Starting Five

Oh, it’s happening alright. It began in Boston last night — the 238th anniversary of the night in this city when Paul Revere and William Dawes rode out of town to warn the colonists that the British were coming to Concord to seize the American arsenal (apparently, after I tweeted out this info last night, Ann Coulter retweeted it).  In 2013 Revere and Dawes have been replaced by Twitter, where information –some of it inaccurate, as we will see (and some of it disseminated by yours truly, but obviously involuntarily) — travels faster than the speed of television news. Here are some items.

Twitter’s founding father?

1. You have to deduce that last night’s events were incited by the 5 p.m. press conference in which law enforcement released video and still photos of the two unidentified suspects at large. Within hours the fugitives had ambushed and killed an MIT police officer (since identified by the Boston Globe as 26 year-old Sean Collier), robbed a convenience store and committed a car-jacking Some time shortly before midnight my friend Ken Fowler, a Notre Dame alum and a third-year law student at Duke, sent me a link to live coverage of the events unfolding in Watertown. At the time –and misinformation was flying as furiously as bullets — police units were reporting IED’s being tossed from the vehicle and “hand grenades.” It’s still too early to know precisely what happened, but this timeline from the New York Times is a trove of information.

2. What I got wrong (some of the information came first-hand from the Boston police scanner and eyewitnesses): The young man lying on his stomach, arms extended over his head and being held at gunpoint by police, was never a suspect. That video and photo ran on television and was all over Twitter… the missing Brown student, Sunil Tripathi and another young man, Mike Muguleta, were identified as the suspects. It turns out that they were not.

The savage brothers? Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The latter was killed in a police shootout last night.

3. CNN’s Anderson Cooper is obviously the news network’s leading on-air personality. On Wednesday afternoon Cooper was reporting from Boston, but by Thursday night Cooper had flown to West, Texas, to cover the deadly explosion from the fertilizer plant that claimed more lives. CNN should never have dispatched him there. The story was always in Boston as long as the suspects were on the loose. Guessing that Cooper is miffed about having missed the story of the year.

Two pics: On the left, you see Martin Richard and what appears to be the younger suspect. As well as the backpack.

4. According to CNN the younger suspect, still at large, is a graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public high school in Cambridge, Mass. Notable alumni include Matt Damon, Patrick Ewing, Rumeal Robinson, two other pairs of brothers — Ben and Casey Affleck and Tom and Ray Magliozzi (the hosts of NPR’s “Car Talk”), poet E.E. Cummings, and former Baywatch actress Traci Bingham.

5. CNN’s Judy Woodruff is NOT happy with her camera crew for shooting footage of police units moving in Watertown. I’d hazard a guess that the TV news media is trying to cooperate with law enforcement in not giving away any tactical positions or movements, as the remaining known suspect is at large and may be watching TV.

Reserves

Here is a photo essay on the older brother, a Golden Gloves champion (CNN’s Don Lemon referred to him as a “Golden Globes boxing champion” but, hey, we’ve all made mistakes this week), from back when he was using his time more constructively.

I’ve not been watching non-stop, but has anyone seen John King on CNN since Wednesday afternoon’s fiasco?

Sea World (SEAS) has its IPO this morning. We hear that none of the marine mammal employees were offered shares in the company.

Half of the creatures in this picture are shareholders

Agree or disagree, but nobody makes a more cogent and hilarious argument than Jon Stewart (and his writing staff). He just destroys the senators who voted against background checks here.

A “Fly By Night” Outfit

The Canadian trio Rush (and others) were at long last inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night. The ceremony was held in Los Angeles. The pr0g-rockers were inducted by Dave Grohl, who is to R&R induction ceremonies what Teddy Atlas is to televised fights. The band finally took the stage at the Nokia Theater –to rousing applause — and played face-melting versions of Tom Sawyer and The Spirit of Radio.

“Begin the day with a friendly voice/A companion unobtrusive” The only known use of “unobtrusive” in rock annals.

$389 per share?!?! How do you like them AAPLs?

