There’s Jared Kushner, White House adviser and First In-Law, saying, “Let me be very clear: I did not collude with Russia nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so.”
Mmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHKgthu2mkA
Meanwhile, Kushner also released a statement yesterday that, as WaPo illustrates, was a textbook tossing under the bus of his own brother-in-law, Don Jr.
2. La-teen-a Lottery Winners
Meet Daniela Leon Ruz of Orlando, Florida. Earlier this week the 18 year-old won Florida’s $500 A Week For Life lottery, and Ruz chose not to take the lump sum. That means she will earn an extra $26,000 a year the rest of her (hopefully…as long as she avoids the dreaded “Florida Man”) long life.
She’s not rich, but that will make life a little easier.
Meanwhile, earlier this month 19 year-old Rosa Dominguez was driving from Arizona to her home in California, stopped for gas, and purchased a scratch-off ticket. Dominguez won $555,000. A few days later Dominguez stopped at another gas station, bought another $5 scratch-off ticket, and won $100,000.
3. Rose, To This Occasion
Every NBA MVP between the years 2009-2016 now plays on one of two NBA teams, now that Derrick Rose (2011) has agreed to a one-year deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers. If he’s healthy, how much can Rose help LeBron James (2009, ’10, ’12, ’13) and the Cavs thwart the Golden State Warriors? Rose actually averaged 18 points per game in 64 outings with the Knicks last season and, in case you forgot, he is still only 28 years old. Stephen Curry (’15, ’16) is 29 and his teammate, Kevin Durant (’14) is a few weeks older than Rose as well.
Quick thought: Why does Rose only play for teams who are located near to I-80 exits? How long until Rose toils for the Jazz, for the Kings and ultimately, for the Warriors?
4. Wipe Privilege
In 1857 Joseph Gayetty (above) began marketing the first toilet paper in the United States. For 50 cents the consumer was able to purchase 500 sheets of medicated paper. Gayetty’s product was sorely needed, as during the Civil War, when it still was not in wide use, 8 of every 10 soldiers was afflicted with typhoid fever due to fecal contamination.
Seth Wheeler obtained the first patent for rolled toilet paper in 1871. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that toilet paper was any different, in terms of texture, than newspaper. Some people will tell you it’s still the same in terms of content.
5. How Do I Buy A Daytona Tortugas Jersey?
It takes a slow sports week such as this one (British Open, Tour de France just ended, while NFL camps just starting up) to remind me to peruse the Minor League Baseball standings. The worst baseball team in the minors? The Class A Advanced Daytona Tortugas, a Cubs affiliate, who are 4-26 (.133) this summer.
The most dominant team? El Toros de Tijuana of the AAA Mexican League, who are 67-28 (.705).
Music 101
Kids In America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_GH6M7cUq4
Few songs are better examples of the advent of New Wave than this 1982 classic from Kim Wilde. For those of us in high school at the time, this was an anthem. The tune was written by Wilde’s brother, Ricky, and her father, Marty, a pre-Beatles British rock star.
A Word, Please
Riven (past participle of “rive,” which no one ever uses)
Unplayable Lie. Line of Sight. Temporary Immovable Object.
Jordan Spieth won The (British) Open with a little help from the rule book on the 13th hole on Sunday. It’s nice to know that even a three-time champion of majors occasionally has to strike a ball from the practice range in the midst of a round.
After six months and a trio of Melissa McCarthy impersonations on Saturday Night Live, White House director of communications Sean Spicer resigns. In his place comes New York finance guy Anthony Scaramucci, who looks like the heavy from every Eighties film based in New York City.
In his opening weekend on the job, Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, called President Trump “a tremendous athlete” and also gave him up as an anonymous source. Buckle up, kids.
3. Froome For More
Kenyan-born, South African-raised Brit Chris Froome won the Tour de France again. It was his fourth Tour victory, and only four men officially (five, if you count Lance) have now won more Tours than has Froome. Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain all won five.
Froome, 32, won this year’s Tour without winning a single stage in the race. That has only happened before six times.
Of course, the most (only) popular cyclist in France the past three weeks was the Flying (Downhill) Nun.
4. Bad Cargo
Nine are dead in southern Texas after the refrigeration unit of a rig with humans inside went out. It might have been as many as three dozen dead if the alert Walmart employee who noticed the trailer hadn’t called police. Meanwhile in northern Switzerland, a chainsaw-wielding nut job attacked the citizens of Schaffhausen. So you get a chainsaw massacre and mass deaths in Texas all in one item.
5. Coming in September: The Vietnam War
Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose previous tours de force include The Civil War, Baseball, and The War (WWII), spent nearly 10 years putting together an 18-hour PBS documentary on (and called) The Vietnam War.It promises to be magnificent.
