by John Walters

“Once A Langmore, Always A Langmore”

Turns out the suspects in last Friday night’s slayings near a lake in rural Florida were both kin and trailer-park trash. And the entire mass slaying may have been over a suspected truck theft.

The older brother in the middle above, who apparently shot all three victims, is Tony “T.J.” Wiggins. He’s 26 and apparently has 230 prior felony charges on his record. So of course he now risks having to deal with Florida’s dreaded “231 Strikes—If You’re A Redneck—And You’re Out” law.

I guess Ozark is closer to reality that we might’ve realized.

This Show Is For The Byrdes

Speaking of Ozark, I finally began watching it and I have to ask, Is anyone rooting for Marty and Wendy Byrde? I’m midway through season 2 and here are the only characters I’m rooting for, in order: 1) The bobcats 2) Buddy 3) Tuck 4) Jonah 5) Charlotte 6) Wyatt 7) Ruth.

Of course, the show just finished Season 3 so they’re probably all dead by now (I know Buddy, played by the late Rip Torn, must be). This show is doing the Redneck Gothic thing True Blood did but with less magic and the khaki-dad-drug-lord thing that Breaking Bad did but with no real sense of humor.

And it’s just so dumb: Marty’s partner vanishes (along with three people he was known to consort with), Marty scuttles their financial advisory firm the very next day, leaves with the cash, and the Chicago PD never even calls him in for an interrogation??? WUT!

The dumb just keeps going. There have probably been about a dozen or so people connected to Marty who’ve been brutally killed since the show began and yet the next day there’s Wendy and he figuring out who will pick up Charlotte from swim practice.

Bryan Cranston somehow managed to make Walter White a compelling and often sympathetic figure no matter what he did. Jason Bateman’s Marty Bird has no such charm, and he’s the series’ key figure.

The best scene perhaps, in the entire series, is when the pastor (whose wife has just been murdered and disappeared, her unborn baby cut out of her womb) tells Marty that he still believes in God because he knows there’s a devil. “And I believe the devil is you,” he says.

He’s right. Marty’s the worst kind of evil. The one who believes that the ends justify all of the means and who always works to ingratiate himself with people. Del should’ve killed him in the series premiere and saved us all a lot of trouble.

Play Ball?

Major League Baseball’s 60-game season begins today, which means that’s 102 fewer games to plunk Astros batters. Too bad. Let the swabbing begin!

$50,000 For Online Courses?

So CNN picked up on our convo last week about having to pay a massive college tuition check when your child is only taking his or her courses online.

Harvard University announced earlier this month that the school plans to resume classes in the fall entirely online. While the school expects to cycle undergraduate students on and off campus in smaller numbers, with freshman invited in the fall and seniors in the spring, many students won’t be on campus at all. Those who are on campus could be attending classes from their dorm rooms.

And yet, the school’s tuition($49,653 before room and board), will remain the same. Which only goes to show that you may not be as smart as you think you are if you attend Harvard.

Pennington’s Peregrinations

Los Angeles-based freelance writer Emily Pennington has set a goal of traveling to all 62 U.S. national parks this year (before Donald Trump awards fracking contracts on all of them). Her work is appearing in Outside magazine.

I’m always a little suspicious when some journalist’s “job” sounds more like a means of having someone else pay for their “adventures.” Everyone wants to be Bill Bryson, but almost nobody else is. Also, that I could come up with “Pennington’s Peregrinations” in 30 seconds (self-back pat) while no one at Outside did, well…

Or maybe I’m just jealous.

by John Walters

MH staffers nursing a cracked rib this morning, but you gotta play hurt. Thanks for the help, Jacob.

Who Was That Masked Man?

The president wearing a mask? Participating in a coronavirus presser for the first time since April? Warning that the pandemic, which spiked above 1,000 deaths in one day in the U.S. for the first time this month, is about to get worse before it gets better?

Sounds as if someone is finally willing to believe those 2020 presidential election polls.

K.O. Kid

Last night Edgar Berlanga, a 23 year-old super middleweight from Brooklyn, knocked out his opponent in the first round. So? So it was the 14th consecutive opponent that the 6’1″ New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent has knocked out in the first round.

Shades of another Brooklynite with a massive fist from more than 30 years ago: Iron Mike Tyson.

