by John Walters

Starting Five

Renfrew’s game-winning TD catch wasn’t flagged, so it was legal

No Pick!*

The judges will also accept “Pick and Roll Tide”

Pick:

No Pick:

Williams’ score here made it 24-21, Bama

Pick:

An ACC team, a rub play against the No. 1 team in the land, an easy TD pass, but—not legal

No Pick! No Pick!

2. Hunter Gatherer

This was Renfrow’s first TD catch versus Bama, a 31-yarder, in the first half of last year’s NCG….

Clemson’s 5’11 former walk-on wideout Hunter Renfrow, who scored the championship-winning TD last night, now has 17 catches and four touchdowns against the Crimson Tide in the past calendar year. Thirteen of the Tide’s 14 non-Clemson opponents in the past calendar year failed to score four touchdowns.

A reminder that Renfrow was not offered a single FBS scholarship out of high school. Something to remember when National Signing Day is upon up in 22 days.

….and this was his fourth, last night.

Mike Williams, another Clemson wide out, is 6’3″ and will probably be chose in the top 20 picks in the upcoming NFL draft. And he deserves to be. And, more importantly, Williams’ two mighty, sky-walking fourth-quarter grabs last night were probably more decisive than any two catches Renfrow made. It’s just going to be interesting to see what happens with Renfrow, who also made a tackle on a Clemson fumble that saved a touchdown early in the third quarter, when his college career ends.

3. Meaningless But Fun

FCS Samford (Birmingham, Ala.) beat FCS Central Arkansas

FCS Central Arkansas beat Arkansas State

Arkansas State beat Texas State

Texas State beat Ohio

Ohio beat Kansas

Kansas beat Texas

Texas beat Baylor

Baylor beat Oklahoma State

Oklahoma State beat Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh beat Clemson (43-42)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_VhQt5gKS4

So by the ultra-transitive property, a team from Alabama defeated Clemson, so the Crimson Tide may as well add another natty to its list. By the way, recall that North Carolina State missed a game-winning 33-yard field goal in October in Death Valley. Granted, if I had to bet, I’d predict Clemson would’ve run the table after that presumed loss and beaten Pitt, but we’ll never know, will we?

4. At Tritt’s End

Travis Tritt Treets:

Yesterday:

Advice to all actors, musicians and entertainers: Please stick to your crafts that we all love you for and drop the political rhetoric.

— Travis Tritt (@Travistritt) January 9, 2017

And this was Travis Tritt 51 weeks ago:

In the upcoming election, I will be voting for the ABC candidate (Anybody But Clinton)! She is a lying troll who isn’t good for America!

— Travis Tritt (@Travistritt) January 15, 2016

It ain’t about whether you agree or disagree with Tritt on the tweet directly above. It’s about fighting the “War on Hypocrisy!” (How’s that one going, Sean Hannity?). For example, can you believe Kellyanne said this yesterday referring to someone who dared to stand up to her boss?

“I’m concerned that someone with a platform like Meryl Streep is also inciting people’s worst instincts.” That’s good, Kellyanne! You are good.

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

5. Pay ‘Em? (More?)

Deshaun Watson is worth far more to Clemson than his scholarship and stipend. On the other hand, would you (or the NFL) know who he is if he just played sandlot ball in his hometown?

So last week Ray Glier, who is a terrific reporter for The New York Times, asked as many playoff-bound college football players as he could what they do with their monthly cost-of-attendance stipend of just under $400.

He received replies from fewer than a dozen players, all of whom spend their money on responsible things like rent, car repairs, sending $$ home to parents or even buying stuff for the homeless. Cool. Apparently, the “Pay ‘Em!” crowd (my friend Jason McIntyre at The Big Lead introduced Glier’s piece in his daily Roundup by writing “To the few dolts who don’t think college football players should be paid, read how they spend their “stipend.”) believes that those of us who don’t believe they should be paid (more) assume they’re all going to use the money for spinning rims or bling or ice or Yeezy’s because you know, we’re all closet racists with a plantation mentality.

Item: What someone uses their income on should never have any impact on how much they are paid. That’s like saying of two sportswriters, one who’s married with three kids and the other who’s single, that the former deserves to be paid more because she buys more Gerber products. Why you’d make that your “Pay Them (More)” argument is asinine.

