“If you’ve been injured in an auto accident, Emerson Jones can get you the money you deserve…”
Emerson Jones is actually a Aussie tennis player. I watched some of her match in the qualifying rounds of the Cincinnati Open last Tuesday.
She’s one of the top 140 players in the WTA. And there she was, on a random Tuesday, in a random city, trying to beat a random opponent, on a random court at the Cincinnati Open complex. Not Center Court. Not the Grandstand Court. Not the Champions Court. Not the Tony Trabert Court. Just one of the many outlier courts, each with a few rows of seats.
At #131 in the rankings, she’s right on the cusp of the draw (128 players each, give or take, in both men’s and women’s).
The match was close, but “Emmo” (as her coaches called her) lost in straight sets. 7-5, 7-5.
She lost to Lanlana Tararudee… great name! Lanlana is slightly higher on the WTA food chain, but still in the “qualifier” group.
FWIW, She’s the highest ranked player from Thailand, too.
As fate would have it, Emerson and Lanlana also had squared off in the previous tournament, in Canada.
Two kids, half a world away from home, trying to make it in a cutthroat sport.
If you look at the prize money totals for both players, you might be thinking that’s some pretty good coin for an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old. And it is. But there’s a price that comes with the prizes.
That prize money has to be split up among coaches, agents, trainers… all the cogs that feed the machine. And then there’s airfare, hotel rooms, meals, equipment…
Not to mention that there’s not much of an off-season for the sport, so you’re on the road constantly. Home is wherever you lay your head on the hotel pillow. And heaven forbid if you skip a tourney – it’ll drop you down in the all-important rankings.
If you want to “go pro” this is your life. Tennis seems like such a glamorous sport. And it is, at the top. But for every woman holding up the winner’s trophy, there are literally hundreds of others that are nearly as good, just trying to make a go of it, on a random court in a random city on a random weekday, trying to beat their opponent so they can do it all again the next day, and the next week.
It’s a lot more grind and grit, and a lot less glamour. Kudos to Emerson, and Lanlana, and all the other “also rans” who are still out there running.
“Tom Tomorrow” is a darn funny political cartoonist. He puts out a weekly cartoon/comic strip called This Modern World.
It’s actually a single-panel cartoon, but it’s usually subdivided into 6 frames. It’s always amusing, and unfortunately these days, it seems less like satire and more like reality. Here’s his cartoon from last week:
“Tom” (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) has some serious bona fides too:
“Tom Tomorrow’s sharp and iconic work embodies the higher purpose of political cartooning: holding powerful figures to account using satire grounded in good journalism,” the Berryman Award judges said.
(from the article linked above)
I used to read This Modern World in CityBeat, Cincinnati’s alt-weekly. But times are tough in the print biz, and Tom’s strip has been dropped by a lot of alt-weeklies due to budget constraints. You can check it out for free at Daily Kos, but a better way to reward his art is to subscribe to his weekly newsletter, “Sparky’s List,” which includes the weekly cartoon, some commentary on the artwork, and Dan’s personal observations.
You can subscribe to “Sparky’s List” for as little as $20 a year.
A single Jackson a year for a weekly dose of humor from Tomorrow? Totally worth it in This Modern World!
Because I’m a person of advanced years, I DO think about Social Security a bit more than I did in my carefree younger days. But I quickly tire of any talk about Social Security insolvency. Not because it isn’t possible, but because the fix is so patently obvious.
It’s time to raise the roof!
Here’s why:
I know $184,500 is more than most Americans earn in a year. But there are plenty of people making a LOT more than that. (6% of covered workers, per the Social Security website.) And it seems unfair that once they’ve hit that mark, they don’t contribute another nickel… even though their SS payments will be higher than the Average Joe’s (and Average Jane’s) based on their lofty income.
And the $184,500 is based on “earned” income (wages, salary, tips, bonus…). So if you make a killing in the stock market, or pulling in thousands in dividends, that’s not even taken into consideration.
Raising the roof (i.e. the max or cap) would deliver a lot more money into the system, without creating a hardship on anyone. What should that roof be? 300K? 400k? Greater minds than mine can sort that out.
OR, maybe instead of raising the roof, we shouldn’t have a roof at all!
Nick Hanauer‘s proposal calls for that (eliminating the roof), and actually goes a couple of steps further, by lowering the contribution rate by 50% while also eliminating the capital gains and investment exemptions and loopholes. Check it out:
“Half of all national income is now above the cap.”
I’m not one of those “eat the rich” types. But I do think that Social Security could be much better for America if it were more social.
So Agent Orange waddled up to a podium last night and read from the teleprompter about how American elections were “worse than any Third World country.”
If you’re trying to keep score at home, here’s your cheat sheet (no pun intended):
Elections Donald J. Trump won*: fair, secure, no meddling… “perfect”
Election he lost: fraudulent, rigged, rife with cheating and voter fraud, “stolen”
Upcoming elections where the GOP is going to get crushed: “unsafe”
*meaning Electoral College votes – he lost the popular vote in 2016.
