by John Walters

A Medium Happy 54th to Mike Judge. Who knew “Idiocracy” would get here so quickly?

Starting Five

Dallas at Green Bay: Dak’s Entertainment!

Here Comes Cowboys

After yesterday’s easy 30-16 win in Green Bay, Dallas is 5-1 with two spectacular rookies, quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott, in the backfield. Elliott rushed for a career-high 157 yards against the Packers (who’d been allowing 42 rushing yards per game). The Ohio State stud has 703 yards after six games; only Eric Dickerson ever rushed for more in the first half-dozen games of his career (787).

Prescott, meanwhile, attempted 176 passes before throwing the first interception of his NFL career yesterday. That’s the most attempts before the first INT in NFL history.

Elliott left school a year early, or else he would have been playing down state in Madison the day before….

The Cowboys head into a bye week before visiting Philadelphia on Halloween Eve, but even if Tony Romo is healthy, the Cowboys (HOT TAKE ALERT!!!!) would be foolish to mess with this youthful synergy.

Circle (or Hi-Lite) December 1 on your calendar: Dallas at Minnesota on Thursday night.

2. “Bye Bye”  Bye*

Notre Dame football in 2016: Ineffectual Brutality

*The judges note that Notre Dame’s offense did not look in sync on Saturday evening…

Notre Dame limps into its bye week 2-5 after going scoreless in the second half against a McCaffrey-free Stanford team and losing 17-10. For the fourth consecutive week, Stanford scored only one offensive touchdown, and that in the second half, and yet they are still 2-2 in that period.

For Notre Dame fans, the season has descended into ranking losses by degree of humiliation, frustration and hostility toward Brian Kelly. This Stanford outing, in which Kelly played “Do I Or Don’t I?” with his QBs throughout the second half, is No 1 for me.

The title here references what the Stanford strength coach said to Kelly as the teams walked off the field. Irish are off next Saturday (they can’t lose!) before hosting Miami on October 29.

3. Clay-mation

Nice way to rewrite the narrative, Clayton Kershaw. After closing out the Nats in Game 5 last week, the best starter in baseball’s regular season since Sandy Koufax blanks the Chicago Cubs, 1-0. Dodgers tie the NLCS, 1-1. Unbeatable trivia note: Only one other pitcher has ever blanked the Cubs 1-0 in a postseason game. His name was Babe Ruth (1918 World Series, which Ruth’s Boston Red Sox won)

4. Mosul

Mosul is located in northern Iraq

Oh, you wanted to talk issues instead of groping? Okay, this is Mosul, a city of 650,000 that is rich in oil reserves. ISIS has controlled it since 2014 and right now Iraqi and Kurdish forces are attempting to take it back. The U.S. is helping in a limited role. ISIS is reportedly using civilians as human shields. One Kurdish general said, “If I am killed in battle, I will die happy because I have done something for my people.”

5. Job Security: Kate McKinnon

The SNL debate openings aren’t exactly original, but they have been funny mostly because Alec Baldwin and Kate McKinnon are nailing their impressions. McKinnon is SNL’s reigning MVP and she’ll be it again this season.

As for the comedy writing, the formula is simple: 1) Take the most outrageous moments of the previous debate and 2) exaggerate them. It’s easy. It’s formulaic. It’s not very original. But it’s working because what’s happened in the first two debates has been so easy to parody.

Music 101

Before You Accuse Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAjXfytr9rg

Going old school today. This song is better known by Eric Clapton’s cover of it, but the legendary Bo Diddley first recorded this hit in 1957. He released it as a “B-side” to “Hey Bossman.”

Remote Patrol

Game 3: Indians at Blue Jays

TBS 8 p.m.

A Tribe-Cubs series is looking increasingly possible. That would be I-80 incredible.

Jose Bautista has been paying attention to American politics, as he’s now claiming the ALCS is rigged and that the umps are on the Tribe’s side. Riiiiiiiiiight. Cleveland teams, meanwhile, have now won eight in a row since the Cavs trailed 3-1 in the NBA Finals last June.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 89th to one of the better Bonds, Roger Moore…..

