IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 11 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Magic Ball, a.k.a Race To The Bottom

With each UCLA victory in the NCAA tourney (and even before), more and more people use the word “transcendent” to describe the game of Bruin freshman Lonzo Ball. Meanwhile, fellow Pac-12 freshman Markelle Fultz is being called the No. 1 pick in June’s draft, but nobody besides scouts and people in flannel shirts have seen him play. There’s no sizzle there.

So here’s what intrigues me: 1) If you have the first pick in the draft, are you really going to take a guard from a Pac-12 team that couldn’t even make the NCAA tourney over a guard from a Pac-12 team who is the main reason that team is leading the nation in scoring, assists AND field-goal percentage, who has a much higher sizzle factor, and who may simply be better? 2) Here are the three worst teams in the NBA: Brooklyn Nets (14-56; their pick goes to Boston), L.A. Lakers (20-51) and Phoenix Suns (22-49). Is there any way that Ball, who grew up not too far from L.A. and who would be a rock star for a dynastic franchise looking to reboot, does not end up at the Staples Center for 43 games a season? Here are the NBA Draft Lottery odds:

  1. 250 combinations, 25.0% chance of receiving the #1 pick
  2. 199 combinations, 19.9% chance
  3. 156 combinations, 15.6% chance
  4. 119 combinations, 11.9% chance
  5. 88 combinations, 8.8% chance
  6. 63 combinations, 6.3% chance
  7. 43 combinations, 4.3% chance
  8. 28 combinations, 2.8% chance
  9. 17 combinations, 1.7% chance
  10. 11 combinations, 1.1% chance
  11. 8 combinations, 0.8% chance
  12. 7 combinations, 0.7% chance
  13. 6 combinations, 0.6% chance
  14. 5 combinations, 0.5% chance

    Josh Jackson should be in Phoenix next weekend and then next season.

    Josh Jackson should be in Phoenix next weekend and then for good next season.

It seems to make the most sense that the Lakers win the lottery with their 19.9% chance and (Psst, Rob Pelinka: Don’t overthink your first real move as GM) and take Ball, which will incite an 18,000-word Bill Simmons column about how Adam Silver rigged the lottery, in which case the name Patrick Ewing will surface. I’d love to see the Nets/Celtics actually win the lottery with their best odds and take Ball, which would be almost as satisfying as actually beating the Lakers in the NBA Finals.

Either way, I just know my Suns won’t be landing Ball. We’ll be happy with Josh Jackson at 3,

2. “STELLA! STELLA!!!!!!!!”

Someone didn’t do their high school English assignment 25 years ago and it cost him $1,600. Then again, I think I saw A Streetcar Naked Desire on Cinemax a number of years ago.

3. The Cranky Sports Guy

The downward spiral continues. Yesterday Bill Simmons, millionaire, complained on Twitter about a former writer at Grantland, Jonah Keri, stealing his bit and using it for other sites. Technically, sure, he has a point, but I’m not sure a Trade Value column poaching is the hill you want to die on here. You have to understand that it’s not as if you’re Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers stole your riff to “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” It’s a sports column and it’s not as if Keri ended the column by writing, “Yep, these are my readers.”

If you’re wondering why Simmons simply didn’t privately contact Keri about his gripe, well 1) I don’t know, either or 2) maybe he did. Either way, the fact that Keri acknowledged Simmons in his column for sorta creating the idea should’ve been enough. No?

The thing of it is, 47 year-old Bill Simmons has become the type of self-absorbed media monster that 27 year-old Bill Simmons would have really enjoyed taking the piss out of. And he would have been hilarious doing it. Tweets such as this have a Butterfly Effect: Simmons tweets this and 3 dozen people back in Bristol nod their heads and say, “I told you so.”

4. So Long, Gong

Barris was 87

Barris was 87

Somewhere in America this conversation is taking place right now:

“Did you hear that Chuck Barris died?”

“No, Chuck Berry died.”

“No, Chuck Barris.
    “Berry. The musician.
“No, The Gong Show host.”

“Berry.

“Barris.”

“Berry!”

“Bar–GONG!”

Kids, you’re both correct.

