheed Jordan. Now we know: he’s going to bring him off the bench behind a walk-on, an event foreshadowed a game or two ago when Jordan came off the bench in the second half behind Felix Balamou. If I had an angel on my shoulder it might be whispering that this is a motivational tool designed to improve Jordan’s game and life prospects; but all I have is a devil, and he says Lavin is just messing with the kid’s head, probably for spite following their personal issues last year and possibly even to convince him to stay in school next year, when the cupboard will be bare. Lavin’s toadies will scoff, just like they did this week after Jim Boeheim made comments they claimed were designed to convince Chris McCullogh that he was not ready to play professional basketball … Jamal Branch finally got the start his fans have been clamoring for and played well enough. No one’s killed him more than me, and I’m happy to admit this morning that he demonstrated last night that he could easily be an honorable mention third team player in the MAAC if he were able to sustain last night’s level of play over a full year and refrain from throwing lob passes into the bleachers and committing fouls 75 feet from the basket as he did again last night … Pointer was the other starter to come off the bench, which is what he should have been doing for three years … Miles Stewart – who Lavin compared in pregame interviews to NBA Hall of Famer Reggie Theus – played creditably enough, hitting half his threes, but brought little to the table other than that. When not babbling about Jordan the devil suggested that Lavin is lavishing attention on Stewart because Stewart constitutes the fruits of entire wasted recruiting year and Lavin wants everyone to think he recruited like that on purpose… Chris Obekpa seems to have lost a bit of the fire he showed when pushing around Division 2 teams earlier in the season. Seven points, 5 rebound and three blocks isn’t going to get him into the NBA, although between his hairdo and his shorts – astute viewers will have noted that the pair he wore yesterday were hemmed rather than rolled up – maybe he has his sights set on the WNBA. When he wasn’t grinning inappropriately he elbowed one guy in the face, punched another guy in the groin, and missed a dunk …. Coming off the best game of his career Phil Greene was suddenly replaced in Lavin’s affection by a walk on. I felt sorry for him until late in the second half when he attempted to take his man off the dribble by doing a spin move in the lane and fell over when his legs got tangled up, then I just started laughing … Jessica Albagovic got the biggest cheer of the night when he hit his first three of the year. He is on SJ fan boards this morning drawing comparisons to our last great shooters, Sergio Lyuk, Fred Lyson, and Heath Orvis … Speaking of knowledgeable fans, Christian Jones provided a welcome replacement for selfish cancer Jakarr Sampson for 3 minutes and the rest of the time sat on the bench.

NOTES: I haven’t checked Fox Sports One this morning: has Tarik Turner shut up yet? … Old time fans will recall that in 84-85 final four season Niagara was the only team that SJU lost to other than Georgetown. That game did not really count though as starting point guard Mike Moses did not play and the then #4 then Redmen were forced to start unreliable freshman PG Mark Jackson, whose 3 TOs in the last 2 minutes sealed the loss. “You’ve got to give Niagara all the credit,” Lou Carnesecca was quoted as saying in the NY Times. “ They played a marvelous game.” …. I did a bit of googling in search of something to say about Niagara University to pad this out a bit but there’s really nothing. Other than NBA great Calvin Murphy and Joe McCarthy – not the patriotic American senator who exposed the communist infiltration of the Roosevelt administration, the other one – there doesn’t seem to be an illustrious graduate in the bunch. Niagara Falls of course looms large in the American psyche as a cultural artifact, what with people consummating their marriages there and lunatics going over the falls in barrels and who can forget Joseph Cotton strangling the shit out of Marilyn Monroe and her pink sweater in the tunnels beneath the falls in eponymous 1953 film noire. The Falls also figure prominently in a vaudeville sketch performed by inter alia Lucille Ball, Abbot and Costello, and the Three Stooges in which its invocation (Niagara Falls … slowly I turned … step by step … inch by inch) turns a storyteller into a homicidal maniac. This does not sound particularly funny in theory, but is hilarious in practice. The sketch also formed the basis of the tune Native Love, the nadir of the career of Harris Milstead, aka Divine, which was otherwise marked by illustrious triumphs like Lust in the Dust and Pink Flamingos. If Milstead had been from Buffalo that would have tied this all up nicely but he was from Baltimore.

