IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

On the bouquet list

Wide World Of Sports

We’ll stop short of calling this the best sports weekend of the year, but it certainly may be the most eclectic. Just a few of the happenings: Champions League Final, Real Madrid vs. Liverpool, from Kiev (Saturday, 2:30 p.m., Fox), NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Semifinals, Albany-Yale followed by Duke-Maryland (Saturday, Noon, ESPN), Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 9:05 a.m., ESPN),  Indianapolis 500 (Sunday, noon, ABC), French Open, opening round (Sunday, noon, NBC), Coca-Cola 600 (Sunday, 6 p.m., Fox), Major League Baseball (ESPN will televise back-to-back-to-back games Monday, beginning with Astros-Yankees at 1 p.m. with Justin Verlander on the hill), AND, beginning tonight and going straight through Monday if both series go to Game 7, Celtics-Cavs (Fri.), Rockets-Dubs (Sat.), Cavs-Celtics (Sun.) and Dubs-Rockets (Mon.).

Do try to step away from the television, though.

2. The “No Fun League” Becomes The “Now Fine League”

It was Neil Armstrong who invoked, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind (who was his writer?),” while it was Colin Kaepernnick who took one small knee for justice, but where will that lead? Yesterday it led to the NFL announcing that beginning this season, teams will be fined if players kneel during the anthem (our suggestion: Stand during the anthem with your back to the flag), but that players will be allowed to remain in the locker room during the anthem (out of sight, out of mind).


Of course, President Hypocrite praised the ruling, going so far as to say that those who kneel “should not be in the country.” Blind loyalty to the flag is the exact opposite of patriotism. Freedom is patriotism, and with freedom comes the ability to disagree with the  majority, no matter how unpopular your stance (even if your stance is to not stand) may be, as long as you do so non-violently. Which is what kneeling is.

Anyway, our two suggestions for NFL players who want to protest now not just police killing of black men but overt submission via Roger Goodell: 1) stand, but do not face the flag or 2) write a note to the league office saying that you are unable to stand during the anthem due to painful bone spurs in your feet.

3. Judge For Yourself

Yankee slugger Aaron Judge told ESPN that he would not partake in the Home Run Derby during All-Star festivities this July in Washington, D.C., adding, “Pressure [on me to comply] won’t do anything.”

Bully for him. Last year Judge hit 30 home runs and was hitting .329 in the 84 games prior to the All-Star break. He then won the Home Run Derby. In the first 60 games after that, he hit just 14 home runs and batted .195. It was as if his bat was corked with Kryptonite.

Currently, Judge is batting .284 with 13 home runs and has the fourth-best OBP in the American League. Pen him in as a starting outfielder in the All-Star Game along with Mookie Betts and Mike Trout.

Yesterday afternoon on one of ESPN’s incessantly insipid gab fests (the one with Marcellus Wiley), they bemoaned this decision, and I believe Wiley said something like, “He HAS to do it.” He really doesn’t. And he really shouldn’t.

4. Harvey Weinstein: Lost In New York

Movie mogul monster Harvey Weinstein finally turned himself into police in Manhattan at the 1s Precinct this morning, was arrested, and charged with rape. He was then released on bail at $1 million.

 

5. Where Are They Now?

Yesterday, to quote the site Mediaite, “The Department of Health and Human Services informed Congress yesterday that they had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant kids the agency was responsible for placing with American sponsors.”

Oops. We suspect at least three of them are sleeping in Kramer’s dresser drawers, but where are the rest? Most of these children are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, so they have not likely been kidnapped by NBA draft scouts. But they may be pawns in a vicious game of human trafficking.

Reserves

Quickly, because we have a 12-hour day of serving burgers and beers outside ahead of us (Do you people have ANY IDEA what I sacrifice for you each morning??? We know, we know, no one is forcing us): James Harden is 0-fer-20 from beyond the arc in Houston’s past two games and the Rockets have won both. Go figure…Amazon ($153.2 billion) passes Disney ($152.9 billion) in terms of total market cap. Let the paradigm shift begin.

Music 101

Can’t Find My Way Home

If you ever have the chance, see the 1985 film Fandango, starring very young versions of Kevin Costner, Judd Nelson and Suzy Amis. It’s set in 1970 Texas and this song by Blind Faith closes out the film. That’s Steve Winwood, the song’s writer, on vocals.

