TL;DR: Man with too much time on his hands goes deep down the rabbit hole on a concept this sub already didn’t seem that enthusiastic about. If you really want to skip ahead, CTRL+F “verdict” and it’ll get you there.
Two days ago, u/MrPhillyj2wns made a post asking whether USL should launch a D1 league in order to compete in Concacaf. From the top voted replies, it appears this made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
But I’ve been at home for eight weeks and I am terribly, terribly bored.
So, I present to you this overview of what the USL pyramid might look like if Jake Edwards got a head of steam and attempted to establish a USSF-sanctioned first division. This is by no means an endorsement of such a proposal or even a suggestion that USL SHOULD do such a thing. It is merely an examination of whether they COULD.
Welcome to the Thunderdome USL Premiership
First, there are some base-level assumptions we must make in this exercise, because it makes me feel more scientific and not like a guy who wrote this on Sunday while watching the Belarusian Premier League (Go BATE Borisov!).

1. All D1 teams must comply with known USSF requirements for D1 leagues (more on that later).
   
2. MLS, not liking this move, will immediately remove all directly-owned affiliate clubs from the USL structure (this does not include hybrid ownerships, like San Antonio FC – NYCFC). This removes all MLS2 teams but will not affect Colorado Springs, Reno, RGVFC and San Antonio.
   
3. The USL will attempt to maintain both the USL Championship and USL League One, with an eventual mind toward creating the pro/rel paradise that is promised in Relegations 3:16.
   
4. All of my research regarding facility size and ownership net worth is correct – this is probably the biggest leap of faith we have to make, since googling “NAME net worth” and “CITY richest people” doesn’t seem guaranteed to return accurate results.
   
5. The most a club can increase its available seating capacity to meet D1 requirements in a current stadium is no more than 1,500 seats (10% of the required 15,000). If they need to add more, they’ll need a new facility.
   
6. Let’s pretend that people are VERY willing to sell. It’s commonly acknowledged that the USL is a more financially feasible route to owning a soccer club than in MLS (c.f. MLS-Charlotte’s reported $325 million expansion fee) and the USSF has some very strict requirements for D1 sanctioning. It becomes pretty apparent when googling a lot of team’s owners that this requirement isn’t met, so let’s assume everyone that can’t sells to people who meet the requirements.
   

(Known) USSF D1 league requirements:
- League must have 12 teams to apply and 14 teams by year three
- Majority owner must have a net worth of $40 million, and the ownership group must have a total net worth of $70 million. The value of an owned stadium is not considered when calculating this value.
- Must have teams located in the Eastern, Central and Pacific time zones
- 75% of league’s teams must be based in markets with at a metro population of at least 1 million people.
- All league stadiums must have a capacity of at least 15,000
The ideal club candidate for the USL Premiership will meet the population and capacity requirements in its current ground, which will have a grass playing surface. Of the USL Championship’s 27 independent/hybrid affiliate clubs, I did not find one club that meets all these criteria as they currently stand.
Regarding turf fields, the USSF does not have a formal policy regarding the ideal playing surface but it is generally acknowledged that grass is superior to turf. 6 of 26 MLS stadiums utilize turf, or roughly 23% of stadiums. We’ll hold a similar restriction for our top flight, so 2-3 of our top flight clubs can have turf fields. Seem fair?
Capacity is going to be the biggest issue, since the disparity between current requirements for the second-tier (5,000) and the first tier (15,000) is a pretty massive gap. Nice club you have there, triple your capacity and you’re onto something. As a result, I have taken the liberty of relocating certain (read: nearly all) clubs to new grounds, trying my utmost to keep those clubs in their current markets and –importantly--, ensure they play on grass surfaces.
So, let’s do a case-by-case evaluation and see if we can put together 12-14 teams that meet the potential requirements, because what else do you have to do?
For each club’s breakdown, anything that represents a chance from what is currently true will be underlined.
Candidate: Birmingham Legion FC
Location (Metro population): Birmingham, Ala. (1,151,801)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Legion Field (FieldTurf, 71,594)
Potential owner: Stephens Family (reported net worth $4 billion)
Notes: Birmingham has a pretty strong candidacy. Having ditched the 5,000-seater BBVA Field for Legion Field, which sits 2.4 miles away, they’ve tapped into the city’s soccer history. Legion Field hosted portions of both the men’s and women’s tournaments at the 1996 Olympics, including a 3-1 U.S. loss to Argentina that saw 83,183 pack the house. The Harbert family seemed like strong ownership contenders, but since the death of matriarch Marguerite Harbert in 2015, it’s unclear where the wealth in the family is concentrated, so the Stephens seem like a better candidate. The only real knock that I can think of is that we really want to avoid having clubs play on turf, so I’d say they’re on the bubble of our platonic ideal USL Prem.
Candidate: Charleston Battery
Location (Metro population): Charleston, S.C. (713,000)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Johnson Hagood Stadium (Grass, ~14,700)
Potential owner: Anita Zucker (reported net worth $3 billion)
Notes: Charleston’s candidacy isn’t looking great. Already disadvantaged due to its undersized metro population, a move across the Cooper River to Johnson Hagood Stadium is cutting it close in terms of capacity. The stadium, home to The Citadel’s football team, used to seat 21,000, before 9,300 seats on the eastern grandstand were torn down in 2017 to deal with lead paint that had been used in their construction. Renovation plans include adding 3,000 seats back in, which could hit 15,000 if they bumped it to 3,300, but throw in a required sale by HCFC, LLC (led by content-creation platform founder Rob Salvatore) to chemical magnate Anita Zucker, and you’ll see there’s a lot of ifs and ands in this proposal.
Candidate: Charlotte Independence
Location (Metro population): Charlotte, N.C. (2,569, 213)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Jerry Richardson Stadium (Turf, 15,314)
Potential owner: James Goodnight (reported net worth $9.1 billion)
Notes: Charlotte ticks a lot of the boxes. A move from the Sportsplex at Matthews to UNC-Charlotte’s Jerry Richardson stadium meets capacity requirements, but puts them on to the dreaded turf. Regrettably, nearby American Legion Memorial Stadium only seats 10,500, despite a grass playing surface. With a sizeable metro population (sixth-largest in the USL Championship) and a possible owner in software billionaire James Goodnight, you’ve got some options here. The biggest problem likely lies in direct competition for market share against a much better-funded MLS Charlotte side due to join the league in 2021.
Candidate: Hartford Athletic
Location (Metro population): Hartford, Conn. (1,214,295)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Pratt & Whitney Stadium (Grass, 38,066)
Potential owner: Ray Dalio (reported net worth $18.4 billion)
Notes: Okay, I cheated a bit here, having to relocate Hartford to Pratt & Whitney Stadium, which is technically in East Hartford, Conn. I don’t know enough about the area to know if there’s some kind of massive beef between the two cities, but the club has history there, having played seven games in 2019 while Dillon Stadium underwent renovations. If the group of local businessmen that currently own the club manage to attract Dalio to the table, we’re on to something.
Candidate: Indy Eleven
Location (Metro population): Indianapolis, Ind. (2,048,703)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Lucas Oil Stadium (Turf, 62,421)
Potential owner: Jim Irsay (reported net worth of $3 billion)
Notes: Indy Eleven are a club that are SO CLOSE to being an ideal candidate – if it weren’t for Lucas Oil Stadium’s turf playing surface. Still, there’s a lot to like in this bid. I’m not going to lie, I have no idea what current owner and founder Ersal Ozdemir is worth, but it seems like there might be cause for concern. A sale to Irsay, who also owns the NFL Indianapolis (nee Baltimore) Colts, seems likely to keep the franchise there, rather than make a half-mile move to 14,230 capacity Victory Field where the AAA Indianapolis Indians play and expand from there.
Candidate: Louisville City FC
Location (Metro population): Louisville, Ky. (1,297,310)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Lynn Family Stadium (Grass, 14,000, possibly expandable to 20,000)
Potential owner: Wayne Hughes (reported net worth $2.8 billion)
Notes: I’m stretching things a bit here. Lynn Family stadium is currently listed as having 11,700 capacity that’s expandable to 14,000, but they’ve said that the ground could hold as many as 20,000 with additional construction, which might be enough to grant them a temporary waiver from USSF. If the stadium is a no-go, then there’s always Cardinal Stadium, home to the University of Louisville’s football team, which seats 65,000 but is turf. Either way, it seems like a sale to someone like Public Storage founder Wayne Hughes will be necessary to ensure the club has enough capital.
Candidate: Memphis 901 FC
Location (Metro population): Memphis, Tenn. (1,348,260)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Liberty Bowl Stadium (Turf, 58,325)
Potential owner: Fred Smith (reported net worth $3 billion)
Notes: Unfortunately for Memphis, AutoZone Park’s 10,000 seats won’t cut it at the D1 level. With its urban location, it would likely prove tough to renovate, as well. Liberty Bowl Stadium more than meets the need, but will involve the use of the dreaded turf. As far as an owner goes, FedEx founder Fred Smith seems like a good local option.
Candidate: Miami FC, “The”
Location (Metro population): Miami, Fla. (6,158,824)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Riccardo Silva Stadium (FieldTurf, 20,000)
Potential owner: Riccardo Silva (reported net worth $1 billion)
Notes: Well, well, well, Silva might get his wish for top-flight soccer, after all. He’s got the money, he’s got the metro, and his ground has the capacity. There is the nagging issue of the turf, though. Hard Rock Stadium might present a solution, including a capacity of 64,767 and a grass playing surface. It is worth noting, however, that this is the first profile where I didn’t have to find a new potential owner for a club.
Candidate: North Carolina FC
Location (Metro population): Durham, N.C. (1,214,516 in The Triangle)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Carter-Finley Stadium (Grass/Turf, 57,583)
Potential owner: Steve Malik (precise net worth unknown) / Dennis Gillings (reported net worth of $1.7 billion)
Notes: We have our first “relocation” in North Carolina FC, who were forced to trade Cary’s 10,000-seat WakeMed Soccer Park for Carter-Finley Stadium in Durham, home of the NC State Wolfpack and 57,583 of their closest friends. The move is a whopping 3.1 miles, thanks to the close-knit hub that exists between Cary, Durham and Raleigh. Carter-Finley might be my favorite of the stadium moves in this exercise. The field is grass, but the sidelines are artificial turf. Weird, right? Either way, it was good enough for Juventus to play a friendly against Chivas de Guadalajara there in 2011. Maybe the move would be pushed for by new owner and medical magnate Dennis Gillings, whose British roots might inspire him to get involved in the Beautiful Game. Straight up, though, I couldn’t find a net worth for current owner Steve Malik, though he did sell his company MedFusion for $91 million in 2010, then bought it back for an undisclosed amount and sold it again for $43 million last November. I don’t know if Malik has the juice to meet D1 requirements, but I suspect he’s close.
Candidate: Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC
Location (Metro population): Pittsburgh, Penn. (2,362,453)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Heinz Field (Grass, 64,450)
Potential owner: Henry Hillman (reported net worth $2.5 billion)
Notes: I don’t know a ton about the Riverhounds, but this move in particular feels like depriving a pretty blue-collar club from its roots. Highmark Stadium is a no-go from a seating perspective, but the Steelers’ home stadium at Heinz Field would more than meet the requirements and have a grass surface that was large enough to be sanctioned for a FIFA friendly between the U.S. WNT and Costa Rica in 2015. As for an owner, Tuffy Shallenberger (first ballot owner name HOF) doesn’t seem to fit the USSF bill, but legendary Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Hillman might. I’m sure you’re asking, why not the Rooney Family, if they’ll play at Heinz Field? I’ll tell you: I honestly can’t seem to pin down a value for the family. The Steelers are valued at a little over a billion and rumors persist that Dan Rooney is worth $500 million, but I’m not sure. I guess the Rooneys would work too, but it’s a definite departure from an owner in Shallenberger who was described by one journalist as a guy who “wears boots, jeans, a sweater and a trucker hat.”
Candidate: Saint Louis FC
Location (Metro population): St. Louis, Mo. (2,807,338)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Busch Stadium (Grass, 45,494)
Potential owner: William DeWitt Jr. (reported net worth $4 billion)
Notes: Saint Louis has some weirdness in making the jump to D1. Current CEO Jim Kavanaugh is an owner of the MLS side that will begin play in 2022. The club’s current ground at West Community Stadium isn’t big enough, but perhaps a timely sale to Cardinals owner William DeWitt Jr. could see the club playing games at Busch Stadium, which has a well established history of hosting other sports like hockey, college football and soccer (most recently a U.S. WNT friendly against New Zealand in 2019). The competition with another MLS franchise wouldn’t be ideal, like Charlotte, but with a big enough population and cross marketing from the Cardinals, maybe there’s a winner here. Wacko idea: If Busch doesn’t pan out, send them to The Dome. Sure, it’s a 60k turf closed-in stadium, but we can go for that retro NASL feel and pay homage to our nation’s soccer history.
Candidate: Tampa Bay Rowdies
Location (Metro population): Tampa, Fla. (3,068,511)
Time zone: Eastern
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Raymond James Stadium (Grass, 65,518)
Potential owner: Edward DeBartolo Jr. (reported net worth $3 billion)
Notes: This one makes me sad. Despite having never been there, I see Al Lang Stadium as an iconic part of the Rowdies experience. Current owner Bill Edwards proposed an expansion to 18,000 seats in 2016, but the move seems to have stalled out. Frustrated with the city’s lack of action, Edwards sells to one-time San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., who uses his old NFL connections to secure a cushy lease at the home of the Buccaneers in Ray Jay, the site of a 3-1 thrashing of Antigua and Barbuda during the United States’ 2014 World Cup Qualifying campaign.
Breather. Hey, we finished the Eastern Conference teams. Why are you still reading this? Why am I still writing it? Time is a meaningless construct in 2020 my friends, we are adrift in the void, fueled only by brief flashes of what once was and what may yet still be.
Candidate: Austin Bold FC
Location (Metro population): Austin, Texas (2,168,316)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Darrel K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium (FieldTurf, 95,594)
Potential owner: Michael Dell (reported net worth of $32.3 billion)
Notes: Anthony Precourt’s Austin FC has some unexpected competition and it comes in the form of tech magnate Michael Dell. Dell, were he to buy the club, would be one of the richest owners on our list and could flash his cash in the new first division. Would he have enough to convince Darrel K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium (I’m not kidding, that’s its actual name) to go back to a grass surface, like it did from ’96-’08? That’s between Dell and nearly 100,000 UT football fans, but everything can be had for the right price.
Candidate: Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC
Location (Metro population): Colorado Springs, Colo. (738,939)
Time zone: Mountain
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Falcon Stadium (FieldTurf, 46,692)
Potential owner: Charles Ergen (reported net worth $10.8 billion)
Notes: Welcome to Colorado Springs. We have hurdles. For the first time in 12 candidates, we’re back below the desired 1 million metro population mark. Colorado Springs actually plans to build a $35 million, 8,000 seat venue downtown that will be perfect for soccer, but in our timeline that’s 7,000 seats short. Enter Falcon Stadium, home of the Air Force Academy Falcons football team. Seems perfect except for the turf, right? Well, the tricky thing is that Falcon Stadium is technically on an active military base and is (I believe) government property. Challenges to getting in and out of the ground aside, the military tends to have a pretty grim view of government property being used by for-profit enterprises. Maybe Charles Ergen, founder and chairman of Dish Network, would be able to grease the right wheels, but you can go ahead and throw this into the “doubtful” category. It’s a shame, too. 6,035 feet of elevation is one hell of a home-field advantage.
