by John Walters

Starting Five

1. Earthquake in Italy

A 6.2 magnitude earth quake rocked central Italy at around 3:36 a.m. local time. There are are at least three dozen dead. The Leaning Tower of Pisa? Still standing.

2. The Human Fund

Is the Clinton Foundation dirty? I don’t know (okay, yeah, to a degree). A cursory investigation by Medium Happy’s crack investigative staff (my cat and I) found that 88% of the foundation’s money goes directly toward its charitable mission (source: Charity Watch) but when you’ve taken in $2 billion, that means that $240 million that did not go to charity. Which is kind of a lot of money.

The Foundation, which Bill Clinton launched in 1997—the same year that George Costanza launched the Human Fund with the tagline, “Money For People”—when he was in office, can certainly be seen as a quid pro quo for people of influence to have an express lane to the government’s top officials, such as our former Secretary of State. P.J. O’Rourke said it best months ago: “Hillary Clinton is the second-worst thing that could happen to America.”

3. How Come We Don’t Know The Colorado Rockies (And How Come They Kinda Stink?)

You wake up this morning to see that the Colorado Rockies (60-66) have the National League’s leading hitter (DJ LeMahieu, .344) and its leader in home runs and RBI (both Nolan Arenado, 33 and 107). And yet do you EVER hear their names on SportsCenter or just in general? Then there’s rookie Trevor “Toy” Story, who was leading the NL in home runs as a rookie before suffering a season-ending injury earlier this month.

Are the Rockies simply a “flyover team?” And is DJ LeMahieu the guy who brings his Mac laptop to parties with a killer EDM play list? Curiously enough, LeMahieu, a 6’4″ 2nd baseman who won a College World Series with LSU in 2009, was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and spent two years with them before being traded to Colorado.

We take this moment to remind you that the Colorado Rockies actually played in a World Series. I know: it sounds so strange to say, but it happened.

4. Seventh-Round Stud

Former Temple linebacker Tyler Matakevich is undersized but he isn’t under-hearted (ooh, that’s good! I could be your friendly neighborhood sports columnist!). Matakevich was the most impressive defensive player (with the possible exception o a Clemson defensive lineman or two) I saw Notre Dame face last season (the Ohio State game doesn’t count; I don’t count games that kick off earlier than noon local time, especially on New Year’s Day) but because he is barely 6 feet tall and 230 pounds, he lasted until the 7th round of the NFL Draft, 246th overall.

Matakevich had four straight 100-tackle seasons at Temple and last season was the only player to lead his team in tackles every game. Plus, you never pass on linebackers with Slavic names (everyone knows that). The Steelers wisely selected him.

Now he’s being hailed as one of the best rookies in preseason. Watch some of his tackles (especially the first one, on a special teams play) here. He’s a keeper. He’s got that “Will somebody block that $#&@ guy!?!?” aspect to his game.

5. Where Have You Gone, Wink Martindale?

Last week in Deadspin Drew Magary had a typically hilarious and insightful piece about the Golden Age of Game Show Hosts and whether they are going extinct. He explained, and rightly so, that turning a comic into a game show host (Drew Carey, Steve Harvey) does not necessarily translate into good hosting.

The best game show hosts, the men of my youth, such as Peter Marshall, Wink Martindale, Bill Cullen, Gene Rayburn and Allen Ludden, knew how to banter with the celebs while making the contestants feel welcome. They were like Roger Sterling throwing a mid-afternoon cocktail party at the offices of Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce.

Music 101

Don’t Leave Me This Way

In 1977 disco balls hung from every ceiling,  and Thelma Houston‘s song was a smash. It hit No. 1 in April of that year. Houston (born Thelma Jackson; no relation to Whitney) disappeared from the charts as disco did, but…AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH, Baby!

Remote Patrol 

No Country For Old Men

IFC 8 p.m.

Call it. I remember taking my parents to see this movie on Christmas day when it came out. My dad was a tough audience, but even he liked it. This is Tommy Lee Jones’ best performance as a law man, and maybe his second-best (after Lonesome Dove) as a Texas-based character (he was a retired law man in that one). It won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem. Deserved every  one of ’em.

 

NEXTDOOR

I’ve lately become addicted to reading Nextdoor, my neighborhood social network. My sister turned me on to it when I was lamenting Craigslist’s high-rape rate; “If only I could purchase a 4×6 area rug and not be scared I’m going to wind up in someone’s trunk,” I believe were my exact words.

