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John Giorno working the lines and reels behind “Dial-A-Poem”.

Inspiration for the Calendar of Song includes the groundbreaking “Dial-A-Poem”, launched 1968 in Manhattan by John Giorno, which today features 282 recordings from 132 poets. Giorno drew inspiration from other modern art movements that reimagined visual arts into all varying forms of multimedia; he sought to accomplish the same for poetry as his contemporaries had for painting, music, and sculpture. As a juvenile, I encountered another derivative of “Dial A Poem”, They Might Be Giants’ bonhomme “Dial-A-Song”, which featured an early internet interface that factored greatly into my personal imagination of telephone internet systems to deliver dial up modem access to snippets of culture and music. (After all, you enter the Matrix via telephone, right?) The rich history of Dial-A-Song invites interested readers to peruse altmodisch answering machines and alternative weekly classified ads on the satisfyingly detailed account on TMBG’s fan wiki. A reimagined version of Dial-A-Song remains online today, although the most recent entry is from 2018. 

It was the third of June…

Sometime in June 2021 I tossed on my record player the recent gift of Music from Lil Brown. “Was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day…” The album, released the same year Giorno launched Dial-A-Poem, nods in its title to The Band’s Music from Big Pink. It would be the sole release from the band Africa and is an artifact wholly sui generis. Through unique arrangements the album provides a thrilling mixture of American cultural approaches. Six of the album’s tracks are covers, all of which are superb renditions. Africa’s cover of The Doors “Light My Fire” is ensconced in the hip hop pantheon for its inclusion as a sample on J Dilla’s Donuts.

Warner Bros sought to capitalize on the popularity of “Billie Joe” by extending the song into a full fledged film in 1976. It was a money maker, but critics widely panned the release.

At the top of Side Two, a raunchy “Louie, Louie” breaks into a stirring rendition of “Ode to Billie Joe”, a song once applauded as the most “earthy and fundamental” art piece to come out of Mississippi since Faulkner by a Miami Herald critic. Just a year prior to Music from “Lil’ Brown”, country singer Bobbie Gentry from Chickasaw County, Mississippi would have a Billboard Number 1 Hit with “Billie Joe”. (It should be noted that legends Barry White and David Axelrod had their fingerprints as A&R men on the path to this ode becoming a smash.) 

The song’s first person narrative dawdles through Southern cordialities when the daughter/narrator learns from her Papa over dinner that a boy she is connected with has committed suicide. “Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge / And now Billie Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge…” Africa’s cover of the song transported the song from white country into a Black jam, while the replacement of female vocals with a male narrator added a taboo layer of homosexual love to the narrative, especially with “Louie, Louie’s” lingering ten-note riff coursing along the song’s riverbed. 

Gatefold of Africa’s Music from “Lil Brown”, recorded in Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles.

Recognizing the tremendous cultural value of the song and its cover, on a dusty day in Los Angeles, June 2021 what struck me was the coincidence of timing—just days ago!—and the imperative of context to the song. “Ode to Billie Joe” is masterful because of the mystery it buries underneath household chores and family dinner, where no detail is spared about the acreage, black eyed peas, or date of the song. I got to wondering… how many songs contain a lyrical timestamp? The gales of November came slashing the Edmund Fitzgerald. Earth, Wind, and Fire remember every 21st day of September, surely. (As brilliantly observed Demi Adejuyigbe’s impressively orchestrated videos from 2016-2021.) Dylan married Isis on the fifth day of May. February 3rd is “The Day the Music Died”. Enola Gay dropped the bomb on August 6th. “Oh, what a night! Late December, back in ‘63. What a lady, what a night…“  

“The ship was the pride of the American side / Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin…”

It’s a Clock, not a Robot 

First conceived and started in Summer 2021, in earnest I fleshed out and compiled most entries in the Calendar of Song under a foot of December snow in Wildwood, NJ, the DooWop Capital of the World. First deployment, dawn of 2022, U2’s “New Years Day”. In its original iteration, my friend and collaborator Parker Higgins composed a bot to wake daily to check the date and data to pluck the cell’s hyperlink and post to Twitter. By October 2022 He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named purchased Twitter and swiftly stole the dancing shoes of such playful bots, putting the Calendar of Song on hiatus until restoration in webpage format. 

While the database is proprietary, the calendar and its contents are public domain and accessible. We share historical and cultural events, just as we share the melodies of popular music. The Calendar of Song herein conceived and presented is a mega blog broken into Robert Christgau length bites, with aspiringly similar acidity and omnivorous appetite. Throughout the year, every year, historical events are remembered and leaders mourned through song: the shocking sinking of the Titanic, the workplace mass murder at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the assassinations of Jesse James, Joe Hill, and MLK. Late 19th and Early 20th Century events feature prominently, indicative of folk songs carrying news along rail lines before radio ley lines took to the airwaves. The Calendar also observes the mundane, nonchalant mentions of dates, months, and days of the week, revealing a shared consciousness of late July contrasted with early February, and Manic Monday versus the Heart of Saturday Night. Thor’s Thursday and Frigga’s Friday have less songs (9) than Saturn’s Saturday (22); Janus’s January (22) spars with Mars’s March (20) in the heavyweight bought among months, while October (10), February (11), and surprisingly September (13) reside in the bottom quartile.  