Candidate: El Paso Locomotive FC
Location: El Paso, Texas
Time zone: Mountain
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Sun Bowl (FieldTurf, 51,500)
Potential owner: Paul Foster (reported net worth $1.7 billion)
Notes: God bless Texas. When compiling this list, I found so many of the theoretical stadium replacements were nearly serviceable by high school football fields. That’s insane, right? Anyway, Locomotive don’t have to settle for one of those, they’ve got the Sun Bowl, which had its capacity reduced in 2001 to a paltry 51,500 (from 52,000) specifically to accommodate soccer. Sure, it’s a turf surface, but what does new owner Paul Foster (who is only the 1,477th wealthiest man in the world, per Forbes) care, he’s got a team in a top league. Side note: Did you know that the Sun Bowl college football game is officially, through sponsorship, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl? Why is it not the Frosted Flakes Sun Bowl? Why is the cereal mascot the promotional name of the football game? What are you doing, Kellogg’s?
Candidate: Las Vegas Lights FC
Location: Las Vegas, Nev. (2,227,053)
Time zone: Pacific
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Allegiant Stadium (Grass, 61,000)
Potential owner: Sheldon Adelson (reported net worth $37.7 billion)
Notes: Sin City. You had to know that the club that once signed Freddy Adu because “why not” was going to go all out in our flashy hypothetical proposal. Thanks to my narrative control of this whole thing, they have. Adelson is the second-richest owner in the league and has decided to do everything first class. That includes using the new Raiders stadium in nearby unincorporated Paradise, Nevada, and spending boatloads on high profile transfers. Zlatan is coming back to the U.S., confirmed.
Candidate: New Mexico United
Location: Albuquerque, N.M.
Time zone: Mountain
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Isotopes Park – officially Rio Grande Credit Union Field at Isotopes Park (Grass, 13,500 – 15,000 with expansion)
Potential owner: Maloof Family (reported net worth $1 billion)
Notes: New Mexico from its inception went deep on the community vibe, and I’ve tried to replicate that in this bid. The home field of Rio Grande Cr---I’m not typing out the whole thing—Isotopes Park falls just within the expansion rules we set to make it to 15,000 (weird, right?) and they’ve found a great local ownership group in the Lebanese-American Maloof (formerly Maalouf) family from Las Vegas. The only thing to worry about would be the metro population, but overall, this could be one of the gems of USL Prem.
Candidate: Oklahoma City Energy FC
Location: Oklahoma City, Okla. (1,396,445)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark (Grass, 13,066)
Potential owner: Harold Hamm (reported net worth $14.2 billion)
Notes: There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow and it says it’s time to change stadiums and owners to make it to D1. A sale to oil magnate Harold Hamm would give the club the finances it needs, but Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark (home of the OKC Dodgers) actually falls outside of the boundary of what would meet capacity if 1,500 seats were added. Could the club pull off a move to Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma – home of the Oklahoma Sooners? Maybe, but at 20 miles, this would be a reach.
Candidate: Orange County SC
Location: Irvine, Calif. (3,176, 000 in Orange County)
Time zone: Pacific
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Angels Stadium of Anaheim (Grass, 43,250)
Potential owner: Arte Moreno (reported net worth $3.3 billion)
Notes: You’ll never convince me that Rangers didn’t choose to partner with Orange County based primarily on its name. Either way, a sale to MLB Angels owner Arte Moreno produces a fruitful partnership, with the owner choosing to play his newest club out of the existing Angels stadium in OC. Another baseball conversion, sure, but with a metro population of over 3 million and the closest thing this hypothetical league has to an LA market, who’s complaining?
Candidate: Phoenix Rising FC
Location: Phoenix, Ariz. (4,857,962)
Time zone: Arizona
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): State Farm Stadium (Grass, 63,400)
Potential owner: Ernest Garcia II (reported net worth $5.7 billion)
Notes: We’re keeping it local with new owner and used car guru Ernest Garcia II. His dad owned a liquor store and he dropped out of college, which is making me feel amazing about my life choices right now. Casino Arizona Field is great, but State Farm Stadium is a grass surface that hosted the 2019 Gold Cup semifinal, so it’s a clear winner. Throw in Phoenix’s massive metro population and this one looks like a lock.
Candidate: Reno 1868 FC
Location: Reno, Nev. (425,417)
Time zone: Pacific
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Mackay Stadium (FieldTurf, 30,000)
Potential owner: Nancy Walton Laurie (reported net worth $7.1 billion)
Notes: The Biggest Little City on Earth has some serious barriers to overcome, thanks to its low metro population. A sale to Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie and 1.6 mile-move to Mackay Stadium to split space with the University of Nevada, Reno makes this bid competitive, but the turf surface is another knock against it.
Candidate: Rio Grande Valley FC
Location: Edinburg, Texas (900,304)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): McAllen Memorial Stadium (FieldTurf, 13,500 – 15,000 with expansion)
Potential owner: Alice Louise Walton (reported net worth $45 billion)
Notes: Yes, I have a second straight Walmart heiress on the list. She was the first thing that popped up when I googled “McAllen Texas richest people.” The family rivalry has spurred Walton to buy a club as well, moving them 10 miles to McAllen Memorial Stadium which, as I alluded to earlier, is a straight up high school football stadium with a full color scoreboard. Toss in an additional 1,500 seats and you’ve met the minimum, despite the turf playing surface.
Candidate: San Antonio FC
Location: San Antonio, Texas (2,550,960)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Alamodome (FieldTurf, 64,000)
Potential owner: Red McCombs (reported net worth $1.6 billion)
Notes: I wanted to keep SAFC in the Spurs family, since the franchise is valued at $1.8 billion. That said, I didn’t let the Rooneys own the Riverhounds based on the Steelers’ value and it felt wrong to change the rules, so bring on Clear Channel co-founder Red McCombs. Toyota Field isn’t viable in the first division, but for the Alamodome, which was built in 1993 in hopes of attracting an NFL franchise (and never did), San Antonio can finally claim having *a* national football league team in its town (contingent on your definition of football). Now if only we could do something about that turf…
Candidate: San Diego Loyal SC
Location: San Diego, Calif. (3,317,749)
Time zone: Pacific
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): SDCCU Stadium (formerly Qualcomm) (Grass, 70,561)
Potential owner: Phil Mickelson (reported net worth $91 million)
Notes: Yes, golf’s Phil Mickelson. The existing ownership group didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to meet requirements, and Phil seemed to slot right in. As an athlete himself, he might be interesting in the new challenges of a top flight soccer team. Toss in a move to the former home of the chargers and you might have a basis for tremendous community support.
Candidate: FC Tulsa
Location: Tulsa, Okla. (991,561)
Time zone: Central
Stadium (playing surface, capacity): Skelly Field at H.A. Chapman Stadium (FieldTurf, 30,000)
Potential owner: George Kaiser ($10 billion)
Notes: I’m a fan of FC Tulsa’s rebrand, but if they want to make the first division, more changes are necessary. A sale to Tulsa native and one of the 100 richest men in the world George Kaiser means that funding is guaranteed. A move to Chapman Stadium would provide the necessary seats, despite the turf field. While the undersize population might be an issue at first glance, it’s hard to imagine U.S. Soccer not granting a waiver over a less than a 10k miss from the mark.
And that’s it! You made it. Those are all of the independent/hybrid affiliates in the USL Championship, which means that it’s time for our…
VERDICT: As an expert who has studied this issue for almost an entire day now, I am prepared to pronounce which USL Championships could be most ‘ready” for a jump to the USL Prem. A reminder that of the 27 clubs surveyed, 0 of them met our ideal criteria (proper ownership $, metro population, 15,000+ stadium with grass field).
Two of them, however, met almost all of those criteria: Indy Eleven and Miami FC. Those two clubs may use up two of our three available turf fields right from the outset, but the other factors they hit (particularly Silva’s ownership of Miami) makes them difficult, if not impossible to ignore for the top flight.
But who fill in the rest of the slots? Meet the entire 14-team USL Premier League:
Hartford Athletic
Indy Eleven
Louisville City FC
Miami FC
North Carolina FC
Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC
Tampa Bay Rowdies
Saint Louis FC
San Antonio FC
New Mexico United
Phoenix Rising FC
Las Vegas Lights FC
Orange County SC
San Diego Loyal SC
Now, I shall provide my expert rationale for each club’s inclusion/exclusion, which can be roughly broken down into four categories.
Firm “yes”
Hartford Athletic: It’s a good market size with a solid stadium. With a decent investor and good community support, you’ve got potential here.
Indy Eleven: The turf at Lucas Oil Stadium is no reason to turn down a 62,421 venue and a metro population of over 2 million.
Louisville City FC: Why doesn’t the 2017 & 2018 USL Cup champion deserve a crack at the top flight? They have the market size, and with a bit of expansion have the stadium at their own SSS. LCFC, you’re in.
Miami FC, “The”: Our other blue-chip recruit on the basis of ownership value, market size and stadium capacity. Yes, that field is turf, but how could you snub Silva’s chance to claim victory as the first division 1 club soccer team to play in Miami?
Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC: Pittsburgh sacrificed a lot to be here (according to my arbitrary calculations). Their market size and the potential boon of soccer at Heinz Field is an important inclusion to the league.
Saint Louis FC: Willie hears your “Busch League” jokes, Willie don’t care. A huge market size, combined with the absence of an NFL franchise creates opportunity. Competition with the MLS side, sure, but St. Louis has serious soccer history and we’re willing to bet it can support two clubs.
Tampa Bay Rowdies: With a huge population and a massive stadium waiting nearby, Tampa Bay seems like too good of an opportunity to pass up for the USL Prem.
Las Vegas Lights FC: Ostentatious, massive and well-financed, Las Vegas Lights FC is everything that the USL Premier League would need to assert that it didn’t intend to play second fiddle to MLS. Players will need to be kept on a short leash, but this is a hard market to pass up on.
Phoenix Rising FC: Huge population, big grass field available nearby and a solid history of success in recent years. No brainer.
San Diego Loyal SC: New club? Yes, massive population in a market that recently lost an absolutely huge sports presence? Also yes. This could be the USL Prem’s Seattle.
Cautious “yes”
New Mexico United: You have to take a chance on New Mexico United. The club set the league on fire with its social media presence and its weight in the community when it entered the league last season. The market may be slightly under USSF’s desired 1 million, but fervent support (and the ability to continue to use Isotopes Park) shouldn’t be discounted.
North Carolina FC: Carter-Finley’s mixed grass/turf surface is a barrier, to be sure, but the 57,000+ seats it offers (and being enough to offset other fully-turf offerings) is enough to put it in the black.
Orange County SC: It’s a top-tier club playing in a MLB stadium. I know it seems unlikely that USSF would approve something like that, but believe me when I say “it could happen.” Orange County is a massive market and California likely needs two clubs in the top flight.
San Antonio FC: Our third and only voluntary inclusion to the turf fields in the first division, we’re counting on San Antonio’s size and massive potential stadium to see it through.
Cautious “no”
Birmingham Legion FC: The town has solid soccer history and a huge potential venue, but the turf playing surface puts it on the outside looking in.
Memphis 901 FC: Like Birmingham, not much to dislike here outside of the turf playing surface at the larger playing venue.
Austin Bold FC: See the other two above.
FC Tulsa: Everything’s just a little bit off with this one. Market’s slightly too small, stadium has turf. Just not enough to put it over the top.
Firm “no”
Charleston Battery: Small metro and a small potential new stadium? It’s tough to say yes to the risk.
Charlotte Independence: A small new stadium and the possibility of having to compete with an organization that just paid over $300 million to join MLS means it’s best for this club to remain in the USL Championship.
Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC: When a club’s best chance to meet a capacity requirement is to host games at a venue controlled by the military, that doesn’t speak well to a club’s chances.
El Paso Locomotive FC: An undersized market and a turf field that meets capacity requirements is the death knell for this one.
Oklahoma City Energy FC: Having to expand a baseball field to meet requirements is a bad start. Having to potentially play 20 miles away from your main market is even worse.
Reno 1868 FC: Population nearly a half-million short of the federation’s requirements AND a turf field at the hypothetical new stadium makes impossible to say yes to this bid.
Rio Grande Valley FC: All the seat expansions in the world can’t hide the fact that McAllen Memorial Stadium is a high school stadium through and through.
Here’s who’s left in the 11-team Championship:
Birmingham Legion FC
Charleston Battery
Charlotte Independence
Memphis 901 FC
Austin Bold FC
Colorado Springs Switchbacks FC
El Paso Locomotive FC
Oklahoma City Energy FC
Reno 1868 FC
Rio Grande Valley FC
FC Tulsa
With MLS folding the six affiliates it has in USL League One, the league is a little bit thin (especially considering USSF’s requirements for 8 teams for lower level leagues), but seems definitely able to expand up to the necessary numbers with Edwards’ allusions to five new additions this year:
Chattanooga Red Wolves SC
Forward Madison FC
Greenville Triumph SC
Union Omaha
Richmond Kickers
South Georgia Tormenta
FC Tucson
Format of Assorted Leagues – This (like everything in this post) is pure conjecture on my part, but here are my thoughts on how these leagues might function in a first year while waiting for additional expansion.
USL Premier – We’ll steal from the 12-team Scottish Premiership. Each club plays the other 11 clubs 3 times, with either one or two home matches against each side. When each club has played 33 matches, the top six and bottom six separate, with every club playing an additional five matches (against each other team in its group). The top club wins the league. The bottom club is automatically relegated. The second-bottom club will enter a two-legged playoff against someone (see below) from the championship playoffs.
USL Championship -- 11 clubs is a challenge to schedule for. How about every club plays everyone else three times (either one or two home matches against each side)? Top four clubs make the playoffs, which are decided by two-legged playoffs. The winner automatically goes up. I need feedback on the second part – is it better to have the runner-up from the playoffs face the second-bottom club from the Premiership, or should the winner of the third-place match-up get the chance to face them to keep drama going in both playoff series? As for relegation, we can clearly only send down the last place club while the third division is so small.
USL League One – While the league is so small, it doesn’t seem reasonable to have the clubs play as many matches as the higher divisions. Each club could play the other six clubs four times – twice at home and twice away – for a very equitable 24-match regular season, which would help restrict costs and still provide a chance to determine a clear winner. Whoever finishes top of the table goes up.
And there you have it, a hypothetical look at how the USL could build a D1 league right now. All it would take is a new stadium for almost the entire league and new owners for all but one of the 27 clubs, who wouldn’t feel that their property would be massively devalued if they got relegated.
Well that’s our show. I’m curious to see what you think of all of this, especially anything that you think I may have overlooked (I’m sure there’s plenty). Anyway, I hope you’re all staying safe and well.

