by John Walters

A Medium Happy 50th to Iron Mike Tyson

Starting Five

Salazar won his 6th straight, the Indians their 12th

1. Danny for the Dozen

The Cleveland Indians win their 12th straight, one shy of the franchise record for longest win streak, with a 3-0 shutout of the Atlanta Braves. Danny Salazar pitched the five-hit shutout for his sixth consecutive win. The Tribe still have not lost since the Cavs won the NBA championship and the sports folk of Cleveland are really, really going to hate saying goodbye to this month of June.

On June 1st the Indians were 26-24 and the Cavs were heading toward the NBA Finals. Cleveland embarked on a six-game win streak on that first day of June and now have a victory string twice that long heading into the final day of June. With a 47-30 record, they’re 21-6 this month.

Salazar, meanwhile, is now 10-3 with a 2.22 ERA, 2nd-best in the American League.

2. Gone Girl

Williams is still only 26

The last terrific hire from the Jon Stewart era of The Daily Show, Jessica Williams, announced that today will be her final appearance. The correspondent was hired out of L.A. four years ago when she was only 22. At least there won’t be a prolonged farewell tour. Williams is going to remain with Comedy Central as opposed to just showing up at the Friars Club at 4:30 p.m. for the early bird specials.

3. The Five-Timers Club

Phelps will head to his fifth Olympics on his fourth continent

Meet Michael Phelps, who just qualified for his fifth Olympics by winning the 200-meter butterfly at the U.S. Olympic Trials.. Oh, by the way, today is his 31st birthday. He’s also a dad now (son, Boomer, was born in early May) and is engaged to his longtime girlfriend, former Miss California Nicole Johnson. You want to root for Phelps, but he spent all that time in Ann Arbor and then married a USC alum.

Phelps has won 18 gold medals at four different Olympics. In Sydney in 2000, when he was 15, he failed to win a medal but did advance to the final in the 200 butterfly.

4. The Prince of Endurance

After running 100 miles in a little over 15 hours, Miller wonders why no one can find him a more comfortable chair, or at least a second folding chair on which to prop up his feet.

This is Andrew Miller, 20, who last weekend became the youngest person to ever win the Western States 100, the granddaddy of endurance runs, in northern California. Miller, who has never run on a high school or college cross-country team (or in track) completed the 100 miles from Squaw Valley to Auburn, Calif., in 15 hours and 39 minutes.

For much of the race Miller, a sophomore-to-be at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff (move there before everyone discovers how great it is), trailed 26 year-old Jim Walmsley, also of Flagstaff. Walmsley was on a record pace for the 43 year-old annual race when he took a wrong turn on Mile 91 that took him three miles out of his way. Walmsley would finish 20th, in 18:45, whereas he had been on pace to run a sub-15.

Insert tortoise-hare analogy here.

5. CNBC’s Brexit Babe

People who talk finance in a British accent just sound more as if they know what they’re talking about. As compared to say, Darren Rovell.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of England’s departure from the European Union is more air time on CNBC for Julia Chatterley, who looks and sounds (and has an appropriately British surname) like someone Mike Myers dreamt up for the yet-to-be-filmed fourth Austin Powers film.

To be gender-neutral, another Brit and an Oxford man, Wilfred Frost,  has also received a copious amount of air time lately covering Brexit for CNBC, and yes, his father is the late David Frost, of Frost/Nixon fame.

Frost: Jolly good show

Music 101

It’s Too Late To Turn Back Now

This tune, by the Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose, hit No. 2 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1972. Eddie Cornelius, who wrote the song, is now an ordained pastor in south Florida.

Remote Patrol

Euro Quarters: Poland vs. Portugal

ESPN 3 p.m.

The most popular Pole since Lech Walesa

Tune in to see if Portugal loses and its pouty potentate, Cristiano Ronaldo, retires from international play. The underdog Poles will be the crowd faves in Marseille and keep an eye on their striker, Robert Lewandowski.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 45th to the Egg McMuffin. How can something so wrong taste so right?

Starting Five

1. Ataturk

41 dead in Istanbul after three suicide bombers struck, also using rifles.

A few thoughts: 1) Syria is roughly the size of North Dakota. 2) Syria is embroiled in a civil war and it is a largely lawless place. 3) ISIS benefits from operating out of Syria, but there are no defined bases, military installations, etc. 4) It’s pretty clear that in order to wipe out ISIS, at least quickly, you’re going to have to put troops in Syria….However, 5) If you study the lessons of Vietnam and Iraq, you’ll remember that putting American troops in nations that have zero political stability does not neatly solve the problem. After all, you have to remember 6) that the average Syrian or Kurdish teen isn’t reading the opinion pages of The New York Times or Washington Post. It’s pretty easy to convert someone who looks like you and prays to the same God as you to your side of a military squabble as opposed to him taking the side of the invaders, the “infidels,” who do not worship Allah. And so by attacking the hornet’s nest there’s the very real chance of exponentially increasing its numbers.

So, 7) good luck turning the truth into a political sound byte to your advantage. Anyone can say, 8) “We have to wipe out ISIS.” How you do it and introduce stability to a crazed region is another question, because, sure 9) 41 dead here, 82 dead there are awful numbers, but thousands of U.S. troops dead somewhere else without any victory (see Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, with more than 80,000 dead and little to show for it except a a 12-figure expense report) is not advantageous, either.

2. Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way Out

The judges will also accept “Will and (Dis)Grace”

Leftover from the weekend, but George Will quit the Republican Party over Donald Trump. Characteristically, Trump called the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist a “loser.”

Of course, the Trumpets have as much as called Will a poofta for abandoning the GOP, not quite appreciating that Trump has hijacked it. At day’s end, Trumpets are nothing more than FSU Twitter while men such as Will and Mitt Romney are just trying to say, “Can’t we just win without abusing coeds?” Yes, this means that Paul Ryan is Jimbo Fisher.

3. Johnny Foosball

Look up “sybarite” in the dictionary

If you ask me who Johnny Manziel reminds me of, it’s not a football player. It’s Sean Parker, the dude who became a billionaire before he was 21 by inventing Napster and then became an incorrigible party boy. Tim Tebow, meanwhile, is leading prayer groups on trans-continental flights. Manziel earned his money and how he wastes it, or his life, is really none of our concern as long as he isn’t smacking up females, is it? I mean, it’s not an inspirational tale, but it’s his life. And he’s never returning to the NFL, anyway.

4. Benghazi, Trey Gowdy

Gowdy’s report was 800 pages so, not curt

This is Trey Gowdy, who oversaw the 800-page report on the Benghazi investigation and who only looks like every villainous lawyer from a John Grisham film. I don’t have much more to say than that they didn’t appear to find a smoking gun on Hillary (it was in the hands of Zurlon Tipton, apparently) and that maybe if George R.R. Martin is still suffering from writer’s block, he should just hand in the report as his next manuscript and see if anyone notices.

5. Sharon Tate

So Valley of the Dolls is on NetFlix and I’d never seen it (and I still haven’t watched it all the way through), but it’s very racy for 1967 and I can confirm that Sharon Tate, who was slain in the Manson Family murders in August of 1969, was quite the ethereal beauty. I was reading up on her grisly end and learned something very strange: on the afternoon of the night that she died, her younger sister Debra phoned and asked if she and their other sister, Patti, could come over and spend the night. Sharon said no and told them they’d have a sleepover on a later date. Saved their lives. My Paul Harvey moment for the day.

by John Walters

He’s not Better Off Dead, after all. A Medium Happy 50th to John Cusack.

Starting Five

England: Mood

1. London Has Fallen*

The judges will also accept “Ssons of Anarchy”

Just four days after the Brits gave the rest of the continent the old, “It’s not me, it’s EU” breakup talk, the soccer team from Iceland, population 330,000, eliminates England, population “We Invented the Game,” from Euro 2016. Call it Brexit 2: Wayne Rooney Boogaloo. This was the Free Folk defeating the Lannisters. The past five days for England have just been one long, lubgubrious Morrissey song.

“Shame”….”Shame”…..”Shame”…..

Hell, England Dan has left John Ford Coley. Madonna isn’t even speaking with a British accent any more. Your local apothecary suggests one healthy dose of “Fix You” and call me from under an umbrella.

2. Westerosi Final Four

Dressed To Kill: “I’m a survivor/Not gonna give up/Not gonna stop/I’m gonna work harder!”

I went back and watched the first half hour of the Game of Thrones season finale last night and now I feel quite certain: that was the best episode in the show’s history. The opening sequence, accompanied by piano and cello and culminating with that dramatic shot of Tommen‘s flying leap (in a way, the second boy Cersei was responsible for pushing out of a tower), was as dramatic as any scene from Free State of Jones (I know, I’m a heretic). By the way, contrast how Cersei (Lena Headey) finished last season as compared to this one. Quite the payback. I’ll have more on all of this later, or tomorrow, but for now, let’s talk about how all of this sets up.

People will say they’re in love….

After six seasons, the Road to the Iron Throne at last has a Final Four: Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, the Starks of Winterfell, and the Night King and his crew. I’m not saying they’re all working against each other (Khaleesi and the Starks are a natural alliance), but those are the four major forces.

Do not even….

There remain, however, a few wild cards. Disruptors, if you will: Petyr Baelish, Ser Jorah Mormont, the Hound, Arya Stark (she’s a Stark, but I see her more going on a murderous spree as she binge watches episodes of Dexter on her down time), Melisandre and Euron Greyjoy. I figure we have two seasons left at most. They could pull a Mad Men and stretch it out to a pair of half seasons. We’ll see. Meanwhile, Lady Mormont is gonna be quite a handful once she gets a driver’s license

3. RIP, Pat Summitt

Summitt: 1,098-208, for a career winning percentage of .841

Simply put, Pat Summitt was the most important coach in women’s basketball history. She took over Tennessee at the ripe old age of 22 in 1974 and would remain there 38 years, leading the Lady Vols to eight national titles. She was aptly named, as her team represented the peak of the sport for more than a decade and it was that Lady Vols’ supremacy that Geno Auriemma aimed for. Their rivalry catapulted the game into a previously unforeseen visibility.

The few times I spoke to her, she was humble, thoughtful and incredibly sincere. Oh, that GLARE was something else; Pat Summitt was a tremendously intense competitor but off the court, she was a decent sort who was compelled, somewhat by the times and the region where she lived, to live a private life that was somewhat in the shadows. That naturally made her a little more guarded than she might have had to have been.

4. The Shallows vs. The Deep

Blake Lives Matter takes on a shark….

This needs to be a double feature at your local art house cinema soon: The Deep, starring Jacqueline Bisset, from 1977, and The Shallows, starring Blake Lively, from this week.

….while Bisset takes on a director who probably was obsessed with the Cheryl Tiegs layout in the SI Swimsuit Issue from a couple years earlier

5. The Sheats Hit the Fan

Seats shot both of her daughters dead in cold blood, and even hunted one of them down to put a few more in her

*The judges will also accept, in fact should have used, “Double Momicide”

This is 42 year-old Christy Sheats, who looks like your local Live at 5 anchor (at the very least, she does weekends in Amarillo), but sadly had a history of mental illness. On Friday, her husband Jason’s 42nd birthday,  Sheats called a “family meeting” and then pulled out a gun and shot her two daughters, Taylor, 22, and Madison, 17. Both died. Jason escaped. Cops later fatally shot Christy when she refused to drop her gun. Taylor was scheduled to be married yesterday—who gets married on a Monday, but what isn’t bizarre about this story. Texas, you’re totally Florida-ing us this week.

Music 101

It’s Oh So Quiet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEC4nZ-yga8

Pouring one out for Iceland, courtesy of the country’s gift (?) to pop music, Bjork. In the early ’90s she was a budding alternative music siren, and then she just decided to release a Fifties-era Broadway musical number. The song sounds like a remake because it is: Betty Hutton, who starred in the Preston Sturges classic, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, released it in 1951.

Remote Patrol

I Am Chris Farley

9 p.m. Spike

“Fat man in a little coat….”

I saw this documentary last summer and highly recommend it. Great interviews with performers who knew and loved Saturday Night Live‘s wrecking ball of humor, including Bob Odenkirk, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Mike Myers, Tom Arnold and Christina Applegate. If you loved Farley (how could you not?), you’ll love this.

Blake Lives Matter!

The Shallows

** 1/2

by Chris Corbellini

Just once I’d like to hear the shark’s feelings on all of this. All that persecution and death through the years in Hollywood — does the species not have feelings? Where’s the love for the best supporting actor in horror – the bad-ass, shit-kicking shark?

What you will always see is a shark’s point of view. The b-movie master himself, Steve Spielberg, perhaps swiping the POV shot from The Creature From The Black Lagoon, made it famous in the opening minutes of the summer all-timer Jaws, with the death of poor, doomed Chrissie, the camera pulling close to the nubile woman’s legs.

And he does it again with the Kitner boy and his raft. That blockbuster is middle-aged now, 41 years old, but these moments are still unspeakably scary. When treading water in the ocean, we are not an apex predator — we’re flailing prey. And yeah, you better believe we see that POV shot in The Shallows, sometimes as a misdirection moment, and others, as a dinner party with a very hungry local.

The Shallows swipes elements from other movies as well—Blue Crush at the start, the original Alien at the finish, and the island survival flick Castaway in between. Taking another step back, the script is basically an aquamarine Halloween, with a hottie on the run from a killer and finding the strength to survive as the body count rises.  Replace Jason Voorhees with a great white and sprinkle in some lovely scenic shots, and you’ve pretty much nailed the story. It’s a copycat flick from start to blood-soaked finish, but it does look pretty in the spray and sun.

I raised the movie ½ star due to degree of difficulty for its lead, Blake Lively. Like a young Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Lively is dealing with/fleeing from a really nasty something with razor-sharp chompers, all the while wearing something skimpy and somehow not making it look gratuitous. This forces an actress to emote with her entire body and though special effects artists CGI’d her face on another young blonde during the hard-core surfing scenes (hello, Blue Crush), it really is Lively everywhere else and she holds nothing back.

This is an entirely different Deadpool altogether (“This is an entirely different Deadpool”)

You can’t say Lively doesn’t test herself here as a performer. Whether shivering on jutting coral for a long stretch or fumbling desperately in the salt water for shells of a flare gun, she is the focus of almost every shot, every scene. Other deaths are captured from her vantage point (a close-up of her terrified face, for example) and she does a fine job keeping it interesting while stranded in one spot for most of the running time. And here’s the Captain Obvious confession: from the trailer I expected to appreciate her physical attributes (I did. It’s impossible to miss. You see her body from every angle), but I walked out of the film thinking there’s much more to Lively than a yoga-tight bod if she picks the  from here on out.

I suppose you’d like to know the plot now. I waited this long because it really isn’t all that necessary. Lively plays a medical school student named Nancy who is running away from feelings of helplessness about her recently-passed mother. Backstory? Check. Nancy soon finds a beach in Mexico that her mom once loved, and after a few well-edited surfing montages (there’s some nice sound design of a hip, montage-y song playing, then the sound dips out when Lively duck-dives underneath some massive waves.), well, she went out too far. Check II. It’s getting late. Check III. What’s a whale doing here? WTF? Check IV.

And then … oh shiiiiit!

Shark time.

That’s basically it. Checkmate.

I mentioned Castaway earlier because like the Tom Hanks character, who is established as an award-winning sailor quickly, it’s understood that the Lively character has the medical background to survive a bite or two from Mr. Wide Mouth. Like the Hanks character, she is inventive enough to handle the life or death circumstances she can’t quite swim away from.  There’s even a Wilson the Volleyball figure in The Shallows, played this time by an injured seagull, who Lively talks to in moments of desperation and humor.

That cute bird, I’m sure, is now reading scripts and fielding calls from rival agents while seated at a corner courtyard table at the Chateau Marmont.

 And what about the big fish? Does Mr. Big Stuff deserve representation for his or her acting in The Shallows? I say yes. Another CGI-construct, this great white was sleeker, faster and hungrier than the rubberized figurine Spielberg stuck in the Atlantic off Martha’s Vineyard 41 years ago. Was it scarier? No, of course not. You can’t beat the king. That piece of not-quite-waterproof rubber deserves a lifetime Oscar. But it’s still frightening enough on a big screen to keep things tense.

Spielberg and his big star

I won’t knock the totally implausible ending of The Shallows, because the ending of Jaws was just as ridiculous. And a movie review is no place to champion the real-life scientists who spend their professional lives quite rightly trying to debunk these films and show the public that great whites are actually awe-inspiring, mysterious and misunderstood.  I’m sure those big brains realize like the rest of us that if it bleeds, it leads in horror – a very lucrative business in the land of make believe out there in Southern California. That may never change.

What should change, I kid, is this: shark typecasting! They continue to be the most typecast characters in Hollywood. Where’s the part where these creatures use their jaws to kiss — not to chew on unlucky co-stars?

by Katie McCollow

Editor’s Note: This should have run a few days ago, but the MH Grand Editing Poobah dropped the ball. It’s still fresh because, of course, Katie typed it, but my apologies for letting it ripen a few days. 

Weeeeelllll, now that the NBA Finals are over, you might possibly be in the market for something to do. But you’ve emerged from your cave blinking, frightened, feeling lost and afraid…there are an overwhelming amount of choices and you’ve forgotten how to enjoy anything that doesn’t involve stuffing balls into things.

Lucky for you, I have some suggestions to keep you occupied before the ’16-’17 basketball season starts next week.

Watch Difficult People on Hulu

OH MY GAWD. I signed up for Hulu so my girls and I could watch The Mindy Project, a show my oldest daughter and I already watched and loved when it was on Fox.

I knew my youngest would love it too since, just like one of her previous favorite shows, Hart of Dixie, it involves a cute young lady doctor with a killer wardrobe who is always finding herself in hilarious scrapes.

How come we aren’t friends, Mindy Kaling?

The three of us have been enjoying the hell out of Mindy, but youngest child is also a rabid basketball fan (she was rooting for Golden State—sorry, Susie B.!) so she had to take time off to hang with her dad in the basement while all that was going on and Mindy was put on hold.

(Editor’s Note: We know her dad. He’s a wonderful guy. We’re fairly certain he does not live in the basement full-time, like that pet from The Munsters, but then again, we’re not sure. We haven’t visited in more than a year.)

Oldest daughter and I were browsing our Hulu options in the interim and came across Difficult People, a show smack-dab in the middle of her particular wheelhouse: whip-smart, gut-bustingly funny cynicism (she wouldn’t watch Hart of Dixie for a petting zoo, and routinely mocks her sister and I for our ‘Countdown to the Gilmore Girls Reunion’ Calendar—thank God we can find common ground like The Mindy Project and Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt.)

Difficult People stars Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner as Billy and Julie, two besties trying to make it in comedy in NYC. They are bitter and jaded but (to me, anyway) lovable and freaking hilarious.

Watch it!

Sample line from Billy, after another fruitless audition: “I hate it when they say they ‘don’t know what to do with me’. Oh, you’ve got Peter Dinklage figured out but you don’t know what to do with me?”

Get My Cat to Stop Ruining My House

I’m a relatively new cat owner, as I’ve discussed here at the MH a few times. It’s not illegal to declaw in my state, I don’t know if it is in any other states, but it’s not here. We still didn’t do it, because it’s barbaric and we love our cat even though she’s a full-tilt jackwagon (according to some).

She loves the five of us, but she is seriously menacing to anyone who isn’t one of us—when my niece comes over, she chases her into corners and hisses and bats at her.

My sister came over the other day with her three kids, ages 8, 6 and 8 months, and my cat acted like she was cool with everything until I left.

I’m completely cool with you being here

“Go out the back door and lock up behind you,” I told sisty, as I had an errand to run and couldn’t wait for her to re-diaper her messy, loud baby. She called me a few minutes later in a panic.

“Your cat won’t let me leave,” she said nervously. Her two older kids were outside already, but the cat decided to hold my sister and the baby hostage; she was guarding the door, all fat-tailed and hissy, swatting at my sister’s ankles every time she tried to take a step.

Obviously this kid is the problem

We think it’s adorable, of course, but everyone else is afraid of her.

Anyway, yes, she does do some things that even I would categorize as…how to say this delicately…dick moves. She has a scratch post the size of the Eiffel Tower that stands untouched next to the TV. She walks past it, looks right at me and digs her claws into the couch or chair for a long, satisfying scratch session.

“Toony no!” I yell, and she stares at me and scratches away. I even sprayed this stuff called ‘No Scratch’ on the things I want her to leave alone, and it just makes her laugh (she laughs!) and dig in harder.

My couch

You guys, I’m gonna sound super douchey for a second (you: some wisecrack about how that ship has sailed—I get it) so bear with me and try not to judge. But I have two Stickley “Leopold” chairs in my living room–my only real, grown-up furniture that I actually ordered and had custom upholstered; every other piece of furniture in my house is either a hand-me-down or from a garage sale or Craigslist (something I’m actually quite proud of, honestly—I’m one of those people who, if you compliment my outfit, will tell you in detail how I only paid two dollars for it or how I found it in a dumpster).

Thanks! I love it, too.

Anyway, of course the cat decided that my fancy, sophisticated chairs would be her beds, so now they are draped with ugly fleece blankets and look like something you might find on the porch of a frat house. They’re so hairy and smelly at this point even she finds them uninhabitable, so guess what? She’s set up new sleeping quarters in the white denim cigar chair by the fireplace.

I thought cats were supposed to be clean animals. My cat spends whatever time she isn’t throwing up in the basement and intimidating my relatives escaping out the back door and rolling around under the deck.

Naturally clean

I adore her, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying, if anyone wants to talk some sense into her, I’m into it. You could be like her cool aunt or uncle who doesn’t judge her for smoking and takes her to the free clinic. Maybe She’ll listen to you.

Learn All The Words to “Guns and Ships”

And then rap them convincingly. Auditions are happening as Hamilton readies itself to launch an extended run in Chicago and a tour beginning in San Francisco. You still have a chance. And yes, I’m talking to myself.

Are you ready? 

Plan Your Fourth of July Menu

When I was a kid, we used to go out to the home of my folks’ friends with some other families for a day-long picnic. Such fond memories…once, one of the other kids (from a different family, not mine) pushed me into the pond behind the house.

The pond was covered with that yucky green algae—you know, the kind that grows so thick on the surface it looks like day-glo Astroturf so you have to throw a rock at it or maybe push a small houseguest into it to make sure there really is water under all that muck? Because that’s something you should really be sure of, especially at a party.

Let’s just make sure it’s not actually a solid

I don’t remember if that was the same year one of the other boys also instructed a smaller kid to hold a lit firecracker for a dangerously long time, but it might have been. Good times. My point is, there was always fried chicken, and it was delicious.

You probably think I’m about to present you with a recipe for fried chicken, but I am not—ahhh, the old switcheroo! I can’t actually eat fried chicken anymore, because I would be doubled over before the second bite, but enough about my digestive issues—we don’t want to poach from next week’s column.

Ouch!

]But here’s a different recipe I love. It goes great with any grilled meat or fish and is also yummy all by itself.

Orange Jicama Salad

Peel and chop up 3 or 4 oranges. Peel and chop up a jicama. Chop up a bunch of cilantro until you have 2-3 tablespoons. Mine up about half of a red bell pepper. Mince up a few slices of a red onion—until you have 1-2 tablespoons. Throw it all together, add three extra tablespoons of orange juice, some salt and pepper, maybe a squirt of lime if you have one sitting around, maybe a shake of red pepper flakes if you like that. Stir and done. Tell all your friends you made it up and it is not from Emeril Lagasse. This is the most important step.

BAM! He had nothing to do with it

Watch This Video

https://www.instagram.com/p/BG0Jkzmy07J/?taken-by=uptopfilms

Because it was made by some friends of mine, a group of very cool people doing very cool things. It was made for Father’s Day, which obviously was last Sunday (percentage of you MH readers I imagine just panicked because you forgot: 100) but it’s still worth your time. These folks are putting goodness out there, and I dig it. Go here to get the full flavor: www.uptopfilms.com