by John Walters

A Medium Happy 100th to Gregory Peck, here in 1947 Best Picture Oscar winner Gentleman’s Agreement (like this year’s Oscar winner, our hero was an investigative journalist; it’s on HBO Now; catch it) Peck died in 2003.

Starting Five

Heroic? Yes. Triumphant? No. No one will forget Marcus Paige’s shot, even if it failed to result in a win.

Clutch Trumps Double-Clutch

So much epic from Villanova 77, North Carolina 74. Quick thoughts:

–This is the same Marcus Paige who somehow missed a lightly contested lay-up seconds earlier. And then somehow stole the ball and put it back in (and we never got a replay).

–Remember when Roy Williams reminded sportswriters on Saturday or Sunday that he’s smarter than all of us when it comes to basketball? That’s likely true, but then how come no one was guarding Kris Jenkins, who is only Villanova’s most reliable outside shooter, for the entirety of the final play? Not smart? Or not good at getting your players to execute your plan, which is bad coaching?

Jenkins: “I am not throwing away MY shot/I am not throwing away MY shot….”

—Charles Barkley leaping in the air as former Tar Heel Kenny Smith absorbs the defeat in the background is as good as spontaneous reactions get. Contrast to how Jay “Bang!” Wright reacted.

–If you’re a point guard and a four-year team captain, it’s impossible to cap a career in a more fitting way than Ryan Arcidiacono did. Find the open man and get the game-winning assist on buzzer-beater for the national title. He’ll be coaching a Final Four team before his 45th birthday, if not sooner. It’s nice when you can put “Final Four MOP” on your coaching resume.

–Nice cover by Sports Illustrated, ruined somewhat by all the extraneous verbiage. You put the name of the mag on the cover and then maybe “Super ‘Nova.” And that’s all. No need to put author’s name (I love Luke Winn, but he’s not quite Curry Kirkpatrick yet, and even if he were, Curry never had his name on the cover) or “2016 NCAA Champions.” Really? I’m not gonna dumb it down, Jerry!

Ochefu: Final Four MOPper

–I couldn’t find a picture of Daniel Ochefu mopping the court his own damn self before the final play, but that happened.

–Someone from Villanova tweeted, “That’s how you end a season, The Walking Dead.” Perfect.

–I try to avoid “of all time” or “in history” when comparing sports feats. It speaks to one’s ignorance of the past and failure to appreciate just how much time there was before we (or ESPN) existed. Most of the “of all time” convos concerning last night’s game assume that the first NCAA title game was between Bird and Magic (it was not).

For example, here’s footage of the 1944 NCAA title game from Madison Square Garden, in which Utah outlasted Dartmouth (which has a U, T, A, and H in its name) 42-40 in overtime. Notice that the Utes score a near buzzer-beating game-winner (at 25:51) taken not far from where Jenkins launched his.

–Jim Nantz gave Arcidiacono his red tie as a tribute to how well RA played. I hope RA gave him a ‘Gee, thanks,” a roll of the eyes, and a wanking motion in return.

2. One Shining Moment

Hey, it’s always schmaltz and it’s always fabulous. I loved the annoyed text I got from my friend (and Katie’s husband), Mike, who seethed, “Kansas got one shot and Notre Dame got an infomercial.”

You can’t do better than the image of the Texas player sinking to his knees after Northern Iowa’s half court buzzer beater. But where, I wonder, was Tyler Brogdon‘s one-shoe three in an Elite Eight game? And I needed more Thomas Walkup.

My good friend Brett McMurphy tweeted that he longed for the bracket leak to make OSM, too. That would’ve been beautiful.

3. Mr. Scorcese, Have You Seen Our Tracking Shot?

The most memorable scene in BCS so far included not a single character that we already know.

The most ambitious and audacious tracking shots (the camera never cuts away) of all time in my memory: the entry into the restaurant in Goodfellas (still the standard by which others are measured), the evading the bad guys night shot in True Detective, and now the opener of last night’s Better Call Saul. When you consider how much choreography among drivers had to happen to pull off this shot, it’s even more impressive.

4. Panama Papers

I’ll admit, I know NOTHING about them other than the term. Fortunately, CNN realizes that I’m far from the only dope out there and so they wrote a story titled “Panama Papers: Seven Things To Know.” I have not even read THAT yet, but I’m linking it here.

5. Yankee$: Affluence & Effluents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=139&v=6J9viOvUbOY

I used to be a Yankee fan.
Then they built the new stadium, an unabashed monument to avarice unlike anything I’ve seen in sports, which is not to say they’re alone, but rather to say they just took it so far beyond what is even unacceptable that they lost my allegiance. They’ll survive.

You know I’ve been wailing this tune for years. On Sunday night, John Oliver chimed in.

