*The judges will also accept “Feeling Minnesota” but not “Minnesota Miracle”
You saw it. Case Keenum to Stefon Diggs for 61 yards and the win as New Orleans rookie safety Marcus Williams almost inexplicably whiffs on the play. As Fox announcer Troy Aikman aptly put it, “I’m not sure what he was thinking,” and our only guess is he was afraid that he’d arrived too early and get a DPI. Weirdly, Williams made an interception on pretty much the same route in the third quarter.
(Minnesotans know what it’s like to be on the other end of this)
Minnesota Miracle? Fine. For those of us who were kids and remember the pandemonium of Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris in Pittsburgh or Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson in Minnesota, this moment joins them. Unlike those two, though, this was the last play of the game. So it’s almost more like Tua Tagovailoa to DaVonte Smith.
Good for you, Minnesota. When it’s 0 degrees outside, you deserve at least this much. Will you be back in this stadium in three weeks? We’ll see.
2. Huddle Up!
At the Houston 1/2 Marathon, Notre Dame alum Molly Huddle runs a 1:07:25 to break the American record for women. Great job!
In related news, this Notre Dame alum, a few years Huddle’s senior, ran a 1:41 in the 1/2 at the Phoenix Rock n Roll 1/2 Marathon yesterday. And earned a free Michelob Ultra. So wins all around.
3. Project Runway
In Turkey, all 162 passengers plus the crew survive when a Pegasus Airlines flight slides off an icy runway and over a cliff, nearly plunging into the Black Seas. Was this the weekend’s more inconceivable crash or was the one in the next item?
4. Vin Diesel Was Nowhere To Be Found
In Santa Ana, California, a vehicle carrying two people and probably going at an unsafe rate of speed crashes into the second floor of a dentist’s office and creates its own Farmers Insurance commercial (“We know a few things because we’ve seen a few things”). No one was injured because the crash occurred at 5:30 a.m., but you’re going to have to postpone that root canal. This reminds me, Bullittwas on over the weekend if you’ve never seen it.
The late Notre Dame president Fr. Ted Hesburgh with MLK
The New York Times has a special tribute waiting for Donald Trump on the occasion of his first Martin Luther King Day in office.
Music 101
Shiny Happy People
For many, this REM tune off 1991’s Out Of Time is when the Athens-based band jumped the shark. Not me. I love it. Just the sequence of vocals from Mike Mills to the B-52’s Kate Pierson to Michael Stipe makes it perfect. Even if comedian Denis Leary famously ranted, “I want the shiny people over here, and the happy people over here, okay, I represent the angry, gun-toting, meat-eating people.”
Remote Patrol
Warriors vs. Cavs
8 p.m. TNT
We run this pic of Sweet Pea in hopes that when Susie B. gets to 40-bagger status on AMZN, she’ll hit up our PayPal account
The second and final regular-season matchup between the two franchises who’ve embargoed the NBA Finals since 2015. Every Hot Take Artiste you know will be watching and taking notes.
He is not the first president to use salty language. Most if not all have.
He is not the first president to be racist. And Andrew Jackson is likely not the only other one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LagxU1Oq0Vw
What he is, though, in the 21st century, is a man who fundamentally does not understand What Makes America Great. I live in a city which has Little Italy, Chinatown, and hundreds of Irish bars. There is no Little Switzerland. There’s a reason for that.
The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used. What was really tough was the outlandish proposal made – a big setback for DACA!
(Above: A non-denial denial and a classic lesson learned from Roy Cohn. He never actually denies saying “shitholes,” he says, “This was not the language used.” In other words, he’ll never address it specifically.)
In the late 19th century Ireland and Italy were shitholes and there’s a good chance that if you are reading this that you descended from immigrants of one of those two nations. On Wednesday night a Mexican waiter gave me outstanding service. On Thursday a highly helpful first-generation African drove me to the airport. That’s what makes America great.
Surreal to see basic human dignity caricatured as an out-of-touch elitist affectation, like kale.
This column from The Chicago Tribune is what I’m trying to say….
By the way, how perfect is this: Eight years ago today, on January 12, 2010, an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 struck Haiti, killing more than 100,000 people. Happy anniversary from Donald Trump.
2.Is This Jordan Also A HOF’er?
