Am I the only one who noticed that he would not pose with black beans?
More than 800 Americans died from the coronavirus yesterday, by the way. Trump hasn’t stepped foot into a pandemic task-force meeting in months, much less visited a single hospital ICU. If you can possibly sweep 200,000 mostly unnecessary American deaths in eight months (by election day) under the rug, well, damned if Donald isn’t about to try.
Kuminga Traction
Top high school recruit Jonathan Kuminga, a 6’8″ Congolese native who’s been playing prep ball in New Jersey, has opted for the G-League over the chance to play for a screaming martinet and take Intro To English Composition.
Kuminga was the No. 4-rated prospect in this year’s incoming freshman class. He’s also the fifth ESPN Top 100 prospect to take his talents to the G League, where NBA hopefuls can earn $125,000 in their internship season before leaping to the NBA.
This is a bad sign for college basketball (initially) and a terrific sign for progress in general. The top college hoops and football players are minor-league pro athletes, not college students. They belong in a minor league. And sure, Kuminga would’ve earned more this coming season at Kentucky or Memphis, but at least this money is clean.
Dirty Harry and Feminism
This is from The Enforcer, which came out in 1976. The mayor of San Francisco back then, by the way, would have been George Moscone, a Democrat who along with his city supervisor Harvey Milk would be assassinated two years later.
But that’s not what is funny to us about this scene (and let’s get this straight, Inspector Callahan is making excellent points). What’s funny to us is that the female cop is played by Tyne Daly, who will grow up to be esteemed New York detective Cagney. Or is it Lacey? Who can remember?
All’s Wales That Ends Wales
In the wee Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells, they’ve figured out a way to keep tourists coming: by staging bizarre and looney sporting events. Hence, there’s bog-snorkeling, man versus horse, and a mountain-bike chariot race.
Brilliant.
Manhattan Transfer of Particles*
*The judges will also accept “Remember The Alamogordo!”
On July 16, 1945—75 years ago today—the first atomic bomb was detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Not a good day to be a coyote in southern New Mexico. By the way, infant deaths in the area rose 52% in the next year but…GET OVER IT!
A White House official whose sole qualification for holding her present position, one for which she is woefully under-qualified, is being the daughter of POTUS, is overseeing a task force for Americans who’ve seen the coronavirus (kind of daddy’s responsibility) take their jobs. And the slogan they’ve attached to their initiative? TRY SOMETHING NEW.
Wow.
Weiss Words
An editorial page editor at The New York Times, has resigned, in essence, over the newspaper’s unflinching wokeness. Read Bari Weiss’ resignation letter. She’s correct, by the way.
Tom Cotton’s Op-Ed, in essence, claims another free-thinking voice at the Times. We completely disagreed with Cotton’s position, but we also completely endorse the column’s publication. In recent weeks the paper’s Op-Ed section has been one unending screed of Krugman and Blow and Friedman and Bouie all pitching from the same side of the mound. And whether or not you agree or disagree with their delivery, there should be no argument that there are contrarian voices and that those voices need to be heard.
Weiss writes that the NYT’s ultimate editor now is Twitter. And she mentions Slack once or twice. If I were a counter-agent attempting to take down American journalism, the first thing I would do is make Slack mandatory at news publications. That’s what they did at Newsweek in my final months there and I saw the devastation it wrought. Slack destroys contrarian thought. It is, at a publication, downright Orwellian.
Winners and Lou-sers
Former Alabama senator Jeff Sessions lost his GOP primary election last night to no-experience-in-politics former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who’s spent the past year treating Donald Trump the way he used to treat the Tigers’ most generous boosters.
Adding an extra element of incongruousness to the scene, President Trump praised Tuberville while also referring to Alabama’s football coach as “Lou Saban.”
Trump: “As he said … because of that, maybe we got ’em Lou Saban … And he’s great, Lou Saban, what a great job he’s done.”
Trump has hosted Alabama’s coach, NICK Saban, and the Crimson Tide at the White House. Lou Saban did coach in the NFL and college, but never in the state of Alabama. And he’s been dead for more than a decade.
This is the same president who boasted that he passed a cognitive test, the results of which the White House refuses to release, last weekend. With Trump, every document is his tax returns.
Ducey Doofus
Here’s Arizona governor Doug Ducey at a graduation party for students of my high school. Now, to be somewhat fair, the party took place on June 6, not July 6th.
But here’s what’s odd to me. In order to stay safe, my alma mater, Brophy College Prep, staged the graduation in a giant parking lot off-site. Students and their parents remained in their cars and listened to graduation speakers on a radio frequency, almost like being at a drive-in movie.
