All Over The Map

For newbies, a quintessential TML post. Travel, sports, politics. Matchbooks?

Another freebie, Mobsters. Enjoy. Normally, it’s 8 bucks a month or $80 a year.

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For maybe the first 20 years of my career as a heathen sports scribe, restaurants and hotels offered matchbooks to their patrons. Whereas now you might get a gratis toothpick or mint, back then you could nab a pack of matches bearing the establishment’s logo and relevant info.

I collected a lot of matchbooks, from all over. On the inside cover I’d jot a reason why I was there. Dailey’s Restaurant and Bar, downtown Atlanta, 1984 Peach Bowl. . . Ivar’s restaurant, Seattle 1984 Final 4. . . Fontainebleau hotel, Miami Beach, 1991, baseball winter meetings.’’

And even Chester’s Road House, Cincinnati 1987, job interview, Cin Post.’’

I’ve got matches from at least 50 spots in more than 20 states. I’ve got a matchbox from OB Hof, a beer hall in Seoul, South Korea. The idea is this:

Put them all in a very big bowl, have my wife close her eyes and pick one. That’s where we will spend a few days and nights in the coming year.

It could be Santa Fe — site of an ancient wedding anniversary trip — it could be San Francisco (many matchbooks). It could be Barrel House Brewing Company on 12th Street in our very own Republic, though probably not, given the Barrel House is not there anymore.

What a cool idea, Doc. Who gave it to you?

Odds are decent we’ll land someplace desirable, even if it’s Montgomery Inn, Cincinnati 1994, Bob Huggins.

Walking Distance. Yes, that’s Ron Howard with Gig Young.

BUCKET LIST QUEST. . . SATISFIED? Frequent Perusers know of my like affair with satisfying Bucket List wishes. We did one last fall, when we went with our son Kelly and his wife to Block Island, nine miles off the Rhode Island coast. Well worth the ferry ride.

Next up. . . a journey to Mecca, ie Binghamton, NY.

OK, we’ll bite. Why there?

As everyone knows, Binghamton is the hometown of Rod Serling, my favorite writer in the history of writing. Unless it’s the scribe who wrote the Bible, though that might also have been Serling. Nobody has a writer’s credit on that book, yeah?

Just as important, Binghamton is where Rod set his masterwork. Walking Distance was an episode in Year 1 of the Twilight Zone. It’s purely autobiographical and concerns a man returning to the town of his youth, 30 years after the fact. Walking Distance is only the best 30 minutes of television ever aired.

It is beautifully written by Serling, it is beautifully scored and shot. Gig Young plays Martin Sloan, “successful in most things, but not in the one thing all men try at some time in their lives — trying to go home again.’’

As luck would have it, Binghamton honors Serling with an annual weekend-long festival. The town has even lovingly resurrected the merry-go-round so instrumental to the story.

It’s in August this year. We’re going.

Empty your Buckets, please.

Now, then. . .

BENGAL FOLLIES, PART 2. . . Zac Taylor kept alive that rolling ball of optimism that is the Bengals offseason, declaring Monday he will make no changes to his coaching staff.

“There’s so many guys on (defense) that, really, their growth was accelerated over the last half of the year. You are really excited about their future here as starters (and) as role players. I feel like we are in a tremendous position going into this offseason.’’

Point of fact: In their final eight games, the Bengals went 3-5. They faced two marquee QBs (ie guys they’ll have to beat to get where they think they belong) and lost to both. Josh Allen completed 79 percent of his throws, threw 3 TDs, averaged 9 yards per attempt and had a QB Rating of 139.7. To be fair, the Bengals did get him for a pick-six. That doesn’t change the narrative.

Drake Maye put up 26 points, threw for 295 with an 8.4 YPA.

Other than that, the defense had the heavy job of containing backup Jacoby Brissett, rookie Quinn Ewers making his first NFL start, Shedeur Sanders and mediocre Lamar Jackson twice.

The D was perfectly OK, in other words. No wonder they’re thrilled to bring everybody back. They didn’t even need a couple days to think about it.

“Our expectations are going to be sky high,’’ Taylor decided. “There is a lot of positive energy heading into the offseason.”

Oh, boy.

Please explain something to me: Why do we spend hours and hours debating player worthiness and almost none calling out the snow jobs most recently presented yesterday? Mike Brown started it. Zac Taylor followed in lockstep. Same as it ever was.

That’s the issue. Not if they’ll lock up Dalton Risner. And yet, we ladle out the undeserved optimism like it’s, you know, mock turtle soup.

Nothing changes. History says so. History is indisputable.

MEANWHILE, THIS GUY ROCKS. . . Detroit’s Dan Campbell, whose team finished 9-8 after going 15-2 last year, looked himself in the mirror Monday and reacted honestly. Yahoo:

“Not good enough. We didn’t get in, we underachieved,” Campbell said on Monday, one day after the Lions’ season officially ended.

“So, not good. I’d give myself a freaking F.”

Kudos to one freaking guy for not insulting the intelligence of his team’s fans.

(Foxnews.com)

STICK TO SPORTS. . . Five years ago today, democracy was attacked at our country’s capitol building. Trump did nothing to stop it. Trump pardoned everyone responsible for it. Trump is now invading another country without the permission of Congress. That’s illegal. He doesn’t care.

Trump and his far-right cabal speak openly of invading Greenland and Cuba and any other sovereign nation they feel like invading. It’d be nice to know why they started with Venezuela, but Trump can’t seem to make up his mind why we’re killing people there. First, it was about blowing up small boats Trump claimed, without evidence, were ferrying cocaine. Only the major drug problem in the US is fentanyl, made in Mexico, not Venezuela. Oops. It was oil, it was human rights, it was to get the Epstein Files off the front pages, it was whatever Trump’s disappearing thought process could come up with.

He kidnaps Nicolas Maduro, yet pardons Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández. Congress.gov:

Hernández had been sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024 after a U.S. federal jury convicted him of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses. According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Hernández and his co-conspirators trafficked more than 400 tons of U.S.-bound cocaine through Honduras between 2004 and 2022. In his pardon announcement, President Trump asserted that Hernández had been treated "unfairly."

Now Trump declares that we are going “to run’’ Venezuela. What the hell does that mean?

Here’s a clue to Trump: The military is not your personal plaything. It is not beholden to every crazy whim you’ve got. Its purpose is not to bomb fishing boats in the Caribbean or kidnap another country’s president, as corrupt as he is. Violating our Constitution is a criminal act. Trump is a convicted criminal.

He’s also a bad human being. He has always been a bad human being. The difference now is he’s clearly losing his mind. The combination is beyond dangerous.

I have no idea how anyone in our country can still defend this guy. He’s everything we claim we aren’t.

PLEASE READ THIS. . . We have an issue, Mobsters. As luck would have it, our Booze winner, James, doesn’t drink. He hasn’t even been in a bar in years. So much for my plan for a get-together. There are a few options:

I could write James a $50 check to the charity of his choice (SPCA, it turns out). Or we could continue the contest until one of our several 2nd-place finishers breaks the tie with a W in a playoff game of my choosing. Tell me which is more appealing, or gimme another idea. I’ll go with your advice. It’s your virtual bar.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Everybody look what’s goin’ down.