Premieres September 17 on PBS.
Music 101
I Can See Clearly Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkwJ-g0iJ6w
Johnny Nash wrote, composed and recorded this classic with heavy reggae influences in 1972. It spent four weeks at No. 1 in the later part of that year.
A Word, Please
Sibilant (adj)
Characterized by a hissing sound (so the next time someone asks you to provide an example of onomatopoeia)
The Juice reacts to hearing one parole board commissioner say that he is 90 years old
Parole of a Lifetime
Orenthal James Simpson (prisoner number 1027820), after nearly nine years of incarceration at Lovelock (“baby, Lovelock! Lovelock, baby that’s where it’s at!”) Penitentiary in Nevada, will be a free man come October 1st after a four-person parole board, one of whom was clad in a Kansas City Chiefs tie, granted him an early release.
When the Juice went away in 2008, Twitter was barely two years old and largely unknown. Instagram and SnapChat had yet to be launched. It’s a different world out there for a man whose parole hearing garnered enough attention yesterday to be broadcast live on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC.
How will the Juice treat his new and easier access to fame and celebrity? Will the Goldmans come after him even more aggressively? And are the “real killers” even still alive (Spoiler Alert: Yes, “they” are).
P.S. Now O.J. will finally be able to watch the F/X series and the ESPN documentary about him.
2. Hugh Gone
Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze was looking for some young misses, or at least available ones, for the right price. And that’s what got him fired (officially, he resigned) yesterday. The school found that he had placed a number of phone calls to escort services, and being that he was already under investigation for other infractions, this was a short walk down the plank. “While Coach Freeze served our university well in many regards during his tenure,” said chancellor Jeffrey Vitter, “we simply cannot accept the conduct in his personal life that we have discovered.”
The Rebels beat Alabama two of the past three years and were up 21-3 on them last October. The Tide were 36-0 otherwise in non College Football Playoff contests in that span. The SEC West, and overall the SEC, just got even more polarized in terms of the have and the have-nots.
Not making this up: Also yesterday, Michael Oher was released by the Carolina Panthers. I’m just hoping that Leigh Anne Tuohy and the rest of her brood are safe and sound right now.
3. I Beg Your Pardon
According to The Washington Post—and when has it ever been correct about executive malfeasance?—President Trump’s lawyers are “exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons…”
Whaaaaa?
Trump’s lawyers deny this, of course (related: their spokesman resigned yesterday).
According to WaPo sources, President Trump has asked advisers about his ability to pardon aides, family members and even, get this, himself. From “Lock her up!” to “I pardon me!” in 10 quick months.
Let’s crank up the “I told you so” machine again, shall we?
For the record, no president has ever attempted to pardon himself, so legal scholars say that this is uncharted territory. Wait and see.
Unrelated but not unrelated: It’s “Made In America” week and Mar-a-Lago is looking into hiring 70 foreign workers. I’m telling you, The Worst Wing “30 for 30” is going to be exploding at the seams with minutiae like this.
4. The Great New Hampshire Bison Stampede of 2017
In Gilford, New Hampshire, 16 bison broke free of their enclosure on Armand Bolduc’s farm and made a run for it earlier this week. Perhaps they were shuffling off to Buffalo. Regardless, all 16 were returned safely to their owner but someone should praise them for being model citizens. New Hampshire’s state motto, after all, is “Live Free or Die.”
5. Dunkirk
The summer’s first true hit movie (that does not feature anyone from Marvel or D.C. Comics, at least) opens today. It’s a true story about the massive evacuation of Allied forces from a town on the northern coast of France. Christopher Nolan (Memento, Too Many Batman flicks) directed and Harry Styles is in it, which means there are going to be a ton of crying, traumatized tweens exiting your local cineplex in the next fortnight.
The critics are, as we like to say, agog. A 94 on MetaCritic and a 92 on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a film that will win Oscars (Cinematography, Directing, at least a Best Picture nom), especially since 2017 is an odd-numbered year, so the Academy doesn’t have to worry about black people this time around.
We’ll see if we can’t get Chris Corbellini to review it for you soon…
Music 101
In The End
It was grim and nihilistic, but Linkin Park‘s breakout 2001 hit was infectious and had serious turn-it-upness. A big reason for that was lead singer Chester Bennington, who died yesterday at age 41. The song was a smash, rising to No. 2 on the Billboard charts. Bennington, who committed suicide by hanging at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif., actually did not like the track and did not want it included on the band’s album, Hybrid Theory. The album went Diamond (10 million units), thanks largely to this song, and was the best-selling album of the decade. In the end, it doesn’t even matter.
A Word, Please
Agrarian (adj.)