For what it’s worth: There are 30 companies that comprise the Dow Jones Index (DJI), all of them quite monolithic, huge American corporations (e.g., General Electric, Exxon). Apple, which is not in the Dow Jones Index, has more cash than any of them. The stock price of Apple has dipped more than $300 per share, more than 40%, since September. One metric –and not the only one– for measuring stocks’ values against one another is to compare their Price-to-Earnings (P/E) ratio, a unit that takes the value of the stock and divides it by the actual value of the company (more or less). In other words, how much more than the company’s actual worth investors are willing to pay for it.

iRate…at his company’s floundering leadership.

Apple (AAPL) is trading this morning at 8.8 times earnings. Its P/E is 8.8. Only two companies on the DJI are trading at a lower P/E than that: Chevron and JP Morgan. The 28 others are trading at a higher P/E, which translates to investors being more bullish about where those companies are heading. We may be looking back at this week, when AAPL fell below $400 per share, and wondering why anyone would not buy AAPL at this insane discount. Or we may be seeing a company in the early throes of its demise.

In news that seemed like forever ago, Tiger Woods’ former caddie, Steve Williams, believes that Woods should have been disqualified from The Masters. Williams, whose golf acumen is a little (a lot) better than mine, lays out the same argument that I did on Monday.

O Captain, My Captain!

Derek Jeter will be out until the All-Star break. As will A-Rod. Jeter and Mariano Rivera last shared a box score was April 30, 2012, in a 2-1 defeat of the Orioles in the Bronx. DJ went 1 for 4 and Mo got the save.

DJ will be MIA for awhile.

Starting Five

Early morning with the beef and spuds, so this will be quick…

1. “Doc is here? Doc is not here?”

CNN –and the Associated Press– (basically, everyone except NBC’s Pete Williams) went all vintage Johnny Carson asking whether or not Doc Severinsen was leading the band that night in their reportage of the arrest/non-arrest of a suspect in the Boston bombing case yesterday. No arrests as of this moment. No one in custody. (Also, check out the avatar of my man @bomani_jones on Twitter. Well done)

“Pete Williams is saying what?”

2. I tweeted out a chain of photos from Reddit yesterday that showed a few people standing near the finish line with black backpacks. Men whose actions might have seemed suspicious. A GIF of a man racing from the blast. According to Reddit, these men are not suspects and are in fact innocent. Make of it what you will. I’ll be over here reading The Ox-Bow Incident.

3. The U.S. Senate votes 54-46 against a bill that would have made it mandatory to have background checks for firearm purchases made at gun shows and over the internet. President Obama calls it “a shameful day for Washington.”

4. An explosion at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas (not far from Waco) levels scores of homes within a five-block area and leaves at least 15 dead. Somehow Erin Brunette and Dr. Sanjay Gupta –both of whom must live in a hangar for a private jet — were on the scene within hours of the blast.

5. Thoughts and prayers to the Utah Jazz and their fans…

Starting Five

1. Boston

A few thoughts: No one has claimed responsibility, and whoever perpetrated this act (working solo or more than one person) was not a suicide bomber, i.e., he/she/they were not about dying for their cause…. hence the odds increase that whoever did this is acting more as a lone wolf… there were too many people taking too many photos and shooting too much video of the finish line area; the bomber is on someone’s camera… Did the bomber plant the bag there for maximum media affect? So that the crime would be televised?… My heart goes out to the three people who lost their lives –and their families– but also to the people who suffered life-altering injuries, particularly loss of limbs. People such as Jeff Bauman, 27, (below), who was there to watch his girlfriend run. Particularly cruel… Boston is a university-infested city, drawing students from all over the world. You will recall that the Virginia Tech gunman and the Denver theater gunman were disaffected college students at or near the time that they committed their mass murders. Is it anything? Maybe not. Is the FBI looking into it? No doubt.

Bauman would lose both of his lower legs to the blast.

The woman who appeared on both the covers of Tuesday’s New York Daily News and  New York Post  (I’ll leave it to you to speculate as to why) is Nicole Gross, a former swimmer at the University of Tennessee. Gross, 31, a personal trainer at the Charlotte Athletic Club, suffered a broken leg and ankle. Her sister, Erika Brannock, 29, had to have one leg amputated below the knee.  They were both there to watch their mother, Carol Downing, 57, who was running the marathon.

