IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour


 

Starting Five

Green Day

In Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, Cleveland took a 7-4 lead and then Boston went Kilauea volcano on their hides, going on a 17-0 run and leading by 18 after one quarter. The Celtcs led by 26, 61-35, at the half and Brad Stevens and the team minus its top two players would hold LeBron to 15 points on the afternoon.

For Game 1, lose the final two words on that shirt

“I have zero level of concern,” saith LeBron: “I didn’t go to college, so it’s not March Madness.”

Was that just a straight-up syllogism or a knock on Boston’s Final Four Fantastic coach?

2. The .700 Club

After an Anemic April, Stanton has been having a Marvelous May

The Yankees, at .500 (9-9) after 18 games, are now at .700 (28-12) after forty. Two weird figures: 1) With Giancarlo Stanton‘s home run in yesterday’s 6-2 victory, New York now has four players with 10 home runs after 40 games: Stanton, Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez and Didi Gregorius. No Yankee team has ever done that and no one in baseball has since the ’03 Texas Rangers,

2) Remember our Gregorius chants of last month when he was leading all three Triple Crown categories? The Yankee shortstop has since plummeted and is currently in a 1-34 slump. For as well as he started and as poorly as Stanton did, Didi is now batting .260 an Stanton .252.

3. Hamburger In A Pickle

How did fans of Hamburger SV, a soccer club that has been part of the Bundesliga, Germany’s top professional league, handle the team’s relegation, which became official on Saturday on the season’s final weekend? You’re looking at it.

Hamburger, based in Hamburg, had been the only club since the formation of the Bundesliga in 1963 that had never suffered relegation (demotion to the second division by finishing so low in top division). In fact, their stadium has a running clock that tells the number of years, days, hours, minutes and seconds that they’ve been in the premier league in Germany. Or had. Now they must play a home-and-home against Holstein Keil of the second division. If they do not win that, they’re headed down.

4. Holy City Embassy

You may want to rethink that trip to Jerusalem: at least for awhile. Today was moving day for the U.S. Embassy in Israel, as Donald Trump keeps yet another foreign policy campaign promise (you have to give him that) by relocating the embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City. More than 1,000 Palestinans protested at the border fence in Gaza, which separates the two tiny countries, and Israeli soldiers killed 37 of them.

Jerusalem, under the U.N. charter that recognized Israel as an independent state in 1948, is an international city in that it is not strictly under Israeli control. Both Israelis and Palestinians consider Jerusalem their capital as there are sacred shrines to both religions located therein.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the creation of the independent stat of Israel, so this is not just a coincidence. Ramadan begins later this week. It’s going to be Kilauea over here, too, and our moving the Embassy to Jerusalem, right or wrong, will be seen as a tremendous snub by Muslims, not that Donald was doing much in the way of being amenable to their concerns before this. Stay tuned for suicide bombings.

5. James Madison High School Graduation

This was our favorite sketch from SNL the past weekend. We especially liked the way they promoted it as if you were headed to a monster truck rally or WWE event.

 

Music 101

Falls Apart

Why didn’t Sugar Ray last? They actually had a number of terrific songs blending different styles (ah, maybe that’s why) from Sublime-style surf punk (“Fly”) to Jack Johnson-y beach mellow (“Someday”) and a lead singer who looked as if he could and would steal your girlfriend during the guitar solo (I’m not the first to suggest Mark McGrath is just a better-looking version of Ethan Hawk) and he could sing. I’m sure there are reasons this late ’90’s SoCal band dissolved and far too soon, but they did release some memorable tunes. This is our favorite.

Remote Patrol

NBA (Western Conference) Finals

Rockets at Dubs

9 p.m. TNT

Game 1 in Oakland: The Beardman of Alcatraz

If not the two best teams in the NBA (they are), the Rockets and Warriors are by far the two most entertaining (and this is Reason No. 348 why a 30-for-30 on the 2009-11 OKC Thunder needs to be made, as two players from that team are two of the three best players in this game). Also we love that Mike D’Antoni is maybe, finally, at last getting the credit for creating the atmosphere in which this type of offense is flourishing.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

WIN-nipeg!

J-E-T-S, Jets! Jets! JETS!

The Winnipeg Jets took down the Nashville Predators 5-1 in Game 7 of the Western Conference semis last night and move on to face the Vegas Golden Knights. The last time a Canadian club advanced to the Stanley Cup finals was 2011 (Vancouver).