Music 101

Alone

Not unlike Cheap Trick, Heart were a mid- to late Seventies staple of FM radio who prolonged their careers in the 1980s with a couple of mid-tempo power ballads. And both are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I chose this tune and version partly for the duet with Carrie Underwood (who cemented her victory in American Idol by singing this song, after which Simon told her she’d not only win AI but sell more records than any artist previously to appear on AI, and he was right) and partly for the primal scream that Ann Wilson unleashes at about 2:31.

The tune spent three weeks at No. 1 in the summer of 1987, making it Heart’s biggest hit, even though Jann Wenner and pals consider it an abomination as compared to “Magic Man” or “Crazy on You.”

Nancy’s blonde sis, guitarist Nancy Wilson, used to be married to the man behind Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe.

How did a major bank or lender never coopt this song for an ad campaign? (“How do I get you a loan???”)

Remote Patrol

Connecticut vs. Syracuse

ESPN 8:30 p.m.

The CEO

Mike Tyson. Michael Phelps. Tiger Woods. Serena Williams. Mount Union football. None of them are “ruining” their sports or did so in the past. Neither are Geno and the Huskies. Appreciate mastery when you witness it….

by John Walters

A day late on this one, but a Medium Happy 82nd to Jane Goodall, the original “Bright Eyes” when it comes to the planet of the apes.

Starting Five

Talia Walton (seen here earlier in the tourney) scored 29 points on Sunday, the most of any player in either Final Four this weekend. The Huskies still lost. It was the best effort by a Walton in the Final Four since Bill shot 21 of 22 in the 1973 NCAA championship game.

Final Snore

A 44-point loss in the Final Four and we’re not talking about the UConn women? No, that was Villanova ova’ Oklahoma, 95-51. The 44-point beatdown set the tone for the weekend, as North Carolina knocked out Syracuse by 17, the UConn “bad for basketball” women defeated Oregon State by 29, and Syracuse downed Washington by 21.

Take away Villanova’s 11 for 18 effort, and the other three Final Four teams in Houston shot 26.7% from beyond the arc because you can’t expect shooters to adjust to playing on an elevated court inside a football stadium when they only get about an hour of practice on it total before the opening tip off.

By the way, I’m not going to call this year’s Big Dance a bore, even if both of Saturday’s games were. Yale over Baylor, Middle Tennessee over Michigan State….the NIU half-courter, the NIU meltdown…the Notre Dame tip-in, the Notre Dame comeback…the Syracuse comeback versus Virginia? Villanova-Kansas? Too many great moments, nay, shimmering moments, for us to pronounce it a bore. We are all just too spoiled by things we get for free.

2. The Weekend Streaks Died

It was still April Fool’s Day on the West Coast when your friends phoned you to tell you that Golden State had lost at home for the first time since January 27, 2015 (and that one had been in OT)

Golden State’s 54-game home win streak, the longest in NBA history, died at the lively defensive hands of the Boston Celtics Friday night. Stephen Curry missed a good-look potential game-tying three with about four seconds left and the Celtics held on to win, 109-106. This also killed the Warriors’ shot at becoming the first team in NBA history to go 41-0 at home in a season (something the Spurs still have a shot at).

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

One day later FC Barcelona’s 39-game home win streak at Camp Nou died, fittingly, at the lively leg of Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid in El Clasico. Ronaldo scored the game-winner in the 85th minute for the 2-1 margin off a beautiful feed from Christian Gareth Bale (I mean, I assume he’s a Christian). Madrid was actually playing with just 10 men when Ronaldo scored the game-winner.

So, two of the longest home win streaks in sport, each held by the two prettiest teams to watch play their respective sports, the Dubs and Barca, die within a 24-hour time span. Yes, coincidence.

Three Things To Keep An Eye in NBA’s Final Week-Plus:

1. Golden State is 69-8. They must go 4-1 to better the ’96 Chicago Bulls record record of 72-10, with two of those remaining games against the Spurs.

2. San Antonio is 39-0 at home. As I mentioned, no team has ever finished 41-0 at home. The ’85-86 Celtics went 40-1 at home. It’s not gonna be easy, as the final two games at the AT&T Center will be against Golden State (Sunday) and Oklahoma City (Tuesday), two of the three other best squads in the NBA. The thing is, all three are locked in to their playoff spots, so how much will Pop’s pride play a role? All we know for sure is that Pop never does anything to please the league office.

This was definitely Kobe’s last game versus the Celtics. This may also have been his final dunk and final 30-plus point game, too.

3. Kobe Watch: The Mamba scored 34 last night to give him a career total of 33,498 points through 1,340 games. One more basket and he’d have 33,500 and an even 25.00 points per game career scoring average. As it stands, he’s at 24.9985 points per game and the LOLakers have six games remaining. If he were to play all six games, he’d need to score a total of 152 points to average 25 for his career.