Anyway, they both died within the past four days. Weird. Barris hosted The Gong Show, which was a savagely cruel talent show/game show that aired in the mid-Seventies in which the acts could be “Gong’ed” off stage if they were awful enough (and they often were). If David Letterman has a favorite game show, my guess is this one is it. It was like the antecedent to Stupid Human Tricks, and Barris was the perfect, unhinged but amicable, host for it.

(Why don’t people have this much fun on TV any more? And why do they take themselves so seriously now?)

You may also have seen the biopic on him starring Sam Rockwell, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in which Barris claimed to have been an assassin for the CIA. I don’t know if we can verify that, but Barris did help create The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game and wrote the pop hit “Palisades Park.”

Barris will be buried next to the Tomb of the Unknown Comic.

p.s. MH sensors would only allow us to show you this video via link….

5. Burp Ease

I came across this story in Runner’s World in which the author did three sets of 10 burpees for 15 days and noticed a change in her energy and fitness level (the story quotes Dr. Jordan Metzl, whom I’ve met a few times and is probably better than any doctor I know in terms of getting his name in fitness publications; who’s his P.R. person?).

Anyway, burpees truly are a great way to measure how UNFIT you are and if you don’t believe me, go ahead and do a set of 10 of them right now. Did you know that they were invented by a then physiology grad student at Columbia Teachers College (NYC) in 1939 named Royal H. Burpee (I just learned that).

I highly recommend even just adding one set of 10 (to start) to your daily routine and see if you notice a difference after a month. And if you’re not sure how to do a burpee, here’s FOMH Amelia Boone to demonstrate:

Music 101

It’s Time

Once in awhile the MH staffers pick a song that’s not of legal drinking age. This one from Imagine Dragons was released in 2012 and is one their bigger hits. I wish I didn’t hate this band’s name.

Remote Patrol

March Malice Doubleheader

TCM

1:45 p.m. What Ever Happened To Baby Jane

8 p.m. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

If you are watching

If you are watching “The Feud” on FX, this is the film around which it is centered

You’ve got Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in the opener and Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne in the nightcap. On AFI’s list of Greatest Movie Stars, Davis is No. 2 and Crawford No. 10 among women, while Stewart is No. 3 and the Duke No. 13 among men.

West Coasters and night owls: At 12:15 a.m. EST and 9:15 p.m. PST on TMC, it’s a genuine classic, Touch of Evil, a 1958 film noir starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh and Orson Welles (written and directed by Orson). Also, you get another creepy scene involving Leigh and a bizarre innkeeper, this one played by Dennis Weaver. If you’re up or out west, highly recommend. TMC is hitting it out of the park the past fortnight.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Lying Donald Trump

It took the Director of the FBI, James Comey, to state under oath not directly that Donald Trump is a liar, but that nothing that he has tweeted in connection to being wiretapped is true. If there is one thing anyone paying attention should have learned by now, it’s that the truth is to Donald Trump what a speed limit is to those of us who have ever tried to drive more than 300 miles in one day.

“Would I lie to you (ohhhhh, yeah),

Would I lie to you, honey (oh no no no),

Now would I tweet something that wasn’t true?

I’m asking you, sugar, would I lie-ie-ie to you?

The more we see of him in the Oval Office, the more Trump reminds us of only one other leader of a nation in the world today:

Finally, how often do you hear “White House sextuples down” and not think it’s a juicy story involving Bill Clinton?

 

2. Connecticut’s Other Team

Quinnipiac's quixotic quest quontinues

Quinnipiac’s quixotic quest quontinues

Yes, the UConn Huskies breezed past Syracuse by 30 points in the second round (pssst: the same two teams played for the national championship last April and the Huskies won that one by 31), but another Nutmeg State squad won last night in the women’s NCAA tourney. The Quinnipiac Bobcats, a 12-seed, stunned 4-seed Miami in Coral Gables last night, 85-78. Quinnipiac took down 5-seed Marquette on Saturday.

Quinnipiac is in the Stockton bracket, and would not meet its in-state neighbor until the national championship game if if got that far.