2. Sad and Sadler


Wherever you stand politically, you have to respect John McCain’s service to the United States, from his 13 years in the U.S. Navy (five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp when he could’ve walked out any day he wanted to) to his 35 years in Congress.

So here we are, as Senator McCain is in the fading twilight, and fellow Republicans are taking the cue from their Supreme Leader (who openly mocked him in July of 2015) and dancing on his grave before the death certificate is signed.

Sadler

Yesterday White House staffer Kelly Sadler mocked McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel as CIA director by saying, “He’s dying anyway” (she had no idea it would get out) while on Fox Business News an old white man argued that torture works, it worked against McCain, and “that’s why they call him ‘Songbird John.'”

It’s a measure of the people who are cracking wise, not of McCain, these snarky comments.  All we know is the type of people who say such things have never dared risk anything of value, including their lives or values. They’re sheep.

3. Not Fair

Meet Kiyaunta Goodwin. He’s 6’7″, 370 pounds and he’s just finishing eighth grade in Louisville. His feet are size 18. He already has a verbal offer from Georgia. Stay tuned…

4. Combine Nation

Greak Freak II?

So yesterday I opined that there should be an NBA Combine and very soon after I was told,  “There already is.” Oh, well, never mind. Anyway, here are some of the intriguing names who will show up in Chicago May 16-20:

Grayson Allen, Marvin Bagley III, Mo Bamba, Kostas Antetokounmpo (Giannis’ bro, 6’10”), Jalen Brunson, Michael Porter, Jr., Trae Young.

And here’s some of the intriguing names who will not be there:

DeAndre Ayton (declined), Luka Doncic (still playing, Real Madrid), Bonzie Colson (recovering from foot surgery).

I think everyone who attends should be required to play the World’s Longest Game of Horse. Who wouldn’t dig that? Also, a 4-on-4 full court league should spring up, single-elimination style.

5. Don’t Overlook The Overlook

New York City is a hyper-bustling metropolis that can drive anyone insane, but it is also an island of infinite hidden wonders. Case in point, The Overlook, a sports bar on East 44th that we’d never visited. Didn’t know about the front-to-back wall mural of famous cartoon characters who were sketched by the original artists (e.g. Bil Keane, Al Jaffee, Mort Walker, Dik Browne, etc.) Learn more about it here.

Reserves

Brooklyn 9-9 was canceled yesterday after five seasons, and though we never watched it, people say it was funny. This moment alone makes it all worthwhile…

Music 101

Under African Skies

In 1987 New Wave was waning, hair metal was waxing, and Madonna and Michael still ruled the world. Then all of a sudden an old standby, Paul Simon, a legend from two decades earlier, released an album called Graceland that was unlike anything anyone could remember hearing on the radio. Defining the music was silly; it was just just harmonies and rhythms stitched so deep into our cores that it defied categorical rules. That’s Miriam Makeba on vocals and this concert took place in Zimbabwe.

Remote Patrol

Evil Genius 

Netflix

In 2003 outside Pittsburgh a man walked into a bank with a bomb strapped around his neck and demanded cash. He was given some but didn’t get very far. When the police stopped him, he told them that he was a pizza delivery man and that someone had strapped this to his neck, that it was a bomb and it was going to go off. Soon after he told them, it did. What happened and why? We many finally know.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

The MH staff got to rub elbows with CBS Evening News anchor Jeff Glor last night. Not that we are suddenly media titans (again), but he treated his staff to a few rounds of ale and whatnot at our other place of employ. Great tipper, nice man. Good luck at the commencement speech at Syracuse this weekend.

Starting Five

Eighty-Six The 76ers

The record will show that Boston advanced “easily,” 4-1, over Philly, but the final two losses came in overtime and by two. Last night in TD Bank Center Garden or whatever it’s called, Philly led 109-107 before a couple of bad turnovers and a missed Joel Embiid layup sealed their fate.

Sharp’s update: The line was Boston minus 1.5 and the Celtics led by one with just 2.7 ticks left when Marcus Smart attempted to miss his second free throw. He tossed it hard off the front rim, but somehow the sphere bounded up and over, ricocheted off the backboard, and bounded through. Celts win by two. If you had Philly plus the points, it was a doubly bad beat.

