Starting Five

1. The aftershocks of Hurricane Clowney continue to reverberate. The South Carolina defensive end’s hit on Michigan’s without-hap Vincent Smith was of the order that immediately when it struck, there was no doubt it was a classic. Both a helmet and a football flew askew, as if Smith were Charlie Brown and someone had just taken his patented slowball pitch back up the middle. This is the type of hit, such as when Alabama’s Cornelius Bennett pulverized Notre Dame quarterback Steve Beurlein in 1986 (the last time the Tide beat the Irish, by the way) that will be remembered for years. Our only question: Why did last night’s SportsCenter put it as the fifth or sixth story? Were they actively teasing us? That’s our only answer. Yes, there were bigger games (Rose Bowl, for one) than the Outback Bowl, but Clowney’s hit is all that anyone was talking about. Noted football scribe and rub aficionado Andy Staples of SI.com wisely focused his entire story on the hit…because that’s what we wanted to know. (Our question: Where are the Vincent Smith quotes? For him the Outback Bowl was nearly the Knockout Back Bowl…okay, we’re stretching on that one).

Attacks this violent are usually seen on Animal Planet.

2. On a Chamber of Commerce day-quality afternoon in Pasadena, Stanford defeats Wisconsin and its throwback coach, Barry Alvarez, in the 99th edition of the Rose Bowl. ESPN squanders a prime opportunity to bill this contest as a battle between schools whose famous alums in other sports found infamy in Las Vegas: Suzy Favor Hamilton versus Tiger Woods. (Note: Cardinal coach David Shaw is 23-4 in two seasons on The Farm; honestly, top academics, the deepest endowment west of Cambridge, Mass., sublime weather, Stewart Mandel on your doorstep, a gorgeous campus: Why would any five-star recruit with an ounce of sense NOT head to Palo Alto? Even Mark Zuckerberg up and moved from Harvard to the area, and he’s no idiot).

3. Why not? Well, yesterday ESPNU aired a practice from the Under Armour All-American Bowl, too (we were quietly hoping for someone to get booted from practice, or at least to see the coaches have the kids do suicides up to the 25-yard line at the end of practice). At one point, probably to quell the drama, they posted a chart of the top five reasons top recruits choose a school. “Academics” was not one of the reasons listed (“Coaches” was the top reason, at 35%). Also not listed, although we believe they play a major role, were “Climate”, “Cool Ass Uniforms”, and “Quality Honeys Like the Ones We Met on Our Official Visit.”

4. As our vehicle was last seen careening toward the Fiscal Cliff, we hopped out a la Harold in Harold and Maude at the last moment and avoided oblivian (or, in Mike Tyson’s case, “Bolivian”). For the moment. The House of Republicans Representatives passed a bill by a vote of 257-167 (which, ironically, was the same spread for the Heart of Dallas Bowl) that will raise taxes on those individuals earning more than $400,000 per year (We’re screwed!). It’s the first time in 20 years taht federal taxes have been raised for any Americans. By the way, how many Americans earn more than $400,000 per year? Less than 2%. Meanwhile, the real problem –cutting spending– will need to be addressed in the next two months. And if you want to sing out, sing out/And if you want to be free, be free…

We’ve always wondered how he was able to leap from the car, save the guitar as well, and it still be in tune…

5. The Clippers lose at Denver, halting their win streak at 17. You sort of saw this coming after a home-and-home with the Salt Lakers (such a superior name to Utah Jazz, no?) and then having to fly back toward, and this time over, the Continental Divide. We’re going to blame it on being in Denver on December 31: New Year’s Rockies Eve!

Reserves

Somehow, we doubt that outside of his family, few people will have empathy for the paparazzo (the singular of paparazzi) who was struck and killed by a vehicle while shooting photos of Justin Bieber’s white Ferrari yesterday. The Biebermobile had just been pulled by the police over on Sepulveda Blvd. near the Getty Center in Los Angeles (we know the road well) but Biebs was not inside. The photographer, a 29 year-old man whose name has not been released, arrived and shot the photos. As he was crossing the road to return to his vehicle, he was hit.

 The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. the NCAA may be even bigger than Alabama vs. Notre Dame. Penn State took the deal, you must remember, but it appears that state officials are lathered up by the fact that the $60 million in fines that the university has agreed to pay Mark Emmert’s association are not being used in the Quaker State itself. Our prediction: this entire harrumphadoodle will wind up costing Pennsylvanians even more money. It may soon be known as, if it is not already, the Commonpoverty of Pennsylvania.

Saw the extended trailer for World War Z post-Orange Bowl last night. The star of the movie appears to be Brad Pitt’s hairstyle (which, suspiciously, looks a lot like Jennifer Aniston’s). Dig it: We unabashedly (with absolutely no bash, not even Dana Bash) loved this zombie apocalypse book and agree with Tweeps who say that it should’ve been a series (a la “Game of Thrones”).