Gross (right) and her mom, Carol, before the race.

2. Au, Shucks

You know what is not worth its weight in gold? Gold! Earlier this week the most precious of all metals endured its worst two-day sell off in 30 years, plunging to a two-year low of $1,321 per ounce (which, according to this story, would make it cheaper than cocaine… which you cannot legally invest in). Anyway, the price of gold has already dipped 18% this year.

I have some bad news for you…

3. A few pearls of wisdom courtesy of a recent Rolling Stone interview with comic Louis CK. On putting in the years versus being an overnight success: “It’s understandable for people to want all their favorite things to happen, but the crazy thing is to think that they can avoid all of the hard things. To want everything that you ever dreamed of, to the exclusion of anything hard, that feels common to me now in a way that is hurting people. They’re ignoring how much good there is in being present for the hardest parts of your life…the worst thing happening to this generation is that they’re taking discomfort away from themselves.”

On our reaction to violence (and remember, this interview took place over a month ago): “What most people do with these events that happen, the violence in our country, is really disgusting, which is to pore over it. Everyone congratulates each other about how upset they are…every time there’s a tragedy in America, there’s all this gawky fascination and a lot of (***in’) exploitation. There’s a lot of (****in’ ) Nancy Grace…”

4. Just so everyone knows. This is Adam Scott, Masters champion, Aussie, and studly bachelor. And this is Adam Scott, actor (“Party Down”, “Parks & Rec”) who is not Aussie but who is kind of a leading man. Earlier this week the latter went on Conan to let everyone know he’d heard enough of the jokes. So, Are we having fun yet?

5. Final night of the NBA’s regular season. For 14 of the league’s 30 franchises, it’s “Win or Lose and Go Home.” What to watch for: Golden State’s Stephen Curry, who has buried 16 three-pointers in the past two games, needs just two more to break the NBA single-season record of 269 set by Ray Allen in 2006. The Warriors visit Portland, who have lost 12 straight contests by an average margin of 14.5 points per game. Ouch.

The East Bay’s most accurate shooter since Rick Barry

Reserves

A beaver is not a creature to be trifled with. A 60 year-old man in Belarus was killed last week when attempting to take a photograph with one and while this video is of a separate beaver attack, you can sort of get the picture why it’s best to avoid them.

We also recommend avoiding Biebers

Farewell to Pat Summerall, 82. Before he teamed up with John Madden to create arguably the best broadcast duo in NFL history, Summerall and Tom Brookshier created the NFL highlight show genre with “This Week in the NFL.” Here they are doing the open for Super Bowl XII, Dallas versus Denver, in New Orleans.

“Could I BEEE any less excited?” NBC is bringing Friends back for a full season. In 2014. I was wondering what had happened to Gunther.

Can I buy a vowel because O. My. God!

Remote Patrol

Utah Jazz vs. Memphis Grizzlies

Houston Rockets vs. Los Angeles Lakers

ESPN, 8 and 10:30 p.m.

If the Jazz win, then the Lakers must defeat Houston in order to make the playoffs. If the Jazz lose, the Lakers are not only in but could overtake the Rockets for the seventh spot in the Western Conference by defeating them. Either way, both sides draw either Oklahoma City or San Antonio, so good luck with that.

The Lakers opened the season 0-3 and it seems as if they’ve been chugging uphill to make the playoffs ever since. It all comes down to this evening, a home contest versus the playoff-bound Houston Rockets at Staples. If the Utah Jazz lose earlier in the night at Memphis, then the outcome here becomes irrelevant. If the Jazz win, though, L.A. must beat playoff-bound Houston in order to qualify.

Starting Five

1. BOOM!

Yes, the tragedy on Boylston Street is horrific. Three dead, 144 wounded. Awful and outrageous. We’ll get to that. Meanwhile, last Friday in Washington, D.C., your congressional “leaders” repealed the STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) Act. Unanimously. The act, passed last year, would have required federal employees earning more than $119,000 a year to disclose their financial dealings in an online database as a means of preventing insider trading by powerful, well-connected government officials.

