by John Walters

Starting Five

Scooter, Oh!

Last night Cincinnati Reds infielder Scooter Gennett, who appears to have left half his uniform at home, had a four-home run, five-hit, 10-RBI game in a 13-1 win. Gennett, 27, becomes the 17th Major Leaguer to have a four-homer game but apparently the first to also have five hits and 10 RBI while doing so. And that’s pretty much all I know about Scooter Gennett.

Ocean’s Two

George and Amal Clooney welcomed twins, the news reports, and I assume it didn’t mean that the Olsens are visiting the Lake Como compound to play hoops. Ella and Alexander Clooney were born yesterday in London. A statement read: “”Ella, Alexander and Amal [39] are all healthy, happy and doing fine. George [56] is sedated and should recover in a few days.”

3. Farewell, Mr. Blonsky

After 32 years, Douglas Blonsky, the president of the Central Park Conservancy, is stepping down. Blonsky oversaw the resurrection of the 843-acre park, which has had an astounding revival during his stewardship. He truly is a New York hero. My assumption is that Uncle Leo’s son Jeffrey will now take over the entire operation.

4. Without A Net (Or Ropes)

That dude on the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park is Alex Honnold, who last Saturday became the first human to scale the 3,000-foot sheer cliff without ropes or any safety gear. All Honnold had were climbing shoes and a bag of chalk. Honnold, 31, had a 4.7 GPA in high school in Sacramento, Calif., and went to UC-Berkeley to study engineering before dropping out at age 19 to pursue his passion. He told NatGeo that the hardest part of climbing El Capitan was simply standing at its base and putting on his shoes. “”Because you look up and go, ‘that’s a f****** big wall,’ ” Honnold said. “It’s like, pretty crazy.”

Roger that.

5. The Quick Brown Fox (Cont.)

Remember a few weeks ago when we here at Medium Happy told you that you’d soon be seeing Kentucky guard De’Aaron Fox creeping up every mock drafter’s board? Well, here he is at No. 2 on SI.com’s board this a.m. after being as low as No. 7 last month. Bleacher Report also puts Fox at No. 2. That means they both have him headed to the Lakers, ahead of anointed one Lonzo Ball.

This has been the semi-frequent MH “We Told You So” minute.

Music 101

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

The melancholy 1971 concept album What’s Going On? by Marvin Gaye was instantly regarded as a classic and a landmark soul album. Rolling Stone lists it as the 6th greatest album of all time. After the better-known title track, this song, which is an elegy for the environment, was the second single released and rose to No. 4 on the Billboard chart.

Remote Patrol

Game 3: Dubs-Cavs

9 p.m. ABC

Dubs are up 2-0. Is this going to be a series or a coronation? Are you a smart guy?

by John Walters

Starting Five

Save the World

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the European invasion by the United States, Great Britain and their allies. If D-Day is not the greatest day in American history, it’s in the top two.

2. Astros-nomical

Hinch

In mid-May the Lastros were swept by the reigning A.L. champs, Cleveland, three straight. Houston has won 11 in a row since and now finds itself with baseball’s best record, 42-16. The Lastros are No. 1 in baseball in runs scored (319) and No. 2 in ERA (3.43) and would be No. 1 if Clayton Kershaw did not exist. But he does.

Do you know who Houston’s manager is? A.J. Hinch. Twenty-five years ago, he was the Gatorade National Player of the Year out of Midwest City (Oklahoma) High. He graduated from Stanford and had a career batting average of .219 in the bigs. In his first two seasons with the Lastros, Hinch has led them to winning records both times. That’s an accomplishment in itself over the previous decade. This, right now, is the best team in baseball.

3. How Sick Is Rachel Maddow?

It has been 10 days since MSNBC superstar Rachel Maddow has been on air. Thanks in large part to Maddow, MSNBC’s prime-time lineup has surged past Fox and was No. 1 in the ratings last month for the first time in 20 years.

So it’s odd to see that Maddow, the most insightful and intelligent opponent to the Trump autocracy, has been MIA this long. I recall seeing her on her last day on air, joking about her illness and how she’d been in bed all day but that she wanted to be a trooper and that the show must go on. Now she’s out for two weeks in air-dates, and this at a crucial time.

And I have no evidence here on which to go on, but there are documented cases of journalistic opponents of Vladimir Putin slowly being poisoned to death. In fact, Maddow herself has reported on these instances. All I’m saying, in this blogosphere, is that her absence intrigues me.

4. Sooners, Later

In the Women’s Softball College World Series, Oklahoma outlasted Florida 7-5 in 17 innings, the longest game in championship series history. The contest lasted more than five hours between the two schools that have won the last four national championships. Shay Knighten hit a three-run bomb in the top of the 17th off the national player of the year, Kelly Barnhill, to put the Sooners over the top. Florida now must win two in a row or Oklahoma needs just one more to win it all.