Cinematically, we are trying our best not to be Z-nophobes

The book had too many storylines for a two-hour feature (or even a three-hour feature) that centers on one man and his family. Sure, we should reserve judgment until the film disappoints us, but if the trailer was any harbinger, it already has. That said, we are looking forward to “The Battle of Yonkers.”

In news that relates to both the Clippers and to untimely deaths, the son of  team owner Donald Sterling was found dead at a home in Malibu. Scott Sterling, 32, had not been seen for a couple of days. Investigators, according to the Los Angeles Times, were looking into the death “as a possible drug overdose.”

The Lakers lose at home to the Philadelphia 76ers and Kobe Bryant calls his team “old.” This is not news. Loss Angeles, 15-16, is a team with plenty of chefs but no prep cooks, no kitchen staff, no waiters, no hostesses. You need a little bit of everything to form a successful restaurant.

Starting Five

1. Have yourself Avery Johnson Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on our troubles will be out of—– Screeeeeeeech! The Brooklynettes fire their coach, whom you may remember was named the NBA’ s Coach of the Month way back in, when was it, November? His son, Avery Johnson, Jr., tweets, “I’m sorry are best players couldn’t make open shots…” and “The expectation were way to high…”

Straight outta Brooklyn…

2. It’s hard to dispute this logic: Congress gave itself an extra, what, 18 or so months to solve the fiscal cliff crisis and here we are three days from fiscapocalypse (while Jon Stewart is on hiatus, it is left to us to create newphemisms to describe the political landscape) and they are no closer to a resolution. If we gave them more time and they squandered it, you can understand why so many Americans are loathe to give them more money, i.e., taxes. Congress: Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right/Stuck in middle with you (and a $12 billion difference in settling).

3. The Los Angeles Police Dept. stages a gun buy-back in which 2,037 firearms are taken “off the streets” (or out of Phil Spector’s garage). The weapons cache-for-cash event yielded 40 assault weapons and, yes, someone even turned in a rocket launcher (never knew that Homer Hickam lived in LA). LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the assault weapons (and we assume, rocket launcher, which the LA Times, regrettably, references only once: “Those are weapons of war, weapons of death. These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns.”
All of the weapons will be melted down.

4. San Jose State wins a bowl game in front of an announced crowd of 17,835 at RFK Stadium (“The Military Bowl was filmed before a live studio audience.”). This was the smallest bowl game attendance in seven years. If a bowl game — or any event — has more empty than filled seats, it’s a terrific argument for not re-staging the event. Kudos to SJSU, though, its long-suffering fans and long-suffering Fan (sports info director Lawrence Fan). The Spartans should end the season ranked for the first time since 1975 and finish with 11 wins for the first time since 1940.

The Military Bowl plays out before a Yawning Room Only crowd

5. Retired five-star general Norman Schwarzkopf dies fades away in Tampa at the age of 78. Schwarzkopf dies of natural causes — as do we all.  The ursine commander of Operation Desert Storm was a West Point graduate who volunteered for two terms in Vietnam. His father, who had the same name but only rose to the rank of colonel (as if that’s peanuts), once

Reserves

Would anyone have a problem is Suzy Favor Hamilton simply said, “Why’d I do it? Boredom. Why the hell not?” Sure, being the spokesperson for the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association is cool beans (literally), but maybe she just got tired of being everything that she was expected to be. I guess our question is this: Does she have to be “suffering from depression” to pull an Elisabeth Shue or, more closely, a Diane Lane in Unfaithful? Why does she have to have a condition? And who are we to judge? Illegal. Yes. Ill? You decide.

As Hamilton, she gained fame for excelling at the world’s oldest sport. As Lundy, she gained infamy for excelling at the world’s oldest profession.

The Los Angeles Clippers have won 15 in a row. Yes, Vinny Del Negro is still the coach.

The Alabama quarterback, A.J. McCarron, is dating Miss Alabama, Katherine Webb. Of course he is. Except that Webb graduated from Auburn. She loves him for his efficiency. He loves her for her Webb gems.

Fiscal cliff. Gun debate. It’s not that this nation has never argued among itself before, it’s just that we cannot recall the last time everyone was so implacable. The Polarized States of America, anybody?

So wait a minute? You’re telling us that jumbo pretzel dogs are not healthy???

Midwestern mom, wife, runner and early forties blonde who is also a $600-per-hour escort. That’s Katie McCollow, who–wait, that’s Suzy Favor Hamilton, but they’re awfully similar except for the escort part. Oh, and Katie is gobs funnier and is hopelessly addicted to movies and television, which we love. So Katie and her sister (one of eight siblings) went to see THAT movie yesterday. Here’s her review..

