Monthly Archives: September 2012

IT’S ALL HAPPENING! SEPT. 7

by John Walters | 1 Comment

STARTING FIVE

1. President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney: Officially, it’s on! While a Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight continues to elude us.

2. The American League East, with 25 games remaining, has come down to Buck versus Big Bucks.

If there’s a movie, does Philip Seymour Hoffman play his second A.L. skipper in the past two years?

3. Help us out here: We missed the MTV VMAs, but did anyone give a shout -out to the recently deceased astronaut Neil Armstrong whilst holding their award?

4. Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are going on hiatus have separated after nine years of marriage. Arrested Development > Parks & Recreation >>> Up All Night.

5. Oscar Pistorius finished fourth in the men’s 100 meter final at the Paralympic Games in London. Has the Blade Runner become the Paralympics’ Lolo Jones?

The Bench

Former Chicago policeman Drew Peterson, 58, was convicted of the first-degree murder of his third wife, Kathleen Salvio, in Joliet, Ill. Peterson, two of whose four former ex-wives were not murdered or found to have mysteriously vanished, could face charges in the future concerning the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson. The couple wed when he was 49 and she was 19.

Given his longtime Seattle environs, we thought ESPN’s John Clayton would be more into grunge than death metal. (notice also that Neil “I’m in the top ten, Roger” Everett includes at least two visual homages to his former home of Hawaii).

More Video Music Awards: Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” wins VMA for “Best Song To Destroy a Pint of Ben & Jerry’s To”. Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times is even more disappointed by Green Day’s refusal to take up the banner it first waved in 2004 than I am in Swift’s pandering to the iCarly contingent. Even at his advanced age –and despite the fact that he is married to what must be the most beautiful woman ever to be raised on Staten Island — Keith Richards should still date T-Swizzle just to teach her a thing or two.

“When you’re 15…” you can get away with writing that drivel. Not now. Please go listen to Pink’s “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”

 

Can’t DeMatha’s football players just behave like normal high school students and have affairs with their teachers?

Two different teenage girls sent out tweets yesterday concerning their hope that someone will assassinate (to be fair, one pledged to  “assinate” him herself) the president. Can’t angry adolescent females confine their hostility to singling out the homely classmate who shops at Dress Barn? Sounds like two young women are having a “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” week.

Bar Tab: Settle up. Marriage: Settle down. Divorce: Settle in court. (We made this up ourselves!)

Tom Petty reportedly “got chills” when he heard his classic “I Won’t Back Down” played as President Obama appeared onstage at the DNC. You will recall that after Obama won the 2008 election the Donkeys blasted “Even The Losers.”  Meanwhile, does California’s crackdown on medical marijuana mean that this could be Mary Jane’s Last Dance?

Admit it: You’d be more concerned about the three dead in Yosemite National Park due to a hantavirus outbreak if you know what a hantavirus is. It’s scarier than it looks, apparently.

Never mind Greece and Spain (and Italy). Here’s your real European crisis.

So, if you’re scoring at home, on the Peterson Scale of Husband-ry (worst to least worst), it goes Drew (one wife murdered, another vanished) = Scott (wife and unborn child murdered) > Fritz (one wife swapped). Stay tuned for more Peterson entries.

When they perfect the odor accuracy on this doll, put us down for five of them.

What USC quarterback, whose first name starts with an M and is four letters and whose second name is seven letters, and who grew up in Orange County, will have a better game this weekend at Met Life Stadium against an opponent from upstate New York: Matt Barkley, whose Trojans face Syracuse, or Mark Sanchez, whose Jets take on Buffalo? Hint: Barkley turns 22 on Saturday.

It’s Precocious Blond(e) Pic Day in It’s All Happening!

Ryan Lochte will not serve as “The Bachelor”  but he is working as a fashion reporter for E! this week in New York City.

In marching band parlance, this is known as “pulling a tromboner”. (“Wrong instrument, stupid!”). Our bad. Ashlee Simpson applauded this effort, by the way.

There’s no crying in football.

 

Day of Yore

by bhubbell | Leave a comment

Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st straight game on September 6, 1995, breaking Lou Gehrig’s record that stood for 56 years and most deemed unbreakable. Ripken would add three more years to the record, finally voluntarily sitting out a game in 1998, leaving his record at 2,632 games. Because this is the internet, and by law we have to find something negative in any event that’s ever happened, we’ll just say that Chris Berman got to do the national broadcast of the game and leave it at that.

You might be wondering what the number one song on the charts was the day Ripken broke the record. You weren’t? Of course you weren’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway, cuz it’s some shit. It was Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.” 

On the subject of perseverance, 490 years ago today the Spanish ship Victoria made it back home and became the first ship to circumnavigate the world. It was the only one of five ships that set out that made it all the way and just 18 of 265 people who left on the voyage made it back alive. The expedition was planned by Ferdinand Magellan and took roughly three years. Magellan was killed two years into the trip in the Philippines.