Remote Patrol

Game 6: Celtics at Cavs

8:30 p.m. ESPN

The first of two times this weekend people may be asking, “Is this LeBron’s final game in a Cavalier uniform?” Unless you live in Maryland, and you may ask, “Will Sweet Pea ever shave his beard?”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 11 Comments

by John Walters

Update: The Fighting Sweet Peas lost in Boston. We’ll return for Game 7 on Sunday. Til then, we’ll let Susie B. provide coverage in the comments. YAWN.

Starting Five

O’er The Land Of The Free

Two headlines, one right above the other, on ESPN.com this a.m.

“Trump: NFL ‘Doing The Right Thing’ With Anthem”

“Video Shows Tasing, Arrest of Bucks’ Brown”

First off, if Donald Trump can recite the words of the Star-Spangled Banner, much less tell us to what the song pertains other than “MURICA!,” we’d be shocked. Second, when a four-time draft dodger gets uppity about respecting the military, much less the flag, the only salute he’s worthy of is an old-fashioned Italian-American mo’fongu.

Third, the Sterling Brown incident is so commonplace these days that YouTube oughta launch a second channel devoted solely to “Black Men Being Pulled Over.” The issue isn’t the law in these situations; it’s control, it’s humiliation, it’s…dominance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaSL4Io4yWA

So now Roger Goodell, in all his wisdom, has bequeathed that if you don’t stand for the flag, referees will throw a flag. The players and the more enlightened owners (and even the refs) would demonstrate a great deal of understanding if players from both sides knelt during the anthem (offsetting penalties).

2. Death In Yosemite

 

We were incredulous after we took in this view at the cables on the base of Half Dome last August and learned that no one had died there since 2011 (understand, it’s a 9-mile hike one way just to reach this point). That statistic changed Monday, as a man fell to his death while ascending the cables in a thunderstorm.

Alaska: Thrilling, yes. Drilling, no.

We still love that national parks allow us to pursue adventure, sometimes to the point of fatality. It sort of makes a greater point about the planet we inhabit. Meanwhile, here’s a fantastic story in The New York Times about a couple that has visited all 417 U.S. national park sites (there are 60 national parks).

Which reminds us: We’ll take “America The Beautiful” over “The Star-Spangled Banner” every day of the week.

3. ALL CAPS

Ovechkin is not just a pretty face; wait, “is just not a pretty face.”

When the week began, Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals trailed 3 games to 2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Prince of Wales Conference final. But they won Game 6 at home and last night, in Tampa (Tampa Bay is not actually a city but rather a body of water), skated past the Lightning 4-0 to advance.

For Alex Ovechkin, the greatest player of his generation this side of the blue line of Sidney Crosby (arguably better: Sid The Kid, 411 goals and 705 assists ; Ove, 607 and 515, it’s his first Stanley Cup final trip in his 13-season career. It’s a great day for the NHL. Washington takes on Las Vegas and we don’t know which city more deserves the nom de place of “Sin City.” But we do know you cannot spell “sincerity” without “Sin City,” without even rearranging the letters.

4. It’s Over, Time (Inc.)

As a former Time-Lifer, someone whose first real post-college job entailed walking into the Time-Life Building on the corner of 50th and 6th each morning (the same building into which Don Draper strolled when Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce was formed), this oral history on the decline of Time, Inc., is a melancholy read. The building that once held Life, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, People, Entertainment Weekly and Money is now a ghost ship, as are those very magazines.

You’d walk down to the second-floor cafeteria (“The Caf”) and stroll down a long hall way on whose walls were some of the most famous photographs of the 20th century (it was Life magazine that purchased the Zapruder film and then did not show every frame due to its graphic nature).

Every periodical has its period, we guess. If you’re a magazine nerd

5. Flake News

Photo taken in past 24 hours. This is the smile of a Republican legislator who hasn’t sold his soul to the president.

Outgoing Arizona senator Jeff Flake (GOP, but not MAGA) delivered an address to the graduates of Harvard Law school at their commencement yesterday:

I do bring news from our nation’s capital. First, the good news: Your national leadership is … not good. At all. Our presidency has been debased. By a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division. And only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works.

This is, in the Eighties, what we’d refer to as a “Benetton ad.”

“Now, you might reasonably ask, where is the good news in that? Well, simply put: We may have hit bottom. Oh, and that’s also the bad news. In a rare convergence, the good news and bad news are the same: Our leadership is not good, but it probably can’t get much worse.”
The bad news would be if Flake is wrong. If we have not hit rock bottom. Time will tell.