Michael Cohen, Renaissance Man

World’s Most-Screwed Individual

Not only did Michael Cohen graduate from the Worst Law School in America, but as the financial records disclosed by Michael Avenatti demonstrate, he’s also a respected accountant (hence the $600,000 payment from a South Korean airplane manufacturer) and a health-care expert (hence the $1.2 million from Novartis).

It’s amazing that a one-man shell company set up in Delaware is able to draw not only interest but substantial fees from corporations based in South Korea and Switzerland, not to mention AT&T. Especially since none of the principals at those companies had never met him in person.

Hmmm.

Now you can ask yourself, Does any of this ever get revealed if Avenatti isn’t representing Stormy Daniels, if the news of the $130,000 payout is not released, which sends Avenatti poking through Cohen’s financial records? And our answer is YES. Wethinks Robert Mueller and pals were way ahead of Avenatti on this (might someone from his office even have leaked these figures to him?) but it sure makes a difference with this evidence out in front of the public long before Mueller files any charges.

And dig: None of these companies denied this. In fact, a few of them released higher payment numbers than Avenatti originally disclosed. Maybe they want their money back?

3. Mass. Murder

Brett Gardner, perhaps the only Yankee yet to play hero during this run, had three hits last night, including the go-ahead triple in the 8th inning

On the morning of April 21st the New York Yankees, losers of two straight, woke up to find themselves with a 9-9 record. The Boston Red Sox, waking up a few hours later on the West Coast, were 17-2. Pundits wondered if the Sawx, with a 7 1/2 game lead on the Bombers just three weeks into the season, would “run away with the A.L. East.”

That night the Sawx were no-hit in Oakland. Earlier in the day the Yanks had exploded for a 7-run sixth inning to beat Toronto, 9-1. Last night New York exploded for a four-run eighth inning (in both big innings, Aaron Judge homered) to beat Boston in the Bronx and win their 17th game in 18 outings, since the morning of April 21.

The Yanks are now 26-10. Boston is 26-11. New York is in first place. Buckle up, it’s going to be a fun summer with these two.

4. Meanwhile, Al Pacino Has A Word For The Mets

A midweek matinee in Cincinnati between the Mets and Reds got interesting when the Let’sGo’s handed the umpires an incorrect batting order in the top of the first. Second- and third-place hitters Wilmer Flores and Asdubral Cabrera were actually written in the reverse order in the lineup card exchanged at home plate before the game.

So, after Cabrera doubled with two out and no one on in the first inning, Reds skipper Jim Riggleman apprised the home plate umpire of this and Cabrera was called out. His double was wiped off the face of the earth. This is what happens when you trade the Dark Knight to Cincinnati for a jar of pickled beets.

Anyway, any history of the Mets now must include this anecdote. The Mets lost 2-1 in 10 innings.

5. “Oh, My Aching Bach”

This is Dane Johansen, 33, and he was a man on a mission. In fact, he may have visited a few missions. In 2014 the native Alaskan embarked on a  600-mile pilgrimage in northern Spain, trekking the famed Camino de Santiago network of trails. His task: to play and record Bach’s six suites for solo cello in 36 churches along the way. Johansen accomplished the suite feat with his sweaty feet in 45 days.

Hands down, this is and will be The New York Times-iest article of the year. Let’s just end the competition now.

Reserves

Satire need not be long or overdone. Here’s Andy Borowitz with a funny idea and he didn’t belabor his point….

***

This type of thing seems to be happening more often lately. Maybe this Yale student can have a chat with those two Native American siblings at Colorado State. The irony of this is that the Yalie, a 34 year-old woman who is earning a Masters in African Studies, just had her thesis handed to her.

Music 101

Fooling Yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkdU7p30xKg

As disco took over on one end of the spectrum in the late 70s, and punk ruled the other, a lot of teens wearing retainers and with terrible bowl-shaped haircuts had no one to believe in. And then Styx came along. A lot of their music gets slagged and rightfully so (“Domo arigoto, Mr. Roboto?”), but this is one of their better tunes.

Remote Patrol

Game 7: Winnipeg at Nashville

8 p.m. NBC Sports Net

A Nashville-Las Vegas Western Conference final is still a possibility, as is a Las Vegas-Tampa Bay Stanley Cup final. Gordie Howe must be forechecking the grave next to him.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

It really is a disproportionately small finger that Trump has on the button of the nuclear arsenal

Deal Or No Deal

In the past week or so, with President Trump’s handling of North Korea (welcome back to the three prisoners) and now North Korea, we’ve learned a lot about his style of “diplomacy,” which is definitely 180 degrees different than his predecessor’s. In a nutshell: I have more power/money/weapons than you do, and I’ll be an even bigger bastard than you guys are if you force my hand.