Starting Five

Anderson

Hands Kristin Anderson*

*The judges will also accept “Forced Trump”

The story of Kristin Anderson, who tells of being felt up by a stranger (Trump) at a New York City nightclub in the 1990s broke earlier today, but it’s not even the latest such story to break in the news. Are ALL of these women lying (answer: NO)?

2. The Hours

Kershaw gets the save. The last time he got a save, in a minor league game, it lasted 121 minutes. And current Dodger closer Kenley Jansen was the catcher

Gone With The Wind…….226 minutes

Lawrence of Arabia………. 227 minutes

Game 5, NLDS, Dodgers-Nats (9 innings)……..272 minutes.

3. A Message For Steve Bartman

The Cubs fans is a Domer, and a smart and successful one, so he already knows this. But on the 13th anniversary of Cub shortstop Alex Gonzalez making an error that led to a 6-run inning and Steve Bartman going on to be blamed for it, we just thought we’d run this reminder.

4. Anyone Have Lou Dobbs’ Phone Number?

FOX Business News anchor Lou Dobbs, who has cold sores older than most of Trump’s accusers, tweeted out the phone number and address of one of them yesterday. Then he quickly deleted the tweet and apologized. I mean….

5. Saint/Sinner

My old friend Richard O’Brien, one of the true good guys at SI (and the ultimate survivor), wrote a tremendous piece on the death of former New Orleans Saint Will Smith earlier this year.

Music 101

Saturday Night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBn2ux5vRHk

Laugh all you want, but this song by one-hit wonders The Bay City Rollers was a monster hit in the mid-Seventies. It also gave you no excuse for not knowing how to spell a certain day of the week. This song actually hit No. 1 on the charts in the first week of our bicentennial year. Strangely enough, despite the title and despite topping the charts, BCR never had a chance to perform this on Saturday Night Live.

Remote Patrol

SATURDAY

No. 1 Alabama at No. 9 Tennessee

CBS 3:30 p.m.

Everybody: Hurts

No team has been more entertaining this season than the Vols, and who knows how much gas they have left in the tank after the past three weeks? The Tide have already been on the road in Oxford and Fayetteville, plus that season opener in Arlington. Tennessee came as close as anyone (besides Ole Miss, of course) to beating Bama last season as they made a national title run. You get a legit Top 10 matchup plus Uncle Verne and Gary. Enjoy!

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 45th to Sacha Baron Cohen! Very niiiiiiice!

Starting Five

The Audacity of Grope

I know, I know. The issues. ISIS is chopping off people’s heads. And honestly, if The Donald just refused to engage all of these new sexual harassment allegations from years ago, that would be his better strategy.

But, here is whey this is going down: 1) Friday’s tape in which he bragged about in essence sexually assaulting women and 2) Sunday’s debate in which he told Anderson Cooper, “I have tremendous respect tor women, no one has more respect for women than me…no, I have not (grabbed them by the…..).”

Make it stop….

Now Trump is lashing out, threatening to sue The New York Times. Is he also going to sue the Palm Beach Post? And People? And…people? If he sues, the NYT can depose him and depose every woman who ever had a gripe with him. Meanwhile, the election is less than four weeks away…unless it’s actually will be held on November 28.

That’s award-winning New York Times reporter Megan Twohey. When she phoned Trump for a comment Tuesday night, he called her “a disgusting human being.” We’re so far beyond why he’d be a terrible leader at this point, no? But I’m sure there’s a banana republic (or a Banana Republic) he’d be able to manage.

A New Leaf

Matthews scored a hat trick and then added a fourth goal cuz why not?

Making his NHL debut for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Scottsdale, Ariz., native Auston Matthews, 19, scores FOUR goals in the first two periods. No one has ever done that. The Maple Leafs still lost to Otttawa, 5-4, in OT. The Leafs last won the Stanley Cup in 1967—this season marks the 50th anniversary of their drought.

