IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

Russian Mobster

The cheap-suit mob boss persona of President Trump has truly come to light this week, what with the “I would like you to do us a favor” followed by “You know what we used to do with spies in the old days?”

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1177306700627501058?s=20

Meanwhile, it’s a little odd that more folks aren’t drawing a direct line to the money Paul Manafort made from the Ukraine that sort of started all this. To wit:

From 2004 to 2014, Manafort had advised President Viktor Yanukovych, who advocated that his country sever ties with the United States and other Western nations, and align itself more closely with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After Yanukovych fled the country in disgrace in 2014, a ledger was recovered from the burned-out ruins of his Party of Regions. Its records showed that Yanukovych and his political allies had madesome $12.7 million in secret cash payments to Manafort. The disclosure led directly to Manafort’s resignation in August 2016 as chairman of the Trump presidential campaign.

So you have Manafort advising the Ukraine to fall in step with Mother Russia. You have the candidate he was advising somewhat doing that very thing—severing ties with the West and becoming friendly with Russia—and so the question is who is behind all of this (Hi, Vlad!) and why. Oh, and then there’s that whole Rex Tillerson-Exxon-Russia’s oil sanctions dealio.

Hmm.

So you have Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani in the Ukraine, you have Trump being overpaid for real estate by Russian oligarchs, and now you have a democratically elected president in the Ukraine feeling the squeeze between helping Trump investigate the Bidens or else losing military funding it badly needs to repel Russia. Donald Trump is truly the best friend Russia ever had.

By the way, if you are looking for a connection between this moment and Watergate, you may recall that Watergate began when Nixon hired a few goobs to break into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in attempt to dig up some dirt on his 1972 reelection campaign rivals. And then spent the next year denying any connection to it. So that’s almost a 1:1 comparison.

Trump In The Land Of Trumpy (Bob)

It’s a month old or so, but if you have a moment give a read to Matt Taibbi‘s piece in Rolling Stone on attending a Trump campaign rally in Cincinnati last summer. Taibbi is a gifted wordsmith, but he also possesses the insight to explain why the left has to this point failed to understand how to combat MAGAland. These are mostly cultists who’d respond better to fart noises than to a logical argument that illuminates their hypocrisy.

Still, the gold in any Taibbi piece are the unforgettable lines:

— His hair has visibly yellowed since 2016. It’s an amazing, unnatural color, like he was electrocuted in French’s mustard

—He then reflects on his 2016 run, when hordes of people turned out to send him to D.C., from places he, Trump, would never have visited, except maybe by plane crash.

And finally, this…

—Throughout Trump’s speech, spectators came down to taunt the libs. It got tense enough that a row of helmeted cops showed up, stringing patrol bicycles end to end in the middle of the street to create an ad-hoc barricade.

“He’s a fucking con man,” the would-be Ortega on the other side is chanting now. “Don the con . . . All power to the working class!”

“We are the working class, buddy!” an older man shouts. More laughs.

“No more hate!” the protesters chant.

“Four more years, bitch!” comes the reply.

The road is only four lanes wide, but it might as well be a continent. Two groups of people, calling each other assholes across a barricade. Welcome to America in the Donald Trump era.

Wag The Dog

If you’re wondering exactly how far down the rabbit hole we’ve gone, Fox News, the network that once worked itself into a tizzy daily about Hillary Clinton and her private email servers, yesterday came out in defense of President Trump using “special computers” to hide the transcript of his phone call to the president of the Ukraine.

Nothing Trump does matters to Fox News or the cult. If Trump does it, by definition it is okay. That’s a cult.

Wild About Harry

Also in that same issue of Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield‘s man-crush profile of former One Direction band member Harry Styles. The two spend a week together in Los Angeles and London—Styles had actually originally contacted Sheffield to tell him that he loved his book, Love Is A Mixtape.

Anyway, the ardor is strong in this profile but it’s pretty difficult to come away not liking the 25 year-old Brit. He comes off as a true gent, a good friend and a better son. A bit of an old soul and something of an introvert. A good bloke.

We like Harry because when RS asked him to list five influences, he went with Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Wings; Pulp Fiction; and Joni Mitchell. Solid list for a millennial.

Jakob’s Ladder


The Worlds (world track and field championships), a biannual event, begin today in Dotha, Qatar. One of the people to watch is 19 year-old Jakob Ingebritsen of Norway, who as you can see from above looks like he was taken directly off the beach from Chariots of Fire.

