IT’S STILL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

https://twitter.com/onikasgivenchy/status/1323857811734933504?s=20

Hey Now, Heyyy Now, Don’t Dream It’s Over

Not sure how long ago this was, probably in the last two weeks, but here’s Bernie Sanders, who’d have made a better president than either of the two men on the ballot, explaining almost down to the county how the 2020 presidential election would play out.

By the way, we avoided watching most of the election coverage and are still doing so. For us, no matter who wins, the mandate has been established: America, with everything it knows and has experienced, did not repudiate Donald Trump.

So this was America’s chance to say, “Throw the bums out!” and America failed. You’re going to see a whole wave of Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes (not to mention the Trump kids) in the future because for some reason, half of America is down with corruption, incompetence, grifting and bullying.

We’re not the best country. Not even close.

Bastard Out Of Carolina*

*The judges are not explicitly talking about Lindsey Graham, but if your mind went there we won’t truck with you.

It’s been a decade or two since we read Bastard Out Of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, but here is what we remember: single mom dating a total bad boy, and bad guy, who treats her daughter quite poorly. In fact, he physically abuses her and ultimately rapes her.

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1323957711919337472?s=20

But mom doesn’t leave him. She knows who he is but she’d still rather be with him than not.

This is an analogy. I think you get it.

Trump Flat-Earthers, The Coronavirus, and Austin Powers


One thing I’ve heard from Trump truthers the past month, and not just one but a few, is that “no one could’ve really contained the coronavirus.” It’s as if that routine ground ball to the first baseman would’ve gone through anyone’s legs, not just Bill Buckner’s.

But it’s simply not true. It’s false. You or I could’ve done a better job fighting the coronavirus. Seriously. Why? Because we would’ve been smart enough to let the pilot fly the plane, i.e., ask the epidemiologists what to do and follow their lead. But what about the economy? Oh, stop. Like prolonging a pandemic for another year is a wise economic move?

So for me it’s like this: Trump truthers claim the coronavirus is a meteor hurtling toward Earth and we are powerless to stop it. False. What the coronavirus is is this: it’s that very slow-moving steamroller in the first Austin Powers film that the dastardly henchman sees coming from 20 feet away but instead of doing anything about it, he simply screams in horror while, with plenty of time to elude it, freezing in place until it ultimately flattens him.

And that’s why I always think in metaphors.

Jacobellis’ing It

Remember the 2006 Winter Olympics, when all Lindsay Jacobellis had to do was jump correctly and then snowboard home for a gold medal? Instead, she tried styling during her jump, fell, and finished with the silver.

Well, the President attempted to declare victory. Prematurely. Last night. We weren’t awake for it but you’ve certainly heard about it.

https://twitter.com/JudithBenezra/status/1323923239261728770?s=20

Here’s the interesting, but also depressing thing: Neither side produced a landslide. Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell were reelected. Tommy Tuberville was elected. The point? Neither side is dominant. The political strife of the past four years will simply continue moving onward. I’m tempted to say, “I’m out.” Cuz this sh*t just ain’t worth it. Find me a beach somewhere. The beach bums have all the wisdom.

IT IS ALLLLLL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Exit Pol?

Election day 2020 dawned with the President of the United States having erected a “non-scalable fence” around the perimeter of the White House (I’m sure that made the Secret Service feel gratified for all that they do) and phoning in to Fox News 45 minutes late to whine that they actually air video of the other candidate.

Today is Election Day. Saturday Notre Dame hosts No. 1 Clemson. I’m against everything orange this week (except Tang, of course).

Vote if you have not yet done so. Remember this day for as long as you live. And if your election lasts more than 40 hours, please consult a physician.

*****

****

Happy Birthday, Colin Kaepernick!

The former Super Bowl quarterback turns 33 today. Life is funny. There’s still time for some NFL owner to sign Kap but, hey, when you’ve got Ben DiNucci taking snaps for you, who needs a former All-Pro who’s still in his prime?

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

*****

Potential Scenario: Donald Trump loses, is tossed over the “non-scaleable wall,” and finds himself in a bottomless gorge of debt. But there is one way out of the predicament: write a tell-all book about the last five years of his life.

Be completely candid, and for once, truthful: What really happened to Jeffrey Epstein? What was said during the meeting with Putin? Was there a back-up Melania? What’s going on with Hope Hicks? Everything. In exchange Trump receives immunity, is allowed to be free (but not to hold rallies or appear on Fox News or OAN) and can settle up with his creditors.