At the time President Obama said, “The idea that everybody plays by the same rules is one of our most cherished  American values. It’s the notion that the powerful shouldn’t get to create one  set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for everybody else, and if  we expect that to apply to our biggest corporations and to our most successful  citizens, it certainly should apply to our elected officials—especiarlly at a  time when there is a deficit of trust between this city and the rest of the  country.”

I’m trying to find the E-Trade statement that proves I bought Netflix last summer.

According to official records the bill was passed within 10 seconds of being introduced in the Senate and within 14 seconds of being introduced in the House. If there were a 24-second clock on Congressional bills…

Why so fast? Why no debate? Do you want to be the Congressman who goes on record saying that you are in favor of keeping the public in the dark as to how you are turning your $174,000 salary into an annual income that is five to ten times that? Those words will come back to haunt you come election time. But damn if that bill didn’t get passed unanimously and quick.

Now it’s up to President Obama to put his money where his mouth was last year and veto it. It will probably still pass –they obviously have the votes — so Obama will likely veto it knowing that his veto is immaterial here. Will he raise public awareness of it, though?

Full disclosure: government officials must still disclose dealings of greater than $1,000 within 45 days of the transaction, but it will no longer be available on an on-line database. It’s just going to be that much harder to locate this publicly available info. Then again, some public advocacy group will likely create a website that makes all this information readily available on-line to you and I, won’t they? So what was the point of Congress’ action?

2. “We’ve had an attack” — Steve Silva, videographer

You know the details. We had the most evocative photo and the most salient video and the name of the runner who stumbled up on this site yesterday afternoon, long before the cable and network news channels had them. Not because I am a terrific investigative reporter, but rather because I pay attention to Twitter. Instead of rehashing the event — we all saw what happened — I’ll ask some questions and make some observations designed to provoke thought.

— It’s 9 a.m. on the East Coast and we all know that an eight year-old boy was killed and that his name was Martin Richard. That’s truly sad. He was cheering on his father, who was running the marathon, and the family is from Dorchester, Mass. His sister lost her leg. We also know that two other people were killed but we know nothing about them. Male or female? Adult or children? White or not? Isn’t it incumbent upon the news channels to at least inform us that they have no specifics about whom the other two victims are at this time? If they don’t know, they should inform viewers. If they do know, they should not single out the eight year-old boy as if his life were more valuable. It does draw in viewers, though, doesn’t it? (UPDATE: I just heard Lester Holt say, “One of the three dead, an eight year-old.”)

Moment of the blast

— What is “terror”? Besides being an alarmist term, I mean? From what we hear it no longer takes a group with the amassed scientific skills of the Manhattan Project to develop a pipe bomb. No one knows who perpetrated this act. It may have been a foreigner or a domestic with a political agenda. It just as easily could have been a nihilist like Adam Lanza, who killed far more people last December. Is it terror if you use a bomb instead of a gun? Is it terror if you target a well-known site or event as opposed to a school? A crime is a crime is a crime is a crime. What’s “terror” got to do with it?

–Last night I was combing through columns looking for one that captured the pathos and gravity of yesterday’s heinous crime and a city’s resilience (I’m like a poor man’s Richard Deitsch; literally). The best story I found was writtenby Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.

— I know, I know, I know. It’s far down the list of “what’s important.” But I’ll mention it. Extremely Handsome Man Adam Scott won the Masters on Sunday (Clay Travis described him as “The man your wife or girlfriend would rather be with than you”) and the glistening rain combined with his killer biceps would make for a great Sports Illustrated cover. On the other hand, Boston occurred on Monday afternoon for a magazine that closes on Monday night. And I’ll add that managing editor Christian Stone is a Tufts alumnus (assistant managing editor Steve Cannella is a Boston College graduate). I’ll be curious to see how SI handles this from a cover perspective.

—Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe columnist: “This was as if someone came into your living room and attacked you.” True. And you can ask the native Americans who lived in what is now Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island between the years 1620 and 1650 how that feels. Read Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Mayflower” some day when you get the chance.