Item: College football players already are paid. You may have noticed the item dealt with the fact that these players receive checks of $388 per month. That is income. That is payment. They also receive free educations. If you think they should be paid MORE, that’s fine. But that’s the issue. Not that they are not paid at all. By continually saying they should be paid, you are either being intellectually dishonest (read: disingenuous) because it doesn’t help your argument or you’re just not very bright.

Item: Glier spoke with less than 12 players. About 10,000 young men play FBS football. Just something to remember.

Item: As far as I know, any college football player at an FBS school is eligible for free housing all four years he’s at that school (I’m not 100% positive on this, but I think so). Moving off campus and getting your own crib, for which you’d have to pay rent, is a discretionary spending move. No one is forcing these players to do that and pay rent. They make that choice.

Item: Most of us didn’t have a pet in college because we 1) didn’t have the time and 2) didn’t have the money to take care of one. I’m all for pets, and I’m all for players having them if they treat them well, but again, this is discretionary use of income.

Item: Same for vehicles. When you’re a college student.

You’re welcome to believe college football players should be paid MORE THAN THEY ALREADY RECEIVE. That’s a debatable topic, because I feel that most sportswriters that espouse this haven’t looked far down the road to explore the Law of Unintentional Consequences here. But that’s another matter.

As I’ve written before, when 100% of the people you make an offer to accept it (Hello, National Signing Day), there’s very little incentive to sweeten the offer. And when about 3% of the personnel playing college football make it to the NFL, the deal as is for the other 97% is far better than if it didn’t exist.

Yes, but colleges and ESPN and FOX are reaping billions off their labor. They DESERVE to be paid more, you say. Maybe. So go on strike. In the adult world, “deserve” and “fair” have very little to do with anything. It’s a lesson one should learn earlier rather than later.

Music 101

Vienna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuCIGvsbMA

The British New Wave act Ultravox was almost too New Wave, as if the barrier to entry to even listen to them required a black trench coat, military boots and eyeliner (You weren’t around in the early Eighties, but this was an actual thing; they were called “Mods”). The song spent four weeks at No. 2 in the UK in the winter of 1981, held off at No. 1 by John Lennon’s “Woman” (he’d been murdered a month earlier) and then for three weeks by the novelty hit, “Shaddup You Face,” proving that listeners had poor taste then, too.

Remote Patrol

President Obama’s Farewell Address

CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. 9 pm.

Watch it with your favorite Deplorable.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Streep used her six minutes to speak not a whiff about her own career

Streep Fighting Man*

*The judges will also accept, “The Devil Wears Trump Ties Made In China”

Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award (lifetime achievement) at the Golden Globes last night, Meryl Streep took up where Hugh Laurie had left off, noting that the tosser of last night’s event, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, had three words in its name that were anathema to Deplorables. Then she went all in:

An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that. Breathtaking, compassionate work.

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. O.K., go on with it.

Of course, this morning the man above is claiming president-electsplaining that he was not mocking The New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis. And then he doubled down by becoming a film critic:

Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017

Then this happened, from professional blonde news reader Tomi Lahren:

These Hollywood elites wouldn’t know average, every day hard-working Americans if we bit them in the ass. #GoldenGlobes

— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2017

But as someone else pointed out, the person she is defending lives in a 32-story glass tower on Fifth Avenue with his name in gold letter atop it. But he’s not an “elite?”

2. More from The Golden Globes

So, Naomi Campbell hasn’t aged a day since the Freedom ’90 video? She’s 46. This is the very definition of arm candy

–Host Jimmy Fallon recovered well from his teleprompter not working at the outset of the show. And he still got off this zinger: “What would it be like if King Joffrey had lived?” Fallon asked. “Well, in 12 days we’re going to find out.”

–Thoughts and prayers to Tom Hiddleston, who probably took the stage with good intentions of sharing the plight of people in South Sudan but instead came off sounding like a wanker. That was like a scene out of Extras.

For a moment there, I had a “Wild Things” flashback

–God bless Emma Stone, who double-hugged director Damien Chazelle as he was leaning over in the other direction to hug his babe, and who then said, “God, that was really awkward.”

The miracle of two-sided tape

–You could park a bus in the area that was open on Jessica Chastain‘s dress above the midriff. It seemed like a competition between she and Mandy Moore to show more decolletage.

