You ever have one of those weeks where you think, "Man I'm not sure there's enough to fill up yet another free newsletter," and then 3,000 words later, you're getting the Wrap It Up light flashing from the back? Yeah, me neither.

If you hold down any sort of editorial job for any length of time, at some point you will be tasked with putting together some March Madness-adjacent project in which you (or your readers) determine the very best of a particular category using the NCAA basketball tournament's bracket format for a series of head-to-head votes. The very best example of this happened online a generation ago with The Road to Springfield, a 64-entry bracket in which various Simpsons characters faced off. I have no recollection of who the winner turned out to be, but my heart tells me it had better have been Moe or Krusty.

There have been less successful iterations of that tournament-style editorial format, and indeed, I was responsible for at least one of them. At the old gig, we used to do a March Madness tournament in which readers voted on the best smartphone, and I was tasked with writing up each day's entry. The problem with this particular editorial package was that after the first round or so, you really ran out of things to say about different phones. Also, whatever iPhone made the field that year inevitably won.

Mercifully, I don't have to do that anymore and can instead enjoy other outlets' efforts to turn March Madness into a recurring editorial bit. The one that's caught my attention this year comes from the Sickos Committee, a good follow on Bluesky if you like the weirder side of college sports. For their 64-entry tournament, the Sickos cast their net beyond their usual remit to find the best state flag. And since every schoolboy knows that 50 state flags leave a few openings in a field of 64, they've opened the tournament to U.S. territories and Canadian provinces, too.

I can't speak to the flags of Canada — though, Newfoundland and Labrador, you've got some explaining to do — but I definitely have some opinions about U.S. state flags. For the most part, they are pretty boring — think of a big field of blue with the state seal slapped somewhere in the middle. For my money, Wisconsin is the worst of the genre, at least among states that didn't try to sneak in a Confederate flag when we weren't looking.

Wisconsin gives us the de rigueur field of blue, featuring the state coat of arms — a sailor and a miner who seem very put out to be here, along with other symbols of Wisconsinite industry. (An anchor, a plow, an arm yielding a hammer, but strangely, no cheese.) So you don't confuse this generic blue flag with the many other blue flags in the union, the state has helpful pasted "WISCONSIN" across the top, presumably because "DULLSVILLE" would be too self-aware.

I don't feel like I have to go into too great a depth as to why this flag misses the mark — it is generic, it is uninspired and, all-caps lettering aside, there is nothing there that makes you think of the state of Wisconsin. Better to just fly a poster of Bernie Brewer from the flagpole at your capitol.

But a few state flags stand out from the boring blue crowd. These are the five I hope find their way to the podium in that Sickos Committee vote.

For sheer "sense of place" vibes, it's hard to top Arizona's flag, which definitely evokes the southwest, with its horizon, star and color scheme. (Colorado comes closest and I nearly put it in this slot, though I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that the old Colorado Rockies of the NHL essentially skated around draped in their state flag.) A cynic might say the Arizona flag looks like the corporate logo for a series of dodgy tanning salons across the greater Valley of the Sun area, and I would be in no position to dispute that argument, but you look at the Arizona flag, and you know you haven't driven to Maine by mistake.

Minnesota's flag is the newest of the bunch, having only been adopted in 2024. That's good news because the old flag was a big of a mess, with that omnipresent blue field interrupted by buoy-shaped circle that looked a little too much like the opening credits of The Love Boat for my tastes. I like the different shades of blue in the new edition, and this one features the North Star, which would seem to be table stakes if you're putting together a flag for Minnesota. Plus, the new flag enrages stupid people, which earns it extra points in my book.

Mississippi's flag is another newbie, inspired by too much blowback over the stars-and-bars iconography of the previous installment. (Remember, kids: bullying works.) The new flag is decidedly less racist, putting the magnolia — the very nickname of the state front and center. And while the red, white, and blue colors may still have echoes of ol' Dixie, the addition of some vertical gold bars makes this flag far less likely to be on the rear window of a car driven by a bearded dude recording social media videos about how much he hates women's sports.

Some flag enthusiasts find the Bear Flag a bit too busy, but some flag enthusiasts can cram it if you ask me. We've got a star, a bear, a little patch of green and a red bar — sounds like a banner you can rally behind if you ask me. But what really seals the deal for me is the whole "California Republic" wording, as a reminder that we asserted our independence before, and we're happy to do it again.

