by John Walters

Starting Five

Thai Foon!

They’re out! All 12 boys and their coach, though we have to think there were moments when he was like, “You guys go. I’ll just stay here” cuz if these were American parents with whom he was dealing… Meanwhile, if these had been American kids, we’d all be discussing how traumatized they were to have to survive more than two weeks without wifi.

Gunan, moments before entering the cave on his fatal dive

And this all could have been avoided if they’d just had one girl on the team (“I think we should stop and ask for directions”).

Tragically, there was one death, retired Thai SEAL diver Saman Gunan, who ran out of oxygen while making a dive to bring oxygen to the youths.

2. Serena

A funny thing happened while we were all waiting for Tiger Woods to become the best golfer who ever lived…another southern California native of color from the same generation with a relentless dad became the greatest female tennis player who ever lived.

Serena Williams, just 10 months after giving birth to her first child, is on to the semifinals at Wimbledon after winning earlier today. She is human, finally dropping a set. The good folks at the All-England seeded her 25th in the tourney because she’d missed so much time this past year due to becoming a mom. She’s two matches away from winning her 24th Grand Slam singles title, the most of any human.

Watch this. This is how a champion talks.

3. They No Gotta Da Vida

Ponytailed soccer star Domagoj Vida, the hero of Croatia’s quarterfinal victory over Russia on Saturday (one goal in extra time and one in PK phase), may not be around for their semi tomorrow versus England. Why not? Well, he’s IN Russia and he helped ELIMINATE Russia and after the game apparently took part in a video, posted to social media, that was supportive of Ukraine, the country that Russia, you know, invaded a few years ago.

I mean, that’s why there are international sanctions against Russia…for now. It’s still playing out, Vida’s fate. But if we were him, we’d hire a food taster for the remainder of the tourney.

Meanwhile, Cristiano Ronaldo is headed to Turin to play for Juventus in Serie A. He’d done about all you could do in nine seasons with Real Madrid. Can’t blame the man for wanting to try different cuisine and unlike LeBron, he’s going from a championship team to another championship team.

4. London Galling

President Trump will head to the U.K. after going first to Brussels to insult more allies, but he will bypass London. Not a city of great importance, after all. Londoners cannot do without their Trump, however, so a few Londoners asked if they could fly this giant balloon of Baby Trump in a diaper during the president’s visit to the other parts of the nation and mayor Sadiq Khan said yes.

The balloon is filled with helium, while the president of course is filled with hot air and bile.

This didn’t sit well with Piers Morgan. But who cares?

5. Rule Number One (Again)

What is Rule No. 1? Gravity always wins. 

It happened again, one week ago in Arizona, as 24 year-old Andrey Privin of suburban Chicago (Buffalo Grove) perished in a 500-foot fall at the Grand Canyon. Privin had apparently climbed over a guard rail at Mather Point at the South Rim when he lost his footing and plunged 500 feet to his death. The Loyola University grad was scheduled to start his career as a nurse in Highland Park, another Chicago suburb, yesterday.

Music 101

Slow Song

The MH staff  scooted up to Providence, R.I., where we saw one of our musical heroes, Joe Jackson, perform last night. About a month ago an ordinarily reliable MH source told us that Joe Jackson was suffering from “Stage 4 pancreatic cancer,” and we were so saddened. Then we learned that it was Michael Jackson’s pop, Joe, who has since expired. Still, it was a lesson not to take greatness for granted, so we scooted up to Providence, bought a G.A. ticket for $45, and heard him play all the classics: “It’s Different For Girls, “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” “Real Men” “Be My Number Two,” “Sunday Papers,” “You Cant’ Get What You Want,” and “Steppin’ Out (slow version, which is better).” He closed with this one. If you get the chance and are in Canada or the northern U.S. this next month, Joe”s the man (he’s the man, he’s the man, he’s the man…).

Remote Patrol

World Cup

Belgium vs. France

2 p.m. FOX

Kylian Mbappe, 19, is the future of France, if not soccer itself…

Now THIS is the real World Cup final (we’ll keep making these claims right up to the moment that England hoists the trophy).

Key Largo

8 p.m. TCM

A classic, with Bogey, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson. A hostage drama during a hurricane in the Florida Keys. If you consider yourself a buff and have not seen this, your buff-ing needs work.

by John Walters

Taking the family on vacation to that giant plastic garbage island in the Pacific that is the size of France. Can’t wait. We should return tomorrow. In the meantime, we did catch a wild film on TCM late last night (The Admirable Crichton), which we wanted to share with you because wethinks in it were the roots of both My Fair Lady and Gilligan’s Island.