Ingebritsen is the favorite to win the men’s 5-K, a race that hasn’t been too well-represented by Europeans at least not since the days of Lasse Viren (1976). Keep an eye on him.

Music 101

Helplessly Hoping


We stole this suggestion from Styles above (maybe we have a man-crush!), who said about this C,S&N tune that, “If I had three minutes to live, it’s one of my one-more-time-before-I-go songs.” From 1969, a year that was flush with incredible music.

Remote Patrol

Penn State at Maryland

8 p.m. FS1

Both Big Ten schools coming off a bye week. The Nittany Lions think they’re a Top 15 school and the Terps are gonna be stoked about a Friday night game in College Park. Methinks SVP will be watching.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Give ’em hell, Josh.

Starting Five

Low Energy Donald

Are the walls finally beginning to close in on MAGAsaurus Rex?

Here’s the transcript, with key parts highlighted, of President Trump’s July 25th phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky (and who will play him on SNL this Saturday?). As far as we’re concerned, referring to Rudy Giuliani as “a highly respected man” is an impeachable offense (“Oh, shut up! Shut up, you moron! Shut up!”).

No one told him he’d have to show up for this.

So how’s this all going to end. The president will agree to move out of the White House as long as America signs an NDA.

Too Toobin

Presidential scandals provided unexpected moments of gold. Here’s a CNN panel from around 5 p.m. in which CNN legal expert Jeffrey Toobin is seated right next to a screen showing CNN political director David Challan who looks like his doppelgänger if only Toobin went on a weekend KFC chicken-and-doughut sandwich binge.

Deep Throat II

Turns out that when the majority party in the government is either corrupt or cowering at the feet of a corrupt administration, there’s not much that can save us except for a courageous government official who’s willing to sacrifice his career for the good of the democracy. In 1972 it was Deep Throat, whose identity would be kept secret for 33 years before it was at last learned he was FBI associate director Mark Felt.

This week it was The Whistleblower, who at the moment lacks a punchier nickname, which really speaks to the paucity of quality hard-core porn films being released these days, don’t you think? Anyway, whoever this person is, it is HIS or HER leaks that kick-started the latest Affaire du Trump and—and I know we’ve all said this before—this one actually looks serious.

There should be a better child-proof seal on the sanctity of the world’s greatest superpower than a lone wolf having to risk everything to bring powerful men to task. Don’t you think? But thankfully there are still some people in Washington who believe in truth and justice as opposed to power and wealth. And how long until we learn this person’s name? And rank?

The Price Is Right

By now you may have read about Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, gave all of his employees a $10,000 raise (a 33% increase for some) and announced that by 2024 all would be earning $70,000 per year.

Corporate America: Was that so hard?

“The market rate for me as a C.E.O. compared to a regular person is ridiculous, it’s absurd,” said Price. “”A lot of people think giving up a million dollar a year salary and millions in profit is an unreasonable sacrifice to pay a living wage and give small businesses white glove service. Well, I am proof of one thing. It is worth it.” 

You can be CEO and by far the wealthiest earner at your company and NOT be an asshole. What a novel concept.

Brew True

Mike Moustakas. I don’t know what the NBC Sideline Sky Cam is doing in Milwaukee, either.

Remember when the Milwaukee Brewers lost prospective repeat-NL MVP winner Christian Yelich in late August? Remember when they were just two games over .500 on August 30th?

Of course you don’t. Who does? Who cares about the Brewers?

Still, if you gave them any thought, you left them for dead. Well, Milwaukee is 20-4 since then and they just eliminated both the Cubs and Mets from the postseason. They’re guaranteed at least a wildcard berth and they’re only 1 1/2 back of the Cardinals for first place in the A.L. Central heading into the final weekend. The Cards have three left against the Cubbies, who may be either just empty or somewhat motivated to knock the Cardinals down from their perch. The Brew Crew has one against Cincy and three versus the Rockies, both sub-.500 clubs.

No Yelich? No problem. Baseball is weird.