All those precautions taken, and then they hold a backyard graduation party. And the governor of the state there with no mask. You reap what you sow, Arizona. I think I learned that in Fr. LaCasse’s freshman year Salvation History course.
Office Space
If the past four months have taught us anything, and they’ve taught us plenty, it’s that there are tens of thousands of white-collar jobs that were performed at offices that could just as easily be performed at home. And whether or not the pandemic ever ends (sorry, Moderna, fool me once…), how much better if many of those jobs remain at home? Less traffic, for one example, is a boon.
So what do we do with all that office space? One friend suggested turn offices into homeless shelters. Now, the major problem I see here is that homeless people are not known to be fans of Keurig coffee, but all that shows is that they have good taste.
It’s an idea worth exploring….because the more that people are unable to FIND SOMETHING NEW, the more homeless we’re going to have.
Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote my class this morning. They’re beginning to understand that they have a cynical professor, but I’ve always believed that a cynic is simply an idealist who’s seen too much.
Films, quality films I should say, have a way of staying with us if they impart lessons that have metaphorical value. In other words, the situations, actions and conflicts of the story are able to be translated into unrelated situations from every day life. Metaphor! Excellent. If you ever hear someone from my generation, for example, saying, “You’re going to need a bigger boat,” that’s a reference to Jaws. In the film it meant that the boat they had was not large enough to deal with the shark they were hunting; since the film it has come to mean that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew (a metaphor to explain a metaphor, oh my) in the task you’re about to undertake. It’s also wonderful as an understatement.
All of the above to introduce a film metaphor below, from The Perfect Storm. Have you seen this movie (from 2000), starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly? Based on a true story (the book is incredible, by the way), it’s the tale of the ill-fated fishermen of the Andrea Gail.
So it’s October of 1991 and the captain and crew of this boat have had a poor summer, financially. They’ve got one more chance to head out into the Atlantic before winter comes. And now they’ve made a big haul and they’re hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic, east of New England. The problem? The biggest storm in decades sits between them and home port.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsARVzxeZms
So here’s the captain’s dilemma: 1) If he sails out further east, the ship and crew are safe but they’ll run out of ice to keep the catch fresh and hence will lose their small fortune. 2) If he sails home, he’s headed headlong into a terrible storm (a “perfect” storm, in fact) but if they make it back to port, the catch will be saved and they’ll have full pockets of cash.
The captain thinks, and what follows are seven of the most destructive words ever strung together, What’s the worst that could possibly happen?
Why bring this up? I think of these characters and this dilemma as I assess the upcoming abbreviated MLB season and resuming NBA season. Here are how the fundamentals of each story overlap:
1) You have a group of individuals who are fully aware of the potential consequences of taking the prudent action (losing money) versus taking the risky action (illness or death).
2) Those same individuals choose the latter action, the risky action, due to a single motivating factor (money). Please, kids, you’re not eight years old any more: when league commissioners tell you they’re bringing back their sport for the morale of the country, because people miss sports, remember, this is a business. There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here in terms of putting product (games) on air.
3) George Clooney or Adam Silver or Rob Manfred are all taking the same, in my opinion, foolish gamble: Thinking that the worst cannot happen simply because it is inconvenient. That’s poor logic.
Should the NBA or MLB not resume? That’s not the question I’d pose to them. The question I’d pose, which no one has adequately answered, is, What happens when players begin testing positive (you probably know that Russell Westbrook has already tested positive)? The follow-up would be, Do you really expect fans to believe that superstars are going to sit out the conference finals or NBA Finals because a swab test says they have symptoms even though they do not feel sick? Do you expect us fans to believe that the NBA, which has an inherent conflict of interest, is going to truthfully report the results of these tests?
Consider: It’s shortly before Game 5 of the NBA Finals, 2-2 between the Bucks and Lakers (sorry, Clippers fans). And Giannis tests positive for Covid-19. Series over… even though Giannis feels great. Unless, the NBA chooses not to report the results of the test. There’s a huge ratings difference between having Giannis available for Games 5, 6 and 7 and having no Giannis for Games 5 and 6. And there’s a lot of money left on the table all because Giannis has the virus but still feels healthy? I don’t see it.
One person’s suggestion for how these leagues should be handling this situation, as opposed to producing 100-page protocols that no one will ever be able to follow (those are simply legal documents to protect the leagues against lawsuits from the unions down the line; they serve little practical purpose) and blowing sunshine up (certain orifices) to appease fans and media: You have two choices.
