Starting Five

1. If you never saw the 1983 film “The King of Comedy”, you should. It’s terrific. Robert Deniro kidnaps a talk show host (played by Jerry Lewis), then demands as his ransom the first guest spot on a broadcast. Jimmy Kimmel Live took that idea to a reality extreme last night, as the host was duct-taped to a chair and gagged with his own tie. Who stepped in to host: Matt Damon! (as Kimmel sat about 20 feet upstage).

Damon hijacked the program, and the idea was executed to perfection. Sheryl Crow stepped in as teh bandleader and debuted a song (“I don’t know if I’d do this if Jimmy were hosting, but for you…”).  Guillermo was replaced by Andy Garcia. Kimmel’s ex, Sarah Silverman, took part in the prank as well, sitting on the couch and explaining to Damon what it was like to date Kimmel for five years (“It’s like when you eat one of those street vendor hot dogs and afterward think, Why did I let that thing inside of me?”).

It’s not quite Oceans 11, but it’ll do.

Kimmel’s regular array of B-list guests were replaced by  by Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore, Reese Witherspoon (who brought booze), Gary Oldman, John Krasinski and his wife, Emily Blunt.

Inspired idea, carried off to perfection. And all we kept thinking was, Jay Leno could never pull this off without it seeming phony. The thing about Kimmel is, these people really are his friends. As for Dave, it was telling that we switched over to a repeat of recent vintage in which he tells Denzel Washington, “I can’t figure out why we’re not better friends” and Denzel repeats, “Well, that’s up to you, Dave.”  Letterman could be Kimmel in the celeb buddies dept. if he ever wanted to be. But to this point in his life, he’s been famously reclusive. Maybe he is beginning to figure out that he DOES belong with that crowd, at least in an “Am I good enough?” way.

2. Manti Te’o appears on Katie Couric and we agree 100% with Gregg Doyel: “Make. It. Stop.” We feel a little like Jerry Seinfeld when he is asked if Timothy Watley’s jokes offend him as a Jew and he replies, “No, they offend me as a comedian.” We’re (and “we’re” is obviously “I’m”) offended not as a fellow Domer but as a fellow former Dillon Hall resident. Is it a coincidence that Manti moved off campus senior year and then all of this stuff began happening?

Whether he is complicit or just plain painfully naive (and, then, just duplicitous enough to make people question his true motives), Te’o might’ve been saved if he’d remained around classmates who might’ve counseled him (and by “counseled him”, I mean “teased him unmercifully”) during this time. Back in the pre-cellphone days in Dillon, you knew the guy who had the Hometown Honey because he sat in the hallway outside his door (as far as the phone cord would stretch) talking to his girl late at night as his roomie tried to study or sleep or watch Letterman.

But this is what happens when everyone has a cell phone and lives off-campus. There’s no one around to tell you what a fool  you are being. Technology… BAH!

A week ago we said that we’d ask Te’o if he is gay, because it goes to motive and is hence relevant. Apparently, Katie agreed, as she did ask. Manti’s reply: “No.”

3. Don’t ever change, Carl Pavano. Don’t. Ever. Change.

4. We need to say this, and not just because we’ve lost our shirt (and trousers) on AAPL in the past few months. Yes, the company’s future is not as bright and rosy –or at least at this moment it does not appear so– as it was five months ago. But here’s the thing. Apple, which is now down 1% over the past 12 months (it was up more than 40% for the year just four months ago), sells at just ten times earnings. That means the following (please correct me if I’m wrong): If you divide the total revenue of Apple by its number of shares, each share should have a value of around $45. But it’s selling at $450.

Meanwhile, Netflix (NFLX) is up 77% for the year but it trades at 583 times earnings. Amazon (AMZN) is up 49% for the year but it trades at 3,700 times earnings. 3,700 TIMES!

So, yes, Apple has had some bad press lately. And here are the respective stock prices of the three companies as I type this:

AAPL:  $440

NFLX: $167

AMZN: $282

Granted, a huge aspect of a stock’s price is what investors believe the company will do in the future (industry term: guidance). However, a huge misunderstanding among Average Joe investors is that Apple is expensive. It’s not. If AAPL sold at the same multiple (i.e., “times earnings”) as even Netflix, a single share would cost $26,235. If it sold at Amazon’s multiple, a single share would cost $166,500. Now THAT is expensive.

