Monthly Archives: August 2012

OZ’S STOCK PICKS: FROM AU TO H2O

by John Walters | 1 Comment

Our man Oz will make a weekly stock pick for us from one of his western U.S. lairs. In his initial entry, about 10 days ago, Oz espoused the lustrous investing possibilities of gold. This time he invokes the value of desert gold, i.e., water.

While on assignment in central California I took this picture. What does it tell you? Crops need water.

And what is the stock opportunity there? Well, I have bought “water” stocks before, but the problem with them is that they are tied to an increase in spending around construction and that means a growing economy. This is not necessarily the case. The other easy answer is agricultural stocks. The main players are the usual names: Monsanto (MON), Syngenta (SYT) and Dupont (DD).

While these stocks have performed well recently, based on “drought” news, I really like the Powershares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA). The chart looks great and I see it topping its 52-week high– potentially a 20% gain in 2012. Plus, I can’t help but mention the overall trend of the market and in the short term is up.

Get in now, is what I say. Plenty of choices out there and more ideas to come…

 

OZ PICKS

Last Week: Nova Gold (NG ) Was: $4.72. Is: $4.51. (oops) 





			

	
	


				
					


	

		
IT’S ALL HAPPENING! 8/27


				

			
 by John Walters			
							
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Starting Five


1. Hurricane Isaac, or as we prefer to call him, “HI”, strikes Gulf coast: an act of God toward the GOP convention, or a guerilla marketing ploy for “Beasts of the Southern Wild?” (We know he may be just a Tropical Storm to you)


2. After more than 13 months, 24 winless starts, and a two-hour, 23-minute rain delay before yesterday’s first pitch,  Chicago Cubs pitcher Chris Volstad gets his first win since July 10, 2011 — and it’s a shutout.


3. The Newsroom season finale blockbuster: a Northwestern alum gets an internship at a cable news outlet. Whoooaaa!


4. Notre Dame suspends starting running back and 1,000-yard rusher Cierre Wood for two games for  the dreaded “violation of team rules (VoTR).”


5. Seahawks name 3rd-round pick Russell Wilson starting quarterback. The N.C. State Wisconsin product  is the first quarterback named after two athletic gear companies to be a starter in the NFL since Spalding Champion in the late 1970s. (Don’t Google that).


The Reserves


 Dieter Strack, a 74 year-old German sports official, was struck in the throat and killed by a javelin during a youth meet in Dusseldorf.


“What rhymes with ‘hospital’?” A musical question raised by Flight of the Conchords (song starts around 10:25).


Flight of the Conchords write new song. Crazy Dogggz remain silent.


All-SEC wide receiver Da’Rick Rogers, who was suspended indefinitely last week for the dreaded VoTR, plans to transfer to Tennessee Tech, where team rules are possibly less stringent.


Break up the Franciscan Friars! The San Diego Padres did not acquire half the Red Sox or a three-time National League MVP, but they have won seven in a row.


On Today: “You’re out to dinner with friends and announced you’ve changed your diet and don’t want the fried appetizer. Your friends tell you that you’re no fun any more. What do you do?” Answers: 1. Order a third Scotch 2. Get new friends. 3. Say (if all of you are female), “Fried appetizers are why you’re still single.”


A bear in Denali National Park killed a man did what bears do. Half a world away, German film maker Werner Herzog sits up in his chair and wonders, “Sequel?”


Quotable


“Listen…he can’t play quarterback in the National Football League, period.” –ESPN analyst and serial Windsor knot wearer Merrill Hoge, on New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow


Then again, when Isaac makes land fall it will have one more touchdown than the Jets this August.


Last week Notre Dame lost cornerback Lo Wood to a ruptured Achilles tendon and this week it has lost Cierre Wood to VoTR. The Fighting Irish, who peddle “The Shirt” each year for students to wear to games (proceeds go to charity), may want to alter its slogan to “We Got No Wood.”


More Today: Natalie Morales announces celebrity births during her news cast in this order: 1. Snooki and 2. Anna Faris. (this site endeavors to be a Snooki-free zone).


We like how The Big Lead posts a photo of a femme fatale each day, but then it occurred to us, Why must it be an actress/celebrity/model of current stature? After all, your chances of ever having a relationship with more than her photo are almost non-existent (unless John Mayer is reading this site). So we’ll jump across eras when we choose to flash a babe pic. First up, an Oscar-nominated vixen who did cold like nobody’s business…


Gene Tierney, ’40s starlet


What is the crueler nickname to dub the Jets: Jest or Mets?


More on Cubs pitcher Chris Volstad: 1. He stands six-foot-eight and 2. In his previous 13 starts for the Cubs this season, he had received one or fewer runs in support eight times. The Cubs had never scored more than three runs for him before yesterday.