I don't think there's a more unique flag in the country than New Mexico's — opting for a golden yellow background when nearly everyone else has seized upon blue or white will do that for a state. The Zia sun — that's the symbol smack dab in the middle of the flag — is an important nod to the indigenous people who lived here long before any of the rest of us. I see that flag and I expect someone's going to be serving me up some sort of dish covered in delicious chili pepper sauce right quick.

Honorable Mentions: Alaska, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Ohio (who needs rectangular flags?) and Louisiana for its deadly pelican, king of all murder birds.

By the way, if you really like flags, state mottos and the like, a new season of the E Pluribus Motto podcast gets started next week. It's a lot of fun, with hyper-focused discussions on official state symbols, the explanations behind those indecipherable state seals and any other fun fact you can think of. It's also the podcast I was listening to last November when I tripped and broke my arm during a walk, but don't hold that against it.

I didn't mention this when I recounted my Sacramento road trip last month, but my daughter and I spotted a billboard during the drive wishing a happy birthday to John Garamendi, the congressman representing Califormia's 8th district. What a thoughtful gesture, huh?

Well, not really, as it turns out.

“Happy 81st Birthday Congressman Garamendi," the sign reads. "Elected 52 years ago.” That accompanies a photo of the congressman carefully selected to make it look like he's ready for Death's welcoming embrace.

Reporting by SFGate indicates that none of Garamendi's opponents in this year's election have taken credit for the billboard. The sign is credited to a group called "Paid for Americans Celebrating Octogenarians," though efforts to find out who's behind that group have proved fruitless. Still, the name of the organization is a bit of a giveaway as to the intent of these back-handed felicitations.

Our representatives in Congress are getting older at a time when the growing perception is that newer candidates might be better suited to take on the imminent threat to democracy we're currently facing. You need look no further than another SFGate article on the race between 81-year-old Doris Matsui — currently in her 21st year in Congress — and 40-year-old challenger Mai Vang to see this dynamic at play. Increasingly, Democratic Party leadership is viewed as not up to the fight, and sending the same bodies back to Congres year after year strikes a growing number of people as a poor way to combat that.

I'm a bit wary of tarring all older legislators with the same used-up brush. Up until a year ago, my representative in Congress was Barbara Lee — 78 years young at the time she left office. And I found her to be a very responsive and active legislator any time my family had reason to call her office, to the point where I was happy to support her Senate bid in the 2024 election. Lee currently serves as the mayor of Oakland, which is not exactly a post you take if you're looking for a comfortable sinecure to ride out your golden years.

My point here is that age is just a number a lot of the time. But expect it to very much be a factor in some primary races for incumbents who don't seem to be more actively bucking the rising pro-fascism tide at play in our country right now.

Baseball season gets underway later this week, and at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, fans of the Texas Rangers will be greeted by a new statue within the stadium. Here's what Major League Baseball's news arm had to say about the One Riot, One Ranger statue:

Missing from that write-up is exactly what the statue is meant to commemorate and why it was removed from Love Field in the first place. The man depicted in the statue — E.J. “Jay” Banks — was one of two Texas Rangers sent to a Texas school in the 1950s as it was about to integrate. The Rangers were not sent to safeguard the Black students entering the school — rather, they were there to prevent that while also protecting the white mob that came to intimidate the students. After George Floyd's 2020 murder by police, statues with that kind of history were no longer in vogue, and One Ranger, One Riot disappeared from Love Field, until the baseball club swooped in to restore it, no doubt emboldened by the "It's OK to be Racist Again" ethos ushered in by the second Trump administration.

Certainly, the progressive-minded baseball media that I consume has covered this story, but I'm not sure it's percolated into mainstream consciousness. Well, let's try and make sure that it does by highlighting Bradford William Davis' write-up, which includes comments from the lone living student turned back by the Texas Rangers 70 years ago as well as by the local congressman, Marc Veasey, who's asking exactly who thought it would be a good idea to proudly put such a statue on display given its history.

