For lucky number 13 of this experiment in shouting out into the ether, I go watch a soccer match. But don't worry if you're not that into the sports scene — I watch plenty of other stuff, too.

The Oakland Roots have been a going concern since 2018, and currently reside in the USL Championship, which is the second tier of American soccer below Major League Soccer (MLS). There, they will likely stay, since we do a lot of things with sports in the U.S., but one thing that we don't is promote teams to higher-level leagues — or knock them down to lower leagues after a bad season or four —  like you'll find in soccer leagues in civilized countries.

Not that Roots fans will complain about the lack of a pathway to the top tier. Attend a Roots match, and you'll find an enthusiastic, agreeably low-key atmosphere where most people are just content to root, root, root for the home team, whether they win, lose, or draw.

I've now been to a couple of Roots matches at the Oakland Coliseum, attending my second one the other night as the home side beat the visiting El Paso Locomotives 2-0 after the visitors went down to 10 men thanks to an early red card. Yet I suspect you are not reading this newsletter for match reports, so instead I'd like to focus on the match-going experience at the Coliseum and what a team like the Roots means for a city of sports fans repeatedly abandoned by bigger-name teams in more prominent leagues.

Though it's a multipurpose stadium, the Coliseum was not built with soccer in mind, not without some serious reconfiguration at least. The soccer pitch runs from left field to the first base dugout, and with no temporary bleachers extended on one side of the field, that means you can only seat fans around three sides of the pitch. That shouldn't lend itself to a great atmosphere, especially since the Roots only sell tickets in the Coliseum's lower bowl. Thus, you're getting about 4,000 fans in a venue built to hold 10 times that.

Still, the Roots fans in attendance make up for that by being as loud as humanly possible. The ultra fans are situated in what used to be the left field corner of the stadium, and they spend the entire match rhythmically banging on drums, singing songs, and leading chants. The Athletics left behind the "Let's Go Oakland" chant in the divorce, and you'll hear it throughout the 90 minutes. It's a fairly decent atmosphere, and with a few tweaks to the seating chart, plus a commitment to making the Coliseum the Roots' permanent home, it could be a really fun matchday venue. The Coliseum should also bring back the pump-based condiment dispensers instead of forcing the worthless little packets of mustard and relish on paying customers, but that's neither here nor there.

What a Roots game at the Coliseum won't be is a big-time sporting event, but perhaps that shouldn't be the goal. It comes down to what you're looking for in a team and a sporting experience.

I'm currently reading a book called Goodbye, Oakland that chronicles the departure of the A's, Raiders, and Warriors in rapid succession. So far, It's not a very good book, and given the haphazard writing and organization, I'm not sure things are likely to improve. It also doesn't help that I don't agree with the book's foundational premise: A major city without marquee professional sports teams is somehow less of a vibrant scene for the city's denizens. Here's a quote from former city councilman Ignacio De La Fuente that appears early on in Goodbye, Oakland:

Setting aside those claims about jobs and TV appearances that are the stuff of pure fantasy — I don't traffic in easily disproven myths — I'd question De La Fuente's claim about the importance of big league sports. Oakland has plenty going for it in terms of food, culture, social history, and people. What value does a sports franchise bring if it's owned by an unremarkable failson or bloodless private equity ghoul who has no connection to the city? I'd rather take a team with some ties to the community — the Roots sold ownership shares in their organization to the general public not long ago — over a few flickers of fickle failson-backed limelight. 

I just want to pay a reasonable amount for a ticket and be treated to a couple of hours of entertainment. Right now, an Oakland Roots game promises that in the way NFL, MLB and NBA events do not.

Reminder: Your Phil needs those reasonable ticket prices because your Phil needs a full-time job. Share my excellent qualifications (here) with anyone who needs a skilled editor who is also very good at amplifying other people's fantastic communication skills.

Despite my earlier criticisms of an Anthony Bourdain book — which, to be fair, was more a collection of his TV show voice-overs than anything approaching a carefully crafted writing project — I'm a fan of his work, particularly those aforementioned TV shows. 

