Monthly Archives: July 2017

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

 

Starting Five

The Kids Are All Reich

That’s Ivanka Trump, whom you may recall tries “to stay out of politics,” posing for a pic at the G20 summit with her dad and, oh, the leaders of China, Japan, Germany and Canada. Ivanka, 35 and formerly someone who provided counsel to her pop when he had to decided whether or not to “fire” Joan Rivers, also sat in as a replacement for her dad in  a few meetings.

When some people criticized her presence, America’s deftest touch, Donald Trump, Jr., took to dad’s favorite medium:

 

Also during the weekend, Donald, Jr., admitted to the New York Times that on June 9, 2016, two weeks after pop secured the GOP nomination, he met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging info on Hillary Clinton. Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also attended. But the Russians, you know, never meddled in the election.

Meanwhile, the editors of The National Review, a self-described “leading conservative publication,” penned an editorial this morning titled “It’s Time To Get Real About Russia.” It was basically a “Child, Please” about Putin to the Trump administration.

2. Pastime Halftime Report

As baseball takes its midseason breather, here’s a look at who’d be in the playoffs if they started today:

American League Wildcard: Yankees vs. Rays (both AL East)

National League Wildcard: Diamondbacks vs. Rockies (both NL West)

A.L. Playoffs: Astros vs. Wildcard winner; Red Sox vs. Indians

N.L. Playoffs: Dodgers vs. Wildcard winner: Nationals vs. Brewers

Chris Sale leads the majors in K’s and leads the AL in WHIP

AL MVP: Aaron Judge, Yankees (and Rookie of the Year)

AL Cy Young: Chris Sale, Boston (narrowly over Chris Vargas, K.C.)

NL MVP & Cy Young: Clayton Kershaw (14-2, 2.18 ERA)

3. Summer Heat In Vegas

Lonnie’s never going to lead the league in scoring, but he’s going to be fun to watch. Great passer.

July in Las Vegas, and I once spent two weeks there during this month, used to mean temps in the 110s and the World Series of Poker. On Saturday night, however, a new threshold was crossed as an NBA Summer League contest between the Celtics and Lakers had a sellout of 17,500 fans at the Thomas & Mack. This was the first meeting between Lonzo Ball (No. 2 pick) and Jayson Tatum (No. 3 pick) and that recent ESPN “30 for 30” The Best Of Enemies didn’t hurt.

The Celtics won, 86-81. Tatum had 27 points and 11 boards. Ball, 11 points and 11 assists.

Breakout star? Kyle Kuzma, a 6’9″ forward out of Utah, scored 31 points and was 5 of 10 from beyond the arc. The Lakers selected him with the 27th pick overall last month.

4. Are Movie Theaters The New Bookstore?

We’re halfway into the year and I have only gone to the movies once, to see a film titled Get Out, which is what theater owners seem to be suggesting we do. Why would you go to the movies? They mostly suck, they’re way overpriced, you can stay home and watch better fare on HBO Now or Netflix or maybe you have a relative who knows how to hack into some service that shows first-run stuff.

Again, I don’t have small kids, but the only theaters that interest me somewhat are indie types that also show classic or cult films and are run by film nerds. Kind of like the best small bookstores that still survive, that are run not for profit but due to passion. I think the multiplex will be dead within 10 years. You?

5. Freak Out!

Our good friend Bruce Feldman lost his job at Fox Sports two weeks back and quickly landed at Sports Illustrated, who will wisely try to mold him (I believe) into the Tom Verducci of college football. Bruce is a GREAT guy, as everyone who knows him can tell you.

He’s already put out his Freaks list for SI (why don’t they brand it ‘Feldman’s Freaks?’), and at the top of his list is a leading Heisman candidate from Penn State: running back Saquon Barkley (have you already forgotten how awesome last January’s Rose Bowl was?).

Music 101

Ice Cream Man

No rock star lead singer was more good-humored than David Lee Roth of Van Halen, so it’s only natural that he handles the vocals on this 1978 tune that appeared on their eponymous debut album. The song was originally written by bluesman John Brim in 1953 and was a favorite of Diamond Dave’s. That’s him on acoustic guitar at the beginning.

A Word, Please

Abstemious (adj)

Not self-indulgent, particularly in food or drink

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

We Cannot Wait Until He Tells Billy Bush About This

Another instance of a member of the Trump-Pence ticket touching something he’s not supposed to. One day it’s Flight Hardware, the next it’s your health care. Speaking of which, why are GOP congressman Mike Conaway and GOP Senator James Inhofe investing tens of thousands of dollars in UnitedHealth stock? Even witty CNBC broker/analyst Downtown Josh Brown finds this practice dubious.