Hello Jamiroquai!
This is the thirteenth META post for a new expansive series I have been wanting to do for some time for the subreddit, "The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META'! This information will be eventually added to the Jamiroquai WIKI Page in it's entirety in the future but for the time being, it will be a recurring post series.
All of this information is being imparted to us from the Funkin Site fansite, massive thanks to my pal David Rowe for collecting all this important tour information during the nearly past +30 years of the band history, I hope everyone in the Reddit Jamily enjoys this & MUCH MORE TO COME! Cheers Reddit Jamily!

PREVIOUS POSTS OF THIS SERIES:

• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #1 | 1992
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #2 | 1993
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #3 | 1994
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #4 | 1995
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #5 | 1996
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #6 | 1997
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #7-#8 | 1998-1999
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #9-#10 | 2000-2001
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #11-#12 | 2002-2003
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #13-#14 | 2004-2005
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #15 | 2006
  
• The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #16-#18 | 2007-2009
  

The COMPLETE Year-By-Year Jamiroquai Tour History META | Year #19-#20: 2010-2011:

2010

Date Of Gig	Country	Concert & Additional Info
24 Jun 10 (Thu)	UK, London, Debut London	Performed: Revolution, When You Gonna Learn, If I Like It I Do It, Light Years, Virtual Insanity, Too Young To Die, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, Corner Of The Earth, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Love Foolosophy, Just Another Story, Deeper Underground. Exclusive 'warm-up' gig two days prior to the band supporting Stevie Wonder at the Hard Rock Calling event in London's Hyde Park.
26 Jun 10 (Sat)	UK, London, Hyde Park, Hard Rock Calling	Performed: Revolution, When You Gonna Learn, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Too Young To Die, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, Space Cowboy, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground. Jamiroquai are one of the support acts for Stevie Wonder, who headlines the second day of this three day festival in central London.
02 Jul 10 (Fri)	France, Arras, Main Square Festival	Performed: Revolution 1993, When You Gonna Learn, If I Like It I Do It, Light Years, Cosmic Girl, Black Capricorn Day, Little L, Alright, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground
11 Jul 10 (Sun)	Hungary, Zamardi, Balaton Sound Festival	Performed: Revolution 1993, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, Corner Of The Earth, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
14 Jul 10 (Wed)	Switzerland, Locarno, Moon and Stars Festival	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, When You Gonna Learn, Blow Your Mind, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
16 Jul 10 (Fri)	Italy, Naples, Neapolis Festival	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Blow Your Mind, When You Gonna Learn, Hooked Up, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Canned Heat, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground
18 Jul 10 (Sun)	France, Carhaix, Festival des Vieilles Charrues	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Black Capricorn Day, When You Gonna Learn, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
19 Jul 10 (Mon)	France, Carcassonne, Grand Theatre	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, When You Gonna Learn, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
21 Jul 10 (Wed)	France, Nimes, Nimes Arena	Performed: Revolution, When You Gonna Learn, If I Like It I Do It, Light Years, Little L, Cosmic Girl, Alright, Virtual Insanity, Rock Dust Light Star, Too Young To Die, Space Cowboy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
23 Jul 10 (Fri)	Switzerland, Paleo Festival	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, When You Gonna Learn, Just Another Story, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
24 Jul 10 (Sat)	Austria, Vienna, Nova Jazz Festival	No Info
26 Jul 10 (Mon)	Monaco, Monte Carlo, Sporting Club	Performed: Blow Your Mind, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up, When You Gonna Learn, Black Capricorn Day, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
27 Jul 10 (Tue)	Monaco, Monte Carlo, Sporting Club	Performed: You Give Me Something, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, Little L, Alright, Hooked Up/Just Another Story, When You Gonna Learn, Black Capricorn Day, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground. This is the second of two gigs at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club.
29 Jul 10 (Thu)	Belgium, Tienen, Suikerrock Festival	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Light Years, You Give Me Something, Little L, Alright, Black Capricorn Day, When You Gonna Learn, Space Cowboy, Cosmic Girl, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
06 Aug 10 (Fri)	Portugal, Sudoeste Festival	No Info
09 Sep 10 (Thu)	UK, London (Knightsbridge), Mandarin Oriental Hotel	Performed: Love Foolosophy, Smokin Mirrors, LifeLine, Hurtin, Rock Dust Light Star, Blue Skies, White Knuckle Ride. Exclusive press/record-company 'showcase' gig to promote the album Rock Dust Light Star.
28 Sep 10 (Tue)	UK, London, BBC Television Studios, Later with Jools Holland (tv) (broadcast date)	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Blue Skies, Deeper Underground
09 Oct 10 (Sat)	Colombia, Bogota, Nem Catacoa Festival	No Info
12 Oct 10 (Tue)	Brazil, Programa do Jo (tv) (broadcast date)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride, Love Foolosophy. Paul Turner did not perform with the band for this television appearance. His place was taken by Dale Davis.
16 Oct 10 (Sat)	Brazil, Sao Paulo, Natura Nos Festival	Performed: Revolution, High Times, If I Like It I Do It, Virtual Insanity, Rock Dust Light Star, Little L, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, Black Capricorn Day, When You Gonna Learn, Cosmic Girl, Blue Skies, Love Foolosophy, Rock Dust Light Star (second version), Canned Heat, Deeper Underground
20 Oct 10 (Wed)	UK, London (Kentish Town), Forum	Performed: Revolution, High Times, Rock Dust Light Star, Little L, Alright, Corner of the Earth, White Knuckle Ride, Black Capricorn Day, Cosmic Girl, Blue Skies, Love Foolosophy, Hurtin', Canned Heat, Deeper Underground. This concert is one of a series of concerts as part of the 'Q Awards 2010.'
22 Oct 10 (Fri)	Switzerland, Basel, Festival Hall, AVO Session Basel	Performed: Revolution, Rock Dust Light Star, Little L, Alright, Cosmic Girl, Black Capricorn Day, Blue Skies, Love Foolosophy, Canned Heat
28 Oct 10 (Thu)	Netherlands, Amsterdam, De Wereld Draait Door (tv)	Performed: Blue Skies (acoustic)
29 Oct 10 (Fri)	Netherlands, Amsterdam, Paradiso	Performed: Revolution, High Times, Little L, Alright (slow version), Hurting, Smoke and Mirrors, Black Capricorn Day, Rock Dust Light Star (acoustic), All Good In The Hood, Love Foolosophy, Cosmic Girl, Deeper Underground
31 Oct 10 (Sun)	UK, London (Wembley), The Fountain Studios, The X Factor (tv)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride. After performing Jay said he had 'reservations before appearing on the show' - and I'm sure the female judges did too after reading the 'quotes' that were printed from Jay in the Sun newspaper (UK) the previous day!
02 Nov 10 (Tue)	Italy, The X Factor (tv)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride
04 Nov 10 (Thu)	UK, London, AIR Studios, BBC Radio 2 In Concert	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, High Times, Smoke & Mirrors, Little L, Alright, All Good In The Hood, Love Foolosophy, She's A Fast Persuader, Blue Skies, Deeper Underground. 100 pairs of free tickets to this concert were given away by BBC Radio Two (UK). Concert broadcast on BBC Radio Two.
05 Nov 10 (Fri)	UK, London (Camden Town), Jazz Cafe	Performed: Revolution, High Times, Smoke and Mirrors, Hurtin', All Good In The Hood, Little L, Alright, Love Foolosophy, She's A Fast Persuader, Rock Dust Light Star, Blue Skies, White Knuckle Ride, Cosmic Girl, Deeper Underground. This gig was for winners of a competition organised by HMV.
09 Nov 10 (Tue)	Switzerland, Zurich, Kaufleuten	Tickets can be won via the 20min.ch website. This is a small 'showcase' gig.
15 Nov 10 (Mon)	France,Paris, L'Arc	Performed: Rock Light Dust Star, Smoke & Mirrors, All Good In The Hood, Hurtin', She's A Fast Persuader, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground. This is a private album launch gig promoted by Virgin Radio in France.
15 Nov 10 (Mon)	France, Paris, Grand Journal de Canal+ (tv)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride, Love Foolosophy, Rock Dust Light Star
20 Nov 10 (Sat)	Australia, Sydney (Point Piper), Take 40 Australia Party	Performed: Hurtin', Cosmic Girl, All Good In The Hood, She's A Fast Persuader, Alright, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground. An exclusive mansion house was rented in Point Piper to host the Take 40 Australia/Singstar party. The band performed outside in the garden on a stage built on top of a swimming pool!
21 Nov 10 (Sun)	Australia, Sydney, The X Factor (tv)	Performed: Canned Heat. The band performed Canned Heat and Jay sung alongside X-Factor finalist Sally Chatfield.
22 Nov 10 (Mon)	Australia, Sydney, The X Factor (tv)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride
24 Nov 10 (Wed)	Japan, Tokyo, Refreshing (tv)	Performed: White Knuckle Ride
24 Nov 10 (Wed)	Japan, Tokyo (Shinjuku)	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, White Knuckle Ride. The band performed a short set on a stage set up outside on the streets of Tokyo for the launch of the Azul by Moussy store in Shinjuku. This performance was not officially announced or confirmed, but word spread round and the streets were full of people. Shortly before the band came on stage guitarist Rob Harris tweeted 'About to perform I Shinjuku. Closing down a street, pandemonium.'
28 Nov 10 (Sun)	Germany, Stuttgart, Zapata	Performed: Cosmic Girl, Rock Dust Light Star, Smokin Mirrors, Alright, All Good In The Hood, Hurtin', Lifeline, She's A Fast Persuader, Blue Skies, White Knuckle Ride, Love Foolosophy, Deeper Underground
11 Dec 10 (Sat)	Norway, Oslo, Spektrum Arena, Nobel Peace Prize Concert	Performed: Canned Heat, Lifeline, Virtual Insanity. Following the concert the band performed an impromptu two hour gig at the hotel they were staying at!

2011

Date Of Gig	Country	Concert & Additional Info
21 Jan 11 (Fri)	UK, London, Alan Carr Show (tv) (recording date)	Performed: Lifeline. The show was broadcast on UK television three days after filming.
28 Jan 11 (Fri)	UK, The Sun Sessions (recording date)	Recording of a live 'session' for The Sun newspaper website.
30 Jan 11 (Sun)	UK, London, Comedy Rocks (recording date)	Performed: Lifeline, All Good In The Hood, (and a few little snippets of songs to introduce acts and go in/out of commercial breaks). Jamiroquai are the 'house band' on this ITV comedy television show. The show was recorded on 30 January.
07 Feb 11 (Mon)	France, Paris, Taratata (tv) (recording date)	Performed: Deeper Underground, Rock Dust Light Star, California Soul (by Marlena Shaw), White Knuckle Ride
07 Mar 11 (Mon)	France, Paris, L'Olympia	The band performed a set lasting around 45 minutes at a private show as part of a 15 year celebration of fashion label Paul & Joe during Paris Fashion Week.
18 Mar 11 (Fri)	Switzerland, Zurich, Hallenstadion	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, All Good In The Hood, Use The Force, Hang It Over, When You Gonna Learn, Blue Skies, Virtual Insanity, Smoke n Mirrors, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam, Hey Floyd, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, Feels Just Like It Should
21 Mar 11 (Mon)	Germany, Hamburg, O2 World	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vain, Cosmic Girl, All Good In The Hood, Use The Force, Hang It Over, When You Gonna Learn, Angeline, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam, Hey Floyd, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, Feels Just Like It Should
23 Mar 11 (Wed)	France, Paris, Bercy	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirrors, Use the Force, Hang it Over, You Give Me Something, She's a Fast Persuader, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, (Scam Break), All Good in the Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, Feels Just Like It Should
24 Mar 11 (Thu)	France, CANCELLED: Lyon, Halle Toni Garnier	On the afternoon of the concert the following message was posted at the Jamiroquai facebook page: Due to a tragic accident at the Halle Toni Garnier Arena, the gig at Lyon on 24th March (tonight) is regrettably cancelled. The band were shocked and saddened when told the news, and out of respect immediately felt the right decision was to cancel the show. A police investigation is taking place which would also have prevented the show from happening. We know how disappointed fans will feel, but can only say at this point, the gig will be re-arranged and we will have news of the revised date as soon as possible.
26 Mar 11 (Sat)	Germany, Munich, Olympiahalle	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, All Good In The Hood, Use The Force, You Give Me Something, Hurtin', Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Hey Floyd, Feels Just Like It Should, Alright, White Knuckle Ride
28 Mar 11 (Mon)	Austria, Vienna, Stadthalle	No Info
30 Mar 11 (Wed)	Italy, Milan, Forum	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke and Mirrors, Use the Force, You Give Me Something, Hurtin, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, All Good in the Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride, When You Gonna Learn
31 Mar 11 (Thu)	Italy, Mantua, Palabam	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirrors, Use the Force, ‎You Give Me Something, Hurtin', Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Use the Force, All Good in the Hood, Alright, White Knucle Ride
02 Apr 11 (Sat)	Italy, Turin, Pala Olympico	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirrors, Use The Force, You Give Me Something, Space Cowboy, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, All Good in the Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride
03 Apr 11 (Sun)	Italy, Florence, Mandela Forum	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirror, Use the Force, You Give Me Something, Hurtin', She's a Fast Persuader, Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, ‎Travelling Without Moving, All Good in the Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride
05 Apr 11 (Tue)	Luxembourg, Rockhal	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirrors, You Give Me Something, Hurtin', Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Love Foolosophy, Space cowboy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam, All Good In The Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride
06 Apr 11 (Wed)	Germany, Stuttgart, Porsche Arena	No Info
08 Apr 11 (Fri)	Germany, Berlin, O2 World	No Info
10 Apr 11 (Sun)	Belgium, Brussels, Vorst Nationaal	No Info
12 Apr 11 (Tue)	Germany, CANCELLED: Oberhausen, Konig Pilsener Arena	On the day of the concert Jamiroquai.com posted the following message "Unfortunately owing to illness tonights Jamiroquai concert in Oberhausen has had to be cancelled. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and will advise of the rescheduled date for the concert as soon as we can."
13 Apr 11 (Wed)	Netherlands, Rotterdam, Ahoy	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, Smoke & Mirrors, You Give Me Something, Hurtin', Little L, Canned Heat, Deeper Underground, Space Cowboy, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, All Good In The Hood, Alright, White Knuckle Ride
15 Apr 11 (Fri)	UK, London (Greenwich), O2 Arena	No Info
17 Apr 11 (Sun)	UK, Birmingham, LG Arena	No Info
19 Apr 11 (Tue)	UK, Manchester, MEN Arena	No Info
20 Apr 11 (Wed)	UK, Glasgow, Glasgow SECC	No Info
29 Apr 11 (Fri)	Chile, Santiago, Movistar Arena	No Info
18 May 11 (Wed)	France, Cannes, Hotel Martinez	Private gig during the Cannes Film Festival organised by clothing label Replay.
20 May 11 (Fri)	Argentina, Buenos Aires, Quilmes Rock Festival	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, You Give Me Something, Lifeline, Little L, Canned Heat, Space Cowboy, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Corner Of The Earth, Travelling Without Moving, Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
31 May 11 (Tue)	France, Paris, Casino de Paris	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Little L, Canned Heat, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam Intro, All Good In The Hood, Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride, Cosmic Girl. Private concert organised by Pression Live.
08 Jun 11 (Wed)	Estonia, Tallin, Saku Arena	No Info
10 Jun 11 (Fri)	Russia, Saint Petersburg, Ice Palace	No Info
12 Jun 11 (Sun)	Russia, Moscow, Crokus City Hall	No Info
14 Jun 11 (Tue)	Ukraine, Kiev, Palace Of Sports	No Info
18 Jun 11 (Sat)	Poland, Warsaw, Orange Festival	No Info
21 Jun 11 (Tue)	Croatia, Zagreb, T-Mobile Festival	No Info
24 Jun 11 (Fri)	Bulgaria, CANCELLED: Razlog, Elevation Festival	Jamiroquai cancelled their appearance at this festival because of an injury to Jay Kay's ankle.
26 Jun 11 (Sun)	Turkey, CANCELLED: Istanbul, Kurucesme Arena	Jamiroquai cancelled their appearance at this festival because of an injury to Jay Kay's ankle.
02 Jul 11 (Sat)	Romania, Mamaia, Orange Summer Party	No Info
03 Jul 11 (Sun)	Former Yugoslavic Republic Of Macedonia, Skopje, Philip-II-Arena	No Info
09 Jul 11 (Sat)	Serbia, Novi Sad, Exit Festival	No Info
13 Jul 11 (Wed)	Germany, CANCELLED: Straubing, Jazz Donau	The concert was unfortunately cancelled on 12 July.
14 Jul 11 (Thu)	Germany, CANCELLED: Mainz, Zollhafen Nordmole	The concert was unfortunately cancelled on 12 July.
16 Jul 11 (Sat)	Switzerland, Bern, Gurten Festival	No Info
17 Jul 11 (Sun)	Germany, Ulm, Radio Festival	No Info
19 Jul 11 (Tue)	France, Arcachon, Velodrome	No Info
21 Jul 11 (Thu)	Italy, Padova, Piazzola Sul Brenta	No Info
22 Jul 11 (Fri)	Italy, Rome, Ippodromo Delle Capannelle	No Info
24 Jul 11 (Sun)	Italy, Lucca, Piazza Napoleone	No Info
26 Jul 11 (Tue)	France, CANCELLED: Bayonne, Arena	This concert was cancelled at the very last minute and the following statement was made the following day. Jay Kay would like to apologise to disappointed fans for the cancellation of last night's show in France. Jay's on-going groin injury has been diagnosed as a hernia which will be need to be operated on later in the summer. Following an MRI scan last week specialists had advised rest but Jay has insisted he wants to try to finish the current run of dates. Doctors have said that provided he manages the pain sufficiently he can continue performing if he feels able. During the course of the past two days the pain flared up again and yesterday he reluctantly decided he did not feel he well enough to perform last night. After two days rest he is hopeful he will be able to complete the remaining 4 shows of the current run, including Toulon tomorrow night. Jay said "I would like to thank fans for their understanding, this is a very frustrating injury and some days the pain is just too extreme to perform to a standard I believe is acceptable. I promise I will do my best to come back out again soon when I'm fully fit and am optimistic I'll be able to pull off the remaining shows of the run."
28 Jul 11 (Thu)	France, Nice, Palais Nikaia	No Info
29 Jul 11 (Fri)	France, Toulon, Six Four Festival	Performed: Black Capricorn Day, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Morning Glory, Little L, Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam, Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
31 Jul 11 (Sun)	Spain, Barcelona, Poble Espanyol	No Info
03 Aug 11 (Wed)	Spain, Malaga (Auditorium Municipal)	No Info
07 Aug 11 (Sun)	Ibiza Privilege Club	No Info
05 Sep 11 (Mon)	Turkey, Istanbul, Kurucesme Arena	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Morning Glory (Intro), Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Use The Force (Interlude), Travelling Without Moving, Scam (Break), Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
09 Sep 11 (Fri)	Italy, Monza, Stadio Brianteo, F1 Rocks	Event organised as part of the Italian F1 Grand Prix.
29 Sep 11 (Thu)	Brazil, Rio de Janeiro (Barra da Tijuca), Olympic Park Rock City, Rock in Rio	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Morning Glory, Canned Heat, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
20 Nov 11 (Sun)	Germany, Oberhausen, Konig Pilsener Arena	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Scam (break), Alright, Deeper Underground. Due to heavy fog in London on the day of the concert the bandmembers arrived at the venue late with no time for a soundcheck. The concert started slightly later than planned and there were many complaints about the sound quality because of the lack of soundcheck. This is the rescheduled concert that was cancelled on 12 April.
22 Nov 11 (Tue)	France, Paris, Bercy	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Dynamite, Feels Just Like It Should, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
23 Nov 11 (Wed)	France, Nantes, Zenith Nantes Metropole	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Use The Force, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Alright, Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
25 Nov 11 (Fri)	France, Strasbourg, Zenith	Performed: Rock Dust Light Star, Main Vein, Cosmic Girl, High Times, Little L, Interlude, Canned Heat, All Good In The Hood, Hey Floyd, Use The force, Love Foolosophy, Travelling Without Moving, Alright, Hurtin', Deeper Underground, White Knuckle Ride
27 Nov 11 (Sun)	France, Limoges, Zenith	No Info
28 Nov 11 (Mon)	France, Toulouse, Zenith	No Info
30 Nov 11 (Wed)	France, Lyon	No Info
03 Dec 11 (Sat)	Belgium, CANCELLED: Antwerp, Lotto Arena	The Jamiroquai Facebook page wrote the following on 28 October - "We are sorry to announce the cancellation of the gig at Lotto Arena, Antwerp (Belgium), on 3rd December. This is due to unforeseen logistical problems, which have led to the difficult decision to cancel the gig. We hope to re-arrange the gig in 2012."
10 Dec 11 (Sat)	UK, Silverstone, Red Bull F1 Racing Team Party	No Info
31 Dec 11 (Sat)	Australia, Sydney, Glebe Island	No Info

(Note: This review exceeds Reddit’s 40,000 character limit for text posts so three additional comments are posted in this thread with the rest of the review. Sorting comments by “old” will bring them up for you in order.)
 