It was this day in 1847 that Henry David Thoreau packed up and left Walden Pond. Thoreau lived there for two years, an experiment on several levels that he turned into his book, “Walden, Life in the Woods”. Upon leaving Walden Pond, Thoreau moved in with his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family. I’m guessing their dinner conversation was a little more high-brow than what you might find at the Kardashian home.

Another life experiment type of thing ended today in 1992, when hunters found the body of Christopher McCandles in an abandoned bus, 25 miles west of Healy, Alaska.

Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming became the first woman to ever vote in a U.S. general election today in 1870. 142 years later and women can finally join Augusta National. 

This smells like something ESPN would do: On September 6, 1912, in a purposely set up matchup of superstar pitchers, the Red Sox Smokey Joe Wood bested the Senators Walter Johnson 1-0 to win his 30th game of the season. The only run was scored when Tris Speaker and Duffy Lewis hit back to back doubles. The first double would have been a run-of-the-mill fly out, but landed in an area that had been cordoned off by rope to contain the overflow crowd at Fenway Park. At least Chris Berman wasn’t involved.

“Rhinestone Cowboy” reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart today in 1975. It became the first song to sit on top of the Country and Hot 100 charts simultaneously in 14 years.

Happy Birthdays to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, NBA Champion Kevin Willis, Emmy winner Elizabeth Vargas and Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan, who all turn 50 today.

– Bill Hubbell

 

 

Posted in: 365 |

IT’S ALL HAPPENING! SEPT. 5

by John Walters | Leave a comment

Starting Five


1. Roger, over and out at the U.S. Open. Roger Federer falls to Tomas Berdych, his first loss before the semis at the U.S. Open since 2003. The good news is, Fashion Week begins today and now Anna Wintour can have Roger all to herself.

2. Fashion Week?!? Today? We don’t have a thing to ready-to-wear.

Fashion Week runways are actually longer than those at LaGuardia

3. The NFL season opened with the Dallas Cowboys beating Big Blue. Which reminds us, at least two present or former co-hosts on Live! With have either been or been married to New York Giants.

4. R.A. Dickey becomes the majors’ first 18-game winner as the Mess shut down the Cardinals, 6-2. Dickey, believe it or not, is the first Mess pitcher to win 18 games since 1990. If you are looking for a terrific read, try Wherever I Wind Up. 

5. Art Modell dies at 87. He purchased the Cleveland Browns in 1961 for $4 million.

Reserves

Bill Clinton speaks at the Democratic convention, reluctantly decides not to seek nomination.

The countdown to Andy Roddick’s unretirement begins as he loses in four sets, in the fourth round to Juan Martin del Potro (“You killed my father; prepare to die!”). Oh, that’s not him? Our bad.

We normally prefer face-to-face interviews, or even phoners, to emailing questions to a subject. However, if that subject is Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz and the answers are this funny, we are on board. Great job by New York Magazine (we’re ready for Jar Jar Bluth).

There’s money in that banana stand. No, really.

Has anyone referred to Dallas’ 24-17 win last night, in which Jason Witten played, as a “splenetic victory?”

CRIMSON TIRADE!!!! Okay, not really, but Nick Saban intimidated reporters as well as a five-foot-six man can do yesterday when he admonished them for not properly respecting Alabama’s upcoming opponent, Western Kentucky. Only three reporters asked questions. The rest hid under their desks.

Is it too much to ask Hollywood to make a movie called The Replacement Refs starring Keanu Reeves as a former scab player, Shane Falco, who remembers just enough about the game to pick up a whistle, don the black-and-white, and become the next Ed Hochuli… while also getting the girl?

Quotable

 “The original Segway is out of production so we had to put some old pieces on a new one. But I’ve always been known for my awkward segues. If you get a chance I’d love to get a picture of you as a baby.” —Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development, when asked by New York mag if it was difficult to find a Segway when reviving the series after a six-year dormant period.

Five deaths from a hot air balloon ride in Slovenia.

More New York Mag: Apparently joking about the death of the Bigfoot impersonator is Highbrow Despicable. Don’t be messin’ with Sasquatch.

Bizarre, horrific and surreal murders in the French Alps.

Not one but TWO books about football at West Point hit the racks (or Amazon.com) this month. Joe Drape of the New York Times spent a season with the Black Knights for his tome, Soldiers First, which is out now. Mark Beech, a senior editor of Sports Illustrated and a West Point graduate (as is his father), is out with When Saturday Mattered Most, a chronicle of Army’s unbeaten 1958 season. That book comes out on Sept. 18.

A book on a team that hasn’t won a national championship in decades — and it isn’t Notre Dame!

Krysten Ritter is featured in the current issue of Rolling Stone, but sadly no mention of her work on The Gilmore Girls is made. Cancel my subscription!

The funniest Ritter with whom to share a sitcom apartment since Jack Tripper

Or should we have gone with, for the above caption, “Where the kisses are hers and hers and…hers/B’s company, too?”