3. Ballad of a Thin Man

Not a bad week for Hibbing, Minn., native Bob Zimmerman. He opened for the Rolling Stones last Friday night in Indio, Calif., and will do so again tomorrow night, and today it was announced that he has won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. And he didn’t even have to submit a manuscript to a publisher! When asked to comment on the honor, the man we know as Bob Dylan replied, “Himmmina mummina ho. Zibbit rikkish ooh.”

4. All’s Well That Ends Wells…

Remember that Wells Fargo CEO with the made-up-rich-kid name (John Stumpf) who was getting his hiney chewed out by Elizabeth Warren during a congressional subcommittee a few weeks back? We wrote about it. He “retired” yesterday.

On September 20 Warren called Stumpf’s leadership “gutless” and added “you should resign.” Well, he has. Effective immediately.

5. “Oh, Bob”

Cubs, I am 87 and I am getting too old for this… #GoCubsGo #FlyTheW pic.twitter.com/d4tnkgRCl0

— Bob Newhart (@BobNewhart) October 12, 2016

Forgot to post that yesterday. That’s comedian Bob Newhart, whose eponymous Seventies sitcom was based in Chicago, reminding the Cubbies that he’d really like to see them win a World Series before he moves on. Other voluble and famous Cubbies fans include John Cusack and Eddie Vedder.

Dr. Robert Hartley, completely over-chicked

Back in the early to mid-Seventies, before people began televising college football on Saturday nights, CBS owned Saturday night prime-time. You had The Mary Tyler Moore Show, followed by The Bob Newhart Show, followed by The Carol Burnett Show. And no one put a #Funny on the screen to inform you that you were watching comedy. It was sort of self-evident.

Sorta wondering whom the Cubs will have throw out the first pitches when they advance to the World Series (yes, they will). They’ll host Games 3, 4 and 5.

***

Also, a Happy Birthday to my sister. She’s somewhere north of 29…..

Music 101

Rapture

What a band Blondie was. Gorgeous lead singer with a seductive voice, and they could go from punk (“Atomic”) to uptempo rock (“Call Me”) to dreamy (“Sunday Girl”) to reggae (“The Tide Is High”) to this, disco-infused-rap. The only thing Debbie Harry couldn’t do, as this video illustrates, is dance. She’s Elaine Benes out there. This song hit No. 1 for two weeks in 1980. Yes, a blonde white girl sang the first rap song to hit No. 1 on the charts (apologies, Sugar Hill Gang).

Remote Patrol

Game 5: Dodgers at Nationals

FS1 8 p.m.

How can you expect to hit one of this dude’s pitches when his eyes are hip-motizing you!?!?!?

This is why the Nationals signed heterochromiac Max Scherzer. To take the hill in a closeout game. Scherzer is earning $210 million over seven years.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 66th to Susan Anton. It was the Seventies; don’t judge.

Starting Five

That sight, so rare in our lifetimes, of seeing the Cubs celebrate

Maddon-ing

Earthquakes, Bay Area residents knows, are sudden and shocking and create seismic change. So did the Chicago Cubs last night at AT&T Park. Down 5-2 in the ninth, having just gotten two hits off Matt Moore (10 strikeouts), the Cubs went single (Kris Bryant), walk (Anthony Rizzo), double (Ben Zobrist), single (Wilson Contreras), error (on what should have been a double play), and single (Javy Baez) off his bullpen.

Four runs and only one out, off five relievers. Cubs win, 6-5. Game over. Series over. Even-numbered year streak over, at three.

The Giants and their fans will always wonder What if? What if we’d just gotten three outs and moved the series back to Chicago? With Johnny Cueto on the hill and MadBum waiting in the bullpen and with all the pressure of 108 long years pressing down on Wrigleyville.

We’ll never know. Maybe these Joe Maddon Cubs really are different.

2. Miracle Met

Yes, Tim Tebow laid his hand on a person who was suffering from a seizure in Arizona, and then that victim seemed to be comforted. The man’s name was Brandon and he told Tebow, who was signing autographs after going 0-3 at the plate in his Arizona Fall League debut, that he was a Georgia fan. Brandon, who was on the ground for 15 minutes, was whisked off by paramedics and is okay.