A) Cancel the season(s) until an effective vaccine is produced or
B) Proceed full-steam ahead with the seasons, BUT, inform fans that players will be allowed to play even if they do test positive. It will be the player’s option. And any player who does not want to participate in the league will be excused without penalty. And that player may leave at any time (before or during the season). But a player will not be held out simply for testing positive. It will be up to him.
Because, let’s face it: If the NBA and MLB really wanted to be safe, they’d stay as far away from continuing or starting a season as possible right now. So since we know that they’re committed to sailing through that storm, we deserve their honesty. Preventing the spread of the virus is really not a priority, so please don’t pander to public relations by saying that you’ll pull players who test positive. Let them play, if they want to.
The captain of the Andrea Gail knew that he could not both be safe and keep his haul. He had to make a choice and he rolled the dice that the storm would not overwhelm him. The boat was never found. All eight or so aboard were lost. Adam Silver and Rob Manfred are facing the same dilemma and making the same choice. Maybe, probably, no one directly dies. But let’s not pretend for one moment that that’s their overriding priority. The money is.
A couple of things: 1) I’m not a Cancel Culture type, but what Anthony Casa, the CEO of Association of Independent Mortgage Experts, did here is beyond the pale. Fire this guy immediately.
Second, note how poorly this story is written. You don’t read his name in the top graf. You read the name of someone not even directly connected to the story.
Someone check Daniel Snyder’s pulse… he may be dead. Snyder, the owner of the NFL’s Washington franchise, for years famously crowed that the Redskins would change their name “over my dead body.”
Washington officially retired the name “Redskins” today, pressured not as much by political pressure but by a company which itself shortened its name years ago: Federal Express.
So they’ll no longer be named the Redskins. But will we still be allowed to refer to secondary ticket scales as “scalping?”
Woj F-Bombed
As this recovering Twitter addict knows, this is what happens when you spend your life on social media. ESPN suspended golden boy NBA news breaker Adrian Wojnarowski after he replied to an email from Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley with a terse two-word command (anatomically impossible) this weekend.
Hawley, annoyed by the NBA/WNBA’s blatant “Black Lives Matter” support, trolled the league by sending out an email wondering why not also have players wear emblems that read “Support The Troops,” “Back The Blue,” or, as he said, “Given how much the NBA makes in China, why not ‘Free Hong Kong’?”
I think Daryl Morey would get behind that last one.
Woj, one of numerous recipients of this email, wrote back, “F*** you!.” And then Hawley’s office shared the email publicly.
Now Woj is being smartphone-quarantined, sort of, by ESPN the next week or two.
We’re giving Hawley the win on this one.
Kelly Preston
Actress Kelly Preston has died at age 57. The cause? Breast cancer.
Preston, the wife of actor John Travolta, is perhaps best known as the smoking-hot but ice-cold fiancee of Jerry Maguire in the eponymous film. She dumps him after his memorandum (“It was a mission statement!”) and not in a kind way.
Arguably Preston’s next-most scene body of work was her role in Maroon 5’s breakout video from 2004, “She Will Be Loved.” She was already 41 at this time but Preston always retained her youthful beauty.
Tech Tradewinds
As of this morning, Elon Musk has a greater net worth than Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha falls behind the Potentate of Palo Alto
About one month ago, more than a little surprised and stymied by the market (and how it just didn’t seem to be reacting to reality), I texted two friends, hands figuratively tossed in the air, and wrote, “I should just have all my money in AMZN and TSLA and not touch it for years.”
And one of the two, who’s done very well in the market over the years, simply shot back a thumbs up.
Of course, I didn’t follow my own suggestion, but here’s what’s happened since that day: AMZN is up from $2,600 a share to nearly $3,300, while TSLA is up from $990 to $1,723.
A 25% gain on one and a 90% gain on the other. It’s crazy. With no signs of stopping.
NFLX? Up from $421 to $563. I can remember having a conversation with a co-worker now national sports columnist back in 2013 and he was lamenting the fact that he’d missed the run-up to buy Netflix stock. No, he hadn’t.
So what’s the opposite of catch a falling knife? Grab hold of a soaring rocket?
Does anyone honestly think AMZN, TSLA, NFLX, AAPL or GOOGL will be lower five years from now? One year? As we all wait for their haircut to jump back in, their locks keep growing longer and more luscious.
Who knows? Not me: the guy who six months ago said that if you put your money in TSLA, six months from now you’ll be very happy? If you had you’d have at least tripled your money. In six months (I did not follow my own advice… because my little man is an idiot, Jerry).
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