 

2. Stupid, Crazy Money

In a 14-year career in which he was named to five All-Star teams, Tim Hardaway earned $46 million. Today the Knicks just signed his son and namesake, Tim Hardaway, Jr., to a four-year, $71 million offer sheet.

Dad averaged 19.8 ppg his first six seasons. The kid is averaging 11.0 ppg through his first four and has not come close to sniffing an All-Star team. Kelly Olynyk, another non All-Star, just signed for four years and $50 million with the Miami Heat.

Part of this crazy money is the passage of time, part is the insane amount of money ESPN handed the NBA a few years back.

3. Despicable Me G20

Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin for the first time face-to-face in Hamburg, Germany.

4. Mattek-Sands Goes Down

Yesterday on Court 17 at Wimbledon, in an unheralded ladies’ singles match, 32 year-old Bethanie Mattek-Sands crumpled to the grass as she approached the net. “Help me! Help me, please!” Mattek-Sands said as her opponent, Sorona Cirstea, looked on in horror.

 

Mattek-Sands, who is ranked 103rd in the world in singles, is actually ranked No. 1 in doubles and won a gold medal in Rio last summer with Jack Sock in mixed doubles. The extent of her knee injury is not known.

5. Livin’ Large In Long Island City

The Queens neighborhood/section immediately east of midtown Manhattan bears the uninspired name of Long Island City, but it may suddenly be a hot stretch of property. This is the pool atop 1 QPS (Queens Plaza South), which is now the highest rooftop pool in Manhattan (if there’s ever a Sex And The City reunion). The 44-story luxury residential tower also offers a 42-foot climbing wall, but that’s rather unnecessary because Long Island City already has the largest dedicated indoor rock climbing gym in New York City. Studios are going for $2,300 and two-bedrooms for $5,000 per month. Again, you’re not even in Manhattan (but you are just one subway stop out).

Reserves

Rule No. 9: Every Baseball Game Offers The Potential Of Witnessing Something For The First Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a0hIsS5mOk

An infield pop-up in a minor league game between the Springfield Cardinals and Midland RockHounds ends up with the batter at 3rd base. Cue the Yakety Sax song.

I’m holding out for the inside-the-infield home run.

Music 101

What Is Love?

We opened this week with a song by Bob Welch (not the LA Dodger pitcher from the late Seventies) and end it with one from Howard Jones (not the iconic USC football coach from the Twenties and Thirties). This tune, released in 1984, hit No. 33 in the USA that summer. We also like the Duncan Shiek version from 2011:

A Word, Please

Polymath (noun.)

A person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas

 

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

Hobby Lobby Gets Robby With Hammurabi

The evangelical Christians who run Hobby Lobby must forfeit 5,500 artifacts that were smuggled out of Iraq and they must also pay a $3 million fine (light) after prosecutors went after them. Turns out that they bought thousands of artifacts on the black market (you know who sells Middle East antiquities on the black market to raise money for their cause? ISIS) and had them shipped stateside labeled as “tiles.”

They really showed bad cuneiform on this one.

2. Advanced Physiques

If it’s sports figures in the nude creatively hiding their genitals and nipples, then it MUST be the ESPN Body Issue. That’s Joe Thornton and Brent Burns of the San Jose Sharks, above, and we could have suggested a more inspired way to hide their packages based on those beards.


This shot of Caroline Wozniacki is one of the best this series has ever produced, if not the best.

3. Zombie Protest

In Hamburg, Germany, protesters dress as zombies in advance of the G20 summit (nothing draws protesters quite like the G20; the G19, not so much, but the G20, hoo boy!). When your international economic protest outdoes Comic-Con, you’re on to something.

4. The World’s Most Expensive Wheels

This is the Bugatti from Chiron. The car, assembled in France, has a top speed of 261 m.p.h. and sells for just under $3,000,000. Only 500 exist and more than half have already been sold. The nice thing about this two-door coupe is that it fits snugly on the back of your yacht.

5. Drama Queen

Speaking in Poland, President Trump, an absolute master of polarization, cast the West against Muslims (let’s be frank) by saying that the fight against “radical Islamic terrorism” is about “protecting our civilization and our way of life” (that way being multiple pieces of chocolate cake after dinner and more rounds of golf than visits with our 11 year-old son, one presumes).

He then said, ““I am here today not just to visit an old ally (Poland), but to hold it up as an example for others who seek freedom and who wish to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization.”

You know, I had the courage and the will to defend our civilization, but then on four different occasions I found a doctor who told me I had shin splints and/or bad feet, something I thought about as I was teeing off from one of my golf courses.

