Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, the most successful, and perhaps most influential coach of the past four decades, announces that he will retire after next season. Coach K, 74, has won five national titles in Durham and won 1,170 games (361 defeats). Among D-I men’s coaches, only John Wooden has won more national titles and nobody has won more games.
Homicidal Hokie?*
*The judges will also accept, “Isi Innocent Or Guilty?”
In Blacksburg, Va., early enrollee freshman linebacker Isi Etute may be entering the transfer portal to a maximum-security prison. Etute, from Virginia Beach, has been charged with 2nd-degree murder. Not much else is known at this time but he’s off the two-deep chart.
Before remarking on the nastiness of this hit, notice the score. Montreal leads Winnipeg 4-3 with less than a minute remaining in Game 1 of their series. The puck has been cleared, it’s an empty net situation, and the Canadiens’ Jake Evans is about to drop in the clincher here. But then the Jets’ Mark Scheifele lays out a high check that sends Evans into the Northwest Territories.
Evans, not that anyone was paying too much attention, did score. He was also carried off the ice on a stretcher.
No word thus far on Evans’ condition or how long Scheifele will be suspended. Evans did remain motionless on the ice for a few minutes, but he was not taken to hospital (as Canadians say). Some hockey folk are saying this is a clean hit, and we’re not hockey experts (to say the least). Regardless, we imagine that going forward Scheifele will be a (dons sunglasses)…Mark’ed man.
This fantastic photo of Nikolaj Ehlers doing what he can to protect Jake Evans has been floating around various social media outlets without any credit to the photographer.
Above, the summit of Mount Russell in Sequoia National Park in California. Seems a little precarious to be walking so casually and you know what? It is. Over the Memorial Day weekend a 56 year-old hiker from San Jose plunged 500 feet to his death not far from this spot. Honestly, this wouldn’t be the worst way to go. Maybe about 20 years older than 56, but all things considered…
Herd Community
In China, a peregrinating pack of pachyderms have wandered more than 300 miles north of their habitat and they’ve been “stealing” food and even liquor. You might call them rogue elephants. They’re now approaching Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, a city of some 6 million residents. Related: there are lots of Chinese people. Not as many Chinese elephants.
Of course, this may sound like a cute story but the real story is that their habitat is being destroyed and they’re hungry. They’re refugees, in a sense. It would be nice if man did his part to protect these incredible (and highly intelligent) creatures. Let them live.
The Kid
(Close-up of me looking at The Kid after he told me he was taking the Clips yesterday)
…took one on the chin last night as the road team in the Mavs-Clippers series won for the fifth time in as many games.
He falls to 11-7 and $795 (or $205 under water).
Tonight he likes the suns +125 at LAKERS. $125 if he wins, down $100 if he loses.
Frank Vogel on LeBron leaving with 5 minutes left in the game: "LeBron had to start his treatment. It doesn’t do any good for him to sit over there without getting worked on & beginning the treatment as soon as possible to help him get ready for GM 6." pic.twitter.com/FA3julerfs
I won’t argue if you call LeBron James a Top 5 all-time player in terms of accomplishments and talent. I’d certainly argue if you think of him as The GOAT.
This Phoenix series, though, has been a case study in why I’ve never been a fan. After the Lakers and Suns split the first two games in Phoenix without much drama, the Lakers punked the Suns in Game 3. Not only did LA lead by as much as 20 points in the third quarter, but LeBron turned the 4th quarter into LA Fitness rec game, clowning the Suns’ Jae Crowder as his boys on the Laker bench went all Arsenio’s studio audience. He’s 36 years old and he’s behaving like this just three games into a 7-game series? At the time I thought, I hope karma makes a comeback.
And it has. While you have to love Anthony Davis’ game and his behavior, the injury of the guy Charles Barkley now refers to as “street clothes” was a portent of doom for the Lakers. The Suns were only up 4 late in the first half in LA in Game 4 when Davis went down and then jumped out to an 18-point lead.
