Welcome back. Reddit's stupid character limit has made it a necessity for me to split my post into two. If you've just happened upon this post without first viewing Part One, a link is available here.

Year 7 (2030)

Martian Manhunter
This film features Martian Manhunter, one of the few remaining Martians, after he is teleported to the planet Earth in a mad science experiment conducted by Doctor Erdel. He operates as a private detective in Apex City, Florida. The film focuses on Martian Manhunter’s detective aspect. The main villain is D’Kay D’Razz, a criminal scientist from Mars imprisoned for experimenting on Martians whose minds were closed off from the communal Martian mind. D’Kay starts kidnapping and murdering humans for her mad science experiments, leading Martian Manhunter to investigate the disappearances.
HBO’s Black Canary: Birds of Prey (Season 3)
This season features Oracle as the deuteragonist, taking place after her offscreen attack at the hands of the Joker (shown in flashbacks). We see the beginning of the Birds of Prey as a partnership between Black Canary and Oracle as the two take on King Kobra and the Cult of Kobra. The Cleaners act as secondary antagonists. In this version, they are part of the Cult of Kobra, their suits adapted to be scaly with a similar scale effect to Mystique’s transformations in the Fox X-Men films. Their cloaking tech is based on chameleons keeping with the theme of Kobra tech and enhancements being based on snakes and other reptiles.
HBO’s Dial H For Hero
Robby Reed, a teenager in the 1960s, discovers the H-Dial and utilizes it to each time become a different superhero with distinct powers each time. The season features Robby Reed as he goes on different adventures with the H-Dial, transforming into a different hero with unique abilities each time. The series emphasizes a sixties atmosphere.
HBO’s Starman (Season 2)
Justice League: Project CADMUS
With the rise of the Justice League comes Project CADMUS. Headed by Amanda Waller, CADMUS aims to discover methods of neutralizing the Justice League should they ever turn against humanity. Since the first Justice League film, the roster has expanded to include the Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart, Vixen, Martian Manhunter, Supergirl, the Question, and Huntress. The main villain is Lex Luthor, who in this film is campaigning to be president while secretly working with Amanda Waller and Project CADMUS. The film ends with Luthor exposed and imprisoned.
Robin and the Teen Titans: Part III
Since the second film, the Titans now consist of Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, Bumblebee, Jericho, and Terra. The Titans are currently tracking down an international mercenary called Deathstroke who’s begun taking action against them. Meanwhile, Robin is investigating connections between the children HIVE had been inducting and training, and metahuman trafficking operations off Markovia. At the end of the first act, Deathstroke, the assassin they’ve been tracking, meets Robin in the night and tells him there’s a mole among his team. The film then devolves into a whodunit that makes Robin distrustful and distant as he goes down this rabbit hole that drives a rift between him and the rest of the team. During his investigation into Markovia, he connects the missing Markovian princess to his new teammate, Terra, making him suspect her. Eventually, it’s revealed that there was no mole and this was all a ploy to destabilize and destroy the Titans by Deathstroke. By the end of the film, Robin realizes he’s become just like Batman, obsessive and paranoid, and decides to develop his own identity from outside Batman’s shadow. Meanwhile, Terra departs from the Titans and returns to Markovia to find her brother

Year 8 (2031)

HBO’s Nightwing
This TV series follows Dick Grayson after his decision to leave Batman’s side and become Nightwing as he moves to Bludhaven. In his new city, Nightwing contends with the city’s organized crime. The main villain of the show is Ra’s Al Ghul and the League of Assassins, who seek to end all crime in Bludhaven through grisly methods. Throughout the show, Nightwing partners with several fellow heroes such as Catwoman, another vigilante operating out of Bludhaven. He also meets the new Robin, Jason Todd, and goes on an adventure with him, accepting him as the new Robin by the season’s end, but warning Bruce that this is no life for a child.
HBO’s New Gods
This limited TV series explores the Fourth World mythology and expands on the character of Darkseid following his introduction in the second Superman film. The story of the New Gods show spans eons and is told in non-chronological order. The main characters for this season are Orion, Mister Miracle, and Big Barda, as well as Granny Goodness and her Female Furies.
Wonder Woman: The Gorgon’s Head
Adapting the “Stoned” arc of Greg Rucka’s run, this film features Circe and the Gorgon Sisters as the main villains. With the second film in the Wonder Woman saga, we continue and conclude the arc of her rivalry with Veronica Cale by having Cale working with the Gorgons. Circe resurrects Medusa on behalf of the Gorgons using their sister’s head. At one point, Medusa kills the son of Peter Garibaldi, a close confidant of Diana and an employee at her embassy. The film climaxes with a vengeful Diana battling Medusa in a football stadium in a fight orchestrated by the goddess Athena as part of her scheme to gain the throne of Olympus. Diana blinds herself in the battle using venom from one of the snakes from Medusa’s hair to avoid her gaze.
HBO’s Strange Adventures
A six-episode sci-fi anthology series with each episode exploring different characters throughout the DC Universe. Featured characters this season include Adam Strange, Deadman, Enchantress, Immortal Man, Lobo, and Captain Comet.
HBO’s Green Lantern Corps: War of Light (Season 3)
Season 3 begins to build to the Blackest Night arc, starting by introducing new Lantern Corps through smaller arcs while also introducing Guy Gardner. We begin with the introduction of the Red Lantern Corps, building from the events of season 1 and showcasing Atrocitus as a product of the Manhunters’ (and by extension, the Guardians’) atrocities. Building from Ganthet and Sayd’s exile, the Blue Lantern Corps is also founded and helps assist in the Red Lanterns’ eventual defeat. The Agent Orange Larfleeze is introduced in the second arc along with the Indigo Tribe. These two arcs build to an epic War of Light between all of the Lantern Corps. The season ends on a cliffhanger as Black Hand harnesses the power of the Black Light and summons Nekron.
HBO’s Aqualad (Season 2)
Aqualad faces his father Black Manta with Aquaman at his side. Throughout the season, Black Manta searches for Atlantis along with his crew of mercenaries. Black Manta has a personal hatred of Aquaman and all Atlanteans, wishing to see them destroyed. The story focuses on Aqualad’s relationship with his father as he inadvertently leads Black Manta to Atlantis, where in the finale, he captures Aquaman and Aqualad and forces Aquaman to watch as his son is trapped in a glass enclosure slowly filling with oxygen, which the baby cannot breathe. Aquaman is enraged, but cannot bring himself to kill the villain, and Aqualad blames himself for the child’s death.
Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow
Supergirl continues to operate as a hero on Earth. Unlike Kal-El, she distrusts humanity and is still coping with the grief and pain of losing her previous life on Krypton. Throughout the film, her arc is to build a new life on Earth, and a new family to help her through her pain and anger. The main villain is Atrocitus. Atrocitus and the Red Lantern Corps of Rage go after Supergirl after she rejects the Red Lantern Ring of Sector 2814. Atrocitus may seem like an odd choice for the villain of a Supergirl movie, but I believe he is a villain who can make Supergirl challenge the rage within her and tie into her time as part of the Red Lantern Corps in the comics.
HBO’s Steelworks: Reign (Season 4)
From the start of the season, Superman has been missing for a week following a battle with the Superman Revenge Squad. Without Superman there to defend Metropolis, Steel and Natasha have been suffering from an increased workload as attacks from supervillains increase. Then, the Cyborg Superman comes, claiming to be the true Superman, having repaired himself with cyborg parts after his body was torn apart in battle with the Revenge Squad. It is eventually revealed that the Cyborg Superman is Hank Henshaw, one half of a husband-and-wife astronaut duo. He and his wife were killed during Brainiac’s invasion of Earth and he was left grievously injured until being revived as a cyborg. It is revealed that Cyborg Superman was working with the alien warlord Mongul in preparation for their invasion of Earth, and was the true force responsible for uniting the Superman Revenge Squad. Superman was teleported to Mongul’s Warworld after being hit with the weapon that had seemingly evaporated him. Now it’s up to Steel and Arclight, along with a ragtag team of Superboy, the Eradicator, Traci Thirteen, and Lex Luthor to rescue Superman from the Warworld and put a stop to Mongul and Cyborg Superman’s plans.

Year 9 (2032)