–I think the director of Elle has the hots for the star of Elle.

—Brad Pitt: separation suits you. Notice the extra-long applause Pitt received. It was like the room was saying, “We’ve been wondering for years when you were going to open your eyes about that woman.” I half-expected Billy Bob Thornto to jump up and high-five him (also, Angelina Jolie and Tom Hiddleston would be a terrific match, no?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_QQgz74qpo

—Steve Carell‘s Fantasia anecdote was the best. “I never saw my father again after that day.”

–Jessica Chastain, Amy Adams and Emma Stone: Ginger is the new black.

–“Golf Boy” sounds like a film Adam Sandler would make and that I would not see.

–Such a strange evening, I still don’t believe it. The movies/shows I was rooting for (La La Land, The Crown) got their just due while those I found somewhat overrated (you know, like Meryl Streep) did not. And I don’t even know if I heard the words “Modern Family” except for when Sofia Vergara did her anus joke. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if someone had done a Vinyl “In Memoriam.”

3. Howlin’ Wolfpack 

Okay, so call it the second-most unbelievable basketball game ever staged at The Pit in Albuquerque. On Saturday evening Nevada trailed New Mexico by 25 with 11 minutes to play, by 19 with just over four minutes remaining and by 14 with 90 seconds to play.

The Wolfpack won, 105-104 in overtime. How’d they do it? By making eight threes in the final four minutes and by the Lobos (who are also a wolf pack, just a Spanish-sounding one) missing six of their final 10 free throws. What a game.

4. Stolen Car-ma

On Friday on Long Island, someone stole a 2010 Honda. Yesterday afternoon a state trooper on the Long Island Expressway noticed the car (apparently there’s a gadget that reads license plate numbers and alerts the fuzz if it’s a license plate of a stolen vehicle). The trooper did not turn on his lights but followed the vehicle at a safe distance as he called for backup.

At some point after pulling off the LIE, the driver noticed he was being tailed and sped up. The problem? The temps were in the teens yesterday and many roads were slick. As the driver attempted to make a sharp right turn, the car skidded off the road way and rolled over upside down into a frozen pond. The driver and two other occupants died before they could be rescued.

5. Oh, The Places They Invite You To Go: Detroit, Tijuana and the South Bronx!

Capetown, South Africa (been there, loved that)

The New York Times came out with its list of 52 places you should visit in 2017. It’s very well done, really.

Music 101

December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)

Franki Valli and The Four Seasons were already your parents’ band when this song was released in late December, 1975. It wound up soaring to No. 1 on the charts in March of 1976 and remaining there for three weeks. All of this came at least a dozen years after those Jersey boys had been in their prime. The lead vocals here are not sung by Valli (he sings backup and bridge) but by drummer Gary Polci. An essential time-capsule song of the Mid-Seventies.

Remote Patrol

Alabama vs Clemson

8 p.m. ESPN

Fitzpatrick (speaking of Jersey boys) won the Pop Warner Super Bowl in 2010 with his team from Old Bridge, N.J.

Despite an alarming lack of pregame analysis, they’re still going to rush ahead and play this game (I’ve studiously avoided any ESPN studio chatter on the game; they’re ruining Christmas for me here). Always tough to win a rematch (ask Apollo Creed), but I like the Tide because that defense is filthy. Minkah Fitzpatrick is a future NFL star.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Korver was apparently upset that Popeye’s chicken staff in Atlanta referred to him as “white boy,” or do I have the wrong alliterative Atlantan?

The Kleveland Korver-liers

On Wednesday the Cavs shot 8 of 25 from beyond the arc in a loss to the Bulls. On Thursday, with serial in-game hugger J.R. Smith still weeks if not months away from a return, they made a deal to acquire white boy three-point marksman Kyle Korver from the Hawks. Korver, in his 14th season who has been an All-Star, is 6’7″ and can rain buckets.

Korver is a career 43% shooter from outside the arc, has thrice led the NBA in 3-point %, and has drained 1,952 career threes. In contrast, LeBron James, who like Korver entered the NBA in 2004, is a 34% shooter from outside the arc and has made 1,400 career threes.