Late in the game LA made a run. Cut it to 7 when Dennis Schroder drove for a layup with under 90 seconds to go but missed. LeBron was under the hoop. Neither he nor Schroder hustled back on D, Phoenix had a 5-on-3 and Mikhail Bridges, or Crowder, hit an uncontested corner 3 to put Phoenix up 10. Ballgame. Maybe the Suns win anyway but it mighta been nice if your GOAT had gotten back on defense.
Narrating the highlight on “SportsCenter,” the ESPN announcer (Michael Eaves) forgave LeBron by noting that LBJ knew the game was over when Schroder missed his shot. Really? Wow, cuz I don’t think Frank Vogel did.
Jump to last night, Game 5, as the Suns take a 30-point first half lead in Phoenix. Now, LeBron played great and he was clearly giving a herculean effort. At one point Grant Hill of TNT says, after a LeBron three, “You know LeBron isn’t going to give up without a fight.”
But then, the game clearly out of hand, Vogel pulls him in the fourth quarter. And LeBron exits the floor with five minutes to play. It’s purely a symbolic gesture, but it’s what I’ve never respected about LeBron. He does this because he can get away with it and no one else on his team can. How doe that make his teammates feel? In the end there’s just too many instances in his career where, sure, LeBron is the best player on his team and yeah his effort is phenomenal on the court, but when his team loses, it’s someone else’s fault. Not his.
Then again, I am a Suns—and Warriors—fan. I’ve always been a fan of whoever LeBron is playing.
Skypool, Skyfall*
*The judges will also accept “Laps In Judgment”
The Darwin Awards are just watching and waiting. Skypool, located 115 feet above terra firma between the swanky Embassy Garden luxury apartments in London, is 84 feet long and has a glass bottom. One imagines its douchebag-to-bather ratio is at least 1:1.
Don’t think I ever realized this about Seinfeld. Larry David, co-creator, returned to write the series finale (which has been largely panned, perhaps for being overly ambitious in scope). Anyway, the first line of the series and the last line of the series are the same.
Blog Off, Donald
May 4, 2021—June 1, 2021
Less than one month into its existence, the blog “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump” has been permanently shut down. Chances are that whoever wrote it began to realize that doing a blog every day can be time-consuming and for the most part unrewarding. Unrelated: MH turns nine years old in August.
From Alpine Rescue To Cold Case
This has the Zen Master parable from Charlie Wilson’s War written all over it.
On a wintry night in January of 1982 in a remote area of the Colorado Rockies, Alan Lee Phillips’ pickup truck skidded off the road into a snowdrift. Phillips opted against leaving the cab of his truck and trekking out into the wilderness; instead he used his headlights to flash out S.O.S. (three short, three long, three short) into the night.
A local sheriff in a plane overhead spotted the signal and recognized it. Phillips was rescued.
“How wonderful,” the townspeople said.
We’ll see.
Authorities never got a straight answer from Phillips (he said he’d been returning home from a bar) as to why he was out in such a remote area late at night.
But in February detectives used DNA evidence to link Phillips, now 70, to the murders of Annette Schnee, 22, and Barbara Jo Oberholtzer, 29. Both women had been hitchhiking that night, independently of one another, near Breckenridge. Each was shot to death. They were dumped far from one another. One was discovered the following day, another six months later.
Phillips has been living in Denver for decades. It’s too early to know whether these women were his only victims. Seems a little unlikely that he’d go on a one-night killing spree and never have done so before or after.
This will soon be a 26-part Netflix series, we predict.
The Kid
… sure was right about the Phoenix Suns, who beat the Lakers by 30.
He moves to 11-6 and he’s back above water at $1,095. This is an important chance tonight to move to a 66.67% win percentage. Who’s he taking?
Tonight he likes the CLIPPERS minus-300 versus the Mavs and Damaged Doncic. $300 to lose, $100 to win.