 

The Triumph of the Will

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Saint John’s squeaked by the LIU Blackbirds Wednesday night at Carnesecca Arena 66-53. If they’d beaten them the way a good team beats their preseason opponents – DooK is averaging over 100 points per games while nearly doubling their opponents score – I wouldn’t have had to sit here for 10 minutes thinking up the worst opening line in the history of sports commentary, and that includes everything written by tortured dwarf Mike Lupica. I could have dashed off some nonsense about the 9 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie and we could have all gotten on with our days. But this is not a good basketball team. Sure there were some positives. The ball movement is encouraging, when they move the ball, which isn’t often: there are in a game fewer offensive sets with crisp passing than there are breaks where a SJ guard takes the ball to the hoop one on four. But it’s there all the same, sometimes. Also encouraging is the free throw shooting, which was once again exemplary. And at times the defense can be stifling, but I’m going to wait until Dom Pointer blocks seven shots by Rakim Christmas before I get too excited, rather than shutting down Sven Gunderson of the Reykjavik High School Lutefisk, Iceland’s player of the year. The bad news is that when the defense is not stifling – which it’s not when Obekpa’s not in the game – it’s pretty atrocious, a fact the Lavin press is designed to obscure. Ask yourself: how much of Chris Obekpa’s considerable defensive prowess is the result of the team’s poor exterior defense? If defenders weren’t continually blowing their assignments there wouldn’t be so many shots at the rim for Obekpa to block, would there. Pointer gets a pass because he lets his man go by intentionally because he wants to block the shot from behind and get on Sportscenter, but the rest of them are either gambling for steals or failing to rotate or blowing their assignments. Except Phil Greene obviously, he couldn’t guard himself …. The stat line was per usual. Saint John’s shot under 50 percent from the field, 10 percent from 3 – the second time this year when the 4-guard offense has shot under 15 percent from 3, gee, I wonder if anyone’s going to zone us – were outrebounded (46-40), and out assisted (13-7). If it were not for LIU’s poor shooting – which likely was more the result of first game jitters from nine underclassmen than any sort of shutting down by SJ’s nine upperclassmen – things might have been different. And of course SJU was once again the beneficiary of generous officiating: in all three games they’ve made 10 more FTs than their opponents and in two of those those 10 points were the margin of victory. One might wonder – if one were in the habit of calling oneself one – if that discrepancy will continue once they play real opponents. One suspects not … Something of a strange rotation by Lavin – resplendent in a Jim Rockford sportcoat over a sweatsuit top – although that’s not really news. Lavin has 4 serviceable guards, but seems intent on mixing two other guards into the rotation, at the expense of Christian Jones and Jasilionus II, both of which big men would seemingly be of value as the season progresses. It seems that Lavin, having examined his ill-constructed roster and determined that he will have no choice but to play small has decided that an even better idea would be to play smaller. The cynic in me whispers that Lavin is doing this so that the fact that he’s been reduced to fielding a team of midgets looks like a conscious decision, rather than the result of his incompetence as a recruiter and manager of personnel.

PLAYERS: Pointer had the same sort of impressive game he usually has against inferior competition, before disappearing against Division 1 teams. The next time he has a game like this against a good team will be the first time … Rysheed Jordan allegedly missed a defensive assignment on a three a couple of minutes into the game and sat for the next 10 minutes. Despite several subsequent LIU three pointers no one else sat. Then Jordan was benched to start the second half in favor of fun-fave Felix Balamou. Perhaps this was just some more there’s more important things than winning light a fire under his ass grandstanding from our resident Svengali, but the conspiracy theorist in me wonders what sort of shenanigans are up the great and powerful sleeve in regards to Lavin’s most talented player. Speaking of Jordan, he managed 15 points, 13 of those in the second half … Obekpa had 10 rebounds and 8 blocks but was 1 for 7 from the floor. (Is it my imagination or are shooters shying away from his body for fear of contacting his member, which is in danger of slipping out the bottom of his taped up shorts?) He yesterday at least reverted to the weird fall away sideways jump shot he regularly displayed last year … For anyone else 14 points and 7 rebounds sounds like a good night but it is less than half of what Harrison put up against Franklin Pierce … Phil Greene is not quite oh for November, but he’s in Avery Patterson territory. He will have to get his shooting percentage out of the teens for this team to have any chance for a successful run in the NIT … Our only true PG Jamal Branch had no assists in 25 minutes … “Good thing selfish cancer Jakarr Sampson is starting for the 76ers, that really opened up 2 minutes a game for Chris Addition By Subtraction Jones” Fun said. “Fun really nailed that analysis” Fun added … Miles Stewart scored his first collegiate bucket … Balamou looks to be shaking the rust off