Nightwing and the New Titans
The first film of the New Teen Titans trilogy, this film introduces classic and beloved characters Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven. The only members leftover from the previous team are Kid Flash and Donna Troy, now going by Troia. Meanwhile, Jason Todd’s Robin has also joined the team, and the film builds his relationship with Nightwing. The main villains of this film are the Brotherhood of Evil, with the Brain, Monsieur Mallah, Madame Rouge, Garguax, and General Immortus. The Doom Patrol also makes an appearance and teams up with the Teen Titans. In this incarnation, the Doom Patrol consists of Robotman, Elasti-Woman, Mento, Negative Woman, and Beast Boy, and is led by the Chief. Elasti-Woman is married to Mento and Beast Boy is their adoptive son. Throughout the film, we see Beast Boy and Cyborg bond. In the climax, Mento betrays the Doom Patrol, creating a psychic wave that threatens to drive the people of Codsville insane. The members of the Doom Patrol sacrifice themselves to stop him. This leaves Beast Boy and Robotman as the only remaining members. Beast Boy joins the Teen Titans to fill the void left by the Doom Patrol.
HBO’s Task Force X
This series centers on Amanda Waller’s infamous Suicide Squad. Featuring a rotating roster of supervillains forced to partake in dangerous black ops missions for the US Government. Waller has received intel that Chang-Tzu, the president of Oolong Island has assembled a team of scientists to create a new super weapon infused with all the powers of the Justice League. She sends the Suicide Squad to neutralize the weapon before it becomes a threat to the United States of America. Chang-Tzu’s “Science Squad” consists of Ira “I.Q” Quimby, Doctor Light, and Ultra-Humanite. It is eventually revealed that Chang-Tzu’s weapon was the AMAZO android, capable of copying the abilities of any metahuman.
Martian Manhunter: Trial By Fire
Continuing the Martian Manhunter story, this film introduces M’gann M’orzz, Miss Martian, with her presence attracting a new threat to Earth, Ma’alefa’ak J’onnz, who is our main villain for the film. Ma’alefa’ak was the architect of Hronmeer’s Plague, which eradicated the entire Martian race, except for his brother, J’onn J’onzz. Ma’alefa’ak follows Miss Martian to Earth to complete his genocide of the Martian race, and J’onn must protect her.
HBO’s Starman (Season 3)
HBO’s Black Canary: Birds of Prey (Season 4)
Season 4 continues the Birds of Prey arc and develops the team from a simple partnership between Black Canary and Oracle to a fully-fledged superhero team. The episodes gradually introduce new team members with a “villain of the week” structure rather than one overarching villain throughout the series. The season builds to a confrontation with Noah Kuttler, the Calculator. He starts as a lackey for bigger threats like Fenice (Maria Bertinelli) and the League of Assassins, becoming a formidable threat on his own by the finale.
Superman: World of Tomorrow (Villain: Mr. Mxyzptlk)
Superman and his supporting cast (outside characters introduced post-Golden Age like Steel) are trapped within a black-and-white Golden Age fantasyland in which Superman is the only superhero on Earth. Their memories have been removed as they are made puppets of a mysterious mastermind. The story adapts aspects of Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” as the world becomes gradually more serious with Superman’s villains becoming more dangerous. We see classic variations of villains like Lex Luthor and Brainiac. Superman finally discovers that the mastermind behind the World of Tomorrow was Mister Mxyzptlk and defeats the villain, allowing him and all of the others trapped in the World of Tomorrow to return home
HBO’s Dial H For Hero (Season 2)
Season 2 adapts the 1980s series with Chris King and Vicki Grant wielding the H-Dial after it is left for them in an abandoned shack by the mysterious “Wizard”. Like the first season was a period piece set in the 1960s, this season does the same with the 80s. Throughout the series, Chris and Vicki use the H-Dial the same way their predecessor, Robby Reed did. The main villain is the Master, who sends several villains after them who all wield the V-Dial, which transforms regular people into supervillains. Eventually, it is revealed that an older Robby Reed was both the Wizard and the Master after his repeated use of the H-Dial broke his mind. Robby retires the H-Dial and cautions Chris and Vicki to do the same.

Year 10 (2033)

Batman: Under The Red Hood
Now that Jason Todd, Ra’s Al Ghul, and Nightwing have been properly established, we can finally adapt the “Under The Red Hood” storyline in the first and perhaps the only Batman film of the saga. The main villain is of course a resurrected Jason Todd who is now operating as the Red Hood. Throughout the film, we see flashbacks expanding on Jason’s time as Robin from Batman’s perspective. The film’s opening flashback shows Jason Todd’s death. The Joker is introduced as a secondary antagonist following several mentions and references throughout the DC Universe, having been a thorn in Batman’s side for many years now up until his first and only major appearance.
HBO’s Aqualad: The Dead King (Season 3)
Arthur Curry’s approval among Atlanteans drops, with detractors citing his human heritage and neglecting his duties as Atlantis’ king while on adventures with the Justice League. Meanwhile, Aqualad questions his place among Atlantis, his actions having led to the death of the king’s son. As these questions are brought up, the Dead King Atlan returns to Atlantis, resurging to help defeat Ocean Master during an attempt to take over the kingdom. Many Atlanteans begin to call for Atlan to be crowned the One True King. This season explores Atlantean history as it is revealed that Atlan was responsible for the sinking of Atlantis and not his brother Orin as was previously believed. We learn that Atlan was in league with the Ocean Master, as both planned to rule Atlantis as a duumvirate. By the season’s end, Arthur leaves the Justice League to devote all of his time to Atlantis, and Kaldur’ahm takes up his mantle as Aquaman, joining the League in his place.
HBO’s Nightwing: Termination (Season 2)
Nightwing once again encounters the infamous Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke. Their rivalry continues in the second season of Nightwing’s show as Deathstroke still blames Nightwing for the death of Grant Wilson, and Nightwing hates Deathstroke for putting him and his Titans through so much anguish. This season introduces the second Ravager, Rose Wilson, who has been trained by her father since youth to become the perfect assassin and has now joined his plot to exact revenge on Dick Grayson. The story follows Rose’s arc of redemption and getting away from her father to become a better person. Jericho is featured as a supporting character who helps Rose on this journey, building a brotherly bond with her.
Black Lightning and the Outsiders
Black Lightning, Metamorpho and Katana form the Outsiders, a team of superheroes under Batman’s control who are sent on black ops missions around the globe. In this film, Black Lightning and the Outsiders work with Terra to find her brother and take down a massive meta-trafficking ring run out of Markovia. After being deployed onto Markovian soil, the Outsiders meet Terra, who has been searching for her brother since the events of the third Teen Titans film. Eventually, they discover that the true mastermind behind Markovian meta-trafficking operations is Amanda Waller, who’s been using Markovia to traffick metahuman children and mount an army of superpowered soldiers. By the end of the film, the roster consists of Black Lightning, Katana, Metamorpho, Terra, Geo-Force, and Halo.
HBO’s Challengers of the Unknown
This series follows Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown, a team of adventurers led by Ace Morgan as they face off against fantastic foes and investigate paranormal occurrences. The series takes place in the 1950s. The first season follows the Challengers as they are hired by a mad scientist on Oolong Island to locate and recover Pandora’s Box.
HBO’s Strange Adventures: Mystery in Space (Season 2)
Continuing the six-episode anthology series, this season follows a couple of series mainstays as well as new faces, now with the theme “Mystery in Space”. Adam Strange, Lobo, and Captain Comet return with new stories, this time their episodes focus on elements of mystery. Adam Strange’s episode could, for instance, follow the titular hero solving a murder on Rann, while Captain Comet’s episode would adapt the 2006-2007 comic series, and Lobo’s episode would lampoon hard-boiled cigar-chomping detectives. Three new characters debut with their own anthology episodes, Space Cabbie, the Thanagarian lawman Hawkgirl, and Ultra the Multi-Alien
HBO’s Green Lantern Corps: Blackest Night (Season 4)
Following the events of the War of Light, Blackest Night begins as the dead rise, possessed by the Black Lantern rings. The Black Hand and his master Nekron seek to engulf the galaxy in darkness, leading all of the Lantern Corps to band together against the threat of the Black Lanterns. Amid the apocalypse, Kyle Rayner is introduced as the harbinger of the White Light. As the HBO shows are by nature less connected to the films, the Blackest Night storyline is changed to less of a major Justice League crossover event and more of a self-contained Green Lantern story without major involvement from other heroes.
HBO’s New Gods (Season 2)
A continuation of the first season, while the first one focused on Mister Miracle and Orion, as well as Big Barda and the Female Furies. This season focuses on Orion interacting with other aspects of the Fourth World, introducing Forager and Lightray and expanding the world of New Genesis while the previous season focused mostly on Apokolips. It also introduces the concept of Anti-Life through the character of Metron.
Justice League: Apokolips
Darkseid finally launches his invasion of Earth as retribution for his humiliation at Superman’s hand. This film serves as the Endgame of the saga, bringing together every corner of the DC Universe together for the final epic conclusion to the Apokolips saga. The Lanterns, the Birds of Prey, the Outsiders, the Justice League, the Titans, the Atlanteans, the Amazons, the Justice Society, Task Force X, and even some villains like Lex Luthor are brought together against the threat of Darkseid. In the climax, Barry Allen, Wally West, and Jay Garrick race to generate enough energy and dissipate Darkseid’s hellspore machine. Barry Allen runs faster than he ever has before to help stop the machine and succeeds, but in the process falls victim to the Speed Force. The film ends with Barry Allen’s funeral, with his peers dressed in black variants of their traditional suits.

Year 11 (2034)