5. Deadwood

This is pretty much what the views look like for most of the race

Ran the Deadwood/Mickelson Trail Marathon on Sunday. If you’re a runner/marathoner, put this stunningly beautiful trail course on your bucket list. Not easy, though. Miles 1 through 13.7 are relentlessly, and I mean that in the literal sense of the world, an uphill grade. Most of the second half is downhill, but by that time your legs are shot. Still, I’ve never come across a more scenic marathon course and Deadwood is a great town to hole up in unless you’re Wild Bill Hickok.

Music 101

Sugar Shack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHzjfGF6MiU

This bouncy tune from Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs, recorded in Clovis, New Mexico, hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts in autumn of 1963 and remained there for five weeks. It was the most popular song in America just a fortnight before JFK was assassinated.

Remote Patrol

Clint Eastwood Night on AMC

8 p.m. The Outlaw Josey Wales

11 p.m. Hang Em High

Peak Clint, just before he began co-starring with an orangutan.

by John Walters

Starting Five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSrc7AYlzIg

Stephen Carry

Did Stephen Curry carry the ball not once but twice on this play? Perhaps. But no one with a whistle seemed to care (that said, it WAS beautiful).

Six NBA MVP awards between them on this play. Dubs win, 132-113, go up 2-0 in series.

Qatar Off

Six Middle East countries —Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Maldives and Yemen (yes, Yemen) have severed diplomatic ties with Qatar a tiny (2.35 million) extremely wealthy nation that juts out like an upside-down tear drop from the eastern side of the Arabian peninsula. They are accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism and destabilizing the region (yes, Yemen and Saudi Arabia are saying this; I KNOW!) and working with Iran.

Qatar is supposed to host the 2022 World Cup. It was always a terrible idea, but now only more so.

3. Wonder Woman

The Comrades Marathon is one of the world’s more renowned distance runs, a 56-mile jaunt between the South African cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg (each year, they reverse directions). It is the world’s oldest and most popular ultra.

This weekend, Camille Herron of Oklahoma became the first American to win the female portion of the race since all-time ultra great Ann Trason (the godmother of the ultra) did so in 1997. Herron finished in 6 hours and 27 minutes.

Herron, 35, can now add this to her other major achievement: In 2012 she set the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon (2:48) ever run by a woman in a superhero costume (Spider-man; why didn’t she go with Wonder Woman? The boots?). She did that at the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa.

4. A(riana) Grande Gesture

The One Love Manchester benefit concert this weekend was something else. Kudos to Ariana Grande for making this happen less than two weeks after the terrible terrorist bombing took nearly two dozen lives after one of her shows in this same city. This was such an uplifting Whoville response to the hate of ISIS.

There were 14,200 music fans who attended Grande’s concert the night of the bombing on May 22nd. Less than two weeks later, there were at least five times that many who attended the show in a display of solidarity and courage. Listen to the prescient lyrics of the Black-Eyed Peas here. It’s a far more evolved foreign policy than say, this…

We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don’t get smart it will only get worse

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017

5. Lawnmower Man

Is this the Photo of the Year? This is Theunis Wessels of Three Hills, Alberta, who has more important things to do than worry if that twister is going to smoke him. His wife, Cecilia, snapped the photo.

Music 101

Love The Way You Lie

Eminem. Rihanna. More than ONE BILLION YouTube downloads.

Remote Patrol

Better Call Saul

10 p.m. AMC

Back after a one-week hiatus. Phew.

by John Walters

Starting Five

Unsustainable

If I had to give the president, Donald Trump, a grade, it would be below C-level. Especially after yesterday’s performance where, mouthing the words of Steve Bannon, he pledged o withdraw the USA from the Paris Accord (we’re now on the same side as Nicaragua and Syria!).

Robert Iger and Elon Musk immediately withdrew from Trump’s economic advisory council, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein took a break from overseeing fraudulent banking practices to send out his first and only tweet (derogatory toward Trump) and French president Emmanuel Macron responded with a tweet…

pic.twitter.com/3g5LYO9Osj

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) June 1, 2017

 ….and mayors in Boston, Pittsburgh and elsewhere basically said they’d ignore Trump/Bannon and follow the Accord anyway. What is it with Paris this month, anyway? Serena Williams, Roger Federer and now the USA have all voluntarily withdrawn.

Why is this man running the United States and making decisions that imperil the planet?

2. Kevindication (After Game 1)

Is Durant staring down Rihanna here?

In his first NBA Finals appearance since 2012 (when he averaged a series-high 30.6 points per game, though his Thunder lost to LeBron’s Heat 4-1), Kevin Durant took over the action on the court, scoring a game-high 38 points. Dubs win, 113-91.

Off the court, Rihanna appeared to be the biggest winner.

3. Today’s Best Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvxQGPAc5Rs

Sent in from a Canadian friend of MH, who has a big birthday, I mean like a really, really big birthday, like a colossal anniversary of birth date, coming up this weekend. This is excellent.

4.  Following The Scripps

Yesterday Ananya Vinay of Fresno won the Scripps National Spelling Bee when she correctly spelled the word marocain – a type of dress fabric – to defeat Rohan Rajeev, 14, from Oklahoma.

