by John Walters

A Medium Happy 85th to Jerry Hall’s husband.

Starting Five

Turn down fer wut?

1. Turning Down the Trumperature

Barely watched last night, but I hear that the latest GOP debate was basically tea-and-cucumber sandwiches. I mean, Donald Trump did say ISIS is evil, so we should act like terrorists to fight them. And Marco Rubio said that as long as China and India aren’t going to clean up their rooms, why should we? But, all in all, the four candidates were more civil to one another.

Maybe they realize that it’s time to stop throwing gasoline on the fire (especially when we should be changing over to batteries). I mean, you had the great Sucker Punch Incident of 2016 earlier this week (above) and also the great Somebody To Shove incident involve Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields (forever).

Trump is accusing Fields of making up the story. Which would be wild. What intrigues me more is not whether or not Fields was actually manhandled by Trump’s heavy, Corey Lewandowski, but that since she wrote a brief “In My Own Words” story about the event yesterday, it has received more than 7,000 comments. And she wasn’t even singing in a car with James Corden.

2. Auguste and Everything After

Auguste scored 22 points and had 19 rebounds and was just a beast in the second half versus the Blue Devils

In the ACC quarters, Notre Dame trailed Duke 64-48 with 11:08 after the Blue Devils’ Matt Jones drained a three-pointer. Then the Dookies forgot how to run a set play, or to put the ball in Grayson Allen’s (27 points) hands while Notre Dame center Zach Auguste just decided he didn’t want to lose.

The Irish went on a 19-2 run, forced overtime, and then won 84-79 in the extra stanza. V.J. Beacham sank three timely threes late in the 2nd half and OT, but Auguste, the chiseled, rooster-tailed 6’10” senior from Marlborough, Mass., was the difference. I don’t know where he’ll play next year (my guess is Europe, and he’ll be happy there) but he put on a show yesterday.

Mike Brey, by the way, is now 5-1 against Coach K since Notre Dame joined the ACC. Notre Dame meets North Carolina in the semis today at 7 p.m.

3. Totally Paula

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-33dLHqkfq0

Our friend and former NBC colleague Paula Faris—once upon a time there was a Notre Dame football pre-game show from inside Notre Dame Stadium, streaming live on the web, and Paula played the role of Liam McHugh, which I guess made me Hines Ward—decided to give stand-up comedy a try. Brave woman.

Joy Behar’s right. You can’t do stand-up holding note cards. Kinda kills the mood.

4. Kobe 25.0

Kobe scored 26 and LeBron 24 last night

In his final meeting versus LeBron “Sweet Pea” James last night, Kobe Bryant scored 26 points in LOLakers’ 120-108 loss. In his last two appearance the Mamba had scored 12 and five points, and he’s averaging 15.5 points in his last 10 games.

Kobe’s career average, this morning, after 1,332 games, is EXACTLY 25.0 points per game. There are eight players in NBA history who retired averaging 25.0 or more points per contest (this would be a good trivia question if I weren’t supplying the answer): Michael Jordan, 30.12, Wilt Chamberlain, 30.07, Elgin Baylor, 27.36, Jerry West, 27.03, Allen Iverson, 26.66, Bob Pettit, 26.36, George Gervin, 26.18, and Oscar Robertson, 25.68.

Baylor was one of three Lakers (Chamberlain, West) who all played on the 1969-70 team and are all in the top four all-time in points per game.

LeBron and Kevin Durant both average above 27 ppg, but they are still in the primes of their careers. The Lakers (14-52) have 16 games remaining, and Kobe has no wiggle room if he wants to average 25 points per game for his career. Will he do it? Stay tuned.

5. Vampire Toothed

Wanted in New Haven….

In New Haven, a hit-and-run incident becomes more bizarre when witnesses describe the driver as looking like a “wolverine” and having “vampire teeth.” Did they really get that close a look at the motorist? And maybe too many people in New Haven are watching X-Men?

Music 101

Personality Crisis

If HBO’s Vinyl does nothing else, it has introduced an entire new generation—or two—to the New York Dolls. The climactic scene of the series premiere shows our hero, Richie Finestra, attending a Dolls show at the Mercer Arts Center (Broadway & West 3rd) when the building collapses. The building DID collapse on August 3, 1973 and the Dolls did play a show there, but those two events did not occur on the same day. In fact, the building collapsed in the afternoon.

