I figured we’d spend most of the summer chasing after an English international who currently plies his trade for a domestic rival.
I assumed it would be Harry Kane — indeed, it could still be.
But it looks like there could be another.
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Browsing Tag
England
Less than a year after I hit 500 libraries, I’m pleased to announce Nixon in New York has now hit the 1,000 mark (I’ve enclosed the screenshot for posterity).
- Still waiting to get into Dartmouth to complete the Ivy League sweep. Same with Wesleyan so I can finally call “bingo” on the Little Three.
- I’m now in Southern New Hampshire University — so the next time I see one of their many commercials on TV, I can say “Thanks for putting my book in your library!” Your move, University of Phoenix.
- I’m in several public libraries now, including those in Boston, Toronto, Greenville, SC, Cleveland, New York City, Skokie, Oklahoma City, Fairbanks, AK, Preston, UK, Dubai and Shanghai. What do all of those cities have in common? Easy. They all have my book now.
- I’m only in two university libraries in my hometown of Pittsburgh: Carlow College and Robert Morris University. Here’s hoping I can get into Pitt, CMU and Duquesne soon.
- I’m in the All Saints Library in Manchester, UK. I didn’t know Manchester had a library named after the second most successful girl-group of the late 90s in the UK. Too band they couldn’t have named it the Take That Library.
Welcome to (Legal) Career Killers — a series that looks at how the law, lawyers or lawsuits killed a band’s or artist’s careers. In other words: They fought the law and the law won.
When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced this week that George Michael had been named as a finalist for the 2023 class, my reaction was: “Wait, he hasn’t been inducted yet? What gives?”
After all, when I was growing up, he was one of the biggest pop stars in the world. He was also a highly respected artist who was a fantastic singer, a charismatic performer and an excellent songwriter. The Hall was built for people like him.
But then I remembered: He wasn’t a big star for very long. In fact, he disappeared at the height of his career, and when he came back, he seemed well past his prime. It all started with his decision to sue his record label.
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Manchester United restarted its Premier League campaign with a stirring 3-0 victory over hapless Nottingham Forest. There were plenty of talking points before and after the match, most notably:
- Marcus Rashford’s continued run of great form and the re-emergence of his once-dangerous partnership with Anthony Martial. Rashford scored the first goal and assisted Martial on the second, giving hope that they can make up for United’s lack of an established, proven center forward.
- Raphael Varane bravely and selflessly volunteering to play after illness sidelined the club’s only two available senior center halves, Victor Lindelof and Harry Maguire. Despite being excused from the match due to his country’s run to the World Cup Final, Varane felt his team needed him and stepped up.
- Luke Shaw volunteering to play center back to help ease said defensive selection crisis. Like Varane, Shaw played well and gave his manager something to think about moving forward.
- Casemiro’s ongoing brilliance. The Tank dominated in his usual role after filling in at center half against Burnley in the League Cup the previous week. He also showed off his playmaking skills, turning two defensive stands into quick counter-attacks that resulted in goals. He even got a slick assist on Fred’s goal late in the match that sealed the three points.
- Jesse Lingard’s first match at Old Trafford since leaving in the summer for Nottingham Forest. Say what you will about JLingz and the way he left, but Lingardinho scored some big goals for his boyhood club and always gave his all on the pitch. After leaving early in the second half with an injury, Lingard finally got the warm send-off he had been denied the previous spring, as Old Trafford gave him a nice ovation thanking him for everything he had done.
But the one that got the most attention was the sudden addition of a forward named “Betinho” to the club’s active roster. Was it a purported clerical error, as the club later claimed? Or did someone jump the gun before a transfer became official?
And who was this mystery man, anyway? Was it the Portuguese forward currently playing for S.C. Espinho who made one appearance with Brentford in 2014? Was it a heretofore unknown nickname for Atletico Madrid’s misfit playmaker Joao Felix? Was it a new, tongue-in-cheek identity for in-form Brentford striker Ivan Toney, who could face a long ban for allegations relating to betting on Premier League matches?
Or was it this man?
(more…)I read several articles commemorating Oasis’ mammoth 1997 album, Be Here Now, which was recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. The consensus has long been that this bloated, overproduced, self-indulgent, chemically non-enhanced album is what ended Oasis as a major commercial force and may have even killed off the Britpop phenomenon. As Rolling Stone famously put it, Be Here Now is “a concept album about how long all the songs are.”
Then I saw this review. Fatherly called Be Here Now a “perfect album” but not in terms of quality. Instead, this critic argues that the album was a perfect encapsulation of where the band was at the time and a honest reflection of everything they stood for. To me, that sounds a bit like arguing that The Room is a perfect movie because it flawlessly captures Tommy Wiseau’s delusions of grandeur and limitations as a filmmaker.
I don’t know if I buy that argument. But this album was perfect in one sense — it was a perfect disaster.
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It’s not easy being an Eric Clapton fan these days. Yeah, we’ve overlooked a lot over the years. The racist comments about immigrants. The many personal failings. Most of his 80s output. His techno album (yeah, that really happened).
