by John Walters

MAC To The Future

On Friday the Mid-American Conference, or MAC, announced there will be no fall sports in 2020. That awkward silence you hear is the Power 5 commissioners wondering how to process that news.

The MAC’s decision makes sense. First, as we’ve only been saying since March, it’s foolish to hold sports seasons in the midst of a pandemic where no vaccine exists. Second, once the Big Ten and other conferences announced they’d only be playing conference games, a Group of 5 conference such as the MAC saw its windfall of revenue taken away. MAC schools play paycheck games against Michigan and Ohio State et al every fall. That’s what puts their athletic departments in the black. And now the big bad Big Ten wants to take that away?

Fine. So now the MAC takes a progressive and righteous stand, exposing the Power 5 conference presidents as money-grubbers. Your move. Commissioners Sankey and others.

We’ve said it before and we’ll repeat: there will not be college football this season. You may have that announcement within 48 hours.

Between A Rock And

We love seeing a note from TheDiscoverer.com in our inbox each morning, and the other day they outdid themselves with “8 Places That Will Scare Even The Biggest Daredevil.”

This is Kjerag Mountain in Norway, but you should check out the seven other sites. Whoever is in charge of story ideas at this site deserves a raise.

Over 3 Served*

*The judges will not accept “You Want Fries With That?”

McDonald’s is suing former CEO Steve Easterbrook, seeking the return of the $40 million severance package it gave him after his ouster last November. Easterbrook, a Brit who was let go after an announced “inappropriate relationship” with a McDonald’s employee, allegedly lied to the board about whether this was a one-time drive-thru affair.

Turns out there is video evidence of the randy CEO being involved with at least three McDonald’s employees. He was working off the “dolla, dolla” menu.

Ben And The Byrdes

A few thoughts on Ozark now that we’ve watched all three seasons thus far (SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read on if you’re planning to watch the Netflix series)

–Should the actor who plays Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan) be given severe mental distress pay? For the entire third season, the producers have put the 22 year-old Tahan in a sexual relationship with Darlene Snell (Joan Emery), who is 68 years old.

–By the way, no show in recent memory has more gratuitous sex scenes featuring actors no one wants to see having sex than Ozark does. I was almost waiting for 8 months pregnant Maya Miller to get busy with 14 year-old Jonah.

–Season 3 was so much of an improvement upon the first two seasons, and no season of any series in recent memory has ended with quite the bang that this one did.

–Tom Pelphrey (above), who played Wendy Davis’ bi-polar little brother, Ben, sort of hijacked the season for good and bad. There are those critics who didn’t love the story arc, thought of it as artificial, and perhaps they’re correct: we never heard a peep about Ben the series’ first two years.

But then Pelphrey, a Jersey shore product, is such an outstanding actor and has such presence that you can sorta see why the producers let him run wild, chewing scenery. In the season’s penultimate episode, they gave him a 2-3 minute monologue that opens the episode (before the illustrated “O” shows up) where it’s just him riffing in the back of a taxi. That’s when I knew he would be dead by the end of the episode. But it’s such an “Emmy voters, here’s my clip” scene that you have to just admire it.

Pelphrey’s the best actor from the Jersey shore to come around since Jack Nicholson. Keep an eye on him in the future.

Mount Rushmoron

The New York Times is out with a story about how the president was exploring a way to become the fifth POTUS to have his face chiseled into Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Frankly, we’re surprised that he’d be willing to share the space with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

The difficult part, folks at the national landmark admit, would be transporting the copper or sandstone to replicate the president’s orange glow.

by John Walters

John G. Hubbell

A moment of tribute for John Hubbell, who passed away two nights earlier in the midst of his 94th (?) year. Mr. Hubbell was the author of the above book but also, more importantly, with his wife Punkin, of nine children: Woody, JP, Mary Louise, Joe, Margy, Bill, Andy, Katie and Mary Jeanne.

Katie is, of course, MH’s frequent contributor and resident scream, Katie McCollow, who is married to this site’s conscience (if only we followed it more often), Mike McCollow.