As is typically the case, every accusation is a confession. T-Rump urging the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act (a better name would be the Voter Intimidation and Disenfranchisement Act) is a good example:
“How easy is that to do? Unless you want to cheat. The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get elected any other way.”
Bad policies, pathetic candidate, wanting to cheat… yep, that sounds just like the guy who has spent every day of his presidency ignoring laws and screwing over the working class and poor to line his own pockets. And the guy who welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Donny can delude himself about election fraud all he wants… even most of his minions aren’t buying it. But this is about sowing the seeds of doubt and distrust now, in advance of the mid-terms. He knows they’ll be a referendum on his policies. And he knows that what his feckless Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said back in February is actually true:
“If we lost the midterms — heaven forbid — if we lost the majority in the House, it would be the end of the Trump presidency in real effect.”
From Holy Mike’s lips to God’s ears. Because the biggest fraud was (and IS) the guy behind the microphone making accusations last night.
No one would be trying to take your vote away from you with this level of intensity if they didn’t understand how important your vote is, how powerful it makes you. Trump always says the quiet part out loud. He’s doing that now. Your vote matters. Prepare to do whatever it takes this fall to cast it. Let’s put a stop to the lies once and for all. — Joyce Vance on her Substack
I know you’re probably tired of hearing me yammer about some tiny “modern rock” radio station where I worked long, long ago.
Heck, that station has been off the air for 22 years.
It’s so old that it’s now considered “historical.”
Give it a rest already!
But here’s the thing. This past Saturday, the Butler County Historical Society had a 97X “Back to the Future of Rock & Roll” event.
More than one hundred people paid their hard-earned cash to hear more about the station from several folks who worked there: Steve “Bakerman” Baker, Dave Tellmann, Matt Sledge, former student co-producer Jen Dalton (now at Channel 12), and yours truly.
But the Q&A segment at the end was the best part of it, and helps explain why people would cough up cash to attend a history lecture. Because there weren’t that many questions, but there were plenty of testimonials from people in attendance.
“Such a big part of my life.”
“My husband came to Oxford from North Carolina for a job interview, and we moved because he heard 97X.”
“I met my husband at the 97X 10th anniversary concert.”
“The station changed my life.”
“The station saved my life.”
The station’s listenership was tiny. But its impact on those listeners was mighty. The connection was so much stronger than the weak signal. Because we gave listeners what they wanted (music they couldn’t hear anywhere else) and what all of us need (a sense of community).
It meant a lot then. It means even more now that it’s gone.
Here’s a photo of all the 97X alums who were there.
Jen Dalton was an unpaid college intern. The rest of us got a paycheck, but it was below-poverty wages. Yet I wouldn’t trade my time there for a million dollars. Not then, and not now. The people I met during my time there (co-workers and listeners alike) were solid gold.
We loved the music. We had fun playing it. We had free rein creatively – not just live, but also for commercials and promos and contests. And best of all, we knew we were sharing it with people who cared.
Good luck getting anything close to that from cookie cutter corporate radio stations.
It’s why Dave Tellmann and I keep publishing new episodes of our podcast about the station. (Listening links are here.)
I was listening to a different podcast this week where Erykah Badu was quoted as saying you experience two deaths: once when you pass away, and then later when your name is spoken for the last time.
It’s been 16 years and we’re still saying “97X” (with or without the Rainman “BAM!”).
We’re a year and a half into the second term of the Cheeto in Chief. How’s it going for you? Grocery prices? Gas prices? Affordable housing? Peace?
Donnie’s dumped more than $100 billion down the gold-plated toilet for an unwinnable war, which also shut down a key shipping route. It’s wreaked havoc across the world. And here were are in 2026, worse off than when the Obama agreement was put in place more than a decade ago.
And some costs can’t be measured in dollars and cents, because they’re senseless.
Meanwhile, on the home front, Deranged Donnie has “fixed” the Reflecting Pool. Or “pond” as he keeps calling it. It seems more like a fetid swamp at the moment. Why? Because he had a “pool guy… the best!” and awarded a no-bid contract. And he picked “American Flag Blue” as the new paint color, and a darker color creates a better environment for algae growth. And then the “fix” (dump hydrogen peroxide into the water) will kill some algae, but it also peels paint.
Pure genius, Mr. Perfect Score on the Cognitive Tests that they keep giving you. No notes.
It’s not an aberration, it’s a pattern. It’s his M.O.
Jeff Tiedrich summed it up quite nicely in his Substack post from June 22:
He’ll never learn. So it’s up to us.
“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” — Harry Emerson Fosdick
And if you voted for DJT, please take some time for a bit of reflecting. Uh, you’ll have to find a different pool.
Kevin Sullivan on The full-brain workout: “Yep, keep writing .. in your voice. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4VA.JFCf.Lr_UK5tlpBRR&smid=url-share” Aug 10, 10:57
Damian on The Future is forever: “It was a magical time for sure! Just don’t get any paint on that 97X sweatshirt, it’ll bring down the…” Jul 4, 20:44
Andrea J McKiernan on The Future is forever: “I still wear my 97X sweatshirt when I’m painting. I have some amazing memories of those times!” Jul 4, 14:46
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