EPISODE I: THE HUNCHED BACK MENACE

 
Welcome to Old BasedWorld
Hurried crowds, sparse synths and ringing cathedral bells in the streets of Old BasedWorld set the scene for our journey. High above the town in the Old BasedWorld Cathedral, a young man with a hunched back dreams of a brighter tomorrow.
 
Staring Out My Window
“The only way you could really feel this pain is from the BasedGod” – From this opening line along with the somber instrumental accompanying it Lil B makes it clear that this project will be different from the hyphy material he’d been releasing since Black Ken. The BasedGod’s stirring musical backdrop allows Brandon to reminisce on the times he spent as a troubled youth staring out the windows of Old BasedWorld’s Cathedral (as pictured on the album cover), dreaming of a normal life with the rest of the citizens across the bridge in San Francisco New BasedWorld.
 
The Many Sides of a Genius
Using a compilation of voicemails taken directly from Old BasedWorld’s only working phone, Lil B uses these messages to convey his own message. The people leaving these voicemails were clearly important people in Brandon’s life and, one could say, are some of the “sides of genius” that helped him develop into the man he is today. It continues the album’s narrative of a brilliant soul whose talent and ambition are unnoticed by the outside world, with only those who are closest to him recognizing the genius within.
 
Ain’t Gon Pick Up
One of the people leaving a voicemail on “The Many Sides of a Genius” mentioned how Lil B never picks up his phone, so it’s only appropriate that the next song has B discussing why he chooses not to answer the phone in Old BasedWorld’s Cathedral. It also ties back in to the theme of unrecognized talent, with Brandon stating in the chorus “I ain’t gon pick up, nobody gives a fuck so I don’t give a fuck”. References to stomach pains and Crohn’s disease further highlight how B is feeling “sick to [his] stomach” of being disrespected: by the end of the song, the listener fully understands why Lil B wouldn’t be interested in picking up his phone.
 
Hunchback of BasedGod
One of the album’s great conceptual triumphs. Lil B states from the jump that this song is meant to be a set of instructions for the Hunchback of BasedGod for his eventual descent from his perch back into the town of Old BasedWorld and beyond. It’s still unclear whether or not Lil B himself is the Hunchback, the BasedGod, the Hunchback of BasedGod, or none of the above: the abstractness allows the listener to form their own perceptions and create their own story. Again, there’s a continuation of themes from the previous songs, with further references to stomach pains and issues of self-worth and meaninglessness coming from Lil B: with so much pain in this world, is it even worth it for the Hunchback to enter society? By the end of the song, Brandon affirms that it is, stating, “Do it and don’t just watch/ Step in the game and have fun/ We all townspeople, we one/”. As such, the Hunchback leaves the cathedral, passing through the cobblestone streets of Old BasedWorld while hushed onlookers stare silently, as he ventures out towards New BasedWorld.
 
Berkeley San Francisco Its the BasedGod
This song is delivered from the perspective of the Hunchback, as revealed in the first line of the first verse: “I got the hunched back from all the depression”. Themes of struggle from the previous tracks reemerge, but you get the sense that the Hunchback is beginning to build up his self-esteem, boasting how he refuses to conform to the looks and expectations of the other townsfolk. He also seems to have gotten past the lack of recognition that was hindering him on “The Many Sides of a Genius” and “Ain’t Gon Pick Up”, as he proudly exclaims, “Who cares if I’m famous?” This gives the Hunchback the confidence to finally travel across the bridge he so often observed from his cathedral window. The townspeople are stunned: the Golden Gate BasedWorld Bridge had been badly damaged and decayed for decades, with no one daring to cross in the fears that it would collapse. But the Hunchback’s persistence leads him to make it across unscathed.
 
Outer Mission Music
With his feet firmly set in New BasedWorld, the Hunchback visits the colony of Outer Mission, a tight-knit community of New BasedWorld inhabitants who are unsure of how to react to their visitor. Lil B spends much of this track describing his interactions with the colony’s locals, which include Justin Timberlake, Alex Rodriguez, and Lionel Messi as tribe members. He also manages to make the situation surrounding the identities of his disparate personalities even more confusing, stating, “Lil B, I’ve seen him in public/ Is that the Hunchback of BasedGod, or is that the BasedGod? It’s BasedGod/” Will we ever know the difference?
 
Wake Up Get High Go Back to Sleep
In spite of a renewed sense of confidence brought upon by his decision to leave his old life behind, not all is perfect in the Hunchback’s mind. On this joint (pun intended) he harkens back to his days in the cathedral, where he would spend his mornings smoking heavy doses of marijuana in order to numb the pain of his seclusion, often to the point of losing consciousness. It’s also worth noting that the only weed that grows naturally in Old BasedWorld is mids, so the Hunchback would need to smoke a significant amount to achieve the desired effect.
 
Video Game That I Still Play
The irony in the title of this song is that the “video game” the BasedGod is referencing here is in fact a metaphor for his own life’s journey. As he so aptly states during the chorus: “My life is like a video game/ It’s been so weird, but I still play”. The fact of the matter is, Lil B could have chosen to rage quit this game of life long ago, but his perseverance has brought him to a new place of inner peace within the confines of New BasedWorld, even if the townsfolk are still unsure of how to respond to their new neighbor.
 
I Rather Die Then Go Home
At the end of the previous song, the Hunchback makes reference to an incident where he visited the Café Au Coquelet, a boutique restaurant in New BasedWorld. Upon his arrival, he received a similar reaction to those he used to receive in his homeland: “I go to restaurants, people stop smiling”. While some of the townspeople have begun to appreciate his presence, many of the other New BasedWorld residents still recognize his outsider status and continue to shun him as a result. This song is B’s response, with a firm affirmation that he would rather die than have to go back to the life of isolation he led in the Old BasedWorld Cathedral, where he wasn’t really living life to begin with. That said, the song’s mistitling of based comrade The-Dream’s original line of “I’d rather die than go home” as “I rather die then go home” leaves the Hunchback’s true intentions up for interpretation.
 
Crying in the Club
After finishing a five-course meal at the boutique, B ventures out to the party district of New BasedWorld, where he surprisingly gets admitted to one of the most exclusive night clubs in the land. As he observes the scene, the crushing reality of the differences between himself and the other clubgoers becomes apparent. A single tear is shed, followed by another, and another, until the BasedGod is in a state of full-blown emotional distress. In spite of his condition, he makes it known that he isn’t ashamed of wearing his heart on his sleeve, openly admitting in the chorus: “I don’t really care if I hurt myself, I don’t really care who sees”. This unyielding display of raw emotion brings the music and dancing to a halt. All eyes are now fixated on the strange being with the tear-stained T-shirt and the disfigured spine. He lets out a desperate plea: “I just want a hug…” To the surprise of the Hunchback, the residents of New BasedWorld collectively embrace him, looking past his outer deformities to recognize the beautiful soul that exists within. Historians would later acknowledge this moment as the primary catalyst for the BasedWorld Revolution™.
 
 

EPISODE II: THE COLD WARS

 
Voyage to Berkeley California
Meanwhile, down in the town of Old BasedWorld, the townsfolk slept restlessly, their dreams invaded by shadowy fake based figures digging away at their souls. Every day, people would wake and stare at the Old BasedWorld Cathedral. Why was the Hunchback not ringing the bells that had kept the evil spirits of the fake based realm out of their lives? It was then they realized that the Hunchback had crossed the sacred bridge and ventured to New BasedWorld. Frantic to reconcile with the gatekeeper they had long taken for granted, a group of the townspeople decide to bravely seek out the BasedGod in the hopes that he will return. However, they recognize that crossing the BasedWorld Bridge is something no mortal man is capable of doing and living to tell the tale. Using a secret map rumored to have been drawn up by Captain 66 himself, a group of citizens board a modest ship to cross the San Francisco BasedWorld Bay on a warm summer’s eve. Will they survive? Only time will tell.
 
Across the Sea
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we are presented with the greatest plot twist this side of the Fingerpoke of Doom: It turns out Lil B is not actually the Hunchback and/or the BasedGod after all.
 
Perhaps we should have known all along...
 
Indeed, unbeknownst to the townspeople (who themselves had just assumed all three entities were combined as one person), Lil B has remained in BasedWorld all along in disguise. About halfway into their journey across the Bay, Lil B’s resentment towards his shipmates and their longing for the Hunchback’s return gets the best of him, and the violent persona exhibited on tracks like “Murder Rate” and “Domestic Violence Case” overtakes Lil B’s natural pacifist tendencies. In a fit of rage, he attacks them, “knocking them off the boat” into the shark-infested waters and keeping all of the remaining LifeVests to himself. B himself recognizes the consequences of his actions, ending the song by saying, “This darkness… It’s scary.” Nonetheless, he refuses to be stopped in his mission to visit New BasedWorld and confront the Hunchback all on his own.
 
Where Is the Potion
Having arrived on the shores of New BasedWorld, Lil B ventures into town. Knowing that the only way to find the elusive Hunchback is through the townspeople who may have caught a glimpse of him, he travels to the aforementioned nightclub, with floors still drenched in the BasedGod’s tears from earlier, asking, “Where is the potion?” The response he’s given comes in the form of several bottles of liquor, which quickly dispel any notions of anxiety or self-doubt that may have stopped Lil B from completing his mission. A few of the club’s premium members willingly show him the spots around town where they had spotted the Hunchback, but any further clues of his whereabouts are hard to come by. Before they know it, they find themselves at one of the many riverbanks in New BasedWorld, where a celebration of the BasedGod’s glory is in full swing.
 
Riverdance
This instrumental is what Lil B and the clubgoers heard as they made their way to the bank of the river. Speaking with more of the natives, Lil B learns more of the Hunchback’s travels and experiences in New BasedWorld and begins to put the pieces together in his mind for where the BasedGod may be headed next.
 
Wolves and Snakes
As Lil B continues to plot his course, the BasedGod, who has just finished eating a salad on his way to the colony of Chaddick, senses a disturbance in the Based Force, feeling as though him and his hunched back may be in grave danger. He ponders on the wolves and the snakes that he was forced to deal with in his past life and reflects on the growth he’s experienced since leaving the dreaded, darkened halls of the Cathedral. In spite of this, he can’t help but shake the feeling that, like in the proverbial rear-view mirror, one of these wolves and/or snakes may be closer than they appear…
 
Meeting on UC Berkeley Campus Today
Undeterred, the Hunchback makes his way to UC Berkeley, New BasedWorld’s sole institution of higher learning. After giving a spirited 90 minute lecture on the power of positivity (modeled after previous lectures at such high class institutions as NYU,Carnegie Mellon and Princeton), the BasedGod is greeted by a mass of adoring students at the university. The male students beg for the BasedGod to fuck their bitches, and said bitches are more than willing to oblige. In a grand spectacle, the Hunchback has consensual sex with all 1,000 of the college’s female attendees while this instrumental blares out of speakers across the campus, being awarded with a trophy as a result of his success.
 
Artistic or Autistic
Elsewhere in New BasedWorld, Lil B attempts to strategize his next move. However, planning the escapade is made difficult thanks to B’s second most potent Internet distraction after his Twitter feed: Reddit. Going through a series of faked based comments on the hiphopheads subreddit, Lil B is particularly struck by a comment suggesting that he may in fact be suffering from the neurological disorder autism. The assertion is an eye-opening moment for him: after all, the elevated levels of lead found in Old BasedWorld’s drinking water had been a concern amongst the town’s scientists for years, and his own behaviors and thought patterns seemed to align relatively well with the common symptoms of the condition. After a brief moment of solemnity, Lil B realizes that his immaculate catalog of music has been made possible because of who he is, and if he is autistic, it is an essential component of his artistic output. This song is the result of this revelation.
 
Free 03
Our story continues as the BasedGod chooses to use his newfound fame and glory to give back to the New BasedWorld community. He begins volunteering at the New BasedWorld Penitentiary, espousing his worldview and giving advice to the inmates on how to make positive contributions to society after they have served their time. One particular inmate catches his eye: a fellow hip hop artist named 03 Greedo, who was arrested a few years earlier in a drug trafficking scheme. The Hunchback’s conversations with the young man have a profound impact on him, and in the weeks and months to come, Greedo becomes the model prisoner for other inmates to aspire to be, with intentions of joining the ministry upon his release. The BasedGod, proud of what he was able to accomplish, promises to dedicate a song on his new 50 song mixtape to Greedo.
 
Rhode Island
Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area, the seventh least populous, but is also the second most densely populated. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound. It also shares a small maritime border with New York. Providence is the state capital and most populous city in Rhode Island.
 
As Rhode Island is located on the opposite side of the continent from Old and New BasedWorld, it has nothing to do with this story other than this brief mention of its existence.
 
I’m Depressed Again
While the Hunchback is continuing to make great strides in improving the lives of the people in New BasedWorld, he continues to be fazed by an ever-growing sense of something troubling being on the horizon. A dark evil is emerging that he cannot foresee, and he worries that by the time he learns what this evil may be, it will be too late. This sends the BasedGod back into a spiraling depression, one not felt since the last day he had spent alone in the cathedral. He warns his closest confidants of the impending doom, saying, “Real talk… Feel it through your heart. Feel it through the spirit. You can feel it through the dark, cold as ever.”
 
Café Au Coquelet
At the same time as the Hunchback is experiencing this sense of dread, Lil B has made his way to Café Au Coquelet, one of the first spots in New BasedWorld that was graced by the power and the glory of the BasedGod. Lil B immediately detects the Hunchback’s prior presence in the vicinity: all of the restaurant’s guests are acting unusually positive and based towards one another, and the only dish that anyone has ordered over the past week has been the clams casino. Lil B also recognizes that the music playing in the background of the restaurant (the instrumental that is this song) was created by the BasedGod. Enraged, he stands up on the restaurant tables and begins to lambast the townsfolk for having fallen for the lies and deceit of a false prophet. He dictates a new philosophy, beginning by disposing of the food everybody has already ordered and teaching them how to cook for themselves. Before long, the entire restaurant is cooking to “Like a Martian”. A growing sect of New BasedWorld begins to emerge in objection to the Hunchback’s teachings, with Lil B and the swag movement as their new leader.
 
Downtown Berkeley Protest
Back in the colony of Berkeley, the BasedGod is gathering his followers together for a celebration of optimism and goodwill unto others. His new instrumental track plays as the Hunchback’s followers enjoy the festivities. It is at this moment that the BasedGod feels a searing pain encompass his entire being, and he recognizes that this is the moment he has been fearing for the past few weeks: the evil has arrived. A mass of residents from the other New BasedWorld colonies have descended upon the party with torches and handguns. Dressed in pink shirts, tiny pants and Vans sneakers, they march to the center of the crowd in unison, yelling nonsensical phrases such as “Figaro!” and “Martha Stewart!” as the frightened followers of the Hunchback look on. At the front of the mob is the leader, the enigmatic Lil B. He flashes a slight smile at the BasedGod, who stares directly back into the eyes of his former student. As the crowd of pretty residents begin to hurl insults and grievances towards the based residents, Lil B raises one hand, and the noise stops. Then, he begins to walk away. B’s worshipers follow him out of the city square in silent unison. Many of the Hunchback’s flock wonder if this is the end of the madness. However, the BasedGod knows deep down inside that this is just the beginning.
 