Robin, The Boy Wonder
In the time between Under The Red Hood and Justice League: Apokolips, the events of the comic story “A Lonely Place of Dying'' occurred and Tim Drake became the third Robin. At this point, Tim Drake’s Robin activities are still limited to training in the Batcave and he is not allowed to go on any field missions as Batman fears what happened to Jason Todd will happen to Tim. While Batman is busy with Two-Face, Robin investigates a series of robberies with clues left at the scene of the crime behind Batman’s back. Throughout his investigation, he discovers the culprit is Arthur Brown, previously known as the Cluemaster, and works with Cluemaster’s daughter, Stephanie Brown who has been laying clues at the scenes of his crimes as “The Spoiler” to lead the police to her father. In the climax, Batman falls into Two-Face’s trap and Robin must choose between saving Batman and capturing Cluemaster. The film ends with Tim Drake going back to school and bumping into Stephanie near the lockers, who does not know his true identity. In his dorm at night, Tim sees the Bat-signal light the sky. When Robin gets to him, Batman explains that Cluemaster‘s operation collapsed due to Robin’s actions, and Cluemaster is running one last job at the casino to recoup his losses before fleeing the city. The Dynamic Duo burst into the casino and work together to defeat Cluemaster’s goons before leaping at their leader. The final shot is a freeze-frame of Robin and Batman socking Cluemaster on the jaw Brave and the Bold-style.
HBO’s Starman (Season 4)
Nightwing and the New Titans: The Terror of Trigon
The second film of the New Teen Titans trilogy. This outing features Brother Blood and the Church of Blood as the main villains, who seek to ritually invoke Raven's father Trigon, and set him loose on the world. The film deals with Raven fighting back against her demonic father. One scene has Raven lose control of her demonic side and turn against the Titans before being brought back to the light through the power of their friendship (yeah, I know). Flashbacks taking place before the Titans' previous outing show Raven's origin and how she joined the Titans. Meanwhile, Beast Boy suffers from PTSD following the deaths of the Doom Patrol, and the other Titans, as well as his ex-teammate Robotman help him through it.
The Flash: Legacies
Based on a story by Troyoboyo17, adapted for context (DCEU references removed, the backstory behind Barry’s death changed), full pitch here.
The following changes are made: Following Barry Allen’s death by Darkseid’s hand, Wally West struggles to take up the mantle of the Flash. The main villain is Evan McCulloch, a former STAR Labs engineer who was fired and got a job as a night watchman at the Flash Museum. One night, Sam Scudder tries to steal a failed multiversal travel machine on display at the Flash Museum to upgrade his tech, or, if that fails, sell it on the black market. Wally West as the Flash intervenes. In the scuffle, Mirror Master’s tech messes with the machine, killing him. Wally fails to stop the machine from going off, and McCulloch is hit with radiation from the Mirror Dimension. McCulloch later discovers he has powers and becomes the new Mirror Master. The rest is mostly the same as the YouTube video.
HBO’s Task Force X: The Quraci Job (Season 2)
This second season follows Task Force X on a new mission. This time, they’re tasked with extracting a high-value target from a “rebel camp” in Qurac. It is later revealed that the camp was a League of Assassins outpost and that the target is the infamous Ra’s Al Ghul. The villain team, Onslaught is introduced as weapons being bred at the mountainous Quraci military complex of Jotunheim, with one of the members being the government operative Eve Eden/Nightshade undercover. Ra’s Al Ghul commissioned Onslaught as elite assassins under his League. Queen Bee is a secondary antagonist working with Ra’s Al Ghul, the leader of the neighboring country of Bialya who used her powers of mind control over men to force Quraci President Rumaan Harjavti to sign over the country. In Qurac, the Suicide Squad meets the Bana-Mighdall Amazons, part of a secret nation hidden deep in the forests of Qurac.
Wonder Woman: Descent Into Tartarus
Ending the Wonder Woman trilogy, this film has Diana, blinded following her last solo outing, ordered by the goddess Athena to descend into the realm of Tartarus and rescue the messenger god Hermes. Hermes is being held captive by the Triumvirate of Tartarus, Ares, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, who scheme to restore Zeus to the Throne of Olympus, with Ares acting as a double agent for Athena. By Diana’s side as she ventures into Hades’ domain are her chef, Ferdinand, and her former protege Donna Troy. Throughout the film, our three main characters are separated, alone in the depths of what is essentially Hell. They encounter several monsters from Greek Myth while facing their flaws, their fears, and their mistakes.
Superman: A Better Tomorrow
Concluding the Superman saga, this film follows Superman as a father to John Kent, adapting Tomasi's Rebirth run. The final Superman movie concludes Superman and Lex Luthor’s decade-long rivalry with a final master plan against Superman. The story takes inspiration from Grant Morrison’s All-Star adding aspects of Tomasi’s aforementioned run.
HBO’s Green Lantern Corps: The First Lantern (Season 5)
Season 5 centers on our four main Lanterns as they face off against Volthoom, the First Lantern, and Krona, the rogue Guardian who created him. The season also introduces Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz as new Lanterns while tying Jessica Cruz’s origin as the villain Power Ring to Krona and Volthoom rather than Power Ring of Earth-3. This change is again, part of an effort to streamline the story and make it more self-contained.

The Future

That's all that fits within the parameters of this post, however, this is not the end of my DCU. All the TV shows would continue up until their fourth seasons, except for Dial H for Hero which was always intended for only 2 seasons.
Strange Adventures would continue, with a new "theme" each season, with each season subtitled after a DC anthology. Season 3 would have a horror theme, subtitled "Tales of the Unexpected", with episodes on Deadman, Enchantress, Resurrecting Man, Captain Comet, Johnny Peril, and Traci Thirteen. The fourth season would have a war theme, subtitled "Weird War Tales" with the Haunted Tank, Adam Strange, Sgt. Rock and the Easy Company, G.I. Robot, the Atomic Knights, and the Unknown Soldier. Even then, it doesn't need to be the end. Strange Adventures is the only show in this DCU I could see easily going for a massive amount of seasons without getting stale.
Nightwing has two more seasons, and the final season of Aqualad's show chronicles his adventures as the new Aquaman, facing the Fisherman and his illegal industrial fishing operations. The final film of the New Teen Titans trilogy has Starfire return to Tamaran to face her sister, Blackfire. I also had an idea for an Outsiders sequel with Brother Eye and the OMACs as the main villains.
This isn't to mention all the other projects. Right now, we are beginning Tim Drake's generation, meaning that heroes like Impulse, Cassandra Sandsmark, and Superboy would soon be on the horizon. The conclusion of the New Teen Titans trilogy would lead to the beginning of a new Young Justice-led trilogy.
But I don't think I'll ever write up a "2035-2044" slate considering how long it took for me just to finish this one and how many different incarnations of the "DCEU Rewrite" I went through before fully settling on this one and it was so long I ended up having to split it into two posts. Even then, I have a few minor regrets. For instance, at one point in the making of this slate, I debated with myself whether I should have Red Hood as the main villain of a Batman project, or adapt the Red Hood story for Season 3 of the Nightwing series. I eventually picked the former and I'm still not quite sure my decision was the right one. Besides, all these DCEU rewrites will be rendered obsolete by the end of the month once Gunn announces his new (and invariably better) slate.

Lately I've been seeing more and more silly headlines about crypto and I wonder if news outlets realize that they're hurting their reputation/brand. They probably don't care but it just makes me trust them less and rely on more independent journalists. The recent news cycle of SBF being given the softest possible treatment which ultimately wound up being less than truthful because of it is the best example but there are smaller examples that might get overlooked because on their face they may seem less impactful.
Take for instance

‘Crypto winter’ has come. And it’s looking more like an ice age.
The crypto industry is calling this moment its “crypto winter.” They say it’s cyclical, much like a bear market for Wall Street — something that has happened before and will eventually blow over.
But experts say the ferocity and scale of this downturn could end up leading to more of an ice age.

We all know this by now. This isn't news to anyone who's been paying attention. This also isn't simply isolated to crypto, everything is down. This feels shallow in its surface.
Or how about this one

Crypto Is Money Without a Purpose
Granted, crypto trading looks a lot like the forms of finance we’re all familiar with. It’s made up of things called “exchanges,” “brokers,” “lenders,” “deposits” and “hedge funds.” The financial press breathlessly reports their every move. Crypto also carries the special mystique of the blockchain, which has let traders treat critics as anti-innovation Luddites.
Yet in the most crucial respect, the crypto marketplace isn’t at all like traditional finance. Finance and financial services exist for a purpose that crypto trading lacks. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller once wrote, “Finance is not about making money per se . . . it exists to support other goals—those of society.”
Finance helps businesses, people and governments raise, save, transmit and deploy money for socially and economically useful ends.
Contrast that with the purposelessness of the crypto trading system. Crypto trading is a game that uses finance as its subject matter. It emulates finance the same way the board games Risk and Monopoly emulate war and real-estate investing.
Crypto trading is also gambling. Gamblers bring money—fiat currency—into a casino or online gambling game, wager on outcomes, and convert the winnings or losses back into money. The closed-loop crypto trading system operates in the same way. Crypto trading can’t serve the productive purpose that defines finance. It performs no intermediation function to help expand the economy or improve society. Crypto trading is, as “Seinfeld’s” George Costanza might have said, finance about nothing.

I'll agree that day-trading crypto is the equivalent to gambling but that isn't isolated to crypto. That exists in Wall Street all the same. Crypto didn't invent this. As for crypto having no benefit to society or having no purpose it signals that this author hasn't the slightest clue what they're talking about. It offers transparency and the ability to know what funds are where and where funds are being sent. It also offers an extremely easy means to both send and receive crypto which can then be converted to fiat.
Finally, let's take a look at this one

Terra Luna Classic Price Prediction – How High Can LUNC Reach in 2023?
How High Can Terra Luna Classic Go In 2023?
Based on the current market conditions, the short-term outlook for LUNC appears bearish. However, some investors believe that LUNC, like other cryptocurrencies, could make a solid recovery in 2023.
It would take a significant increase in the value of LUNC, perhaps as much as 750,000%, for it to reach its all-time high again.
One potential strategy for helping LUNC increase in value and potentially reach the $1 level again could be a token burn drive. This would involve a reduction in the supply of LUNC tokens, which could potentially increase their value. However, the large current supply of LUNC tokens may make it difficult to achieve this goal.
For example, if the market capitalization of LUNC is assumed to be $1 billion, a very aggressive reduction in supply would be needed in order to have only 1 billion LUNC tokens left in circulation.
The current burn tax on all LUNC transactions is only 0.2%, which is insufficient to achieve the needed supply reduction. The community is advocating for an increase to 1.2%, but even this may not be enough to see positive results.
It is important to keep in mind that the cryptocurrency market is dynamic and that things can change quickly. The supply of LUNC will continue to be a key factor in its performance, and it may be worth keeping an eye on this token as we move into 2023.

Who in their right mind honestly believes that LUNC can make a comeback to its ATH in 2023? The token burn tax on its transactions is a drop in the bucket to help get it back to even just $1, let alone its ATH. It's dead and operated by an on-the-run scam artist. There's hopium and then there's articles like this that only serve to keep bag holders holding.
Anyway that's my rant on the state of media and the awful articles that are coming out. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

A friend was told this low-stakes poker at the casino by Men “The Master”. My friend took the advice, raised, and The Master folded.
This is great advice in poker, Snap, and life in general. Don’t chase power from behind.
Snap specifically it’s almost never the right move to simply “call” someone else’s snap. You have to be reasonably sure you have the winning hand already (the “nuts”), and if you’re sure you have the nuts, go all-in an re-snap them!
The only time I’d consider merely calling is if I’m on a draw, but bear in mind not all draws are equal. Needing one card for a flush is very different than chasing an inside-straight. In Snap you might consider staying in through hands 3 and 4 for an extra cube to see if you can draw Wave for your Death Wave deck (with Death and Aero already in hand), but chasing Patriot, Mystique, and Ultron after drawing none of them yet… those are terrible odds.
If you can call, you can raise.