The game is now dictated from outside the arc, if you hadn’t noticed (I’m working on a story on this at the moment), and Cleveland’s maneuver is going to set the Cavs up well for the Finals. Besides, now Kevin Love will have someone to talk to.

2. Black Ops*

This tweet wasn’t admiral-ble

*The judges will not accept “But I thought black people couldn’t swim”

Is this why they called David Robinson The Admiral? This Yahoo! Finance tweet remained up for about 20 minutes, but it got a lot more people talking about Yahoo! Finance while reminding us that Denzel Washington was the protagonist in Crimson Tide.

3. The Three Stooges

How do you say, “Piers Morgan without a British accent?”

Fox News announces that middle-aged Princeton eating club member Tucker Carlson will replace Megyn Kelly, giving the cable news channel a nightly 8-11 p.m. lineup of  Bill O’Reilly, Carlson and Sean Hannity. That’s three hours of white-mansplainin’ of Donald Trump each night for those of you who live in states that only border other states or The Great Lakes (or Mexico or the Gulf of Mexico).

Jon Stewart appeared on Carlson’s show “Crossfire” a few years back and singlehandedly destroyed it. I mean, like, it was canceled soon after this appearance.

I may as well go all-in on coastal elitism, if I’m going to be accused of it, anyway. Meanwhile, Greta Van Susteren, who ceased being relevant about a decade ago, is moving to MSNBC (which ceased being relevant three months ago?).

4. We Never Gave James Madison and Youngstown State Their Proper Props

Rader pinned the ball against his defender’s back to make the game-winning catch of a lifetime. Something out of a movie.

Tomorrow in Frisco (“Kid, was a friend of mine!”), Texas, will be the FCS National Championship, pitting a pair of underdogs (or overcats, if you will) against one another: James Madison U. vs. Youngstown State.

JMU, Jason McIntyre’s alma mater (he even has the same initials), got there by taking down FIVE-TIME DEFENDING NATIONAL CHAMPION NORTH DAKOTA STATE in Fargo, and with a first-year coach, Mike Houston (Hello!). The final was 27-17. Quite a feat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz4vBqXa5FA

Youngstown State also defied the odds, traveling out west to Cheyney, Washington, to upset favorite Eastern Washington (a school that took down Holiday Bowl participant Washington State) in the snow under its own first-year coach, Bo Pelini (you know him). Kevin Rader made a SICK catch with just :01 remaining to give the Penguins a 40-38 victory.

MH regrets not appreciating all this when it happened. The game airs tomorrow at noon on ESPN2.

5. Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Feeney made his fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers Group, which George Costanza claimed he knew nothing about.

(Erstwhile) billionaire Charles Feeney is a man whom I imagine is familiar with the scripture verse Matthew 19:24:

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

(proof that Jesus visited zoos? We digress….)

Five years ago Feeney, then 81, pledged that he would give away the remaining $1.5 billion of his accumulated wealth (he’d already given away $500 million, or half a billion). Last week Feeney, now 85, gave $7 million to Cornell University, his alma mater, as a grant for students doing community service work. He and his wife, Helga, who live in a rented apartment in San Francisco, will now get by on his remaining $2 million.

Feeney’s quote? “You can only wear one pair of pants at a time.”

Feeney is “subsisting” on .01% of his former liquid assets. According to The New York Times, no American philanthropist has given away a greater proportion of his or her wealth. Charles Feeney is a real-life superhero.

Word Up

Ephemeral (adj): Lasting for a very short time

Johnny Manziel’s quixotic and ephemeral NFL career….

2017 Stock Pick!

We thank An Inconvenient Ruth for her suggestion of Vandalay Industries (you roll that up with Moland Spring Water, the Penske File and J. Peterman and you’ve got quite a promising portfolio), but we’ll pass. So what should we pick?

This is hardly a risky choice, since the stock soared 220% in 2016, but with the coming emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and the company’s early entry into the sector, we like Nvidia (NVDA), which is based in San Jose. It’s getting a lot of attention at the CES show in Vegas this week and at the very worst it’s a takeover target.

NVDA opened at $101.80 this morning, Jan. 6, so let’s say that the MH coffers are going to open up to buy 100 shares. That’s an outlay of $10,180. We’ll see you all on December 31st to see how that investment turned out.