 

EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE BITCH

 
Bring the BasedGod and Lil B Gifts
This is a Cold War, and we know what each side is fighting for. The New BasedWorld citizens have been divided into an even split, with half of the townsfolk (now calling themselves the “Task Force”) following the ways of the Hunchback and the other half (now calling themselves the “Bitch Mob”) committing themselves to the teachings of Lil B. In a frantic attempt to prove the superiority of one leader over the other, the townspeople begin to bestow luxurious gifts and rewards upon their idols in an attempt to make one appear more grandiose than the other. Lil B relishes in his newfound fame, gladly accepting a plethora of PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360 games from his fans, along with a fully registered copy of FL Studio to allow him to produce beats on the same level as the BasedGod. Meanwhile, on the other side of the village, the Hunchback seems uncomfortable embracing his new role as a worshipped deity. Having become accustomed to people ignoring him or being flat-out disgusted by his appearance, the adjustment to now becoming the leader of thousands of men is one that is not made easily.
 
Body Shaming
The opposing sides of New BasedWorld’s population quickly transition from honoring their respective leaders to creating smear campaigns against the opposition. One of the Bitch Mob’s most talented computer hackers manages to secure nude photographs of the Hunchback and distribute them online, highlighting the embarrassing weight gain that the BasedGod has endured over the past 5 years. The Hunchback is at first distraught upon hearing the news: “Why are they body shaming me? Why would they say all these mean things?” It is only when the BasedGod taps into his creamy center, where all the gooey happy-lovin' goo sits that allows him to be the nicest, most compassionate person he’s ever been, that he’s able to let the world know that he will not fall down so easy. He releases this song on his MySpace as a rebuttal, saying, “There's no reason to bully people and make fun of folks”. The Task Force immediately lauds the song as the perfect response to the scandal, while the Bitch Mob lashes out at the lack of trap drums and celebrity-based adlibs.
 
Stopped Talkin’ But I Still Rap
“So self-conscious, you feel me?”: Despite the approval of his comrades, the BasedGod is unable to shake the ever-persistent sense of self-hatred that is being exacerbated by the actions of the Bitch Mob. He feels his mind regressing to a prior state of fear and insecurity akin to that of his days spent in isolation in the Cathedral. Deep inside, the Hunchback finds himself in the midst of an existential crisis: how can one speak on the benefits of positivity and self-love when one does not truly love thyself? What would the consequences be of allowing this negativity to manifest itself in real time? Surely, an admission of hopelessness would spell defeat for the Task Force, allowing Lil B and his army of pretty townsfolk to rule the land for all eternity. But it would also be hypocritical for the BasedGod to continue to preach the Gospel of Based when his mind is not in a based state of being. In a move that would prove to be one of the most shocking of the Cold War, the Hunchback gathers his followers in the town square to announce that he will be taking an oath of silence until peace can be found between the two factions of New BasedWorld, capping off his decree with the debut of his ‘final’ song, “Stopped Talkin’ But I Still Rap”. The crowd gasps and devolves into hysteria, with thousands pleading for the Hunchback to reconsider, rightly worried over what would become of the based movement without the voice of its sole originator. But the BasedGod is persistent. He silently walks through the crowd, hugging each of his based brethren (and consensually face-fucking some of the females) before departing, possibly for good. Some time after midnight, he successfully crosses the Based Bridge and returns to Old BasedWorld, making his way back to the Cathedral without a single soul noticing his presence. He travels to the deepest, darkest depths of the Cathedral’s caverns, located miles beneath the Earth’s surface, where he begins an indefinite period of contemplation and meditation. This sequence of events would prove to be a milestone of the BasedWorld Revolution™, and would be forever immortalized in the cover art for the Where Did the Sun Go? mixtape.
 
Intermission
It was a bad time for both Old and New BasedWorld. The Hunchback just stayed inside his Cathedral and he never came out. People said his brain was infected by fake based devils. The Task Force hurt the most of all: without their leader, they crumbled and succumbed to the will of the Bitch Mob. Lil B’s tyrannical rise to power was all but complete. In the months that followed, he would expand his territorial control, conquering the villages of Albany and East Oakland and even sending troops to claim regions of land as far away as Hawaii and Nepal.
 
Nearly a full year after the disappearance of the BasedGod, Lil B’s armies waged war on Old BasedWorld. The BasedWorld Bridge was destroyed, leaving Lil B and his followers (who controlled the naval fleets) as the only ones who had access to both sides of the territory. After taking most of its citizens hostage and establishing a new structure of government with Lil B at the helm, the Bitch Mob began to formulate its Ultimate Bitch Plan to capture the Hunchback. One night, they rushed the Old BasedWorld Cathedral, setting it ablaze and burning the once-iconic structure to the ground in the hopes of finding the charred body of the BasedGod buried underneath the rubble. When they failed to retrieve the body, the contingent of pretty boys and girls was ordered by Lil B to venture underground, as an ancient prophecy had foretold the Hunchback’s journey to the center of the Earth. Armed with assault rifles of all varieties, they began their descent into the depths of the caverns.
 
However, the deeper they traveled, the more they became disillusioned by their actions, and the actions of their once-beloved leader Lil B. They did not realize that the closer they got to the Hunchback, the more they were swayed by his righteousness and his way of being. Soon, they were no more than a few hundred yards from locating the BasedGod. It was at this moment that they had a great awakening, recognizing the error of their ways and freeing themselves from the spell that had been placed on them by Lil B. They abandoned their mission, instead choosing to return to the surface without the Hunchback. Lil B, furious at the group’s reluctance to complete their task, began to chastise his former followers, and prepared to issue one of his infamous curses upon them, one which would result in certain death. Having become completely overwhelmed with the guilt and the shame of their exploits as part of Lil B’s army (and also acknowledging the fact that none of them would ever win an NBA championship now without signing to Golden State), they instead turned the guns Lil B had given to them on themselves, committing mass suicide on top of the remains of the Old BasedWorld Cathedral. Thousands of Old BasedWorld onlookers stared in paralyzing shock as the sound of hundreds of guns discharged at once. What followed was several hours of silence, as Lil B, covered in the blood of his former troops, coldly stared at the mass of dead bodies, trying his best to process what had just taken place.
 
 

EPISODE IV: A NEW HO(PE)

 
The Waterfront West Berkeley at Night
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Bay, most of the former Task Force members still remaining in New BasedWorld have all but accepted their fates, purchasing clothing that is too tight for them to wear comfortably and listening to the government-approved “Cooking Music” playlist on a constant loop. A small contingent of Hunchback loyalists remain, holding private meetings in the basement of the Café Au Coquelet and listening to the “Based Music” playlist in shrouded secrecy. Upon learning that Lil B and a commission of his troops had left to invade Old BasedWorld, the few remaining Task Force members felt it was safe enough to worship the Hunchback out in the open one last time. As most of the Bitch Mob members who had crossed the BasedWorld Bay with Lil B had come from the village of West Berkeley, the BasedGod’s loyal comrades choose the village’s Waterfront area as the gathering place for the ceremony. Unbeknownst to any of the group’s members, the mass suicides in Old BasedWorld were taking place at the exact same time as the celebration in New BasedWorld was commencing. The Task Force members rejoice, harmoniously singing the BasedGod’s favorite songs of worship: “B.O.R. (Birth of Rap)”, “The Age of Information” and “No Black Person Is Ugly” are belted out towards the heavens. Suddenly, the youngest of the Task Force’s members (who goes by the name of u/insabnma) feels a twinge underneath his bare feet. He looks down at the ground and notices that he has stepped on a golden USB drive, encrusted with diamonds and embroidered with the word “BASED” in all caps. The curious group of based boys and girls procure a laptop and, upon plugging the drive in, are amazed to find a .zip folder of 13 unreleased instrumentals credited as being produced by the BasedGod. Even more amazingly, the first song is entitled “The Waterfront West Berkeley at Night”: the exact place and time of day that they are performing their ritual. The Task Force members ecstatically listen to the new music, with several being driven to the point of involuntary orgasm. Throughout the night, word spreads throughout New BasedWorld of the drive’s existence, and suddenly, the followers of the Hunchback have a renewed sense of hope.
 
Games of Berkeley and Magic Cards
The next evening, thousands of Task Force members, old and new, join together in the town square of Berkeley, the last place that the Hunchback was seen alive. A Task Force party has commenced, with various games being played and the Based Music playlist blasting from the colony’s speakers. As it is nearing midnight, the townspeople are each given a magic life card, rumored to be the same life cards that were discussed in the BasedGod’s legendary philosophical diatribe [“Life on Earth”](). At the stroke of 12, the second of the BasedGod’s 13 secret instrumentals is played, as the crowd enthusiastically chants “Thank You BasedGod” along to the beat. The expectation is that the Hunchback will hear their prayer and reemerge by the end of the song. However, this was not to be the case: the instrumental ends, with the BasedGod nowhere to be found. For a moment, the Task Force is disheartened, wondering if the signs pointing to a return of the Hunchback were too good to be true. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a shooting star flies across the Berkeley sky, the brightest and most brilliant star that anyone in the colony has ever seen. It continues to arc across the northwestern skyline and appears to land in the village of Albany, a formerly based territory which has been overrun with members of the Bitch Mob. The Task Force is again filled with a renewed sense of hope at this discovery, as they courageously follow the signs that could lead them to the Hunchback’s holy ascension.
 
Walking Through Albany California
Upon arriving in Albany, the Task Force members notice a contingent of Bitch Mob members huddled around a large crater, approximately one mile in diameter. Evidently, this is where the shooting star had landed. One of the senior members of the tribe is examining the star, which, contrary to its once large and brilliant appearance, has been reduced to the size of a small rock. Several Bitch Mob members now make their way into the crater to examine the fallen star. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, the once-dead star explodes into thousands of pieces, each piece shooting out towards the heads of a Bitch Mob member (though some less fortunate members wind up getting hit in the balls). When the star touches each member, it instantly uploads the third of the BasedGod’s secret instrumentals directly into their cerebral cortex. The Bitch Mob members are at first displeased at the lack of poorly mixed 808s and rattling hi-hats, but soon after, they begin to comprehend and enjoy the BasedGod’s alternative production style. Once the song has finished, they have all been converted into full-fledged comrades of the Task Force. The Berkeley delegation of Task Force welcomes their new brothers and sisters into the fold, and the group marches on to spread the word of the Hunchback’s return to the other villages.
 
The Sound of Being Bullied
While this is all occurring in the BasedWorld territories, something else entirely is beginning to unfold in the far away kingdom of Detroit, Michigan. Teejay Witherspoon, the Bitch Mob’s certified rarest hacker, leans back in his chair and slyly grins. His successful exploitation of the BasedGod a year ago has proven to be a major turning point in the young man’s life. His notoriety has allowed him to start a rap career of his own, with several music videos on YouTube having gone viral throughout the past 12 months. His loyalty to the Bitch Mob has been unquestioned, and he has since been promoted to a senior position within the fold. As he clicks his way through a darkweb laundering scheme one evening, he leaves to take a shit and, upon returning to his computer, notices that a mysterious golden USB drive has been plugged into the laptop. Only one file exists on the drive: an audio file entitled “The Sound of Being Bullied.flac”. Teejay curiously loads the file into VLC, and the instant the song begins, he is assaulted with a rush of crushing despair and depression. The title of the song spoke for itself. Teejay is experiencing the totality of the Hunchback’s negative emotions that had been fueled by his prior actions, but even more intensely, and as the emotions begin to amplify, he next notices that his physical being is being affected as well. His body is shaking uncontrollably, his skin is beginning to peel, his eyes are popping out of his skull. After four minutes and seven seconds of agonizing torture, his entire being bursts into flames, unable to handle the power of the BasedGod’s wrath. The song ends.
 
No Longer Afraid of the Dark
It’s dark. The air is still. The ground is hot. Water drips from the ceiling. The Hunchback, in a deep state of reflection, hasn’t moved a muscle for over 12 months. His shriveled body has been starved of nourishment and exercise, but fortunately, his weight gain has had the positive effect of having enough fat stored to keep him alive. The amount of based energy needed to have maintained this state of being has aged the BasedGod considerably. He has been devoid of almost any sense of perception for at least a few months. A faint glow radiates from his being. He has concentrated his powers to what was thought to be an unattainable degree of positivity. Before his extended withdrawal from society, the negative side of the force was something that the Hunchback struggled to put out of mind. At the level of based he now encompasses, the light of positivity is too grand for the BasedGod to fail. He is no longer afraid of the dark. And that’s because the dark no longer exists. The cavern has been filled with his based radiance. And the Hunchback is almost ready to return and spread this radiance throughout the land.
 
Nepal Wants the BasedGod
All across BasedWorld, shooting star sightings have been abound, and thousands upon thousands of Bitch Mob members have been converted to Task Force faithful. Even beyond the traditional confines of BasedWorld, rare star sightings have also been seen in the Bitch Mob’s disparate properties. A star lands in the Bitch Mob’s Nepalian expansion territory. After having its people cleansed with the power of the BasedGod’s sixth secret instrumental track, Nepal adopts a new constitution which entails all of its citizens to embrace the Hunchback’s teachings of optimism and self-love.
 
Taxi Around Town
The streets of Old BasedWorld have been in dire need of repair ever since the Bitch Mob ransacked the colony, but that doesn’t stop Travis, one of the land’s only remaining horse-drawn taxi drivers, from making a buck. One evening, he picks up a mysterious hooded figure in one of the town’s more dangerous districts. The man enters the carriage, greeting the driver with two words: “Hello, Travis.” The driver says nothing. The horses begin their trek through the streets, passing by a row of burning buildings. Travis breaks his silence. “It’s lit,” he says. “The buildings, that is. There’s only a few Bitch Mob members left at this point but they always blow these things up.” The figure feels more comfortable speaking to the driver: “I hear you got the nomination”. It dawns on Travis that this person must be almost exactly one year behind the times: has he ever even heard of Cardi B? Regardless, he plays along. “Straight up. Won’t be long now.” The figure smiles, quipping, “Well, I hope you win.” He then proceeds to remove his hood. Travis looks back and momentarily gasps. His composure returns soon thereafter. Unsure of how to proceed, he attempts to continue the conversation. “I… I read about you in the papers… How are you?” Knowing he’s referring to the suicides, the figure replies, “Oh, it’s nothing new, I got over that.” They sit in silence for the remainder of the ride. Soon, the horses come upon their destination, the edge of the BasedWorld Bay. The figure gets out of the car. Turning to Travis, he asks, “How much was it?” Travis is nearly speechless. He lets out one final Auto-Tuned “So long………..LA FLAME!” and the horses gallop off.
 
Berkeley California Before Lil B
A massive cleaning project has commenced throughout Berkeley. The townspeople have nearly all been converted to followers of the BasedGod by this point, and in a unanimous vote, the colony’s leaders choose to rid Berkeley of any and all trace of Lil B and his formerly effective propaganda. Murals are whitewashed, statues are torn down, and portraits are removed from public spaces as the eighth of the BasedGod’s 13 secret instrumentals is played on a loop. The many books proclaiming Lil B’s omnipotence are collectively burned to ash in the town square. Even saying the name “Lil B” is punishable by fine of up to $30,000, equivalent to the amount of money Lil B had charged for features (in contrast to the Hunchback’s extremely generous $0.01 minimum fee for a verse). The townspeople are once again a tight-knit unit of based human beings living their best lives. It was just like Berkeley California before Lil B.

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater. (the previous edition can be found here if you are super behind).
House-keeping:

1. How to read: the headings will guide you through this piece. The Main Course covers the “big” stories and The Sides covers the “smaller” stories. IF YOU FOLLOW THE NEWS CLOSELY: you likely know about the stories in the Main Course section, so you will be best served by scrolling down to The Sides portion.
   
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Let’s dig in!