Ever since Sonic Frontiers was announced, I’ve been thinking a lot about Sonic lore. I’ve been a longtime fan of the series, with my first game being Sonic Adventure 2 (for Gamecube). The lore and story of the series has always enamored me, from the ancient mystique of Angel Island, to the clandestine horrors of Project Shadow, to even just the everyday relationships between the characters. That’s why I loved Sonic (and games like Jak and Daxter and later Legend of Zelda).
But notice how I said “loved” – I haven’t cared about Sonic in about 10 years. Why you ask? Because Sonic lost what made it special in my eyes. In trying to move away from the “Dark Ages” Sonic Team essentially threw away everything that made me like the games. The side characters were phased out. The lore was gutted. Sonic essentially became an automated running simulator with a side of cartoon antics that not even a 10 year old would find funny. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played the new games, some even on launch. But Sonic isn’t the same anymore. Nor has it been a series I actively cared about until recently. My re-interest in the series is because Frontiers looks like it might be a return to form for the series in terms of story. While I know spoilers for the game are out there, the majority of us probably haven’t played the game yet. So that’s why on the eve of the final day so to speak, I want to share with you all my ideas for what Sonic lore could look like if I was in charge of it. I know this none of this will ever actually be canon, but I felt the desire to share what my imagination has cooked up these past few months.
The impetus behind creating this rewritten canon is that I feel like the Classic games through the Adventure/Dark Ages had a continuous lore that built on itself. In the games leading up to and into the “meta” era, this cannot be said. Each “Meta Era” game is essentially self-contained adventure occurring in the ether. They’re generic and disconnected from any kind of unique aspects of the Sonic world or continuity. So in rewritten the Sonic lore, my main goal is to unify the themes and lore of the series, while rewriting and re-integrating the “bad” games. Accordingly, the “core” of my canon is based around Sonic Adventure, SA2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Edgehog, Sonic Battle, and Sonic Chronicles.
…Anyways with that out of the way, and without further ado, here is “my” canon for Sonic.
The first thing to understand about “my” canon is that there is absolutely no isekai or two-worlds non-sense. The world is just that, one world. This world is divided into parts dominated by Humans and parts inhabited by animal-people (also known as Mobians). This world is pretty much an alternate version of Earth. So, most of its locales are based in some loose sort of realism. Places like Pumpkin Hill, Frog Forest, and Glyphic Canyon exist, but places like Sweet Mountain and Casino Park (in its current state) do not. At the current stage in history, humanity dominates approximately 3/4 of the planet with Mobians being mostly relegated to archipelagos of islands like South Island and some landmasses out of the reach of humanity. These lands are collectively known as Mobius.
Before I drive deeper into the set-up of the “modern day” I want to explore the ancient lore of the Sonic world. So firstly, unlike current canon, there are 4 types of energy: Chaos energy, Order energy, Bio energy, and Geo energy. Chaos Emeralds represent chaos energy, while the Sol Emeralds represent Order energy. These forms of energy exist in a chain: chaos gives way to order, which creates substance (geo) which allows life (bio) to thrive.
At the beginning of civilization, a precursor race arrived from the Chaos Realm (where Special stages take place). This transcendent race was known as the Chao. Chao are a highly adaptive lifeforms, able to learn and change by taking on the traits of things around them (explaining what they do with little animals in SA1 and SA2). Chao exist in a state of evolution and reincarnation. At their apex, they are highly intelligent god-like beings. However, at their birth, they are infant-like and require positive emotions and energy to evolve and reincarnate. Through successive reincarnations, they amass the knowledge to eventually ascend, leaving the material world behind. The Chao form what is later known as the First Great Civilization on this world (terminology taken from Sonic Chronicles and Sonic Battle where the Nocturnus are called the 4th Great Civilization) and create the Chaos Emeralds and build the Temples of Gaia to house the emeralds (Dark and Light Gaia don’t exist in my canon) and other super ancient architecture. Later civilizations find their ruins on the planet and dub them the Gaians. As the Gaians ascend, they leave behind their descendants and a Chao-deity known as Chaos, who serves as a bodhisattva of Chao-kind and protector of the Master Emerald
A Second Great Civilization rises as a time of period between Mobians and Humans. However, this era is ended by the invasion of a malevolent race known as the Black Arms who form the 3rd Great Civilization. The Black Arms create vast structures such as Glyphic Canyon, but are eventually driven off the planet by the coalition of Humans and Mobians championing a hedgehog hero who utilizes the power of the Chaos Emeralds. The Black Arms are intrigued and covet the power of the Chaos Emeralds but make their retreat to avoid annihilation, leaving behind traces of their civilization and weaponry on the planet.
Time passes, and a Fourth Great Civilization rises, the Nocturnus Clan. Using their research on Gaian and Black Arms technology, this clan of Echidnas has become technologically advanced. Their crowning achievement is the creation of the robotic weapons known as Gizoids, who are able to evolve and adapt in ways inspired by Chao. In seeking domination of the world, the Nocturnus Clan meets opposition in the form of the Knuckles Clan, another expansionist echidna clan who attempts to use the power of the Chaos Emeralds to defeat the Nocturnus. This genocidal warfare and the assault on the Shrine of the Master Emerald enrages the god Chaos who wipes out civilization before being sealed in the Master Emerald by another legendary super-hedgehog.
At this time, a small kingdom known as Soleanna, fearing its safety, seals the Sol Emeralds within the inner sanctums of its palace and seals their god Solaris (counterpart to Chaos) within the bloodline of their princess.
Over the course of the next thousands of years, humans begin to expand, pushing Mobians into smaller territories and driving Chao into endangerment.
Thousands of years pass, and the Black Arms return to the planet hoping to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds. The backstory of Sonic Battle and Sonic Adventure 2, and Shadow the Hedgehog plays out mostly unchanged with Dr. Gerald Robitnik creating Shadow.
Eventually, there comes a time in the modern day where a powerful energy company (either called MeteorTech or HexaECO) from the human part of the world begins to encroach on Mobian lands in search of new sources of energy. This company, which doesn’t care about the environment or the welfare of Mobians, funds the research and excursions of a scientist named Dr. Robotnik (Eggman), the grandson of the famed but disgraced Gerald Robotnik. Eggman conducts research into the viability of using biological energy produced by Mobians as an energy source for human civilization.
Sonic 0 / SegaSonic the Hedgehog: Eggman establishes a base off the coast of South Island. He continues his research with bio energy by kidnapping Mobians to experiment on, including a young flying squirrel named Ray, an armadillo named Mighty, and a hedgehog named Sonic. These animals escape and return to their homes, now aware of the threat at hand.
Sonic 1 – Sonic 3 & Knuckles play out mostly the same, except Sonic 2 happens before Sonic CD and “little planet” is Planet Wisp, pulled into orbit to collect bio energy from Wisps, who might be an easier target than Mobians.
Between the classic games and Sonic Adventure, Eggman is fired by the energy company due to his many expensive failures and his increasingly wacky plans. However, using what he learned about bio energy and the army of Badniks he created with their funding, Eggman stages a coup and takes over the company, transforming it into Eggman Enterprises.
Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 then occur mostly unchanged, with Eggman’s plans becoming more focused on world domination and gaining the power of the Chaos Emeralds.
Sonic Battle and Sonic Advanced are combined and rewritten into a single game that tells the origins of Emerl, hints at the backstory of Gizoids, and explains more about what happened on the Space Colony Ark. (Shadow is written out of Sonic Battle portions). Then Sonic Advanced 2 & 3 happen.
Finally, Sonic Heroes happens, bringing Shadow back. The main change I’d have here is making Metal Sonic’s modification to evolve explicitly based on Eggman’s research into Gizoid technology. Metal Sonic overthrows Eggman and usurps his company to advance his “android supremacist” (compared to Eggman’s human supremacist views). As is in the original game, Metal Sonic collects the Chocola and Froggy to collect their data for his transformation into Metal Overlord.
Next, Shadow the Hedgehog occurs, mostly the same—just toned down on the edginess. Shadow eliminates Black Doom and destroys the Black Arms (mostly).
Next is Sonic Adventure 3, based off Sonic 06. Sonic and friends just happen to visit the Kingdom of Soleanna on vacation. Since Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow has become interested in continuing Gerald Robitnik’s research into Chaos energy and the ancient past. A new villain a Mobian-supremacist scientist named Dr. Starline, who used to work under Dr. Eggman, takes advantage of this and uses a Shadow android to trick Soleanna into letting them tour the inner sanctums of the palace and study the Sol Emeralds. Dr. Starline steals the Sol Emeralds and awakens a part of Solaris’s rage called Mephiles. Mephiles seeks to release Solaris from within the Princess of Soleanna, named Princess Blaze, and bring order to the world to satisfy the rage and malice he felt thousands of years ago during the warfare of the Fourth Great Civilization. A hedgehog named Silver arrives from a future where Solaris’s full rage has been released. Silver tries to find and destroy the “trigger” which releases Solaris’s rage. He comes to believe this trigger is Sonic. Princess Blaze has pyrokinetic powers from her exposure to Solaris and order energy. Rouge and Shadow’s story in this game would be investigating Dr. Starline and Eggman and uncovering some of the deeper secrets of the plot that Sonic and friends don’t see. Ultimately, Blaze sacrifices herself to defeat Solaris within herself. Dr. Starline develops Sol Drives based off his research of the Sol Emeralds. These Sol Drives allow Mobians to gain elemental powers if used correctly. After the future is changed, Silver cannot return to the future as the circumstances of his birth never occur in the new future. So he stays in the present as an ally for Sonic.
Following that would be game based on a several ideas from Sonic Colors and Lost World. Metal Sonic allies with the remanent of the Black Arms (reconceptualized Zavok + Deadly Six) and launches an assault on Little Planet, also known as Planet Wisp, which had previously been pulled into a closer orbit to earth in Sonic CD. They intend to use the Wisps bio-energy to destroy Sonic and conquer the Earth. Their plan fails, but Zavok manages to escape but not without leaving behind an artifact from early in the world’s history that the Black Arms had safeguarded all these millennia.
This would lead into a hypothetical Sonic Frontiers, where Sonic and friends investigate the ancient Starfall Islands and uncover the lore of the First Great Civilization, the creation of the Chaos Emeralds, and more---including the Phantom Ruby and Infinite (instead of SAGE)

