Monthly Archives: June 2017

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Joe Mama!

I miss the quaint days when the loudmouth New Yorker from Queens whom everyone was mad at was John McEnroe… Anyway, Morning Joe and Midnight Mika published an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning titled “Donald Trump Is Not Well.” 

Excerpts:

This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.

and…

More significant is Mr. Trump’s continued mistreatment of women. It is disturbing that the president of the United States keeps up his unrelenting assault on women. From his menstruation musings about Megyn Kelly, to his fat-shaming treatment of a former Miss Universe, to his braggadocio claims about grabbing women’s genitalia, the 45th president is setting the poorest of standards for our children.

It’s easy to forget that they’re talking about the President of the United States here.

Of course, Trump had to tweet this morning:

 

 and then Joe Scarborough came right back up the president’s highway…

 

Stay tuned…

Foul Ball Fouls Up Fowler

Well, that sucks. Dustin Fowler, in his Major League debut for the New York Yankees, chases a foul ball into the right field stands and tears his patellar tendon. Fowler, 22, never even got an at-bat. He’s out for the season. Here’s hoping for a complete recovery.

3. NVDA: Half-Year Update

At the start of this glorious year, MH’s crack/crap finance staff provided our ONE stock pick for 2017 (You may have gained access to it from our special Medium Happy VIP paywall section). Anyway, that stock was Nvidia, NVDA, a Silicon Valley-based company that does compression and is trying to democratize the internet by putting it on everyone’s smartphones (or is that Pied Piper?).

Anyway, on January 3rd, the first trading day of 2017, NVDA closed at $102.01.

On June 30, as I type this, NVDA is at $146.65 in pre-market trading.

That’s a net increase of $44.64, or 43.8%. *

Also, kids, MH’s evergreen day-trade stock pick, Chesapeake Energy (CHK), was at $4.48 last Friday and looks to open at $5.03 this morning. That’s greater than a 10% jump. In one week. Remember, sell when CHK jumps 10% in one week, and buy when it falls 10% in one week. As a company, it’s hot garbage; but as a stock, it’s a yo-yo.

*Earlier this year, NVDA actually closed at $159.94. I don’t see any reason why it won’t return there and beyond later this year.

4. No Re-Greta’s

 

So, MSNBC canned Greta Van Susteren at its 6 p.m. hour and I’d like to suggest this comely brunette from Good Morning, Britain, Susanna Reid, as her replacement. This is beautiful.

5. Steve Spence Is A God

At an all-comers meet at North Hagerstown (Pa.) High School on Tuesday night, former U.S. Olympic distance runner Steve Spence clocked a 4:55 mile. Spence, the cross-country coach at Shippensburg University, is 55 years old. Here’s what’s astounding: Spence has now run a sub-5 minute mile at least once each year since 1976.

42 years. That’s nutty.  According to Runner’s World, that’s the longest such streak in existence.

Music 101

Mystery Achievement

I try to avoid putting the same band in this spot more than once in a calendar year, but this under-appreciated 1980 gem from The Pretenders was rolling through my mind this morning. Chrissie Hynde is the queen of Turn-It-Up female rockers (“Why did you say female rockers? Why not rockers?” ZIP IT!)

A Word, Please

Calumny (noun)

The making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone’s reputation;

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Let’s Begin The Day With A Tweet From The Most Powerful Man In The World Attacking A Woman’s Looks

 

 You have to credit the growth that Donald Trump has made in just two years. In the summer of 2015 he accused another attractive blonde anchor, Megyn Kelly, of bleeding “from wherever.” At least now he is more detailed.

 

Loved this one, too:

 

 Mika had the last word…

 

2. Only Her Alibi Is Bulletproof

I guess you can say he ghosted her…

Pedro Ruiz, 22, wanted to shoot a video that would truly go viral, so he told his baby momma to shoot him——or at least to shoot the book that he was holding in front of his chest. Monalisa Perez did just that, and now she’s in jail for second-degree manslaughter.

Worse, the video has not been posted to YouTube.

I’m waiting to see which outlet will be the first to report the title of the book. I’m hoping it’s The Darwin Awards.

3. She’s Always “Right”

CNBC is not posting the video on its site, but yesterday afternoon co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera had quite the contentious back-and-forth on health care costs with a guest, Steve Brill (a Yale-educated lawyer who has written an acclaimed book on health-care costs). The gist: Brill suggested that our government’s complete free market allows big pharma to extort patients in need of drugs and that we should copy European plans to set price controls. MCC’s harsh reaction: Shame on you for suggesting that any company’s profits should be subject to price controls.

I watched all of this from my rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper West Side.

4. We’re On To Martha’s Vineyard…

“Oh, honey, I think it would be fun!”