For Sale: Yogurt Maker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking to Start a Sewing Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

ISO Notebooks and Pencils

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gently Used Tube Socks For Sale

 

 

 

Looking for Recommendations for a Handyman

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rash of Car Break-ins on 7th Avenue

 

 

 

ISO Nanny

 

 

 

by John Walters

Starting Five

Britain? Great!

You know who had a great Olympics  in Rio? The only nation with “Great” in its name (they’re the Tony the Tiger of nations). Sure, the USA steamrolled everyone in the medal count with more golds (46) and more medals (121) than anybody.

But—and here’s the thing—four years after hosting the Summer Games in London, Great Britain, a kingdom of humans with about 20% as many people as the USA, finished second in both golds (27) and silver medals (23), and were third overall behind the USA and China. The Brits, led by Mo Farah’s double in the men’s 5,000 and 10,000, amassed more gold medals and medals overall than than Russia, than Germany, than host nation Brazil (which has the world’s fifth-largest population). Great Britain has the world’s 21st-largest population.

Maybe there is something to this Brexit thing.

2. Mongolian Beef

(Warning: The names in this story, in terms of spelling, have a degree of difficulty that only Simone Biles would dare attempt in normal settings)

Let’s do what most major news outlets on this story have not: Tell you whether or not the Mongolian coaches and their athlete were wronged or wrong. The answer is the latter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrupwYdwW1I

News stories and tweets made the story all about how Mongolian head wrestling coach Tserenbaatar Tsogtbayar and assistant coach Byambarenchin Bayaraa went berzerk after their wrestler, Ganzorigiin Mandakhnaran, lost to Uzbekistan’s  Ikhtiyor Navruzov (phew; the difficult part is over) after receiving a one-point penalty at the end of the bronze medal match. We heard and saw how the two coaches doffed duds, one taking off his shirt and the other going full Upper and Lower Mongolia, losing pants and shirt.

Few news services explained why. Seems that Mandakhnaran was up 7-6 in the closing seconds when he started celebrating (some old and middle-aged white guys, like me, might even refer to it as taunting), which meant that he was not engaging with his opponent. That’s a one-point penalty, which put the match at 7-7, and under the rules, the last man to earn a point, in the case of a tie, wins.

Mongolia chose not to attend the clothing ceremony. Its Olympic contingent leaves Rio with one bronze and one silver medal.

3. A Not So Tragic Tragically Hip Show

When Gord Downie, lead singer of Canadian band The Tragically Hip, announced that he had terminal brain cancer, the band did not shrink out of sight. The 52 year-0ld lead singer led the band on a short summer tour, with last Saturday night’s show in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario, being their fond farewell.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau attended. Canada basically shut down on Saturday evening, as the concert aired on CBC and there were also viewing parties at venues all over. The Tragically Hip never translated south of the border, which may have made them even  more popular in the Great White North.

An estimated 11.7  million people tuned in to watch the band’s final show. That’s about one-third of the population. Imagine 100 million Americans watching anything other than the Super Bowl, which is the only event that draws those types of numbers (%-wise) in the USA.

4. NFL vs NBC: Who’s The Boss!

I still don’t get this. Mike Tirico departs ESPN after 25 years to head to NBC just as the Peacock announces that it is adding Thursday Night Football to its primetime lineup. So it’s assumed Tirico, the voice of Monday Night Football on ESPN, will get that gig.

But now the NFL, which apparently had veto power on whom NBC gets to put in that chair, said, “Nah, no thanks. We want Al.” So now what does the 49 year-old Queens native do, and how does 71 year-old Al Michaels (and we assume, Cris Collinsworth) feel about having his work load doubled? We kinda think Al enjoyed his relatively cush life with Tuesday through Friday free back in Bel Air.

To be fair, Thursday Night Football is only five games per season. CBS also has a 5-game TNF package and the NFL makes its No. 1 team of Jim Nantz and Phil Simms call those. The difference is that Nantz and Simms do Sunday afternoon games and are given a reduced workload on the weekends before their Thursday night games. Michaels and Collinsworth, who work the No. 1-rated show in prime time on Sunday nights, will not be given that option.

The weirdest thing is that Tirico is no neophyte or maverick. He’s not only the consummate professional, but the consummate corporate guy. He never editorializes in any fashion against the establishment, and he’s in his prime. It’s as if the NFL went out of its way to remind NBC who’s the boss (which was an ABC show, but you know…).