That’s one miracle for Tebow. Two, if you count that he won a playoff game as a starting quarterback in the NFL.

3. Onward, Christian Soldiers*

McCaffrey had just 35 yards rushing after getting hurt in the first half versus Wazzu….

*The judges are entirely plugging the Newsweek story of a hack they know. Skip immediately to the next item!

If you stayed up to watch Washington State at Stanford last Saturday night in Pac-12 After Sark (and I did, because I never miss an opportunity to watch Christian McCaffrey), you saw a vintage McCaffrey gallop in the second quarter. The junior, last year’s Heisman runner-up, took the handoff and headed right behind his blockers. Seeing the running lanes more clogged up than the 101 during rush hour (pro tip: ALWAYS take the 280!), he quickly reversed field and scampered 23 yards.

It was the most 2015 McCaffrey play of 2016. Soon after, though, he was gone, not to return. All coach David Shaw will say is that he is “banged up” and that they will not make a decision on him until Friday or Saturday, regarding Saturday’s was-supposed-to-be big game at Notre Dame.

Is this the play on which McCaffrey was hurt?

I wrote about McCaffrey in Newsweek. About how it wasn’t fair that he was robbed of the Heisman last season, and about how it’s a shame that this season has been such a disappointment. In Stanford’s last three games, they’ve scored five touchdowns: two on defense and another two, both to J.J. Arciga-Whiteside, with less than :30 on the clock. There was a fifth meaningless second-half TD to JJAW at U-Dub.

No McCaffrey TDs. None.

4. Vagina Monologue*

*Warning: NSFP. Not Safe For Phyllis

On her show, Full Frontal, host and The Daily Show alumna Samantha Bee went off, not exactly half-cocked, at Donald Trump’s 2005 bus comments. She ended her rant by free associating about every last euphemism for that part of the female anatomy that has ever been conjured.

Meanwhile, at NBC, it’s Bye, Bye Bushy.

5. Checkout: Gwyneth*

Check out that rack (of magazines)

*The judges also considered “Paper or Plastic,” “Six-Pack” “One Item or Less”  and “I’d Bag That”

Yes, that’s Oscar winner Gywneth Paltrow, who’s been working out, for a Bazaar photo shoot. My instincts tell me that’s the Pioneer Market (the signs on the window are a giveaway) on Columbus Ave., which is this fantastic anachronism of a grocery store on the posh Upper West Side in the 70s. However, the other photos don’t seem to verify my claim. We’ll get MH’s (on) crack research staff to look into this.

The Pioneer Market. A scene out of the UWS’ gritty past….

Music 101

Lightning Crashes

Probably the only time “placenta” has been used in a hit song. In the last great days of MTV as a music station, the band Live from York, Pa., went to No 12 on the charts with this 1994 song. Few lead singers have had a less glamorous name look or name than Ed Kowalczyk. The song was not originally released as a single, but the album (Throwing Copper) was a hit and people couldn’t help but notice that this song was actually better than the three songs that had originally been pulled as the singles. Live, along with Soul Asylum, were a Lollapalooza-worthy if not R&R HOF-worthy band of the early ’90s.

Remote Patrol

Speechless

ABC 8:30 p.m.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u55WK6AbaM

Can a half-hour comedy on network TV that is not exactly a sit-com (no live studio audience) actually succeed in the 21st century? Probably not, but we like that, like The Grinder last autumn, someone is giving it a try. Solid premise, and Minnie Driver gives the show about an untraditional family plenty of cred. If only it were on NetFlix or AmazonPrime.

by John Walters

A Medium Happy 49th—yes, he’s still alive—to Artie Lange

Starting Five

Ken Bone: Red, White, and You

Bones

It is actually Emily Deschanel’s birthday today, so this is kind of a two-fer

He’s 34, married, and has a son. His parents were enjoying “Thanksgiving dinner” the previous night, which means there’s probably some Canadian in his family or background. He’s self-deprecating and quick-witted. Ladies and gentlemen, Ken Bone (@kenbone18), the one good thing that has emerged from this election.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqchRR1tZvc

2. Cubs Lose, Cubs Lose

The Giants refuse to relent on this whole even-numbered thing…

Madison Bumgarner was far from perfect, surrendering a three-run homer to opposing starter Jake Arrieta in the 2nd inning, but the Giants still do not know how to lose when MadBum pitches in an elimination game. San Francisco won 6-5 in 13 innings on Joe “Don’t” Panik’s RBI double. The game lasted five hours and our minutes, so if you were watching on the East Coast, you were up past 2:30 a.m.