Also, completely unrelated, wethinks Luka Modric of Croatia must in some way be related to Thom Yorke of Radiohead.

The Admirable Crichton (title character in tux)

Okay, see youse guys tomorrow.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Good Riddance

The Director of the EPA (Environmental Penetration Agency), Scott Pruitt, resigns. The Swamp is a much more arid place this morning. Here is a short list of his misdeeds and malevolence toward the environment he was sworn to protect in his 17 or so months in office.

The encouraging news, for D.C. diners, is that apparently you can step up to a government official these days, tell them to resign, and they’ll actually do it!

2. Vegas Is Allen Town

During last night’s NBA Summer League action in Las Vegas, Trae Young (5th overall pick, Dallas to Atlanta) scuffled with Grayson Allen (21st overall pick, Utah). Young has been a cautionary draft tale all spring: he’s short and slight and while he has fantastic court vision, his 3-point shooting % was subpar). Thus far he’s 3 for 24, or about 12.5%, from beyond the arc. Not great, Bob!

Both players were T’ed up for this. You just know Grayson will lead the Summer League in technical fouls. Last night the 6’5″ Allen has 11 points, 8 rebounds and 7 assists  in just 16 minutes. Of course, you know this is the Summer League because Allen jacked up 16 shots in 16 minutes.

Some of us don’t have NBA TV. The Summer League is more entertaining than the NBA regular season because this is like a College All-Star league except half of these guys are legitimately fighting for jobs. The rest are fighting for playing time once the season begins. Maximum fun.

3. Tirade Wars

Donald Trump, on a campaign stop (?) in Montana last night…

–Imagines throwing a DNA testing kit at Senator Elizabeth Warren to force her to prove her Native American ancestry: “We are going to do it gently because we’re the #MeToo generation, so we have to be very careful.”

This from a dude whom 20 women have accused of sexual assault, not including the two women who say they slept with him (after his marriage to Melania), one of whom likely aborted a child from their sexual congress.

–Slammed Senator John McCain and Bush 41, both of whom are in extremely poor health. “A thousand points of light, I never got that. ‘America First’, now that I get.”

–“Putin’s fine.”

4. Ryker, Alexey and Megan Fall Over Shannon Falls

Just the lede we pulled from the news story says it all: “Three members of a YouTube travel blogging collective have died after falling over a waterfall in Canada.”

Listen, we of all people here at MH get it. Why work when you can just travel and post videos of your lifelong vacation and then hopefully somehow someone will sponsor your exploits???? (personally, we’re just waiting for an extremely generous gift from the Susie B. Foundation).

The site: Shannon Falls, British Columbia.

The dead: Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper

5. Chomp, Chomp; Womp, Womp

Three poachers infiltrated the Sibuya Game Reserve in South Africa to hunt rhinos and instead got the (final) surprise of their lives when they were tracked and eaten by lions at the reserve. And this is the strongest evidence that karma may just exist.

I was overjoyed by the news and if you were, too, please call the office of Wayne Palmer, a dentist in the Twin Cities, and tell him so. Call him as often as you like at 952-884-5361. He’s on vacation this week, probably off murdering Golden Retriever puppies or something, but hopefully he’ll be back on Monday. Call him five to ten times a day. Just to share this news with him. Tell him, “I ain’ lyin’, this is true!”

Reserves

We’d like to apologize to all of our readers for running that owl piece yesterday and never using the phrase, “a real hoo-dunnit.” We’ll be better. We have to be.

Music 101

Presence Of The Lord

A dozen or so years before there was the supergroup Asia, made of musicians who were already accomplished and famous, there was Blind Faith. The band, composed of Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker, released only one album, eponymously titled, in 1969.

The group, made up of former Traffic and Cream members, went on a brief tour but, like Asia, barely had enough material to fill an hour much less a set. Clapton became disillusioned and left the band after the tour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT-SFgkVlno

We’re gonna now cheat here and also include our favorite Blind Faith tune, which we’ve run in this space before. But here’s a live version performed relatively recently.

Remote Patrol

Belgium vs. Brazil

2 p.m. FS1

The soccer staff at MH believes, quite ardently, that these are the two best sides remaining at the World Cup. So why are they meeting in the quarterfinals??? Tune in for the soccer, stick around for the melodramatic Neymar death scene.

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

A message from your President @realDonaldTrump on Independence Day pic.twitter.com/O2PwZqO0cs

— Sacha Baron Cohen (@SachaBaronCohen) July 4, 2018

Starting Five

S’tat You On The Statue?