The home team is 0-4 in this series but something’s gotta give, no?
Naomi Osaka, 23, is the reigning women’s singles champion of the U.S. Open and the Australian Open. Those are the last two grand slam tennis tournaments played. Just before the French Open began this weekend Osaka, ranked No. 2 in the world and the No. 2 seed in this tourney, announced that she would not be speaking to the media. The French Open responded by stating originally that they’d fine her and then banded together with the other three Grand Slams to state that Osaka would be in danger of defaulting (being expelled from) the tournaments.
Osaka saw their raise and called their bluff. She kicked herself out of the French.
This is one of those classic 2021 issues where you’ll only be hearing, at least on Twitter, from either one extreme side or the other. At MH, we’re more in the middle. Which doesn’t make us wishy-washy, just rational. Or so we think.
Osaka is 23. She is an adult. A young adult, but still an adult. She wants media on her terms. Last year Osaka earned $37.4 million from endorsements alone. Granted, it was a difficult year to make money playing tennis, but she’d never have made that much money on the courts even in a normal year. The Grand Slams have played a major role in her “creating her brand,” and of course she did her part by being so successful. It’s a partnership. They help you and you help them, which is what her doing media is.
You don’t arrive empty-handed to a pot-luck supper.
Still, kudos to Osaka for ripping off the band-aid. She heard the rules, took the $15K fine after the first match, and then decided not talking was going to be a bigger story and distraction than talking. So she left. And yet, this is a woman who has won four of the past nine grand slams in women’s tennis. There has to be a better solution here.
You Said It
Before yesterday I’d never heard of the 1949 film Battleground. Then I saw a tweet about how it was the film the creator of Band Of Brothers felt did the most justice to the Battle of the Bulge. Then I read how it cost Louis B. Mayer his job, since he refused to green light it, let Dore Schary walk it over to another studio, and two years later Schary took Mayer’s job at MGM. Oh, and it was MGM’s top-grossing film for a few years and was also nominated for Best Picture.
So I watched it.
And here’s the scene I won’t forget. Hearing this speech on Memorial Day 2021, at least 72 years after it was written, well, that’s quite something.
They should play this clip every single damn day in the halls of Congress. And on cable news. And certainly on Memorial Day. Maybe this is on me, but I cannot fathom why I’d never heard it, or heard of it, before yesterday.
Murdur Durdur
Dove into HBO’ Mare of Easttown last night, and now I understand this SNL clip, “Murdur Durdur,” from a couple months back. Between this and his Vin Diesel impersonation for “The Movies,” Beck Bennett had a most solid season on SNL. Somewhere between a Phil Hartman type and a Bill Hader type.
Woe, Canada
Here’s the situation for those of you who don’t pay attention to hockey or Canada: the Toronto Maple Leafs have won 13 Stanley Cup championships, but their last triumph was in 1967. They have not even won a playoff series since 2004.
This season, however, the Leafs finished atop the NHL’s Canada-only (for pandemic reasons) North division. They had the league’s leading goal scorer in Auston Matthews. And they were up 3-1 in the opening playoff round versus their arch-rival, the Montreal Canadiens.
So, of course, they lost the last three, including Game 7 at home last night. The Canadiens had already won both Games 5 and 6 in overtime, where sudden death decides the outcome.
Just devastating. On a good note, it’ll be above 70 degrees in Toronto this week.
The Kid
… was prescient enough not to take Naomi Osaka in the first round at the French Open, but instead Serena Williams, who won 7-6. 6-2. So he’s now 10-6, at $995, or a Lincoln below the surface.
Tonight he likes the SUNS minus-200 at home versus the Lakers. A little risky when Brooklyn at home is a much surer bet and he could’ve taken Nadal, who is a guarantee on clay.
This is Hobbs Kessler of Ann Arbor, Mich. Over the weekend at the Portland Track Invitational Kessler ran a 3:34.36 in the 1500. That time not only breaks the U.S. high school record but also the U.S. collegiate record. It’s good as an Olympic qualifying time. Hobbs is heading to Northern Arizona University in the fall, but first he’s headed to the Olympic Trials in Eugene in three weeks.