(P.S. MH is always happy to hear the investing thoughts of the great and powerful Oz, our old high school friend who has the coolest hair of anyone over the age of 50 and owns a domicile or two in Park City. Oz is the best investor we personally know.)

Music 101

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man (and….

Bob Seger released this song in 1968, when he was an unknown, and I’m sure when people heard it they thought, Well, this is a very nice effort by the Spencer Davis Group. The song shot up to No. 17 on the charts in early 1969 and it also became the title song of his debut album.

….Ramblin’ Man)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VxoXn-0Ezs

Then, five years later, The Allman Brothers released this song about a character who I can only assume is the son of Seger’s protagonist (“My father was a gambler down in Georgia/He wound up on the wrong side of a gun…”). It shot up to No. 2 on the charts and remains the band’s lone Top 10 hit.

Remote Patrol

Sunday 

The Golden Globes

NBC 8 p.m.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnIGdb-sT-s

The above was only last year. It feels like about five years ago….

Tune in despite the fact that Jimmy Fallon is hosting. You get film and TV awards, drunk and well-dressed celebrities, and the obligatory cracks made at the expense of the Hollywood Foreign Press. Have we really gone from the caustic (and hilarious) Ricky Gervais hosting to the fawning Fallon? Yup.

by John Walters

Starting Five

I love when Pence gives the media that death glare that says, “You’re probably secretly gay and you should be exterminated (but maybe I’m secretly gay, too).”

Slow Your Roll (Call)

The Republican clown car is just three days into the New Year (and two days into the 115th session—as opposed to Sessions…all opposed to Sessions, say, “Nay!’ “NAY!”) and the wheels are already coming off the vehicle:

Monday night-Tuesday: The “Let’s Get Rid of the Independent Ethics Panel…On Second Thought, And After Being Flooded With Vitriolic Phone Calls, Let’s Not” debacle.

Wednesday morning: Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, looking and sounding as if they just played in a foursome with Judge Smails and Doctor Beeper, opine on how terrible the Affordable Care Act is and promise that repealing it will be their first order of business….while insisting that they have a plan, but we can’t tell you what that plan is…never minding that the Los Angeles Times disputes their assertions. My gut feeling tells me that what they find most heinous about “Obamacare,” if these men were ever willing to admit it, is the first three syllables of the word.

Monty Python foresaw the GOP pressers of late more than 40 years ago. Thanks to the outstanding Notre Dame photographer Matt Cashore for the suggestion.

Wednesday morning: Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has the audacity to chide Democrats for thinking about obstructing the confirmation of a SCOTUS, even though he led an unprecedented crusade to do just that the past 10 months.

Cal Marshall dabs at the swearing in of his father, Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), earning himself a grounding by dad and the adoration of classmates for the rest of his high school years.

Wednesday morning: Lawyers who worked for the state attorney general’s office in Alabama write an op-ed in The Washington Post directly and bluntly refuting the claims of Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, about having worked on anti-discrimination and desegregation cases. Meanwhile, more than 1,100 law school professors nationwide put their names on a letter to Congress urging it to not approve the nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general.

Those confirmation hearings are scheduled to take place on January 11, which is the same day that Donald Trump is holding his first press conference since the election, which is a wonderful tactic for hoping the press takes its eyes off the ball.

Kids, this is EXHAUSTING and we’re still two weeks away from it even beginning. Are you sure you’re ready for this?  It’s going to be a four-year battle between the well-read and the well, red.

So, ‘nova Bitches?

Butler takes down No. 1 and unbeaten and defending national champion Villanova (14-1) last night at Hinkle Fieldhouse, 66-58. Here’s Jay Wright picking up his first technical of the season in the first half, upsset that his guy who shot an air ball didn’t get a foul call.

Meanwhile Butler (14-2) moves to 4-0 against ranked teams this season and picks up one of two wins against top ten teams in the state of Indiana last night (my way of shoe-horning Notre Dame’s 77-70 win over No. 9 Louisville into this item). It was the first time a No. 1 team had played at Hinkle since 1953 (Indiana, which beat Butler that night, one year before Milan High beat Muncie Central in the same building).

Also, not to be dismissed, this is the same Butler team whose charter flight had to make an emergency landing in Pittsburgh last Thursday night after losing at St. John’s, the cabin losing pressure and oxygen masks descending. Players and coaches texted loved ones as the plane descended from 35,000 feet to 10,000 feet in a span of about 10 minutes.