Music 101

Dance With Me

Some 70s songs, for worse and not for better, you will never be able to evict from your memory. This 1975 tune from Orleans, a band that was formed in Woodstock, N.Y. in 1972, reached No. 6 on the charts. The following year they’d release an even bigger hit (Can you guess it?) with….

 

…..”Still The One.”

Remote Patrol

Game 5: Dubs at Rockets

9 p.m. TNT

The TNT pre- and post-game crew is still riding a crest (that they’ve been riding for nearly two decades). As for the game, we probably should not watch as the laissez-faire refereeing will upset our anally-minded self too much. Suffice it to say that the Dubs blew a 12-point 4th quarter lead on Tuesday when they could have put this series on ice. Now they’ll have to win again in Houston.

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 8 Comments

by John Walters 

Tweet du Jour


Hyper Lynx (p.s. Nature is AMAZING)

Starting Five

The Great Banks Robbery

Maybe it happened so long ago that you do not recall: 10 years ago this September began a massive Wall Street downward spiral that was precipitated by the naked greed of mortgage  companies and BIG BANKS with the complicit acquiescence of federal regulators. It was the worst financial event since the Great Depression and it caused a few of us to become adept at asking “May I take your order?” while the very men who lit the fire took a $20 billion helping hand from Uncle Sam.

Oh, the bankers were very contrite but no one lost their home in Amagansett or Bridgehampton. Heavens, no. In the wake of this awful event Congress passed Dodd Frank, a measure aimed at protecting investment banks from their avarice, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote Too Big To Fail, and American filmgoers got one fantastic, shoulda-won-Best-Picture film, The Big Short (based on the book by Michael Lewis).

And then a funny thing happened. The economy took off, the Dow Jones nearly QUADRUPLED in value (read that again), Sorkin created a popular Showtime series called Billions that basks in the glow of the post-subprime trough of wealth and only yesterday stories came out showing that U.S. banks had recorded record quarterly profits for the first quarter of 2018.

But also yesterday: news that Congress will soon pass the repeal of most of Dodd-Frank and that President MAGA will sign it. With Wall Street, too much is never enough. The Big Short II should be a good movie, though.

2. This Isn’t Basketball

No one is better at exploiting refs than James Harden, who for some reason here is hooking Stephen Curry as he drives past him

While much of Twitter was agog over Draymond Green being rejected on a dunk by the rim or by the fact that Kevin Durant passed up a final shot and the chance to be the hero, this scribe once more found himself turning away from Rockets-Dubs after every few plays because once again the quality of play just sucked.

The players don’t suck; they’re phenomenally gifted. The NBA has never seen more talented shooters or more sublime physical specimens than it now has. But they travel on nearly every play. They hold each other (off-ball defending) on nearly every play. Screeners behave like offensive tackles, moving defenders out of the way (I noticed screeners holding their forearms up at throat level last night). Dribblers palm the ball on nearly every play.

Resonant

Props to The Big Lead’s Bobby Burack for calling out the fact that the NBA has become a cult of personality and that the emperor is actually wearing no jersey right now, but it’s about more than the blowout scores in these playoffs or the incessantly childish MJ vs. LeBron debates. It’s about the fact that what we’re seeing out there right now only bares a passing resemblance to basketball.

Back in the Seventies, when we were growing up and before political correctness was discovered, we LOVED basketball. We’d play every single afternoon and if there was no one to play with, we’d play an entire full court game ourselves at a local church, pretending to be all 10 of the NBA stars on the court (and we knew all of them). We could go from mimicking Jamal Wilkes bizarre jumper to doing Kareem’s sky hook.


During that same time, when we saw people playing basketball in the manner you’re watching right now, holding on defense or taking extra steps, we called it “Jungle Ball.” Go ahead and tsk tsk us, but it was the Seventies. Still, that was the term and it was meant in a derogatory fashion as if to say, “If you cannot play the game the right way…” (and sure, you may interpret that as, “If you cannot play the game the white way…”, but nowhere does it say that just because you can dunk means you can also defend your opponent as if you’re a linebacker).

Anyway, last October we had the chance to interview the NBA’s new (2nd year) President of League Operations, Bryon Spruell (a fellow Domer and a former Notre Dame team captain in football) for a profile on his life. At the end of the interview we asked him point blank, “Will you PLEASE do something about calling traveling?” He smiled and said they were working on it.

They’re not working hard enough on it. And yes, the NBA is very popular with the male 18-34 demo, and maybe they don’t care that they’re losing people like me. But they are.

One last note: A few seasons ago the Warriors ushered in the most beautiful style of offensive hoops we’d ever seen. The best since Magic started passing the ball around like a wizard in the early Eighties. And our theory is that gradually the NBA figured out that the only way to slow the Warriors down was to hold them as they made their cuts or slid off screens. This grab-ass defense is the league’s response to Golden State’s unstoppable offense. And the refs are just too unwilling to whistle a foul on every play.

3. False Flag Operation

The NFL is actually mulling a rule change that would make it a 15-yard penalty, to be imposed on the kickoff, for a team whose members kneel during the national anthem. We assume Roger Goodell and his Wealthy Old White Zombies Association (WOWZA) believe this would be an offensive penalty.

In related news, Johnny Manziel signed a free agent contract with a CFL team while Colin Kaepernick is probably still working out at Chelsea Piers.

Okay, we’ve already editorialized way too much this morning, but here’s the thing about old, rich billionaires: it’s not enough to get their way, they have to thumb everyone who dares oppose them into submission (hello, Iraq War), even when that face-down-position-knee-to-the-neck hold they put on you works to their own detriment. If they had just let this go the “movement” would have quickly subsided.


But, by drawing this line in the sand, by telling players that we will not only control what you do, but how you behave in our luxurious stadiums (paid for by taxpayer money), they’ve simply given the fire more oxygen. They’re almost daring the players to revolt against them in order to show them who’s boss. Have they seen the Planet of the Apes films? Don’t they know how this ends?

Here’s hoping players from both teams take a knee, and that a prominent quarterback or two, even a coach, joins them. Taking a knee, in this environment, is the best way to say that you love this country, because it is an homage to the very civil disobedience against unscrupulous authoritarian rule on which this very country was founded.

White people have such a short memory. Sad!

4. When Metaphors Show Up On Your Lawn

Outside the White House, a sink hole.

5. When Shera Met Donald

The problem with President Trump is that, among other things, he keeps cutting himself with Occam’s Razor. Which of these two scenarios is more probable/plausible:

A) California billionaire Elliott Broidy impregnates a former Playboy playmate, Shera Bechard, and pays her off to keep silent and to get an abortion, but instead of simply doing that, he has the money wired to her through a New York-based fixer of zero repute and pays her $1.6 million in eight $200,000 installments because no one knows who she is and no one knows who he is, and no one cares, so he’d want to keep this quiet, or….

B) California billionaire Elliott Broidy has a deal contingent with a pair of Middle East countries that could net him more than $600 million if he can demonstrate to them that he has Donald Trump’s ear. And just one day before he meets with Donald Trump (December 2, 2017) to close that deal, the president’s fixer offers him a tit-for-tat (“Sure, we’ll work with you, but you gotta take the fall if news of this payout to Shera Bechard ever goes public”).

Considering Trump’s well-known penchant for adultery and porn stars or Playmates, we’re going to go with Option B. As laid out here.

Music 101 

Landslide

Released in 1975, this song was written by Stevie Nicks in a living room in Aspen, Colorado, as she looked out at the Rocky Mountains (Is that why it sounds so much like a John Denver tune?) and contemplated whether she should return to school or keep scuffing at this musical partnership she had formed with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. The duo soon after joined Fleetwood Mac, put this song on their first album together (Fleetwood Mac) and after nine albums that did little, that album produced three Top 20 singles—none of which were this song.

Remote Patrol

The Thin Man

8 p.m. TCM

Every TV or film whodunnit comedy featuring a his-and-her sleuthing team—Moonlighting, Hart To Hart, Castle, etc.—they all took their cue from this fantastic 1934 film starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. You’ll see a lot of Roger Sterling (to be clear, John Slattery borrowed from Powell) in Powell’s portrayal of Nick Charles (this is a man who in real life was married to Carole Lombard and later engaged to Jean Harlow, two of the three or four most beautiful actresses of the ’30s [we did not forget you, Marlene Dietrich]). This film is effortlessly witty and fun, plus a decent mystery, and if you look closely, you’ll see the tall, dashing actor who would later play The Joker on the Sixties Batman TV series.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour


The life of a college football coach. Former head coach at the University of Montana, now an offensive analyst at Oklahoma State.