Before I begin, I’d like to throw a quick thank you  for the kind introduction, though whether or not I’m “gobs funnier” than Suzy Favor Hamilton, I’ll leave for the clients to decide.  That’s a picture of me there, on the right. I don’t know why.

So my sister and I snuck away from our lives for 16 hours yesterday to see Les Miserables, The Movie. Let me say right off, I loved it. She hated it. Everything she hated about it, I agreed with. Who can explain love? Fools would try.

Pretty much everyone knows the story, right? I mean I even knew the story, and I never saw the stage musical. Anyway, Hugh Jackman plays Jean Valjean, a guy who spent 19 years in prison for stealing bread. He’s on parole for life, and he’s like “That s*** be cray, I’m tearing up my papers and starting fresh with the help of this nice priest. He was so nice that I promise God to always be nice too.” He changes his identity and becomes successful. Hugh is great. He sings great, he acts great, I totally bought everything he was selling. Russell Crowe plays a mean cop who chases after him and basically catches him about 16 different times, but for one reason or another, Hugh always escapes. Russell Crowe sings much the way I imagine a potato would sing, if a potato could sing. Which they cannot, and neither can he.

Anne Hathway plays Fantine, a girl who works in Hugh’s factory. Her co-workers find out she has a kid out of wedlock, so after an angry sing-along, they get her fired. Hugh is not around when this happens. That’s not even close to the end of Anne’s Bad Day, kids…within about 3 minutes, she gets fired, sells her hair, sells her teeth, becomes a prostitute, sings a show-stopper and dies. Remember that the next time your car won’t start. I plan to put in my living will that no one let me die before I get my show-stopper out. If tragic musicals have taught me anything, it’s that warbling a deathbed ballad can turn the memory of even the most useless sad sack’s life into something heroic. Her showstopper is fierce, people. She kills it. The extreme close-up of her screeching out that song totally worked…so much so, the director does that with everyone in the movie. Everyone sings with the camera basically pointing right at their tonsils, tears streaming down their uncomfortably close, blotchy faces.

Hugh vows to care for Anne’s daughter, once he finds out the injustice of what happened to her. But first, Russell Crowe finds out he’s Jean Valjean, parole-breaker, and Hugh has to make himself scarce. He finds the daughter, Cossette, who lives with Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who is playing the same part she plays in every movie. I think she has one wig, and just brings it to every set she’s on. Hugh pays them money and he and Cosette live an idyllic (but secret) life in a convent together. Russell Crowe sings a song and I see that he has 3 fillings, a surprisingly small amount for a man with such an obvious love of sugary foods.

Meanwhile, unrest abounds. A bunch of handsome teenagers have had enough, and to show how disgruntled they are, they block off a road with a large pile of furniture and sing a bunch of songs in extreme close-up. They are lead by Marius, who has lots of freckles and is secretly rich, but pretends to be poor so his unrest-y friends won’t hate him. Eponine, who is also the daughter of HBC and SBC, loves Marius but Marius loves Cossette, who he has seen once and never actually spoken to. Eponine is sad about this, but after mulling it over through an extreme close-up song and a cleansing rainstorm, comes to realize she might as well pretend to be a boy and join the furniture-fort-making rebels. She is killed, but not before telling Marius where Cosette and her foster father are hiding. Russell Crowe sings again. It was at this point my sister began letting out audible yawns and looking around grumpily at the other movie goers, before settling her angry glare on me, as if it were my fault she had shelled out 7 dollars to have her senses raped for three hours. This gave me the church-giggles, which kept hold of me pretty much for the rest of the movie, yet in no way diminished my enjoyment of it.

Back to the story: All hell breaks lose, as the handsome teenagers unsuccessfully try to defend their furniture pile but wind up dead instead; all except Marius, who is saved by Jean Valjean because JVJ knows Cossette loves him. The way he saves Marius is by dragging him through a disgusting, excrement-filled sewer. Jean Valjean’s work is done, and he disappears again. We endure another song from Russell Crowe and he jumps to his death, defeated by Hugh Jackman’s goodness.

Marius goes back to being rich (presumably because all his poor but idealistic friends are dead and the furniture-fort thing didn’t work out) and he and Cossette get married. Cut to Jean Valjean, who is now dying, though he was in perfectly robust health just one scene previous–clearly that jaunt through the sewer is to blame. Cossette and Marius find him just in time to say their tearful, grateful, goodbyes, and Jean Valjean is escorted into heaven by Fantine’s happy ghost. I bawl. A large crowd of French peasants sing a rousing song of freedom, joined by the ghosts of everyone in the movie, and I bawl some more.

