Starting Five

In this SI cover from a year ago, Balotelli is seen standing on water, arms outstretched in crucifixion mode.

1. Bad Boy Toys

(The judges will also accept, “We’re going down to Liverpool to do nothing…”)

Last season Liverpool had a wonderful problem on its hands: Luis Suarez. The Uruguayan striker-biter led the EPL in goals scored by a wide margin despite being sidelined for five matches due to a suspension (re: cannibalism).

Suarez scored 31 goals in 33 games and was the consensus Premier League Player of the Year as Liverpool finished second and qualified for Champions League play. Then he bit someone else, in a World Cup defeat, against Italy, in a match in which Mario Balotelli (like Suarez, one of the five best strikers in the world when he’s on) played.

Suarez was suspended from soccer for like, I dunno, you look it up, a long time. So Liverpool sold him to F.C. Barcelona, where he will now team up with Lionel Messi –so arguably the world’s two top footballers on the same side.

Are Suarez and Balotelli big deals? Do you know how often soccer players make the cover of SI?

And so Liverpool, which is right near the summit when it comes to world’s wealthiest football teams, has gone and purchased Balotelli from A.C. Milan. Mario was the world’s most notorious footballer before Suarez acquired a taste for human flesh. This should be interesting.

FWIW, Balotelli spent a few seasons with Manchester City, which is only an hour east of Liverpool, so he’s familiar with the region.

2. One of These Will Finish Fourth

“You’re the smartest man I’ve ever met, and you’re too dumb to see they made up their minds we were going to win Best Drama nine months ago”

The Emmys will air on Monday night…your host is Seth Meyers and I’m truly hoping for cameos from Stefon and Olya Povlatsky. But here’s the thing, kids. How loaded is the Best Drama category?

Game of Thrones

Mad Men

Breaking Bad

True Detective

House of Cards

Downton Abbey

Roger Sterling does not care that you didn’t nominate him for Best Supporting Actor…he just wants to know where the bar is located

I’ve never watched the final two, but look at those top four. None of them deserves to finish in second place, much less third or fourth (for this reason, I’m 98% certain that Downton Abbey will win).

What will happen? I believe True Detective should win, but I think voters will punish it for hubris. You would’ve won Best Mini-Series in a slam-dunk, but you had to be pushy. Tough luck, Rust Cohle. Besides, none of us have ever even auditioned for Nick What’s-His-Name. Game of Thrones is excellent, but voters will not want to admit to loving it (Lena Headey will probably get stiffed on Best Supporting Actress in a Drama as well, though she deserves it).

Timothy C. Simons, who plays Jonah Ryan, wuz robbed by not garnering a Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy nom. And if “Veep” doesn’t win Best Comedy, the Emmys are dead to me.

Which would bring it down to a pair of AMC dramas, Mad Men or Breaking Bad. Both outstanding. Mad Men is about as genius as it gets, but Breaking Bad has bowed out, and everyone loved it, too. BB will win this year and then MM, whose final season is coming up, will win next year, as a way for the voters to say thank you.

Worth noting: Walking Dead not nominated, nor did it deserve to be. Also, none of the six nominees come from network television.

3. Awkward Silence?

Mark it down: Austin Kryszczuk will play Major League Baseball…and probably before I learn to spell his name without having to look it up

Not sure if you’ve heard, but America still has a few problems with racism. Fortunately, we’ve got the Little League World Series to take our minds off the troubles in Ferguson. Let’s see who’s playing tomorrow for the U.S. championship. Here we go…lemme see…oh, here….it’s Mountain Ridge Little League out of Las Vegas, reperesenting the West, versus Jackie Robinson West Little League out of Chicago, representing the Midwest….says here that Mountain Ridge’s team is entirely made up of white players, while Jackie Robinson’s is entirely made up of African-American players.

The kids from Mountain West are named as if their parents’ favorite show was Saved By the Bell (and maybe it was): Austin, Dallan, Brennan, Zach, etc. The closer for Jackie Robinson West is named Marquis.

Wondering if the gang at ESPN will make any mention of this…

4. This Interview

Lemon never backed down to Kweli. I give him the win here.

You decide for yourself. Contrary to the Daily News headline, this is not a “disastrous” interview at all; it’s illuminating for what it reveals without even attempting to: the simmering-below-the-surface temper, the heightened concern about being “disrespected.” True confession, and this will not surprise you: I own no Taleb Kweli albums.

And, so you have it, here’s Bill O’Reilly of FOX News having returned from vacation (Bridge Hampton? East Hampton? Wainscott?) and unleashing some furor on the coverage of this story. Regardless of your opinion of FOX News, he’s mostly on-target here.