 

Day of Yore

by bhubbell | Leave a comment

“You know when I was a kid, my father used to say, ‘Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.’ Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were 11 hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.”

Jim McKay spoke those words 40 years ago today, after PLO terrorists had killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympic Games in Munich.

Three years later in Sacramento, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was arrested for trying to assassinate President Ford.

On September 5, 1957, Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” was published. The book has long been a manifesto, or at least a talisman, for the “beat” generation. After years of stops and starts in Hollywood, a movie version is coming out in December of this year.

Yes, Kristen Stewart is in it, but no, there are no vampires or evil witches. I don’t think.

1986 and 1987 said goodbye to two television icons, Merv Griffin aired his last show in ’86, and American Bandstand was canceled this day in ’87.

The writing (or video, as it were) was on the wall for American Bandstand, the show where teens danced to the popular hits of the day. MTV revolutionized the medium and after seeing videos like Dire Straits, “Money For Nothing”, Bandstand now looked like a relic. Dire Straits actually won the VMA best video on this day in 1986.

Deion Sanders homered for the New York Yankees in a lopsided win over the Seattle Mariners today in 1989. Five days later Deion returned a punt 68 yards for a touchdown in his NFL debut for the Atlanta Falcons.

Bob Sheppard was the PA announcer for the New York Yankees for the last time five years ago today. “The voice of God” was the stadium voice for the Yankees for 56 years. His voice lives on in his taped introductions of Derek Jeter. 

Happy 72nd birthday to a woman Playboy magazine called, “the most desired woman of the 1970’s”, Raquel Welch.

– Bill Hubbell

 

 

Posted in: 365 |

HEAD BANGERS BALL

by John Walters | 1 Comment

 

Sometimes a pair of seemingly unrelated stories collide, with concussive force you might say, and compel even the most simple-minded among us to draw the inferences between them. Such a phenomenon occurred today, Wednesday, which just happens to be the opening night of the NF- (my apologies, Merrill Hoge) National Football League season.

This morning NFL commissioner Roger Goodell appeared on network television and announced that the league was donating $30 million, its largest one-time donation ever, to the National Institutes of Health. While the league itself referred to the gift as “unrestricted”, it is no secret that the league has taken a public stance on finally hoping to be a leader in brain injury research. Goodell himself tweeted, “We announced today: NFL to provide $30 million for medical research to study brain injuries & other health issues.”

The second story pertained to Dallas Cowboy tight end Jason Witten, who suffered a lacerated spleen during an exhibition game and will miss tonight’s opener between the Cowboys and the Super Bowl-champion New York Giants. Witten, team sources told ESPN, “has persistently told the Cowboys he is willing to sign a medical waiver that would absolve the team and its doctors of liability in case he re-injured his spleen during the NFC East matchup.”

Beautiful.

The tackle that caused Jason Witten’s injury.

Now, while it is true that the brain bone is not connected to the spleen bone, let’s examine this for a moment.

The NFL is writing a check for $30 million to the NIH (while quietly filing a motion to dismiss a class-action suit brought by 3,400 former players suing for damages related to concussions) to study brain injuries, the results of which will do absolutely nothing to curb the root of its perceived problem.

Here, simply, are the facts. I will lay them out like a geometry proof for you:

1. To excel at football, particularly on defense, it pays to be a) large b) swift and c) aggressive.

2. NFL salaries are at least ten times greater than most other starting salaries in the workforce. Often they are 20 to 100 times greater.

3. The largest, swiftest and most aggressive men are most likely to excel at football, meaning…

4. …That they are the most likely to fill NFL rosters.

5. There is no apparatus in any weight room that one can use to create a stronger cranium, or to properly protect the head from the effects of the brain knocking against the cranium.

6. The largest, swiftest and most aggressive men will deliver the most lethal hits to the skull, which means that they are the most likely to deliver devastating brain injuries.

7. Because of the allure of an NFL salary, relative to most other salaries, it is highly unlikely that the largest, swiftest and most aggressive men will not continue to play in the NFL.

The Witten story is so sublimely timed because it takes this proof one step further. You see (that’s the Michelle Obama in me coming out, adding the folksy “You see…”), NFL players, even if they are armed with unquestionable evidence of the gravity of their injury and the potential dangers of continuing to play, would still do so. They cannot be protected from themselves. Ask Witten, who is married and has two sons, if he would risk his health to play in the opening game of the NFL season and his answer is, “Hell, yeah.”

You know what makes this even better? Jason Witten’s wife is an emergency room nurse.

Save your $30 million, commissioner Goodell. Or give it to someone who really will benefit by it. Yes, the NIH may learn more about the devastating effects of brain injuries due to the NFL’s munificence, but that education will not change the culture of the NFL. Men are providers. If you give a man an opportunity to provide for himself and his family that is high multiples above the norm, he will take that opportunity at whatever risk (see “The Champ”). And as long as NFL salaries continue to escalate, the men who play the sport will only become larger, swifter and more aggressive. While the skull remains the same.