Beginning around 3 p.m. yesterday, the Fourth of July, Therese Okoumo began scaling the outside of the Statue of Liberty on one of its busiest days of the year. Okoumo, who did so as a protest of this administration’s immigration policies, made it past the base and to the bottom of Lady Liberty’s robe. That’s when, after a 3-hour standoff, police finally nabbed her.

The NYPD neither shot nor Tase’d Okoumo, who is black, so as a nation, look at us! Making progress.

2. Is Jake Fromm Insured By State Farm?

Georgia’s starting quarterback, Jake Fromm, who led the Dawgs to within a couple plays of the national championship last January as a true freshman, breaks his left (non-throwing) hand in a 4th of July wake boarding accident. Oops. You gotta be woke when you wake.

That was not smart, thinks Kirby. A reminder that Fromm Wally Pipped a five-star Dawg starter last September, Jacob Eason, who has since transferred to Washington (he’s a Seattle native). And Georgia has a true freshman in camp this summer, Justin Fields, a Peachtree State native like Fromm, who was considered the NUMBER ONE quarterback recruit in the nation last winter (and No. 2 overall player). Could get interesting in Athens this August.

3. Is Bitcoin Trust Trustworthy?

Jordan Bellfort

In January we made Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) our MH Stock Pick of the Year. Then by late June it was down to one-third of its New Year’s Day value and we raised the white flag, conceded defeat. Then of course of Monday the stock rose 20% in one day.

So the question, independent of whether or not you believe Bitcoin is ultimately a fraud, is, Can you still make money on Bitcoin and How? By buying long or short-selling? On July 2nd, the same day GBTC was spiking 20%, CNBC ran a story in which Jordan Bellfort, the shamed Wolf of Wall Street, advised investors to avoid Bitcoin at all costs because he of all people knows a scam when he sees one. “Get out of Bitcoin if you don’t want to lose all of your money,” said Bellfort, echoing the admonitions of Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger.

Bellfort talked about the principle that made him rich, the “Greater Fools” theory. That theory says that it’s fine to buy a worthless stock as long as you can find a greater fool who will pay more for it than you did. Our rejoinder to that is that Bitcoin has come down so far from its December highs that it will either ultimately vanish altogether or rebound. So where do you place your bet on either of those two outcomes.

The hard-core Bitcoin proponents, and these are men who wear suits and have big Wall Street jobs (and of course, also, the Winklevi) promise that Bitcoin will be up 300% by the end of the year. Surely, they’re wrong. But what if they’re right? Name another equity that’s going to give you a 300% return in the next 6 months.

4. Nordic Skier Wins Mount Marathon

Jessica Yeaton, an Australian Nordic skier who lives in Anchorage, was the first female up-and-down in the annual Mount Marathon 5-K in Seward, Alaska, yesterday. It was her first time scaling the mountain. David Norris was the men’s champion, his second win in the past three years. Neither broke the course record.

Denali Foldager-Strabel, whom we mentioned yesterday here, finished in 2nd place, :30 behind Yeaton. We are assuming Allie Ostrander, defending women’s champ, did not enter.

5.  Look “Hoo”‘s Doing Time at Riker’s*

*The judges have dismissed “Jailbird” as “too easy.”

A snowy owl showed up at the Riker’s Island jail in New York City on Sunday (it’s that jail you see as your plane is landing/taking off at LaGuardia, and yes, we are sorry you had to fly into/out of LaGuardia). The best part is that the owl, whom staffers have named Lorax, was captured and is now, I guess you can say, incarcerated until officials release it to a rehab center—a halfway house!— in New Jersey before ultimately releasing it back into the general population.

The bird is understandably upset, as it wishes to assert its white privilege and not be confined with other known talons.

Music 101

I’ve Got The Music In Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQRW7J_D0U

A year later Kiki Dee would become better-known to Americans as half of a duet with the world-famous Elton John for “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart,” but here she is fronting the Kiki Dee Band for a tune that would hit No. 12 on the Billboard chart in October of 1974. Dee, real name Pauline Matthews, was born and raised in Yorkshire, England.

Remote Patrol

The Blob

8 p.m. TCM

As a kid in the Tri-State area, Channel 9 (WOR) used to air a Saturday night movie show called “Creature Feature.” They’d air old Hollywood horror films, which is where I first saw this classic, which scared me as a five year-old but will probably seem hilarious now. Besides, back then I was too young to appreciate the mid-Fifties symbolism of The Blob being the “Red Scare.” I guess you could remake it now to be viewed as the “Red-State Scare.”