I made the choice to select nearly zero Christmas songs. That there is well trodden territory. I am a longtime devotee of WXPN 88.5 in Philadelphia, where not only is The Last Waltz 3 LP broadcast every Thanksgiving, but for over 30 years DJ Robert Drake has led “The Night Before Xmas” a 24-30 hour no sleep broadcast that is truly a radio gem. The Calendar of Song directs visitors to WXPN on The Night Before. And I guess, at writing, to Tubi for The Last Waltz. 

Acknowledgement 

The Calendar of Song has been a multi-year effort on not only my part, but supported graciously and generously by my friend, artist-activist and programmer Parker Higgins. Parker and I have had our clocks synchronized since acquiring matching Casio F91-Ws in 2007, and his creative approach to developing code and deploying the Calendar of Song via Twitter bot and now via All Things Atkins dot com has been a sustaining creative force behind bringing this project to life. Parker also serves as webmaster to All Things Atkins, which, despite the straightforwardness of the website, ensures he receives regular offbeat requests which are always taken in understanding stride.

Medium: Video, sound collage

Runtime: 52 minutes

Release Date: February 26, 2025

Credits: Created by Michael Atkins Archival audio from the television and film of David Lynch 

Tracklist: 

1. “I’m Deranged” by David Bowie, Lost Highway (1997)
2. “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison, Blue Velvet (1986)
3. “Blue Velvet” performed by Isabella Rossellini (1986)
4. “Massive Quantities of Pie and a Glass of Water”, David Lynchcameo Twin Peaks
5. Angelo Badalamenti recounts composing “Laura’s Theme” with David Lynch 
6. “Twin Peaks Theme” by Angelo Badalamenti (rearranged)
7. Enter the Black Lodge, Twin Peaks (1991)
8. “Audrey’s Dance” by Angelo Badalamenti (rearranged)
9. “Falling” by Julee (rearranged)
10. “I Told Every Little Star” by Lisa Scott, Mulholland Drive (2001)
11. “This Magic Moment” performed by Lou Reed, Lost Highway (1997)
12. “Love Me” performed by Nicolas Cage (1995)
13. “Llorando”  performed by Rebekah Del Rio in Mulholland Drive (2001)
14. Finale of Blue Velvet (1986)
15. “Love Me Tender” End Credits to Wild at Heart (1995)

The sonic landscape of Perchance to Dream is composed of 15 tracks, carefully selected to mirror David Lynch’s singular approach to music in film. Lifted directly from his television and cinematic works—each a testament to his impeccable ear, his attention to sonic detail, his love for Roy Orbison and Elvis, and his significant and lengthy collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti, Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, and Isabella Rossellini.

Lynch’s use of popular music doesn’t just set a mood—he wields it like a weapon grade magnet, dragging the viewer deeper into scene and emotive surreality. His curatorial choices subvert, distort, and linger, turning “magic moments” into haunting, otherworldly experiences naming “every little star” or claiming derangement in the opening credits with a Bowie/Eno track. The music in Perchance to Dream distills the Lynchian ethos, somewhere between nostalgia and nightmare, when we can walk and talk in dreams, all of the time. 

Part of what I admire most about Lynch as an artist is the interplay between his two major modes: the birder and the dreamer. Lynch had a very tactile side – delivering meteorological reports, constructing set furniture, and demonstrating a deep knowledge and appreciation for songbirds and owls along with trees good for gazing or graining. Grounding oneself in the natural world, keeping your ear to the ground, is essential for detecting surreality; the final scene of Blue Velvet epitomizes this duality as Jeffrey and Sandy admire a robin eating a worm to his mother’s detestation. “It’s a strange world, isn’t it?” If I can dream - Wild at Heart’s Oz Elvis Cage trifecta posits the existence of transcendental love. Lynch of course also is no stranger to the dreamscape. Dreams, premonitions, and nightmares factor into all of his work, especially Twin Peaks. What delight it is to realize you’re living in a local and global communities where everyone at the coffee shop is recovering from last night’s Moon in Pisces overnight unsettling. His explorations of the psyche and subconscious are most explored through the Black Lodge and White Lodge, but also include Lost Highway’s doppelgängers and Mulholland Drive’s Club Silencio, where “everything is an illusion.” Through it all there persists a romantic heart, which hopes that “sometimes the wind blows and the mysteries of love come clear.”