Separated at Mirth: Hunter Pence and….

…Pied Piper founder RIchard Hendric

Aroldis Chapman gave up a two-run triple in the eighth off a 102 mph fastball to Conor Gillespie to allow San Fran to take the lead, but then Kris Bryant’s two-run homer in the ninth off Sergio Romo tied it and forced the four extra frames.

Both Los Angeles and San Fran host Game 4’s today in which they will be attempting to stave off, as opposed to staving on, elimination.

3. Adios, Papi Grande

Ortiz, 40, will likely gain at least that many pounds in the next six months

The Red Sox went meekly into the New England night, being swept by the Cleveland Indians. David Ortiz, the Dominican Babe Ruth, walked in the eighth inning and was pinch-run for with the Sox trailing 4-3. The runner never scored and Papi’s place in the order never came up again, anyway.

Boston, which scored more runs than any club in baseball this season (878, or more than 5 per game) was held to seven runs in three games and never scored more than one per inning. They last led in the third inning of Game 1, 2-1. The Sox won 11 straight in mid-September, then folded like a cheap tent, losing eight of their final nine.

Still, we’re going to miss Big Papi. There was simply no one who smote a baseball quite like he did, and no one in baseball who seemed to deliver more frequently in the most crucial moments. In his final two at-bats, he lined a screamer to center that nearly dropped, but still was good for an RBI, and then later walked on a 3-0 count. He was kind of hoping, you could tell, that the ump was going to call Ball 4 a strike. On to mofongo.

4. Carnage in Vermont

All five teens were 15 or 16 years old

Late Sunday night in Vermont, five teens in a Volkswagen Jetta heading southbound on I-89 were struck head-on by a Toyota Tundra headed the wrong way in their lanes, The car burst into flames and all five, high school juniors, were killed.

It gets weirder. As the first policeman arrived on the scene and attempted to douse the flames, someone stole his police cruiser, drove off, and crashed into multiple cars before being ejected. It’s assumed that the thief, Stephen Bourgoin, 36, is the same man (at least by me), but police have yet to confirm that. Bourgoin, of Williston, Vermont, is in critical condition.

5. Trump Tapes (Cont.)

The gift that keeps on giving, a.k.a. “The GOP Elephant in the Room.” Here’s Seth Meyers last night:

And here’s the latest Ana Navarro-Scottie Nell Hughes fracas. The Trump apologist went to Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight films, and Magic Mike to defend Donald Trump’s ugly sexism. As Navarro called Nell Hughes’ argument, it’s “Fifty Shades of Crazy.”

And here’s Mike Huckabee calling the GOP who are abandoning Trump as “bed-wetting, hand-wringing Republicans.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4VrXn9A0F4

Music 101

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Here’s David Letterman introducing Scottish twin brothers Charlie and Craig Reid, a.k.a. The Proclaimers, in 1989 as they perform their one major hit. The tune went to No. 1 in Australia (where someone we know once danced atop a picnic table to it; XXXs beer may have been involved) and New Zealand, and to No. 3 in the U.S.A. “Haver,” by the way, is not Scottish for vomit; it means babble or talk nonsense.

Remote Patrol

Golden State Doubleheader, Game 4s

Nationals at Dodgers

FS1 5 p.m.

Cubs at Giants

FS1 8:30 p.m.

Yasiel Puig is 0-4 in the postseason

Day baseball at Dodger Stadium with Clayton Kershaw taking the hill as L.A. attempts to force a Game 5 and a trip back East. Twilight baseball at AT&T, as the Giants try to force a Game 5 at Wrigley.