Is Berlanga that devastating? Or have they been lining up tomato cans for him? Or a little of both? It would be fun to see boxing, not ultimate fighting, return to the spotlight. Is this young man the person to bring it back?

The Lesson Of Ocoee

As election day 2020 creeps closer and as the president already sends signals that he may not accept the results (but only if he loses), you’re going to be hearing about it also being the 100th anniversary of the Massacre of Ocoee.

So just remember you heard it here first.

November 2, 1920, was the date of the presidential election pitting Republican Warren G. Harding versus Democrat James Cox. According to Wikipedia, the previous year had been “marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities.”

You don’t say.

In tiny Ocoee, a village abutting what is now Orlando, Fla., blacks were simply trying to vote. In the months preceding the election, they were told they would need to register with the county notary public, but he was repeatedly being sent away on fishing trips. And they could not simply text him.

On election day, Mose Norman, a prominent black farmer who had registered, attempted to vote multiple times but was turned away. Eventually enough angry whites decided to do something about Norman’s uppity ways, as it were. They went to track him down at the home of Jules Perry and eventually tried to break in through Perry’s back door. Norman had somehow escaped (or never been there) and he was never found. But Perry shot and killed two white intruders (Klansmen?) and then it was game on.

The whites sent for reinforcements. In the next day or two more than 3 dozen blacks in Ocoee were murdered. The rest fled their property and basically lost everything they owned. Ocoee was 100% white.

It’s good to see we’ve come so far in the past century.

I’d never even heard about this before last night, when a Google search for something else landed me on it. Imagine you’ll be hearing about it more as we approach Nov. 4. It is the 100th anniversary, after all.

Punting Is Winning

There’s a ton of prep football talent in California, and none of it will be on display until at least December. The Golden State has punted on its high school football season until after Thanksgiving at the earliest. The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) tipped its hand Monday when it announced that the last day for football championships this coming academic year will be April 17.

Cool Mom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIwP3Fg7CUE

You’ve probably seen this by now, but here’s Reese Witherspoon dancing to her son Deacon’s first pop hit. He seems like a grounded kid (not as in, “You can’t leave the house for 2 weeks!” the way MH was when we were that age, though the sentence was usually commuted after a few days and thousands of pouty faces) and our favorite thing in this video is his old-school Phillies road jersey. His last name does start with a “P” (Phillippe).

by John Walters

Urban Warfare

Saigon, 1968? Los Angeles, 1992?

No. Portland, 2020. Portland?!? Doesn’t everyone have better things to do this summer, especially in the Pacific Northwest (which may be northwest, but sure as hell ain’t pacific).

The United States has its own Gestapo now, and it’s called the Department of Homeland Security (you may remember this agency was formed to root out bad guys in turbans who shouted “Death to America!” less than 20 years ago. Now they’re tasked with putting down any form of insurrection and/or rebellion while ignoring all tenets of due process or Miranda rights. Hooray, ‘merica!”)

President Trump is copying directly from the Putin playbook and he apparently has enough support (DOJ, U.S. Senate, etc.) to continue his fascist agenda for the time being. Should people be vandalizing government buildings? No, and they should be arrested for doing so.

Should unidentified federal agents in camo gear and night sticks be descending on U.S. cities against the wishes of those cities’ mayors or those states’ governors to squash a “rebellion” that really isn’t one? Nope.

And don’t think for a moment that Trump and his ilk don’t hope that the bullying tactics don’t draw out more protesters, which will allow him to bring in more muscle, and then you need someone to light a spark on this race war that Trump wants Fox News cameras to film in living color.

It has a way of getting 800 dead Americans daily off the front page, you know?

Florida Men

On a rural lake road in central Florida last weekend, three young white men were brutally murdered. And if you were wondering what we were wondering, the local sheriff, Grady Judd, says, “This does not look like a drug deal gone bad.”

The victims—Brandon Rollins, Keven Springfield and Damion Tillman—were all between 23 and 30. They apparently were going night fishing last Friday night and Tillman arrived first. He was being beaten and may already have been shot when Rollins and Springfield rolled up. Rollins managed to place a cellphone call to his father, who lives only 10 or so minutes away, and the two were briefly able to talk before Rollins passed.

