IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Changing Your Major*

The judges will also accept “Woof Housing” and “German Aggression”

Presidential pup Major Biden (right) has been sent home to Delaware after an aggressive snip at a Secret Service agent. On one hand, we cannot have creatures in the White House simply biting other creatures (stabbing in the back, maybe; but not biting). On the other hand, it’s nice to have one in the White House whose bite is worse than his bark.

I gotta admit, I spent half the day wondering if Major Biden and Hunter Biden were brothers.

The Sweet Smell of Suggs-cess

(In Haarms’ Way: Suggs, here taking it to the rim versus BYU’s Matt Haarms, who at 7’3″ is the tallest boy in college hoops)

Gonzaga improved to 26-0 and won the West Coast Conference championship with an 88-78 win over BYU, which is located two states over from a west coast state. But never mind.

The Zags were led by 6’4″ frosh guard Jalen Suggs, he of St. Paul, Minn. Suggs looks like the kind of guard who five to 25 years (and all years in between) ago would have opted to go play for Coach K at Duke. In fact, two Minnesota point guards have gone down to Durham to play for Coach K in the past decade (they’re siblings).

But not Suggs. He headed west along I-90 to Spokane. Last night the putative Top 10 pick led all scorers with 23 points. The Zags have had many fine players over the years, but Suggs may look more like a polished Big Ten or ACC player after not even one full season than any of them.

Gonzaga will be a 1-seed in the tourney, though most fans probably consider Michigan the overall No. 1 and the tougher out.

Without Piers

As you know, Piers Morgan checked out of Good Morning, Britain for good shortly after stomping off the set as weatherman Alex Beresford hit him with a litany of charges as to his behavior toward Meghan Markle. You probably saw the clip. And hey, have you ever watched so much of Good Morning, Britain? And wouldn’t you like to see it more often?

Anyway, we’re not about to defend Morgan’s previous, at best, sexism if not downright misogyny. And yes, he’s always been somewhat arrogant and of course is a friend of 45. However, we watched this extended clip of the show before the viral moment, and if you take the time to do the same, let me ask you: 1) Is Morgan being at all unreasonable here? 2) Who’s cutting off whom more often, conversationally? and 3) Did you realize it was actually Morgan who wanted Beresford on the panel that morning?

I won’t have Morgan’s back for all of his previous Tucker Carlson-like behavior. But in this clip, in the moments before he’d storm off the program he’d co-hosted for the last time, I do. I don’t think he’s at all being unreasonable. In fact, I think he’s the saner one of the two. You have the right to feel offended, sure. But you don’t have the right to alternative facts.

Big Noon Bob

Fox Sports hires Bob Stoops to replace Urban Meyer for its Big Noon Kickoff pregame show (that airs at 7 a.m. local time in Los Angeles on Saturday mornings. Good luck with that, Bob). Fox’s extended college football team now has four on-air personalities whose 2005 football season was canceled by the University of Texas: Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart (USC), Joel Klatt (twice!, with Colorado), and now Stoops (Oklahoma).

We cannot wait until Fox hires A.J. Hawk or Jim Tressel.

You gotta wonder if Bob was getting jealous of all the air-time his walk-on receiver son Drake Stoops was getting on Fox with the Sooners and wanted some of that action himself. Or if he just thought, I can only sit and drink with the well-heeled boosters in luxury boxes on Saturday afternoons so much.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle/I Want To Ride My Bike

(The Hovenring Einhoven, The Netherlands)

One of our favorite blogs, The Discoverer, puts out a list of “The Six Coolest Bike Paths In The World.” Take a peek.

Stock The Insanity

On an incredibly bullish Tuesday in the market, TSLA jumps 100 points (or dollars) while GME’s incredible second surge continues. GameStop, which surged nearly 200% between Feb. 23 ($44) and March 1st ($120), is up more than 125% in just the past four days ($118 to $264). What is it based on? Nothing more than momentum and Reddit posts. When will it stop? Who knows?

Take The Money And– Run Or Don’t Run

Donald Trump’s latest scam (besides requesting a mail-in ballot after claiming for months that mail-in votes are fraudulent)? Appealing to voters to send their money directly to him, as opposed to the Republican party. This is brilliant. Does that mean he’ll run for office again? Who knows? Will the mentally weak and deluded who write checks out to him get their money back if/when he chooses not to run for office? Why don’t you ask former students at Trump University or consumers of Trump Steaks how that ends…

Trump’s contention? “No more money for RINOS [Republicans In Name Only.. e.g., Mike Pence, Adam Kinzinger]. They do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base – they will never lead us to Greatness.”

Believe it or not, and you’ll believe it, Trump goes on to use a superlative (!) statement: “We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!” Shocked.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Dak To The Future

The Dallas Cowboys retain quarterback Dak Prescott, last seen being carted off the field at Jerry World with his ankle hanging by ligaments and tendons, for four years and $160 million. And $123 million of it, more than 3/4, is money up front as a signing bonus.

We’re well past the “Is He Worth It?” question with NFL quarterbacks (thanks, Pat Mahomes) but there are a few questions: 1) What will Prescott, entering his sixth season, be like after that gruesome ankle injury suffered against the New York Giants? and 2) How many playoff games have the Cowboys won in Prescott’s first five seasons (one)?