So now Sean McDonough has Tirico’s old MNF gig while Tirico, who co-hosted the closing ceremony with Mary Carillo* (*the best) and Ryan Seacrest last night, may not be hosting a sporting event in prime time for at least two years (Pyongyang). What’s he going to do at NBC? American Ninja Warrior? Notre Dame games?

Tirico loves/lives to work. Now he’s not going to be doing college hoops with his buddy Dan Dakich and he’s not going to be doing NFL? And no World Cup? I would not want to be his agent right now; those phone calls must be hot lava.

5.  The Max Factor

It’s officially Notre Dame football season, as Brian Kelly paid the school’s annual tax to the “If you’re gonna talk the talk” gods. Over the weekend six Notre Dame football players were arrested in two separate incidents and the most experienced (talented?) of them, two-year starter at safety Max Redfield, was dismissed.

On Friday night Redfield, linebacker Te’Von Coney, frosh wide receiver Kevin Stephenson,  DB Ashton White and sophomore running back Dexter Williams were headed south on U.S. 31 (for lack of a true north-south interstate in Indiana, you get his highway that winds through towns and where speed limit changes abound) and pulled over for speeding. Inside the car cops, with the help of a drug-sniffing dog named Cartoush, found weed and worse, an unregistered handgun. Redfield copped to the handgun.

Meanwhile, outside the Linebacker Lounge, which is literally a stone’s throw southeast of campus, DB Devin Butler got into a shoving match with a cop as he was dealing with some agitated females (was he the source of the agitation?) and was arrested for assault of an officer. He has been suspended indefinitely.

Max Redfield and Alize Jones (academics). Two starters gone for the season. That’s about the going rate in South Bend, prior to injuries.

Music 101

Take It Easy On Me

“Little River Band” is an Aboriginal phrase that translates roughly to “Styx.” Or maybe “Eagles.” This Aussie band had a string of radio-edible better-than-average hits in the late ’70s and early ’80s whose melodies still invade my mind from time to time: “Reminiscing,”   “Cool Change,” “Lady,” “Lonesome Loser,” “Help Is On Its Way” and this song. LRB never had a No. 1 hit, but all of those songs spent at least 18 weeks on the charts and all but one cracked the top 10.

Remote Patrol

Stranger Things

Netflix

A boy goes missing in Hawkins, Indiana, in the early 1980s. The town is also the site of a government lab. Then a local diner owner is fatally shot. And a teenage girl disappears. What’s going on?

Take a few ingredients from X-Files, Stand By Me, The Goonies and even E.T. and Poltergeist, and you have Stranger Things, which is more than just its iconic logo. Don’t want to oversell it, but it’s good. The young actors who play Eleven and Mike are phenomenal.

by John Walters

Starting Five

The World’s Greatest Athlete

It was not the best of times (Usain Bolt’s 19.78 in the 200 meter final last night), but it was not the worst of times, either. Before Bolt arrived, no man had ever won the 200 meters twice, much less twice in a row. He has now done it three times.

Before Bolt, only Carl Lewis had won the men’s 100 more than once (he did so back to back). Now Bolt has done that three times in a row, too.

If he is part of Jamaica’s third consecutive 4×100-meter gold-medal team, that would be three golds in the world’s three fastest races in three consecutive Olympics. And zero finishes lower than first place. To me, Bolt is the world’s greatest athlete.

The World’s Greatest Athlete (Part II)

It’s tough not to really like Ashton Eaton, so I won’t even try. Last night he became the first American since and only American besides Bob Mathias to win a second consecutive decathlon gold. Eaton also holds the world record in the event.

He is the son of biracial parents who split when he was two. His white mother raised him in rural Oregon, and there were probably a few awkward episodes in his childhood. But Eaton, whose Canadian wife, Brianne, won bronze in the women’s heptathlon, seems like an incredibly grounded and humble dude.

Oh, by the way, “I Am Cait” was canceled this week.

3. I Am Kate

It’s coming up soon, and I’m completely intrigued by the women’s 800 final. Our American favorite is the lovely and demure Kate Grace, a Yale alum whose mom, Kathy Smith, was at the forefront of the aerobics boom back in the 1980s (it was the Pilates of its time).