The glitter rock classic was the opening song on the Dolls’ self-titled debut album in ’73. Written and sung by David Johansen, it never scored big on the charts, but Rolling Stone includes it on it Top 500 list of all-time greatest songs at No. 271.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctg5FCS1wCM

Remote Patrol

College Hoops All Day

Noon, ESPN: Michigan-Indiana (B1G)

6:30 p.m., BTN: Ohio State-Michigan State (B1G)

6:30 p.m., FS1: Providence-Villanova (Big East)

7 p.m., ESPN2: Baylor-Kansas (Big 12)

7 p.m., ESPN: Notre Dame-North Carolina (ACC)

7 p.m., SECN: Alabama-Kentucky (SEC)

9 p.m., ESPN2: Oklahoma-West Virginia (Big 12)

9 p.m., PAC-12 N: Arizona-Oregon (PAC-12)

11:30 p.m., FS1: Cal-Utah

Poeltl is Utah’s best seven-footer since Andrew Bogut

Enjoy, kids: In this cache of games you get Yogi Ferrell, Denzell Valentine, Kris Dunn, Perry Ellis, Brice Johnson, Auguste, Tyler Ulis, Buddy Hield and Jakob Poeltl. Not bad for a Friday in mid-March.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 58th to Sharon Stone, who once married a print journalist.

Starting Five

She may be the Owen Meany of distance running, but don’t be fooled by her size. She’s a demon.

1. Allez, Allie!

Let’s just provide the resume of 19 year-old Allie Ostrander of Soldotna, Alaska, a freshman at Boise State:

–10-time state champion in track and field and cross country

–state record-holder in the 1600 and 3200

–Nike National High School Cross Country champion, 2014

–Six-time winner of the Mount Marathon Junior Race, and runner-up in her first try at the Senior edition of the race last July 4th.

–In her past two Mount Marathons, she has broken the existing records in the Junior race (2014) and the Senior race (2015).

–Runner-up at last fall’s NCAA Cross Country Championships.

–Straight-A student.

That’s joy, not pain

Ostrander will compete in the 5,000 (Friday) and the 3,000 (Saturday) at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Birmingham, Ala. No freshman has ever won either race. Her only real competition is Notre Dame senior Molly Seidel, who beat her at the X-Country Championships last November. Consider, for example, in the 5,000, that Seidel (15:19) and Allie (15:21) are the only two women who have gone below 15:30 this winter.

2. Let Bees Bee

Finally, someone displays sanity and humanity in dealing with wild creatures

A spring training game between the Kansas City Royals and the Colorado Rockies in Surprise, Arizona, was disrupted on Tuesday when a swarm of bees decided not to pay for tickets.

Fortunately, Lowell Hutchison, a retired bookkeeper, was also in attendance (wait, what? Oh, he’s a retired beekeeper. My bad).

A year ago, on the same day (March 8), bees disrupted a Royals game and they were all exterminated. At the time Royals manager Ned Yost (my new favorite manager) was pissed at the action that was taken: “They’re just honey bees, man. There’s a decline in honey bees. We need ’em.”

This year Yost made sure that the bees were not killed.

“I told (vice president of communications Mike Swanson), we ain’t killing those bees,” Yost said after the game. “We better figure something out. But we’re not killing those bees. Luckily, we had a beekeeper from St. Joe, I told Swanny, ‘Just get a bag.’

“They had already devised that plan by the time I called them over. Just get a plastic bag, take ’em out and let them go.

“There’s not enough bees in the world, boys. We can’t be exterminating them. I’m telling you, they are dwindling, and they’re so important to our environment, because they pollinate everything. It doesn’t make any sense for me to panic and kill bees.”

3. Chestnut Hill Street Blues

The men’s basketball team at Boston College finished its ACC season 0-19  with an 88-66 loss to Florida State in the first round of the ACC tournament on Tuesday. Coupled with the football team’s 0-8 record in ACC play, the Eagles became the first school since TCU in 1976-77 to lose all of its conference games in both football and men’s basketball. And I’ll be happy to take their entire Sports Information department out for a drink later this spring.

If you are wondering, B.C. lost by 1 to N.C. State on March 3 and by 3 to North Carolina, a possible No. 1 seed next week, in February. All of its other ACC games were blowouts.

The video above is both painful and hilarious to watch. That’s senior Dennis Clifford. The irony of Clifford’s answer is that this is a season when the men’s basketball team got sick after eating at Chipotle.

4. Fake Wobegon Days

It IS close to Canada, which could soon be a benefit.