To be fair (not that we need to be), Prescott’s passer rating consistently rose, from 25th to 16th to 13th to 6th, in his first four full seasons before he was felled in the fifth game of 2020. He’s a good egg, too. Now all he needs to do is join Roger and Troy and lead the StarBoys to a Super Bowl victory.

Didn’t We Refer To It As A ‘Crown Show’ Only Yesterday?

Here’s quite a lede via The Irish Times:

https://twitter.com/huwlemmey/status/1369231829073559552?s=20

By the way, how does one know for sure that something is fundamentally and morally wrong? When Piers Morgan, the Tucker Carlson of the U.K., is in favor of it…

Hey, When Are The Oscars?

April 25th

Have they nominated anyone yet?

No. They’ll be out next Monday, March 15.

Best Picture faves?

Nomadland, The Trial Of The Chicago 7, Mank, Malcolm & Marie, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Sound of Metal, Minari.

We haven’t seen Nomadland. Really enjoyed The Trial of The Chicago 7 and Mank and predict a Best Supporting Actress win for Amanda Seyfried in the latter. That could also win Best Screenplay, which isn’t easy to do in a year that Sorkin has a film out. But it’s our favorite script of the little we’ve seen.

Will there be a host?

Probably not. Remember last year, students of biology, that the big winner was Parasite even though there was no host.

I Feel Seen

It’s almost as if The WSJ has abducted MH’s headline-writing staff…

Vaccinated

Do you remember the 2004 Dashboard Confessional hit “Vindicated?” We do and we always loved it. The chorus went like this:

I am…VINDICATED!

I am selfish/I am wrong

I am right/I swear I’m right

Swear I knew it all along

And I am flawed

But I am cleaning up so well

I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

So who’s up for a parody?

I am… VACCINATED!

I am healthy/I am strong

I am white/Of course I’m white

So the line it wasn’t long

And I’m immune,

But I’m still eating fries and cheese,

I won’t get COVID-19 but I will die of heart disease….

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Crown Show*

*The judges will also accept “Tea-ing Off”, “Tea-N-Tea”, and “Off With Her Headlines”

Dig: if you saw Season 4 of The Crown, particularly the season finale, none of what was revealed by Harry (what’s his last name, again?) and Meghan to Oprah last night should surprise you. In fact, if you saw Seasons 1 and 2, where the king marries an American woman and then abdicates from the throne, none of this should come as a shock.

Americans, judging from Twitter, are qualified to care and obsess about the trials and tribulations of the .0001%, as interviewed by a similar person. I’d say “uniquely” qualified, but it’s the Brits who put these folks in positions of mythic power for the past millennium.

Seasoning With Curry

Y’all can debate whether or not LeBron is The GOAT (not to us, not even close) of the NBA, but what isn’t debatable to us: Stephen Curry is The GOAT beyond the arc. The player who revolutionized the way the game is played put on a show at the All-Star Game in Atlanta, winning the three-point shot competition (below) and then burying 30- and even 40-foot bombs during the game itself.

https://twitter.com/WorldWideWob/status/1368723364420980736?s=20

There may some day be a player who comes along and is even more of an ICBM than Curry, but for now he’s the greatest to ever launch.

PDA Meeting

Move over, Walter White: there’s a new “World’s Wealthiest High School Science Teacher” in town. Meet Dan Jewett, who teaches science at the Lakeside School in Seattle. Dan just married MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos and apparent baldie aficionado.

In 2019, less than two months after her divorce from the Amazon founder was finalized, Scott signed The Giving Pledge, a commitment to give away the majority of her approximately $35 billion net worth.”I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,” she wrote.

Apparently that altruism extends to high school educators. We know one science department that will not be running low on graduated cylinders or centrifuge tubes any time soon.

Crikies! It’s Bikies!

Great white sharks and saltwater crocs, yes. But Australia, particularly, western Australia, has a motorcycle gang problem. They’re known as “Bikies” Down Under and someone forgot to tell them that Mad Max: Fury Road is just a movie (albeit a great one).

There’s millions and millions of dollars of drugs involved, of course. And turf. And muscles. And facial tattoos.

A quick guide:

  1. The Rebels: formed in Brisbane and the nation’s largest (yes, that’s East coast).
  2. The Bandidos (originally formed in Texas)
  3. The Hell’s Angels (now operating in 27 countries… how long before they go public?)
  4. The Mongols (sworn enemies of the Hell’s Angels)
  5. The Comancheros (allow non-bikers to join in order to beef up criminal activities… but we hear their profit-sharing plan is shite)

Kubrick’s Killer’s Kiss

We watched Killer’s Kiss (1955) on TCM’s “Noir Alley” Saturday night. It’s Stanley Kubrick’s (above) second film and it’s an incredible piece of work in only 67 minutes. You can see a young artist—Kubrick was only 26 when he shot it—already deftly flexing with master strokes.