“(Inaudible grumbling)”

Bill Belichick, serial winner of Super Bowls, and his girlfriend Linda Holliday posed for a photo shoot that will appear in N magazine (Nantucket) that comes out this week.

5. (Start Shooting At) My Fellow Americans*

*The judges will also accept “Arresting Bitch Face”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDa3FgEcpCk

The woman in this video, Dana Loesch, is an on-air host at The Blaze.

Music 101

Hotline

Let’s celebrate the 10th anniversary of the iPhone today by playing this anachronistic video about a dude phoning his girlfriend on a public phone. The Sylvers, a Jackson 5-lite band, had a Top 5 hit in 1976 with this neo-disco tune.

A Word, Please

Mendicant (noun)

Beggar (So why don’t you just say ‘beggar?’ Shush!)

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

 

Starting Five

New York, Phil, Not Harmonic*

*The judges will also accept, “That Was Zen, This Is Now”

After three seasons, an average record of 27-55, a team-record 16-game losing streak, another team-record worst season of 17-65, countless insults (many of them accurate, but hey) of Carmelo Anthony, and one eviction from Madison Square Garden of fan favorite Charles Oakley, the Phil Jackson era is ending for the New York Knicks. It was a case of Toxic Jock Syndrome.

Jackson was renowned for his defense but a limited offensive player, which is why Wilt has that stunned look on his face

Jackson has won 11 NBA championships as a coach and two more as a member of the early Seventies Knicks, the last edition of the team to hoist a trophy (1973). This current endeavor was just the wrong time in his life with the wrong franchise. Maybe it’s time to hoist a boom box outside Jeannie Buss’ window…

 

Of course, Jim Dolan still runs the Knicks, so it’s going to be forever until NYK wins another championship.

2. Serena-ty Now!

This morning I ventured onto the ATP Tour site and was surprised to discover that they actually do rank men’s tennis players deep into hundreds. The 700th-ranked men’s singles player as of today is Issam Haitham Taweel of Egypt, who has a career record of 2-5. Issam was born in Aleppo, Syria (news you can use, Gary Johnson) and stands all of 5’2.” Sorry, but I like Serena in a head-to-head match here.

Issam vs. Serena head-to-head would be great for PPV, once she returns from maternity leave

Anyway, I can’t believe this is still a kerfuffle. But as I tweeted last night, if you’re angry that Johnny Mac explained to the NPR interviewer why it was necessary to qualify his statement, “greatest female tennis player,” then I invite you to tell me why Geno Auriemma is not the greatest college basketball coach ever, as opposed to the greatest women’s college basketball coach.

3. There Already IS a Cross-Fit Prison Workout

He’ll emerge from prison a Newman

A judge sentenced Joshua Newman, an erstwhile whiz kid entrepreneur, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for bilking—oh, he’s a bilker—investors out of $3 million in a Cross Fit-style gym he’d opened in New York City. Newman, a Yale alum who somehow was operating a venture capital fund out of his own dorm room around the turn of the millennium, is now 37 and will have plenty of time (and reason) to work out in unorthodox ways in the yard.

4. The Jimmys

Deler and Moreno

What are the Jimmys? Now in their ninth year, the Jimmys are an all-star high school musical competition. Held on Monday at the Broadway theater that ordinarily houses The Lion King (Mondays are dark nights on Broadway), the Jimmys brought 74 teens (all of whom have watched Pitch Perfect and every episode of Glee dozens of times) from across the nation to compete against one another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GQ3rBY0o-A

The winners: Sofia Deler of Orlando, Fla., and Tony Moreno of Winter Park, Fla.

5. Mitch Man, Poor Man

It’s always difficult ranking the most miserable cretins in The Worst Wing, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell never falls out of the top five. Yesterday McConnell had to acknowledge that the new TrumpCare bill did not have enough votes to pass the Senate (the GOP holds the majority in both Houses) so he is delaying the vote until after the July 4th recess. I imagine the vote will take place just as Aaron Judge comes to bat at the All-Star Game on July 11 at Minute Maid Park.

McConnell, whose long-stated ambition was to oust Barack Obama from the White House (mission not accomplished), is now the toady of a sociopath demagogue whose long-stated ambition is to do away with Obamacare (if you haven’t heard, he considers it a “disaster”). Regardless of the finer points of the bill, and there are many, the objective has always seemed not to serve the American people but to wipe that black guy out of the annals of American presidential history. Good job, good effort, boys.

Reserves

Fake News

Music 101

Talk To Ya Later

In April of 1981 The Tubes, a San Francisco-based band, released their sixth album and had two hits: this song, which peaked at No. 6 on the charts, and the slower, more earnest “Don’t Want To Wait Anymore.” The band’s lead singer? Fee Waybill. 