Some of Bourdain's books are hit-or-miss, but I genuinely liked his breakout memoir, Kitchen Confidential. Heck, I even liked the Kitchen Confidential TV series, which only shared the book's title and the protagonist's surname — otherwise, a completely different beast. But as a shot-on-film sitcom of the early aughts, it was an enjoyable hang with a pre-fame Bradley Cooper and a better-than-you-might-expect supporting cast. (Sadly, that iteration of Kitchen Confidential appears to be absent from streaming platforms, so you'll just have to take my word for it.)

The biographical elements of the Kitchen Confidential book are now newly relevant with the release of the trailer for Tony, which quite clearly telegraphs itself as a Bourdain biopic a few seconds into the proceedings, even though the full name reveal is saved for the end to inspire an "Ooooooh, that guy" from the audience.

If we can trust the trailer to depict what the film really does, Tony is taking a sound approach for biopics: shunning the Wikipedia-style recitation of key events in a person's life and instead focusing on one defining moment. In this case, that defining moment is Anthony Bourdain's time in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA,  where he learned the cooking trade. 

"It's a coming of age story," as our hero explains right at the start of the trailer, perhaps too obviously.

I confess to being a little bit nervous about the movie. Since Bourdain's death, there's been a push to turn him from what he was — an interesting guy with things to say about food and culture and the wider world — into an epicurean saint. On the rare occasions I condescend to check my dormant Facebook account, I'm not that far into scrolling down my feed before the algorithm force-feeds me AI-generated slop with a black-and-white photo of Anthony Bourdain emblazoned with some kind of vaguely inspirational aphorism. Whether Bourndain actually said, "You miss a thousand of the xiao long bao you don't pop in your mouth" isn't the point; it's the flattening out of a curious, all too human person into an easily-packaged and wholly context-free meme. 

 It's really cringe, as the kids might say.

I'm not suggesting that Tony's filmmakers are going to default into Saint Bourdain Of the Noodle Soup territory, though there's a real temptation to run complicated people through a soft-focus filter until all the edges become a bit more palatable. At least the main cast sounds pretty encouraging: I really enjoyed Dominic Sessa in The Holdovers, and we sometimes forget that Antonio Banderas can be a really compelling actor when he's freed from blockbusters and Shrek installments.

So while I may harbor dark suspicions, I won't prejudge Tony. "Hang in there, baby," as the inspiration poster of a black-and-white Tony Bourdain shucking an oyster might advise.

The basis for this item actually appeared a couple of weeks ago, but last week's newsletter was so jam-packed, we didn't have room. That's the motto of the Get Your Phil newsletter staff — All The News We'll Get Around To When We Feel Like It.

Anyhow, not that long ago, SFGate ran a story with a rather provocative headline: Did the A's really leak Las Vegas name change in a job posting? We investigated. Well, the Athletics changing a name that's been a part of their identity across four cities — and counting — as well as for the entire 125-year existence of the American League would certainly be an intriguing development. I would click on that headline. Maybe you would, too.

The answer, or course is: No, they are not changing their name. What are you, some sort of dummy? But you have to dig nto the article to reach that conclusion.

Here's the Too Long; Didn't Read (Lucky for You) version of the story: A few job postings for the Athletics baseball club in their future home of Las Vegas, Nevada, include mentions of something called "Las Vegas Black Fire." That's caused some people to speculate that Black Fire would be the new name of the club.

The problem with such speculation is that it's bullshit. Here's what the SFGate story reveals:

/Of course, to reach the extremely salient point that invalidates the entire existence of the article, you'd have to wade through six paragraphs of throat-clearing, a YouTube video and an embedded tweet to find the information you were actually looking for. 

In other words, this is a non-story that SFGate fluffed up into a full-fledged exposé just so that you'd click — or at least that you'd be enraged enough to share with other people online.

And you know what? It pretty much worked. A lot of people shared the linked article, including a prominent writer or two with huge online followings, and to a person, they all tut-tutted the non-existent name change and the A's for making it.

Look, I appreciate the instinct to point and laugh at John Fisher, believe me. But the only thing I value more than a seething hatred of the A's current owner is a commitment to accurate journalism that informs rather than inflames. And this SFGate article ain't it, chief.