In other news, Tennessee failed to reach the Sweet 16 for only the second time, losing to Louisville. Kelsey Plum of U-Dub scored 38 to give her the NCAA single-season scoring record (1,080; she’s already the NCAA’s career scoring leader) as the Huskies put down Oklahoma. Finally, every 1, 2 and 3 seed in the women’s tourney but for one school: Duke, which was a 2-seed and lost to 10-seed Oregon by nine.

Bad weekend for Duke hoops.

3. Tapper Meets Maher

In case you missed this from Friday night, Jake Tapper of CNN has raised his profile greatly in the past three months. Here’s a smart conversation with Bill Maher from last Friday night…

4. Dwight Clark Has ALS

Tough news: Former San Francisco wide receiver Dwight Clark, 60, announced that he has ALS, which is incurable and a particularly cruel and debilitating disease. Because of the moment above, though, Clark is an immortal.

5. Hustle & Flow

 

 You have to love the complete absence of chalance shown by this potential drowning victim. His car may be seconds away from being washed downstream with him in it, but he does not exit the vehicle until he is sure he is able to find his cell phone. As our friend @AuburnElvis suggested, “He needed to check his brackets.”

Music 101

Where The Bands Are

The Boss is a prolific songwriter, and some of Bruce Springsteen‘s better tunes never even made it onto his studio albums. This one, written in 1979, should have made it onto The River, but instead had to wait nearly 20 years to be included on his four-disc outtakes release, Tracks. Reading Born To Run, his 2016 memoir, you get the overwhelming sense that all Bruce ever really wanted to do was just play gigs. A dive in Asbury Park. A roller rink in Neptune. The Super Bowl. Makes no difference. As he says to the fans in another live version of this song on YouTube, “I wanna be where the fans are.”

Love how this version begins with him singing the first verse a cappella. No one will ever accuse Bruce of having a heavenly voice, but there sure is a life’s worth of texture there.

Remote Patrol

Double Indemnity

8 p.m. TCM


It’s “March Malice” week on my favorite cable channel, so why not take in this 1944 Billy Wilder classic that basically set the template for Los Angeles film noir. Starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, it was nominated for seven Oscars but received none.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

The Crying Games*

*The judges will also accept “March Meme-ness”

After a desultory first round (no losers in the top 4 seeds, only 3 games decided by 2 or fewer points, no buzzer beaters), the tourney kicked into a higher gear over the weekend:

–No. 1 seed and defending champion Villanova lost to Wisconsin.

—Caleb Swanigan of Purdue was both an inspiration and a perspiration.

—Joel Berry Carroll of UNC used good pad level and a non-call by a ref to help UNC go on a game-ending 12-0 run to hold off Arkansas.

 

 (Stew’s a Northwestern alum)

–Michigan, a.k.a. Project Runway, continued its magical run by upsetting No. 2 Louisville, 73-69.

 

–And Gonzaga nearly squandered all of a 20-point lead to hold off Northwestern. Yes, it was basket interference but no, Chris Collins, you can’t take three steps onto the court and get in a ref’s face as play continues. Besides, it wasn’t even that ref’s call to make. Just because you sat NEXT to Coach K doesn’t mean you can behave like Coach K. Not yet. Refs blew it, sure, but as a head coach you can’t cost your kids 2 points that late in a game. Four-point swing there (score was 73-68 when Pardon went up for dunk), from potentially 73-70 to 75-68. And yes, Northwestern kid, we don’t blame you for that reaction. But you’re only 12. The head ball coach needs to know better.

Gonzaga's 7-foot, 320-pound Przemek Karnowski:

Gonzaga’s 7-foot, 320-pound Przemek Karnowski: “Hodor! Hodor! Hodor!”

2. Whistle Blowers

 There were 48 meaningful games between Thursday at 12:15 p.m.  and Sunday at 11 p.m., so yeah, there are going to be some poor calls by the refs and, yeah, they’re going to be hyper-exaggerated because every game is do-or-die. Having said that (and you know what Seinfeld says about “Having said that….”),

…there were some obvious poor calls (Gonzaga’s goal tend and Joel Berry’s three yards and a cloud of dust, not to mention the tipped shot by the Tar Heel defender that the refs reviewed and still got wrong). Meanwhile, dudes take two steps after dribbling on drives to the hoop and no one calls a travel.