It’s not something they extol at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, tyrannical diplomacy, but short-term, it’s working. Kim Jong-Un (or as Mike Pompeo calls him, “Chairman Un”; it’s “Chairman Kim”) appears to speak the same language and is now sending home three U.S. prisoners and talking about getting rid of his nukes. Will Iran, which took our money and then funneled (always with the funneling) a lot of it to militants we were fighting elsewhere in the Middle East, suddenly realize that we’re no longer the soft step-parent they assumed we were?

On the other hand, no one in Europe likes that Trump pulled out of the Iran deal. Moreover, the signal, and anyone who dealt with Trump the casino-0wner or Trump the real estate-magnate or Trump the husband could have told you this, Trump honors a deal only so far as it is beneficial to him. The moment it is not, he cuts and runs and cares not about the bridges he has burned. That’s what Michael Cohen and the slush fund is for, to assuage the hurt feelings.

Anyway, we’ll see. Trump is taking a victory lap this week. Is North Korea playing him, or are they really sincere because Trump has either 1) made some very dark threats or 2) paid them off in some secretive way? Will Iran become more or less amenable to behaving?

We’ll see.

And finally, here’s a conspiracy theory: What if Trump is telling men like Kim and Putin and China’s Xi, “Look, dudes, the only thing keeping me from turning America into a dictatorship is the freaking free press. Help me score a few wins against them, turn the public further in my favor, and then I’ll be able to get away with being more punitive toward them. And then we’ll all get richer and America will be just like you.”

2. The Last BOY Scout*

*The judges will not accept “The Boy Scout Handbook of Mormon”

To read any Brigham Young University football media guide in the 1990s (and we read our share) was to discover that a disproportionately high number of Cougar gridders were also former Eagle Scouts. In fact, the other religion within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, i.e., the Mormons, is the Boy Scouts of America.

But, as of December 31, 2019, the Mormons and the B.S.A., who have a fruitful relationship for more than a century, will split. In a joint statement, the two organizations announced the divorce, with the increasingly global church announcing that it will form its own independent youth scouting group.

The personification of most Mormon adults I’ve met.

In 2013 the BSA announced that it would admit gay scouts.  A year later, transgender scouts. A year after that, in 2015, openly gay adult scout leaders. And last week, it said that it would take the name “Boy” off the Scouts as to openly welcome girls into the program. So from whom do I buy my cookies now?

It might be fair to say that the Mormon church had finally had it with all this progressiveness. Can’t you just get a “Social Justice Warrior” merit badge and be done with it?

3. Three Months, Three No-Hitters, Three Countries

Big Maple gets a hug

Since the baseball season officially began in March, we can say that this is its third calendar month. And last night in Toronto James Paxton, a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners who is Canadian, threw the third no-hitter of the young season. And for what it’s worth, it was tossed in the third different country.

The first, by the A’s Sean Manaea against the Boston Red Sox on April 21, came in Oakland. The second, a combined job by a quartet of Dodger pitchers against the hapless San Diego Padres, happened last Friday night in Monterrey, Mexico. And now a third in Canada.

Paxton, who threw a 99 mph fastball on his 99th and final pitch, becomes only the second Canuck (after Dick Fowler) to toss a no-hitter. And it’s the earliest point in the season baseball has had three no-no’s since 1969, a season that would see six no-hitters in all. It was also baseball’s 299th regulation-length (9 innings) no-hitter.

Paxton, a.k.a. Big Maple, made news earlier this season when an American Eagle landed on him during the national anthem.

4. Knotted at 116

You probably weren’t paying attention, but last weekend in Gulf Shores, Alabama, UCLA won the NCAA Beach Volleyball national championship. If you’re saying to yourself, I didn’t know there was an NCAA sport for beach volleyball, well, it’s only been around since 2016 (Title IX: it was cheap to add and creates more schollies for women and no, they don’t wear bikinis).

What makes the title newsworthy is that now UCLA and Stanford are knotted at 116 for the most NCAA championships won by one school. At No. 3, and you might have guessed, is USC with 104. But who’s No. 4? We’d never have reckoned, but the school has less than half USC’s total (51).