However, the two favorite for gold and silver are Caster Semenya of South Africa and Margaret Wambui of Kenya. Semenya, we know a little about: she’s the athlete who has flummoxed the IOC and IAAF with questions about her actual gender. There’s really no nice way to say it other than biologically, she does not easily fit into either gender. It’s funny, if you watch, before her races Tom Hammond is obviously reading from a pre-written script to describe her ordeal, words that were probably typed by Joe Gesue or Aaron Cohen of NBC Sports to make sure that there are no gaffes.

What confounds me, though, is that nothing is ever said of Wambui, whose physique and hairline make you think of that scene where Austin Powers attempts to pull off the “wig” of Michael York’s mother. It’s not Wambui is a man, it’s just that to me she appears every bit as masculine as Semenya, but they only mention Semenya’s situation.

I think Wambui will win tonight.

4. “You’re Fired!”

On Friday morning Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Manafort was fired/ resigned from the Trump campaign. Donald Trump has always been a kindred spirit to late Yankee boss George Steinbrenner, and apparently both have very little patience with managers. Then again, I bet Manafort would rather have Trump upset with him than Putin. Can’t blame him.

Later, Tiffany Trump resigned from the Trump family.

5. Peak Flori-Duh

Oh, Flori-Duh. You were worried that we had become bored with your standard strip-bar shoot-up or meth-fueled gator rape, so you had to take it nuclear to grab our attention.

What happened? Your typical double murder followed by an attempted face-eating. Austin Harrouf, a 19 year-old “rising sophomore” at Florida State, was out at a popular sports bar, Duffy’s, when he became agitated by the slow service (somewhere some server is racked by guilt). He randomly stormed off, saw a couple sitting in a garage, and fatally stabbed both of them. A neighbor came over to intervene and he too was stabbed—five times—but will survive.

Cops arrived as Harrouf was hunched over the male victim, biting off chunks of his face. They tried to Taser him and used attack dogs, but they could not subdue him. #BathSalts #GTBW

Anyway, the irony of this is that a former high school football teammate of the suspected killer said that the coaches did not play him very much, despite his good size and muscular physique, because he just wasn’t aggressive enough. Also, he was supposedly wearing a “Make America Great Again” ball cap when he committed the murders. Of course.

Music 101

Amie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4xp2lgiAjY

This bluegrass classic from Pure Prairie League, a band out of southern Ohio, wasn’t a hit when it originally appeared on their eponymous debut album in 1972. But as the band played college campuses and as soft rock and bluegrass rose in popularity, the song drew more and more requests. It finally hit the charts in 1975 and peaked at No. 27, but FM radio deejays have never fallen in and out of love with it. They’ve always loved it.

by John Walters

 

Star, 80

Happy birthday to film legend/sex symbol/conservationist/indie film crusader Robert Redford, who in his prime was bigger than Brad Pitt. Five essential Redford films: Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Way We Were, The Great Gatsby, All The President’s Men (okay, two more: Three Days of the Condor and Jeremiah Johnson)

2. Horton Hears A “Says Who?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-Z9lTUu3e8

Just when you think the 2016 presidential election cannot get any more surreal….

There were three “Says who’s?” in there, if you’re counting. That’s CNN anchor Brianna Kellar talking to Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

3. Lie of Ryan

Too much fodder here; just know that you should always be suspicious of a 32 year-old man who dyes his hair white.

4. High Hurdles: Trio in Rio

A dazzling night on the track in Rio, as three American female high hurdlers swept the medals. Brianna Rollins, gold, was the first American to take gold in a track (not field) event in Rio.

5. Life In Aleppo

This is five year-old Omran Daqneesh after an air raid hit his hometown in Syria. No matter what side of the aisle you are on, you must agree that little boys and girls should not be subjected to this madness. Why do adults (adult males, let’s be honest) screw everything up?

Music 101

Lonely Boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOddagW50hY

As backup musicians for Linda Ronstadt go, Don Henley and Glenn Frey enjoyed more overall success than Andrew Gold. But in 1977, this tune dominated the air waves, spending five months on the charts and peaking at No. 7. Plus, it has been used in both Boogie Nights and The Nice Guys (<–why did I forget to go see this?). Gold denied that the song is autobiographical even though, like the song’s main character, he was born in the summer of 1951. Here he is performing the song on The Midnight Special (even though he should’ve appeared on Solid Gold, no?) (Later era)