A bit of context: Nmom and Edad have a unique relationship. When I was little Edad took a job that required him to be on the road a lot, so I saw little of him growing up and I was stuck with Nmom. I would say that for the first 20 years of my parents marriage, the time my Edad was not constantly away was probably 5 years of it. As a result, both of them "grew up" separately while in their marriage. My Nmom got worst over time with Edad not around, and I bore the brunt of it. They both keep secrets from each other that they don't want the other to know, such as online "flings", secret savings, expenditures etc. They are now in their 70s, retired, and they don't really have any shared interests and need personal space. Tbh I think their relationship is pretty messed up.
Two years ago I married the love of my life after many years of dating, and he puts up my dysfunctional family dynamic. DH has a loving and close knit family, and I am very lucky to be embraced and loved by them. DH and I have a very transparent and communicative relationship as we spent a good amount of our dating years long distance. We are both very happy and fulfilled. We talk about our careers, share similar hobbies and function as a team. We ask each other for advice and opinions on things.
My Narc mom and Edad feel I am "too" trusting and naive. They feel I should keep "secrets" from DH as that keeps the mystique of the relationship. They don't like it when I share family details, such as my parents going to the casino because DH could "use that against me someday" when we fight?? My DH doesn't judge and doesn't care about these details. I think my parents are thinking this way because THEY would hold this against someone else and manipulate people this way. But they are saying I am still early in my marriage and they have been married for decades so this is the secret to marriage. It really bothers them. Even though they are posing it as advice, I think I am being gaslit over and over again.
What do you all think?

Oh, beautiful Lake Tahoe. Just look at that blue sky, freshwater, green forest, and monstrous snake creature.
South Shore of Lake Tahoe from the West Shore. Heavenly Valley's ski runs can be seen quite clearly, as can just a bit of Job's Peak on the right.
Of course, you can't see the monstrous snake creature in the photo because then we wouldn't have a mystery on our hands. Research into the unknown—especially cryptids—is fraught with booby traps, half-truths, pitfalls, lack of physical, photographic, or video evidence, and dead ends. It's dangerous out there, but I'm happy to be your guide as I hack and slash my way through the information danger jungle called the Internet.
Lake Tahoe is situated right on the border of Nevada and California. It's the second deepest lake in the United States—coming in at around 1,645 feet (about 500 meters.) Measurements are impossible for most people to visualize, so here's a quick way to picture the depth of Lake Tahoe.
First, gather the following items: 35 full-sized sofas, 35 queen-sized mattresses, 77 baseball bats, 42 hockey sticks, 35 garage doors, 21 full-grown alligators, 7 residential telephone poles.
Then, set everything up end to end outside your house, taking as much room in your neighborhood as you like (your neighbors surely won't mind.) There you have it, a rough approximation of 1645 feet (or 500 meters.) Now, take a walk alongside your new Lake Tahoe depth measuring stick and see for yourself how much lake monster might fit. And that's just the depth.
If you couldn't find all your alligators or hockey sticks, here's a photo of the Shanghai World Financial Center, a supertall skyscraper that's around the same height as the maximum depth of Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe covers a surface area of around 191 square miles (495 square kilometers.) Since you're probably fresh out of full-grown alligators for a surface area measuring square, here's another way to picture the size of Lake Tahoe: you can fit the entire city of Frankfurt, Germany in it—twice. It would even hold the Republic of Palau—an entire country.
Tahoe Tessie is supposed to be around 60-feet (18 meters) long. You know what else is 60-feet long? A bowling lane. Now that we've established that we're looking for a single, constantly moving bowling lane in an area the size of two Frankfurts and a max depth of the Shanghai World Financial Center—one has to wonder, where are all the photos/videos/TikToks of Tahoe Tessie?
We face the same trouble here that often plagues cryptid research: a massive area. How much of Lake Tahoe do you suppose has been explored? Well, it depends on how one defines "explored." (And remember, when we're talking living creatures, they can just decide to get up and swim around, making them a little hard to find.) No matter the definition, though, it's an absolutely stunningly ginormous area to look for something so small.
Such an awe-inspiring mass of water was bound to be at the center of numerous stories, myths, folklore, and "inventions," aka lies. Let's take a look at some of these to understand the mystique of Lake Tahoe before we delve into tracking Tessie down.

Frozen Bodies at the Bottom

If you go looking up Lake Tahoe, you're bound to come across a popular story about a bunch of perfectly preserved frozen bodies resting on the bottom of the lake. Two different stories explain the origins of the bodies.

Mob Dumping Grounds

The Myth
Back in the heydey of the 50s and 60s, The Rat Pack used their mafia connections to get rid of people they didn't like, and the mafia disposed of the bodies by dumping them into Lake Tahoe. Who and why did The Rat pack want to disappear? How many people? Well, nobody knows.
The Rat Pack, in front of the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV..jpg) L-R: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop..jpg)
The Reality
There is no evidence to support this. Although, in The Godfather: Part II movie from 1974, a character is killed on Lake Tahoe and dumped overboard.

Bodies of Hundreds of Chinese Rail Workers

The Myth
"They" brought in hundreds of Chinese immigrants to build a railroad in the area. When the immigrants had finished building the railroad, instead of paying the workers, "they" took everyone into the middle of the lake, tied them all together, and threw them into the water, where hundreds of people drowned. Who is "they" in this story? Well, an evil railroad tycoon, obviously—no need for names here.
The Reality
Hundreds of tied-together frozen bodies haven't been found yet. At least if there are perfectly preserved bodies down there, they won't just get up swim around—they should be reasonably straightforward to find. Which likely means they don't exist. However, the myth holds at least some grain of truth, a real-life horror.
In the mid-1800s, Chinese laborers did work on the Transcontinental Railroad in that area. Anti-Chinese resentment quickly built, and a white supremacist group called Caucasian League was formed in the 1870s. Their ideas garnered support in the nearby town of Truckee, which produced a local group called the 601 Truckee Vigilance Committee, whose self-proclaimed job was to instill law and order. If you're wondering what the "601" means, it's not an area code. It means "6 feet under, 0 trials, 1 rope." Some of the "law and order" the group "instilled" was to tell Chinese people to GTFO or be shipped out in boxcars—lots of violence, lots of hate crime. You can read more on The No Place Project.

Jacques Cousteau

By the way, famous French explorer Jacques Cousteau found those frozen bodies. Except—not really. This is another myth.
The Myth
Jacques Cousteau took a submersible dirigible (that's what I like to call old submarines) over to Lake Tahoe and navigated to the bottom of the lake. When he came up, he was 'shook' and refused to tell anyone what he saw. When pressed, he said, "the world is not ready for what is down there." In other versions, he said, "A stop was quickly put on the mission by some powerful people."
The Reality
There's one small problem to this story: it never happened. Jacques Cousteau never visited Lake Tahoe. But, his grandson Philippe Cousteau Jr. may have visited the lake in 2002 while he was in the area for a speaking engagement. That's basically the same thing as flying a submersible dirigible and finding some unspeakable horror—right?

The Missing Scuba Diver

The Myth
There's this scuba guy whose body went missing years ago. His frozen body was caught up in underwater lava tubes that connect Lake Tahoe with Pyramid Lake, and he was stuck down there for some odd decades. He got unstuck, and they found his perfectly preserved body. Also, Tessie hides in those lava tubes. And Chinese immigrants. And mafia victims.
The Reality
Donald Christopher Windecker's body was recovered 17 years after it went missing on July 27, 2011. Dental records confirmed his identity.
Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Byers said, "His remains are in amazing physical condition." No further details were provided on the condition of his body. As for why he was down there for 17 years and came up in excellent physical condition, he was in 35-degree water and increased pressure at a depth of 265-feet. You can read more about this fascinating story here.
If you go Googling this story, you'll find numerous people claiming "authorities believed." It's a strange phenomenon that seems to occur frequently in cryptid cases—someone makes a statement, presents it as fact, and claims it came from a vague "authority." Often, it's simply not true. In the case of Donald Christopher Windecker and that Los Angeles Times source article—the actual "authorities," Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Byers, interviewed in the article, dismisses the idea of underwater tunnels as an urban myth. Things like this make researching cryptids a difficult task and a chore of diligence in separating fact from fiction.
The theory of Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake connected by underwater tunnels is currently unproven and unverified, though they are hydrologically connected via the Truckee River.
Now that we've captured some of the mystique of Lake Tahoe let's see about tracking down Tahoe Tessie.

Tahoe Tessie

Physical Description
The size of a school bus with a large serpentine body "as wide as a barrel." Tessie's color ranges from jet black to turquoise, sometimes a "slick grey" (or, I guess, "slick gray" for Americans.) Smooth skin, no scales.
The description of Tahoe Tessie from eyewitness accounts is strikingly different than that of Bob McCormick's 1985 book The Story of Tahoe Tessie: The Original Lake Tahoe Monster. I mention this book not only because it's old but also because the illustration you see on the cover is what turned into the Tahoe Tessie mascot you'll see around the area—gift shops, parades, etc. It's funny how some cryptids become cute and cuddly compared to the eyewitness accounts. Maybe Tahoe Tessie doesn't need a better PR person after all.
Habitat
Tahoe Tessie lives in Lake Tahoe, of course. But may also swim over to Pyramid Lake using underwater tunnels. As I mentioned before, the existence of the tunnels is unproven. It is interesting to note that Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake are only about 50 miles apart. Check out this map I made. (And by "I made" I mean I added the location markers in Google Maps, took a screenshot, and made that fancy red circle.)
I've circled Lake Tahoe. Pyramid Lake is to the north. The other marker to the southeast of Lake Tahoe is Walker Lake. It's only about 65 miles away. Walker Lake has its own legends of a giant serpent modernly known as Cecil the Serpent, and there's a lot of overlap in stories and sightings between Tahoe Tessie and Cecil the Serpent.
By the way, I would love to know if the late-50s/early-60s cartoon Beany and Cecil has anything to do with Cecil the Serpent of Walker Lake. I couldn't find anything linking them, but I might be better at tracking down cryptids than cartoons.