Presented without commentary, here are the last 10 winners of the National Spelling Bee, counting backwards: Ananya Vinay, Nihar Sai Reddy Janga and Jairam Hathaway (tie), Gokul Venkatachalam, Vanya Shivashankar, Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe (tie), Arvind Marhankali, Snigdha Nandipati, Sukanya Roy, Anamika Veeramani, Kavya Shivashankar and Sameer Mishra.

I just found it a little curious that ESPN sent Kevin Nagandhi down to Washington, D.C. to cover this event.

5. Medium Happy Book Review

Today’s book recommendation: The Sellout, by Paul Beatty. A darkly comic novel in every way, this satire revolves around a young black protagonist who owns a small farm (chief crops: rectangular watermelons and marijuana) in south central Los Angeles (go with it) whose elderly black neighbor, Hominy Jenkins, a former understudy to Buckwheat on The Little Rascals, asks him to make him his slave.

There’s a lot more going on, but the premise allows Beatty to have a lot of fun with race relations, etc. The 2015 novel won the Man Booker Prize, making Beatty the first U.S. writer to win the award. Beatty claims that he was inspired to write the book because “I was broke.” Very dark and very funny.

Music 101

Top of the World

Leave it to Japanese all-female punk band Shonen Knife to cover  a classic by The Carpenters and completely kick ass doing so. This tune came out in 1994 as part a tribute CD, If I Were A Carpenter, that is highly recommended by MH editors and janitors. Earlier that decade, the band had opened for Nirvana on the European leg of the Nevermind tour, because Kurt Cobain was a huge fan.

Remote Patrol

Saturday

UEFA Champions League Final

Juventus vs. Real Madrid

2:45 p.m. Fox

From lovely Cardiff, Wales. If you don’t know why ESPN calls Cristiano Ronaldo the most famous athlete in the world, check this out.

by John Walters

Update: Six year-old spelling prodigy Edith Fuller spelled both of her words correctly yesterday (“nyctinasty” and “tapas”) but did not fare well enough on the written portion of the spelling bee to advance. There’s a written portion?!?

Starting Five

Griffin Done*

*The judges will also accept “Head Tart” and “Kathy’s Career Caput”

What.
Was.

She.

Thinking?

Most of us first met Kathy Griffin when she played a D-minus list comedienne with an irrational hatred of a New Yorker (Jerry) on Seinfeld. Twenty-plus years later, what has changed? I’ll only add that a certain witty woman from the Midwest told the MH staff that “What I was truly offended by was her cultural appropriation [of a Middle Eastern custom].”

2. Paris Or Pais?

It only looks like a Pink Floyd album cover

Do you know all the details of the Paris Accord? I don’t, either, but it seems as if the entire world with the exceptions of Nicaragua and Syria agree on something designed to stave off pollution, that it would make sense to be on that side. Nature (air, water, trees, temperatures, etc.) doesn’t recognize national borders. Anyway, we’ll see if Donald Trump goes full covfefe on this or if he pulls back this afternoon when he makes his announcement in the Woes Garden.

3. “Being Black In America Is Tough”

LeBron James may win the NBA Finals, but that’s, to use a phrase Donald Trump once uttered to describe the end of the USFL, “small potatoes.” Would he ever consider running for president? Though he would be neither the first black or non-college-educated president, LeBron would become the tallest president (and, at the age of 35 in 2020, he’d be eligible to run next cycle while still playing for the Cavs: He could invite himself to the White House).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAjXrU2Info

I say this because besides being the planet’s best basketball player, James keeps making statements like the one he did yesterday after it was discovered that his Brentwood home had been tagged with a racial slur that sound wise and mature. Besides, the dude is a self-made billionaire and he has already done more to bring back a Midwestern city than most presidents of the post-industrial age. And he could make Kawhi Leonard his Secretary of Defense.

4. Breakdown

In Africa, 44 people die of….thirst after their truck breaks down in the Sahara desert. The travelers were heading from Niger to Libya, the first step in a path most likely to try and cross the Mediterranean. Six survivors, all women, lived to tell the tale. Many of the dead are children.

5. Allie’s Back

Remember Allie Ostrander? Last year I profiled the diminutive cross-country phenom from Alaska, who as a freshman in 2015 finished second in the NCAA cross-country nationals, in Newsweek. Ostrander was pretty much injured all of last autumn but now this young woman who loves chugging up mountains has found the ideal event for herself: the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

In April Ostrander made her steeple debut and ran an NCAA-qualifying time of 9:55 while winning the race. To put her feat into perspective, no competitor at last year’s Olympic Trials ever ran as fast in the steeple in their debuts. Last weekend Ostrander qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene (June 7-10) by winning the NCAA West Regionals. She’ll be one of the favorites.

Music 101

Bad Blood

The power of YouTube: Neil Sedaka and Elton John’s 1975 hit soared to No. 1 on the Billboard charts for three weeks but has fewer than one million views on YouTube. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift‘s 2015 hit of the same title also went to No. 1 but has more than one BILLION YouTube hits.

Remote Patrol

NBA Finals, Game 1
9 p.m. ABC

It’s about time.