3. Pardon The Interruptions

Negan’s bat may contain an illegal substance

Sunday night’s 90-minute season finale of that zombie show might as well have been called The Walking Ad. Did anyone put a clock on just how many minutes were devoted to commercials?

The season ends when Rick and his posse finally have to come to grips with the fact that, not for the first time, there’s a new sheriff in town. We’ve heard the name Negan all season, but it turns out to be the patient with the weak heart from Grey’s Anatomy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really cheering for Rick and the gang any more (only one-eyed Carl is more annoying). And when Carol asked Morgan rhetorically midway through the episode, “You think I’m being dramatic here?” well, I laughed. As the show’s quality deteriorates, the best acting anyone involved with it may be doing is Chris Hardwick, who acts as if he loves every plot twist while hosting The Talking Dead immediately after. What choice does he have, though?

We’ve seen this before, TWD

So my question is this: Who gets the credit for baseball bats as weapons of cranial destruction in movies/shows (because that’s how Season 6 ends, though we don’t know who the victim is: I’m guessing it’s Hardcore Henry). Is it Quentin Tarantino for this scene in Inglourious Basterds, or is it Brian De Palma for the Al Capone (DeNiro) scene in The Untouchables? Or do we go back further, to 1979, to the Baseball Furies in Warriors?

Here’s Sepinwall’s review, titled “The Walking Dead Ends It’s Season On a Hilariously Stupid Cliffhanger”. In it he resolves that he has now quit watching the show (and that, oh by the way, if they stay true to the comic book, Glenn is the batting practice ball; I guess you can only go under the dumpster one so many times), so Negan sort of knocked him out, too.

4. Whirled Cups

Ian, alas, does not sing “You’re gonna me when I’m gone” while stacking….

This is 11 year-old Chan Keng Ian of Malaysia, who won the male division at the World Sport Stacking Championships in Speichersdorf, Germany, this weekend. World-record holder William Orrell of the USA finished a disappointing 34th. Get a glimpse below to see what this all entails.

It’s like Superbad meets Becca’s audition for the Bellas.

5. Cannibal Holocaust

The “Guess Who’s Coming To Be Dinner” scene from the 1980 flick.

So I noticed that one of New York’s coolest movie theaters, the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, was screening a 1980 horror film titled Cannibal Holocaust. And I’d never heard of it. And while I didn’t go see it at the theater, you can easily find it online (I’ll leave the work to you if you want to find it) and view it in its entirety.

I’ll warn you: the dialogue and script is cheesy, like barely better than what you’d hear in a porn film (from what friends tell me). But, oh my God: this movie is SO WRONG. Just a short list of things you’ll see: impaling, amputations, decapitations, sexual mutilations, gang rapes, animals being killed onscreen, a 70s mustache and, oh yes, cannibalism.

It’s as if someone said, “Let’s make a movie and just go for all of it. Let’s see if we can make a film so vile, so disturbing, so repugnant and so grisly that there will be no one left in the theater when it’s over.” They may have succeeded.

The film was actually made by an Italian film crew and after its premiere, it was banned in Italy and director Ruggero Deodato was arrested on obscenity charges. The film has since been banned in 50 countries. I didn’t recognize a single actor in this film, maybe because appearing in this movie was career suicide. It makes The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel look like Kung Fu Panda.

Believe me, most of the pics of this movie on line are graphic and disturbing. Put it this way: it’s a good thing they never came out with Cannibal Holocaust action figures.

Now here’s the crazy thing about Cannibal Holocaust: it’s skillful and in terms of structure, way ahead of its time. The set-up: an anthropologist heads into the Amazon to discover what has become of a four-person documentary crew (all young and sexy Americans) who themselves went in to film a primitive cannibal tribe and have not returned. During our anthropologist’s journey, we come across items or events that don’t make too much sense at first, but will later.

When? Well, the anthropologist does return with the “found footage” (hello, Blair Witch Project) from the documentary filmmakers’ excursion. And we slowly learn why so many earlier inscrutable moments took place, as well as the fate of our film crew. So it’s a pretty ingenious idea for 1980. But so much of what you see here is just, like, well, a product of the most warped of imaginations.

I love what this reviewer did: he posted photos of kittens, adding  in the captions, “I refuse to subject you to any images from Cannibal Holocaust. You know how to use Google Image Search, scar your own damn minds.” His lede, which I wholeheartedly agree with, is, “If you really, I mean really buy into the idea that all art is protected speech, and nothing should be obscene, Cannibal Holocaust is what you should be prepared to live with.”

So, yeah, it’s a movie you’ll never forget having seen. But that may very well be the problem: You cannot unsee this movie.