NOTES: Regular readers (hi Mom!) (just kidding, she’s dead) (thank god) will notice changes to BEB. Essentially I got tired of maintaining the wonky dB to the standards expected by its host and so have taken it off line in favor of this format: it’s called a blog, which I’m led to believe is the next big thing. And which, let’s face it, makes a great deal of sense, as nobody posted here anymore and I don’t care much about the opinions of those who did anyway. The only loss is the archives, which contain a wealth of witticisms, mostly by me; I copied a lot of them off beforehand because that’s gold jerry, gold. The demise of the old BEB is a little ironic, because I had recently been considering making the entire archive publicly available – by public archive I mean the hidden forums where the moderators discussed misbehavior on the board, much of it mine. You’d not believe the caterwauling that went on. I didn’t have much use for moderators then and still don’t and if you don’t believe that 70 years ago small-minded petty clerks like Tom in Simsbury would be shoving you into cattle cars for a one way trip to Birkenau, well, you’re probably a democrat and wouldn’t recognize a fascist if the entire Wehrmacht goose-stepped up your ass to film a Leni Riefenstahl bioepic in your colon … Regular readers are also aware that I skipped the FP game and I appreciate your emails asking about the website’s well-being. I didn’t have anything of import to say about Franklin Pierce anyway, so you didn’t miss much. There was a bit of a drunken ramble about Franklin Pierce dying of cirrhosis and another paragraph about the year I spent clerking in Concord where I lived on the third floor of a haunted pink Victorian inhabited only by myself and a woman named Helen who’d just been released from 40 years confinement in a mental hospital and who had the unfortunate habit of running out into the hall late at night and banging on my door yelling “I bet he’s jerking off in there,” which was all the more confounding because usually I was. Those are down the rabbit hole but I would remiss if I did not mention that the Pierce game saw the reemergence from the primordial slime of Jim Burr, the worst referee in the history of college basketball, whose every court appearance cheapens amateur athletics … Franklin Pierce are the Ravens and LIU the blackbirds, which motif leaves me an excuse to recycle this, which I wrote many years ago as part of a misbegotten attempt to stage a musical version of the works of Edgar Allen Pork. I think you’ll agree it still hold up.

 

Once upon a midnight snacking
While I dawdled,
meat-stuffs lacking
Over a many times reheated
platter of forgotten yolks
While I buttered,
bushed from boinking
Suddenly there came an oinking
Yes, a none too gentle oinking
“Oinking,” said I, “’tis a hoax”
“‘Tis some visitor” I muttered
“Oinking — surely ’tis a hoax
People and their little jokes”

So I sat, engrossed in guessing
Till at last I made the blessing
And employed some salad dressing
Hoping to improve the yolks

Presently my soul grew stronger
Hesitating then no longer
“Sir,” I said, “or Madam truly
Truly I approve of jokes
But the truth is I was eating
And so forceful was your bleating
And I’m peace and quiet needing
Lest on my eggs I’ll surely choke”

By and by I spied the lurker
Steady now — here comes the corker
Inside stepped a stately porker
S’truth — I nearly had a stroke
Not the least obeisance made he
Not a minute stopped or stayed he
But with mien of lord or lady
Plopped down on my plate of yolks
Picture that — his porcine pooper
planted on my plate of yolks
Perched — I nearly had a stroke
Quote the Bacon, “Th-th-that’s all folks”