While he has never gotten as many endorsement opps as former teammate Chris Paul and chronically DL’ed teammate Blake Griffin (appearing occasionally as a sidekick, a hoops Andre the Giant), DeAndre Jordan has been the most consistent Clipper of the past half-decade. In the past five years Jordan has finished first or second in the NBA every year in Total Rebounds and FG % (granted, most of his shots are dunks or put-backs; so what?) .
Jordan, who has only been chosen to play in one All-Star Game (breaking: the West is crowded with talent), has led the NBA in FG % every one of the past five years and is currently in second place behind Clint Capela of Houston. He currently leads the NBA in Total Rebounds, which would be his third of the past five seasons leading in that stat (finishing 2nd the other two times).
If the 6’11” former Texas A&M player, who injured himself dunking last night, keeps this up another five years, he should be given serious consideration for a spot in Springfield, no? Mark Cuban and I cannot be the only two people outside of Staples Center who appreciate his value, can we?
3. Tyler The Creator
This is John Tyler. He was the 10th president of the United States (1841-1845) and was born in 1790.
Tyler may not have been a prolific president, but he was prolific. He fathered 15 children with two wives before he expired in 1862. One of his progeny, Lyon Tyler, was born in 1853. Lyon had six children with two wives, two of whom were born in the 1920s: Lyon, Jr., born in 1924 when his pop was 71 and Harrison, born in 1928 when dad was 75.
Lyon did some layin’ late in life
Both Lyon, Jr., and Harrison are still living, ages 93 and 89.
Lyon Tyler was a genealogist, by the way, and the president of William & Mary College from 1888-1919.
4. The Streak Dies With The Streaker
On July 31 last summer Linda Evans, a 68 year-old Ohio woman who had run every day since 1980, was struck and killed by a driver under the influence of drugs while out on a 12-mile run. Evans, a retired school teacher, died on impact. It was 9 a.m. What was the driver, 32 year-old Jon Coffman, doing DUI at that hour of the morning?
Evans in the Seventies with her husband, Gary, at marathons
Evans, who ran 13,563 consecutive days and was an avid marathoner, is being remembered with this profile in Runners’ World. Worth a read.
5. Sager Saga Sadder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_xMvztr-Wo
You remember Craig Sager‘s son and namesake, who admirably filled in for his pop as he was undergoing cancer treatments, don’t you? He seems like a great young man, and he probably is. Sadly, he tweeted this last night as rumors about his well-liked late dad and a certain will have been floating around of late.
Craig Sager wrote his son out of his will the day after he spent 9 days in Houston trying to save his life a 2nd time. Craig Sager’s son & his 2 sisters that were also written out never contested it, but have been taken to court so they can never contest it.
Make sense now? Good
In September of 1966 an American vocal group, the Sandpipers, did a cover of the most famous Cuban folk song ever written and took it to No. 9 on the Billboard charts. The group had originally called themselves the Four Seasons, but then they became of another vocal group from New Jersey that seemed to be having a little more success.
Remote Patrol
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction
Netflix
No, Paul, just Dave as he sits down with the 44th president of the United States for an extended interview in front of a live interview.
The most 1970s named player in the NBA, Lou Williams, torches Golden State for a career-high 50 points as the Clippers win 125-106 in Oakland. Williams, a 12-year pro who never attended college, scored 27 in the third quarter. He was 8 for 16 from beyond the arc as the Clips outscored the Dubs, who were without the world’s best backcourt, by 23 points in the second half.
Meanwhile, Durant Durant passed the 20,000 career-point mark (second-youngest after Sweet Pea) while putting down 40 himself.
2. Racial Slur-pee*
*The judges will not accept “ICE, ICE, Baby,” they just won’t
All of us at one time or another have visited a 7-11 to pick up ice. But who among us has had ICE pick us up at a 7-11?
Yesterday ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents swept through some 100 7-11’s in 17 states telling owners to produce valid employment records for their employees showing either that they are citizens or have a valid green card. Does the Dollar Store sell Slim Jims, I wonder?
3. She’s The Yuan
Yesterday The New York Times introduced the most envied and itinerant print journalist in the world for 2018. Jada Yuan, a 39 year-old Chinese-American (checks box) female (checks box) from northern New Mexico who lives in Brooklyn (checks box) and has a B.A. in history from Yale (checks three boxes), won the gig. She’ll travel to all of the NYT’s “52 Places To Go” this year—as soon as she dumps her boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Whatever.