The three original rearrangements were edited by embedding Agent Cooper’s cassette tape recordings into the iconic Twin Peaks soundtrack. Thematically, “Twin Peaks Theme” sets the tone with Cooper’s original observations of the idyllic town of Twin Peaks to the unseen ally accomplice (lover?), Diane. “Audrey’s Dance” slinks into the seedy side, including Cooper’s report of Audrey Horne’s amorous pursuit of the special agent, before taking us across the border to the brothel casino known as One Eyed Jacks. Of course worth noting in Atlantic City is Agent Cooper’s predilection for the vice of gambling, with his trusted 10% return. Indeed roulette is rigged, just ask Dostoyevsky. Finally, Julee’s “Falling” includes Cooper’s reflections more broadly on luck and who really killed President Kennedy. “Haley’s Comet’s come and gone.”

“Diane, 6am please add the following sound to my master tape labeled ‘Sounds.’”

The Dalliance Of The Eagles, Walt Whitman (1880)

SKIRTING the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)

Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,

The rushing amorous contact high in space together,

The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,

Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,

In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,

Till o’er the river pois’d, the twain yet one, a moment’s lull,

A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,

Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,

She hers, he his, pursuing.

Juvenile bald eagle stakes out an osprey perch at Forsythe Wildlife Refuge with Atlantic City’s skyline in the background.

The American Bald Eagle has made a heroic comeback! A flurry of feathered news lately centers on New Jersey, which just became the latest state to DELIST the Bald Eagle from the endangered species list in January 2025. Once there was only a single nesting eagle pair in all of the Garden State; now it boasts over 300. On his way out the door, former President Biden also named the eagle as our national bird, which, as appropriately observed nearly everywhere, was surprising in itself that it took until our 248th year since the Declaration of Independence to make official. (Typical of our elected leaders, I might add….) For further reading, AP: “American bald eagle is having a moment, culturally and ecologically.”

The eagle resurgence has its strong hold in South Jersey, where the raptors have ample marshland to form habitat throughout the Delaware Bay Shore and up the intracoastal waterway. Here, due to macro trends in population growth and consistency at the state level to preserve undeveloped land, abundant habitat has paired with tighter regulations to ensure the safety of the species. Following the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the department enacted with Congressional backing two key measures: the banning of DDT in 1972 and the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1974. Together these regulations ensured that fifty years later these majestic birds are safe to delist from protected species classification. The typical lifespan for a bald eagle is between 20-30 years; eagles hatching today are the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of that lone intrepid pair who refused to perish.

Peak eagle viewing season coincidentally is right now in New Jersey. Last week, a consortium of wildlife nonprofits and government partners held the Annual Eagle Festival in Mauricetown, Cumberland County. For anyone who has not explored this stretch of South Jersey, it is truly the land that time forgot. You can glimpse at the decimated oyster industry at the Bayshore Center in Bivalve, or traipse around desolate marsh at a number wildlife refuges. (It should be noted, that while the bald eagle is a charismatic megafauna, oysters, too, have enjoyed an ecological and cultural resurgence with numbers are rebounding throughout the region.) It is no wonder that birds of all feathers love this natural space in the densest state in the union.

The occasion of an Eagles Super Bowl also always brings me back to reflect on a departed mentor and inspiration, Lewis MacAdams. Lewis founded Friends of the Los Angeles River in 1987, partly out of irony and partly out of nothing to do. Early “happenings” were radical performance art; he once painted his body blue and donned a white suit to march out of the river channel and into a DTLA venue as “Riverboy”. Lewis meant a great deal to me professionally and personally. So, being a son of South Jersey, when I read the following poem, it had a feeling of fated encounter. Surely I remember this Super Bowl Sunday on February 6, 2005 - I turned 17 the next day and took my driver’s test, opening me up to the whole wide world and cosigning me to the sins of the petrochemical vice. About ten years down the road I met Lewis, where else but on the Los Angeles River.

As a poem, I also believe “The Mask” to be one of his strongest. Unlike lengthy reports from the Bolinas farm or fantasies of Marilyn Monroe and Walt Whitman in holy matrimony, it is lean. With steady hand and unflinching gaze it aims for the heart of the matter and shoots right through it. Classically, Lewis places the river and himself in the concrete world - the one where the sportsbook is clear on favorites and underdogs, a clarity not guaranteed in other affairs in life - and not a metaphorical “river of time.” He hangs a sharp left toward the wisdom acquired specifically in nature, and ties it off with a hauntingly beautiful note of tripartite negotiation between the sedge and its avian commissars; treaties that failed to anticipate the ugly humanness of our impending and all-consuming sprawl. Then, in closing, his final meditation is a wonderful distillation of his spirit; one part loser with no where to go, like all of us at some point or other, and two parts civic mystic, obsessed and crazy and spending Super Bowl Sunday meditating that his money is on the birds and not the patriotic war machine.

37 - Riverboy: “The Mask”, Lewis MacAdams (2005)

I built this river — 

not with my hands, 

but with my imagination. Now it’s 

Super Bowl Sunday, and the Eagles 

are underdogs to the Patriots; 

so practice the patience

that you learned from the sedge, 

unchanged for millenia 

because it made a deal 

with the wading birds 

to write their sacred names 

with cloud bursts on moving water. 