(Speaking of a commitment to accurate journalism that informs rather than inflames, I'd like to let you all know that I'm open to doing it for an outlet that appreciates my experience and skills. Here I am.)

Anytime you write a story, you should ask yourself what the purpose is. Ideally, it should aspire to telling its readers something they didn't know, whether that's revealing a new insight, clearing up some confusion, or explaining something that will contribute to a common understanding of reality. The SFGate article fails on all counts.

Instead, it's deliberately designed to amplify a rumor that few people probably heard, and it doesn't get around to debunking that rumor until deep into the story, with the tacit understanding that few people are ever going to get that deep into things. One might suggest this was a pretty cynical calculation on the part of the SFGate writer and editors to post some clickbait they knew angry ex-Athletics fans were apt to share without even confirming the claim's veracity. You might as well run a headline along the lines of Does 2 Plus 2 Equal 5? We Investigate.

It pains me to have to call that out, as I think the SFGate is a pretty good online site that's really succeeding in its mission to provide extensive coverage of not just the Bay Area but the West Coast as a whole. 

(Full disclosure: Your correspondent applied for a gig there not long ago, and I assume the radio silence since then means they're going in another direction. I also assume this little missive would all but guarantee I'm on a no-fly list now, but oh well, I believe I might as well explain what matters in journalism.) 

Many of the stories you'll find on SFGate will make you better informed about this particular section of the country; this dumb article just doesn't meet that standard.

No clickbait here, only the primo bait for you people.

The very last movie I streamed on Netflix before becoming an ex-subscriber was Train Dreams, the Oscar-nominated picture where Joel Edgerton spends most of the first half of the 20th-century cutting down trees in the Pacific Northwest so that the railway can come through. Prior to watching Train Dreams, the only thing I knew about the movie involved a pre-Oscars Conan O'Brien interview where he groused about how it was nearly impossible to write Train Dreams jokes.

Maybe that's because Train Dreams didn't have as wide an audience as some of the other nominees, and it's certainly stemming from the fact that no real iconic moment or image from the movie has landed with the public, like say the car chase toward the end of One Battle After Another or the vampire jamboree in Sinners. 

But I would suggest that it's hard to joke about a movie that should come with a content warning label for emotionally stunted men of a certain age who run for cover at the first hint of emotional catharsis. Not that I know any such people.

Anyhow, Train Dreams is heavy work: a movie about a man contemplating his place in the universe, thinking he's found it — then losing it all and trying to piece together what a lifetime adds up to — that can hit hard depending on where you find yourself. It's beautiful and moving, and I will never, ever watch it again.

As for streaming services I still pay for, I just polished off the eight-episode run of Ponies on Peacock. Ponies is set in the USSR of the late 70s, and it focuses on two women (played by Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson) who are living at the U.S. embassy in Moscow while their husbands do spy stuff. Some of that spy stuff goes horribly wrong, leaving Clarke and Richardson to try and discover why. They're pressed into service as agents, under the theory that they're Persons of No Interest — the PoNIes of the title — and can slip under the radar of the Soviets.

It's a good comic setup, and a lot of Ponies is very, very funny, but that's not the full aim of the show. Instead, what works about Ponies is watching the characters come into their own by leaving behind the thankless tasks of being unpaid support staff for their husbands and taking on more fulfilling (and dangerous) work. It helps that both Clarke and Richardson are charismatic, and their relationship on the show really blossoms into an engaging friendship. Adrian Lester, as the CIA chief in Moscow, is also really good as the taciturn, deadpan boss.

Ponies doesn't successfully keep its many different plot threads from getting tangled up, and it commits one of my cardinal sins for TV series — the last episode ends on a cliffhanger before anyone's confirmed that there will be a second season. TV show-runners I am begging you: treat each season of your series as a self-contained story that resolves satisfyingly should your program get the chop. You don't have to tell stories like you're Charles Dickens maximizing the payout for one of your serialized novels. 

But if you can go into a series with far more serenity about cliff-hangers than I have, watch Ponies. It's fun.

And that's the Phil for this week — thanks for reading. Until next time, when we'll consider whether Train Dreams would have been more or less moving if accompanied by the 1970s needle drops from Ponies.