Here’s the thing: Opioids will kill more Americans THIS YEAR than ISIS and Al Qaeda has ALL OVER THE PLANET in the past five. This isn’t about reality. This is about sewing fear in the minds of gullible Americans, which will help to keep the War Machine going as well as the GOP machine. It’s a con, people.

Does that mean there aren’t Jihadists who fervently hope for “Death To America?” Sure, there are. There are also gila monsters who will latch on to your limb and chew their poison into your flesh and you cannot get them off you unless you cut off their heads. Scary, right? But not an every day problem. Sorry.

Music 101

Burnin’ For You

I’d wager that in the summer of 1981 Phoenix radio stations KDKB and KUPD put no song on heavier rotation than this rocker from Long Island natives Blue Oyster Cult. The song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Rock Tracks list. Note: no cowbell on this one.

A Word, Please

Neophyte (noun)

An inexperienced person; a beginner

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Declaration of Independence

Why Gordon Hayward is leaving Salt Lake City and is headed to Boston: A) His college coach at Butler, Brad Stevens; 2) He wants to advance at least to the NBA Finals in his career, and that wasn’t about to happen any time soon in a Western Conference with the Dubs, Rockets, Russell Westbrook and Kawhi Leonard; 3) Similarly, Hayward (21.9 ppg, or 26th in the NBA in Scoring last season) can now start for his conference in the All-Star Game; 4) He wants to become the greatest player ever to wear the uniforms of the two whitest teams in NBA history, Utah and Boston.

The 6’8″ Hayward has increased his scoring average in each of his first six NBA seasons. He is 27 years old. The man who finished directly ahead of him in scoring last season, Devin Booker, is 6’6″ and 20 years old. He gonna GET PAID in a couple years.

Hayward wrote a “Thank You, Utah” (“Thank You Tah Tah,” is what MH editors would have recommended) piece for The Players’ Tribune in which he buried the lede in graf 6. Bad sportswriting there, Gordo.

2. Fly Girl

If only Bigfoot were also in this photo…how great would that be?

Breaking news suggests that Amelia Earhart’s last days were sort of an Unbroken-type deal. This recently released photograph, taken in the Marshall Islands in 1937 on an atoll where Westerners were forbidden, appears to show Earhart’s navigator, Fred Noonan, on the far left. That may be Earhart, seated with her back to the camera, in the center. She may be looking at a large object, presumably their downed Lockheed Electra aircraft, being towed by a barge.

Post died in 1935 when his plane crashed on takeoff near Point Barrow, Alaska. His passenger? Famed humorist Wil Rogers.

Earhart took off from Papua New Guinea on July 2, 1937, in her quest to become the first female to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane (Wiley Post had become the first person to do it six years earlier). She never completed the journey, although she had only the Pacific remaining at the time she disappeared. This new evidence strongly suggests that the Japanese captured her and Noonan, considered them spies, and imprisoned them.

According to today’s report, the man who took this photo was later executed.

Mock

In case you were wondering—and I was—the first female to accomplish the feat Earhart set out to perform was Geraldine Mock, who did so in 1964 aboard a Cessna. Curiously enough, another woman, Joan Merriam Smith, also set out to pursue this record two days earlier following the same flight path as Earhart. Mock, who started and finished in Columbus, Ohio, took off two days later (March 19) but finished first. Smith would be killed in a plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains the following year; Mock died in 2014.

3. When In The Course of Human Events

All of this accomplished in Philly in July WITHOUT air-conditioning!

When I work at the cookoutateria on the 4th, as I did yesterday, I ask tables who seem willing to give me the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. Everyone’s first response is, “We the people…” which is incorrect. Take a few minutes to read the Declaration of Independence today. It’s worth it.

Also happening on the 4th of July….

1911: Ed Walsh stops Ty Cobb’s hitting streak at 40 games. Both will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is 25 years away from being.

1939: Lou Gehrig gives his famous speech as Yankees retire their first uniform number (4) and stage baseball’s first Old Timers’ Day.

1969: 140,000 attend Atlanta Pop Festival featuring Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Chicago, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Joe Cocker, Grand Funk Railroad, Tommy James and the Shondells, and Creedence Clearwater Revival (How had I NEVER heard of this until just now????). Woodstock was just seven weeks out.

From left: Bruce Dern (legs only), Sam Waterston, Mia Farrow, Robert Redford and the lovely but relatively unknown Lois Chiles

In literature, Nick Carroway, Jay Gatsby, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and Jordan Baker go for martinis at The Plaza and things go awry (and a ‘gin).

4. Cycling Is A Contact Sport

On the fourth day of the Tour de France, an elbowing incident less than 200 meters from the finish line leaves British cyclist Mark Cavendish with a broken shoulder and causes officials to disqualify Slovak Peter Sagan. Watch for yourself.