*****

Are we being too hopeful here? Spiking the ball before we cross the plane of the goal line? Yes, we’ll stop. We’ve got little doubt that Biden will win the popular vote and think he’ll probably also take the electoral college. What happens after that is beyond our ken. We’ve got the cynical thoughts and also the hopeful thoughts. Who knows?

But maybe, just maybe, someone has whispered into Don’s ear that he really doesn’t want to spend the next four years being president and that he can still do his pump-up-your-ego rallies without having to live in Washington, D.C. any more. Maybe even his own show on Fox News. That actually might appeal to him more. While Ivanka prepares for a run at the Senate (in Florida) in 2022 or 2024. Who knows?

Vladimir Putin In The Sauna With The Crossbow Is The Strangest Clue Hypothesis Yet

In case you missed it, Russian oligarch Vladimir Marugov, who owned several meat-processing plants and was dubbed “The Sausage King,” was killed by unnamed assailants who entered his home and shot him with a crossbow as he and his wife were seated in their sauna. Apparently they were demanding money and the wife somehow escaped.

I’d say, “Stay tuned,” but it’s Russia and we’ll never learn the truth. Just be thankful we were given these salacious details.

Who’s A Smart Doggy?

I don’t care if this good doggy was trained to do this or not. Even if it was, then give him or her an extra doggy bone for superior acting talent.

Remember Her?

Four years later, it’s important to remember that Hillary Clinton A) is not dead (remember she was gravely ill?) and B) has not been locked up or even accused by anyone outside of a fulminating charlatan of any actual crimes.

There are voters who hate her because she’s dishonest (Is she, though, or is that just how you like to feel? Is she any more so than you or I?). There are voters who hate her because she stayed with her adulterous husband (these same voters have no problem admiring a man who cheated on all three of his wives, which seems, I dunno, rather hypocritical). Mostly, though, voters hate her because she’s a woman who stands up for herself, can out-think them, and whose primary goal in life is not to be sexually pleasing to the male animal.

She wouldn’t have been a perfect president. No one has been. She would’ve stopped this virus in its tracks, though. Literally, I feel safe saying, half as many Americans at most would have died from it. Think about that. People voted for a man whose presence in the Oval Office was likely responsible for the death of at least 100,000 Americans. And that’s a very conservative estimate.

You made the wrong choice, America. You need to be reminded of that.

When Darkness Turns To Light/
It Ends Tonight/It Ends Tonight

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

The Week We’ll Never Forget

It’s rare to enter a week at any point in history and know that so much of the future will emanate from it. Maybe you’d have to go back to the Monday after Kennedy was assassinated or the day after Pearl Harbor.

But here we are.

May you live in interesting times… yeah, sure.

Here’s our advice, and we take it directly from William Wallace. No matter what happens tomorrow or the day after that…Hold…Hold…HOLD!!!!

Rail To Whale*

*The judges will also accept “Breach of Contact” and “Fluke Occurrence” but not “Moby Dyke”

In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a metro train overshot its final stop but a whale sculpture was in the right place at the right time, probably saving a few lives.

The East Coast Sequels To La La Land Look Pretty Lame

Back in New Jersey, parts of the Garden State Parkway were shut down on Sunday due to a Trump caravan. Same thing happened on the Gov. (Maria) Cuomo Bridge, which we old-timers know as the Tappan Zee Bridge (spanning the Hudson, north of New York City about 10 miles).

As for the former, that’s Bruce Springsteen country and as the Boss once wrote, “It’s a town full of losers/I’m pullin’ outta here to wi-i-iiin!“

You may wonder, Where are the police? Why aren’t they pepper-spraying these folks the way they do black people who are simply marching to a polling station? That’s a very good question.

A better question is, What has possessed so many Americans to work themselves into a quasi-terroristic froth over a presidential election? Hmm. I have to go back to that Barry Hussein Obama dude. Seems his election stirred up a lot of murder hornet nests, particularly in rural U.S. of Damn A!

For a whole bunch of Americans, presidents are supposed to look like Mike Pence and talk like Donald Trump. The patriarchal white man in a suit equals stability and security. For them. Don Draper knew his audience. So does Don Trump.

Meet The New Trump, Same As The Old Trump

Speaking of bosses and 45, we’ve read in the past week as to how those stranded rally-goers were a result of bus lines not being paid by the Trump campaign. And we’ve also read how, even before election day, Trump’s plan is to flood battleground states with lawsuits and lawyers and tie the election up in the courts.

A) Not paying bills and B) Stalling via litigation. Does this sound like any Donald Trump you know? Oh, yeah. It sounds much like the same Donald Trump New Yorkers have been familiar with for roughly 40 years.

There are some folks, decent-minded folks, who seem to believe (and I don’t know why) that if Biden wins by a decisive number of electoral votes (and/or the popular vote) on Tuesday that Trump will just concede defeat. Their thinking is that only if the election is close will Trump contest it. I don’t know what rock these people have been living under, but they may want to listen to New Yorkers who’ve known Trump’s playbook for four decades.

It’s kinda like this: Some dude grabs your wife in public and starts playing tongue hockey with her. Are you really not going to do anything because you think, Well, it’s not as if he’s going to try and sleep with her? What part of his behavior leads you to believe that this aggressor has any sense of moral boundaries?

A Great, Big, Beautiful Wall (And Once Again, Mexico’s Not Gonna Pay For It)

Reports out of some outlets are that the White House is erecting a non-scaleable fence around its perimeter. Supposedly to protect itself from election protesters.

Even though all of the pre-election demonstrations that are festooned with para-military gear and threats belong to, you know, Donald Trump’s followers. Interesting.

Jock To The Future

We were ruminating last night about what the populace could do in the event that Joe Biden handily wins the vote and yet Donald Trump refuses to vacate. Ah, the irony: a slumlord who’s evicted so many in the past will fight his own lawful eviction.

Anyway, we began to think about sports and America’s highly unhealthy addiction to it. And we thought about the age of social media and how much easier it is for athletes to communicate and to mobilize because of it. And so here is our wish/suggestion for big-time athletes: if Biden wins and Trump attempts to remain in office, DO NOT PLAY.

That’s right: simply refuse to take the field. That is, of course, if these athletes are fans of justice and democracy and all those things we were taught in school that makes America great.

If NFL players simply refused to take the field next Sunday… if college football players followed suit… well, the outcry from the public would be enormous. And without the opiate of sports to distract the nation from its ills—particularly football—that would cause plenty of unrest.

I’d never expect every NFL player to follow through on this. But you don’t need every NFL player. You simply need enough high-profile players (let’s begin with quarterbacks) who would do this. It would be a game-changer. Do I expect this to happen? No. But it would be the greatest sports moment in terms of social justice since Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

I’m posting this on Sunday. There may or may not be a Monday edition. Don’t be greedy, Susie B.

America’s Vaccine

Remember when Donald Trump promised that “we’d have a vaccine by election day?” Well, we’re nowhere near having a vaccine for the coronavirus, but we’ve got one for Donald Trump’s presidency: Joe Biden.

Now, Railway Joe is no superstar, but he’s a decent man. And America sorely needs decency out of a leader. Honesty. Empathy. Strength.

If you want to live in a country where “Fuck your feelings” is a legitimate comeback to any legitimate complaint, then you don’t want Joe Biden. But if you want to live in a country where intelligence, science, truth, majority rule and plain human decency still carry weight, then you do want Joe Biden.

One candidate wants you to vote. The other candidate doesn’t want you to vote. This is supposed to be a democracy.

That’s your vaccine. One vote per patient.

Mulaney Strikes Again

The last time John Mulaney hosted SNL was on Leap Year. The next time? Halloween.

The last time John Mulaney hosted SNL was the same day the U.S. had its first official Covid-19 fatality (there were likely many more dating back a month or three earlier). By the time he hosted last night, the U.S. was at around 235,000 coronavirus deaths. The last time he hosted the U.S. was at the advent of a huge surge in coronavirus cases and deaths. This time? Look around.

Mulaney, who has now hosted SNL four times before his 40th birthday, loves to involve his family in his monologues. It’s his love letter to them. Last night he paid tribute to his 94 year-old nana, but of course he found a way to do it that was funny and avoided being saccharine. It’s all part of his genius.

You can go directly to 6:26 for this part of the monologue. You gotta love it. Mulaney knows his nana is 94 and who knows how much longer she’ll be with us–Sean Connery–so he gives her the sweetest gift an Irish Catholic wiseacre can: he skewers her on national TV for three minutes.