John Hubbell lived a damn-near perfect 20th-century life. He was a full-time writer at the Reader’s Digest and was able to raise the funniest family I know in a house on the shores of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. I first met Mr. Hubbell in the summer of 2004, when I was living in the Twin Cities, and was made a welcome guest to a number of Hubbell happenings.

The best way I might describe Mr. Hubbell was as the eye of the storm. In a tempest of children, one funnier or louder or drunker or more opinionated than the next, John Hubbell, who had a jawline of granite, was the quietest one in the room. But he always had a smile on his face and a warm and gentle way about him.

In his final months, in a Minneapolis-area nursing home, Mr. Hubbell could be spotted in his “I’d Rather Be Watching Gilmore Girls” sweatshirt as one of his children snuck into his first-floor room window to spend time with him. Just this past week, all of the Hubbell kids gathered together one last time and an impromptu pizza party was held.

Mr. Hubbell had been working in his last years on two memoirs, one about his career (Writing for Wally; My Life With a Brilliant Idea) that has been published. A second memoir, about his brood, has yet to be finished (but will be). Here’s a passage from it:

“And the years passed and one by one they all grew up and graduated and got jobs and left home and fell in love and got married, and before we knew what was happening, it happened. Suddenly, Mrs. Hubbell’s dream house was much too big for the two of us, with its huge front porch, and its six bedrooms, its study, its immense living room with the fireplace, its large formal dining room, its family room and its huge kitchen/laundry room… soon we lived in a much smaller house in a pretty suburb, and those nine kids and our 30-plus grandkids and great-grandkids come often and visit and we often visit them. And there are many more joyous hellos than there ever were sad goodbyes.

If you visit Katie’s Instagram or Facebook pages, you’ll see some wonderful photos of the patriarch of this hilarious and happy family. Rest in peace, Mr. Hubbell.

Today (NOW!)

5 p.m. EDT

TCM

There are World War II movies that everyone knows or has seen: The Longest Day, Saving Private Ryan, The Great Escape, The Bridge On The River Kwai.

And then there is, from 1964, The Train. Starring Burt Lancaster as a French Resistance fighter and loosely based on a true story, it’s about the Nazis attempting to bring looted works of art to Germany and a French plot to subvert them. As director John Frankenheimer later noted, this is possibly the last action film to be made in black-and-white (you wouldn’t consider Schindler’s List an action film, would you?).

Highly recommended by MH’s film critics and possibly the second-best film with the word “train” in its title.

by John Walters

Big Bang Query

More than 100 are dead in Beirut and for once it had nothing to do with terrorism. Apparently storing nearly 3,000 metric tons of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse close to a fireworks facility at the nation’s largest port is not a good idea. Who knew?

Photos here show the before and after.

The deadly material arrived years ago via a Russian cargo ship because, of course.

Of Moose And Masks

MH’s Canadian correspondent, Moose, has become a mask fiend during the pandemic. She owns close to a dozen. Moose wants to remind everyone 1) to wear a mask and 2) that Canadia is better than the U.S.A. in every way except baseball.

The Big Game Comes Early!

Good news, Michigan fans: You won’t have to wait 12 months to lose to Ohio State this year. The Big Ten just released its revised, coronavirus-adaptive schedule and the Wolverines will visit Columbus on October 24. Before Halloween, even.

We, for reasons of weather, would welcome this date change becoming permanent. The post-Thanksgiving weekend is of course a bonanza of post-secondary education gridiron, so why not remove one contest and put it somewhere else?

Not All ’70s Family Pop Groups Were Talented

It’s a long way down from the magic of the Jackson 5 to the milk-fed stylings of the Osmonds, but it may be an even further plummet from the Osmonds to the DeFrancos. Here they are on the Jack Benny Show singing their big hit, “Heartbeat, It’s a Love Beat.” The year was 1973 and another Italian-American musician, Bruce Springsteen, could barely afford change for the toll at the Lincoln Tunnel.

The DeFrancos are Canadian, Moose.