MAIN COURSE

Trump’s war on the intelligence community: 10 days under an authoritarian administration

I wrote a stand-alone piece covering the biggest news from last week: Over the past 10 days, we've seen Trump fully indulge his authoritarian impulses in an attempt to stamp out any inkling of facts that he dislikes - whether that be for personal, egocentric reasons or to shore up political strength. This began with a briefing given to the House Intelligence Committee that Russia is seeking to re-elect Trump. In response, Trump purged the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of officials he perceived to be disloyal, installing loyalists in their place.
Also covered: how Trump gets away with a cabinet full of acting officials, Richard Grenell’s numerous dis-qualifications, a pardon offered to Julian Assange, and the hunt for “Never Trumpers” in the administration.

Sunday night update

On Sunday, Trump made a veiled threat toward House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff while claiming without evidence that the Democrat had leaked information from the Russia briefing on Feb. 13: “Somebody please tell incompetent (thanks for my high poll numbers) & corrupt politician Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff to stop leaking Classified information or, even worse, made up information, to the Fake News Media. Someday he will be caught, & that will be a very unpleasant experience!” tweet
Later, while speaking to reporters, Trump called for an investigation into the leak - more concerned about the public learning of the briefing than he is about Russia’s repeated interference in U.S. elections. “They leaked it, Adam Schiff and his group. They leaked it to the papers and - as usual - they ought to investigate Adam Schiff for leaking that information,” Trump said.
Schiff responded: “Nice deflection, Mr. President. But your false claims fool no one. You welcomed Russian help in 2016, tried to coerce Ukraine’s help in 2019, and won’t protect our elections in 2020.”

Pardon-palooza

Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any system or legal rule. The point of authoritarianism is to concentrate power in the ruler, so the world knows that all actions, good and bad, harsh and generous, come from a single source. (The New Yorker)

Last week, Trump granted pardons and commutations to 11 people with one thing in common: connections. Trump bypassed the process of formal procedures typically used to determine who is given a pardon, instead relying on connections to his wealthy friends and political allies.

• Former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of soliciting bribes from candidates to replace Barack Obama in the Senate after Obama was elected president, knew Trump personally from his appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice. Trump falsely claimed that former FBI Director James Comey was involved in Blagojevich's prosecution; Comey did not take over at the FBI until years after the Blagojevich case.
  
  • Illinois' entire GOP congressional delegation—Darin LaHood, John Shimkus, Adam Kinzinger, Rodney Davis, and Mike Bost: "Blagojevich is the face of public corruption in Illinois, and not once has he shown any remorse for his clear and documented record of egregious crimes that undermined the trust placed in him by voters...Blagojevich is the face of public corruption in Illinois, and not once has he shown any remorse for his clear and documented record of egregious crimes that undermined the trust placed in him by voters." (source)
• Former San Francisco 49ers team owner Eddie DeBartolo, who was convicted of “failing to report a felony” in 1998 after he paid a $400,000 bribe for a casino license, was pardoned as a result of the lobbying of New England Patriots owner and frequent Mar-a-Lago guest Robert Kraft.
  
• Michael Milken, the so-called junk bond king who was convicted in 1990 of securities and tax fraud, knew Trump personally and frequently spent time with him at Mar-a-Lago. In his first memoir, Trump called Milken “a brilliant guy.” Many of Trump’s inner circle also lobbied for a pardon for Milken, including Rudy Giuliani, Jared Kushner, Steven Mnuchin, and developer friends Howard Lorber and Richard LeFrak. In fact, last year Mnuchin “flew on Mr. Milken’s private jet from Washington to Los Angeles and helped secure a real estate tax break that could benefit Mr. Milken.” A key backer of Milken’s pardon, hedge fund manager (and executive of Wendy’s) Nelson Peltz, held a record-breaking fundraiser for Trump’s re-election campaign at his home just 3 days before Milken was pardoned.
  
  • John K. Carroll: “As one of the lead prosecutors on the Milken case, I am outraged — not at the specific result here but at what the pardon process says about the way justice is served in our country...What outrages me, and what I think should outrage others, is the process that brought about the pardon. In as guileless an admission as I have ever seen of rich man’s justice, the White House bolstered its decision by listing a murderer’s row of Republican donors and billionaires who provided “widespread and long-standing” support for Milken’s pardon. Sheldon Adelson, Tom Barrack, my old boss Giuliani and others are listed as supporters of the pardon. If I had to prove that the scales of justice tilt toward the rich, I would offer that list and then sit down and wait for the jury to convict.”
• Former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, who was convicted in 2009 of lying to federal investigators and committing tax fraud, knew Trump personally and had Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera sign a letter on his behalf requesting a pardon from the president. In 2004, Trump called Kerik “a friend of mine” and “a great guy.” Rudy Giuliani also supported the request, as Kerik once served as a senior vice president at Giuliani Partners.
  
  • "The pardon cancels out $103,300 in restitution that Kerik still owed the Internal Revenue Service as part of his sentence, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan." (source)
• Paul Pogue, a construction company owner who pleaded guilty to underpaying his taxes by $473,000, did not know Trump and did not have any Fox News personalities lobby on his behalf. Instead, Pogue’s family appears to have purchased a presidential pardon. Pogue’s son and daughter-in-law made over $200,000 in contributions to the Trump Victory Committee last year. The couple also made several large donations to the Republican National Committee and each donated $5,600 to Donald Trump for President Inc.,” according to FEC filings.
  

Roger Stone going to prison

Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump’s pardoning of corrupt public officials like Blagojevich occurred just two days before Roger Stone’s sentencing for lying to investigators, obstructing a congressional investigation, and witness tampering. Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Stone to 40 months - or 3.3 years - in prison, much lighter than the original 7-9 year sentencing recommendation made by career prosecutors who withdrew from the case in protest of AG Barr’s intervention.
Lawfare has a great line-by-line breakdown of the sentencing hearing, if you’d like the nitty-gritty details. But if you only have time to read one excerpt from the hearing, I suggest the following:

Judge Jackson: “The truth still exists. The truth still matters. Roger Stone's insistence that it doesn't, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy...The dismay and the disgust at the attempts by others to defend his actions as just business as usual in our polarized climate should transcend party. The dismay and the disgust with any attempts to interfere with the efforts of prosecutors and members of the judiciary to fulfill their duty should transcend party.
"Sure, the defense is free to say: So what? Who cares? But, I'll say this: Congress cared. The United States Department of Justice and the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia that prosecuted the case and is still prosecuting the case cared. The jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. The American people cared. And I care."

Judge Jackson pushes back
During the hearing, Judge Jackson said that the jurors in the case "served with integrity." Stone’s lawyers took this statement and moved to disqualify the judge from the case, claiming that her remarks “rendered her unable to fairly rule on his bid for a new trial.”

"Stone’s Motion for New Trial is directly related to the integrity of a juror. It is alleged that a juror misled the Court regarding her ability to be unbiased and fair and the juror attempted to cover up evidence that would directly contradict her false claims of impartiality," his lawyers argued.
"The premature statement blessing the “integrity of the jury” undermines the appearance of impartiality and presents a strong bias for recusal," they added.

As expected, Jackson denied the motion to have her disqualified...
A pardon for Stone?
But the goal may be to reach the ears of the president instead. According to Politico, a former senior administration official who remains in contact with Trump and his senior advisers says about a pardon for Roger Stone: “It’s not a question of if; it’s when.” Following the sentencing, Trump argued that Stone’s jury was “tainted” and said that “Roger has a very good chance of exoneration.”
On Sunday, Trump was asked about the possibility of a pardon for Stone and instead took the opportunity to attack the jury forewoman, again:

"That juror is so biased and so tainted, that shouldn't happen in our criminal justice system… You have a juror that is obviously tainted. She was an activist against Trump. She said bad things about Trump and bad things about Stone," the President claimed without evidence. "She somehow weaseled her way onto the jury and if that's not a tainted jury then there is no such thing as a tainted jury."

More info on Stone’s lenient sentence

In the week since four prosecutors withdrew from Stone’s case in protest of AG Barr’s interference, we have gotten a slow drip-drip of new information. A piece by The New York Times Sunday summed it up nicely: Timothy Shea, appointed to replace Jessie Liu as head D.C. attorney, was sent to the office specifically to steer cases to the president’s benefit after previous efforts failed.

A new boss, Timothy Shea, had just arrived and had told them on his first day that he wanted a more lenient recommendation for Mr. Stone, and he pushed back hard when they objected, according to two people briefed on the dispute. They grew suspicious that Mr. Shea was helping his longtime friend and boss, Attorney General William P. Barr, soften the sentencing request to please the president.
...The tensions between the office, the Justice Department and the White House date back further than the tumult in the Stone case. They have been simmering since at least last summer, when the office’s investigation of Andrew G. McCabe, a former top F.B.I. official whom the president had long targeted, began to fall apart.
Mr. Shea’s predecessor, Jessie K. Liu, a lawyer whom Mr. Trump had appointed to lead the office in 2017, pressed the McCabe case even after one team of prosecutors concluded that they could not win a conviction. After a second team was brought in and also failed to deliver a grand jury indictment, Ms. Liu’s relationship with Mr. Barr grew strained, people close to them said. She left the position this year, though she and Mr. Barr have both stressed to associates that her departure was amicable.

Undoing Mueller’s work

Trump’s efforts to derail the sentencing of Stone can be seen as part of a larger campaign to rewrite history, and specifically, erase the findings of the Mueller investigation. Roger Stone’s indictment shows that Stone was acting on Trump's personal order to find Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails stolen by Russia. In order to cover-up his role in the Russia-Wikileaks-Trump network, Stone lied to investigators and threatened a witness. By claiming that Stone did not commit a crime, Trump is attempting to reverse the findings of the Mueller report and make himself the victim.
Last week, Trump embarked on a rambling Twitter thread calling for all cases stemming from Mueller’s probe to be “thrown out.” He continued, saying: “If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place.......BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!”
Hours later, while discussing the spate of pardons he had issued that day, Trump made the astounding assertion that he is “the chief law enforcement officer of the country” and thus has the “legal right” to interfere in criminal cases. “I’m allowed to be totally involved,” the president added. While technically he is incorrect - the Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer - in practice Trump has been proven right. A lawless chief executive is in fact in charge of enforcing the law when the Attorney General acts as his personal fixer.

This is in the style of autocrats across the globe, who weaponize the law to help themselves and their friends and hurt their enemies. The nation’s legal system is now run by a man who has spent his life mocking it. (NYT Editorial Board)

Meanwhile, the president’s allies have reportedly been urging him to fire anyone who was involved in Mueller’s investigation:

The MAGA punditry’s outsized influence over the president means their campaign against the so-called Mueller “holdovers” is likely not falling on deaf ears, especially given Trump’s fixation with what his defenders and detractors are saying about his administration in their frequent appearances on his favorite TV programs.
“It's totally unclear to me why any members of the Mueller team need to remain in the Trump DOJ,” the pro-Trump conservative blogger Will Chamberlain wrote after news broke of the Stone sentencing recommendation.
...GOP operative Arthur Schwartz, a close friend of Donald Trump Jr. who has been described as the eldest son’s “fixer,” said of the career officials in question: “I think they should all be investigated.”
...John Dowd, a former Trump lawyer who remains in touch with the White House, characterized the line attorneys in the Stone case as “insubordinate,” and “the same crowd of prosecutors wedded to the Mueller agenda” who need to be “cleaned out” from DOJ. “And Bill Barr is doing that,” Dowd said.

What can be done about the politicization of the DOJ? In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School suggests that “Congress should transform the Justice Department into an independent agency, legally immunized from the president’s day-to-day control.”

Public charge rule takes effect

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the government to implement new “wealth test” rules making it easier to deny immigrants residency or admission to the United States if they might depend on public-assistance programs. Legal challenges will continue in lower courts in the meantime. Doug Rand, co-founder of Boundless Immigration who formerly worked on immigration policy in the Obama White House, estimates that as many as 400,000 people every year could be denied green cards or visas because of the new rules.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a written dissent that was sharply critical of both the federal government and her conservative colleagues, warning that they are “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the Trump administration. Read her full seven-page dissent here.

The justice wrote that granting emergency applications often upends "the normal appellate process" while "putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the party that won." Targeting her conservative colleagues, she said "most troublingly, the Court's recent behavior" has benefited "one litigant over all others."
"Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases," Sotomayor said. "It is hard to say what is more troubling," she said, pointing to the case at hand, "that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it." CNN

THE SIDES

Justice Department’s new rules benefit Giuliani

In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, the DOJ indicated that the agency has implemented another layer of approval that would make it difficult for prosecutors to widen their probe into Rudy Giuliani:

The Justice Department revealed Tuesday that law enforcement officials running Ukraine-related investigations must seek approval before expanding their inquiries — a move that could have implications for Rudolph W. Giuliani, as President Trump’s personal attorney pushes for scrutiny of the president’s political foes while facing a federal probe into his own conduct.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote to Nadler that the department had tapped two U.S. attorneys to assist in the process — Scott Brady in Pittsburgh to receive and assess new information, and Richard Donoghue in Brooklyn to help coordinate personnel throughout the Justice Department involved in Giuliani’s case and others with a focus on Ukraine. An accompanying internal memo, circulated by Rosen in January, says that he and Donoghue must approve expansions of any inquiries.

Related: The Hill admits John Solomon’s columns were misleading

The Hill’s review of Solomon’s work can be found here. I have found the review itself to be overly generous to the publication (no surprise), so I will quote from a WaPo summary of the review:

In effect, the Hill said Solomon amplified an inaccurate and one-sided narrative about the Bidens and Ukraine that was fed to him by Giuliani, “facilitated” by businessman Lev Parnas, who was working with Giuliani at the time, and reinforced by Solomon’s own attorneys, who also represented clients embroiled in U.S.-Ukraine politics.
But the Hill stopped short of retracting or apologizing for Solomon’s articles, nor did it say it shouldn’t have published them. It also didn’t characterize Solomon’s motives in presenting what appears to be a largely debunked conspiracy theory about Ukraine.
“In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation,” said the internal investigation, which was overseen by the newspaper’s editor, Bob Cusack. “In other cases, the sources were [Solomon’s] own attorneys” — Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, who have also represented President Trump and Giuliani, who was also a key source for Solomon’s columns.
Solomon didn’t disclose this connection in his columns nor did he disclose to his editors that he shared drafts of his stories with Toensing, DiGenova and Parnas, the review noted.

Trump tries to block Bolton book

The Washington Post reports that Trump is attempting to block the release of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, instructing aides that it should not be released until after the November election.

Trump has told his lawyers that Bolton should not be allowed to publish any of his interactions with him about national security because they are privileged and classified, these people said. He has also repeatedly brought up the book with his team, asking whether Bolton is going to be able to publish it, they said.
Trump told national television anchors on Feb. 4 during an off-the-record lunch that material in the book was “highly classified,” according to notes from one participant in the luncheon. He then called him a “traitor.”
“We’re going to try and block the publication of the book,” Trump said, according to the notes. “After I leave office, he can do this. But not in the White House...I give the guy a break. I give him a job. And then he turns on me,” Trump added during the West Wing lunch. “He’s just making things up.”

Susan Rice tells Bolton the truth

During a panel discussion at Vanderbilt University on Wednesday, Bolton shared the stage with Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. Bolton made excuses for his failure to testify in Trump’s impeachment trial, blaming the House for committing “impeachment malpractice.” Rice challenged Bolton repeatedly, denigrating his decision to promote his book instead of testify:

"I thought a lot about if I had been in that position how would I have approached it, and I'll be honest: It's inconceivable to me that if I had firsthand knowledge of gross abuse of presidential power that I would withhold my testimony from a constitutional accountability process.”
"I can't imagine withholding my testimony, with or without a subpoena," Rice said. "I also can't imagine, frankly, in the absence of being able to provide the information directly to Congress, not having exercised my First Amendment right to speak publicly at a time when my testimony or my experience would be relevant. And, frankly, when my subordinates ... were doing their duty and responding in a fashion consistent with their legal obligations to provide information."
"I would feel like I was shamefully violating the oath that I took to support and defend the Constitution."

Trump corruption update

President Donald Trump’s choice to stay at his own Las Vegas hotel each night during the western states swing that wraps up Friday likely cost taxpayers a million extra dollars as well as diverted thousands of them into his own cash registers.

Breaking with precedent, Trump flew back to Vegas to stay every night at his Trump International Hotel, despite his day activities taking place in California, Arizona, and Colorado.