Music 101

Hooked on a Feeling

“Ooga-chaka ooga-ooga, ooga-chaka ooga-ooga….” You’ve probably never heard of Blue Swede, the Swedish band that took this song to No. 1 in 1974. Theirs is a cover of the B.J. Thomas (“Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”) original, which only rose to No. 5 in 1969. But B.J. did not include the “ooga-chaka…” opening. That was done by English musician Jonathan King in 1971 (his version never made a splash in the states).

If you watched the most the March 27 episode of Vinyl (set in 1973) an L.A. record company owner tells Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) that he just laid down a cover of “Hooked On A Feeling” and Richie asks, “You mean the B.J. Thomas song?” It’s a good reference for the show to make, since who remembers Blue Swede? Favorite moment from the scene is when Ray Romano’s character tells Richie that he’s going to hit the buffet line “before you-know-who does” and then nods in the direction of Mama Cass, who is only referred to earlier as “Mama” (characters depicting Graham Parsons, Steven Stills, David Crosby and Neil Young are also depicted in the Malibu beach party scene).
Here’s the B.J. Thomas version. No horns, no ooga-chaka, but richer vocals:

Remote Patrol

Better Call Saul

10 p.m. AMC

Villanova-UConn

TBS 8ish

Tune in to UNC and the Kitty Cats and hope it’s close, then switch over to see if Jimmy said “Yes” to Kim.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 34th to Taran Killam, who apparently graduated high school in 1973.

Starting Five

1. Trump Campaign Files For Bankruptcy

This is HUUUUUUUUGE! Apparently self-funding your own campaign is more expensive than we thought. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump announced today that his campaign coffers are empty and that he will now run his entire campaign out of his Fifth Avenue home. “I said recently that I thought we’ve had too many debates,” said the recently minted granddad, “and now I think we’ve had too much air travel and hotels. New York City is a great, great city. It’s the best city. I’m going to run my campaign from here. I like Manhattan. We’ve got a moat around the entire town, which is even better than a wall.”

2. Battery Not Included (Or Is It?)

Will Tesla’s “affordable” Model 3 change the auto game?

Yesterday Tesla unveiled its $35,000 car, the Model 3 (see, it rhymes with “Model T”). The  automaker has already received 115,000 advance orders for the sleek five-seater, which will be able to travel 215 miles on a single battery charge.

The Model S, Tesla’s previous big seller, came in at anywhere between $71,000 to $109,000.

Tesla stock shares (TSLA), which were at $141 on February 8, are at $245 this morning.

3. Miss Colombia Meets Missed Columbia

Colombia: Never Forget!

Is Steve Harvey on the NCAA tournament Selection Committee? Word came out yesterday, and not on April 1st, that the tourney inadvertently sent a text to South Carolina on Selection Sunday inviting it to the Big Dance. Did they not send one to the other USC, which actually did make the tourney?

The Trojans, by the way, finished 21-12; the Gamecocks, 24-8.

4. Available at the Jerk Store

Not quite an urban sombrero

Because it is, after all, that day, GQ.com is featuring a certain debonair male in all of its stories this morning. Head to the site to check it out.

5. For Whom the Bell Trolls

Bell was fired over a Facebook post. It’s not just millennials who get in trouble via social media

This is Wendy Bell. Until recently she was a news anchor at WTAE in Pittsburgh, where she had worked since 1998. She has won 21 regional Emmy awards.

Then, on March 9, there was a mass murder in Pittsburgh. Five people were shot and killed at a backyard party (that’s a lot). Miss Bell chimed in on Facebook to discuss the tragedy:

“You needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. They are young black men, likely in their teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They’ve grown up there. They know the police. They’ve been arrested.”

In the immortal words of Lenny and Squiggy, “Hello!”

Bell was terminated by WTAE.

You can read more about it here. 

Music 101

What a Fool Believes

In the late 1970s the Doobie Brothers transformed from being America’s favorite biker band to a group that actually cared about writing radio-friendly hits. Also, I think, someone in the band purchased a blow dryer. Lead singer Michael McDonald joined the band in 1976 and that changed everything. This song reached No. 1 and won a Grammy for Song of the Year, but true DB fans have a difficult time listening to it without a gob of phlegm rising in their esophaguses.

Remote Patrol

Celtics at Warriors

10:30 p.m. ESPN

5’9″ Isaiah Thomas is Boston’s leading scorer at 21 ppg

The best home record in NBA history, prior to this year, belonged to the Boston Celtics, who in 1985-86 finished 40-1 (they lost by 22 to the Trail Blazers). The Dubs are 36-0 at home this season and the Spurs are 38-0 at home. When these two met in Boston on December 11, the still unbeaten Warriors needed double overtime before winning (they lost their first game the following night in Milwaukee).

By the way, Golden State’s final home game is against San Antonio next Thursday night. And then it visits the Spurs.