There was no IAH! yesterday as the staff of MH took its annual field trip, affectionately titled this year as the “Yosemite Scram!” Under the guidance of the intrepid and outstanding Geoff Thurner (and the unbelievable understanding of his wife, Ali, and their newborn) we did the 18-mile round trip hike (almost) up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.
Moment of wussification. Actually, it was a few steps prior to this. We’re not proud, but we’re not really that ashamed, either.
Geoff’s a shrewd and seasoned outdoorsman. Hence, we embarked out of the parking lot at 12:45 a.m, up past Vernal Falls, then past Nevada Falls, making it above the tree line just before dawn. Geoff (and Ali, who stayed back at the homestead) has done this hike four or five times and always summits. The MH staff chickened out right before the cables. We’ll admit it: we wussed out. But we’re alive today, and that’s the big goal.
On average, about two people per year die at Yosemite. And those seem like good odds, until this is your view.
Nevada Falls. Just one of Yosemite’s many wonders.
Again, deepest thanks to Geoff and Ali. They are the best. Also, if you’ve never visited Yosemite, you owe it to yourself to do so. At one point during our hike, around 4 a.m. a deer happened upon us. Stood no farther than 10 feet and just stared at us. Just glad it wasn’t a bear.
*The judges will not accept “It’s Miller Time” but will consider “Spar For the Course”
America’s most beloved Nazi, Stephen Miller, went after CNN’s Jim Acosta during a White House briefing. On the bright side, at least White House briefings are being televised and live again.
The topic was immigration (or, “illegal immigration,” snowflake) and Acosta went a little too Aaron Sorkin in quoting a poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty (“Roses are red/Violets are Blue/Send me your Irish/But please not a Jew”; that’s what it says; it’s true) and referencing Mein Kampf, but then Miller showed a complete lack of self-awareness, being a Santa Monica native and a Duke grad and yet calling Acosta “too cosmopolitan.” Or maybe he was ordering two cosmopolitans.
What’s it like to be berated on live cable TV?
Meanwhile, MH’s editorial board wonders if The Mooch (“MOOOOOCH!”) lasted long enough in the job to even merit a caricature on Saturday Night Live come October.
2. Summer of Mannion and Minions (But, Fortunately, Not Mansons)
While you were out watching Despicable Me 3, Los Angeles Ram 3nd-year quarterback Sean Mannion (out of Oregon State) was quietly improving and now unseat 2016 No. 1 overall pick Jared Goff as the Male Sheep’s starting quarterback. Former Ram and HOF’er Eric Dickerson believes he should start.
Mannion is 6’6″ and started four years in Corvallis. In 2013, his junior year and best season, he tossed for 37 TDs and only 15 picks. He was chosen 89th overall in 2015. Goff was selected No. 1 overall and could soon be a backup. Unless he’s Cam Newton or such, NEVER pick a QB No. 1 overall in the draft. And Jared Goff is not Cam Newton.
Head to head, I believe, Mannion went 1-1 versus fellow Pac-12 alum Goff (Cal) in college.
3. What Did Ingersoll Lockwood Know And How Did He Know It?
The web is freaking out because one man’s coincidence is another man’s prophecy. And vice versa. The internet (which I hear is on the web these days) has unearthed a pair of children’s books by 19th-century lawyer/author Ingersoll Lockwood that follow the adventures of a character named…Baron Trump (our future tsar spells it with two “r’s”). And our young protagonist is often aided by a man named Don.
Lockwood, a lawyer born in Ossining, New York (Don and Betty Draper’s digs) in 1841 wrote a third book in 1900 and its title, and we are not kidding, was The Last President.
And this is not fake news. Just real fiction.
Unless tomorrow we learn that this was a cleverly crafted hoax….
4. Ara
I spoke to Ara Parseghian once or twice (as has every college football writer who spent any time around Notre Dame in the past half-century) but I don’t have a wonderful personal anecdote to share about the legendary coach, who led Notre Dame to a pair of national championships (1966 and 1973) and came within a pair of losses to USC to winning two more.
Ara died yesterday at the age of 94, a wonderful man who went 95-17-4 in South Bend and who ushered the Irish into the modern age. When he took over in 1964, I don’t believe the team had a black player yet and I’m quite sure the school had not yet admitted its first female. Here’s David Haugh’s remembrance in the Chicago Tribune.
He said it was ok with him as long as his wife didn’t mind. Thankful she said yes! My favorite memory of Ara 😘❤️ pic.twitter.com/YBLciZmocZ
Ara accepts a smooch from Michiana-based Big Ten/Notre Dame reporter Allison Hayes.
p.s. If you’re going to wade in on the 10-10 tie in East Lansing, best not to do so unless you know the whole story.