The answer, and we were shocked: Oklahoma State University, but unlike the other three schools, all of theirs are in men’s sports. How did this happen? Well, two-thirds of the Cowboys 51 titles have come in wrestling and another 10 in golf.

5. Funnel Of Love

Most likely on CNN or MSNBC this very moment

Yesterday America’s unofficial special prosecutor, Michael Avenatti, who has gone from zero to household name in the past two months, released a report claiming that a Russian oligarch with ties to Vlad Putin wired at least $500,000 to Essential Consultants, LLC,  a shell company set up by Michael Cohen.

Here is where it becomes far more interesting: in a time period stretching from just before the 2016 election to this past January, more than $4.4 million passed though Essential Consultants coffers, and some of those payments originated with “legit” companies: $99,000 from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, $200,000 from AT&T.

The largest payment known came from Columbus Nova, about $500,000, which is a New York-based investment firm owned by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

All of the above claim these were “consulting” fees, but let’s face it, you’d receive better advice, legal or non-legal, from your barber. This was pay-for-play to Donald Trump, with Michael Cohen acting as the intermediary. Is Trump that greedy or is he that broke, or is it a little bit of both?

Hal Holbrook said it best: “Follow the money.”

Music 101

Suspicious Minds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb0Jmy-JYbA

Legendary talent. Arguably the Abraham of rock and roll. Elvis Presley had it all: looks, swagger, a voice, charisma, musicianship and mystique. He was to culture what the atomic bomb was to warfare. By this time, 1970, he was a drug-addled shell of his former self, literally a Vegas lounge act. He’d die 7 years later, only 42 years old.

Remote Patrol

Who The F**k Is That Guy?
Netflix

Alago, left

A documentary on the life of Michael Alago, a gay Puerto Rican kid from Brooklyn who in the early Seventies, barely a teenager, snuck into clubs such as CBGB to see the biggest names and music and within a decade or so was a 24 year-old A&R exec signing bands such as Metallica. He’s still only 53. If you love the seamy underbelly of the music biz, or at least learning about it, this is for you. It’s like HBO’s Vinyl but real.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

Starting Five

Literally 3 hours after The New Yorker story appeared on line, Schneiderman resigned

When Will They Learn?

On Monday afternoon The New Yorker released a story in which four women accused New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman of physical abuse. By the time the sun had set, Schneiderman, 63, had resigned. Two of the women, ex-girlfriends Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam, went on the record and provided their own names and their own harrowing testimony of being slapped across the face and choked. Both said that Schneiderman had threatened to have their phones tapped and that he’d kill them if they broke up with them.

Schneiderman, who had pursued Harvey Weinstein on criminal charges due to the assault allegations brought up against him last October, denied the accusations but resigned three hours later. He joins the short list of infamous ex-New York Attorneys General that includes Elliot Spitzer and Aaron Burr.

2. The Wholly Ronan Empire*

*The judges will also accept “American Farrow”

No male figure has done more to forward the #MeToo movement than Ronan Farrow, who  co-authored the piece on Schneiderman and who broke the story on Harvey Weinstein last October that sparked the entire crusade. Farrow, 30, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.

Not bad for the son of Mia Farrow, best-known for her work in the title role in Rosemary’s Baby, and officially of Woody Allen. Although Ronan’s mom has publicly hinted that her ex-husband, Frank Sinatra, may have sired Farrow and if you ask us to look at the photo above and place our bet, we’re going with Ol’ Blue Eyes. Which would be funny because Frank was a friend of many, many people (and dames), but he loathed the press. He reportedly once nearly ran a few of them down after landing at LAX with Eva Gardner.

Anyway, Farrow (like Anderson Cooper) has turned out to be far more than the scion of New York celebrity. He’s a very bright young man (Yale Law School alum) who’s done some of the most intrepid reporting in the country in the past year. And to think NBC execs put the kibosh on his Weinstein reporting last year, which is why he went to The New Yorker with it.

Allen The Family: Those Were The Days

Finally, you cannot at all discount how Farrow’s own highly exposed personal life played a role in his dogged pursuit of sexual predators. Born in 1987, he was just a little boy when his father’s decision to leave his mother for his half-sister, an adopted Asian teenager, was all over the New York City tabloids. It was a pre-internet age, but that story ruled this city for a summer and his family imploded. As bright as Farrow is—graduating college at age 15—you can bet that that traumatic experience had an enormous impact on his life and his impassioned reporting.