Us? Jealous? C’mon!
4. The Manchester Scene
Raheem Sterling leads Man City with 14 goals
Now that we’ve got Alabama-Georgia out of our systems, it’s time to turn our attention to another level of football: the English Premier League, where first-place Manchester City is undefeated after 22 games (20-0-2). The Sky Blues have a chance to become only the second EPL club to go undefeated through a 38-match season, as Arsenal did so in 2003-04.
The difference is that the Gunners finished 26-0-12, so nearly half their matches ended in draws. Man City is on pace to finish with quite a few more wins (three points) and fewer draws (one point), but there’s still a long way to go.
The Sky Blues have been dominant: they have the league’s top three assist men and its third- and fourth-leading scorers, none of whom overlap.
5. Collusion vs. Illusion
Remember a few weeks back when we noted that in Donald Trump’s impromptu interview with a NYT reporter he used the term “no collusion” 16 times in a span of about 10 minutes? Yesterday he answered ONE question in a White House presser and used the same term seven times.
On Monday Viking tight end Kyle Rudolph paid for 250 pounds of ribs to be brought in to feed teammates and staffers at the team’s Edina complex. He also included a note of thanks to all the equipment staff and trainers. Total Domer.
****
Lights Out at the Tech Show
Black Lights Matter
Your first blast of non-Trump irony in 2018, as a blackout hits the massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
Music 101
Superstar
The song had already been a hit for a few artists before siblings Karen and Richard Carpenter, a.k.a. The Carpenters, recorded their cover that shot to No. 2 in late summer of 1971 (Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” kept it out of the top perch; those were the days, kids). Richard actually heard Bette Midler sing it on a late-night talk show and thought he and his sis could do it up even better. He was right.
Remote Patrol
Bringing Up Baby
6 p.m. TCM
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn starred together in three comedies between 1938 and 1949—Holiday, The Philadelphia Story, and this, the screwballiest of them all. An heiress, a stolen dinosaur bone, and a house-trained leopard all figure into the plot.
Go Speed Racer! Go Speed Racer! Go Speed Racer, Gooooooo!!!!!
College football season is over, so our attention turns to the Olympics, where the biggest star in Pyeongchang—the Olympics are being held in South Korea—will be American skier Mikaela Shiffrin.
Why? She’s an amazing talent, she’s American and she has a million-dollar smile. On Tuesday in Austria she won her fifth consecutive World Cup race in a slalom, becoming the first skier to do so in 20 years. It was her eighth win in nine races. Shiffrin, 22 year-old from Vail, Colo., already has 41 World Cup Alpine race wins. Lindsey Vonn, the all-time female record holder in World Cup wins, had seven wins at her age.
The Europeans, they already know who Shiffrin is. We’re about to learn.
2. Spicy Tua Roll
Looking back at one of the most exciting national championship games in memory, a few thoughts:
A) The above play , Tua Tagovailoa’s 3rd-and-7 escape in which three Georgia defenders whiffed on the sack, was THE PLAY of the game. The Tide trailed 13-0 at the time and were badly in need of hope. A few plays after Tua got the first down he threw a touchdown and assured that Jalen Hurts was never coming back into this contest.
B) The final play was a brilliant look-off of safety Dominick Sanders by Tua, but he’s nowhere near as much to blame as corner Malkom Parrish (or the defensive coordinator who rolled the Dawgs into Cover 2 on a 2nd-and-26). As I tweeted out late last night, Bama lined up in trips right. Parrish was the weak side safety. His mandate is simple: “Deeper than the deepest” as he knows the coverage is going to shade toward the opposite side of the field. Perhaps Parrish assumed they wouldn’t go for the home run ball; whatever, he was far too lax in letting DaVonta Smith to get behind him. There’s no shame in getting beat, but when you’re beat by 5 yards on that play in overtime, your head was somewhere else.
C) Jalen Hurts? Pure class. Don’t be surprised if he transfers (as Georgia’s Jacob Eason will), but he was the first one to congratulate Tua on the first TD pass, his head was always in the game and he handled every postgame interview putting team first and propping up his teammate. Only hope the best for him.