Had Trump held the same events but done so in a geographically logical order ― starting in Beverly Hills and finishing in Colorado Springs, but overnighting each day in the city where he would begin the following morning ― Trump would have spent four fewer hours aboard Air Force One, thereby saving taxpayers about $1.1 million.
...Indeed, the repeated overnight trips to Las Vegas may have forced the Secret Service and other support personnel to keep a motorcade there for a full four days, rather than move it to the site of an upcoming presidential trip

This week, Trump has a whole new country to focus on: India, home to the largest portfolio of Trump real estate projects outside North America, according to the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. According to The Washington Post, since the elder Trump’s last trip to India in 2014, two of his business partners have encountered massive legal and financial trouble.
During Trump’s time as president, the Trump Organization has vigorously promoted their properties in India, earning millions of dollars in royalties:

In 2018, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — who runs the Trump Organization with his brother, Eric Trump — spent several days in India promoting the family’s developments, attending a champagne dinner with condo buyers who plunked down $39,000 deposits and bringing in millions of dollars in new sales. While there, he also met with Modi behind closed doors. The next year, Trump’s Indian business partners flew 100 early buyers of his luxury condos near Delhi to visit Trump Tower and Trump Ferry Point golf course in New York City as a way to generate interest in the properties in India. One attendee gushed afterward about meeting the son of a U.S. president on the trip.

Trump 2020: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook

President Donald Trump’s campaign is bringing on an alum of the controversial data firm Cambridge Analytica...Matt Oczkowski, who served as head of product at Cambridge before it went bankrupt and shut down in 2018, is helping oversee the Trump campaign’s data program...Oczkowski, who also worked on Trump’s 2016 effort, joined the reelection campaign in January, and payments to his company, HuMn Behavior, are expected to show up on Trump’s next campaign finance disclosure later this month. (Politico)

An Axios report revealed where most of Trump’s re-election campaign is spending its advertising budget: on Facebook ads. “Last fall, the campaign urged Facebook to keep the same tools for political advertisers that they make available to companies...Facebook ultimately decided not to change its policies around microtargeting.” However, unlike in 2016, the campaign is also diversifying, “testing new strategies on several dozen platforms, including YouTube, Google, ad exchanges, publisher networks and conservative podcasts.”

• Side note: The IRS is suing Facebook for $9 million in back taxes, alleging the social media company undervalued intellectual properties when selling them to an Irish subsidiary in 2010. Ireland has lower corporate tax rates than the United States, so the move reduced the company’s tax bill.

Erik Prince investigations

There is apparently another investigation into Blackwater Founder - and brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos - Erik Prince. The FBI is reportedly investigating Prince “for his 2015 attempt to modify two American-made crop-dusting planes into attack aircraft — a violation of arms trafficking regulations...The planes became part of private military services Prince proposed to sell or use in mercenary operations in Africa and Azerbaijan.”
This new investigation adds to Prince’s legal problems, though he insists that he is untouchable “under this guy,” referring to Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Justice Department is “in the late stages of deciding whether to charge” Prince for allegedly lying to Congress in its Russia probe and violating U.S. export laws in his business dealings overseas.

Trump blocking prominent climate change warning

The United States is against mentioning climate change in the communique of the world’s financial leaders, G20 diplomats said, after a new draft of the joint statement showed the G20 are considering including it as a risk factor to growth...G20 sources said the United States was reluctant to accept language on climate change as a risk to the economy. Reuters

On Sunday, it was announced that the U.S. ultimately agreed to a less-prominent placement for the risks of climate change. It will now appear in language referencing the Financial Stability Board’s work examining the implications of climate change for financial stability.

One of the G20 sources said it was the first time a reference to climate change had been included in a G20 finance communique during Trump’s presidency, even though it was removed from the top of the joint statement. U.S. officials have resisted naming climate change as an economic risk since Trump took office in 2017. One of his first acts as president was to announce Washington’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Rightwing threats

Last week, two men were arrested in separate incidents involving threats to President Trump’s perceived opponents.
A Michigan man, Brittan J. Atkinson, was arrested on Thursday for sending death threats to Mark Zaid, an attorney for the Ukraine whistleblower. Atkinson sent the threats in November, on the day that Trump held up a photo of Zaid and read some of his tweets at a rally in Louisiana.

"All traitors must die miserable deaths," Atkinson's email read in part, the indictment says. "Those that represent traitors shall meet the same fate[.] We will hunt you down and bleed you out like the pigs you are. We have nothing but time, and you are running out of it, Keep looking over your shoulder[.] We know who you are, where you live, and who you associate with[.] We are all strangers in a crowd to you[.]"

On Wednesday, Salvatore Lippa of New York was arrested for threatening to assault and murder Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Chuck Schumer in voicemails last month.

Lippa started the threatening message by calling the congressman "Schiff, Shifty Schiff," invoking the nickname used by President Donald Trump for Schiff, the lead House manager during Trump's impeachment trial.
...When questioned by U.S Capitol Police, Lippa admitted to making the threatening calls to Schiff and Schumer because he said he was upset about the impeachment proceedings, prosecutors said.

State news

• Washington Post: A second court has temporarily blocked North Carolina’s new voter identification law on the argument that it discriminates against African Americans. The ruling reduces the likelihood that the rule will be in effect in a key swing state during November’s elections. A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that intent to discriminate was a “primary motivating factor” behind the voter ID law, which passed the Republican legislature in late 2018.
  
• CBS News: Florida cannot bar felons who served their time from registering to vote simply because they have failed to pay all fines and fees stemming from their cases, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
  
• CNN: Mississippi's law banning abortions at the detection of a fetal heartbeat -- as early as six weeks into pregnancy -- will remain blocked, a panel of circuit judges ruled on Thursday...The three-judge panel on the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that the Mississippi law unconstitutionally prohibited pre-viability abortions.
  
• Tampa Bay Times: A curious request arrived in the inboxes of Florida tax collectors last week from an employee of the Republican National Committee. He asked for “all email addresses that have been collected and are in the possession of the Tax Collector’s Office.” He also wanted any names, property addresses and phone numbers connected to those emails in their records. If the tax collectors had complied, the Republican Party would soon have a valuable trove of personal information for millions of Floridians as it gears up for the 2020 election: A detailed database of many taxpayers’ emails plus the name, address and phone number tied to that email.
  
• Associated Press: Most Republican lawmakers refused to attend a Tuesday night session of the Oregon House of Representatives amid a slowdown over anger at a sweeping bill on climate change. Earlier, Republican lawmakers, who are a minority in the House, insisted that bills coming to the floor be read in their entirety instead of being summarized, which slowed things down substantially. The 2020 session of the Legislature lasts only 35 days, being an even-year short session.
  
• Q13 Fox News: Efforts to expel a controversial state representative from the Washington Legislature are likely over after no Republicans would sign a letter calling for state Rep. Matt Shea’s expulsion. The Spokesman-Review reports that all 98 members of the state House of Representatives were asked Thursday to sign a letter calling for the expulsion of Spokane Valley Republican. All 56 Democrats signed the letter, but no Republicans did.
  

CONTINUED BELOW

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUS YEARS ARCHIVE:
1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999

1-3-2000	1-10-2000	1-17-2000	1-24-2000
1-31-2000	2-7-2000	2-14-2000	2-21-2000
2-28-2000	3-6-2000	3-13-2000	3-20-2000
3-27-2000	4-3-2000	4-10-2000	4-17-2000
4-24-2000	5-1-2000	5-8-2000	5-15-2000
5-22-2000	5-29-2000	6-5-2000	6-12-2000
6-19-2000	6-26-2000	7-3-2000	7-10-2000
7-17-2000	7-24-2000	7-31-2000	8-7-2000
8-14-2000	8-21-2000	8-28-2000	9-4-2000
9-11-2000	9-18-2000

• The Delaware Supreme Court ruled against the USA Network in their appeal to prevent WWF from accepting the Viacom deal. The decision makes it official that WWF is moving to TNN next week and ends the 17-year WWF/USA relationship. The appeal process has been lingering for over a month and because of it, USA, Viacom, WWF and ECW were all pretty much paralyzed and waiting to see how things turn out. But now that it's all finalized, ECW's final TNN show will air on 9/22 and the first Raw on TNN will air on 9/25. It doesn't give Viacom much of an opportunity to promote the move. They had set aside $7 million to promote Raw's TNN debut but because of the lingering court proceedings, they kept having to delay it and now there's almost no time. On Raw's final show on USA, Jim Ross mentioned repeatedly that this was the last episode on the network and plugged the move to TNN (and hyping that Austin will be there live). But that's pretty much it so far. During the next few days, you can expect Viacom to bombard all media outlets with as much promotion as they can cram into the short amount of time, but it's going to be impossible to promote it as much as they'd hoped to. And considering they're moving from the #1 rated network to the #15 rated network, they need all the promotion they can get.
  
• Needless to say, this all gives WCW a golden opportunity to put their best foot forward for Nitro on 9/25 and hopefully gain some much-needed ground (in case you're want spoilers for next week, Russo uses this opportunity to make himself the WCW champion). In the short run, Raw's ratings will almost certainly fall, but in the long-run, being with Viacom is going to be hugely beneficial to WWF. As for ECW, this opens the door for them to continue negotiations with USA. They desperately need a TV deal, on a strong network, and most importantly, they need outside financial support if they are going to survive. Having a TV deal is useless if you can't afford the production costs. As mentioned last week, ECW missed payroll and has had to cancel several house shows due to the financial crunch they're under.
  
• Also this week, TNN announced that it's renaming itself The National Network (instead of The Nashville Network) and will be moving its base of operations from Nashville to New York. They're planning to debut a new logo and target their programming to a more diverse audience. Dave recaps the history of WWF on the USA Network, dating back to 1982 when they aired monthly WWF MSG shows. Then WWF got a weekly show called All-American Wrestling on the network in 1983, which then became Prime Time Wrestling and Tuesday Night Titans, the creation of Raw in 1993, the Monday night wars, and now to this.
  
• There was a frightening moment at WCW's Fall Brawl PPV with Paul Orndorff suffering a stinger that left him motionless in the ring. The good news is that it was only temporary paralysis. He was treated and released from the hospital that same night. It was reminiscent of the injuries suffered by Droz and Buff Bagwell in recent years, but fortunately for Orndorff, it didn't end up being as bad. There was immediate suspicion that the whole thing was a work, which Dave thinks is a pretty sad reflection of WCW these days. When Orndorff went down, everyone else in the match basically panicked and continued working the match on the other side of the ring, taking bumps that kept jarring the ring, all while the EMTs and trainer were trying to tend to Orndorff. Finally, almost 2 minutes after he collapsed, referee Charles Robinson finally took charge and ordered the match stopped. The match was scheduled to go several more minutes and run-ins were scheduled, but it all got scrapped when Robinson ended it. The injury happened when Orndorff tried to piledrive Mark Jindrak but Jindrak didn't go up correctly for the move. Orndorff had to deadweight lift him and when he did so, his hamstring went out. He completed the piledriver but landed awkwardly, causing something with his neck and spine to jam up and that was it. Dave talks about Orndorff's health problems over the year, specifically his arm injury that caused his right arm to atrophy severely and never recover. He retired twice before due to health issues (87 and 94) only to return both times when he probably shouldn't have. (This was his final match for 17 years. But it looks like he came out of retirement last year and worked a 6-man tag match at an indie show in Canada. But otherwise, this Fall Brawl match was the end of the road for Orndorff).
  

WATCH: Paul Orndorff injury at Fall Brawl 2000

• This whole thing brings up questions about Nitro this week, which has a match scheduled between Booker T and Vince Russo. Just a few weeks ago, Russo suffered a concussion during an angle and has been dealing with headaches and such ever since, and it's probably not a good idea for him to be in the ring. They could probably work around it, but Dave thinks it's bad enough to have untrained people in there doing moves anyway, much less ones who are already injured. Dave notes the recent example of Kurt Angle wrestling on Smackdown 2 days after getting severely concussed at Summerslam, which he never should have done and led to him getting another concussion because you're always more susceptible to further concussions during the period after suffering one. Russo has openly claimed to have had 3 concussions in the last year and has only worked about 6 matches. If that's true, he probably shouldn't be in there taking bumps again. But maybe they'll book something safe that doesn't require it. Either way, Dave is just concerned about the overall safety of all these guys.
  
• Oh yeah, other notes from Fall Brawl: crowd was 8,600 although only about half of that (4,311) was paid, the rest were freebies. Dave notes all the excitement people in WCW had last week when the Nitro rating was higher than usual, and points out how it obviously didn't mean dick when it comes to ticket sales. TV ratings are nice but it's a vanity metric. The real numbers that matter are the ones that make money. Ticket sales and PPV buys. And, well, those are still horrible. There was a guy in the crowd facing the hard cam who was seen constantly throughout the show wearing a Destroyer mask. Destroyer was a famous wrestler back in 60s and 70s who wore a red and white mask. Anyway....turns out that was the real Destroyer (real name Dick Beyer), just sitting in the crowd at a WCW PPV at 70 years old, still doing his old gimmick. Kevin Nash cut a promo earlier on the pre-show claiming he was hungover from hanging out at the bar last night and essentially telegraphing that he was going to lose his match (he did). Right after the Orndorff match, Shane Douglas cut a pre-match promo saying Kidman would be joining Paul Orndorff at the hospital. Even his partner Torrie Wilson seemed to drop her TV smile and give him a "what an asshole" look for that one. The scaffold for the scaffold match was way wider than any other ones before and the area underneath was padded and safe, but Torrie still seemed legitimately terrified up there. After Madusa took a bump off the scaffold (which the crowd booed because it was clearly gimmicked for safety), the announcers also tried to compare her injuries to Orndorff's injury earlier in the night. Dave is just disgusted. Torrie never took a bump off the scaffold, which was the original plan but she refused, and good for her Dave says. It would have meant nothing for the match anyway. Negative 1 star. They did a segment with David Flair beating up a mailman in his yard and Dave says the whole segment was actually hilarious and more interestingly, it was all David Flair's idea. ICP did commentary on Vampiro's match again, which once again was funny. Mike Awesome came out with former child actor Gary Coleman. There's been a lot of news stories lately about Coleman working as a security guard for $6 an hour these days, so at least WCW probably didn't have to spend a lot to get him. Naturally, he got involved in the match and it was hilarious because he knew he was going to take a guitar shot from Jarrett. So he had a hat on with a towel folded up in it to cushion the blow. But during the chaos, his hat got knocked off. So just before the guitar shot, he picked up his hat, calmly put the towel back in, put it back on, and took the hit. Goldberg vs. Scott Steiner was a shockingly good match and Dave gives it 4.25 stars. And of course, Booker T won the title from Nash in the main event.
  

WATCH: Fall Brawl 2000 highlights

• We get the usual long obituary for Professor Toru Tanaka, one of the biggest heels of the 60s and 70s, who died at age 70 in California. Dave recaps his career and of course, he was a Hawaiian who got booked as a typical salt throwing Japanese heel. Worked for WWWF feuding with Sammartino, won titles in all the territories, etc. He also tells an interesting story from 1977 when Pat Patterson returned to the San Francisco territory after being gone for 8 months and was supposed to face Mr. Fuji in a show that ended up drawing 12,000 people. But Fuji had a falling out with promoter Roy Shire and left the territory 2 weeks before the match. So Shire brought in Tanaka and put him under a mask and tried to pass him off as the real Fuji. The crowd didn't buy it and the media got ahold of the story and started claiming fraud and the athletic commission got involved. Shire nearly lost his promoter's license but he claimed he didn't know and thought it was the real Fuji under the mask. Tanaka and Shire were both fined but the commission seemed to buy the story (others backed it up to protect Shire) and let them off with just the fine. The real Fuji caught all the heat and was legitimately banned by the commission for life from wrestling in California, but that was overturned in 1984.
  
• The current plan for AJPW's Triple Crown title is to hold a tournament soon, which is expected to be won by Toshiaki Kawada, who will then defend the title against NJPW champion Sasaki in a title vs. title match at the Jan. 4th Tokyo Dome show. And the plan from there is for Kawada to get the surprising win, since most people don't expect NJPW to book their champion to lose to AJPW's champion. But the way Riki Choshu (NJPW booker) sees it, AJPW is pretty much doomed and he's not too concerned about them as competition anymore, and he's well aware that this inter-promotional feud is the only thing keeping AJPW alive right now. But there's still money in an AJPW/NJPW feud and they want to prolong it, so Kawada will have to win. The idea is to keep Kawada strong because NJPW loves the gimmick of a strongly booked outsider coming in and shaking things up. In the past, that person has been Naoya Ogawa but Choshu is tired of the headache that comes with dealing with Antonio Inoki and Ogawa because Inoki is intent on making Ogawa an unbeatable superman and NJPW can never get him to put anyone over. Choshu is pretty much trying to do anything he can to get Inoki's influence as far away from the company as possible. So the idea is to keep Kawada strong and milk this angle for all it's worth.
  