Sports should be a welcoming environment, a place where anyone should be able to gather to take their mind of the troubles of the world. I couldn't imagine walking into a stadium to be greeted by a statue commemorating my exclusion nor could I imagine looking the other way if that statue meant to exclude someone else. I hope the Rangers go 0-162 this year.

Other people write things, too, you know.

/Outside of Rick Steves, I credit Anthony Bourdain and his assorted TV shows with augmenting my love of trave with a sense of purposel. Certainly, I loved visiting new places outside before I even knew who those two fellows were. But both drilled home the point that travel should be about more than just seeing a checklist of sights when you set foot in a new city, but immersing yourself in the local culture, even if it meant pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone.

So with that in mind, a book like Anthony Bourdain's World Travel should be a welcome addition to my library, especially as it bills itself as "an irreverent guide" to visiting hotspots around the globe. It isn't; in fact, it may be one of the worst books I've read in some time.

The trouble starts with the fact that the book isn't really written by Anthony Bourdain — not in the conventional sense that we understand writing at least. Bourdain was aware of the project, certainly, as he met with co-author Laurie Woolever to discuss ideas for book — its tone, the places it would cover, the format it would take. And then, shortly after lining all that up, Bourdain took his own life in 2018.

I'm sure there was a feeling to push forward with World Travel as a way of honoring Bourdain and his legacy, and while there's an understandable nobility to that, it doesn't make for a very good book. Bourdain's contributions to World Travel are limited to transcripts of voice-overs he wrote long ago for Parts Unknown, No Reservations and a host of other shows plus some comments from magazine articles or other media. It's uniquely Bourdain's voice, but when stripped of the visuals that accompany the words, the whole enterprise feels like a glorified listicle — like one of those "America's Best Steakhouses" ads you used to see as part of in-flight magazines, only with a lot more effing and jeffing thrown in.

Consider this passage from the Chicago entry on the Italian beef sandwich to be had at Johnnie Beef's.

I would love to look at it. But there is no photo of the italian beef sandwich served at Johnnie Beef's. I guess I'll just have to catch a rerun from Season One of The Bear.

To be fair, World Travel includes a few original essays from Bourdain associates, friends and family that are of varying value — a contribution from one of his producers that speaks very eloquently about the episodes shot in her home of South Korea and what they meant to her is particularly striking. But for the most part, reading through World Travel, I wondered what the point of this exercise was. And that didn't strike me as a feeling that Anthony Bourdain would have wanted to inspire.

At the risk of testing your patience with one last item, I'm afraid these newsletters are giving the impression that I don't seem to enjoy much of anything. So I'd like to talk about a movie I just watched that really impressed me — BlackBerry from 2023.

There was a spate of movies around that time based on a product like Tetris or Flamin' Hot snack foods, promising to reveal the untold story about the thing you had some warm pangs of nostalgia for. The movie chronicling the creation of the Air Jordan essentially gave the Oppenheimer-treatment to the development of a basketball shoe, proving to be so unbearable and full ot its own self-importance that I tapped out about halfway through — and I'm someone who rarely abandons anything with a finte run time.

It would be unfair to lump in BlackBerry with that group, as it has something to say beyond "Boy, capitalism — that sure is something, huh?" BlackBerry's answer is "yes, it sure is, and it's not always something good." I found the movie to be about our misguided definitions of what it is to be a success and the compromises we make to get to a place we wind up discovering we don't really want to be.

Glenn Howerton, in particular is a standout, especially if you largely know him from shows like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or AP Bio. He brings some comic chops to the part of BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie, but there's also a desperation that comes through behind the over-the-top anger and profane outbursts. From the wardrobe that's a couple of years out of date from the time he’s wearing it to the grasping attempts to buy a hockey team and relocate it to Hamilton, Canada, Howerton plays Balsillie, as a guy driven to prove he's somebody but with no idea of how to do it.

My own career writing about tech took place on the outskirts of the BlackBerry story — the photo at the top of this section comes from a media event I attended that took place long after the events of the movie — and I can tell you BlackBerry is not especially accurate about the details, even if it sticks to the broader strokes of the story. But if you want accuracy, watch a documentary. BlackBerry the movie has a story to tell, and it tells it in a pretty engaging way.

And that's the Phil for this week — thanks for reading. We'll try to keep it going next week with hopefully fewer words.