Our favorite riff: “You don’t get to vote when you’re 94 years old. You don’t get to order for the table when you’re about to leave the restaurant. I’m sorry, that joke is ageist. It is wrong. It is wrong to say that one age group is better than another. That would be like calling yourselves ‘The Greatest Generation.’ ‘Ohhh, ohhhh, we fought the Nazis.’ ‘Well, we’re trying to fight the new Nazis if you’d get out of the way.'”

Sean Gone

As someone tweeted Saturday, it turns out that Alex Trebek did outlive Sean Connery. The beloved Scottish actor, who was named “Sexiest Man Alive” at the age of 59, died over the weekend at the age of 90.

You may have first notice the ruggedly handsome 6’4″ Scot in The Longest Day, but he burst into international fame as the original “Bond, James Bond.” Connery landed the 007 gig without even having to audition.

Connery was perfection as Bond (the original and still the best) but he was also outstanding as Indiana Jones’ dad and in films such as The Rock and Finding Forrester. Someone wrote yesterday that he may have been the only man since Cary Grant that women wanted to be with and men wanted to be. That may be true.

Pawn Her Way To The Top

Ordinarily, when Katie McCollow makes a pop culture suggestion on Instagram, our first reaction is one of insecurity and defiance followed by, “What does Katie know, anyway?”

But we decided to give her latest critic’s choice, Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, a try. It’s about an orphaned daughter, Beth Harmon, of a brilliant but suicidal mom in the 1940s. Beth learns chess at her orphanage from a gruff janitor who does not try to sexually abuse her (he teaches her in the basement) and then picks up the game very, very quickly. All of this with the help of green pills (Mother’s Little Helpers).

So, as I told Katie, just another sad tale of an athlete using performance-enhancing drugs.

Pro Job

If the person who did this was not behind some of the best arena rock light shows of the 1970s, well, he or she should’ve been. Maybe even Metallica’s.

And speaking of outstanding design on Halloween…

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

LAWRENCE OF AWAY-BIA

Clemson quarterback and preseason Heisman Trophy favorite Trevor Lawrence is the latest high-profile athlete to test positive for the coronavirus. Probably because he was on the field celebrating with the Dodgers.

Lawrence, a junior, will miss this weekend’s Clemson game at Boston College. He’d probably be back in time for next Saturday’s Notre Dame game but will have been in isolation for 10 days, which means he would not be able to practice with his teammates until game day.

90,000-PLUS

For the first time, the U.S. recorded more than 90,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day yesterday. And while those diagnoses will lead to, statistically, fewer than 500 deaths, it’s still something, no? I mean, that’s how we’re thinking these days: what’s another mid-air collision between two 747s among friends?

Also, yesterday, more than 1,000 Americans died due to the coronavirus. But of course, you’re welcome to take cocaine-addled Don Jr.’s word for how the battle against Covid-19 is going.

Worth noting: The U.S.A. ranks like 145th among countries in terms of population density and yet leads the world in coronavirus deaths and cases. Keep America Great!

Deadliest Wreck

Off the coast of Senegal, a ship carrying 200 or so migrants to the Canary Islands capsizes and more than 140 people perish. It’s the deadliest shipwreck of 2020.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a vessel carrying 200 people left the Senegalese coastal town of Mbour last Saturday, bound for the Canary Islands.

A few hours into the journey, the boat caught fire and capsized near Saint-Louis, on Senegal’s north-west coast.

The Fellowship Of The Tweet


Just how bad does Twitter founder Jack Dorsey want a role in the next installment of a Hobbit film? We’re not experienced in the growth of facial hair, but we’d think he’s been working on that look for at least a year, no?

Travis Roy

Yesterday Travis Roy passed at the age of 45. If you do not recall him, his story is heartbreaking. Roy, a Maine native, was a freshman hockey player at Boston University in 1995. Just 11 seconds into his first shift for the Terriers, he was slammed into the boards and suffered a broken neck. Roy was paralyzed from the neck down.

Yesterday he died during a procedure he needed to offset some complications. Fate dealt Roy a cruel, cruel blow and from all accounts he did his best to become a crusader for others who were quadriplegics and paraplegics. Here’s hoping there is an afterlife and that he is free once more.