5. Sam Smith=Tom Petty

Right down to the same number of letters in the first and last names…

Sam Smith: Never covered the Chicago Bulls in MJ’s heyday

Well, I won’t back down

No I won’t back down

Won’t you stay with me

Cuz you’re all I need

You can stand me up at the gates of Hell,

But I won’t back down

This ain’t love, it’s clear to see

But, darling, stay with me…

Tom Petty: Is used to musicians plagiarizing his chord processions. Remember Dani California?

Thank you, Katie, for yesterday’s edition of Medium Happy: Unplugged, although I still don’t understand why you chose so many Meat Puppets covers. Oh, well. Am I the only one who searched for the trailer of Peace, Love and Misunderstanding only to find a naked Alice Cooper strutting about?

Starting Five

1. Remember Her Mane

Found myself seated on a hill beyond the right-center field wall for last night’s game between Taney Little League of Philadelphia and Mountain Ridge of Las Vegas. Love Mo’Ne Davis, but last night she was going up against the Yankees (not New York, but from The Bad News Bears) and I do believe Vic Morrow was coaching them. Worth noting: it was possible to visit Komodo dragons at Reptiland, just 15 miles south of Williamsport, and then watch the Taney Dragons play at Lamade Stadium last night. So that’s cool.

At Reptiland, the tenant wonders how a Longhorn skull found its way into his dwelling.

2. Pardo the Interruption

I’ve got Will Ferrell narrowly edging Eddie Murphy in the final

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live –even though the season premiere is, what, like six weeks away–Grantland seeded the entire cast, from 1975 to 2014, March Madness-style (slap in the face to Julia Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall, whose bubbles burst; that or they’re in the Dayton regional) I’m impressed by the care taken in the seeding. For example, as funny as he is, Chris Rock was not that good on SNL. The 12 seed fits him. And while it’s difficult to imagine Chris Farley as a 4 seed in his own bracket, the other three seeds –Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Mike Myers–were very, very strong on the show.

Your No. 1 seeds? Eddie Murphy, Carvey, Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig. The easiest regional is the most recent (“Digital Kids”), while the first two eras (Adam Sandler, for example, is a 5-seed) are loaded.

3. Something About Sports

I like this heading. Thanks, Katie. Maybe we’ll just keep this.

Altuve and teammate Chris Carter, who is bigger

The shortest player in Major League Baseball is Jose Altuve of the Houston No-Longer-Lastros. Altuve stands five-feet-five. He also is currently leading the big leagues in both Batting Average (.336) and Hits (175). When is the last time baseball’s shortest player led in either category? I don’t know, but neither Freddie Patek (also 5’5″) nor Eddie Gaedel (3’7″) ever did.

Gaedel retired and founded a blog called Small Happy, the success of which suffered due to the internet being decades away from its debut

4. Great Moments…

…in the Ice Bucket Challenge before it even existed.

Jennifer Beals in Flashdance:

Bill Parcells, courtesy of Harry Carson, at the Super Bowl:

Julie Andrews, prepping for a scene in The Sound of Music...

…and Varys Targaryen, with an assist from Khal Drogo (thanks to MIB for the reminder)

5. Shake vs. Snake

Anaconda: One female artist’s response to “Baby Got Back”

I’m not savvy enough about the music biz to understand why Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift would each release much-hyped music videos within days of one another during the dying days of summer. Only smart enough to know that they’re wholly unlike one another. If you haven’t seen them, here’s Minaj’s “Anaconda” (NSFP) and Swift’s “Shake It Off.”

Cutie, with no booty.

Starting Five

1. “I Call Shotgu–uh, Never Mind!”

Last night Captain Ron appeared on CNN at around 1 a.m . Eastern time and in the midst of answering questions posed him by Don Lemon and Jake Tapper, invited them to hang out with him tomorrow (this) evening. You’ve never seen two cable news guys so excited. I’d love to see Anderson Cooper big-time them on this and demand to be air-dropped into Ferguson for this ride-along.

Meanwhile, a white photographer was tear-gassed and he became CNN’s top story for 20 minutes. He told Lemon, who asked him if he’d ever witnessed anything like this, that, yeah, he had because he’s from Albuquerque…where police have killed 26 people the past four years. Including this guy. And this guy. Gus Fring is impressed.

Of course, they’re standing behind a white line

And I loved when Lemon asked the freelance photographer if he was going to go to the hospital. The photog shot him a “Child, please” look as if to say, “Hospitals are for you corporate types with health care. I’ll just rub some dirt on it.”

That’s Errol Barnett, not Erin Burnett.

Also last night: CNN went to its London studios for late-night coverage, where Rosemary Church wondered aloud why police in Ferguson would not “perhaps use, water cannons?” And watch the look that co-host Errol Barnett, a man whom I am convinced was constructed in a secret lab to be the Africanized version of Anderson Cooper, reacts.

I hope someone shows Rosemary this video before she returns to air.

He really wants a Liter-O-Cola!