I built this river, not with my dreams

 but with my drama; 

though now I feel it ebbing, drying 

up and cracking like a mud man’s mask. 

I built this river with my karma, 

just so I would have a park bench to sit on 

when I had no 

other place to go.

During the peak of the pandemic, one enterprising urbanist fabricated and installed benches along the Los Angeles River out of surplus material. This remarkably popular and socially distanced example of tactical urbanism lasted all of a week before the goons in County Flood and the Army Corps had them removed. Read more at LAist.

The weekend Alex Cameron’s “Miami Memory” was released, I began a journey to the LA County Fair — an ultimately delightful evening, but to arrive I snaked through downtown congestion, wound out to suburban congestion, charged thru collision traffic, crawled from the freeway into a parking lot line, then queued to take a shuttle to a ticket line… enough time to consume the full album. While waiting anxiously in line to relieve myself at the urinal trough, I composed my initial review of MIAMI MEMORY — I love it. I will add that in addition to listening to the album start to finish, I also nibbled on Springsteen and (to a less fulfilling extent) Billy Joel tracks, both of which heavily influence Alex Cameron’s generational refresh and response to their music.

First track STEPDAD offers a saccharine chorus, with faux heroism and unreliable narration, however it reveals an important theme of the album and Cameron’s canon: if yer lookin for an anthem to the overlooked, look no further. The same can be said of FAR FROM BORN AGAIN, where “are you seeing what I’m seeing?” with appropriate saxiness (provided by creative partner slash business associate Rory Molloy) and drumming cowbell underneath radiates through the full album. For what it’s worth, “Born Again” invites the most likely sing-along chorus, and, frankly could well be a strip club anthem in the coming decade.

Such an unflinching gaze at, say, the beauty of mother of two mesmerizing her admirers from the mirrored stage also calls our attention to less savory subjects in BAD FOR THE BOYS and DIVORCE. “Bad for the Boys” is a timely retort to incel culture (did they have a torch song previously?) with jangling piano riffs and sliding blues guitar, presenting a gloss that allows for a biting critique of the social inept. Along with GASLIGHT — which features an accordion and conjures 90’s Hootie and the Blowfish vibes — these songs represent a unique peril to learning new Alex Cameron songs and a danger of singing in mixed company. At first their musical construction within the confines of pop tradition allow for the listener to anticipate chorus and melody, and coax you into singing along, before trapping you in a song about incles, gaslighting, and bitter divorce. “I got friends in Kansas City with a motherfucking futon couch, If that’s how you want to play it” is hard not to sign along with the second go-round in the song! Before long you’ll be chanting “divorce, divorce, divorce” right along with him before realizing the bleakness of your merriment.

After seeing Cameron’s touring performance in support of this album, I can only add that this lyricism and delivery are at the core of Cameron’s appeal to fans. Singing along to “divorce” with 100 fellow spectators gifts bodily affirmation. Yes, you are in on the joke. No, we don’t all feel OK. Sure, you, too can be a merry prankster.

This brings me to the masterful centerpiece of the album and title track, MIAMI MEMORY. This song has been in my rotation since its video release. I appreciate the garish drum machine announcing hollow tone to the bones upon which to hang orchestration and lyricism. To offset the drum machine, we hear a series of resonant chords and swirling synth strings before the lyrics enter: “holding your hand to make sure you’re never too far out of reach”, offering a simple and heartfelt sentiment unparalleled on the album, and exhibiting more devotion than any other Cameron “love” song. Then there’s the chorus, fronting poetic observation before introducing extended metaphor of love as a city fated for imminent flood destruction. “Eating your ass like an oyster / before you came like a tsunami” deserves commendation for its boldness and execution, and for its crafty and crass linkage between ecstasy and death. But it’s the following verse that elevates Cameron to Leonard Cohen echelon of songwriting (everybody knows that the boat is leaking, everybody knows that the captain lied…)

Knowing the world is a sinking ship

Knowing we’ve been here before

Knowing when cars fill with water

A vacuum seals the door

With the power of “knowing”, what are we to make of the wicked and wild world? Is there a wine as sweet as the one enjoyed by a benevolent scoundrel? What for the fallen saint? Do you wish to un-know? In the words of another master of persona, Samuel Clemens: “go to heaven for the climate, hell for the companionship”. Alex Cameron’s depiction of pre-apocalypse purgatory offers servings from both.

(Originally published December 12, 2019.)

Last week Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall played gracious host for the fifth consecutive year of the Mid Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) basketball championship tournament. For the uninitiated, the winner of this tournament earns an automatic bid to the “Big Dance”, the NCAA basketball tournament. Soon, interoffice bracket mavens and neophytes, fans of Men’s or Women’s basketball, and bettors looking for an edge will catch the madness. The MAAC Conference Championship is therefore a telling window into the bracket busters and undervalued underdogs. It seems nearly yearly a “mid major” conference team upsets a Final Four favorite to fit a glass slipper at the dance. This tournament is a pre-tremor for the following week. A place and moment in Atlantic City where you can get the jump.