Starting Five

Spring Awakening

Say what you will about LeBron James (and one of our readers will surely say plenty), but at age 33 he is arguably having the best postseason of his career and now has the Cavs in a best-of-3 versus the Celtics to advance to the NBA Finals. Last night he put up 44 in a Game 4 win.

Check the numbers.

LeBron, 2018: 33.7 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 9.0 assists, 1.4 steals, 1.1 blocks.

LeBron, 2009: 35.3 ppg, 9.1 rpg, 7.2 assists, 1.6 steals, 0.9 blocks.

He does have nearly twice as many turnovers per game this postseason, but he has been tremendous.


Meanwhile, how great is that?

2. Burning Through His Savings

The Eagle Creek fire

A judge in Oregon has ordered the 15 year-old minor who started last year’s Eagle Creek fire, which burned 48,000 acres of land in the Pacific Northwest, to pay a fine of $36,000,000. No joke.

The teen inadvertently started the blaze when he threw a firecracker in the woods, which is all kinds of stupid. But maybe they should have imposed a lighter fine, like cutting off the arm with which he tossed the incendiary stick. Either way, he’s willing to pick up any extra shifts at Panera all summer.

MH staffers checked the archives for the harshest punishment a teen has ever endured and the best we could come up with is when Richie Cunningham was “grounded for life” by Mr. C for taking dad’s car.

3. Deaths In America, 2018

We just thought we’d update you on dangers, real and imagined. All of these fatality statistics are for the current year, as up to date as we can make them:

By SHARK: ……………………………………………….0

By GRIZZLY BEAR…………………………………….0

By RATTLESNAKE…………………………………….1

By GUNS……………………………………………………5,531

By OPIOIDs………………………………………………. > 16,000

Of course we would not be responsible journalists if we failed to disclose the details of that rattlesnake fatality that occurred on Sunday, April 29. Barry Lester and his wife were driving some Oklahoma back roads to on their way to Keystone Lake to celebrate his 57th birthday. Lester spotted a timber rattler in the road and stopped to remove it.

Bad idea. When he picked up the snake, it bit him on his left hand. Then Lester moved the snake to his other hand, and it bit him on his right hand. He died on the way to the hospital.

And so, with one fatal rattlesnake bite every four months in the U.S.A., it’s easy to understand why states such as Texas and Oklahoma are well-known for their rattlesnake roundups. But with 5,500 gun fatalities in the same amount of time, GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF MY GUN YOU ELITIST SNOWFLAKE!

4. Brandi, Show Us Your Bust

No, not that bust. The one they molded of you for your induction into the Bay Area Sports Hall Of Fame (BASHOF). Wow.

 

5. Don’t Ask, Don’t 

They won’t allow gays in the military but they will allow this every spring. Yesterday at the Naval Academy they conducted the Herndon Climb, the scaling of a 21-foot obelisk on post that officially signals the end of plebe year, as they have every year since 1959. Plebe Shawn Chapman got to be man on tap and it only took 2 hours and 9 minutes an 23 seconds to do so.

Mike Pence recommends conversion therapy.

(Related: Does the Naval Academy need a few more African-American plebes? We bet they could cut this record in half.)

Reserves

CHK, Mate

Our semi-frequent update on how Chesapeake Energy (CHK) is the most worthwhile yo-yo stock worth tracking (worth fracking?).

Price of CHK on May 3: $2.87

Price of CHK this morning: $4.75

That’s a 66% jump in less than three weeks. We regret to say we only took small advantage of this precipitous climb. But there will be a next time. There always is with CHK.

Music 101

Walking With A Ghost

Calgary-born twins Tegan and Sara Quin are better known simply as Tegan and Sara. This 2004 album was later covered by White Stripes.

Remote Patrol

Rockets at Warriors, Game 4

9 p.m. TNT

Steph returned to form with a 35-point Game 3

13. 22. 41. It’s like watching one tennis match take place on two different courts. Or a horse race between two races on concentric tracks. The gaps in the final scores keep widening like a Kilauea fissure.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Art, Teacher

Houston police chief Art Acevado had some blunt words about “thoughts and prayer” in the wake of the murders of 10 people in an art class at Santa Fe (Texas) High School on Friday.

“I know some have strong feelings about gun rights but I want you to know I’ve hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue,” Acevedo wrote in a Facebook post. “Please do not post anything about guns aren’t the problem and there’s little we can do.”