Red Lake County is an unassuming spot in northern Minnesota, and yet a  place that Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham last August, in a story ranking every spot in America by “geography and climate,” referred to as “the absolute worst place to live in America.”

A few weeks later Ingraham visited. And he decided he’d been too harsh.

So now Ingraham is moving his family to Red Lake County for two years.

Sorry, Chris, not buying it. I mean, I buy the original story. But this sounds to me like a very canny and savvy journalist who knows a good book deal/film deal/NPR-worthy story when he reads one. So now he’ll write one.

Good luck, Chris. Minnesotans are nobody’s fools. I don’t doubt Ingraham will stay. I doubt the sincerity of the reason for his relocation.

5. Now That IS a Smart Phone

What will this do to the Ziploc bag industry?

I’ve done it; have you done it? Lost a phone to a careless interaction with H2O? Extra points if you’ve dropped yours in a toilet.

Well, as you may already know, Samsung has come out with a Galaxy S7 that purports to be waterproof. Yesterday on CNBC they placed one in a goldfish bowl on the studio desk to demonstrate.

Meanwhile, Apple had a water-resistance patent accepted last November by the U.S. Patent office.

For the longest time, phones not being water-resistant was actually a boon to business for Apple and Samsung (See: “Planned Obsolesence”). But we all knew this day would eventually arrive. I’ll call you from my shower later.

Music 101

The Long and Winding Road

In honor of Sir George Martin, the genius behind the Beatles’ studio work who whose death was announced….yesterday….at age 90, we present this mournful but hopeful Beatles classic. This was the Fab Four’s 20th and last No. 1 hit, topping the charts in June of 1970.

Remote Patrol

GOP Debate

8:30 p.m. CNN

How can you not love this man?

Yes, another one, this time from Miami. It’s either No. 11 or 12, we’ve lost count. Donald Trump, part-time resident, and Marco Rubio, part-time senator, will vie for home-court advantage as Ted Cruz tries to persuade voters that you can do an effective job even if everybody despises you (look at us, after all). After the last debate (hands & glands), will anything be off the table? And how well would a Don Rickles in his prime do in this format? I think he’d be leading.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 30th birthday to Brittany Snow, who is not leaving this shower until she hears you sing “Titanium.” That song’s her jam.

Starting Five

Megatron was that NFL player who actually had the same physique as those Under Armour football uniform mannequins

1. RIP, Megatron

I saw Calvin Johnson play in person at Georgia Tech. No one could cover him. Simply a freak of nature. After the game Notre Dame safety Chinedum Ndukwe, a future NFL player, was asked about Johnson and he simply smiled and said, “Good as advertised.”

Yesterday, after nine seasons with the Detroit Lions, Johnson, a.k.a Megatron, retired. So now he’ll have Thanksgiving mornings to himself. He’s a Hall of Famer, talent-wise. The problem is that because Detroit always stunk, there’s not much of a legacy for the fan beyond the environs of the Motor City.

Do you realize that Johnson never played a home playoff game in his career? He played in two wildcard games, in 2014 and 2015, and the Lions lost both. The more memorable of the two was a 24-20 loss at Dallas in 2014, which is actually memorable mainly for the fact that America saw Chris Christie hugging Jerry Jones in the owner’s box.

Johnson, 30, retires as Detroit’s all-time leading receiver. But overall in the NFL, he is only 43rd in career receptions (731), 22nd in TD catches (83), and 27th in receiving yards (11,619). Very, very good, but it’s disappointing that, not unlike Barry Sanders (who was relatively better), he spent all of his career in hapless Detroit.

Outside of his physical gifts (the 6’5″ size, the hands, the speed), he may actually be remembered for the TD catch that was ruled not a catch in Chicago (“The ruling on the field is that the runner did not complete the catch during the process of the catch.” Never say the NFL can’t take something that can be explained in five words and do a worse job of explaining it in 20). That was the shot heard ’round the world in the NFL’s recent “What exactly is a catch?” debate.

2. Donald Trump: Team America F**k Yeah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEPLefoDwNM

Yesterday I tweeted that it would be stupid to spend all this money ($21 million) on anti-Trump ads, since such attacks would only be throwing gasoline onto the fire. Like thrashing about in quick sand. For those who don’t want to see a Trump America, they must understand that Donald Trump followers use attacks against him as a reason to become even more entrenched against the establishment and/or political correctness. As does he.