Music 101

Les Moulins de mon Couer (The Windmills of Your Mind)

Introduced in the original 1968 version of The Thomas Crown Affair, this tune composed by Frenchman Michel LeGrand with lyrics by a pair of Americans has, to us, always sounded better in French (not unlike Morticia Addams). It won the Oscar for Best Original Song that year and was re-recorded for the film’s remake by Sting. But we prefer this version.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Is This It? (No)

After the president admitted that yes, he held back $400 million in aid to Ukraine and, yes, he asked the Ukrainian prime minister to investigate Hunter Biden after but NOOOOOO, there was no quid pro quo going on, after all this, after the years of callously ignoring the Emoluments Clause, ranking Democrat Nancy Pelosi finally announced that the House will begin a formal impeachment inquiry.

What’s it all mean? Here, read this. The House voted to impeach Andrew Johnson. And Bill Clinton. Neither left office because on top of that it also takes a 2/3 vote of the Senate and I don’t think the Senate would vote that way about Trump even if he came out and confessed that he was the Zodiac.

If we know President Trump, though, this will make him fighting mad, which means he’ll cater to the cameras, which means he’ll probably utter even more self-incriminating words. Stay tuned.

Strike ‘Em Out, Hit ‘Em Out

Ronald Acuna, Jr., is a budding superstar, but he’s also whiffed an MLB-most 188 times in 2019

For the 12th consecutive season, Major League Baseball has broken its single-season strikeout record (41,208 and counting). Meanwhile, last night the New York Yankees became the first team in MLB history to have FOURTEEN players with at least 10 home runs. The Yanks, who’ve already broken the single-season team home-run record for the second year in a row, are one home run shy of 300 for the year.

What ever happened to contact hitters? Rod Carew is weeping.

Blue Planet, Red Alert

From the BBC:

According to a UN panel of scientists, waters are rising, the ice is melting, and species are moving habitat due to human activities.

And the loss of permanently frozen lands threatens to unleash even more carbon, hastening the decline.

There is some guarded hope that the worst impacts can be avoided, with deep and immediate cuts to carbon emissions.

I think Greta Thunberg nailed it on Monday. “And all you talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal wealth…”

Sticky Finger-Lickin’ Good

Meanwhile, you can bet that more folks on your Twitter and Instagram feeds will have the feels not about oceans rising but rather the prospect that their cholesterol levels will. Introducing KFC’s Chicken-and-Doughnut sandwich (a.k.a. the KFCPR), which will be rapaciously devoured by the same people who will then tell you that health care is a human right. There I go, Susie B., kicking your hornet’s nest again…

Evidence Of Love

We blame our old friend Moe Cav for stoking a recent interest in true crime books (it’s weird how when you go out to a bar to read Zodiac by yourself that more people do not approach and start a conversation. Huh). Anyway, she gifted us a copy of Evidence Of Love, a 1984 book by Jim Atkinson and John Bloom (you may know him better as film critic Joe Bob Briggs). It’s the true story of two suburban Dallas housewives, a sordid affair involving one of their husbands, and a grisly axe murder that took place in the utility room of one’s house. To say more would be…criminal.

If you think this is just a Lifetime movie on steroids, think again. The book is so thoroughly reported, the events so well-framed, that it will grab you. Strongly recommended. The details are lurid and grisly, but the reportage is as meticulous as anything you’ll ever come across.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Greta The Great!

If you didn’t know the 16 year-old Swede before yesterday, you may know here now. Greta Thunberg, who first gained attention last summer when she demonstrated outside of the Swedish parliament to call for climate action, was invited to speak at the United Nations yesterday, where dozens of world leaders have gathered this week (and clogged up traffic from Sixth Avenue east). She did not squander her moment.

“We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of economic growth. How dare you!” Take that and stick it up your corn hole, Joe Kernen.

Of course, it only took a few hours for a guest on Fox News to refer to her as “mentally ill” and for Laura Ingraham to refer to her as “Children of the Corn,” and you wonder at what age do people’s hearts die. Or maybe it’s not a matter of what age they reach, but how much income they’ve earned.

Spooky Castle*

*The judges are soliciting your help for a better headline

This is Dunstanburgh Castle in northern England, or at least the remains of the 14th-century fortification, located in Northumberland on the coast of the North Sea. Doesn’t look like all that much in the light of day…

…but then when the sun goes down and what with the Northern Lights and all, it becomes a Tim Burton soundstage. Bucket list wish: see the Northern Lights.