Earliest Mentions of Tahoe Tessie

As with the Oklahoma Octopus article I wrote, I dug around to try and find early mentions of Tahoe Tessie to see just how far back the phrase went.
Here are the two earliest mentions that I could find referenced on the Internet (this doesn't mean it's the earliest ever, only the earliest I could find mention of via Internet tools):

Snow Country Magazine - Oct 1989 - Vol. 2, No. 10 - Page 48
On long summer nights, the children must have shivered to tales of the apparitions in the lake. For instance, there is Tessie, Tahoe's own Loch Ness monster. Residents swear that the U.S. Navy verified film of Tessie, but suppressed it for fear it would ruin the valley's booming economy.‍
— https://books.google.com/books?id=I-1Khy8pV9QC&pg=PA48&dq=tahoe+tessie&hl=en
Nevada Magazine - 1986 - Volume 46 - Page 52 - Swimmer's Marathon
Lake Tahoe will be no place for chickens of the sea on July 26 as master swimmers in the Trans Tahoe Invitational Swim brave the 6,225-foot altitude, terminal goosepimples, and—myth-makers insist—a possible close encounter with a resident sea monster named Tessie.*
— https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nevada_Magazine/0rkNiDaDYcoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=tessie

Sightings of Tahoe Tessie

The sightings of Tahoe Tessie span from around the 1950s and continue even today. Unfortunately, most of them are either anonymous, cite someone I can't find, or are vague enough that I can't verify anything about them. Cryptidz Wiki has several accounts and you can read all about them on the link there.

Native American Legends

Here's where things get real damned interesting to me. I wrote a piece about the Oklahoma Octopus a while back, and I turned up all sorts of indications that brought into question the age and origin of stories regarding an octopus stalking a few lakes in Oklahoma. Well, I'm telling you now that what you're about to read goes in an entirely different direction because of what I was able to dig up about Lake Tahoe in actual, real-life, documented, Native American anthropological studies of the Washoe tribe.
As usual in America, there's a lot of "it is said" and "legend has it"—vaguely motioning toward "Native American." Unlike the lakes in the case of the Oklahoma Octopus, Lake Tahoe is about two million years old. The references to indigenous legends refer to the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California and, occasionally, the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada.
In terms of cryptid research, the fact that two specific tribes were mentioned immediately made this stand out. I've said it before in other articles, but there are so many times a research trail goes cold with "Native American legend/burial ground/story/folklore." There's simply no evidence to back up this claim in many cases, and while there may be some grain of truth somewhere buried in it, there's usually absolutely no way to verify it.
But, when there's specificity, though, things are different. For Tahoe Tessie, the Washoe Tribe of Nevada/California and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Nevada are specifically named. I wanted to know for myself if either tribe had ancient folklore on Tahoe Tessie, so I looked them up and reached out. After a lot of digging and attempts, I was able to pick up on a rather intriguing trail.

Warren L. d'Azevedo

Let me introduce you to a man named Warren L. d'Azevedo. He died back in 2014 but left a legacy that will impact the world for generations to come.
Warren L. d'Azevedo. August 19, 1920 - January 19, 2014.
In addition to being an all-around bad-ass of a person and all the fantastic things described in that legacy.com link, here's how he fits into this write-up about Tahoe Tessie.
In 1952 he began anthropological fieldwork in Nevada with the Washoe tribe. He continued until he died in 2014—that's 61 years spent with the Washoe tribe from personal and professional perspectives.

In 2006 at the bi-annual Great Basin Anthropological Conference -- a major scholarly organization he helped develop in the 1960s -- Warren was honored by the Washoe Tribe for his decades of work with tribal elders to help preserve knowledge of traditional culture, and his many efforts in support of the Tribe. — Legacy.com

Warren wrote volumes regarding the things that he learned in his life. In October 2008, he released a 70-page book published by the Nevada State Museum and Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs. It's titled The Two Worlds of Lake Tahoe. You can read the entire thing online here. (Warning: 73-page PDF)
The book linked above focuses on Cave Rock, a 250-foot-tall (76 meters) formation of volcanic andesite on the shore of Lake Tahoe. It is a place the Washoe holds sacred, and there are numerous stories, folklore, and mythology surrounding it. Warren did an excellent job of capturing so much about the history and often conflicting perspectives of people in the area around Lake Tahoe. I'm only going to summarize a few points that I think are relevant to Tahoe Tessie.

Cave Rock & Waterbabies

These are somewhat difficult to summarize quickly, as you might imagine, considering Warren wrote an entire book about Cave Rock. To make it even more difficult for myself, I'm not part of any of the tribes who have the actual lore of it. I'll try, though, but if you find yourself with time, check out the PDF of his book that I linked above. It really is worth reading.
Cave Rock. Imagine this except much bigger and without a highway.
Cave Rock is a place of spiritual power for Washoe shamans and is home to dangerous spirits known as "Waterbabies." So dangerous that historically the Washoe people believe that only shamans should visit the place. Lake Tahoe is home to Waterbabies, and they don't live in the actual water—but in a country under the water. They have their own towns and use the waterways like roads. Occasionally, they come up and camp at places like Cave Rock. In some of the stories about Waterbabies, they create natural disasters like floods. The physical descriptions of the beings vary from story to story—everything from mermaid-like to something that makes baby sounds and leaves footprints.
Regardless of the Waterbabies physical appearance, the Washoe have always respected the beings and believe they have always inhabited the area. Cave Rock and Lake Tahoe have been the center of the Washoe cultural heritage for at least 9,000 years—so when we're talking about ancient legends—we're really talking about ancient legends—ones documented by an expert anthropologist who gathered information straight from tribal elders.
Warren's book details two perspectives, though. One of the Washoe and another for the Euro-American. The differences in perspective on Cave Rock are pretty stunning. The Washoe still hold it sacred—and their views were tossed aside 1931 and 1957 when two tunnels were made straight through the sacred formation to open it up for a highway. The structure used to be a lot bigger but countless tourists destroyed have already destroyed a huge portion of it.
Ongoing issues with disrespectful rock-climbers have caused early erosion.
Based on references in The Two Worlds of Lake Tahoe, I tracked down a copy of an out-of-print book called Tales of Tahoe: Lake Tahoe History, Legend and Description written by David J. Stollery, Jr., originally (self-)published in 1969. It took a while for the book to arrive at my house. I found it via a rare bookseller, and it arrived in fantastic condition, especially considering my copy is the sixth printing of it from 1992—that's 30 years old at the time of writing this. Anyway, I couldn't wait to crack it open and see for myself what Warren was talking about.
You can judge for yourself, so I'll just leave a couple of photos here. The book is totally full of things like what you are about to see.
Book photo #1: Great condition for a 30-year-old book, right?
Book photo #2: A big part of my family tree belongs to the Muscogee Nation (a Native American tribe also known as the Creek Nation), but I don't think you need Native American ancestry to guess what I'm thinking. 🤨
Book photo #3: Okay, well, I'm no anthropologist but...
I think that Warren L. d'Azevedo so accurately depicts this book that I'll just drop in what he has to say about it.

Tales of Tahoe is an odd miscellany ranging from "true historical" pieces about "people, places and events" to waggish tales and parodies--admittedly in the mode of Mark Twain and O. Henry. One of its unintended merits as an historical document is that it is an unprecedented compilation of white folklore about the lake. Just about every known anecdote or popular notion in circulation among locals and visitors receives notice, or at least a passing squib. Significantly, the local "consultant" for many of the pieces is a patronized fictitious character with the punnish title of Chief Wa-na-ni-pa who hangs around in anticipation of edibles, cigarettes and liquor for which he will hold forth on quite novel renditions of Washoe beliefs and customs. The Washoe words are sheer inventions of Stollery's fertile imagination and reminiscent of the lingo attributed to Indians in popular fiction. The "legends" are equally outrageous. Of course, "Great Spirits" and "Evil Ones" abound.
— Warren L. d'Azevedo, The Two Worlds of Lake Tahoe, Page 43

The Lake Monster

From Warren's work, I was able to find a few references of a monster living in the lake that he pulled from traditional Washoe stories.

At this site, Waterbabies lived in an underground cave. A monster also lived in a cave in the area. [Cave Rock]
There used to be an old fellow. He worked for a long time at the Raycrafts in the livery stable. His name was Charlie Schofield. Just as regular at that same time--maybe if the moon was right--he’d hike up to Cave Rock at the lake. I don’t know how many days he’d stay there, talking with the spirits. It was just as regular--every season, every year, when it came that time. He used to tell us what the spirits told him. He’d stay up there for three or four days.
The suggestion that monsters or giants were associated with Lake Tahoe and Cave Rock in Washoe lore is substantiated by references to them in a number of traditional tales.
And then there are the many versions of a well-known legend about another monstrous predatory creature noted by Freed (1966:82, Site 27): "About 100 yards offshore from this rock was the nest of a mythical bird ('Aŋ)."
Zany tales and buffoonery of this sort seem to have been standard fare among the rough-and-ready regulars of the lake during this period, fortified by frequent reports of serpents and mermaid-like creatures. It is clear that such lore represents a syncretic fusion of Euro-American and Washoe folklore: there is, for example, a Washoe counterpart in the sightings of small Waterbaby footprints on the shores of the lake and banks of streams--some with high-heeled shoes (cf. Downs 1966:62; Lowie 1939:322). Then there are the fictionalized accounts of Washoe legends by white writers about "little people," monstrous serpents, and of young braves who fall in love with "fish maidens" and go to live with them in caves at the bottom of the Lake (see, for example, Stollery 1969:57-59, 111-113, 132-135).*
— Warren L. d'Azevedo, The Two Worlds of Lake Tahoe

DETOUR: The Paiute Tribe

If you go looking up Waterbabies, by the way, you may come across "legends" of the nearby Paiute tribe that "is said" to have tossed premature and deformed newborns into Pyramid Lake. I haven't been able to confirm an actual link to the Paiute, though. I keep running into our old friends, "It is said," "Legend has it," and "Some locals believe." Take that story with a grain of salt, or perhaps an entire salt shaker, unless someone can confirm it with documented Paiute legend.
I found a significant overlap in myths and folklore between the Washoe and Paiute concerning the lakes. Unsurprising because they historically inhabited the same region. Additionally, the Paiute have a story relevant to why such overlap may exist.
The Stone Mother
The Paiute have a creation story about how the tribes in the area formed. You can read about it here or watch Ralph Burns, a Paiute language teacher and keeper of Paiute stories, tell it on video (Ralph first tells the story in Paiute language and then retells it in English).