We still don’t know exactly how it went down between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson. What I do feel pretty confident saying, though, is that the police seem to prefer bullying to building bonds through civil discourse. It’s as if they’ve all seen Super Troopers and modeled themselves after Farva.

Finally, this is hilarious and oh so Fox News.

2.  Notre Dame’s Conundrum

Not the best lab partner

Yes, I’m a proud Notre Dame alumnus. I’m proud that I attended a school that excels on the athletic field –it won the Capital One Cup for overall athletic excellence in Men’s Sports this past school year–and in the classroom, where it is currently ranked No. 17 in U.S. News & World Report.

But, having spent four years there as a student and many autumns there since, I also know this: the football players are no more representative of the overall academic prestige of the student body as my friends in Dillon Hall and I were representative of the football players’ gridiron prowess.

Sure, he’s a cardiologist now–but he was also the kicker (and a damn reliable one)

To say that a Notre Dame football player is a typical Notre Dame student in the classroom is to say that I belonged on the two-deep because I passed Emil Hofman’s General Chemistry class (although I did catch a pass Steve Beurlein threw me at the end of practice one day; my roommate was a student manager and got me in).

Yes, I know –not believe, know–that as an institution Notre Dame does the right thing. But I also know that it opens the door for the investigation (no one has been found guilty of any wrongdoing) when it admits young men, almost all of whom are of good character, into a school where the course load is often over their heads.

“Mama said knock you…”

Still, this video by 120 Sports is frighteningly cynical. If I’m to extrapolate Ro Parrish’s thoughts here, then recruits may be scared off of attending Oklahoma simply because they now know they can’t put a bitch in her place when she gets out of line. Sure, it seemed that OU would be fine with that when it accepted Dorial Green-Beckham, but now that it suspended Joe Mixon for the season, well…

3. “Tell Him What He’s Won!”

“It’s Saturday Night Live, with….”

The inimitable Don Pardo, the greatest unseen voice of my childhood next to Mel Blanc, passed away yesterday at the age of 96. It was Pardo who told contestants on games shows such as Jeopardy! and The Price is Right what they had won, and it was Pardo who did the roll call at the opening of Saturday Night Live from day one in 1975 all the way to last May (he missed one year of 39).

Pardo actually joined NBC in 1944–at at time when World War II was still undecided.

Besides the near four decades of introducing SNL each week, Pardo is also a legitimate part of U.S. history. It was he who provided the first NBC News bulletin after JFK’s assassination.

Don Pardo leaves us at the age of 96. But he will receive some lovely parting gifts.

4. Our Tillery?

He won’t pancake you. He’ll Jerry-mander you.

The young man on the left, Jerry Tillery, is rather large. He stands six-foot-seven, 317 pounds and is beginning his senior year at highly renowned (at least for football) Evangel Christian in Ruston, La. This photo may provide better evidence of his size differential to other players his age.

What I love about Tillery is that he’s kind of a nerd. The Notre Dame verbal commit –and I know, that means zilch — has a 4.0 GPA. But, he was spotted last spring taking in the LSU Spring Game. A change of heart. “To be honest, I didn’t go down to Baton Rouge for the spring game,” Tillery told a newspaper. “I was there for the state literary test.”

5.  Johnny, Are You Queer?

It’s actually third down, Johnny, not first

I’m with Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead on this: don’t get your panties in a bunch over JFF giving the MF to the Team Whose Name Cannot Be Mentioned. They laughed, after all.

And, as the Oscar Wilde of American sportswriting, Jason Gay, wondered, “Um isn’t making people pay for preseason tickets also kind of an obscene gesture?”

The problem for the Browns is this: How much do you want your QB, whose not the next Peyton Manning, being Topic No. 1 on First Ache and PTI and ATH and The View? How much noise is worth this? Isn’t that what eventually made Tim Tebow quartbacka non grata?

Let Johnny be Johnny? Okay. But it’s beginning to suffocate the league. I mean, wasn’t Michael Sam supposed to be the distraction?

******

Finally, I am overjoyed to announce that we’ve secured the services, one day per week for as long as she doesn’t grow bored of it, of the utterly fabulous Katie McCollow to steer the MH ship. Katie’s pretty much my favorite humorist. Please, everyone, shower her with welcomes tomorrow and tell her that her hair looks nice.

Honestly, there’s too much happening. We’ll do what we can to cover it.

Starting Five

It’s all for a good cause

1. Ice Bucket List Challenge

When did donating money to a good cause become a blatant act of self-promotion? I get it: celebrities dousing themselves in a bucket of ice water draws attention. Which raises awareness. Which spikes donations.

But it feels as if we’ve crossed the Rubicon on this. Now it’s more like, “Well, if you don’t let someone videotape yourself being self-icing a bro, you want people to die of ALS. And you’re just mean.”

Larry David covered this ground –brilliantly– in a terrific episode of “Curb…” with Ted Danson. 