–Days such as yesterday remind us how much more valuable our time is spent devoting ourselves to careers that help make the world a better place. The police, the first responders, the doctors and nurses who worked tirelessly through the night attempting to save lives and limbs. None of them lose any sleep wondering if they are happy or not, I bet. Something for younger readers to think about and consider.

–The 78 year-old runner who stumbled and fell at the moment of the blast, Bill Iffrig, rose and finished the race in less than 4 hours and 10 minutes. He finished second in his age group and a 4:10 at that age is incredible. Said Iffrig, “When you get that close to the end of the marathon, you’re going to finish.” Good for him. Iffrig, who has been on the earth some seven decades more than Martin Richard lived, was probably no more than 10-15 yards away from Richard when he was killed. That’s life. It’s not supposed to make any sense.

— “Thoughts and prayers.” I apparently incited a furor on Twitter amongst some of my (former) followers for suggesting that a tweet of “thoughts and prayers” is a hollow act of piety. Last summer, in the premiere episode of “The Newsroom”, anchorman Will McAvoy rolls his eyes while reporting on the BP oil spill after a second corporation sends out a release noting that its “thoughts and prayers go out to the victims.” My point isn’t that people tweeting such thoughts do not care; it’s that typing those words, from an emotional standpoint, is the equivalent of the $20 gift certificate as a Christmas present. It’s tantamount to a Costanzan donation in your name to the Human Fund. It’s the most convenient and unimaginative form of grief. It is boilerplate.

And let’s be honest: Is this grief? Did you know these victims? Or do you just feel the need to be involved because you “saw it on the TEEEE-VEEEE?” Nobody with a heart is anything but devastated when watching the video, and knowing that innocent people lost their lives and limbs in that attack. But “thoughts and prayers” translates, at least to me, as you wanting the world to know that you have a compassionate soul. Last night I read a tweet from actor Wendell Pierce. He wrote, “Prayers of peace to the world. Peace of spirit to those around the world who have lost a loved one to violence today. May you be blessed.”

See what Wendell did there? He actually conveyed both a thought and a prayer.

— Yes, April. Specifically, mid-April. The hour of Waco, Columbine, Oklahoma City, Virginia Tech, and yes, Lexington and Concord. And now Boston. It is one of the best months of the year, the true advent of spring and the regeneration of life in the natural kingdom. So why has it developed this notoriety for nihilism and violence?

3. Mad Men

You are welcome to your opinion, but for me the show is at least three times better when it focuses on the spreadsheets as opposed to what’s going on between the sheets. The philandering of Don Draper and Pete Campbell plays a role in the narrative, but the office scenes are magic. They are Sun-Tzu meets the Wernham Hogg Paper Company.

Roger Sterling does not appear in Sunday’s episode until it is two-thirds over, and before he even utters a line, his admiring grin during the meeting between SCDP and Jaguar may be the show’s most rewarding moment. Roger’s smirk says it all: Look at Don Draper talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, overtly obeying the craven request of a New Jersey Jaguar dealer — a slimy creep whom he loathes — to persuade the corporate overlords to refocus their campaign locally while simultaneously destroying the idea with the words he uses. Roger’s admiring grin is the same one you and I are wearing at home, marveling at the brilliance of the scene.

And to think that the dealer tells Pete Campbell afterward, “He’s (Don’s) no salesman!” HA!

When Roger finally has a chance to talk to Don, in Don’s office, he says, “That may be the finest act of self-immolation I have ever seen.” Don: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then Pete enters and admonishes Don: “Why can’t you just play by the rules?” Don, who can be so idealistic and ethical professionally (and when it comes to Joan), locates a metaphor and tells Roger and Pete, “This is Munich.” Pete, decade or so younger than his veteran/military veteran partners, replies, “You guys are always talking about Munich. What the hell does that mean?”

Roger: “It means we gave the Germans whatever they wanted to make them happy, but it just made them want more (a syndrome that Megan Draper and Trudy Campbell can relate to).”

And then Pete’s retort: “Well, who the hell won the war?”

If that isn’t the most Pete Campbell thing ever said, I don’t know what is.