USC punter Kyle Negrete, who as a walk-on in 2011 pinned nearly half (19 of 39) his punts below the 20-yard line and did not kick a single touchback, was granted a scholarship yesterday. With an offense that includes quarterback Matt Barkley, Marqise Lee and Robert Woods at wide receiver, and Silas Redd at running back, Negrete should not be very busy this autumn.


Kuwaiti national soccer coach shot in his native Belgrade, in critical condition.


Four days have passed since Paul Campos accused, on Salon.com, author Joe Posnanski of committing “a minor literary crime” with his biography of Joe Paterno without any Salon editor noticing — or at least not fixing — Campos’ minor literary crime of misspelling “Salvador Dali” as  Salvador Dail in the opening sentence.


The lead story on ESPN.com’s football page is on an unranked team with a quarterback who has never played a down of college football. Will someone please alert Rick Reilly to this travesty?


 


 

			

	
	


				
					


	

		
IT’S ALL HAPPENING! (THE WEAKENED EDITION, 8/25-8/26)


				

			
 by John Walters			
							
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Starting Five




1. Neil Young, first man to walk on the Harvest Moon, dies. Wait, what? Neil Lomax passes? No, that’s not it. Astronaut Neil Armstrong expires.


2. Boston Flee Party: Red Sox trade Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez and Nick Punto (Carla’s ex-husband?) to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Wait a minute…didn’t former NESN dugout reporter Heidi Watney move to Los Angeles last autumn? Hey…. HEYYYYY!


3. America’s premier marathoner, Ryan Hall (an expectant first-time dad), puts his Mammoth Lakes, Calif., home on the market for $625,000 and advertises on Twitter. Offer him $26.2 thousand and see what he says.


4. The box score for Goodlettsville (Tenn.) 24, Petaluma (Calif.) 16 in the Little League World Series semi-final.


5. iWin: Apple defeats Samsung in court. Down to its last $622 billion in available capital (we’ve all been there), the tech giant avoids having to panhandle thanks to an award of $1.2 billion in damages.


The Reserves




Cleveland Indian rookie pitcher Corey Kluber nearly brained The Captain, Derek Jeter, on Friday night with a pitch that deflected off his helmet visor. The preternaturally placid Jeter lost his cool for once, yelling something at Kluber as he headed to first base. What did Jeter say? “Not the face, man! Anywhere but the face!” (or so we assume)


Bryan A. Graham of Sports Illustrated unearthed this gem from SI’s vault concerning astronaut Neil Armstrong and knuckleballer Gaylord Perry.


Keep on rockin’ in the free-of-gravity world


How did our beloved New York Mess score more than two runs for the first time in eight games yesterday? Pitcher R.A. Dickey and left fielder Jason Bay, both hitting the interstate, each had one RBI, while first baseman Jason Turner hit a solo shot, his first home run of the season. Mess win, 3-1.


So a vaunted Boston institution has “a rat” in its ranks and quickly rids itself of it? Is this the 2012 Red Sox or The Departed? (You will remember that the infamous text was sent from Adrian Gonzalez’s phone, a nod to a vital plot point in Scorcese’s Oscar-winning film). Shipping up to Boston? No, shipping out of Boston.


Hurricane and/or GOP aficionados, here’s a breaking picture of Isaac.


Adrian Gonzalez? Honestly, you haven’t seen a guy this happy to leave Boston for California since Will Hunting decided to chase Skylar.


Punto didn’t want to leave, but then he got a visit from the Savage Brothers, and that was that….


Dustin Pedroia


Are you like us? We imagine Dustin Pedroia approaching Carl Crawford’s locker and pulling a Dignam: “I’m the guy doing his job. You must be the other guy.”


In Sunday’s New York Daily News, baseball writer Bill Madden proposes that positive PED tests should result in voided contracts. He has a point.


Over night on Thursday and Friday morning, 19 people were shot, four fatally, in Chicago. But none of them were shot near an iconic landmark, so, you know…


The sublime Bomani Jones on Lance Armstrong and how his odyssey relates to that of Luther Vandross….


We are not in law enforcement. We have never had anyone point a loaded weapon at us. Hence, this is a sincere question with no underlying implication: Did the two veteran NYPD patrolmen who fired 16 rounds, killing murderer Jeffery Johnson but also inadvertently wounding nine bystanders, do a good or bad job in that moment?