(Kessler earns a hug from 27 year-old Craig Engels, a 2016 Olympic alternate who won in 3:33.64)
Kessler’s time beat the extant high school record, set 20 years ago by Alan Webb, by nearly four whole seconds. That’s crazy. He bettered Notre Dame’s Yared Nuguse’s collegiate mark of 3:34.68 set just two weeks earlier.
A Day That Should Live In Infamy
One hundred years ago today, in Tulsa, Okla., a bunch of cowardly and scared white supremacists destroyed a flourishing black business district known as Greenwood and murdered approximately 300 people. They burned the area to the ground. See, they say wanted segregation, but what they also wanted that they failed to mention was degradation. Or, as Carol Anderson wrote in her book White Rage, “The trigger for white rage is black advancement.”
Ironic that this centenary is taking place on what white America recognizes as Memorial Day.
This area was known as Black Wall Street because black-owned businesses were flourishing. And that terrified them. So, being white nationalists and deplorable humans, they committed mass murder on a scale rarely seen.
This weekend former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who should be behind bars (as opposed to backed by Barr) spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas where he wondered aloud why a military coup like the one staged in Myanmar (“Minimar,” he said) cannot happen here.
Very little has changed in a century.
Me And Helio Down At The Brickyard
At Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, Brazilian Helio Castroneves earns his fourth career milk shower, his first since 2009. If you’re paying attention in 2021:
Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady (his 7th SB win) is 43.
PGA Championship winner Phil Mickelson (his 6th major) is 50.
Castroneves is 46.
And the top seeded men’s player at the French Open, which began yesterday, is Rafael Nadal, who turns 35 on Thursday.
Sam I Am
The winner of this year’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions is Sam Kavanaugh, a substitute teacher from Minneapolis, Minn. Maybe now he’ll earn a full-time teaching position somewhere. Kavanaugh lapped the field in the two-day event that aired last Thursday and Friday, winning more than $68,000 in the competition. As the winner, though, he takes home $250,000. Not too shabby.
Kavanaugh had won $156,000 during a five-day streak of wins on Jeopardy! in 2019 when Alex Trebek was hosting. He knew he’d qualified for the Tournament of Champions, and when he lost his teaching gigs due to the pandemic last year, he devoted all of his time to studying for the T of C. Studying pays off.
An unofficial winner, in our minds, of the T of C was guest host Buzzy Cohen, who handled the duties the past fortnight. A former T of C champ (2017), Cohen possessed the perfect energy and acumen for the gig. He’d make a worthy successor to Trebek.
A Trio Of R.I.P. Worthy Gents
Three well-known figures all died over the weekend. First Gavin McLeod, whom you either know as Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or as Merrill Stubing, the captain of the Pacific Princess on Love Boat, passed. He was 90. Has a TV actor ever played two more dissimilar characters?
Then Mark Eaton, the former NBA shot-blocker extraordinaire for the Utah Jazz, died in a bicycle accident. Eaton was 64 and 7’4″. Oddly, that’s the second catastrophic bike accident to take place in Utah this past few months involving a 7-foot plus center who played part of his career in Utah (the other was Shawn Bradley, who was left paralyzed). A two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, Eaton averaged 5.6 blocks per game in 1984-85, which remains the highest single-season average since the league began tracking the stat.
Finally, musician B.J. Thomas passed. Thomas, whose “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” won the Oscar for Best Original Song and hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts for four weeks, was 78. Thomas did not write the tune, Burt Bacharach and Hal David did. They offered it to Ray Stevens, who turned it down. Thomas recorded it in seven takes—Bacharach hated the first six.