Police aren’t saying what was said, but he obviously did not identify the killer(s) are officials are offering a $30,000 reward for info leading to the arrest of who did it.

So what’s the motive? Was it really a fishing trip? This is not a heavily populated area. You’d have to think they at least one of them knew the assailants. Stay tuned or wait for the Netflix documentary.

Trump Trips Over Truth

It was 90-plus degrees in the Rose Garden on Saturday afternoon, but most of the heat President Trump felt was coming from four feet away. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace would have made his daddy, the legendary news griller Mike Wallace, proud. as he questioned Trump and exposed falsehood over prevarication. You have to wonder who inside the administration thought that this would be a good idea.

Chris Cillizza at CNN has done the dirty work, posting the “55 Most Shocking Lines” from Trump during the interview. 55. This is the new normal.

Pryor Engagement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE1f4awlxVc&t=604s

This was from the Seventies. The Richard Pryor Show, with a spoof of To Kill A Mockingbird. Opposing counsels Richard Pryor and Robin Williams. This actually aired on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC in 1977—for all of four episodes.

NBC put it up against the one-two punch of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley

on ABC.

Someone at ABC must have seen this episode, though, as they soon snatched Williams to play Mork in a bizarre episode of Happy Days that soon after resulted in Mork and Mindy. Pam Dawber. Sigh.

Incidentally, today would’ve been Robin Williams’ 69th birthday.

Freeze Frame

On this day, in 1983, the coldest temperature ever officially recorded: minus-89 degrees in Vostok Station, Antarctica.

by John Walters

This, Apparently, Is An Outrage

The magazine InStyle is doing a profile of Dr. Anthony Fauci, and here he is poolside (wearing more clothing in his home than I have worn at mine in the past five months), and of course, the far-right went off on him. Meghan McCain, who like the president, is only where she is in life because of who her father was, described Fauci in the photo as “dressed like, you know, somebody in a Brad Pitt movie.”

Perhaps if that film is Benjamin Button and it’s early in the film?

Columnist Maureen Dowd, in Sunday’s New York Times, distilled the contrasts between Dr. Fauci and his nemesis, Donald J. Trump:

One is a champion of truth and facts. The other is a master of deceit and denial. One is highly disciplined, working 18-hour days. The other can’t be bothered to do his homework and golfs instead. One is driven by science and the public good. The other is a public menace, driven by greed and ego. One is a Washington institution. The other was sent here to destroy Washington institutions. One is incorruptible. The other corrupts. One is apolitical. The other politicizes everything he touches — toilets, windows, beans and, most fatally, masks.

Arash

I hadn’t heard that the Los Angeles Times had suspended sports columnist Arash Markazi until Friday afternoon when one of you commented on it. I quickly found this piece from Vice in order to glean more.

To be clear: I’m very fond of Arash and always was when we spoke regularly. Arash started at Sports Illustrated On Campus in the beginning of 2005, I believe, as a student intern. I was working there at the time. We quickly became good friends. Arash was funny, self-deprecating, self-aware and cherubic. Just a delight to be around. A human teddy bear.

At an early stage in our friendship I noticed Arash had a predilection for attending the type of galas and publicity-stoking events that I regularly avoided. A premiere, a club opening, a book release, anything that required you to call a public relations firm and have your name added: I hated those, Arash lived for them. I dubbed him, and he enjoyed the nickname, “Guest List Markazi.”

We always remained friendly. When I was in LA, I’d spend time with him. We spent a wonderful Saturday morning watching college football at Barney’s Beanery on Sunset once. I went to his parents’ home and met them. We even spent a couple of days in Las Vegas.

Arash was, and is, good company. And a good guy. I’ll be sure to phone him this week.

In the past few years I stopped following him on Twitter. I didn’t like what he was doing, from a professional perspective, and as I’ve already established myself as a bitter scold on the platform, I didn’t feel I needed to alienate yet another ex-SI colleague.

A year or two back he posted a photo of himself, Justin Verlander and Kate Upton at Minute Maid Park right after a big postseason win by the Houston Astros. I was disappointed. I tried to imagine anyone who was on the masthead at SI when I first arrived doing that.