3. Vatican City McDonald’s

I mean, c’mon, man. Not here.

Yes, there’s now a McDonald‘s just outside  Vatican City, rendering yet again the question “Is nothing sacred” rhetorical.

Is the kids’ area known as “Prayland?” Will there be a drive-pew window? What does black smoke coming out of the chimney mean? Can your order the McWafer with cheese and are all patties made from 100% papal bull? And how long until we’ll see a MeccaDonald’s?

4. Retail Between Its Legs

When you ask for the “Death of the Mall” photo and instead are given a Darth Maul photo

Macy’s announces that it is closing 68 stores. Sears announces that it is closing 150 stores. Doesn’t anyone want to go to the mall anymore (as an AMZN shareholder, I have conflicting thoughts about this).

5. Facebook Live Torture Story That Is Disturbing

It may seem cool to broadcast your crimes on social media until you realize you’re handing law enforcement the evidence

Four black Chicago teens, two male and two female, kidnap a white special needs teen and torture him for half an hour, broadcasting it on Facebook Live. Reprehensible, indefensible and certainly racially motivated. They yelled, “F*** Donald Trump!” and “F*** white people!” as they scared the young man half to death.

All four have been arrested by police and should be spending a long time in jail.

So what to say about it? Are there racist black people? Well, of course there are. Do we all want to go running to Clay’s and Bomani’s Twitter accounts to gauge their wildly antipodal takes on this sick incident? Go ahead. Is it a hate crime? I personally don’t believe in that term, but if you’re going to buy into it, then this is as clear an example of one as you will find.

My own personal take, having lived in NYC for a quarter century but having spent many a time in Chicago and having traveled to every city in the U.S. of any relative import is that there’s a special mean in the south side of Chicago that I’ve never personally encountered in any other city. Might it exist elsewhere? Sure. But I’ve never seen it, not in Philly, not in Baltimore, not even in south Central. There’s a reason 762 people were murdered in Chicago in 2016.

As we write this, the sentencing phase of the Dylann Roof mass murder trial is taking place  in South Carolina. He murdered nine African-Americans in a church in a racially motivated crime less than two years ago. Instead of worrying about if white people or black people are the victims/perpetrators perpetually, maybe let’s just punish people who o horrible things and move on.

Music 101

Unwritten

The invention of YouTube allowed anyone with a video camera and an account to have access to the entire world to show of their talent, or lack thereof. This young woman has the chops and there’s a reason besides just her vocals that her cover of Natasha Bedingfield‘s 2004 No. 5 hit has had 16 million in the nine years since she uploaded it. Watch all the way through. Bedingfield is an international star, but I always thought she’d be even bigger than she is: beautiful, lovely voice. Maybe she should’ve had a tawdry marriage to Russell Brand. This is my favorite song of hers.

Wonderful trivia bit: The song was co-written by Danielle Brisebois, the former child actress who played the step-daughter on All In the Family and later Archie Bunker’s Place.

Remote Patrol

Thunder at Rockets

8 p.m. TNT

A battle between the season’s first-half MVP favorites, neither of whom are named Steph or LeBron. Russell Westbrook is No. 1 in scoring (30.9 ppg) and No. 2 in assists (10.5) for the Thunder (21-15). James Harden, his former OKC teammate, is No. 4 in scoring (28.4) and No. 1 in assists (11.9) for the 27-9 Rockets. Besides, these may be the two most fun players to watch in the NBA this season who don’t have a Greek name I cannot spell.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Kelly, 46, heads across 6th Avenue and one block north from Fox to NBC

Me-Gone Kelly*

*The judges, for a limited time, will accept “The Kelly Flies”

As a former employee of both NBC and Fox, I can get behind Megyn Kelly‘s decision to move from the latter to the former. Why? There are so many more lunch choices within the building, silly.

Kelly, 46, is a survivor of Toxic Fox Syndrome (TFS), which happens when you wake up and realize that you must attend the same Christmas party (not to mention the same “War On Christmas! Party”) with Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

Kelly will make a lot of bank at The Peacock (likely between $17 and $22 million per year), but UNLESS SHE’S TAKING SAVANNAH GUTHRIE’S PLACE ON TODAY, SHE WON’T BE WORTH IT.