The point is this: a stock’s price is not an ABSOLUTE value, while a stock’s price relative to its multiple is. That’s the more salient way to compare one stock’s value to another.

5. So, our colleague on mediumhappy.com, Bill Hubbell, is a wonderful (albeit reclusive) friend for many reasons, one of them being that he sends friends “Best of (Year)” discs each year. And not just one. A single year may fill up as many as 20 discs. In truth, anything we know about pop music since 2005 is directly related to Billy’s “Best of…” discs. So we thought it might be a good idea to begin sharing the songs that he sends us, at least our favorites, with you. Today’s choice is a country tune by Lee Brice, from 2012, titled “Hard To Love.” And we think that Tom Petty may want to contact Mr. Brice about that opening riff and consider asking for a share of the royalties, as it sounds conspicuously similar to the lead-in to “Learning to Fly.”

Starting Five

1. The Loss Angeles Lakers lose their seventh consecutive road game, this time at Memphis. LA is now 2-10 since New Year’s Eve and would have to win eight straight simply to find themselves in the final playoff qualifying spot in the Western Conference, all other things being equal. You watch the Lakers and you wonder if Dwight Howard is the NBA’s version of Alex Rodriguez.

“No pick! But, please, Dwight, set a pick.”

Yesterday the Lakers had an air-the-grievances meeting before the team shootarouand and by post-game the media knew that it had happened. That seemed to irk Pau Gasol, and rightly so. Portions of his comments: “I don’t know how that got out…our family should be tight. If it’s not tight, then there are cracks and the situation just keeps getting worse until at some point it will explode.”

The Lakers do look old. Perhaps they should tape a cheetah to their backs.

Laker coach Mike D’Antoni put it best, considering his lineup has at least three future Hall of Famers and two NBA MVPs: “We’ve got an All-Star team out there. Have you ever watched an All-Star game? It’s God awful, because everybody gets the ball, they go one-on-one and then they play no defense. That’s our team. That’s us. We’re an All-Star team and we haven’t learned there’s a pecking order.”

Meanwhile, the “other” team in California you should be watching is the Golden State Warriors. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, David Lee: now that’s a BASE upon which you can build. Players who know their roles and perform them (for example, they like passing the ball). In the past three days the Warriors (26-15) have taken down both the Clippers and Thunder, who just happen to have the two of the three best records in the NBA. Damn, it’s good to be a sports fan in the Bay Area right about now, is it not? 

Curry still has time during games to entertain children by making duck silhouettes.

2. The nation’s top-ranked basktball team, Duke, travels south to Miami and loses by 27 points to the Hurricanes. That’s one less point than the nation’s top-ranked football team lost by in Miami Gardens earlier this month. Meanwhile, LaSalle upsets No. 9 Butler in Philadelphia, 54-53, thanks to a coast-to-coast bucket by Ramon Galloway with 2.7 seconds remaining. It marked the first time the Explorers (good name) had beaten a top-ten opponent since 1980.

Yes, it’s STILL possible to watch a top-10 college hoops squad play in a gym that’s, well, a gym. Crazy.

3. Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gets the Nathan Jesup treatment on Capitol Hill from a group of men who, let’s face it, don’t have have the balls she has. Senator Rand Paul informed Clinton that had he been president, he would have fired her over Benghazi. Clearly, Mrs. Clinton should have shot back, “Well, I guess we’ll never have to worry about that hypothetical becoming reality.” Lots of blame to go around here, but there seems also to be a wee little bit of partisan piling on taking place as well.

4. The U.S. military will announce today that females in the military will be permitted to have combat roles. (Plug in your own sexist remark here). If this means Kathyrn Bigelow’s next film will have Kate Upton in a starring role, would that be so bad?

5. How ’bout them Apples? The world’s wealthiest company sees its stock price plummet about 6% in after-hours trading after its quarterly earnings report. Apple (AAPL) actually beat the Street estimate on earnings-per-share but the computer giant lowered its guidance and that made investors nervous. Our take: remember those people who would tell you that the Beatles (a band who, by the way, recorded on a label known as Apple Records back when Steve Jobs was still cleaning out his garage) were overrated just to be contrarian? That’s kind of where we are with Apple now. The Beatles were not overrated and Samsung is still nowhere near Apple as a brand. But everyone was beginning to tire of hearing how great Apple is and all it took was a small chink in the armor (Apple Maps!) to set off this narrative.