But his reinvention as a COVID-19 anti-vaxxer and anti-mitigation protestor has been too much for a lot of his fans (myself included). In fact, it seems to have completely consumed him to the point where it’s become difficult to separate the political advocate from the artist.
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Success to the United States Token 
1795 Washington Grate Half Penny 
1783 Georgius Triumpho copper 
1795 Liberty and Security Token 
1791 Washington Cent (Small Eagle). 
1793 Washington Ship Half Cent 
“1783” “Unity States” Washington Cent 
“1783” Washington and Independence Military Token 
Washington Double-Head Cent (no date)
This won’t be one of my normal Coin Blog posts. I wanted to show off these coins but didn’t have too much to add that hasn’t already been written by others.
Anyway, I really like these George Washington colonial coins and I’m glad I made the investment in them. Understandably, Washington was a rock star after the successful conclusion of the Revolutionary War, and there was a huge demand for merchandise bearing his image — think Notorious RBG (R.I.P.) but for the 18th and 19th centuries.
(more…)When it comes to movies, there are box office bombs and then there’s Heaven’s Gate.
The 1980 western epic went massively over-budget thanks to a disastrous and well-publicized troubled production and received infamously bad reviews upon release. The film ended up being such a box office bomb that it single-handedly killed director Michael Cimino’s Hollywood career and star Kris Kristofferson’s potential as a leading man (one particularly brutal review from Vincent Canby of The New York Times wondered if Cimino had made a deal with the devil to produce his last movie, Oscar-winning classic The Deer Hunter, and now the bill had come due).
And that was just the beginning. According to the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, the movie may have also killed off United Artists, the studio that produced it. Shortly after writing off the film’s entire $44 million budget (equivalent to nearly $140 million in today’s money), UA was sold to MGM and ceased being an independent studio. The movie may have even killed the era of the all-powerful director, as runaway disasters like Heaven’s Gate, Apocalypse Now, At Long Last Love and others caused studios to step in and start asserting control.
By those standards, Yes Please! by the Happy Mondays is the Heaven’s Gate of albums.
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UPDATE (12/17/2020): The House bill was passed via unanimous consent in the Senate. Assuming the President signs it, looks like we’ll be getting those new Morgan and Peace Dollars after all.
UPDATE (01/05/2020): The President signed the bill into law.
I attended two coin conventions in 2019, and one thing they both had in common was that there was no shortage of Morgan and Peace Silver Dollars available from the many vendors on the bourse. There was such an abundance that Scrooge McDuck could have bought every single silver dollar with whatever pocket change he happened to have (assuming he wears pants – Donald doesn’t, so why should he?), loaded them into a wading pool and gone for a dip.
By this time next year, there could be even more Morgan and Peace dollars hitting the market — provided that Congress can get its act together.
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Who was Edward VIII?
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The Continental Dollar is one of the most significant coins in American history. Bearing brilliant and beautiful designs from one of the most accomplished and respected Founding Fathers, as well as the long-held belief that the 1776-minted coin was the first proposed national currency, the Continental Dollar is exceedingly rare and extremely valuable.
And way out of my price range.
Luckily for me, the restrike is much more affordable.
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Arguably, the Holy Roman Empire has two lasting legacies. First, it gave us Voltaire’s famous quote about how the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Secondly, it gave us the Maria Theresa Thaler – one of the first truly international forms of currency.
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Click here for Part I.
As mentioned in the previous post, Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t shy about putting his bust on coins that would circulate throughout his empire. Of course those weren’t the only coins he found himself on. Like Andrew Jackson later in the decade, Napoleon’s image was used on a variety of unofficial tokens and coins. Some were positive and served to glorify and underscore his dominance. In other cases, they were negative and even celebrated his downfall.
Here are three tokens I recently added to my collection:
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The things we do for a free vacation.
Some people enter random drawings. Some sit through timeshare presentations. Some even cash in their credit card points.
Robert J. Thompson got a commemorative silver dollar made honoring one of the greatest heroes of the Revolutionary War.
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You’d forgive Manchester United fans like yours truly for living in the past. These last six years have been painful – especially for those of us who came of age during the Sir Alex Ferguson era, when the club collected trophies the way I collect coins. From Ferguson’s appointment in 1986 to his retirement in 2013, United won 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League titles and two UEFA Champions League crowns.
His finest moment came twenty years ago, this week. United played Bayern Munich in the Champions League Final held at the Nou Camp in Barcelona. Both sides were chasing a historic treble, having won their respective leagues and primary league cups. Both sides were evenly matched and loaded with talented players, however United were slight underdogs heading into the match, owing to suspensions to team captain Roy Keane and playmaker Paul Scholes.
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About Me:
- Former Lawyer.
- Current Journalist/Writer/Editor.
- Author of "Nixon in New York: How Wall Street Helped Richard Nixon Win the White House," published in 2018.
- Husband, father and dog-lover.
- Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Manchester United supporter.
- Chicago via Pittsburgh, New York City and several others.