The song was an odd choice for a Western (Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid) but something about it playing as Paul Newman’s Butch rode a bicycle around the yard clicked. It was a massive hit, back when music lovers used to buy singles. Thomas did write and record “Hooked On A Feeling” (1968) and “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” (1975). The version of “Hooked On A Feeling” that you knew was actually covered by Swedish group Blue Swede, who uses the “ooga chaka ooga ooga” intro you know so well. That version hit No. 1 in ’74.
The Kid
…took it on the chin this weekend. We wondered why he’d do a parlay, but he just had to, and the Nets lost Game 3 in Boston. It’s their only defeat in four games versus the Celtics in the series. Then on Saturday he took Man City and Pep Guardiola in the Champions League final. Frantic texts from The Kid on Saturday as Pep changed his lineup, dropping a midfielder into the defensive backfield before the match. The Kid thinks Guardiola has a little Darell Bevell in him, too smart for his own good, and he self-sabotages his squads in big games. Does something different just to prove that he’s different as it costs his squad. As an ND football fan, all’s I can say is, “Run the damn ball.”
Then again, Pep sounds a little like The Kid these past two weeks. Attempting reverse lay-ups when the gimme dunk is right there.
He’s now 9-6 and at $895, or $105 under water.
Today he likes Serena Williams minus-$300 over Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania in opening round action rom Roland Garros. That’s $300 to lose, $100 to win.
We’ve all seen Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, right? That’s probably the extent of our knowledge on how the Senate filibuster works. If you are really, really, really against a bill being passed, you can stand up and start arguing against it and as long as you keep talking and refuse to yield back your time, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop you (just make sure you take a potty break before you embark on this mission). It’s like a Hail Mary pass of legislation and a test of one’s physical stamina and perseverance. A little like a Spartan Race inside the Senate chamber.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work. While it only takes a majority of 51 votes to pass a bill, it takes a supermajority of 60% (60 votes if everyone is voting) to end debate on a bill, so that the vote may be taken. So if you never get enough votes to end the debate, then the bill never comes up for a vote. And as Jefferson Smith taught us in that Frank Capra film, you stall debate by reading the Bible, the scout handbook, anything, in order to hold the floor and prevent the vote that ends the debate.
So a couple things I learned this morning:
“Filibuster” is derived from the Dutch word for pirate. I don’t get the connection, but you can dig deeper into that.
Senate Rule XXII (not the one where the Redskins mauled the Broncos) says that cloture—a motion to end debate on a bill—requires a supermajority of at least 60 votes. Which is another way of saying that having a simple majority of the 100 senators is not enough to pass a bill as long as at least 41 senators choose to obstruct that passage. And by invoking the filibuster, they choose to obstruct.
The 60-vote filibuster has only been around since 1917, so don’t pin this one on “the Founders.”
In 2013, the Democrat-controlled Senate voted in a rule that all nominations except that for Supreme Court need only a simple majority. Just three years later the Senate, now under Republican control, said, “A ha, two can play that game” and extended the rule of a simple majority to Supreme Court nominations, which is how we got stuck with Brett Kavanaugh.
Now, since the early 1970s, the Senate has imposed what is known as the “silent filibuster.” Now you no longer need to drone on endlessly for hours (the longest such filibuster campaign was waged by South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who spoke for more than 24 hours in 1957 to protest the Civil Rights Act… but, of course). Instead, as long as at least 41 senators threaten a filibuster, the Senate majority leader can refuse to call a vote.
It’s a lot like the modern intentional walk rule in baseball. You don’t even need to throw the four balls any more. You just let the ump know you want the batter on first base. Takes all the effort—and fun—out of it.
I can’t say I understand why if Chuck Schumer (a Dem) is the current Senate majority leader why he allows the silent filibuster to happen. Not sure why he doesn’t force someone from the GOP side of the aisle to stand up and talk ad nauseam. Maybe it’s just a gentleman’s agreement (ha!) but it’s certainly wrong.