A Word, Please

Slattern (noun)

A dirty, untidy woman. In modern parlance, a ‘ho.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 8 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

1. What The Health?

So this tweet storm from my new best friends at AARP is a little scary…

 

and…

 

and…

 

and…

 

and…

Yesterday I was out on a run (it was the most sublime day of the year here in NYC) in Central Park, my own cheap form of preventive health care, and I had an epiphany about the prism with which Republicans such as Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan see health care. Tell me what you think:

Let’s imagine the USA as a giant corporation. Now, in massive corporations it is possible to streamline the business by laying off employees. In the USA (or in any nation) that happens via death, which is a very non-discriminating form of termination. It happens to men and women alike, people of all faiths and colors and sexual orientations. Death is very helpful to the bottom line of USA Corp.

Here’s where it becomes sticky. Imagine if you were to tell a company that it doesn’t have to lay off workers, but in order to do so upper management and the top earners at that company are going to have to contribute more from their paychecks. Well, that wouldn’t go over very well, now would it? So, to me, this is exactly how a Mitch McConnell or a Paul Ryan views health care: sure, we could save or extend more lives if we made health care more affordable to the bottom 50% of the country, but what is the upside to that for USA Corp? We’re actually a more streamlined nation without them.

You may think of that as evil. Really, though, it is just natural selection on a grander scale. 

2. Fatal Retraction

Three prominent print journalists (forgive the oxymoron) at CNN—reporter Thomas Frank; executive editor in charge of investigations Lex Haris; and investigative editor and reporter Eric Lichtblau—resigned on Monday after CNN pulled and retracted a story they worked on last week. In the piece, the trio drew a connection between hedge-fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, a Trump ally, and a Russian investment fund reportedly being investigated by the Senate.

Haris had been with CNN since 2001. Lichtblau was just hired away from the New York Times in April. Clearly CNN is more than a little hypersensitive about being labeled “Fake News,” particularly when the accusation may be correct. To be clear, it’s not that the story has proven to be false, according to CNN. It simply, at this time, has not proven to be accurate.

As Will McAvoy and Charlie Skinner would attest, the story never passed the red team test. This is a bad look for CNN top guy Jeff Zucker.

3. Penis de Milo?*

*The judges will also accept “Mein Shaft” even though that’s a German pun, not a Norwegian one. 

In Norway, a famous rock formation south of Stavanger known as Trollpikken, which resembles an erect penis, was cut off over the weekend. Police have no suspects but are rounding up area rabbis.

Meanwhile, locals have already raised thousands of dollars and the plan is to put Trollpikken back in place, or res-erect it, using reinforced rods and bolts. In other words, after a reasonable dormant period (it is pretty old, after all), Trollpikken will return to its erect state.

4. Miller’s Out Post

When we last saw everyone’s favorite lovable tech a-hole, Erlich Bachman, who runs the incubator out of which Pied Piper runs in HBO’s Silicon Valley, he was lit up on opium in a hut along the Silk Road. And that’s the last we will see of T.J. Miller on the show.

Miller and Silicon Valley announced a parting of the ways last week after four seasons, but because Miller is not that far removed from the self-absorbed and mildly deluded character he plays, he gave a candid exit interview to The Hollywood Reporter.  “I just thought that what the show has suffered from, what’s bad about it, is that Richard [Thomas Middleditch] is the CEO and then he isn’t but then he finds his way back to be CEO,” said Miller, “and then once he finds his way back to being the CEO he says he doesn’t want to be the CEO, and it’s just the same thing over and over.”

He’s right, you know. It’s classic Gilligan’s Island or even Seinfeld. They’re always coming back to the lagoon or the coffee shop and starting over from scratch. Does that make it less of a show? Your call.

5. Daily Harrumph: The McEnroe-Serena Non-troversy

What’s the deal here? Yesterday John McEnroe, promoting a book whose title is his catchphrase but in light of what would happen is particularly ironic, You Cannot Be Serious, was interviewed on NPR by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Here’s the transcript of the part that raised everyone’s cackles:

Garcia-Navarro: We’re talking about male players but there is of course wonderful female players. Let’s talk about Serena Williams. You say she is the best female player in the world in the book.

McEnroe: Best female player ever — no question.

Garcia-Navarro: Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world. Why qualify it?

McEnroe: Oh! Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?

Garcia-Navarro: Yeah, the best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player?

McEnroe: Well because if she was in, if she played the men’s circuit she’d be like 700 in the world.

Garcia-Navarro: You think so?