Trump, Biden, Whistleblowers and Nepotism

The latest, “Oh, he’s gone entirely too far!” episode involving our beloved 45th president involves him personally ordering his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine in the days before he pressed the new Ukrainian president to investigate the Democrats’ leading presidential candidate. Two White House officials have confirmed this.

Now, we can have a separate debate as to why Uncle Sam is writing out such robust checks to any foreign government when our educational system is bankrupt and we can hardly keep grizzly bears out of classrooms because of it. Sure. But this is a pure Mob Boss move on the president’s part: I’m going to give Ukraine a taste of the pain I can unleash if it doesn’t play ball with me.

Meanwhile, Dems in Washington fluttered their hankies anew at the report and some wondered if they might have to change their reservations at Charlie Palmer. My Lord, what a bunch of feckless milquetoasts.

On the other hand, if you read this story, Trump does have a point: why did a Ukrainian petroleum company take on Hunter Biden, who does have a law degree, at $50,000 per month when he had no previous expertise in the industry or Ukraine? To get closer to his dad, of course. Now, sure, it’s funny that Donald Trump of all people would call out nepotism (he’s been both the beneficiary of it and he’s now passing it on to his kids), but yeah, the Bidens don’t come off as altogether wonderful. Don’t you just miss the days when Leo McGarry’s daughter was simply an attractive school marm that Sam Seaford could hit on….?

King Gone

After playing four games, and losing three of them, University of Houston senior quarterback D’Eriq King has opted to take a mulligan on the remainder of 2019. Because the new redshirt rule allows you to play up to four games without it costing against your season, King is eligible to return next year and play for the Cougars. Or, having auditioned in front of Lincoln Riley and 90,000 Sooner fans on September 1st in Houston’s season-opening loss at Oklahoma, he could become the third Texas-based QB in the past five years to transfer to Norman (after Baker and Kyler, who both went on to win the Heisman). Stay tuned.

One of King’s favorite targets, Keith Corbin, will also shut it down the rest of 2019. First-year Houston coach Dana Holgorsen, in our opinion, should just thank the two of them and tell them to get lost for good. And while you’re at it GET OFFA MY LAWN!

It’s All Downhill From Here

No human being has ever run a marathon in under two hours, even though that will likely happen in the next 20 years. Organizers of an event in Andalusia, Spain, can’t wait that long. With the aid of a 6,358-foot decline from starting line to finish, they were hoping to produce the first sub-2-hour marathon this weekend.

Didn’t happen.

Kenyan Anthony Kiringa broke the tape in 2:09, though his 30-K split (about 18-mile mark) was faster than fellow Kenyan Eliud Chipkoge’s split at the Berlin Marathon last year when Chipkoge set the world record at the 26.2-mile distance at 2:01:39.

Of course, if Kipchoge had run in Spain on Sunday he might’ve crushed the two-hour barrier but it would not be an official time, owing to the dramatic altitude decline on the course.

Personal memory: In 2006 we ran an all-downhill half-marathon in Fontana, Calif. The objective was achieved: our fastest half-marathon ever (about 1:21 as I recall). But we wrecked our quads for about two weeks. Here’s how crazy that race was: We finished in the top 10 but at least three runners ahead of us dropped out. Fast runners don’t ordinarily drop out of half-marathons. They did so because they’d been hammering their quads for 10-12 miles at that point and their muscles could no longer take the stress. Run a downhill marathon or half- at your own risk.

Music 101

Where The Bands Are

This song never made a Bruce Springsteen album, so as we belatedly celebrate his 70th birthday, we take note of it and offer that it would have fit perfectly on The River. By the way, all of the footage in this video is from before, during and after his November 5, 1980 show at the Arizona State University Activity Center (now Wells Fargo Arena) that my sister worked as an usher and scored me a ticket to but Phyllis wouldn’t let me attend because it was a school night. I’m not quite over it yet.

Remote Patrol

Country Music

8 p.m. PBS

Waylon & Willie, R to L

So both Phyllis and Susie B. have been chatting up this latest Ken Burns’ documentary (Burns has now done series on Baseball, The Civil War, World War II, Vietnam and this; let me throw out his next two for him, “The Movies” and “Rock ‘n Roll”) and even though we’re catching it nearer to the end, here’s hoping/guessing that PBS will re-air it plenty.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Life, death, fire, Iggles.