D) Alabama was favored by 3.5. Alabama trailed by 13 when the fourth quarter began but won by 3. The sharps know what they’re doing.
3. The Warren Retort
The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, appeared on CNBC this morning with the one reporter he’ll allow to interview him, Becky Quick (she flew to Nebraska). Asked about the hottest term in the stock market the past three months, the 87 year-old, self-made megabillionaire said, “In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending. When it happens or how or anything else, I don’t know.”
Buffett is 87. His partner at Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, is 94. Is he right? Last night on CNBC’s Fast Money, Tom Lee, an analyst at least 30 years Buffett’s junior, predicted that Bitcoin will at least double in value this year. Lee was correct about Bitcoin all last year. We’ll see.
Anecdotally, you’ll find that millennials and college-aged ones are very into crypto. And they’re the ones coming of age. To this investor/gambler, the biggest danger to crypto will be governments attempting to strangle it out of existence due to pressure from lobbyists backed by big, big, BIG banks.
4. Luke, I Am Your Father!
Here’s why I love Indianapolis Star sports columnist Gregg Doyel: a few years ago he was on the Hot Take Express, a talented and opinionated columnist at CBSSports.com who seemed destined to be starring in one of ESPN’s or FS1’s plethora of incarnations of Pardon The Bloviation.
Instead, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Doyel moved from his home of Cincinnati up to Indy and became a LOCAL sports columnist. He decided that there were stories to be told on a state or municipal level if one just SEARCHED for them. That it was better to find and report stories than to make half-assed and unaccountable guesses as to what would happen next (even if it didn’t get him as many clicks).
Hoover, 83, played at Purdue in the Fifties
So here’s his latest masterpiece, on a freshman hoops phenom, Luke Brown, in a small Indiana town, Hartford City, who is fourth in the state in scoring (he just put up 48). An 83 year-old first-year coach, Jerry Hoover. And a team that, before Brown and Hoover arrived, had lost 78 of 79 games but is now 8-1. It’s basically a John Mellencamp song meeting an Angelo Pizzo film.
You want to teach sports journalism at a local college? The first person your students should learn about is Gregg Doyel.
5. California Stormin’
If you’re saying to yourself, Wait, isn’t Santa Barbara County still burning, that’s so last week/month/year. The latest apocalyptic plague to hit the area is winter storms, and they have proven more deadly. In Montecito, just east of the city of Santa Barbara (both coastal towns face due south), heavy rains triggered flooding that triggered mudslides. At least 15 are dead. Woulda been nice if these rains had come about three weeks earlier, and yes, the fires probably had a lot to do with the earth being so much more susceptible to mud slides as so much vegetation was lost. I’m not a meteorologist or botanist, I just play one in the blogosphere.
Reserves
Chucky’s Back
Now if only we can get them to remain in Oakland. Oh, and no kidding, here’s his son, Deuce, the team’s new strength coach….
Meanwhile, has Darren Rovell been training with Deuce?
This is the ideal male body, you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like pic.twitter.com/IpWgt0aRlm
It was a crowded field of bad-ass ladies as the Eighties began, what with Chrissy Hynde and Deborah Harry strutting about, but Pat Benatar, a classically trained singer from Brooklyn (and later, Long Island), held her own. This song was the first single off her band’s 1981 album Crimes of Passion, but you should know it is a cover of The Young Rascals’ tune from 1966 that went to No. 20.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2RxlWaWHAI
Remote Patrol
The Crown
“Paterfamilias” Netflix
If you haven’t been working through Season 2 of this fantastically written and lavishly filmed show, let Season 2’s ninth episode be your inducement. Prince Phllip insists that his eldest son, Charles, not attend a Foppish British secondary school such as Eton College and instead matriculate at a smaller, more spartan Scottish school, which happens to be his alma mater. Through flashbacks we learn how this school shaped his childhood and the devastating, and I mean truly devastating, events that led to his maturation. Part Lord of the Flies, part An Officer and a Gentleman, and better than any Golden Globes-nominaed film I’ve seen.