Why not? Because Kelly’s target audience won’t be tuning in to NBC to see her between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and she’s simply not warm enough a TV personality to pull off that Oprah/Ellen schtick. She’d be great on MSNBC at 8 p.m. as a lead-in to Rachel Maddow or with Matt Lauer between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., but she’s actually not compelling enough on TV—I don’t think—to be a midday-feelgood-TV-must-watch. NBC overpaid for a TV news personality. Not the first time.

2. What’s Wrong With This Headline?

This story ran on Mediaite.com last night. Maybe whoever produced the piece (likely the author; that’s how digital publishing works in 2017) was still hung over from Saturday night.

3. A Travelsty In Lawrence*

It wasn’t even a Eurostep by this Euro

*The judges will accept “Walk-Off Win”, “Rock Chalk, Jaywalk!” and “Gimme Two Steps, Gimme Two Steps, Mister”

Listen: It was a terrific game at Jog Allen Fieldhouse between Kansas State and Kansas, a welcome distraction on a dreary January week night, but when a white kid (Svi Mykhailiuk) who sounds like a goalie for the Canucks can pick up his dribble at the arc and score a game-winning lay-up and none of the three refs toots his whistle, we got a problem. Kansas wins, 90-88.

4. Trump Attempts To Assange Voters

Presented without comment, other than to say that PEOTUS promptly deleted this after tweeting it:

Trump just tweeted about Assange then deleted it — very likely because autocorrect changed “Assange” to “Assuage” pic.twitter.com/THIW8OOxO9

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 4, 2017

5. Let’s Pick a Stock (But Not a Max Bialystock)

Nvidia, whose logo is reminiscent of Pied Piper, saw its stock price rise 220% in 2016

If you read this site regularly (then your name is either “Susie B.” or “Mom”), you know that I’ll frequently devote an item to a stock and talk about how high it has risen (CHK) or how steeply it has plummeted (FIT) and then finish with something such as, “If you had bought this stock at the start of the year….” and then we all feel poorly that we’re not rich and that we didn’t have this foresight.

Well, guess what? It IS the start of the year.

So what I’d like to do is take nominations for a stock that you think will blow up this year; perhaps not a “single-bagger,” as Ms. B would say (100% rise), but at least a 20%’er. At least And then on Friday we’ll adopt this stock and periodically check on how it’s doing so that 12 months from now we can all feel stupid for not heeding our own advice. I have a couple of names in mind, but I’ll just take nominations today and tomorrow. Thanks!

Reserves

Bill O’Reilly Is Pathetic, But You Already Knew This

First, watch the clip within this link. The Fox News host notes that many performers have been asked to perform at the inauguration and almost all have said no, and then says that it is “NOT CONFIRMED” that they are turning down the gig out of fear of being blackballed by the Hollywood liberal elite. He continues assuming this is why, although he repeatedly (because Fox has lawyers, too) repeats that none of this is confirmed.

Now watch the clip below, in which Charles Krauthammer simply and calmly tells O’Reilly, “You have presented no evidence!”

“Bah!” scoffs O”Reilly. “The evidence is that there’s nobody booked!”

Krauthammer, calmly: “They don’t wanna play for Donald Trump.”

O’Reilly: “Bull!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_JWBxG1P4A

Music 101

Time of the Season

This may have been the Freedom ’90 of videos for the Sixties as a parade of lovelies pass by on screen as Colin Blunstone of The Zombies ask the musical question (and was he the first to do so?), “Who’s your daddy?” This tune by the British band reached No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard charts in March of 1968, which was sort of funny because the band broke up in December of 1968.

Remote Patrol

Heaven Can Wait

8 p.m. TCM

Reds

10 p.m. TCM

It’s Warren Beatty night on Turner Classic Movies, and if you have the willpower to stay up until 1:30 a.m. to finish a 3 1/2-hour movie about love among the Cossacks, God bless you. But the opener in our double feature, a remake, is ineffably charming and harks back to a time when playing for the Los Angeles Rams meant something. It’s not quite Shampoo, but it is peak Beatty (and, you get super ripe Dyan Cannon and just-past-ripe Julie Christie).