5. Lawyer Stand-Up Comedy
If you’re a lawyer or if you’ve ever had to deal with a lawyer, here’s my good and old friend (whom we all affectionately refer to as “Sorp” or “Lord Sorp” for reasons I don’t really know) doing stand-up about law school. Is he ready for Catch A Rising Tort? You tell me.
p.s. That video above was taped years ago (I suspect in Myanmar or Albania or another country in which one of our mutual friends was stationed). This below is our friend current day. He’s upped his wardrobe game.
Music 101
You Get What You Give
Perhaps every decade brings them, but the mid- to late Nineties produced a slew of one-hit wonder tunes: “Flagpole Sitta” (Harvey Danger), “Steal My Sunshine” (Len), “My Own Worst Enemy” (Lit) and this 19998 tune by New Radicals. Frontman Gregg Alexander broke up the band before a second album, saying he was tired of fronting a one-hit wonder and had lost enthusiasm for three hours of sleep per night in hotels in exchange for schmoozing with record people. He later won a Grammy for writing a song and was nominated for an Oscar for another tune he wrote in 2015.
A Word, Please
sycophant (noun)
Not the planet’s largest land mammal, or even a variation thereof, but rather “a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage.” Think of the people you see giving White House briefings.
22 runs, a five-run deficit overcome, another two-run deficit overcome in the ninth by the visiting Cleveland Indians, and a game-winning three-run bomb in the bottom of the ninth with two outs….with three, kind of, if you count the two-out strikeout by Boston’s Mitch Moreland that did not end the game becaue of a wild pitch on the third strike. The Sawx won 12-10 and took over first place in the A.L. East while doing so.
Oh, and Chris Sale started for the Sox and the Cy Young favorite quickly got them in a 5-0 hole after two innings and allowed seven earned runs.
Finally, Cleveland’s Austin Jackson made quite possibly the greatest home run-robbing catch in the history of Fenway Park. I don’t know why the Red Sox save their most surreal games for the Yankees and Indians, but they always seem to do so.
2. There and Back
On Sunday Emily von Jentzen, a 34 year-old attorney from Kalispell, Montana, and a longtime endurance swim enthusiast, became the first person to ever swim the entire 30-mile length of Montana’s Flathead Lake–and back! Flathead is the largest freshwater lake in the continental USA west of the Mississippi.
That’s real cool, Emily, but do you swim to work like that dude from Munich? No, you don’t, do you?
3. It’s The Worlds’ Tallest Single Family Home–And It Could Be Yours
It’s 124 feet tall, located in pristine Prescott, Arizona, and it’s a bargain considering it’s going up for auction starting at $750,000. The Falcon Nest has four bedrooms, three baths, 360 degrees of views and an elevator to take you from the garage to the sixth floor. Nice.
How is it that a futuristic Seventies film was never set here, and is it too late to change that?
4. “It’s Not Whether You Get Knocked Down, It’s Whether Anyone Is Willing To Coach This Team”
How influential was Vince Lombardi? The NFL named its Super Bowl trophy after him.
Well, this seems rather bizarre. In Green Bay, Wisc., at Vince Lombardi Middle School, the football season has been canceled due to… a lack of available coaches.
If this does not sound like the opening scene of the greatest sports film of the next decade, I don’t know what does. Further, I may just apply for the job tomorrow. Who’s with me!?!
5. PB & Jail
The plan was smooth and creamy, but the jail came through in crunch time
The Peanut Butter Dozen—the 12 inmates in Alabama who used America’s favorite lunch spread to escape by fooling a rookie guard (they changed the number of a door leading to the outside to make it resemble one leading to a cell by using PB as a sort of modeling clay)–were spread out after their exodus and authorities at Walker County Jail were in a jam, but the last of the 12 have since been rounded up.
It would seem an appropriate punishment would be not more jail time but a diet of nothing but PB&J for lunch and dinner for the next year.
Music 101
You Better You Bet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXMWNhCmLUg
Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey et al, i.e. The Who, were already considered “classic rock” (a.k.a. geezers) by the time they released the album Face Dances in 1980. But this is definitely one of their best songs (and if Townshend hadn’t kept “Let My Love Open The Door” for his solo album the year before, part of one of their best albums)
A Word, Please
homunculus (noun)
a very small human or humanoid creature (e.g. Smiegel)
When u make your own warts using dopes like Art Schwartz
Scaramucci
Words can sting-a-ling-a-ling, you ding-a-ling-a-ling
And we’ll sing, “‘rivadercci'”
Don’t you open up and mope, you vile, profane dope,
There’s no mercy
The Mooch is out! He lasted less than four full days as the White House Communications Director. John Kelly, the new White House Chief of Staff, shitcanned the dude who forced Kelly’s predecessor to be shitcanned. The Worst Wing 30 for 30 will wind up being 18 hours long.