I’m getting more heat for loving this movie than I am for wanting to take everyone’s assault rifles away. Some samples:

From MJ: I dreamed a dream I saw The Hobbit. The beginning of the dream coincided  with the beginning of hour 23 of Les Mis. I almost offered to play with the fussy baby the guy in front of us was holding just for something to do. Close up close up close up of:

From Fran: Just saw Les Miserables, or as I like to call it, “Russell Crowe And His Friends Try To Kill Me With Song.”

Starting

1. Let’s begin with, in the words of Chris Kattan, “A pop quiz…a little quiz!” Who was Christmas Snow ( answer below… do resist the temptation to Google)?

2. “To face unafraid/The plans that we’ve made/Walking in a winter wonderland…” The word “unafraid” always freaks us out. Why do we need to introduce the element of fear into a Christmas carol? While we’re on the topic of Christmas tunes, it is “Heat Miser” and “Snow Miser” not “Heat Meister” as I’ve heard some say or “Cold Miser”. The Year Without a Santa Claus made its debut in 1974. I was eight years old and was quite certain I had never seen a Christmas special anything like it.

“I’m Mr. Green Christmas/I’m Mr. Sun/I’m Mr. Heat Blister/I’m Mr. Hundred and one…”

“I’m Mr. White Christmas/I’m Mr. Snow/I’m Mr. Icicle/I’m Mr. Ten below…”

3.  Seattle 42, San Francisco 13, or as we are calling it, “What’s Your Deal? II: NFL Boogaloo”. In 2009 Harbaugh’s Cardinal defeated Carroll’s USC Trojans 55-21, easily the most emphatic defeat in Carroll’s legendary SoCal tenure.  The post-game handshake was a classic. The following year Carroll was off to Seattle, and the year after that Harbaugh joined him in the NFC West as the coach of the 49ers. In their three meetings as NFL coaches, Harbaugh’s Niners had won each game.

Last night, however, in the NFL’s loudest stadium, Carroll exacted revenge with a 29-point win. And he did it on Harbaugh’s 49th birthday. If you think about it, Harbaugh had owned Carroll since arriving on The Farm in 2007. There was the upset that year at the Coliseum, when USC entered as 40-point favorites. The following season USC won in Palo Alto, but what I’ll always remember is Harbaugh having the Card air it out, down 29 points in the final seconds, simply so that Stanford could beat the 23-point spread (the Cardinal did, scoring a TD on the game’s final play to make the final margin 45-23… even funnier, the announcer — I believe it was Brent; it had to be Brent — slyly noted that Harbaugh had just made a few folks in Nevada very unhappy.

Last night, Carroll finally struck a blow and made this a rivalry. And what a perfect rivalry for a league that sorely needs one. Seattle vs. San Francisco. Starbucks vs. Peet’s. Microsoft vs. Apple. Rain vs. Fog.

4. As Robert Palmer might say, “She’s so fine/There’s no telling where the money went…”

5. Christmas Snow? Jack Tripper’s roomie… hung out at the Regal Beagle… never realized Mr. Roper had installed a hidden camera in the shower: Chrissy Snow. Her father, the Rev. Snow, had named her Christmas.

xx

Starting Five

1. Como se dice, “Epic fail” in Mayan?

2. Kelly Lundy? Nine-time NCAA champion and three-time Olympic middle-distance runner Suzy Favor Hamilton is a hooker. Hamilton charged up to $600 an hour under the nom de concubine Kelly Lundy as an employee of Haley Heston’s Private Collection. In the story broken by The Smoking Gun, Favor Hamilton lamented that one of her johns broke the “code of silence” between “providers” (escorts) and “hobbyists” (clients) while failing to mention that he also broke the time-honored bro code of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” SI senior writer and “personal demons” beat reporter Gary Smith is already checking the batteries in his tape recorder, we have to think. Honestly, we admire Favor Hamilton for owning up to this as candidly as she did, though the quote “My husband wasn’t supportive of this at all” was a little bit odd.

Just a wholesome Midwest mom…

3. Speaker of the House/Nothing up his sleeve/Gonna keep us Cliff’in’/Up to New Year’s Eve…Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) cancels the Plan B vote in the House due to lack of support, which is rather curious since the House is a majority Republican body.

 4. The National Rifle Association stepped up to the podium on Friday morning and suggested that we need to have armed guards at schools. More guns — and more training — whether or not you agree with the solution, would likely to translate to more income for people who manufacture arms and weapons-related training, many of whom, we assume, are some of the most ardent supporters of the NRA.

5. ESPN serves Rob Parker with a one-month suspension. But it fails to answer the question of why it allows such an assclown to pollute its air in the first place. Bob Ley, speak to us. What’s going on here?