McEnroe: Yeah. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Serena is an incredible player. I do, but the reality of what would happen would be I think something that perhaps it’d be a little higher, perhaps it’d be a little lower. And on a given day, Serena could beat some players. I believe because she’s so incredibly strong mentally that she could overcome some situations where players would choke ’cause she’s been in it so many times, so many situations at Wimbledon, The U.S. Open, etc. But if she had to just play the circuit — the men’s circuit — that would be an entirely different story.

Let’s not forget that only a sentence or two earlier McEnroe called Serena the greatest female tennis player ever

McEnroe has seen and played and knows way more about tennis than myself or anyone reading this. Yes, “like 700” seems plenty low, but I’m not certain why we need to haggle over the number. Wasn’t the dumber part of this interview the fact that Garcia-Navarro would be so willfully obtuse as to wonder why McEnroe did not consider Serena the greatest tennis player, period? Diana Taurasi may be the best women’s basketball player of all time (or you can name someone else), but could she make an NBA club? Not on pure merit.

Music 101

Hello, Goodbye

The Beatles were so talented touched by God that they could just fart out pop song perfection. This tune is from, by most accounts (not mine), their second-best album of 1967, Magical Mystery Tour. If you only had one song to explain the genius and simplicity of John, Paul, George and Ringo, this would get my vote. Released in November of 1967, the song hit No. 1 in eight different countries, including the US, UK, Australia and Canada.

A Word, Please

Sagacity (noun)

Wisdom

IT’S ALL HAPPENING

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Master Of His Domain

Dodger rookie Cody Bellinger smashes two home runs in one game for the sixth time this season and then tells ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt that he does not recognize the name Jerry Seinfeld (whose eponymous show left the air when Bellinger was three years old).

Clip-n-Save: The most multi-home run games in one season in MLB history is 11, a record that is held by both Hank Greenberg (1938) and Sammy Sosa (1998) The most in a career? 71, by George Herman “Babe” Ruth, who was truly king of his castle, which is why they called Yankee Stadium the House That Ruth Built.

p.s. The Dodgers swept the first-place Colorado Rockies this weekend to take over first place in the N.L. West.

2. Keep On Truckee

Emma does it again, always with a smile

Northern California, inland, was the place to be for acolytes of running this weekend. At the USA Track & Field Championships in Sacramento, familiar faces such as Evan Jager (men’s steeple), Emma Coburn (women’s steeple) and Jenny Simpson (1500) were all winners again. For Jager it was his sixth straight USATF title, for Coburn her sixth overall, and for Simpson her 4th in a row.

The Western States is as difficult as it gets

Meanwhile at the Western States 100 Endurance Run, the granddaddy of 100-mile ultras that is staged between Squaw Valley and Auburn, 35 year-old Ryan Sandes of South Africa won in 16 hours, 19 minutes and 38 seconds while American Cat Bradley won the women’s race in 19:31:30. If you’re curious, Sandes averaged just below a 10-minute mile while Bradley averaged an 11:42 mile.

This was an extremely torturous Western States (first race was in 1974) as competitors had to deal with snow and mud still on course due to the 100-year level of snowfall the area received this winter as well as temperatures that soared close to 100 degrees.

3. Disastrophes Abroad

In China, more than 100 are dead or missing following a landslide.

In Pakistan, 153 die when a tanker explodes as locals were running toward the leaking fuel carrier to gather up gas in pots. The truck had crashed and was sitting on the side of the road. As gas formed in pools around it, villagers rushed to collect it. Maybe someone was smoking, maybe not, but the truck suddenly burst into a huge fireball.

In Colombia, 31 people are missing after a tourist boat capsized in a reservoir.

4. Hair-esy

Meet Man Bun Ken. Last week Mattel unveiled 15 new Kens (Barbie is a player!), featuring one with a dad bod, another with freckles and the one above. Pabst Blue Ribbon can sold separately.

5. Is This VIP Content?


The smartest move Clay Travis ever made was not to be a full-time employee of Fox Sports. By maintaining his independence, as a sort of contracted partner with Fox via his website, Outclick The Coverage, he can tweet tweets such as the one above without fear of reprisal.

 

Over the weekend Outclick announced that it would be offering premium pay-only content.

Music 101

Used To Love Her

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXIuAz7aryo

On any Top 10 list of Not-In-Love songs, please place this gem from Guns ‘n Roses from 1988. Guitarist Izzy Stradlin (whose own stage name is a pun) on the inspiration for the tune:  “I was sitting around listening to the radio and some guy was whining about a broad who was treating him bad. I wanted to take the radio and smash it against the wall. Such self-pity! What a wimp! So we rewrote the same song we heard with a better ending.”

A Word, Please

surreptitious (adj)

Kept secret, particularly because it would be disapproved of