It’s a perfect television moment, from the board meeting –where Don suggests putting Jaguar fliers in the Sunday paper– to this confab in Don’s office. Mad Men does not get any better than that. What series could?

4. The HBO comedy special, Oh My God, a taping of Louis CK’s concert last February in Phoenix, Ariz., premiered over the weekend. If you had to introduce a stranger to the mind of Louis CK in just one bit, you’d want to refer him to “Of Course, But Maybe.”

5. Now, a treat. My 18 year-old niece, Kristen, a college freshman at Loyola Marymount, attended the Coachella Music festival last weekend. Like all writers who contribute to this site, she is more talented than its founder. Here’s Kristen’s report on her weekend of music and mayhem in the desert:

Coachella Vs. The College Student

by Kristen Walters

        Midterms, all-nighters, weekends, finals, parties, 20-page research papers. I consider myself to be an expert at all of these—just try and test me. I have Red Bull running through my bloodstream, I drink coffee like it is water, and sleep is basically non-existent. It seems as though nothing can stop me! I can’t be tamed!

            Nothing can stop me, besides Coachella, that is. I finally met my match this past weekend when I attended the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival held in Indio, CA.

“We are young/So we’ll set the world on fire…”

            Let me start by saying that when I was at Coachella, I felt like I was on another planet (And no, I was not on ‘shrooms). Different types of live music everywhere I turned, so many young people just having the times of their lives, and even that picturesque ferris wheel that lights up the sky—it all creates an atmosphere unlike anything I have ever experienced.

            But not everything about Coachella is out of a dream. For instance, the plethora of hipsters roaming the grounds with their pretentious attitudes was straight out of a nightmare. I actually never minded the whole hipster thing until Coachella. To all the people hipper-than-I: Yes, I know you heard of them before me. Yes, I know I only know the words to that one hit song that’s overplayed on the radio. Yes, I am aware of how upset you are that this band is now becoming too mainstream.

            Also—a side note: I could have done without the girls in the flower head bands. This is not the 70’s and you are not at Woodstock, you are in the Sahara tent dancing to music that is made from a guy pressing buttons on his Mac.

            One other thing—put your phone away. I will never understand why people insist on recording the entire set on their iPhone. First of all, I assure you there are professionals taking pictures and videos that will be of much better quality than yours. Second, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are right in front of you! (And you are missing it because you’re so focused on your videotaping).  But at least you have that one video, right? I too would much rather have that video—that I will never look at again—than have actually enjoyed the moment and the music. I also love having your raised videotaping hand block my view the entire show. Love it.

(Editor’s Note: So my 18 year-old niece is Louis CK; I could not be prouder)

            People are so obsessed with their phones that at Coachella there is actually a charging station. Here, I stumbled upon a group of people sitting around outlets charging their phones. As I walked by, I could just feel their intense pain. 20% battery left? What an atrocity! It seems as though they would rather die than let their phones die.  

Karen O. of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

            But despite this, I have only good things to take away from my Coachella experience. Thousands upon thousands of people and I didn’t find myself waiting in line for a bathroom or for a bite to eat (by the way, the food was overpriced, but awesome). Let’s just say they really had their stuff together.

            There are six different tents/stages at the festival, including the main stage. All day long, bands and artists of all genres of music are performing. The great thing about Coachella is that one moment I was watching Band of Horses (an indie rock band), then I could go over and witness the wonderful talent known as 2 Chainz ( a rapper? I think), and then from that I could go into a tent where a DJ, such as Wolfgang Puck, is playing music and everyone’s dancing and going crazy. When there was no one performing I particularly knew of, I walked around to the different stages and found myself discovering new music everywhere I went. There is definitely something for everyone at Coachella.

The Not-Far-From-San-Diego Chargers

            I would describe Coachella as a three-day party. I could also describe it simply as a college kid’s dream and a parent’s worst nightmare. It’s non-stop all day and you are either ready for it or you’re not. I brought all my energy—which is a lot—and at the end of each day I was completely drained. And by the end of that third night it was clear Coachella got the best of us.