Pertaining to cultivated land or the cultivation of land, i.e. farming
“Glioblastoma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer,” says a physician on CBS This Morning. “The normal expected life span is 14 months.”
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), 80, was diagnosed with this form of brain cancer after having a blood clot removed above his eye last week. Best of luck to McCain, who as you know was a P.O.W. in Vietnam for five years. Our good friend Katie has a great dad who wrote a book all about Vietnam POWs and much of it was the result of interviews with Senator McCain. I’ve read it and I highly recommend it.
Make no mistake about the grimness of this cancer. As I read earlier today, ” The 2-year survival rate is approximately 17 percent for patients between 40 and 65 years old.”
2. Can We Talk?
“I owe HOW MUCH?”
Next Wednesday Donald Trump, Jr., (arguably the third favorite son of the president right now) and Paul Manafort (former campaign chairman) are scheduled to testify publicly before Congress as part of a prolix hearing titled “Oversight of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Attempts to Influence US Elections: Lessons Learned from Current and Prior Administrations.” Whatevs.
What makes this fun? Yesterday The New York Times reported that Manafort owed about $17 million to pro-Russia interests before he joined the Trump campaign last year. Rule No. 1 is Never fight a land war in Asia and Rule No. 2 is Never be deep in debt to Russian oligarchs.
Meanwhile, yesterday a source close to the grown-up Trump bros told People mag that Don, Jr., is “miserable” and he “can’t wait for these four years to be over.” As a friend on Twitter quipped, “Join the club.”
3. If Nolan Arenado Hits Three Home Runs and Collects Seven RBI In An Untelevised Game Against The Padres, Did It Really Happen?
What a fantastic microcosm of the under-appreciated Colorado Rockies third baseman’s career: yesterday afternoon, in a game that the franchise’s broadcast partner, AT&T SportsNet Rocky Mountain, did not televise, Nolan Arenado blasted three homers, had two more hits, 14 total bases, and seven RBI. The Rockies slapped around the Padres, 18-4.
Arenado, whom we’ve mentioned frequently in this space before, led the National League both in home runs AND RBI the previous two years and was unable to finish better than fifth in MVP voting. He currently leads the NL in RBI and is second in WAR and will likely be looking up at Bryce Harper (or Clayton Kershaw) in this year’s MVP voting.
4. Napoleon, Hitler and Trump
Napoloen: Small hands, died in exile
In an entertaining 50-minute interview with The New York Times, we learned that President Trump’s six year-old granddaughter speaks a little Chinese (Manchurian Candidate alert!), that Trump never would have appointed Jeff Sessions as AG if he knew he was gonna wuss out, and that the prez thinks French counterpart Emmanuel Macron “loves holding my hand (probably more so than Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon do). Then there was this interesting discussion on failed European imperialists that bears reprinting here:
TRUMP: Well, Napoleon finished a little bit bad. But I asked that. So I asked the president, so what about Napoleon? He said: “No, no, no. What he did was incredible. He designed Paris.” [garbled] The street grid, the way they work, you know, the spokes. He did so many things even beyond. And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death. How many times has Russia been saved by the weather? [garbled]
[crosstalk/unintelligible]
Adolf Hitler: One testicle, killed himself as Allies closed in
TRUMP: Same thing happened to Hitler. Not for that reason, though. Hitler wanted to consolidate. He was all set to walk in. But he wanted to consolidate, and it went and dropped to 35 degrees below zero, and that was the end of that army.
[crosstalk]
But the Russians have great fighters in the cold. They use the cold to their advantage. I mean, they’ve won five wars where the armies that went against them froze to death. [crosstalk] It’s pretty amazing.
So, we’re having a good time. The economy is doing great.
5. Are You Part of The 1%?
Kyle Schwarber (.176) has the worst average in the big leagues, but his $522,000 salary still puts him in the top 1%.
The minimum salary for an NFL player is $465,000.
The minimum salary for a Major League Baseball player is $535,000.
The minimum salary for an NBA player is $815,000.
On Wall Street, the AVERAGE salary is $526,000.
What do all of those salaries (except the NFL in certain states) have in common? They put those earners in the TOP 1% of American wage earners. The curious thing is that those four groups of people, most of whom are extremely talented, spend the majority of their time in the company of their co-workers (as most of us do). So, to use an analogy, if you’re 6’4″ everyone else sees you as tall. But if you’re 6’4″ in an NBA locker room, you’re slightly undersized.
Gus Fring knows you only need to earn $231,000 per year in New Mexico to be in its top 1%. And do try Los Pollos Hermanos for breakfast.
In 46 of the 50 states, you don’t need to earn $500K to be in the Top 1%. In 38 of the 50 states, you don’t even need to earn $400K to be in the Top 1%. Highest income state? Connecticut ($659,979 to be in top 1%); Lowest? New Mexico ($231K; no wonder Walter White was doing so well relatively). Most surprising, at least to me: North Dakota, where you need to earn $481K to be in top 1% (GAS/ENERGY).