Scaramucci: it’s Italian for schadenfreude.
Mooch will presumably return to his old job of playing the villain in cheesy 1980s films set in NYC….
Yo-Del-A-Hee-Hooooooooooooooooo!
The world’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge just opened in Randa, Switzerland. The bridge, located in the southern Alps, spans 1621 feet (about 540 yards) and is at most points 300 feet above terra firma. Don’t you love when life becomes more like Lord of the Rings?
The bridge is slightly more than 2 feet wide and its grated surface makes it possible to look down beneath your feet. I’m just wondering how many dudes have already peed off it. Okay, and maybe how they built it.
3. Gio-graphy
On what would have been Jose Fernandez’s 25th birthday, the Miami Marlins hosted the Washington Nationals. Gio Gonzalez, a Miami native, fellow Cuban-American and good friend of the late Marlins ace, took the mound for the Nats…and threw eight no-hit innings.
Dee Gordon led off the ninth with a clean single to center and Gonzalez walked off to cheers from the home crowd and from the Marlins’ dugout. The Nats won 1-0.
Meanwhile at the trading deadline, the Dodgers acquired Yu Darvish (6-9, 4.01 ERA) and the Yankees Sonny Gray (6-5, 3.43). Bring on the 1977 (and ’78) World Series.
4. If This Is True, Is THIS Enough For Impeachment?
The late Seth Rich
Rule No. 1 for Donald Trump, as I’ve said before, is, “Believe the opposite of everything he says.” So when he blasts the media for creating Fake News, as he does often, why would you be surprised that he is the one creating Fake News?
That’s what a lawsuit alleges, and then some. From The Daily Beast:
Rod Wheeler, the private investigator cited by Fox News for its retracted report claiming former DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered for leaking emails to WikiLeaks, has now sued the network, claiming they: 1) Fabricated quotes from him to make the false connection; 2) Sent an article draft to the White House for review; and 3) Took orders directly from Trump to establish a connection between the DNC and Rich’s murder “to help lift the cloud of the Russia investigation.”
The question becomes when this suit would ever go to court. Also, because it’s not a criminal trial, what impact would such a trial even have? And wouldn’t Fox News simply attempt to settle? Is this yet another NothingBurger that is actually a SomethingBurger that nevertheless leaves your appetite unsated?
If you want to read more about the details here on Wheeler and the money maestro behind the scenes, Dallas-based Ed Butowsky, NPR has a detailed story.
5. The Good Shepard
Actor, playwright and all-around laconic handsome man Sam Shepard passed yesterday at the age of 73. Shepard wrote more than 50 plays, winning the Pulitzer for Buried Child, and appeared in more than 50 films, including The Right Stuff and The Notebook. He also had a long and tumultuous love affair with Jessica Lange, who was a knockout in her day (and still is).
Reserves
My Angel, Frank
Do you believe in angels? Because I think I encountered one recently.
So I’m trying to take up golf (now that I’m an AARP member) and really haven’t played at all since junior high school, and even then not so much. Recently I was on a driving range, scuffing worm burners right and left. And all the other dudes in the lineup looked like captains of industry or CEOs or CFOs or…you know the type.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, a short, schlubby, poorly dressed man who appeared to be in his mid-sixties stood behind me. “You’ve inverted your pivot!” he proclaimed, doing so in such a way as not to offend or upset me. There was no judgment in the comment, simply observation. He introduced himself as Frank and with a very brief motion explained to me that I needed to think of my swing more in the manner of a second baseman turning a double play. He swung his hips and moved his body in a far more horizontal manner that I had been doing.
I tried Frank’s way. The next ball I struck, to use a Dan Jenkins term, was dead solid perfect. Frank changed everything. I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. I don’t know if he actually exists in the spatio-temporal world. All I know is that he changed my entire day, if not more.
Whenever you have the chance, be someone’s angel.
Music 101
Jessie’s Girl
Few pop stars benefited from the advent of the MTV more than Aussie dreamboat Rick Springfield. If you know any woman between the ages of 45-55, chances are she’d still drop you in a hot minute for the singer whom General Hospital fans also knew as Dr. Noah Drake. The song hit No. 1 on the charts in August of 1981.
Kluber has struck out at least 10 batters in 8 of his past 9 starts
Indian Summer!