            After having lived through three days of Coachella and all of its glory, we college students went from hyped, eager, wide-eyed animals dancing everywhere we went, to zombies literally covered in a layer of dust (thanks to a sandstorm that swept through Sunday night) walking slowly in unison toward the shuttles that would take us away from this dreamlike place forever. Or until next year, at least. I would go every year if I could. There really is nothing like it. I’m still trying to process it all.

            But I did find the college student’s kryptonite: 3-day music festivals. I have to give Coachella props because it might be the ONE thing on earth that can wear a college student out. Thousands upon thousands of them, at that.

Coachella: 1. College Student:0. 

            And I didn’t even camp.

“There is no such thing as a good tax.”

–Winston Churchill

 Starting Five

1. Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About

Boston Marathon. Patriots’ Day.  The finish line clock read 4:09:44 when presumably a bomb was detonated less than 100 yards or so short of the finish line, just outside of the Marathon Sports store. The explosion occurred just to the left of the course and you’ve probably already seen the video. But this is THE VIDEO, at least thus far. A second explosion occurred about 150 yards up Boylston Street, in that same final .2 mile of the famed 26.2-mile race.

This iconic photo shows Boston P.D. reacting with the strongest sense of purpose, and looming over the runner who fell to the pavement in the immediate aftermath of the concussive blast. It will probably win a Pulitzer Prize.

Photo by John Tlumacki, Boston Globe. The runner is Bill Iffrig, 78.

There are deaths. And there is dismemberment. Precisely how many of each are unknown at this moment. One eyewitness reported that “Somebody’s leg flew by my head.”

Deaths. Lost limbs. Horrific, of course. “Thoughts and prayers”, isn’t that what we are supposed to tweet? Another April day and another descent into madness. Waco. Oklahoma City. The Virginia Tech shooting, which took place simultaneously with the 2007 Boston Marathon (a male victim’s female sibling was actually running Boston at the time he was murdered.

Such events no longer occur in a vacuum. They occur and, whether by design of the perpetrators or not, they seize command of Twitter, cable news and even network news. We tweet out “thoughts and prayers” because it’s happening in our living room, via computer or television. And because they’re either American or on our side. Twenty bombs and 37 dead in Iraq today, too, but we’re all kind of over that.

It’s almost as if whoever commits the heinous crime takes a line from that Bonnie Raitt song, as if a bored and stagnant nation needed something to be horrified or indignant about. But then nobody detonates a bomb when the LIBOR scandal happens, now do they?
You cannot commit a crime such as the one committed on Boylston Street today without gaining both fame and infamy, even if it is only in Warhol-ian time increments. And we should be wondering just how much that truth plays into the motivation to commit the crime in the first place.

2. Tiger Woods Improves His Lie

It’s not complicated. Here are the salient points worth making over Tiger Woods’ 2nd-round visit to Amen Corner last Friday:

1.) Nothing about Tiger’s past, on or off the golf course, is relevant in terms of discussing this issue.

2.) Golf rules may be arcane and silly and redolent of a time when Ward sat down the Beaver and explained to him that sometimes the difficult thing to do is the best thing to do. And, yes, it’s 2013. But the rules of golf are the rules of golf and no one altered them between Friday morning and Saturday afternoon. If you don’t believe me, ask Guan Tianlang.

3) Tiger Woods hit, fittingly for him, too perfect an approach shot on 15. His ball actually struck the stick, and then ricocheted backward onto the slanted green before rolling into the pond. Tiger essentially has two choices here. He can draw a line between the hole and the point that the ball went into the pond and place his ball anywhere BEHIND the point the ball entered the pond extending as far back as he wants, OR… he can drop a ball “as near as possible” to the place where he struck the approach shot. Since that shot left a divot, it’s not too difficult for Tiger to locate that spot.

4.) Tiger chose option No. 2, which is fine. Except that he placed the ball about two yards, or six feet, or the body length of a slightly taller than average adult male, behind his previous shot. We not only know that Tiger did this but why he did it: to improve his lie. And how do we know this? Because Tiger said so himself in his post-round press conference: “I went back to where I played it from, but I went 2 yards further back and I took, tried to take 2 yards off the shot of what I felt I hit.”