END DETOUR: The Paiute Tribe

Those were some fun trails to follow, and I learned a lot. The most important thing, though, is that there doesn't seem to be an ancient Native American legend of a 60-foot long sea monster in Lake Tahoe. However, there's plenty of lore about the area, even without needing a lake monster.
But what about Tahoe Tessie then? If the tribes of the area don't have ancient legends about a lake monster, then what is it? Well, let's talk about some theories on Tahoe Tessie.

Theory: It's a Sturgeon

Somebody tossed a sturgeon into Lake Tahoe around the 1950s, and people kept mistaking it for the Loch Ness monster's cousin until it eventually died, and most of the sightings died out with it.
The largest sturgeon on record was captured in the Volga estuary in 1827. It measured 23 feet 7 inches (7.2 meters) and weighed a whopping 3,463 pounds (1,571 kilograms). That's one huge fish. Their average lifespan is 50-60 years, which could explain why there seemed to be a cluster of sightings in the 50s and 60s and then they kind of trickled into nearly nothing over time. They can live much longer lives, though. According to this handy infographic from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the oldest lake sturgeon on record was 152 years old.
Sturgeon are bottom-feeders, and as we learned earlier, Lake Tahoe is super deep. It's plausible that a big fish could hang out at the bottom of the lake and only occasionally be seen by people.
Here are some great photos of an enormous sturgeon caught by former award-winning NHL goalie Pete Peeters.
I think Tahoe Tessie as a sturgeon is a solid theory, but since we have no physical evidence of the creature, we can't rule for or against it. Perhaps the important question here would be: what would possess someone to go and drop a sturgeon into Lake Tahoe? It could have been accidental, as Mackinaw trout were intentionally introduced in the late 1800s, and a stowaway sturgeon wouldn't be unheard of in such a case. With everything we do know about sturgeon, if a small one were dropped into Lake Tahoe in the late 1800s, it could have grown to a fairly massive size by the 1950s.

Theory: It's a Dinosaur

A plesiosaur, ichthyosaur or mosasaur, to be exact. This is a fun theory that people apply to many lake monsters, including Loch Ness. Wouldn't it be cool to find out that an extinct species of dinosaur isn't really extinct? I think so. The problem with this theory is that, like the sturgeon theory above, we have no physical evidence. Current science believes that dinosaurs went extinct around 65 million years ago. If any evidence crops up to contradict that, I'm absolutely sure you'll hear about it all over the news.

Theory: It's a New Species of Freshwater Eel

Well, as I pointed out in my Oklahoma Octopus write-up, new species are discovered regularly. It's not a stretch to think that a new species could be found in Lake Tahoe. This is another fun theory to think about, but there's not much we can do without physical evidence.
The largest species of freshwater eel I could find is the New Zealand longfin eel. The females are larger than males and average around 3'9" long (115 centimeters), and some have weighed as much as 53 pounds (24 kilograms). That's big but a far cry from the idea of a 60-foot-long monster.

Theory: It's Fake

Well, that's just not a very fun theory on it. Many people think that every cryptid is fake because humans haven't found them yet. To these people, I say, "I bet you're no fun."
I want to quote Carl Sagan here:

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."— Not Carl Sagan

Who said that quote first is kind of a controversial topic. Some people think it was cosmologist Martin Rees. Anyway, it's not even the right sentiment for what I'm after, so here's a better one:

"Absence of evidence is not proof of absence."— Mark Peacock, July 24th, 2018, aka a random dude I found on Quora when I was trying to find out who said that thing about absence and evidence that I always remember from a character voiced by Samuel L. Jackson on The Boondocks. (~1-minute video worth watching)

My Theory: The Donner Party

You know the one—the American pioneers. They migrated to California via a wagon train and got caught in a horrible winter and stuck in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and then had to eat people to survive. You know—the cannibals.
Okay, I know what you're thinking. Cannibals are not lake monsters. Stick with me, though, because I'm about to make you question that.
In the winter of 1846 into 1847, the Donner Party became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall near what was once called Truckee Lake (now called Donner Lake.) Two months later, their food supplies were dangerously low, and a group set out on foot to go and find help. Two months after that, a relief party finally arrived. Of the 87 members in the wagon train, only 48 survived.
What you may not know is that the members of the Donner party are called pioneers, but they had little knowledge or experience in travel and no expertise in interacting with Native Americans. In fact, the Donner Party had run-ins with several tribes, and none of the encounters turned out that well.
Truckee Lake, where the Donner Party was stuck that winter, is only 11 miles (18 kilometers) away from Lake Tahoe. Google Maps gives me a 15.5-mile (25 kilometers) hiking trail to go between them (about 5 hours on foot.)
Why is this important? Well, there's a "legend" of a "monster snake" at Lake Tahoe. In 2009, The Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California put together this online PDF titled: WA SHE SHU: "The Washoe People" Past and Present. Section 6, page 25, is about The Donner Party. Since that section is relatively short, I'll copy/paste the entire thing right here for you to read.

Donner Party‍
In 1846, the Washoe noticed the famed Donner party wagon train because they had never seen wagons before. The Washoe describe seeing the wagons and wondering if they were a "monster snake". In route to California, the Donner party reached the Sierras late in the year and got trapped in snow for a particularly harsh winter. The Washoe checked in with the stranded travelers a few times and brought them food when they could. Even so, in the face of suffering and starvation, the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism. When the Washoe witnessed them eating each other they were shocked and frightened. Although the Washoe faced hard times every winter and death by starvation sometimes occurred, they were never cannibalistic. Stories about the situation, some gruesome and some sympathetic, were told for many generations and are said to add to the general mistrust of the white people.
— WA SHE SHU: "The Washoe People" Past and Present, Page 25*

Remember what the anthropological expert Warren L. d'Azevedo said about the stories people tell around Lake Tahoe?

*It is clear that such lore represents a syncretic fusion of Euro-American and Washoe folklore.
—Warren L. d'Azevedo*

You probably already put together my theory on your own here.
Washoe people saw the Donner Party and described the wagon train as a “monster snake.” Over time, this description blended with the stories and misinterpretations about Waterbabies, Cave Rock, and other tales in the area, eventually merging into its own story of a monstrous serpent-like lake monster.
Imagine you are Washoe and see a wagon train snake through the area, then find out the people ate each other. How might you describe that? A monstrous snake at Lake Tahoe that ate people? And, remember, English isn't your first language, if you speak it at all. Honestly, I like this theory of mine, and if you toss in an accidental sturgeon along with it, that's one helluva legend.
That's it for Tahoe Tessie. Any of the theories I mentioned here seem plausible to me, but we may never truly have an answer to this mystery, though it's fun and fascinating to explore. We don't know everything there is to know about our own planet, and new species are discovered all time. The idea of something living near humans, yet humans being unaware of it, is captivating.
Here are seven species that used to be cryptids (article by/at Indiana University.)
Related: Here's a great 16-minute video about Lake Tahoe created by UC Davis Tahoe: Lake Tahoe In Depth 2D Movie.
Have you seen Tahoe Tessie? Do you have any personal experiences with the creature? What do you make of it?