They Have A Dream

The WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, a franchise that is literally named after a Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, is practicing peaceful protest in the most dynamic way. When one of the team’s owner, billionaire Georgia Republican senator Kelly Loeffller, basically told the ladies to shut up and dribble, they countered with the above T-shirts.

Loeffler, 49, was not elected but appointed to the U.S. Senate by Georgia’s GOP governor after an incumbent announced his intention to resign for health reasons. She’s loaded and her husband is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and I can’t see why you’d think there’s a conflict of interest there.

When the WNBA announced they’d be putting “Black Lives Matter” on their courts, Loeffler wrote a note to the league complaining and asking that players have flags put on their uniforms instead. Loeffler is on record as adamantly opposing Black Lives Matter and is still more than a little upset that Ashley married that plain-jane Melanie instead of her.

Warnock, by the way, is Raphael Warnock, a Morehouse alum and doctor of theology, who is also a senior pastor in Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.

by John Walters

The Big Bangs Theory

In Monday’s New York Times, a wild story about another wondrous ’70s relic, Creem magazine. This was the other music magazine of the era, but the cooler one. Inside the pages of Creem, based out of Detroit (and for a year or two on a farm outside of Detroit where the entire staff lived…How Seventies!), rock aficionados found the words of Lester Bangs and other writers who coined terms such as “punk rock” and “heavy metal.”

(Lester Bangs)

A documentary is coming out soon. Our favorite part of the story was the revelation that sometimes the writers and editors got into fist fights. This should happen at every publication. Every one would be better off for it.

Don Vs. Swan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig_btdrmxD4

We haven’t watched the full Axios interview between President Trump and John Swan, but above are five of the wackier moments. Remember Constanza’s Law of Prevarication: It’s not a lie if you believe it, Jerry.

Dumb and Dumba

Before the Blackhawks played the Oilers on Saturday in a nationally televised game, Matt Dumba of the Minnesota North Stars walked out on the ice and said a few words about racism and Black Lives Matter. Then he knelt during the national anthem—and no one else did.

Two black NHL players, Darnell Nurse and Malcolm Subban, flanked Dumba and put a hand on his shoulder, but they did not kneel.

This item is not going where you think it’s going.

I’m fine with athletes kneeling during the national anthem. I’d probably do so. I’m just as fine with athletes standing during the national anthem. Earlier this week ESPN.com actually ran a headline that read “Leonard (the Miami Heat’s Meyers Leonard, who’s white) Stands For National Anthem.” Granted, Leonard was an outlier here among NBA players, but this is news?

The author of this Deadspin piece, Sam Fels, calls out the NHL players and everyone for not kneeling. Fels represents that wing of sports media that I refer to as the Intolerant Tolerant. HE decides what social justice is and HE decides what is acceptable and unacceptable and if you don’t agree with him, then you’re part of the problem (this is also the “nice white people are to blame” syndrome).

Here’s Fels:

The NHL will hide behind “not getting political” but racism isn’t political. It’s decency. Either you recognize everyone’s rights, needs, and wants, or you’re an asshole. It’s pretty simple. 

That’s fine, Sam. But if I don’t kneel for the national anthem, that means I don’t recognize everyone’s rights? Who decided that? You? One of my rights, and I’m part of everyone, is the choice to stand or kneel during the anthem.

But I guess you and other SJWs decide what my rights are. That doesn’t seem right.

Maroon 3

Three mariners were marooned on Micronesia, an island so tiny it has “micro” in its name. So they did what characters in movies do when not talking to a volleyball—they inscribed a giant “SOS” in the sand. And it worked.

The fishermen’s boat had run out of fuel and drifted more than 100 miles off-course but they were lucky enough to find an island. If only Lost could have begun and ended so quickly.

Man On The Run

Another great piece from The New York Times, this one from their Sunday magazine, on Behrouz Boochani. He fled Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, exposed off-shore detention camps of Australia (!), and all while bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jesus and/or Daniel Day Lewis (and who is to say who’s a better paragon of perfection?).