5). At this point, if it were a trial and Aaron Sorkin were writing the script, a blue-eyed Lt. Daniel Kaffee would have stepped in and exposed the fatal flaw of Tiger’s syllogism: If men follow your orders and you ordered them not to touch Private Santiago, then why would you have him moved because you felt he was in danger? If moving the ball — no matter in what direction — to improve your lie is a violation that results in a disqualification, and if the rules of golf attest that you must self-report any transgressions, and if as you just stated, you “went two yards further back” in order to gain a competitive advantage, what are you still doing in this tournament?

6) You like watching Tiger play Augusta. I like watching Tiger play Augusta. CBS and the Masters LOVE seeing Tiger play the Masters. None of that should have mattered. By allowing Tiger Woods to continue — the ticky-tackiness of the foul, again, is irrelevant here; this is the business that golf has chosen — all golf did was become the latest institution (standing proudly with the Justice Dept.) to demonstrate that money trumps justice. That, as George Orwell put it so bluntly in “Animal Farm”, “Some animals are more equal than others.”

Here’s what Dave Kindred thought and here’s what Cameron Morfit offered. For a contrary opinion –and a surprisingly weak argument from a gifted writer –here’s what SI’s Michael Rosenberg wrote.

Is it the death of golf? No. The lowest moment of Woods’ career? Hardly. But it is another step down a treacherous path for this nation, this generation, one that values convenient short-term solutions to hard-won principles. When you start placing the importance of certain individuals (those with money, power and/or celebrity) over ideas and principles, look out.

Remember one of the very first scenes from the first episode in the first season of “Game of Thrones”? When Ned Stark, as the Lord of Winterfell,  beheads the deserter even though he does not want to do it, even though he can see the deserter may have had a valid reason to desert the Night’s Watch? Ned beheads the criminal and tells his son, “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”

Am I overreacting? It was just a golf shot. Maybe. Then again, maybe winter is coming.

3. Speaking of Game of Thrones, here’s the update on Jaime Lannister: He’s gone from handsome to handless. At least one of them (then again, as Elaine Benes might say, “Not the face. Anywhere but the face.”) There was some important right-hand symbolism taking place last night on GoT. Lannister lost his after, oddly enough, coming to the rescue of Lady Brienne. Meanwhile, sister/co-parent Cersei made a prolonged and quite overt demonstration at a council meeting, showing the trio of wise men that both literally and symbolically she sits at the right hand of the father, Tywin Lassiter.

Jamie Lannister: “Call me ‘Lefty’.”

The theme of the show: Money isn’t everything — unless you are the Master of Coin. All of his daddy’s money cannot save Jaime Lannister’s hand –taking the swash out of his buckle — and in fact it probably incited his captor to chop it off. And Kaleesi finds that no amount of money will purchase 8,000 castrated warriors –but one dragon will.

Simply put, GoT is excellent. There’s fantasy and swords, etc, but there’s also realism in the shape of Tyrion Lannister discovering that his nephew’s kingdom is in fabulous, grand debt — and no one in Westeros has ever heard of collateralized derivatives or credit-default swaps.

4. Through 13 career starts Met pitcher Matt Harvey has a 2.21 ERA and a nearly three-to-one strikeouts-to-walks ratio (70 to 26). Last Saturday the New Jersey native took a no hitter into the seventh inning at Minnesota. Harvey, 24, struck out 11 in just 5 1/3 innings in his Major League debut at Arizona last July. He is 3-0 this season with a 0.82 ERA and an MLB-best WHIP of 0.545.

5. Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant both have two games remaining, but we don’t expect to see Carmelo, whose Knicks clinched the second spot in the Eastern Conference, in uniform again until New York hosts Boston in the first round. If Carmelo enters a game, that goes against his points-per-game average and currently Melo leads KD in the scoring race, 28.7 to 28.1. Here’s what you should be watching: Durant needs 99 points in two games, versus Sacramento and Milwaukee (both games are in OKC), to surpass Melo. The bet here is that KD gets there.

KD probably needs 60 tonight to get Melo thinking about playing in the Knicks’ final game Wednesday.