Starting Five

Red Light District

Sanford Stadium and Georgia wholly disregarded the advice of the Police on Saturday evening (“You don’t have to put out the red liiiiight”) as Notre Dame came to visit for the first time. The Irish acquitted themselves well, but in what has became a near-annual tradition, came away with a respectable loss versus a highly-ranked team (USC ’05; Florida State ’14; Clemson ’15).

BRUUUUUUUUUCE!

Turns 70 today. So much has already been said and written, so much more should be. Everyone has their pop culture/artist heroes. For me, it’s Roger Staubach, David Letterman and Bruce. All of whom are now septuagenarians.

Fleabag’gin The Emmys

The TV show Fleabag, which is written by and stars a female with a hyphenated name, is filmed in London and appears on Amazon Prime, cleaned up at last night’s host-free Emmys. Creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge hauled in three Emmys, including upset wins against Veep and fellow hyphenated star Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Best Comedy and Best Lead Actress in a Comedy.

Our favorite televised thing of the year, Chernobyl, also picked up three Emmys. It was also the target for snarky filler lines such as “Chernobyl was filmed i Studio City in front of a live audience” and “Chernobyl, the little nuclear disaster that could.”

Game Of Thrones won Best Drama and like 11 other awards but, just like in the show, the women were treated callously and without mercy. The only individual acting award went to The Imp, Peter Dinklage.

Pandemonium In Pullman

For one half in Pullman, it felt like a baccalaureate exercise. Mustachio’ed man of the hour Gardner Minshew had flown 2,800 miles to return, in jorts, to the stadium that made him famous. His successor, Anthony Gordon, was on the way to breaking Minshew’s school-record 7 touchdown tosses in one game. The ESPNers were talking up Gordon’s Heisman chances and Mike Leach’s “Insurgency In Warfare” course.

And then suddenly Chip Kelly and UCLA authored their own episode of Pardon The Interruption. Trailing 49-17 early in the third quarter, the Bruins stormed back for an incredible 50-second half points and defeated the Cougs, 67-63. We’ve lost sleep over many a Pac-12 After Dark contest, but this was by far the Pac-12 After Darkiest.

Giant

Send your apologies to New York Giant general manager Dave Gettleman, who used the sixth pick in last spring’s draft to select Duke quarterback Daniel Jones, was roundly pilloried for it, and now appears to be having the last laugh.

In his first career start yesterday, on the road in Tampa, Jones led the G-Men to a 32-31 victory. Jones, with two fewer starts in 2019, has one more win than Kyler Murray, the first overall pick in the April draft.

Killer Cliff of Connecticut

Both a father and son perished after falling 75 feet off a cliff in Connecticut, a state that is not ordinarily infamous for its craggy promontories. Steven Price, 71, and his son Mark, 30, had been riding ATVs in a quarry in Farmington, Conn., a lovely town about 20 miles northwest of Hartford.

This happened last Wednesday night. The dad had gone over to peer off the edge of the cliff (never a good idea) and tripped. His son moved to save him and they both fell. Rule No. 1, quarry-style.

Music 101

Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’

There we were at the Fairway market yesterday, groping avocados (not a euphemism), and an old-timey song came over the speaker system. It could’ve been a Sam Cooke song. Not sure. The refrain went something like, “Nothing, nothing, nothing could keep me…” and now I forget the rest. I mention all of this because A) I’m commissioning one of you to locate the song and B) because now I know from where Journey stole the melody to its 1978 breakout hit. The “nothing, nothing, nothing” lyric is “lovin’, touchin’, squeezin’.”

For perspective’s sake, Journey had been a band before this song, but Gregg Rolie had done the vocals. Then they brought in Steve Perry, who sang lead vocals here, and the band exploded. We remember it well, early autumn of 1979. And this song got wall-to-wall play on the radio. It was Journey’s first Top 40 hit. Rolie, who had co-founded both Santana and this band, did not take the demotion well, leaving Journey a year later. Then they released Escape. Maybe shoulda stuck around.

Yes, but did it have legs? Ask the producers of Glee:

Remote Patrol

Bride Of Frankenstein

11:15 p.m. TCM

“The cocktail hour MUST go from 2 to 4 while we’re taking photos!”

In which the producers pose the age-old question, What’s more terrifying than a 7-foot tall corpse come to life with the brain of a mental patient? Being married. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!