Meanwhile, West Virginia Dem. senator Joe Manchin says he will not vote to end the filibuster because he “does not want to destroy democracy.” Which shows that he has a poor grasp of what the term means. Because by insisting on keeping the filibuster he is in favor of not allowing democracy—a majority vote—to prevail.
And so that’s why the Senate approving a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, when 50 of the senators are GOP and House Minority leader Mitch McConnell is asking them to filibuster the vote “as a personal favor,” is unlikely to come to a vote.*
*I think. Please school me where I’m wrong. I have to move on to other matters.
As longtime readers know, Rule No. 7 states that “any baseball game offers the opportunity to see something you’ve never before seen in the game (and the other team sports are just not like that).” The crazy thing here is that there were two outs. All Pirate first baseman Will Craig need do is turn around, step on the bag and the inning is over. He got lazy and now this moment of infamy will live for as long as social media does. Certainly it will outlive his career.
Overdraft Dodger
We’ve gotten so accustomed to congresswoman Katie Porter or Senator Elizabeth Warren stuff the Montgomery J. Burnses of the world in a locker—and yes, they almost always deserve it—that we may have forgotten to ask, Do the merits of the argument hold up? When Porter was holding J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s feet to the flames a year or two ago about the shamefully low wages his company pays to its tellers, etc., I was on her side.
Two days ago, though, when Sen. Warren upbraided Dimon for the > $1 billion in overdraft fees his company collected in 2020, I thought, Wait a minute. Isn’t an overdraft fee a bit like paying an overdue fee for a library book except that in the library-book scenario the consumer did not actually cost the library money? In other words, when Warren asked if Dimon would pay everyone back and he said, flatly, “No,” I thought, Neither would I.
An overdraft fee is the fee you pay when you withdraw more money from the bank than you actually have in your account. And the bank floats you that money. If I go to Whole Foods and buy $27 worth of goods but only have $20, they don’t let me take everything I bought out of the store. And why should they? So why should any bank give you more money than you have in it, unless you’ve formally applied for a loan? Which is essentially what an overdraft fee is: interest on a loan that you took out from the bank without actually clearing it with the bank first.
Sorry, Not Sorry
True story: Denver Sheriff Deputy “Duke”, a former Marine, posted anti-vaccine videos/pictures on Facebook.
➡️Outcome: He dies of #COVID19. He was just 33-years old.
He’s the 2nd Denver Sheriff to die in 2 weeks. Please #vaccinate
As Jerry used to say on Seinfeld, “That’s a shame.”
You have to wonder what Officer Trujillo was thinking as they intubated him and put him on a respirator in the final days/hours of his life. Was he remembering Donald Trump’s advice from last October about Covid-19: “Don’t let it dominate you?” Was he experiencing any sense of remorse over having been so arrogant and boastful about a subject he was woefully under-qualified to wax eloquent upon (that’s never stopped me)? That age, 33, is awfully young to depart this planet. But of course, being MAGA I presume, he probably thought that any type of capitulation to the reality of a pandemic that’s killed 2.3 million people would be a sign of weakness on his part. And if there’s anything white male MAGA types hate (more than govt. handouts to poor people), it’s weakness.
Ignorance is okay. But weakness is shameful.
Now he’s dead. An apt metaphor for the current condition of the Republican Party.
The Kid
… won again as the Lakers iced the Suns in Game 3.
He’s now 9-4 and the bank is up to $1,340 (from a $1,000 base).
Tonight he likes a PARLAY!
VEGAS over Minnesota in Game 7 of their Stanley Cup playoff series AND
Brooklyn over BOSTON in Game 3 of their NBA playoff series.
Betting $100 to win $112.
If he loses, he loses $100. If he wins, he wins $112.
And The Kid is not even done. He wants a Saturday bet for the Champions League final, an all-England affair between Chelsea and Manchester City in… Portugal.
He’s putting down $345 to win $300 for ManCity over Chelsea, even though the Blues have beaten them twice in the past six weeks. So that’s our first Saturday bet.
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