MH loves Lenn Robbins, but his Saturday college football column in the New York Post posits that Notre Dame still has not named a starting quarterback for the Navy game… two days after the Irish did. We suggest following @ChiTribHamilton , @IrishIllustrated , @KeithArnoldNBC or even, and only as a last resort, @jdubs88


ESPN had the College Gameday gang in a sterile studio setting on Saturday. The dearth of a WSU flag and hungover Delta Gammas appeared to play tricks with the sanity of some of the analysts. When host Chris Fowler asked his three comrades for a Heisman favorite, not everyone shouted in unison, “Matt Barkley!” Desmond Howard, a Michigan alum and Heisman winner, voted for the Wolverines’ Denard Robinson, while Lee Corso stumped for Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones, the second-most popular QB on his own team (Bell Dozer!). Hence, the Heisman will come down to who puts the nastiest beatdown on Notre Dame.


Comedian Matt Goldich, noting that the first day of the GOP Convention in Tampa will be canceled due to rain, tweets that a “twi-night doubleheader versus the Democrats is scheduled for Tuesday.”


For those space exploration fans keeping score, no one has yet moonwalked on the moon….


Lost in all the Dodgers-Red Sox transaction news (the Sawx, by the way, acquired a pitcher namd “Rubby” who, alas, pronounces it like “Ruby”; color us dismayed) is the added news that former MLB Network reporter Trenni Kusnierek  is Dropkick Murphy’ing it to work for NESN and cover the Rojo Hose. Kusnierek had been living in her native Milwaukee for more than a year. How a woman from a northern city bordered by a large body of water directly east of it, a town that worships beer and once had an MLB franchise named the Braves, will ever acclimate to Boston is beyond us.


She’s shipping up to Boston…


ESPN2 aired three high school football games on Saturday, the same day that the Little League World Series semifinals were being aired from Williamsport, Pa. If you don’t think that a high school football national championship, to be aired on ESPN, is in the offing, you’re not paying attention.


By the way, terrific graphic from Saturday night’s contest between this scribe’s alma mater, Brophy College Prep of Phoenix, and national No. 1 Rancho Santa Margarita of Orange County. The latter school’s offensive line averages 305 pounds per man, which is larger than half the teams in the top ten of the Associated Press preseason poll. The Ranchos won, 27-14.


Lance Armstrong (who did not die yesterday) finished second in a 36-mile bike race in Aspen yesterday to a 16 year-old named Keegan Swirbul. Really. So that lifetime ban from cycling…? The USADA does not govern the race, so Lance was able to participate.


By the way — and no kidding — Armstrong won the inaugural Steamboat Stinger Marathon , a trail marathon, on August 15 and was planning to run a marathon this morning. Say what you want about whether or not he doped, the dude has an insatiable appetite for competition.


Lance and Keegan

			

	
	


				
					


	

		
DONDE ES DIANA?


				

			
 by John Walters			
							
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What do the 2012 Phoenix Mercury have in common with the Mike D’Antoni-era Phoenix Suns?


They don’t play D.


D, at least in terms of the Mercury, represents Diana Taurasi. The 2009 WNBA Most Valuable Player and in this writer’s opinion, the most gifted female basketball player of at least the last decade, has not played for the Mercury (4-18) since May 26th, the team’s third game of the season. Taurasi, 30,  missed 16 games with what was described as a “strained left hip flexor” before the league went on sabbatical for the London Olympics. The former U Conn All-American, who led the Huskies to three consecutive national championships in her final three seasons, has missed all three games since the league returned from its five-ring hiatus.


She also serves, who only sits and waits….


Taurasi’s extended absence would not be so egregious except for two factors: 1. She led Team USA in both minutes played (24.1 per game) and scoring (12.4) as the squad went undefeated and won the gold medal in London and, 2. the franchise that finishes with the league’s worst record will have a 44% chance of winning the WNBA draft lottery and selecting Baylor center Brittney Griner, who led the Bears to an undefeated, 40-0 season and the national championship last April. Griner, a six-foot-eight studette who averaged 23.2 points, 9.5 boards and more than five blocks per game, has the potential to be a Lew Alcindor-like game-changer for whichever team drafts her.


I am strong. I am invincible. I am Woman.


Meanwhile, the WNBA, a league whose games’ attendance rivals those of 8 p.m. showings of The Dark Knight Rises, sits its prime attraction.


“The excuses the Mercury are using, to me, are comical,” said one WNBA official.


Let’s enumerate them, shall we? Since the WNBA returned to action on August 16, Taurasi has missed games…


…at Seattle, Aug. 16 (Loss), due to “arriving late from London.” Her Team USA backcourt mate, Sue Bird, a former U Conn teammate, played that night for the Storm.


…versus San Antonio, Aug. 19 (Loss), a “dental procedure” the previous day.


… versus New York, Aug. 23 (Loss), “lightheadedness” during warmups.