The point is this: most people who are in the Top 1% don’t think of themselves that way because in the immediate company of their peers, they’re just average. But if you were to tell them that there was, for example, a tidal wave that knocked out 99 of 100 people in a village and that THEY happened to be the lone survivor, they would consider themselves extremely, almost miraculously, lucky, no?
Reserves
Are you wondering what I am wondering? Why don’t college football writers have to sit out a year upon transferring? An incomplete list of recent transfers:
Pete Thamel…..Sports Illustrated to Yahoo! Sports
Bruce Feldman…..Fox Sports to Sports Illustrated
Stewart Mandel…..Fox Sports to The Athletic
Brett McMurphy….ESPN to undecided (Brett’s the Malik Zaire of this class)
Brian Hamilton….SI to undecided
Music 101
Midnight Confessions
Was this 1968 single by The Grass Roots (a Top 5 tune, the band’s highest charting single ever) a musical dramatization of Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale’s pining for Hester Prynne from the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter? Some have suggested as much. The Grass Roots did not write this song; it was originally penned by Lou T. Josie and performed by the Ever-Green Blues (get it?).
Remote Patrol
The Open Championship
6 a.m.-Noon The Golf Channel
In the last nine years, nine different men have won The Open. Last year’s champion? Henrik Stenson of Sweden. This year’s links course is at Royal Birkdale.
A Word, Please
prolix (adj.)
tediously wordy; using too many words; employing lots and lots and lots of unnecessary words to explain something; are you getting it?
Remember this photo from May 4? It’s Donald Trump’s “Mission Accomplished” pic. This was after the House passed his health care bill. Yesterday the bill failed in the Senate after four of the 52 GOP senators failed to back it.
With a majority in both houses and a mandate from the American public, President Trump failed to pass the most important piece of legislation of his nascent presidency. And how did he react to this defeat? “We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House. “I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.”
How many back hoes were needed to move those goal posts, Donald?
2. Here Come The Dodgers
Justin Turner’s .370 batting average is the best in the big leagues
You may not be able to see them play if you live in Los Angeles (at least not on TV), but the Los Angeles Dodgers are mowing down the National League. On June 6 they lost to Max Scherzer (no shame in that) and the Washington Nationals, 6-3. Since that day they are 30-4 and have baseball’s best record at 30-4. L.A. has put together two 10-game win streaks in that span, a current and continuing one included.
And we don’t even talk about Yasiel Puig any more (he’s second on the team, behind rookie phenom Cody Bellinger, in home run with 18; Bellinger has 26).
3. Badwater Dropouts
Last week’s Badwater Ultra (135 miles run through Death Valley in the dog days of summer) had the highest dropout rate (20 runners quit) since 2003 and the slowest winning times, both for men and women, in more than 10 years. Obviously, millennials are to blame.
The female winner, Sandra Villines, became the first Latina champion in the history of Badwater, which dates back to 1978.
4. Oh, Deer
That video of the golden retriever (“Good boy, Storm!”) saving the drowning fawn (why did so many media outlets call it a “baby deer?”) off Port Jefferson, Long Island, already garnered 4.5 million views on Facebook. To think that deer will grow up and in a few years be shot by a hunter warms the cockles of my heart (I was a pre-med but we never learned exactly in which chamber the cockles are located).
5. “Shall We Begin?”
“I’m comin’ home, I’m comin’ home, tell the world I’m comin’ home”
The season 7 season premiere of Game of Thronesfront-loaded the carnage and did a MAJOR spoiler alert by making the final clip in the “Previously on Game of Thrones” montage the shot of Arya slitting Walder Frey‘s throat. So if we already knew Walder was dead, when you open the season with him addressing his family in a banquet hall, we KNOW that it’s not him. And we know that Arya can shift shapes. So it kinda took a little away from the reveal, no?
By the way, if you noticed, Tyrion did not get a single line in the premiere, though we did see him. And above is Danerys’ only line? Meanwhile, I really loved the Samwell “Taking Care of Business” montage, didn’t you?
Music 101
Teardrop
One of the three members of Massive Attack sent the intsrumental version of this tune to Madonna in 1997, hoping she’d record the vocals. The other two outvoted him, electing to have the more ethereal-sounding Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins do the honors. She did. Fraser wrote the vocals, while the show runners of House loved the heartbeat sound and used it as the long-running CBS show’s theme.
A Word, Please
unctuous (adj.)
excessivepiousnessormoralisticfervor,especiallyinanaffectedmanner;excessivelysmooth,suave,orsmug. (my mind goes to Mike Pence)
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