It’s also a gritty look at New York City, not the Big Apple of a Doris Day film. The film, which centers on a boxer-blonde-gangster love triangle, also came out a year after Rear Window. There’s back-window voyeurism with a dame in danger and a blonde (Irene Kane, a.k.a. Chris Chase) who even looks as if she could be Grace Kelly’s sister. Kane, a former Vogue model, would leave acting for journalism and even join CNN in its early years.

If you ever get a chance to see this, MH recommends.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by john walters

The Idles of March

If you listen to your local Q Anon shaman, yesterday was supposed to be the real inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term. Turns out…you’re never going to believe this… that claim was fraudulent. Instead the 45th president spent it not putting out on a hole and Republican senators wasted everyone’s time in their chamber by compelling senate clerks to read the Rescue Bill in its entirety, out loud, on the floor, as a means of delaying a vote that whose outcome is a fait accompli.

And this is a bill that has wide bipartisan support. If you’re not paying attention, the entire Republican agenda is to gum up anything that Democrats want to do. It’s like an entire Tom vs. Jerry or Roadrunner vs. Coyote or Spy vs. Spy bit. The actual consideration of whether or not something is beneficial to American citizens never even enters their Neanderthal skulls.

Warren’s Piece

Here is the essence of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax: for every dollar north of $50 million that you are worth, you pay 2 cents. For every dollar above $1 billion, you pay 3 cents.

That’s it. That’s the tax.

Somehow the Republicans have managed to paint this as socialism and an attack on their God-fearing constituents who will never earn north of $200,000 (and that’s being generous) a year.

Let’s put this in perspective, shall we? If you earn $200,000 a year, you are already making more than 95% of Americans. Also, if you earn $200,000 year, that is just zero-point-four percent of (0.40%) of what $50 million is. You’re not even out of the driveway.

Moreover, imagine having one dollar and the guy next to you has $1,000. Completely different buying power, no?

Well, if you have one million dollars, that’s like having $1 next to $1,000 compared to having one billion dollars.

MAGA voters are bad at math. Their pols know this. And they exploit their ignorance.

Elizabeth Warren isn’t coming for your paycheck. She’s coming after the super-filthy rich, and let’s just put two more points in perspective:

  1. If her bill passed, Jeff Bezos, the second-wealthiest man in the world, would make up for that tax hike with the equivalent of one half of one day of work.
  2. Also, America’s 600 or so billionaires have increased their wealth by more than $1.3 TRILLION since the start of the pandemic. They’re doing just fine.

Pope And Glory

Here’s Pope Francis being greeted upon his arrival in Iraq. Wouldn’t all of us like to be welcomed this way after a long flight? Just once? No pope has ever visited Iraq, which is weird since it’s sort of the cradle of civilization (Mesopotamia and all).

The Cork Soakers

One of my students turned me on to this SNL bit I’d never seen before. Wondering if this aired before or after companion sketch “Colonel Angus.” Though you may argue that it all began with “Schweddy Balls.”

Poor Janet Jackson. She cannot keep it together. Almost sabotaged the sketch. Even Jimmy Fallon kept it together better than she.

The Original SNL Sketch


John Belushi, the first SNL superstar (sorry, Chevy), died 39 years ago today. Here’s the very first SNL sketch, in October of 1975, which followed George Carlin’s opening monologue on football versus baseball.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

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by John Walters

The Miles High Club*

*The judges will also accept, “Whoop! There Goes Gravity”

Coming to a galaxy near you in just six years (or so they promise): a hotel in outer space called Voyager Station. It’s brought to you by OAC (Orbital Assembly Corporation), which is not to be confused with AOC, who would never allow an outer space hotel to open in New York City. Of course.

My big questions: 1) How’s the WiFi? 2) Will the lobby bar be exactly like the one in Star Wars? 3) Who will be the first to moon the moon from their hotel room?

MAGA’s Gate

Here’s what I always admired about the Heaven’s Gate cult: when the world did not actually end on the appointed day, they donned their track suits and committed mass suicide.

I mention this because the Qanon weirdos have appointed today, March 4, as the true inauguration day for Donald Trump (for his second term as president). So when today comes and goes and Trump remains yet another fat, crooked septuagenarian hiding out in south Florida, will the true believers off themselves?

Fluffer Nutter

Here’s why it’s always worth listening to Bill Walton on TV, and why you need to pay attention. Does Walton know what this word means? I imagine he does. Way to sneak it onto an ESPN broadcast. You wonder if someone dared him.

Today’s Quick Peek At Republican Corruption

–D.C. National Guard commander William Walker (like William Wallace, a brave heart in the face of tyranny) testifying yesterday how he could not get approval to bring in his men on January 6 for more than three hours. Odd that the man who had to give that approval was newly installed Sec. of Defense Chris Miller, a Trump toady who had only been appointed to the job two weeks earlier. Oh, and that he was conferring with a Gen. Charles Flynn, who is the brother of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was sent to jail and then pardoned by Trump.

–Former Sec. of Transportation Elaine Chao, who is the wife of Mitch McConnell, is being investigated for using her office to benefit family business back in…CHINA!

There’s really no limit to Republican mendacity. Keeping up is overwhelming.

Don’t Raise The Bridge, Lower The River

When youths figure out a better way to solve a problem..