Meanwhile, Netflix (NFLX) soared more than 35% in after-hours trading simply by providing a quarterly report in which it did not lose money. The Street expected the movie/TV rental company to lose 13 cents per share but instead it earned 13 cents per share (golf clap). A brief look back: In July of 2011 NFLX was nearing a $300 per share stock price when it announced a change in how it would bill customers. Bad idea. The stock went all Felix Baumgartner, falling all the way to $52 per share last August. This morning it’ll probably open at $144 per share or better.

This is where you need to apply the Blood, Sweat & Tears aphorism to investing: “What goes up, must come down…ride a painted pony let the spinning wheel turn.”

By the way, you could do a lot worse than purchasing Blood, Sweat & Tears Greatest Hits. Tim Cook suggests you buy it on iTunes.

Reserves

Manti Te’o Fauxmance Update: The New York Daily News reports that the “woman” whom Manti was speaking with all those hours was actually Ronaiah Tuiasosopo in falsetto. And it gets funnier/more embarrassing, if this is true…. Te’o’s interview with Katie Couric will air today. January Thursdays are all about taped confessionals with female talk show hosts. I’ll be appearing on Ellen next Thursday (anything to escape this NYC winter0.

Starting Five

1. Brrrrrrrrrrr. That’s all I have to say about that. I don’t want Mark Twain looking askance at me from beyond the grave.

2. Former Hollywood Squares celebrity defeats Serena Williams at the Australian Open. Wait, what? Oh. Sloane Stephens, not Shadoe Stevens. Stephens, 19, is the daughter of former New England Patriot running back John Stephens, who died in an auto accident three years ago (Stephens was actually the NFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1988) . Her mother, Sybil Smith, was an All-American swimmer at Boston University. In fact, she was the first female African-American All-American swimmer in D-I history. Sloane lived up to mom’s legacy in Melbourne by becoming the first American tennis player younger than Serena to defeat Serena. In fairnesss to Williams, 31, she was up 2-0 in the second set, having already won the first, when she appeared to have tweaked her back.

Hey, Nineteen! Stephens, still an adolescent, slays Serena.

As an aside, we have to ask: Is watching that brilliant midsummer Australian sunshine good or bad for our January Seasonal Affect Disorder (SAD)? Or does it just make us all want to hop a flight to Down Under?

3. Manti Te’o Fauxmance Update

 — Longtime Notre Dame beat writer (and, full disclosure, Notre Dame alumnus) Tim Prister scolds Deadspin for taking their outstanding investigation one step too far –and for failing to ever attempt to contact the man(ti) at the center of the storm.

–The Cleveland Cavaliers debuted a “Manti Te’o Kiss Cam” at Quicken Loans Arena last night, showing dudes seated next to empty seats on the Jumbo-tron. Well done, Cleveland. Well done.

4. Speaking of the Cavaliers… Kyrie Irving dropped 40 points on the Boston Celtics last night as Cleveland added to New England’s awful sports week in a 95-90 win. The Celtics, who still have three potential Hall of Famers in their starting lineup (Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo) have now lost four in a row, the last two at struggling Detroit and Cleveland. This is a squad, alas, that understands and perhaps embodies the term Rust Belt. The Celtics are 20-21.

One reason Boston is struggling: Paul Pierce blows lately. Pierce is shooting 18 of 58 (31%) during the skid.

As for Irving, he became the first player to drop 40 against the Celtics in the past two seasons. The second-year point guard is averaging nearly 24 points and six assists per game for an 11-32 team. Does he deserve a spot on the All-Star roster (the Celtics’ Rondo will deservedly start at PG).

Hot in Cleveland. Irving goes for 40 versus the Celtics.

“If you look at the point guards in the Eastern Conference, name one that’s having a better season,” says Cavs coach Byron Scott. “I’ll wait.”