Acevado singled out “the elected officials that ran to the cameras today, acted in a solemn manner, called for prayers, and will once again do absolutely nothing.”

I will continue to speak up and will stand up for what my heart and my God commands me to do, and I assure you he hasn’t instructed me to believe that gun rights are bestowed by him.”

By the way, has anyone noticed that when a white male teen massacres his classmates, he is “mentally ill” but that when a Muslim man kills a white man, he is “an evil doer.” I guess white kids cannot be evil? Is that it?

2. Bravery

  This is Italian actress Asia Argento and this could not have been easy to do.

3. My Kinda Lava

In Hawaii, on the Big Island, another fissure opens and sends plumes of lava skyward and then into the Pacific Ocean. Nature continues to amaze. Of course your news networks still cover this solely as a “danger to humans” story, as if, Boy, wouldn’t it be great if volcanoes did no erupt? as opposed to basking in the wonder of it all, or bothering to explain why volcanoes erupt (Because God wants them to, of course, or To punish evil-doers).

And so we return to the hubris of man based on some stories repeated around campfires a few millennia back that took on the power of dogma and have forever doomed man to thinking that, even if the earth does revolve around the sun (an admission man only came around to making a few hundred years ago), everything else still revolves around man.

It doesn’t. Get over yourselves.

4. Finally, Some Good Animal News

In Chad’s Zakouma National Park, the elephant population is making a comeback. The population had been reduced from 4,000 elephants more than a decade ago to some 400 as poachers massacred elephants for ivory and even killed seven rangers who were there to protect the magnificent beasts. Now Chad’s president, Idriss Deby, has rededicated efforts to protect them and the population is back up over 1,000.

Also, the black rhino, which had been rendered extinct in Chad, has been reintroduced there. These are where Nobel Peace Prizes should be awarded, not to tiny-fingered, orange-faced tyrants.

By the way, you may find this extremely difficult to believe, but do you want to know what the major threat to the continued existence of these incredible creatures is, besides man himself? If you answered GUNS, you are correct.

5. Viva Las Vegas

The Golden Knights of Las Vegas, who did not exist one year ago, have advanced to the Stanley Cup finals where they just might meet the Tampa Bay Lightning. Las Vegas is a city where you are far more likely to spot ICE than ice, but this is where we are at.

If you’re scoring at home, the Toronto Maple Leafs last advanced to the Stanley Cup finals in 1967.

Reserves

And Not

Not that you care, but we are watching the entire series of The West Wing for the first time (we’d seen scrambled episodes here and there before). This scene that we watched over the weekend is just loaded with outstanding writing and while Richard Schiff’s Toby is written as your least favorite character among the main ones (at least he’s mine), there’s no mistaking what a true pro he is.

After this moment, and I cannot find it on YouTube, Martin Sheen’s Jed Bartlet goes off on how important it is that they stress education, that being an “elite” does not make you a feckless wank but how education is the door through which all the disenfranchised and poor must walk in order to get ahead, or get their family ahead. I believe some members of the GOP heard this rant and immediately designed a defense plan against such a happening, and here we have Orange Alert as our president.

Music 101

When Will I Be Loved

The year 1960 had a number of hits whose titles you may know better as a release from another artist (for instance, did you know that in that year Neil Sedaka had a big hit with a song titled “Stairway To Heaven”?). The Everly Brothers had a No. 8 hit with this tune in 1960 but 15 years later Linda Ronstadt rocked it a little harder and took it to No. 2 (she also had a hit a few years later with a cover of The Hollies “Can’t Let Go” ). What a powerful voice she had, no?

Remote Patrol

Casablanca 

10:15 p.m. TCM

Cav-ablanca

8:30 p.m. ESPN

If you’re, say, under the age of 40 (or under the age of dead) and you still have never seen Casablanca, do yourself (and the rest of us) a favor. Next thing you know, you may just realize that the world did not begin in 1980. Who knows? You may start running “Greatest 2-Sport Athlete” lists on your blog without putting in an “-after 1960” qualifier because, you know, having to go back and look stuff up is hard.

Hepburn, left; Babe looking on, right

By the way, there was film on TCM Saturday night called Pat and Mike that starred Kathryn Hepburn as a woman’s golfer (she did her own stunts; Kate was a magnificent athlete, too) and there’s an entire 10 minutes devoted to a match play championship between her character and the real-life, playing herself, Babe Zaharias.