5. Our Annual Update Of America’s Wildest Trail Race

This race is for Sisypheans, not sissies

Yesterday the Mount Marathon Race, an annual Fourth of July 5-K trail run up and down a hill/mountain in Seward, Alaska, was staged for what is believed to be the 90th time. It was first officially staged in 1915, though it may have been run as far back as 1907.

Anyway, the visually breathtaking and often bone-breaking ascent-and-descent was won by Scott Patterson (I was SO HOPING it was the same SP who played Luke on Gilmore Girls, but alas, he’s an Alaskan cross-country skier) on the men’s side and by MH fave Allie Ostrander on the women’s.

Allez, Allie! This was Ostrander’s second win at her local race.

As you may know, Ostrander is a local and also last month won the NCAA women’s steeplechase national championship. Her time of 49:19 was the FASTEST EVER for a female in this event. “This race it was for Alaska,” said Ostrander. “I’m just happy with this be apart of this tradition, and finally being able to get a win.”

Music 101

Tin Man

Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man/That he didn’t, didn’t already have… In early 1974 Dewey Bunnell, one of the three members of America, wrote a song about his favorite childhood movie and then begged his bandmates not to put it on their upcoming album. Perhaps Bunnell was using reverse psychology. It not only appeared on Holiday, but hit No. 4 on the charts later that year. Despite this tune, A Horse With No Name, Ventura Highway, and Sister Golden Hair, four of the most heavily played and iconic radio tunes of the early 70s, America still is not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

A Word, Please

Effete (adj)

Ineffectual, over-affected. In a word, weak.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

 

Starting Five

Jamie Fox Up

Meteoric rise. Star-crossed career. The fireworks came early for sports media mavens, as yesterday news broke that Jamie Horowitz is out as president of Fox Sports following a claim of sexual harassment. According to the Los Angeles Times, Fox Sports spent a week interviewing females at its Century City-based HQ.

 

This comes exactly one week after Horowitz laid off about 20 writers and editors and announced an abrupt pivot to “premium video content,” of which he is probably glad none exists of his alleged loutish behavior.

2. It’s The First Week of July: Why Is ESPN (And To a Lesser Degree, Fox Sports) So Obsessed With the NBA?

a.k.a., Carry On Our Hayward Son

The two largest markets in the USA have charismatic rookies who are each leading their respective league in home runs. One of them is also leading in all three triple crown categories.

And yet if you went on espn.com last night the lead story was a ranking of NBA Superteams. The first list of scores up top was for the NBA Summer League. Four of the top six headlines were NBA-related.

Our friend Jason McIntyre has devoted much of his Saturday radio shows in the past month to the NBA draft, impending free agency, and to delving into why the Lakers are playing for 2018. Certainly the NBA draft and even free agency, to a degree, are newsworthy. Also, as I peruse his site, The Big Lead, this a.m., the top three stories are all NBA-related.

On Monday morning, 6’7″ Aaron Judge and 5’6″ Jose Altuve had the top two batting averages in the American League

But the Houston Astros are playing above .666 ball. Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger. Clayton Kershaw is 12-2. Max Scherzer has struck out at least 10 batters in seven of his last eight starts.

Crickets on all of it. Even the NFL is being overshadowed. Ooooooooooo-wheeeeeee, What’s up with dat, What’s up with dat?

3. A Good Guy With A Gun

In Sedalia, Colorado, 58 year-old Frank Huner mistakes his 33 year-old son, Nicholas, for an intruder, and fatally shoots him. He has now been booked for second-degree murer. Guns prevent some fatalities, but they unintentionally cause some as well. It’s, at best, a wash.

4. Atlanta Traffic (Cont.)

It’s a wonderful city with surprisingly excellent cuisine, but Atlanta is also notorious for its awful traffic. That doesn’t subside just because it’s a holiday: The annual Peachtree Road Race, a 4th of July tradition since 1970, will draw 60,000 participants this morning southbound on the city’s most well-known street. You may want to take an alternate route.

5. The Nets or Knicks Could Use Him

Meet Calvin Roberts. A 6’8″ power forward out of Cal State-Fullerton, he was selected in the 4th round of the NBA draft…in 1980. Roberts never made it to the NBA, but now at age 61, he’s giving it another try. If the Mavericks could sign Tony Romo for a day, why not this guy?

Hickey, left, played his final NBA game just two days shy of his 46th birthday

FYI, the oldest NBA player in history was either 45 year-old Nat Hickey or, as both you and I secretly suspect, Greg Oden.

Music 101

The Star Spangled Banner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKAwPA14Ni4

Jimi Hendrix, Woodstock, performing at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning…..

A Word, Please

Apostate (noun)

A person who renounces a political or religious belief or principle