Perhaps Taurasi has a nagging injury (injuries) from playing overseas in Russia, then stateside, then preparing for and participating in the Olympics. If so, the Mercury should announce this as if it were a legitimate league.


Perhaps the Mercury just blatantly covet Griner, although probable No. 2 pick Elena Delle Donne, who led the NCAA in scoring last season, is no slouch (hold your Judge Smails jokes, please). Regardless, earlier this summer Phoenix cut Lynette Kizer, who was giving them quality minutes in a move that left the league’s many few keen observers scratching their heads. Taurasi, their best player, the league’s best player, has seen just 36 minutes of action all season, or seven minutes more than she saw in the gold-medal victory versus France two weeks ago… in the halcyon days before she was afflicted with dental worries, lightheadedness, the vapors, consumption, the Mondays, etc….


Delle Donne and Diana could be teammates next season.


“I think (the Mercury) are  doing damage to their franchise,” said the league official, “and this hurts the integrity of the league. It’s very obvious what they’re doing.


“I don’t know why our commissioner isn’t saying, ‘If Taurasi is healthy, she should play,'” the official said. “David Stern would put pressure on a team that was holding someone out in the final week of the season. We’ve still got a month to go, and we’ve already been through the longest hip-flexor strain in sports history with her.”


The Mercury, who have lost nine straight dating back to June 29 and are tied with the Toxic Tulsa Shock for the league’s worst record, host Indiana tonight (Saturday). As of this moment Taurasi is scheduled to play but there’s always the chance that she may have to wait for the cable guy or that there’s bad traffic on the Squaw Peak Parkway (note: there’s never traffic on the weekend in Phoenix in August; ever). Then again, given the opponent’s nickname for tonight’s contest, there’s really only one DNP excuse the Mercury should use: fever.


 


 

			

	
	


				
					


	

		
IT’S ALL HAPPENING! 8/24


				

			
 by John Walters			
							
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 Starting Five


1. Does this mean Lance Armstrong will take the hill for the Sugar Land Skeeters?


2. Red Sox equal the Mets’ runs output in their last seven games, and still lose, 14-13, to the Angels.


Armstrong opts to take his ball and go home.


3. Tennessee suspends wide receiver Da’Rick Rogers, first-team All-SEC  in 2011, indefinitely (read: for the season).


4. The world cried out for a musical version of The Silence of the Lambs, and (off-, off-) Broadway listened.


5. Messi scores. Ronaldo scores. Barca wins, 3-2.


 The Bench


Quotable


“I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours. The toughest event in the world, where the strongest man wins. Nobody can ever change that.”


–Lance Armstrong, whom the USADA is doing its very best to turn into an even more sympathetic figure than he already was.


The NCAA denies the waiver request of Notre Dame transfer Aaron Lynch, a budding All-America at the most important on defense (if not all of football), defensive end, who is now attending classes at the University of South Florida. Lynch is originally from Florida. He can suit up for the Bulls, whose coach, Skip Holtz, is also a former Notre Dame gridder, in 2013.


“Step off, George! “Step off, Tony?” “You heard him, George, step off!”


T-shirt spotted in NYC:


Spoken like a bro


Samuel L. Jackson attends University of Georgia football practice. After all, they both despise reptiles.


On consecutive days the Mets handed the ball to rookie pitchers who weree not with the team one month earlier. The two hurlers, Matt Harvey and Colin McHugh, combined to toss 13 scoreless innings and strike out 18. New York lost both games.


Molly Palmer kills a 1,022-pound marlin. If something grows to that size, doesn’t it deserve to live? (the fish, too)


Steve Spence, 50, ran a 4:52.9 mile on Tuesday. Spence, who finished 12th in the marathon in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, has now run at least one sub-5:00 mile in each of the past 37 years. Our streak of not having run a sub-5:00 mile for 45 consecutive years is also intact.


No longer sub-50, but still running sub-5’s


 


Continuing today’s “Step off” series, 83 year-old Mimi Parkes rappels down the tallest building in Montana.


You’re thinking what I’m thinking: Miguel Cabrera doesn’t run fast enough to turn his ankle.


Gavin Smith disappeared on May 1st. The website his family set up to assist in the search for him, findgavinsmith.com, has not been updated since May 17. What gives?


This is the worst subway photo ever (do not open link if you plan to eat soon…or maybe just do not open link).


The New York Mets, whose offensive woes have become a minor obsession of ours (or hadn’t you noticed), have scored 13 runs in the past seven games. That’s still a larger number than the total points the New York Jets have scored in their first two preseason games (9).




A tune from the aforementioned “Silence of the Lambs” musical spoof, “It’s Me.”