See this moment from a Q&A in Michigan yesterday. The MSNBC reporter asks him about foul language, and he turns it back on the reporter in an ad hominem attack. This is what the GOP establishment and/or the liberal media (and even conservative media) don’t get. There are millions of voters out there who are exactly unlike them (they don’t, for example, tweet or use the term “ad hominem attack.”)

Team America: World Police and Idiocracy were early millennial satires. The joke is on them, though. It’s now reality. There’s a pushback on the transgender bathroom crowd and the Modern Family crowd and the Black Lives Matter crowd.  It’s all about balance. One group went so far in one extreme direction that now another antipodal group is going that far in the opposite direction.

It’s like this: ESPN awarding Caitlyn Jenner the Arthur Ashe Courage Award is the best thing that ever happened to the Trump campaign.

3. I Choose Violins?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuH3tJPiP-U

I always pegged Cersei as more of a fan of the lyre. Anyway, here’s the Season 6 Game of Thrones trailer. Meanwhile Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” sill has some mileage left in it. I feel as if HBO or someone used this song as a theme song for a show back in the 1990s. At least here the title of the song is apropos.

4. Far RIGHT Fielder

Former New York Yankee Paul O’Neill, one of my all-time favorite pinstripes, endorsed Donald Trump yesterday. For president. I think he likes the idea of building a wall. A right field wall. That keeps fly balls inside the park.

I wonder, though: How can a man with hair that good be backing a man with hair that bad?

5. “Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!”

Marcia and Sarah: Doppelgänger bangers

As “The People Vs. O.J. Simpson” soldiers on, you may notice that are titular character is becoming less of a major character…which is exactly went down in his trial. As the Juice was muted, attorneys and/or witnesses such as prosecutor Marcia Clark, defense whiz Johnny Cochrane and Detective Mark Fuhrman came to the fore.

A few interesting, timely notes about last night’s Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) -centric version: first, Clark , playing the part of Marco Rubio, makes a joke about the size of defense attorney F. Lee Bailey’s hands in the courtroom, a joke she knows the jurors will comprehend. Second, Bailey may have launched the race card war by asking Fuhrman if he had ever used the “N-word.” People forget that for the jurors and much of the American audience, whether or not he did ever those two syllables was tantamount to deciding O.J.’s innocence or guilt.

Finally, there’s the whole, surreal idea that an event of major importance (a murder trial then, a presidential race today) devolves into a soap opera for the TV audience. There’s one scene in which two mechanics are watching the trail and one of them says, “They should put Kato back on the show,” as if this is General Hospital. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, here’s Fuhrman on why he won’t watch the show. He makes some very solid points.

Music 101

Grazin’ in the Grass

I can dig it he can dig it she can dig it we can dig it they can dig it you can dig it. I mean, if you have to decline the verb “to dig it,” proceed directly to the Friends of Distinction. This tune hit No. 3 on the Billboard charts in 1969.

Remote Patrol

Champions League

Paris St. Germain at Chelsea

2:30 p.m. FS1

Ibrahimovic: Soccer star, man-bun aficionado

This is the third year in a row the London club and the Parisian club are meeting in a knockout stage. Two years ago the Blues won, while last year it was PSG. John Terry will miss the match with a boo boo, but Diego Costa suits up for Chelsea and The Zlatan, Zlatan Ibrhamovic, will make his presence felt for PSG. I also think we may have him to blame for the man-bun.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 26th to two-time Wimbledon champ Petra Kvitova

Starting Five

Andrews was awarded $55 million after the jury deliberated for 7 hours. Afterward the judge answered two questions and then jogged off to his chambers.

The Peephole’s Court

Yesterday a jury in Nashville awarded Erin Andrews $55 million. The jury divided the award, so that her pervert stalker must pay $28 million, which he does not have, while Marriott Hotels must pay her $27 million, which they do.

I’ve been told that her legal counsel could receive anywhere from 20% to 50% of her award. And I’m not sure how that works (but read Michael McCann of SI.com here). Let’s imagine they collect 20%, for example. Is that of the $55M total or of what she can realistically expect to recoup, which is half that? And when Marriott appeals, do Erin and her team settle for less to prevent that appeal from happening or does she fight it, which will eat up more of her award in legal fees?

Andrews left the courtroom without stopping to give an interview. Which seems like bad karma, considering what she does for a living.

2. All Alone at the End of the Evening

The Meinsers: If it all went to pieces before you….

Former Eagle Randy Meisner, who was best known for co-writing and singing “Take It To The Limit” before Glenn Frey kicked him out of the band, yesterday either did or did not kill his wife, Lana Rae.