More powerful than a dozen orchestras…

Boardwalk Hall, like many places in Atlantic City, is dripping with such history that it is hard to fathom. Following construction in 1929, Boardwalk Hall commissioned the largest pipe organ in the world, “more powerful than a dozen orchestras”, completed in 1932, which remains the largest musical instrument in the world. Tours are available to see the organ in demonstration throughout the tourism season. The Miss America Pageant, founded in 1921, crowned its annual queen here for the better part of a century. Mike Tyson battled for heavyweight titles in the hall’s ring, while the stage welcomed leading acts across generations, stretching from Judy Garland, to the Rolling Stones, to Madonna, and Beyoncé.

“When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene II

Boardwalk Hall was at the pinnacle of its prominence in 1964 when it hosted the largest Beatles show on their first American tour, and the Democratic National Convention that went “All the way with LBJ”. This set the stage for Beatlemania, a virus that eradicated DooWop, and the Great Society, the second great investment in the public in the 20th Century following the New Deal. While everything would be different in four short years, that summer night the audience erupted in a reported 22-minute standing ovation for Robert Kennedy, who eulogized his assassinated brother by quoting from Romeo and Juliet: “When he shall die, take him and cut him out into the stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Boardwalk Hall is also the setting for a truly haunting scene from Neptune, NJ’s Jack Nicholson’s 1972 classic King of Marvin Gardens, for the cinephiles. (I give it a rating of five bags of popcorn and a horse on the beach.)

Mid Major Papal States and Orders

The MAAC Conference comprises eleven teams from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and an interloper from Maryland. Of these eleven schools, eight are Catholic, three Jesuit, with plans in 2024 to add two additional Catholic schools, Merrimack and Sacred Heart. While players on these teams are unlikely to ever reach professional competition, they are, bien entendu, undoubtedly the best player in any pickup game on any court and could perhaps play in an internationally expanding sport in China or the Balkans.

A Brief History of Cinderella and Lady Tremaine

The MAAC Conference tournament was squarely installed into my purview last year, after legendary and infamous basketball coach Rick Pitino led the Iona Gaels to tournament victory. Pitino is arguably the greatest college basketball coach of his generation, and the most scandalous coach of all time. At the advent of the three-point line, Pitino was an early adopter to his teams’ advantage, pairing long-range shooting with his trademark full-court press defense. His early career as an assistant was tarnished by paying for meals, cars, and flights in Hawaii (mildly bad), before embarking on a career as head coach in both college basketball and the NBA. Pitino is the only coach to have led two schools to win the National Championship, Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013), and three separate schools to the vaunted Final Four, the aforementioned along with Providence (1987).

Pitino’s 2013 national championship with Louisville was vacated by the NCAA following the convergence of two separate scandals, a 2015 escort sex scandal followed by a larger 2017 bribery scandal. The former is salacious and venal. The latter scandal implicated eight college athletic programs with bribery and fraud charges as Adidas (and others) paid player expenses and provided gifts to assist Pitino in recruitment of high school prospects in exchange for his players representing Adidas when they turned pro. One assistant coach implicated in the investigation offered the following colorful picture of Rick “Coach-2” Pitino during deposition: “No one swings a bigger dick than Coach-2 at Company-1. . . . All [Coach-2] has to do is pick up the phone and call somebody [and say], ‘These are my guys.’ [And then] they’re taking care of us.”

These two scandals were fixed in the milieu of National Collegiate Athletic Association v Alston (2021), when the US Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that the NCAA was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act by contending their competition was purely amateur, subsequently opening the door for college athletes to receive compensation and sponsorship for usage of their “NIL” (name, image, likeness). Following the Court’s holding, the NCAA introduced interim NIL policies, while states and President Biden have rushed to pass legislation and endorse a mandated student athlete right to compensation as long as the NCAA itself is profiting. The NCAA earned $1.28 billion in revenue in 2022-2023, with about $1 billion coming from March Madness alone. An interesting wrinkle here is that under long established Title IX, female student athletes have a right to the same accommodations and compensation as their male counterparts. Iowa’s Caitlin Clark broke the all-time scoring record for men’s and women’s NCAA basketball, and has secured $3 million in annual compensation. Congress has introduced multiple bills to legislate a federal policy on student athlete compensation. This is a New Frontier for college sports where the more they rightly compensate current and future players, the more they reveal their shrewdness to past players.

“Winning is the most important thing in my life.” -Rick Pitino

After Pitino was fired by Louisville, he went on to coach the Greek National team, before landing in 2020 at Iona College in New Rochelle, NY. By 2023, he was back to his winning ways, and led Iona to victory in last year’s MAAC conference tournament before an early bounce from the Big Dance. “Winning is the most important thing in my life,” Pitino told the Press of AC (“Iona gives vintage Rick Pitino performance to win MAAC Conference men’s championship”, Press of Atlantic City, March 2023.) Ever the bon vivant, Pitino celebrated his tournament win with a chicken parm at Chef Vola’s in the Sinatra Room, before divorcing Iona for St. John’s in the offseason.

Cinderelly, Cinderelly, night and day it’s Cinderelly!

But college sport isn’t just bribes and boosters! In 2022, Saint Peter’s squad won the MAAC Conference Tournament and rode the wave all the way to the Elite Eight, becoming the first 15-Seed to ever advance that far into the tournament. (Ironically, they upset No-2 Seed Kentucky, Pitino’s old team in the first round, facing arguably weaker subsequent opponents after cracking through.) Coach Shaheen Holloway, a former standout point guard who turned down the venerable Coach K and Duke to play closer to home with Seton Hall, captured the attention of the nation with his unapologetically New Jersey savoir faire. When questioned by national media if he is fearful of the physicality his team would face in later rounds, he replied through a raspy voice with a quintessentially tristate bon mot. “I got guys from New Jersey and New York City. You think we’re scared of anything? You think we’re worried about guys trying to muscle us and tough us out. We do that. That’s who we are.”

Open the Book

While friends of mine dabbled in the sportsbook from Illinois to ride the March 2022 Saint Peter’s run, 57% of New Jersey voters elected via ballot referendum in November 2021 to not permit collegiate in-state sports betting. My vision for attending the MAAC Basketball Tournament was to observe the players and momentum shifts to bet in-game accordingly, however the regulation against college sports betting extends to any competition IN New Jersey, not just among NJ players and teams. Dear reader, I pay attention to these things like ballot referendums and casino regulations and was nonetheless caught flat footed during Fairfield, CT vs New Rochelle, NY. “I thought I just couldn’t bet on Rutgers!”

This seems like a structurally compromised dam ready to burst. Smart phone betting has taken root in every sport, aided greatly by the massive spending among online sports betting companies (casinos) for promotion throughout sports broadcasts from regional to national. Even the casual observer can recognize the shift from picking pregame winners to discussing the spreads and lines before and during competition, while blatantly promoting parlays. Taylor Swift’s entry into the realm of the NFL was not just a boon for football, as DraftKings notably leveraged her popularity to send push notifications, prop bets, and immaculately composed promotional parlays in the parlance of the Swiftverse. One can understand this imperative; sports betting increases viewership of less competitive games much in the way fantasy football did (and does), Swift represents the lecherousness of online casinos to break into the female demographic.

With the broad and rapid adoption of sports betting by the American public, professional sports have found themselves in a profit crazed predicament — when nightly broadcasts promote sports betting, how can a sports commissioner or athletic association regulate against players gambling?

The baseball world is reeling presently at the thought Shohei Ohtani may truly be their Michael Jordan as his confidante and translator has been fired for “massive theft” to place bets with an offshore bookie. NFL wideout Calvin Ridley was suspended for the 2022 season for violating the league’s gambling policy for betting $1500, while just this month this writer’s own beloved Phillies posted to official social media a clip of their backup catcher jawing up his prior night at the casino with his teammates. In fairness, he was talking about three hours at blackjack before an elite turn at the roulette wheel. Innocent stuff for guys to get into! Nonetheless, the genie is out of the bottle in a “yuge” lingering cultural impact of electing a real estate robber baron and casino charlatan as Commander in Chief.

If one accepts the notion that “what’s good for the casinos is good for Atlantic City”, then legalizing sports betting on the highest level of field competition that the city can muster to host would and could become a major draw for this event and city, recreating a “day at the races” experience for local in-state sports bettors. That notion should be critiqued, and surely the city’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority can perform greater service to its hometown when casinos post multi billion yearly profits even through the pandemic. It seems silly to regulate out of experience smart phone betting on college sports from a casino resort town. And the losers aren’t even the gamblers or players, but city residents.

Peacock Pride

This year’s competition stretched from Tuesday’s first round to Saturday’s championship matches. I first attended Wednesday to see Fairfield take on Iona in the 9pm game. Fairfield senior Caleb Fields, a product of nearby Wildwood Catholic, was having a dominant homecoming, making decisive plays every appearance for the Stags. Fields led Fairfield through a 2nd Half rally, as they overcame defending champ Iona with a score of 68-63.

As a local, I sought to circumvent the Ticketmaster fees, but arrived after the box office closed for sales. A friendly attendant instructed me to simply attempt to walk in, so, cloaked in my Philadelphia Inquirer hat as a “credential”, I did just that. Setting aside the gameplay, watching a mid major basketball tournament is kind of like attending a minor league baseball game. You are closer to the action, can feel the kinetic energy of the game, sense which team has momentum, and monitor which coach is closer to an aneurysm.

On my second night attending the tournament, once again “sneaking” in, I saw an all-NJ matchup— Saint Peter’s versus Rider. Rider sent a full band, while Saint Pete just sent a dance squad. This game was a low scoring affair, with a final score of 50-48 but once again a narrow margin down to its conclusion. In Friday’s semifinals, Saint Peter’s upset first seeded Quinnipiac in a dramatic buzzer beater finish. Fairfield, led by Fields, handled their business against Marist, setting them up to square off in the championship finale.

The championship match was markedly different from the weekday events. Instead of a few hundred attendees, the last game drew several thousand (officially 2,477), with a palpable presence of fans from Jersey City dwarfing the Fairfield contingent that had attended all week. Fairfield had a more consistent season, and built a comfortable seven point lead at the half, before extending it to 10 points early in the second half. But Saint Peter’s remained undeterred and tough. Much of their scoring deficit was linked to Fairfield’s ability to force turnovers and steals, as Saint Peter’s adjusted and relied upon shot blocking and strong field goal conversion just as the Fairfield Stags went cold. With 11 minutes remaining in the contest, Saint Peter’s drained a three point shot from Brett Bland and a layup from Michael Hogue to take a one-point lead. From there, Saint Peter’s extended the lead all the way to nine, as you could feel the wheels fall off the Stag Wagon. Fairfield’s Caleb Fields refused to give in, and delivered impressive play in the final minutes as his team clawed back to a three point, then a single point deficit with 1:07 left in play.

Every single game I attended in the MAAC Tournament featured a one to three point difference with 90 seconds or less of play, providing for a truly exciting series of nightly competitions. Saint Peter’s made their free throws down the stretch, while Fairfield fought tenaciously. The difference maker was two missed three point shot attempts by Stag shooters in the final minute, allowing for Saint Peter’s to prove their Jersey toughness, secure the tournament victory, and punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament, which is now underway with the first rounds of play this weekend. The Peacocks are once again the No 15 Seed in this year’s tournament where they will face the Top Ten Tennessee Volunteers in the first round of play. Let’s see if the slipper fits again…. (Editor’s note: Saint Peter’s 2024 season ended March 21st in a First Round loss to Tennessee.)

A Note on Fairfield’s Women’s Team

One unfortunate reality of holding down a day job and the perceived lesser interest in women’s competition is that the best team in the tournament posted game times as early as 10am. Fairfield Women’s team has won 29 straight games in a row, including their tournament championship run, to post a remarkable 31-1 record on the season to earn them their first-ever Top 25 national ranking as they enter the NCAA Tournament. They faced tough competition from Niagara in their MAAC Championship game, who forced them into overtime before the Lady Stags responded to win by 8 points. Despite owning the 2nd longest winning streak in Women’s basketball behind Dawn Staley’s South Carolina juggernaut, they enter the NCAA tournament as a No-13 seed, set to face No-4 seed Indiana on Saturday March 23rd in their first round of competition. (Editor’s note: After hanging tough through the first half, Fairfield’s 2024 season ended in a First Round loss to Indiana.)

As the nation renews their Paramount+ and YouTube TV accounts to view March Madness and prepares to gloat or scratch a few coins in their pocket, we await this year’s surprise stepsister. America loves Cinderella. Perhaps again it will be a MAAC school that draws national attention to a mid-major upset of a powerhouse that will eliminate a majority of bracket builders. I applaud the MAAC Conference, the Fairfield Women and Saint Peter’s Men, and the great city of Atlantic City for holding a little space for March magic at Boardwalk Hall.

Late Friday night, February 24th, Flaco the famous Eurasian eagle owl was reported dead from a collision with a building on 89th Street in Manhattan. In the year of Flaco’s fugitive freedom, he became an outlaw icon, igniting the imaginations of locals, attracting distant tourists, and garnering press in major outlets the world over. Notably, Flaco’s “Year of Freedom” earned him a multi page spread in the New York Times earlier this month, chronicling his offbeat penchant for exploring the city and showcasing a number of remarkable photographs, professional and amateur, of New York’s latest “It Girl”.

Flaco was one of a kind; as an exotic owl, he was a charismatic megafauna, capable of inspiring humans to consider other birds, owls, and wildlife in urbanity. Flaco was an exceptional entry into this pantheon—he attracted advanced bird photographers and novice naturalists to his haunts around Central Park, but his online celebrity enamored even more spectators to his story, eclipsing other notable New York owl leading ladies, like Geraldine and Barry. Above all, he was a certified New Yorker, whose story of “immigration”, captivity, escape, and adaptation melted littletown blues and satisfied vagabond shoes.

“If I were to leave the confines of everything I’ve ever known, would I be able to adapt, hunt, find shelter, attract a mate, thrive?”

First, the basics. Flaco was born in March 2010, and lived twelve years in an enclosure the size of a bus shelter in the Central Park Zoo. In February 2023, an individual or group of “vandals” damaged his exhibit, leaving a hole in his mesh aviary through which to escape. Initially, park rangers and the public watched intently as he fasted and evaded attempts of recapture, before, after about a week, producing a pellet that proved he had adapted outside of captivity to prey on the local delicacy of city rats. This introductory episode alone was enough to inspire admiration, conjuring memories and acknowledgement of relatable city struggles. If I were to leave the confines of everything I’ve ever known, would I be able to adapt, hunt, find shelter, attract a mate, thrive? Survive?

In my years of working at the intersection of the environment and humanities, I’ve come to embrace a central tenet: to connect a community or individual to their local ecosystem, you must introduce them to a local animal to extrapolate the similarities between wildlife and human life in a shared neighborhood. Despite his immigration status, Flaco was built for his moment. The “nite owl” is a perfect wildlife match for “the city that never sleeps.” New York City’s abundance of food source (rats) and diversity of habitat provides feathered friends a veritable playground; Flaco was spotted on baseball fields, in trees, peeking inside apartment units, and perched atop construction equipment and fire escapes alike. Thus, Flaco quickly became a prism through which to examine urban ecosystems, bending outward and parsing the refracted issues and achievements a flying predator faces while making a life in the Big Apple. Due to his celebrity, news of Flaco’s death has inspired a flood of social media tributes, some of them are touching reflections on the relationships between wildlife and human mental health and imagination.

Despite his immigration status, Flaco was built for his moment. The “nite owl” is a perfect wildlife match for “the city that never sleeps.”

Throughout his freedom, concerns lingered. Eurasian eagle owls have a lifespan of 20 years in the wild, and up to 60 years in captivity. Some within the birding, conservation, and zoology communities contended the dangers were too great, and a return to captivity was best. Amidst the acknowledgement of common threats to owls in New York City, the recently elected Mayor Adams declared a War on Rats. At a July press conference, Adams celebrated a 20% reduction in rat-related 311 reports. He pledged to starve city rats, promised new “rat slabs” to prevent burrowing in public housing projects, established “rat mitigation zones” in three boroughs, and invited the public to join “Anti-Rat Community Days of Action.”

While the Central Park Conservancy refrains from rodenticide usage during owl nesting season, and the city cast its anti-rat measures primarily as trash abatement, it is hard (at least for this observer, dear reader) to imagine rodenticides are absent from the municipal arsenal. Rodenticide is a major threat to urban predators; our chemical romance with exterminating vermin has a knack for making its way up the food chain and killing more beloved species, like owls and raptors, mountain lions, and more. The UK’s Barn Owl Trust claims: “Research has shown that poisoned Barn Owls either die slowly, or survive and carry a residue of poison in their bodies. Typically it takes 6 to 17 days for a Barn Owl to die after eating 3 mice containing the poison Brodifacoum.” Barry the barred owl, Flaco’s lesser famous predecessor, died of collision with a parks maintenance vehicle in August 2021; her necropsy revealed a lethal dosage of anti-coagulating rodenticide, raising questions of correlation to impaired flying abilities.

The natural range of habitat for Eurasian eagle owls is quite expansive—stretching from Southeastern China north to Siberia and westward all the way to the Iberian peninsula. However, there are no native owls of this species anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Flaco was born a stranger in a strange land, hatched in a North Carolina bird park before being transported to Central Park Zoo in 2010. In this regard, we can examine ethical questions of non-native birds, exotic at that, bred in captivity and kept for spectators. Against this backdrop, Flaco’s escape exposed more than one villain. Central Park Zoo was quick to pin Flaco’s death on those who assisted in his escape. But are the vandals culpable for the world of pain into which he entered? Does not original sin extend to the bird breeders and zookeepers that hatched or procured a non-native owl for captivity? And who decided that a bird with a six-foot wingspan be prevented from soaring? And finally, with dangers like automobiles, windows, and rodenticide in Flaco’s habitat, isn’t human development’s antagonistic relationship with wildlife itself accessory to his death?

The dark truth is that this beautiful bird was captive to Manhattan Island even free from his enclosure. Despite venturing to Lower Manhattan, Flaco displayed an apparent inability to cross the Hudson River for estuarine destinations as close as Freshkills or the Meadowlands. Elusive promised lands. The most ardent conservationists will proffer “I told you so…” and call for the prosecution of the “vandals” who set Flaco “free”. But therein lies the messy complexity of the hierarchy of environmentalism. A bird with Flaco’s charisma and daring saga served many millions more in twelve months of freedom than in his twelve preceding years of captivity. As we project our desires and imagination onto an owl like Flaco, we must also recognize that human existence itself is a death sentence for most species on a warming Planet Earth. May Flaco in death continue to serve as an ambassador for wildlife, pointing out our human harshness and bellicose relationship with nature.

Rest in Peace Flaco.

2010 - 2024

You died for our sins.

Liftoff of a V-2 rocket on May 10, 1946 (source: NASA)

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