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

I LOVE how this brag tweet about his ‘ability to write‘ was deleted because of a typo. This is peak Donald Trump, ladies and gentlemen. pic.twitter.com/S4UA1AujVa

— Mike P Williams 🌹 (@Mike_P_Williams) July 3, 2018

He corrected it (or his staff did) and still failed to hyphenate “best-selling.” Dumbass.

Starting Five

Land of The Gluten-Free, Home of The Brave

The 2nd Civil War will be anything but boring. The Battle of Williamsburg. Sherman’s March on Walmart. The Siege at Starbucks (I know, which one?)

I have a my “liberal war rucksack” filled with a 6 pack of microbrews, some Orwell in paperback, reusable metal straws, and yoga mat. this thing is on.

— Grant Burningham (@granteb) July 3, 2018

The libtards subsisting on hard tack made from compressed gay wedding cakes, while MAGA finds sustenance in white rage and paranoia. And of course, the texts and tweets home from the front.

Can we please make this happen, Alex Jones?

2. Ayers Rock Is A Hard Place

A Japanese tourist, aged 76, died climbing up Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, in central Australia. The tourist suffered a heart attack during his ascent. He is the 37th person to die on this great monolith since it was opened to tourists in the 1960s.

Here’s the weird thing: last year a 12-person board voted UNANIMOUSLY to ban people from climbing the rocks, since this is a sacred spot to the Anangu people, who have been given back title to the land. But the prohibition does not go into effect until October 26, 2019, in order to give people who have already booked trips there the opportunity to climb it. So do it now if you ever want to, but know that it may be perilous.

3. Max-imus

His name is Max Muncy, he was inserted into the Los Angeles Dodger lineup as an infield  replacement after Corey Seager went down with injury, and last night he hit his 19th and 20th home runs of the season in just his 63rd game in Dodger blue. In two previous years with the Oakland A’s, in which the native Texan appeared in 45 and 51 games, respectively, he walloped 3 and 2 home runs.

Last season Muncy, 27, spent the entire year down in the minors. Now he just became the fastest Dodger to 20 homers, breaking the record set by Cody Bellinger…last season. What’s his secret? Lower crouch in batting stance, which equals…higher launch angle.

Looks as if someone out-Moneyball‘ed Billy Beane, no?

4. World’s Oldest Murderer*

*The judges will also accept “Blessing In Disguise”

A 92 year-old Fountain Hills, Arizona, woman alledgedly fatally shot her 72 year-old son who wanted to put her in a nursing home (Don’t worry, Phyllis; I’m taking heed). Anna Mae Blessing allegedly hid two pistols in her robe and allegedly told her son, “You took my life, so I’m taking yours.

Very Dirty Harriet of you, Anna Mae.

She then allegedly tried to murder his 57 year-old girlfriend (niiiiiice) but she was able to wrestle both pistols away. Of course, if you’re Anna Mae, can’t you just claim the girlfriend murdered him?

Anyway, Blessing could get 10 years in prison, but her attorneys are hoping to get her sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

5. Alaska’s Super Bowl

Mount Marathon: You COULD die doing this 5K run

Every 4th of July we go nutso about Alaska’s Mount Marathon race (maybe they’ll finally  take the $100 application fee we submit each year and put our name on the roster of entrants….maybe???), which takes place today. We’ll have the winners tomorrow, but take note that the defending women’s champ is Alaska native and Boise State junior Allie Ostrander, who is the reigning NCAA steeplechase champ. Seems like a perfect fit. This is just a steep chase, after all.

Our sentimental fave is Denali Foldager-Strabel, because each of her parents won this race previously and there’s hardly a more Alaskan name than Denali and also because she’s a recovering meth addict whose job is to register firearms at a Cabela’s and this is all true.

Denali

Music 101

That’s The Way

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

In the Seventies Led Zeppelin got radio play for rockers such as “Ramble On” and “Whole Lotta Love” and of course, “Stairway To Heaven,” which is half-rocker and half-mystical acoustic court ballad. This tune, which never got air play, is full Tolkien-esque mystical jingle-jangle acoustic ballad. One of the lovelier tunes in Robert Plant’s arsenal (we’d love to see Led Zep on Carpool Karaoke).

Remote Patrol

The West Wing

Netflix

You’ve got the day off (we don’t) and hopefully you’ve got Netflix. If you’re not out BBQ-ing or at the lake/beach, and you get home from the 2nd Civil War early enough, watch an episode or two and fall back in love with your government. “Shutdown” and “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet” are two of our favorite episodes.