Look who’s back! The Cleveland Indians have won 9 of 10 to move 12 games over .500 and firmly in first place in the A.L. Central. On June 14 (Flag Day!) the Tribe were 31-31 but are 26-15 since (Curiously, Kansas City has also won 9 of 10 and now have Melky Cabrera and are only two games back).
Do you remember how bizarrely Game 7 ended last November? Michael Martinez came to bat with a man on and two outs in the bottom of the 10th and represented the winning run. Martinez, who’d had a total of 101 plate appearances in 2016, could have been one of baseball’s most unlikely heroes ever, but instead grounded out weakly to third against Cub reliever Mike Montgomery.
In a world without Chris Sale, Indian ace Corey Kluber (2nd in ERA and WHIP, 3rd in Ks) would be the favorite to win his 2nd A.L. Cy Young in the past four years.
2. Current Events:Against The Flow of Traffic
O.K. Commuter: David swims to work each day. Yes, but how does he return home?
This is Benjamin David, who reportedly packs up his clothes and laptop in a waterproof bag and swims 2K (1.2 miles) in the Isar River in Munich daily to commute to work. I found a story in both Time and on BBC.com, and neither divulged where David works or whether he swims home, too (presumably, against the current). Also, does his office have a shower?
This is poorly reported journalism. But who cares? We clicked.
3. Schwartz Story
Mooch is a classic bag man
Can The Worst Wing go a full 48 hours without another embarrassing incident and/or leak? The latest: On Saturday Anthony Scaramucci (THE MOOCH!), whose wife of three years recently filed for divorce, tweeted a request (threat?) to people that, in our own terms, said, “Hey, youse guys leave my wife alone or I’ll bada-bing! Bap!”
Family does not need to be drawn into this. Soon we will learn who in the media has class and who doesn’t. No further comments on this.
Then on Sunday Arthur Schwartz, who has previously been ID’ed by Fox News of all outlets as a spokesman for The Mooch (a spokesman with his own spokesman? Niiiiiiice.), typed a tweet that he has since deleted. It read:
So, if you’re following at home, on Thursday Mooch called Priebus a “(bleeping) paranoid schizophrenic,” on Friday Priebus resigned/was forced out, on Saturday Mooch went all snowflake on his personal life, and then on Sunday Mooch’s own sub-Mooch accused Priebus of committing adultery.
I deleted my tweets re @Reince & apologized to him. Pretty sure he’s not accepting my apology. Can’t blame him. I’m ashamed of what I said.
Schwarz has since apologized, in part because CNN’s Jake Tapper called him out on it. Yet another incident for The Worst Wing 30 for 30.
College Football Writers Are Doing Their Darnedest To Make Sam Darnold Sound Interesting, And It’s A Monumental Task
The two most intriguing notes in this epic Los Angeles Times feature on USC quarterback and Heisman front-runner Sam Darnold: 1) his maternal grandfather is a former two-sport USC jock, Olympian and Marlboro Man named Dick Hammer (now that’s a name you’ve got to live up to) and 2) his father is a plumber at the same medical center, UC Irvine Medical Center, where UCLA QB Josh Rosen‘s dad is an orthopedic surgeon.
Another writer I know is doing a feature on Darnold now and described him as “the world’s most boring person.” Hey, it happens all the time in sports writing. Usually, if you have to mention the athlete owns a snake, that’s code for you couldn’t find anything interesting about him (FYI: Darnold does not own a snake).
This was Sam Darnold’s grandfather. He died of lung cancer.
Keep in mind, though: Darnold threw five TD passes in USC’s highly entertaining 52-49 Rose Bowl win over Penn State on New Year’s Day. He’s a legit favorite to win the H, particularly if the Trojans enjoy a renaissance revival season.
5. Steve Jobs on Marketing vs Production
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM
This is what happened at my former place of work (as well as at MTV and myriad other places that began putting sizzle over substance). It’s about WHAT you make, not how you try to sell it.
Required viewing for anyone in business, this.
Reserves
Love this.
NFL network giving their expert opinion on all the games we’ll win and lose this season. THIS IS LAST SEASONS SCHEDULE. pic.twitter.com/QAmDhFLeP2
Can you possibly get any more Lilith Fair-era artist than Lisa Loeb? This song from her 1996 follow-up album was not her major hit (“Stay”, which went to No. 1 in 1994), but this one is definitely better driving music. My guess is that if Monica, Rachel and Phoebs ever took a road trip, it would be nothing but Lisa Loeb and Sixpence None the Richer CDs.
A Word, Please
sanguine (adj.)
optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation
On average, about two people per year die at Yosemite. And those seem like good odds, until this is your view.