• New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman officially signed into law the bill to regulate so-called "extreme wrestling." The bill bans children under 18 from attending extreme wrestling shows. It also adds an athletic commission tax to promotions running extreme shows, mandates an ambulance and 2 doctors must be on hand at every event, and even though it's a state law, the city officials where the show is to be held must specifically give permission for the event. This bill doesn't affect ECW, which was categorized as one of the 3 major companies which are exempt from the law. The bill is a not-so-subtle effort to drive Jersey All Pro Wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling specifically out of the state, JAPW in particular. They're planning to still run shows but will be forced to get rid of bladejobs, no more light tubes or thumb tacks or barbed wire, etc. JAPW owner Frank Iadeavia has said they are considering legal action. But at this point, if they want to continue to run shows as they have, they're going to be forced to leave the state of New Jersey to do so.
  
• Raw did well in the ratings again, facing stiff competition from the Olympics and Monday Night Football. But they had one segment that was a major bomb. Mick Foley came out, cutting a promo once again trying to get George W. Bush and Al Gore to appear on Smackdown for a debate. The segment was right before the main event and caused a full 700,000 homes to change the channel, which is an unheard of drop for a Raw episode. That led to the Rock/Undertaker main event that followed to be the lowest rated Raw main event of the year.
  
• The Wrestling Observer Hotline has been officially killed off. 1-900 hotline numbers have been dying anyway and the numbers were down and Dave says more importantly, he needed to stop because he's so busy with the newsletter and the Eyada online radio show and wants to concentrate fully on those and the daily hotline stuff took up too much time.
  
• Motoko Baba threatened a lawsuit against Nippon TV over their decision to drop AJPW and start airing NOAH instead, and due to the lawsuit, NOAH currently isn't airing on NTV, which is a major blow for the fledgling new company. In the meantime, Misawa has started negotiations with TV Tokyo, which is another one of the major networks in Japan.
  
• Former WWF and ECW wrestler Nicole Bass made headlines after being arrested in New York after getting into an argument with someone on a street corner. It turned into a fight and when the police tried to break it up, she allegedly bit one of the cops. Bass was one of several people arrested.
  
• Notes from OVW: Jim Ross did announcing on some of the shows there this week, because he was down there scouting talent. Shelton Benjamin is showing a lot of promise and Jim Cornette says Benjamin is progressing even faster than Kurt Angle and believes he's guaranteed to be a big star. Brock Lesnar still hasn't debuted on TV there yet but Bob Orton's son Randy Orton recently did. They're also strongly pushing Leviathan (real name Dave Bautista) and Jim Cornette predicts he will headline Wrestlemania within the next 5 years. (yup, exactly 5 years later in fact)
  
• Ed Farhat, better known as The Sheik, is said to be in very grave condition. He's down to 150 pounds and can only communicate through blinking his eyes or lightly squeezing if you hold his hand (he ended up living another 2+ years after this. His Wikipedia page says he was working with a biographer and did extensive interviews before he died, with plans to have a book on his life released. But it says the interviews "provided a highly explosive look" into the business and as a result, the interviews and draft of the book were sealed at the time of his death and to this day it's never been released. Interesting. When I originally wrote this up a few months ago, I tweeted Dave about this and he responded saying he didn't know anything about it either. I'd love to find out more.)
  
• The latest revival of Stampede Wrestling is in bad shape. They have no more shows scheduled and have only done 10 shows in the last few months. Their TV show has been airing old tapes rather than new episodes lately.
  
• Ken Shamrock broke his silence on his recent PRIDE loss to Kazuyuki Fujita. Shamrock pretty much blamed himself and admitted he wasn't in proper shape to fight and said things happened which contributed to him not having time to train properly (he doesn't go into detail but I think Dave mentioned something in an earlier Observer but I can't find it right now. But I think Shamrock was going through some personal shit around this time. Something like a divorce or a custody battle or something. That doesn't get mentioned here, it's just something I vaguely remember reading awhile back, I might be wrong).
  
• Nobuhiko Takada has announced he's going to face Igor Vovchanchyn at next month's PRIDE show and that if he doesn't win, he'll retire. Takada had a reputation as a shoot fighter from his years as the founder and star of UWFi, which was a worked shoot promotion. But then he started doing real shoots and it's been bad news ever since, including 2 high profile losses to Rickson Gracie. He's had a couple of wins, but they were worked matches. His real MMA fights have all been losses and Dave says the real fighters in PRIDE have pretty much no respect for Takada as an actual fighter. He doesn't like Takada's chances next month (indeed, Takada gets punched into submission in the 2nd round. But he still didn't retire).
  
• Notes from Nitro: the building was mostly full, with not that many freebies. But only because it was a small arena that only holds about 5,000 people. It was also in Canada and the crowd was pretty much only there to see Lance Storm (who ended up jobbing to Jim Duggan in an undercard match) and Bret Hart (who wasn't there at all). They hated Goldberg with a passion, probably due to the Hart stuff, and booed him mercilessly.
  
• On his personal website, Mark Madden apologized to Lou Thesz for his comment on Nitro last week where he joked that Lou Thesz beats up women. Madden said he was only joking and that he has a ton of respect for Thesz.
  
• Pamela Paulshock apparently injured her ankle doing an angle on Thunder last week. Dave thinks it's bad enough when they have untrained wrestlers in there getting hurt, but now untrained ring announcers are getting hurt too.
  
• WCW is pitching an angle for Vampiro to team with singer Billy Idol in a feud against Mike Awesome and David Cassidy, of Partridge Family fame (Never happened but.....yeah. That was a thing evidently).
  
• Dave only has a couple of thoughts on this week's Thunder: he begs someone in WCW to PLEASE send Major Gunns to get acting lessons. He also wants someone to save Mike Awesome from a gimmick worse than the Red Rooster. And finally, I guess there's been a lot of commercials for the new Meet The Parents movie and Dave thinks it looks funny.
  
• Various WCW notes: DDP is likely being brought back soon, though Kimberly won't be. Nitro Girl Spice was released. She was being groomed to co-host WCW's Saturday morning show, but then the show got canned and they didn't have anything else for her. And after being world champion for a couple of months, WCW has finally decided to start making some Booker T merch. Seems like a good idea to finally get around to. The Harris Twins taped segments for both the Maury Povich and Jenny Jones shows, no word on what they are or when they'll air. Goldberg will be on an episode of The Daily Show this week. Gene Okerlund is expected to be given a grumpy old man gimmick where he swears a lot.
  
• Next month might be a surprisingly good month for WCW ticket wise. They have shows in Australia that are expected to do big numbers because Australia is so starved for wrestling that even WCW can do big business there. And they have a PPV in Las Vegas which will do good because the casinos are buying up a lot of tickets to give away.
  
• Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner are reportedly being total team players right now, because there's concern that a regime change could come at any time (a lot of people are pushing for Johnny Ace to replace Vince Russo) and they're basically being on their best behavior until they see who their next new boss might be. The only person right now who's really stirring up shit is Goldberg, who is said to be openly pissed about pretty much everything and isn't shy about expressing it (yeah, even Goldberg has since admitted that he was frustrated and probably wasn't very pleasant to be around back then).
  
• Scott Hall is expected to return to Nitro next week. Brad Siegel reportedly gave up on fighting with Nash about it and is willing to bring Hall back. Siegel and Hall spoke last week and Hall was basically told this is his last chance and if he fucks up one time, he's gone for good. Of course, Scott Steiner has been told that a dozen times in the past, so you know how that goes (Hall doesn't end up coming back. Not sure if it fell through or Dave got bad info or what, but it never happens).
  
• They held a Miss WCW Pageant in Las Vegas last week with Carrot Top as one of the judges and of course there was a bikini contest. Nitro Girl Chae ended up winning over Torrie Wilson, Major Gunns, Baby, Chiquita, Midajah and Stacy Keibler. Pamela Paulshock was supposed to be in it but no-showed due to her ankle injury (there's some good catty drama coming out of this in the next week or two).
  
• So the deal with Konnan is....pretty messed up, actually. He had tricep surgery a few months ago and has no business back in the ring yet. But WCW cut his paycheck in half so....he came back and he's wrestling. But here's the problem. The doctors still haven't given him a medical release yet because, well, they're doctors and he's still fucked up. They're like, "Dude...no." Anyway, because he doesn't have his medical release, WCW is still only giving him half his pay. But they're still allowing him to wrestle. He's hoping to get a medical release this week so he can start getting full checks again. Dave just thinks this whole policy is so screwed up on so many ways.
  
• Disqo Inferno has been bringing out some plastic duck to the ring called the Disqo Duck. (I should stop for a second and explain something for the younger readers. R&B singer Sisqo had a HUGE hit called "Thong Song" around this time and WCW, in their infinite wisdom, capitalized by changing the spelling of Disco to Disqo.) Anyway, the duck is fucking stupid and apparently at Nitro this week, Konnan literally handcuffed himself to the duck backstage to try and keep Disqo Inferno from taking it out to the ring. Someone had to try to save him from himself.
  
• Jeremy Borash will be doing announcing at this week's Thunder tapings. Dave says there's a lot of heat here because Borash is close to Vince Russo, so he's getting a lot of chances to do things like commentary even though he hasn't really earned it yet and hasn't shown any real aptitude for it. Dave says if Borash ends up replacing one of the main announcers on Nitro, there'll probably be a meltdown.
  
• Steve Austin and Debra got married last week in Las Vegas (fun fact: same wedding chapel Triple H and a drugged out Stephanie McMahon got married in. Funner fact: also the same wedding chapel I got married in).
  
• The plan for Sunday Night Heat, now that it's moving to MTV, is for it to be more of a humor and skit type show, with a lot of Tom Green-style humor (oh man, 2000 was such a weird time). They want to bring in musical guests and celebrities for it and will do a lot of the stuff from the WWF New York restaurant as well as at MTV's Times Square headquarters.
  
• Notes from Raw: a lot of the show was built around trying to seemingly bury Kurt Angle, by turning him into a goofy heel character and implying that he's gay. They showed a lot of footage of him crying at the Olympics and had Triple H make fun of him and all that stuff. Dave thinks it's a pretty weird thing to do one week before the biggest match of Angle's career (he's got a No DQ match with Triple H at next week's PPV) and sure didn't do him any favors for people taking him seriously. Hugh Hefner was on to plug Chyna's upcoming Playboy appearance and Dave thinks it's nice that Playboy and WWF could come together again in the interest of making money after all the nasty legal issues they had with the Sable fallout. And finally, Steve Regal debuted.
  
• Since we were talking about WCW's injury policy, Dave decides to let us know what WWF's policy is. A WWF wrestler that is out with an injury receives their downside guarantee. WWF contracts give you a guarantee (say, $300,000 per year for example) but you can make a lot more money on the road because everyone gets a cut of house show gates and PPV revenue and whatnot. So if you're injured and not on the road, you won't get all that extra money, but you still make the $300,000 guarantee. Of course, that leads to the same incentive for guys to sometimes come back before they're ready, because they're losing money by being at home, but from everyone who talks to Dave, there's not nearly as much pressure from the WWF to hurry up and come back as there is in WCW.
  
• Various WWF notes: Big Boss Man will be out for a few weeks after having his knee scoped. Grand Master Sexay needed 14 stitches in his ear after getting legit cut from the belt shot on Raw. Tori should be back in Oct. or early November after shoulder surgery. Billy Gunn should be back in a few weeks. Road Dogg's wife had surgery for a collapsed lung so he's out tending to her. Davey Boy Smith was in a motorcycle accident last week and Dave says if you know how many times Smith has been in and out of the hospital this year, it would scare you to death.
  
• Four different wrestling promotions have videos in the Billboard Top 20 charts....and none of them are WCW. Of course, WWF is all over the charts with their various releases taking up 12 of the 20 spots. ECW has videos at #5 and #7. XPW, which currently isn't running new shows and doesn't even have a building to run shows in right now, has videos at #12 and #19. And Insane Clown Posse's JCW promotion has a video at #13. All that, but no WCW.
  
• Kurt Angle and Taka Michinoku worked a UPW show in California along with a few other WWF developmental signees who started out at the UPW school (I decided to look it up and see who else of note worked that show: Franie Kazarian, Simon Dean, Rocky Romero, Mike Knox, Vic Grimes, Christopher Daniels, Samoa Joe, and John Cena were all on the card. 2000/2001-era UPW had a ton of future stars come through the doors).
  
• One of the XFL teams is already moving before it even starts. The San Jose Demons have now been renamed the San Francisco Demons and will be playing in San Fran after negotiations with Spartan Stadium in San Jose fell apart. Dave thinks it might be a bad move. San Jose is a wealthier community with a large population and their hockey and soccer franchises do huge business. San Francisco already has a major team in every sport and he doesn't know if a B-level football team is going to draw as well there as it would have in San Jose. He also notes that in the spring, the weather is a lot warmer in San Jose at night than it is in San Francisco, and California isn't exactly the type of place where people want to sit out in the cold weather at night and watch football games. This isn't Green Bay or Chicago where freezing to death for football is almost a tradition (the cities are, like, an hour apart so I can't imagine the weather is that much different? Although I guess San Francisco is right there on the bay so maybe wind? I dunno. Anyone from the area care to chime in?)
  
• A New York newspaper reported that Vince McMahon tried to stop VH1 from airing an episode of "The List" because the show featured appearances by Kevin Nash, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Sting, and other WCW stars. VH1 is owned by Viacom, which now owns 3% of WWF's stock and McMahon decided to try to throw his weight around and get the episode canned. Didn't work and it actually was one of the highest rated episodes of the show ever. But he did succeed in getting VH1 to agree to not air reruns of that episode. A WWF spokesman responded to the story, saying, "It is highly unlikely that took place. It's not something we would do." But of course, you'll note that they didn't outright deny it and the idea that Vince McMahon wouldn't do something like that is laughable since he has a long history of doing exactly that sort of thing.
  
• The Slam! Wrestling website wrote an article criticizing the WWF policy of not allowing wrestlers to do interviews with other websites without company approval because they see all other websites as competition to their own WWF.com site. The article noted they had an interview with Gerald Brisco awhile back and Brisco told them he could talk freely about his pre-WWF years but if it has to do with WWF, he'd have to clear it with the office. Jim Ross responded on his WWF website column, saying not a single interview request has come across their desk from any other wrestling websites. Dave talks about when the policy was put in place and says WWF told him he could still get anyone he wanted to interview on the Observer website, but he would need to go through the office first. Since that time, Dave says he's talked to wrestlers who agreed to appear, but when he tried to get it cleared by the office, it stalled and has been pending approval ever since with no answer sooooooo......
  
• WWF is wanting Big Show to drop down to 400 pounds. At his heaviest in WCW he was 505 and currently weighs a legit 480.
  
• Someone writes in with a conspiracy theory. He thinks Shane McMahon's death-defying fall from the TitanTron at Summerslam was done to prove a point given the upcoming Owen Hart wrongful death lawsuit, with the idea being that the WWF side can point to it as an example that, "See! Even Vince McMahon's son is sometimes asked to perform stunts like this and they're usually done safely." Dave responds, saying that normally he'd think that's reading too much into things. But the day after Summerslam, several people in WWF as well as a couple of legal experts he talked to all had basically the same theory and said they wouldn't be surprised if it gets brought up in the trial. But time will tell, Dave says.
  
• Dave Lagana writes in, talking his experience working on "Friends" and talking about how most TV shows are written by writing teams and how stories are crafted in TV writing rooms and so on and so forth. Basically, it leads to the one big question every writer, booker, and performer should ask themselves: how will the audience react to the long-term story? Not how loud the momentary pop is or how much you were able to swerve the audience with a surprise that doesn't make any sense, etc. The point he's trying to make is that Vince Russo is doing literally everything wrong and he has no idea how to write television. He's also pretty fed up with Russo's constant everything-is-a-shoot booking, where they openly acknowledge scripts and bookers and shit in every segment. He's not the only one.
  
• Lots of letters talking about what a total trainwreck WCW is. Russo isn't the only problem. From management to marketing, the ball is being dropped everywhere. None of the stories are coherent. Characters change gimmicks or go from face to heel from week-to-week with no explanation, fans have no idea what's happening. Wrestlers themselves are out of control backstage. Merchandising is dead. Basically, the ship is sinking and the worst part is that nobody seems to care. Everyone is just drilling more holes in the ship. Even when they luck into something that works, they always manage to fuck it up immediately. So there's all that. But also, a lot of piling on Russo from a lot of people who think he's killing the company.
  

MONDAY: Raw debuts on TNN, Steve Austin returns, ECW not yet cancelled on TNN after all, WWF Unforgiven fallout, and more...