5. “From Seneca to Selma to Stonewall…” was the takeaway phrase from Barack Obama’s inaugural speech. The 44th president (Hey, 44 was also Hank Aaron’s number) of the United States invoked women’s rights, African-American rights and gay rights –the last a nod to an iconic West Village bar — in one alliterative phrase. As Jon Stewart intoned on last night’s The Daily Show: “I believe it’s the first time a president has name-checked a gay bar at his inauguration since Rutherford B. Hayes reminisced about working at ‘The Loaded Musket.'”

Reserves

We are going to give the new Jeffery Ross show on Comedy Central, “The Burn”, a chance. This, after all, is the man who had the greatest takedown in Comedy Central Roast history (our mom reads this, so we’ll spare the details except to say that it involved Bea Arthur and an anatomical part that Ms. Arthur most likely did not possess).

Last night Mr. Ross discussed a man who recently died on a New York City subway when he attempted to take a dump while riding between two cars. “I can only assume that he was on the No. 2 train,” Ross quipped.

Apple (AAPL) reports earnings after the bell today. Both Google (GOOG) and McDonald’s (MCD) have beaten the Street estimates in the past 24 hours. Clearly, the key to vitality in the equities markets is to just have Wall Street put very low expectations on quarterly earnings. Is that too much to ask?

Apologies for the late post. Steak waits for no one.

Starting Five

1. Manti Te’o will do his Armstronging with Katie Couric, thank you very much. Couric has a hard news background (“Manti, what newspapers do you read?”), but chalk this up as another stop on the Bad Advice Tour. Couric and Te’o share a spokesperson, and certainly there is a conflict of interest no matter how much Katie doth protest. Jeremy Schaap was the proper move and if anything Manti should take a second dose of JS, this time on camera.  Just the fact that he’s speaking with a female whose current show is more suited to the Lifetime crowd (“Mother, May I Not Sleep With, But At Least Conduct an Online Romance With, Danger?”) will only result in the masses linking his and Lance’s stories together more. Or did you not see Saturday Night Live‘s cold open?

2. Moving onto other Domer Heisman Trophy finalists/winners in the news, Tim Brown suggests that his Oakland Raider coach, Bill Callahan, sabotaged the Silver & Black’s last Super Bowl appearance by changing the offensive game plan three days before meeting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. What’s next? Did Callahan buy Barret Robbins his first round of beers on the eve of the game, too? What’s even stranger is that Jerry Rice, Brown’s teammate on that Raider squad in 2002, is backing Brown. This is the greatest wideout of all time and another who is a probable future Hall of Famer with more than 1,000 career receptions. Still, why would a coach lead a team all the way to the most important game on Earth outside of the World Cup final (you heard me!) and then not care who won? Right about now Notre Dame –which is losing its sports information director, Brian Hardin, at month’s end — could use another of its Heisman brethren, Paul Hornung, to drop trou in public or be caught with a Playboy centerfold (perhaps the one Ditka had a crush on?!?). Anything to take the heat off.

3. So that’s Eddie Money (given name: Eddie Mahoney) in those “Two Tickets to Paradise” ads for GEICO. When you get into your forties (arthritic hand raised), you forget that everyone does not have your frame of reference pop-culturally. Eddie, 63, who now resembles an ugly old woman from Hempstead, was once quite the rocker. Our favorite tune of his came out in the mid-Eighties and was MTV gold. Just as this ad is a call-back to an era of a quarter-century ago, that tune is, too. Ronnie Spector’s part is culled from her famous early Sixties classic tune, “Be My Baby.” We give Ronnie indignant props (like mad props, only more intense) because it takes one helluva woman to be married to Phil Spector and survive.

Are those those two tickets to paradise by the dashboard light? (Shut up, Meatloaf!)

4. So, yeah, Obama’s inaugural address. Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.

5. Great Britains’ Prince Harry (third in line to the throne) says that he has killed Taliban members and credits his fondness for video games and X-Box with making him such a deadly shot from the cockpit of a helicopter. Somewhere that LaPierre dude from the NRA is pointing toward England and saying, “See? See?”

Reserves 

We remember Colin Kaepernick when he played at Nevada. Superb athlete but never close to being THIS jacked. It’s funny how whatever football teams Jim Harbaugh coaches, his players go from soft (do you remember 2006 Stanford?) to JACKED!

We don’t care much for tats, but those are some badass tats.