I realize it’s a different era. Writers are trying to promote their own brand. Who knows, maybe someday they’ll earn the distinction of having Tony Reali award them a few points on Around The Horn, the ultimate display of “I’ve Made It!” in this present print epoch.

But I prefer to be old-fashioned. I wondered, seeing that photo, if Arash would write anything that night that would remain with me longer than the image in that photo. And isn’t that his job, after all? And how does his being chummy with Verlander and publicizing it help him do his job? If he’s doing his job, it doesn’t.

I don’t know what Arash did or didn’t do. I don’t know if the fact that there’s an audience, a big one, for writers and pundits who don’t always follow the rules of journalistic integrity (Clay Travis, Dave Portnoy, etc.) because they’d rather promote themselves, trumps my Puritan values.

Arash is a guy I like very much. I observed his meteoric rise the past few years with dubious silence. I was happy for him on a surface level. Deeper, though, I wondered how he was going to connect with staffers at the Los Angeles Times, the paper of Jim Murray (and Lou Grant!). These are serious journalists, Pulitzer Prize winners.

I’ll be a friend to Arash no matter what happens. And maybe some of the words above sound harsh. Or like tough love. But it’s the truth. And there’s no hiding from that.

by John Walters

75,600

That’s the number of new cases diagnosed yesterday in the U.S.A., according to The New York Times. Florida and Texas also surged to one-day records. That number is approximately double the number the U.S. was hitting on a daily level just one month ago.

Remember, “fifteen, going down to zero?” How quaint.

Mask-arade

In Provo, Utah, a meeting to discuss a state mandate that all children wear masks upon returning to school next month was canceled when parents not wearing masks flooded the room (although, look at that nice couple on the lower left).

It’s time for Mask America Great Again headgear. And I don’t mean baseball caps.

Got To Rock On

There are about three Kansas songs that everyone knows: The band’s massive breakout hit, “Carry On, Our Wayward Son,” “Dust In The Wind,” and perhaps “Point Of Know Return.”

This tune comes from their 1980 album, “Audio-Visions.” Always felt that it got lost on the radio. It’s not a classic, but it deserves a little more attention. If you have kids who’ve never heard either band, you should play, “Styx Or Kansas?” with them, playing a smattering of each band’s songs.

That’s Going To Cost You An Arm And A Leg

When the sister of tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh, 33, did not hear back from him for more than a day she went to check on him in his $2.25 million luxury apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. There she found a grisly scene: her brother’s decapitated and dismembered corpse (writers from Law & Order are already on Page 16 of the script).

Police have already arrested Saleh’s 21 year-old personal assistant, Tyrese Haspil. Apparently Saleh had discovered that Haspil had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him and confronted him about it. Not that he was going to report Haspil to the cops, but that he wanted to set up a repayment plan. It seems that Haspil was not down with that.

Saleh was a born entrepreneur, the kind of dude you’d seen killing it on Shark Tank. His main success was a Nigerian ride-share company that used motorbikes: Uber on two wheels. But if you’re going to hire a personal assistant, hire an older female. Not a 21 year-old dude with designs on your possessions. Or, better yet, just get married.

Luanda

Sometimes when I’m up against it, figuring out how to fill out the daily five, I look up a place in Africa that I’ve never even heard of. Today’s place? Luanda, the capital of Angola. Right up against the Atlantic Ocean.

Luanda is the largest Portuguese-speaking capital in the world, even more so than Lisbon. It was the center of the slave trade to Brazil until it was outlawed. It was also colonized by the Portuguese way back in the 16th century. But now the indigenous peoples have taken back their home.

Oh, and the country has running rhinos. Which is cool.

Tuition Fruition

A recurring conversation I’ve been having with friends whose kids are in college right now: Is it really worth it to send your kids back to campus if they’re going to be taking courses on-line?

Now, certainly, not everyone’s kids attend a Top 100 university but look at the costs in tuition at these schools. Once you get past room and board you’re talking at least $60,000.

So what’s the smart play here? How about a gap year? If your student/child can find a job and take a couple of community courses locally (or online), isn’t that better than sending them off somewhere where they’ll be cooped up in an even smaller room and yet still have a far, far greater chance of contracting the virus? And for what? What’s the point of being educated on a college campus if you’re never in the classroom or never around other students?

I’ll hold for your thoughts…