Here’s the weird part: At 5:30 p.m. LAPD had visited the home and taken a domestic violence incident report. Apparently, this was not uncommon between these two. Ninety minutes later, according to police, while Randy was in another room, Lana Rae was in another room lifting a rifle that was in its case when it accidentally discharged and killed her.

Why was Lana Rae lifting the rifle? Was she coming back, she coming back for more?
And is Randy, who only last summer was in court for threatening a murder-suicide with an AK-47, completely innocent here, or is there nothing to believe in?

3. Flunkie

Sharapova took full responsibility for taking the Meldonium, because she’s not married to Peyton Manning’s wife.

I’m still trying to understand all of this, so bear with me. Maria Sharapova flunked a drug test at the Australian Open in January for taking a banned substance, meldonium, which was only placed on the banned list on January 1, 2016 (or less than a month earlier)? And now Nike has suspended its ties with her and Porsche has dropped her as a client? And Sharapova may receive a lengthy suspension from the WTA?

Meldonium is a drug taken by angina patients, but it does help athletes recover more quickly from intensive exercise. Sharapova has been taking it since 2006. The ITF only put it on its banned list recently as it noticed the drug showing up in so many of its athletes’ samples. Meanwhile, Serena Williams is like, “Let that skinny-ass white girl take all the meldonium she wants, I’ll still beat her ass.” And she’s right, of course.

That all of this took place on the day Peyton Manning retired, that’s rather rich.

4. The Daily Harrumph: Journalism

Not a good look for Yale, but not a good look for journalists, either.

Okay, this isn’t a major harrumph; consider it a minor harrumph. And let me preface it by saying that in the coverage of the Yale-Jack Montague story, no one has been on top of it quite like Daniela Brighenti and Maya Sweedler (both undergrads) of the Yale Daily News. The spirit of Rory Gilmore is strong in those two.

The New Haven Register, after a very slow start, has also done good work in the past week. And I cannot remember if Mitchell Huntzberger still owns that newspaper, or if he sold it and invested in an app.

Anyway, here’s my beef. On Saturday SI.com heads up to Levien Gym to get around to covering this story. It’s a fine story by David Gardner. My beef here is that in the second paragraph Gardner, writing for a high profile sports site, alludes to a story earlier in the week by The Big Lead, a story that featured NO ORIGINAL REPORTING if you don’t include TBL’s own admission that “a tipster told us.” And he hyperlinks the story.

This is not reporting. All TBL did was get a phone call or email from someone, then aggregate the reporting of the Yale Daily News into an item. And that’s fine for them to do. But it’s a little irresponsible of Gardner to make that the one story to which he leads his readers. Unless it was TBL’s salacious headline which persuaded him to do so. In which case, well, that’s exactly why TBL used it.

I like the guys (and non-girls; no females or people of color on the staff?) at TBL. They’re doing what it is they do and often times they do original reporting. Not here, though. And I don’t know why another writer would reward them for it when there are actual reporters doing real, honest work.

Harrumph!

5. Manning Up (Mooning Up?) to Peyton

If someone tells a reporter, “It’s neither the time nor the place,” then it is definitely both the time and the place.

As ESPN got out the scented candles and lubricants for its Peyton Manning retirement coverage yesterday, a lone intrepid reporter, Lindsay Jones of USA Today, dared to put a damper on the festivities by asking No. 18 about the sexual assault allegations that have dogged him since mid-February (from an incident that, to be fair, allegedly took place 20 years ago).

Credit Jones for asking the question (she took a lot of heat online, but who cares? Twitter bullies are always just four steps away from the door of the basement leading up to their mom’s kitchen, anyway) and credit Manning for invoking another mythic southern figure whose tale is too good to be true in his response: “I did not do what has been alleged,” he said. “Like Forrest Gump said, that’s all I have to say about that.”

Music 101

Out Of The Picture

In 1995 the band Son Volt put out an album called Trace, which is just a wonderful slice of melancholy country rock. None of the songs became chart hits (“Drown” came closest), but I’ve listened to this album hundreds of times. I just flows. That’s lead singer Jay Farrar, formerly of Uncle Tupelo.

Remote Patrol

Champions League: Roma at Real Madrid

2:30 p.m. FS1

Gareth Bale (left) of Real Madrid marks his Roma counterpart

The second leg in this Round of 16 match takes place in Spain. Real Madrid won 2-0 in Rome when the two last met, so they’ll be looking to close it out today with Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo.