by John Walters
Is Elizabeth Hurley really turning 51 today? “Yeah, baby! Yeah! And still sound as a pound!”
Starting Five
Four different Sharks scored on Thursday evening, including Logan “Haute” Couture
1. They Do Know The Way To San Jose
Thousands of Yinzers lined up outside Cheapest, Latest, Most Environmentally Unfriendly Way To Produce Energy and Make Billions Off It Arena (a.k.a. Consol Energy Center) in Pittsburgh last night. They assembled, on a lovely late spring evening, hoping to see a Pittsburgh team clinch a championship in Pittsburgh for the first time since the Pirates did so in 1960 (related: They never played a Super Bowl in Three Rivers Stadium).
And then the Sharks said, “No way……..San Jose!” The Sharks defeated the Penguins 4-2 in Game 5 (the score was 2-2 after just five minutes, by the way), sending the Stanley Cup Finals back to Silicon Valley for Game 6. So if the Penguins want to please their thousands upon thousands of fans who set up in Washington Place and Market Square last night, not to mention the 18,500 who bought a ticket, they should lose Game 6 and send it back to the Iron City for a Game 7? Sure, why not?
At least Pirates fans still have this: Iron City staking a claim to the Iron Throne?
2. Lady and the Trump
“Long ago and oh so far away…”
“Shots fired” between the presumptive presidential candidates. It began with this tweet from @RealDonaldTrump at 2:22 p.m. yesterday:
Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama—but nobody else does!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
Five minutes later, at 2:27 p.m., @Hillary_Clinton tweeted:
Delete your account. https://t.co/Oa92sncRQY
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2016
Ooh, sick burn! Honestly, “Delete Your Account” should be the mantra for her entire campaign.
Who knew grandparents could be so vicious? For the record, Donald’s tweet has been RT’ed 32,000 times, Hillary’s 400,000 times. Also, they’re following one another! I love the idea that Donald can slide into Hillary’s DMs, or vice versa.
3. “Orange Is NOT The New Black”
HRC was not the only Dem trolling Donald last night. POTUS showed up on Jimmy Fallon to, for one last time, slow jam the news. It was one of their better-written bits (“Prez Dispenser,” “Baracky with the Good Hair”, etc. , as Fallon asked the prez if he was “down with TPP” (Trans-Pacific Partnership), though he could have acknowledged that just hours earlier POTUS had publicly stated that he was, in not so many words, “down with HRC.”
And speaking of the Republican nominee, POTUS quipped the headline on this item, which is a good line, like it or not. Strong show for Fallon—and quite the green room—as the two guests were Barack Obama and Madonna. This was a vintage show, as the Queen of Pop brought it all back to the Summer of ’84 with “Borderline.” You have to wonder if the pop goddess, 57, looked around at her pal Prince’s death, at the same age, and realized these are moments you don’t pass up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPUXNw43O5c
What’s funny about this is I don’t remember a time when so many TV show hosts were so unabashedly transparent about which candidate they were backing (yes, guilty right here, too). There’s no hint of impartiality at all here.
4. Never Stop Never Stopping!!!!
Cleveland, Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Justin Bieber out-pop stars Pop Star by getting into a fight after the game, with a brother no less, and the guy shooting the video even mentions as its happening, “I’m gonna have TMZ.” Right you are.
So then I sent out this tweet yesterday, on my mobile phone and with these nearly 50 year-old eyes that stubbornly refuse to get glasses:
How to win a fist fight with Justin Bieber: 1) Let him punch u in the face 3) Call a lawyer.
— John Walters (@jdubs88) June 9, 2016
And so the amusing part is I just plain typed “3” when I meant to type “2” (not like diabetes or anything), but that only meant the tweet got more RTs as dozens of tweeps went out of their way to tell me what an ass hat I am. And then I had that “A ha” moment (not like “Take On Me” or anything) and thought, Oh, so this is how Clay Travis does it.
5. Media Movings
Two relatively big moves in media: 1) Our Twitter friend whom we’ve never actually met in person, Jason McIntyre, confirms on Twitter that he’s moving to “the Best Coast,” which means he’s going to be a part of FS1’s Speak For Yourself, though considering his two co-hosts, he should be calling it, Can I Get A Word In Here? I don’t think it’s yet been reported on his own sports media-obsessed site, The Big Lead, which is both kinda funny and a harbinger for future problems.
2) This is a print media big deal, but Paul Fichtenbaum, who started out at Sports Illustrated in the bullpen just a month or two after me in 1989, is retiring at the end of the month as SI’s “Group Editor,‘ which basically meant he oversaw the umbrella of both the mag and the site. Chris Stone, who is the ME of the magazine, will replace “Fichto,” as we referred to him.
I didn’t know Paul well. He came in as a hockey reporter, then wrote a little, then got straight onto the editor track. When a bunch of dinosaurs near the top of the masthead didn’t quite understand or appreciate the power of the web around the turn of the millennium, they put Paul in charge of SI.com. At the time it was not seen as a prestigious honor but rather, well, someone has to mind that store and we don’t quite know what to do with him, anyway. It’s almost as if someone needed a person to mind these three dragon eggs that will probably never hatch and Hey, Daenerys, you don’t seem to be too busy, so here you go.
To Paul’s credit (and with some serendipitous fortune), he and B.J. Schecter, his deputy, shepherded a publication into the online era, even though most of his bosses at the time were hardly enthusiastic about the revolution. Paul and B.J. were given the keys to the kingdom (or should I type “Peter King-dom”?) and the men handing them over didn’t even realize it. Fichto took on his mission with gusto and aided greatly by the one established writer at SI who saw the future, who just happened to be the mag’s main NFL writer, Peter King, he became the most powerful editor at the mag. He and B.J. knew that they were the mighty tail that was wagging the wheezing dog that the weekly publication had become. Life’s funny.
Music 101
Rock the Boat
What did disco sound like before people even realized they were listening to disco? Meet The Hues Corporation, whose 1974 hit helped launch the era. The song languished after its release in the early part of the year, but then like a scene out of Vinyl it became a favorite at club where disco was being spawned. By early July, it hit No. 1 on the Billboard 100 chart and a polyester era was born. “Our love is like a ship on the ocean/We’ve been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion….”
Remote Patrol
O.J.: Made in America
Saturday 9 p.m. ABC
It’s a credit to ESPN’s branding, and Bill Simmons’ influence, that the term “30 for 30” has replaced “sports documentary” in the minds of millennials. I reviewed a number of excellent HBO sports docs (and a few from Showtime as well) in the late Nineties and can assure you they were every bit as good as anything ESPN has done. But everyone who has seen this five-part, 10-hour doc says that it is the best one that the WWL has ever done, a snapshot of late 20th-century America as much as it is the story of a fallen sports idol and the grisly murder of two people.
We always knew, from the moment it happened (I fact-checked the first SI story run on it back in June of 1994) that this story was GIGANTIC. It was way bigger than sports or homicide. It was America, where we’re at in terms of celebrity culture and racial division, among other matters. It was a Robert Altman film come to life. Looking forward to watching this, if not enjoying everything I see.
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