We call that turning a negative into a positive.

3. The International Rifle Association

You can’t spell “Nicaragua” without “N-R-A”

At least the NRA has a sense of humor. On Monday they named convicted international arms dealer Oliver North as their new president. In case you are too young to recall, in the mid-Eighties North was a member of the National Security Council who played a huge role in selling arms to Iran, which was expressly prohibited since we had a trade embargo with them, and then funneling some of those profits to help fund the Nicaraguan Contras (which I hope will someday be the name of an MLB expansion franchise) in their war against their government, which was expressly forbidden by the Boland Amendment.

Ollie may have been the fall guy for some of these Beltway shenanigans, but he was convicted (those convictions were later dismissed by Reagan’s former Veep who would succeed him, George H.W. Bush).

Still, you have to admire the NRA’s chutzpah: putting the most infamous living American in terms of illegal sales of arms in the post as the president of your association. Bravo!

I wonder if any thought was given to asking Donald Glover if he wanted the gig.

4. Has Running Peaked?

Spokane’s annual Lilac Bloomsday Run, which is on our bucket list for races to run before we die (or our back and knees give out, whichever happens first) took place this weekend, as it always does on the first weekend of May. Sunday’s 12 km (7.46 mile) race had “only” 38,187 finishers, which marked the seventh consecutive year that the number of finishers had declined.

Sunday’s race had the fewest number of finishers since 1985.

Founded by runner and writer Don Kardong in 1977, less than a year after he finished in fourth place at the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal, Bloomsday (named after a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses) became synonymous with the road running boom. Its popularity peaked in 1996, when more than 61,000 runners finished. With that many runners and that relatively short a distance, Bloomsday is more a parade for most than a competitive run.

Maybe this is just a blip on the chart. Or maybe running is waning in popularity, which we’d be fine with, since it wouldn’t be so dang hard to get entries into the races we’d like to run.

5. Carpet Diem

Carla Delevingne: Actually, I’ll pass on the pudding, thanks.

On an insanely lovely early May evening in Manhattan, the MET Gala rode again. On to the costumes…

We found love in a Popeless place….

Is it us or is Rihanna beginning to look like Albert Pujols?

Wondering if Katy Perry took the M79 crosstown bus over to the shindig

Reserves

Be Best Galini

She is lovely, though

“Be Best.” Not Be Your Best or Be The Best. Simply “Be Best.” That’s our First Lady’s new program for children. Melania seems like a decent person trapped in a prison of her own design, but there’s also a sense of comic relief to so much of what she’s attempting to do. It’s funny how MAGA types are so adamant that people speak English but then give it a pass as long as they’re not speaking Mexican or poor.

Our Newest Hero

Gerald

You may have read about the film director who ignored safety precautions at a wildlife park named Glen Afric, roamed off into an area he didn’t belong, and was unwittingly killed by a giraffe. Carlos Carvalho, 47, was looking through the camera eyepiece trying to take closeups of a giraffe known at the South African game park as Gerald when the magnificent creature swung its magnificent neck and inadvertently struck Carvalho, sending him flying through the air. The blow was fatal.

This is the last photo of Carvalho, snapped about five minutes before the incident

Now, Gerald is not exactly our hero, but the owners of the wild life park, who announced that Gerald would not put down, are. Said their spokesperson, a woman identified simply as Jenny: “Gerald was not to blame and would not be put down. We are not going to shoot Gerald. He was not in the wrong. He’s just a huge wild animal and the guy disobeyed safety regulations. I’m very sad for his family. But I’m not one of those people who blames the animals.”

Thank you.

Thank You!

THANK YOU!!!!

At last, a little sanity.

Music 101

The Spirit of Radio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juv5Ifs2fFY

Senior year of high school, April 1984. We had an assembly and three of my classmates played this song in front of the entire Brophy Prep student body and 10:30 a.m. and the gym went nuts. You had to be there, but lead singer Michael Brockman had Geddy Lee’s vocals down perfectly and lead guitarist Chris Redl could flat-out shred. It was pretty damn epic. Oh yeah, Rush released this song in 1980.

Remote Patrol

NBA Playoff Doubleheader

Jazz at Rockets Game 5

8 p.m TNT

Pelicans at Warriors Game 5

At this point, I’m just watching for the TNT studio updates on gas mileage. Wake me for the conference finals.