If you’re like me, you want the games to be called correctly, you don’t want refs to reward players for playing out of control, and you want the game to have a flow. Oh, and you don’t want every last thing reviewed because there’s no better way to rob the last 2 minutes of a game of its natural rhythm. Is that so difficult?

3. More Wisdom From Geno

I always enjoy watching people’s preconceptions (i.e. misconceptions) about Geno Auriemma undergo a transformation. This was from over the weekend. Here he is talking about “body language,” and I’m not talking about the Queen album song.

Geno gets it. He always has.

4. Here Come The Conways

Remember just a week or two ago when the Kellyanne Conway train had run off the rails? Now she’s being profiled in New York magazine (my pull quote from Olivia Nuzzi’s story:  “Anybody who pretends I’m not smart or not credible, it’s like, ‘Excuse me, I’ve spoken 1.2 million words on TV, okay?,’ ” Conway told me before the Flynn mishap. “You wanna focus on two here and two there, it’s on you, you’re a fucking miserable person, P.S., just whoever you are.”) and her husband, George, is up for a job with the Department of Justice (psst: I think he’s got a legitimate shot of landing it.

5. Bye, Bye Breslin

Breslin passed away this weekend at the age of 88

Breslin passed away this weekend at the age of 88

In New York City in the Sixties and Seventies Jimmy Breslin was a legend. Even people who didn’t know how to read knew who the New York Daily News columnist was. Breslin epitomized New York of that era: he was loud, he was unkempt, he was in poor shape, he was obnoxious, he was provocative, he was angry, and he was smart.

One of his better quotes: ““Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

I thought about all the people on Twitter who have told me I’ve gone off the deep end about Trump in the past 20 months and I thought, Exactly. Rage stirs passion, which is why I’ll never apologize for not seeming rational about Trump. What I do wonder is why anyone would be dispassionate about him.

Music 101

No Particular Place To Go

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

On Saturday night Chuck Berry died at the age of 90, and there are a whole lot of people who know more about rock-and-roll than your intrepid correspondent who consider him the father of rock-and-roll. Yes, there were a few predecessors (Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson), but Marty McFly never appropriated any of their hits (“Johnnie B. Goode”). This was not his first hit (“Maybellene”) but you can see a lot of Berry’s personality in this live performance. If you want to read more on Berry, here’s a piece by The New York Times. 

Remote Patrol

Warriors at Thunder

8 p.m. TNT

Mommie Dearest

Mommie Dearest

Will everyone rest again? If you’ve overindulged in hoops the past four days, may I suggest Psycho on TCM, also at 8 p.m.?

Designated Survivor: Day 4

by John Walters | 2 Comments

I’m through (unofficially) to the fourth round with my Gonzaga pick yesterday (after West Virginia on Thursday and Oregon on Friday). My Sunday pick? Baylor.

As for the actual players, we are down to just two (sorry, Lorraine W.; we don’t see a Friday pick).

Pick Day 4 in the Comments and thanks for playing….

 

Gene B: Gonzaga, Kansas, Florida State

Fawn L: Butler, Oregon, Gonzaga

Jim O: Duke, Oregon ?

James D.: Gonzaga ?

Brian R.: Florida State, Baylor ?

Sean S.: Purdue, Baylor, Gonzaga, 

Brian C.: Virginia, Baylor, ?

Jeff P: Butler, Oregon, Florida State

Ruth R.: Iowa State, Creighton

Jacob: A: Virginia, SMU

Susie B.: Maryland

Michael Z: Vanderbilt

 

 

Designated Survivor: Day 3

by John Walters | 4 Comments

Post your picks in the Comments below, please. I’m taking Gonzaga today.

So far…

Michael Z: Vanderbilt

Ruth R.: Iowa State, Creighton

Susie B.: Maryland

Gene B: Gonzaga, Kansas

Lorraine W: Butler, Purdue

Fawn L: Butler, Oregon

Jim O: Duke, Oregon

James D.: Gonzaga ?

Brian R.: Florida State, Baylor

Jacob: A: Virginia, SMU

Sean S.: Purdue, Baylor

Brian C.: Virginia, Baylor

Jeff P: Butler, Oregon