My dream? Someone issues Meadowlark Lemon the Ice Bucket Challenge and then he allows someone to toss a bucket of confetti over his head.

2. Ferguson

Captain Ron (left) meets with protesters

A few thoughts on the Ferguson crisis, some of which you may not like:

1) There are two sides to every story, and I’m not even certain we’ve heard one of them yet. To quote Fr. John Jenkins of Notre Dame, who was speaking about another matter entirely, the rush to judgment here may be “premature.” What I do know is that we don’t know. And that this eyewitness account is only going to upset some people more.

Officer Darren Wilson

2) It’s been three days, and I still don’t know anything more about Darren Wilson other than he is a six-year veteran of the Ferguson P.D. and that he is 28. Where did he grow up? Where did he attend high school? College, yes or no? Married? Kids? Anything in his background to point to his having a short fuse or problems with minorities?

3. Of course no one deserves to die because they stole a pack of Swisher Sweets. And of course it’s coarse for the police to release that “DVD extra” as they grudgingly release Wilson’s name. But you know what? It IS slightly relevant. Why? Because it goes to Michael Brown’s state of mind when he was confronted by a police cruiser not long afterward. The photo of Michael Brown lying dead in the street is ugly because the entire situation is awful. But maybe a little patience is in order here.

4. I’m more than a little over the embedded media practicing the “Look at us” journalism. This isn’t Selma. Sorry. A young man was shot down in midday on a street by a policeman. We still don’t know all of the extenuating circumstances. Getting yourself arrested or tear-gassed doesn’t make you a better journalist. It makes you a voyeur. What happened to Wes Lowery of the Washington Post last week–that was real news. Everything since has felt like a battle for attention.

5. No, I’m not “blaming the victim” when I point out that in a town that is two-thirds African-American only 12% of the African-Americans voted in the last election*. The point is that towns operate best when their leadership is representative of the general population.  If 35 of Ferguson’s 53 police officers were African-American, as opposed to three of the 53, my guess is that the Michael Brown tragedy is very unlikely to happen. Statistically alone, the chances would’ve been two out of three that the cop who came across him would’ve been black and would’ve handled it better.

*I’m told the 12% figure is for the entire town, not just African-American voters. Still, two-thirds of Ferguson IS African-American.

6. I’m sorry, Dorin Johnson, but you lost me. You went on the cable news shows and gave your account of the shooting without ever mentioning what you’d been involved in less than half an hour earlier. You surrendered the moral high ground. So I’m a little more skeptical of how the police cruiser’s car door just accidentally got pushed back in when Officer Wilson opened it –you described it as an accident.

7. Is everything that folks, from Bill Maher to John Oliver, are saying about the militarization of police forces true? Sure. In fact, as follower Jim Leahy reminds us, The Andy Griffith Show covered this ground more than 50 years ago. Do the Ferguson PD have a PhD in incompetence when it comes to handling the aftermath of Brown’s killing? Certainly. Will that photo of the Fallujah Invasion cops pointing their weapons at an unarmed black person as a mailbox in the background has the words “F___ the Police” haunt this town and this era of law enforcement for a long, long time? Yes.

But does any of that directly impact the evidence of Michael Brown’s killing? No. Time will tell.

8. A few African-Americans who follow –followed?–me on Twitter said that Captain Ron Johnson is a “puppet.” I found that a little sad. To me he’s pulling heroic duty, stepping into a racial gulf and trying to soothe a situation before anyone else needlessly dies.

3. Football Returns: Size the Day!

Jason Gay of WSJ likened this moment to “Armstrong walking on the moon.”

The opening weekend of the Barclays Premier League saw the NBC debut of the Men in Blazers, (listen to how often Rebecca Lowe giggles off-camera) a pair of awesome no-look, heel-touch assists (for Liverpool and Manchester City) and an awesome fan penalty kick that the keeper, much to my delight, still felt the need to save. Love that.

Last week –and we all saw this coming back in June– the Michael and Rog visited GFOP Seth Meyers.

Also, worth noting:

Steven Naismith                                                                       Stephen A. Smith

Rebecca Lowe                                                                                                              Rebecca Lobo

4. Story Arc of a Diver

Windle already has a gold-medal smile

Meet Jordan Windle, a 15 year-old Cambodian native who was orphaned before his first birthday and then adopted by a gay American man, Jerry Windle. Who is now married. Yesterday Windle convincingly won the U.S. Men’s Diving 10-Meter platform championships and he is now a legitimate medal threat in Brazil. I cannot wait to tell Ann Coulter!

Jerry and Jordan have already written a book about their lives, in fact.

5. Nice Mug

Grudging Admiration. Extra credit for making the T-shirt orange

This is Robert Burt, 19, of Pittsfield, Maine. The charge: Driving under the influence and operating a vehicle without a license.