*The judges will also accept “When They Go Lie, We Go ‘O’
An Oration followed by an Ovation at the Golden Globes last night. Oprah Winfrey received the Cecil B. DeMille Award (“What a tremendous honor for Cecil B. DeMille,” crowed host Seth Meyers) and she did not disappoint in her acceptance speech. In what might be construed not just as a Hollywood call to arms for women but also as an early 2020 presidential campaign speech, Miss O declared, “Their time is up. Their time is up! Their time is up!”
Two minor quibbles: 1) It’s “speaking THE truth,” not “speaking your truth.” Your truth is also known as opinion, and 2) What’s the deal with her, Steadman Graham and Gayle King?
2. Ladies’ Night
Saoirse Ronan won Best Actress
Oprah. Big award hauls for Lady Bird, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri(about the rape and murder of a teenage girl), The Handmaid’s Tale, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Big Little Lies all took home multiple awards.
If Hollywood isn’t contrite, the Hollywood Foreign Press is.
As for our host, Seth Meyers hit a home run. “Good evening, ladies and remaining gentlemen” Meyers began, then said what at least we were thinking by adding, “A special hello to all the host of upcoming awards shows who are watching me tonight like the first dog they shot into outer space.” Then he went directly to, “For the male nominees in the audience, tonight will be the first time in three months it won’t be terrifying to hear your name read out loud.”
Other great monologue moments included The Post gag, kicking Kevin Spacey to the curb (“You lost me at ‘of age'”), and the punch line banter with Amy Poehler.
3. Missing
UPDATE: She’s been found, alive and well. No details yet.
A 29 year-old Houston-based reporter for Rivals.com, Courtney Roland, has now been missing since Saturday evening. Roland last texted her roommate that she believed she was being followed by a suspicious man. Police located her white Jeep Cherokee at the Galleria (a mega-mall) along with her computer and credit cards, but Roland is nowhere to be found.
Roland covers Texas A&M and attended an Aggie elite high school football camp in the Houston area on Saturday. Around 4 p.m. she texted her roomie that a strange man was following her around Walgreens and that he followed her home, then drove away when she arrived at her house. She was supposed to meet up with the roommate but never showed.
This quote/plea from Roland’s father is eerie:
“If somebody has her, we just want to tell them we love you too. And I know Courtney would be praying for you, because that’s the way she was. She cared for other people.”
4. Cam-cussion
When Carolina Panther quarterback Cam Newton is watching The Gorilla Channel every waking hour in 10 to 20 years, let’s remember the night he clearly suffered a concussion on a devastating hit, fell to his knees as he went to the sideline, and then returned after missing only one series. Let’s also remember how Fox announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman (no stranger to QB concussions and thus far, one of the lucky ones) barely even mentioned how reckless this was.
On Friday the NFL announced it was earmarking $16 million-plus toward concussion research. On Sunday night it demonstrated that it was like putting $16 million of blush over a black eye just to hide the fact that your husband is beating you.
5. Conference Play Reveals What’s Real
No. 1 Michigan State lost at Ohio State by 16. No. 2 Duke is in eighth place in the ACC after losing for the second Saturday in a row to an unranked conference foe. No. 4 Arizona State is now in ninth place in the Pac-12 after losing two in a row. Big East rivals Xavier and Villanova could be 1-2 when they meet Wednesday in Philly, even though neither of them are in first place in the Big East: Seton Hall is.
Meanwhile, the Fighting Irish, minus their two All-American candidates, Bonzie Colson and Matt Farrell, won at Syracuse for the first time since 2007. Mike Brey is a very stable genius.
What’s it all mean? There are far too many schools in Division I, and the idea before conference play is to feast on numerous cupcakes and try to be no worse than 12-1 or so when conference play begins. Rankings in CBK are meaningless anyway, but especially so before MLK Day. RPI is what matters.
Music 101
Whip It
Were they from another galaxy? Another century? Turns out Devo hailed from…Ohio. This was the five-man band’s 1980 breakout hit (went to No. 14) that scared parents and even a few teens. Who are these guys? Note relative to the item below: a few of the band members attended Kent State at the same time as Nick Saban.
Remote Patrol
Alabama vs. Georgia
8 p.m. ESPN
The other SEC Championship Game is also the national championship game. This is the same venue where Alabama began its season, versus then No. 3 Florida State. Now the Tide is taking on CFB Playoff No. 3 Georgia. Roll, Tide.
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