This was written by my friend Mike Morsch, a former print newspaper editor from the Central Jersey area. He's a huge baseball head and got to experience some amazing things. I hope this story gives you some insight into the Piazzas and the man that raised our Hall of Famer.
Word has reached me that an old friend, Vince Piazza, has died, at age 89. Vince is the father of Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza. There was a time in 2000-2001 where I hung out with Vince a few times, and was even a guest on his private plane to New York for a day game at Shea Stadium when Mike was playing for the Mets. I saw Vince off and on over the years after that and I occasionally had lunch with a group of guys at one of the country clubs that he owned.
This is a repeat, and many of you have probably seen it, but here's a piece I wrote about that trip to Shea with Vince. In the photos, that me with Vince, right, and Ed Lasorda, left, the oldest brother of Vince's lifelong pal Tommy Lasorda. The other photo includes Vince, left, and me at a Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame banquet six or seven years ago. At least one guy in that photo could hit a little.
Here's the piece I wrote:
I was sitting in my office at the Norristown Times Herald in the summer of 2000 trying to get comfortable at my new job as editor of the paper when an older gentleman knocked on the door?
“I’m Hank Cisco, welcome to Norristown,” he said, extending his hand. “Let’s go have lunch.”
OK, part of my job was to get out into the community, and the sooner a new guy like me got out there and started mingling and meeting people in the community, the better it was going to be for the newspaper. And for me.
Hank was about 75 years old at the time. A former Norristown police officer, he went on to become a Montgomery County detective in the juvenile division before his retirement. (He passed just recently at the age of 96 and he was a dear friend for a long time.)
Hank was the only guy I’ve ever met whose nickname had a nickname. His real name was Frank Ciaccio, but as a young man, he had been a boxer. His ring name was “Hank Cisco,” and that’s how everybody knew him. I never heard anybody call him Frank.
The other endearing quality about Hank was that he was bad with names. He called all the guys “Rock” and all the women “Rockette” because it took him a while to learn your name and even longer to remember it. And in return, everybody called him “Rock.” So Frank Ciaccio’s nickname was “Hank Cisco,” and Hank Cisco’s nickname was “The Rock.”
That first day at lunch, Hank did all the talking and I did all the listening. He was a big fan of Norristown and the Times Herald — the guy absolutely loved getting his name and picture in the paper — and he was a big believer that the editor of his hometown paper should be an integral part of the community.
As such, Hank suggested that we pick different places to go to lunch a couple of times a week. He would introduce me to the owners, the patrons at the tables, the dogs on the sidewalk outside, anybody who would listen, he would introduce me to them.
I could write an entire series of stories about Hank, but it was through two of his introductions that I would eventually experience one of the most unique baseball opportunities of my life.
We had been running around to different restaurants for several months when in the spring of 2001, he called one day and said, “Hey, we’re going to Christine’s (a diner) tomorrow for breakfast. There’s a couple of guys I want you to meet.”
I never said no to Hank on these excursions. I passed Christine’s on my way to work every morning, so it would be easy to stop in.
When I got there the next morning, Hank was already sitting at a table with two guys.
“Mike, this is Vince Piazza and Eddie Lasorda,” said Hank, as the two gentleman stood up to shake my hand.
That would be Vince Piazza, father of future Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who at the time was starring for the New York Mets. And Ed Lasorda, one of the five Lasorda brothers and oldest sibling of Hall of Fame Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.
The Piazzas and the Lasordas go way back in Norristown, to when Vince and Tommy ran together as kids. I had been in Norristown just a little less than a year, but it was safe to say that I was familiar with the members of both families.
I was fortunate to hit it off with both Vince and Eddie, to the point that they invited me back often enough to where I eventually became a “regular” a couple of times a week at their morning “coffee klatch.” There was always a lot of yukking it up and storytelling at these breakfasts, and various other guys would occasionally wander in and join the breakfast, but the three regulars were me, Vince and Eddie.
And oh my, what wonderful stories they told. All I had to do was shut up and listen. This was less than a year after the famous incident in Game 2 of the 2000 World Series when Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens sawed of Mike Piazza’s bat, a portion of which ended up nearly hitting Clemens, who picked up the piece of bat and threw it back at Piazza as he ran to first. Earlier in the 2000 season Clemens had beaned Piazza, forcing the catcher to miss the All-Star Game that year.
So there was some bad blood between Piazza and Clemens and I was getting all the inside scoop on that from Vince.
And then there was the time that Vince and Tommy Lasorda — who was pals with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin — drove over to see the two entertainers in Atlantic City. After a night of heavy drinking, according to Vince, Martin passed out in the casino bar. Vince and Tommy had to carry Dean up to his suite, struggling all the way. When they got the famous crooner inside his room and threw him on the bed, Vince said to Tommy, “You think we should take off his tuxedo jacket and shoes?” “No. Fuck him,” said Lasorda. “We had to carry him up here. Let him sleep it off in his clothes.”
Baseball and Rat Pack stories. Firsthand, inside information. Yeah, I’ll keep showing up to breakfast with these two guys.
The one thing that I learned about Vince was that had more money than God, but he didn’t act like it. Vince was very down to earth and modest when I was around him. He was, in fact, rich well beyond my imagination and had made his bones well before his son even became a major leaguer. He owned every Honda dealership in southeastern Pennsylvania and had since the 1970s. And as it turned out, it seemed he owned just about everything else, including couple of country clubs in the area.
The scuttlebutt was that he was worth in the neighborhood of $300 million. The other scuttlebutt was that Vince was a connected guy, and I had heard some stories from other people about him in his younger days and how he had made his fortune. It was all secondhand stuff, although it did add to his mystique in my mind.
One morning, wanting to pull my weight, I offered to pay for breakfast. The total bill for three guys was $12. “Let me get this one, Vince,” I said. I had noticed that Vince always paid for breakfast and neither Eddie nor anybody else who joined us ever offered to pick up the check. That should have been my first clue. But I didn’t want to seem like a deadbeat.
“No, I’ve got it, Mike,” said Vince. “I insist Vince. Let me get this one.” “OK, Mike. You get it.”
When we got outside, he put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Listen Mike, I’m going to teach you something. Never argue with the guy who offers to pay the check.” And ever since then, I’v never argued with anyone who wanted to pay the check.
One morning in May of 2001, we walked out of the diner and into the parking lot after breakfast and Vince said to Eddie, “Hey Eddie, the Mets are playing a day game tomorrow, you want to go up to Shea?” “Nah Vince,” said Eddie. “I got some other things to do tomorrow.”
Vince then turned to me and said, “Mike, you want to go to the game tomorrow?”
Uh, yeah, I think I do.
“OK, I’ll call you later today and let you know where to meet,” he said.
As you can imagine, I was anxiously awaiting that call for the rest of the day. In fact, I could barely contain my excitement. And at around 3 p.m. my office phone rang. It was Vince. “Meet me tomorrow morning at the Limerick Airport at 9 a.m.,” he said. Nothing else. No other details.
Now I lived in Limerick at the time and I was familiar with the Limerick Airport. Limerick is a very small town. The Limerick Airport is even smaller. I didn’t even know it was operational. Turns out Vince owned the Limerick Airport, too. And the airplanes.
I arrived right on time the next morning and there was nobody visible at the Limerick Airport. Everything looked closed up. So I just stood outside waiting for somebody to show.
After only a few more minutes, another car pulled in and a guy got out. He came up to me and in a gravelly voice said, “You Mike?” Yep, that’s me, I answered. “I’m Leo, Vince’s accountant. Vince will be here in a few minutes.”
Leo The Accountant. That’s beautiful. We weren’t even at the ballpark yet and this was already turning into a great story.
Vince did indeed arrive a few minutes later and the three of us walked right onto the tarmac of the runway. Unbeknownst to me, there was already a pilot in one of the small planes, a six-seater, and he had the plane warmed up and ready to go.
Inside the plane, the first two seats behind the pilot were facing the back of the plane. The other four seats were facing the front of the plane. Vince got on first and took the back seat on the left side of the plane, and Leo took the seat across the aisle from Vince. I grabbed the seat directly behind what would be the co-pilot’s seat facing Vince, but we couldn’t make eye contact because there was an empty seat between us. And what I didn’t know until we got into the air, was that those small propeller planes are quite noisy in the cabin, to the point where the passengers can’t really have a conversation because it’s so loud. So we would sit without talking on the way to New York.
We arrived at LaGuardia Airport, in an area for private planes only, in less than an hour, right around 10 a.m. We stepped off the plane and literally into the back of a limo, where in no time, we were at a private entrance to Shea.
Ballpark security opened the door of the limo and Vince stepped out first, followed by Leo and then me. And I swear everybody just stopped in their tracks. It was like the pope had just stepped out of the popemobile.
“Hello Mr. Piazza, how are you Mr. Piazza?” Vince was shaking hands with every security guy and Mets employee working the joint. Every one of them knew who he was and showed proper respect. We were escorted by security through the private entrance and immediately up to the Diamond Club. It was still three hours before game time, and an hour before the fans could get inside the stadium.
In fact, the Diamond Club was still closed. For everybody but Vince Piazza. The doors were unlocked and we stepped into an absolutely empty Diamond Club.
“Put us over near the windows so we can watch batting practice,” said Vince to the maitre de. The chef himself came to our table to take our order. We had the entire place to ourselves to watch batting practice.
We were done with our early lunch and already seated in the Piazza luxury suite before the Diamond Club had evened opened to the other Mets high rollers.
The game itself was mostly uneventful. It was an absolutely gorgeous spring day to be at the ballpark, but the Mets lost 2-1 and Mike Piazza had a horrible day at the plate. He struck out twice and popped up to the catcher.
After the game, as we sat there in the suite, Vince said to Leo and I, “Let’s wait a few minutes and then we’ll go down to the clubhouse and see Michael.”
Wait. What? We’re going to the Mets clubhouse? To see Mike Piazza? Holy moly. True to form, I had not been given details on any aspect of the day, so this was a fortunate turn of events for a baseball fan like me. I was just following Vince’s lead.
Eventually we headed down to the clubhouse. And Vince was greeted once again by every security guard and Mets employee. “Hello Mr. Piazza, how are you Mr. Piazza?” Shaking hands like a rock star on the rope line.
We arrived at the Mets locker room, which I knew was the Mets locker room because right on the door it was written “Mets locker room. Visitors keep out.” We weren’t visitors, we were part of the Piazza entourage.
Just as we got to the locker room door, Vince turned to Leo and I said and said, “You guys wait here,” as he entered the locker room by himself, leaving us out int he hallway.
Shit. I was that close.
We waited. And we waited. For about 20 minutes we waited. I struggled to even make small talk to Leo. What’s a guy like me going to say to Vince Piazza’s accountant? “Hey Leo, what’s it like to count $300 dollars?”
And then Vince came out the door and said, “Let’s go.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Aren’t we going to see Mike Piazza?” I was screaming in my head. Of course I kept my pie hole absolutely shut tight and followed Vince’s lead once again as we made our way out of Shea Stadium and right into a waiting limo.
It seemed like we were back at LaGuardia in no time — almost like the rich people don’t even have to deal with New York traffic the same way the rest of us do — back on the prop plane and in the same seats we had occupied on the departing flight, headed west to Limerick Airport.
Once we landed back at Limerick and the pilot had cut the engines, Vince leaned his head around the the empty seat between us and said, “Well Mike, what did you think of this?”
“Vince, this is one of the coolest things I ever done in my life,” I said, not worried at that point about containing my excitement.
Vince got a big smile on his face and his demeanor appeared to change. It seemed to me that all of a sudden, he wasn’t Vince Piazza the multimillionaire with a famous baseball player as a son. He appeared to be just as excited as I was at what we had just experienced.
“Ya, I know. This is really cool, isn’t it?” he said with a huge smile, seemingly as astonished as I was at his good fortune in life to have the means to do what we had just done.
Turns out that Vince Piazza was the same 10-year-old boy at the ballpark as I was that day, if only for a moment.