Monthly Archives: March 2018

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

 

Stupid Is As Rick Santorum Says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FySRbF-EJKY

Starting Five

Weapons of Mass Instruction*

*The judges will also accept “March Sanity”

In Washington, D.C., in New York, in Los Angeles, in Parkland, Fla., even in Rome, hundreds of thousands of people gathered for the March For Our Lives. The best counterattack the NRA could come up with, via NRAtv host Colion Noir, was to rebuke MSD activists such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez with, “No one would know your names” if it weren’t for the Parkland shooting.

That is the “They should be thanking ESPN” of 2018.

By the way, is Emma Gonzalez not the most potent speaker Washington has seen in at least a couple of years?

 

2. Cinderella at 98*

America’s most famous cheerleader is a 98 year-old nun

*The judges wish to thank the great Cecil Hurt, who thought of that

Sister Jean is the easy draw when it comes to noticing Loyola of Chicago, but the 1963 national champions are returning to the Final Four because of beautiful and unselfish basketball. The Ramblers will meet Michigan, which will be their first opponent in the NCAAs that finished the season ranked in the top 10 (7th).

The Rambler backcourt of Clayton Custer and Ben Richardson have been teammates since the third grade back home in Overland Park, Kansas. And after Saturday night’s 78-62 defeat of Kansas State, Richardson, who scored a game-high 23 points, told a funny story about how a young lady at their hotel asked Custer to take a photo of her and Richardson, then asked the hero of the Ramblers’ Round of 32 win versus Tennessee, “Are you on the team?”

Custer was also the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year.

The Ramblers are 21-1 since January 3rd, their lone defeat coming by 2 points at Bradley.

3. Say Goodnight, Grayson

Duke lost. Senior Grayson Allen’s potential game-winner as time expired rimmed in and out, Kansas forced overtime, and then the Blue Devil anti-hero missed everything he tossed at the basket—and yes, there was some hero ball going on—until his final shot, when the outcome was already decided. He shot 3 of 13 for the game.

Most hoops fans who did not graduate from Duke will not miss Allen, a four-year player who as a freshman was Coach K’s unlikely Final Four hero. He did not finish in the all-time Duke Top 10 in Scoring or Assists, but he was someone who played college hoops whom we all knew for more than three full seasons, which is unbelievably rare these days.  Nowadays, the only college hoops people who are household names for three years are coaches.

Allen will likely be a late first-rounder and could see three teammates taken ahead of him.

This isn’t a one-and-done pro- or con- argument. And who knows how good of a pro the 6’5″ Allen will be? It’s just an acknowledgement that college basketball is better when we have recurring characters, as opposed to recurring uniforms. For that, we owe Grayson Allen a trip of, I mean a tip of, our caps.

4. Overblown Stormy

We think we learned more about Giannis Antetokounmpo last night on 60 Minutes than we did of Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. The star of One Wild & Crazy Night detailed her one wild and crazy night with the president that occurred 11 years ago, which included a spanking—administered by her—and an observation by Trump, shortly before the banging, that she reminded him of Ivanka. Ew.

Otherwise, we were left rather empty and unsatisfied after viewing.

5. Latimore Crushes LaVar

In October, former Arizona and Notre Dame hoopster Dennis Latimore became the third coach in three seasons at Chino Hills (Calif.) High School. The school hasn’t had a coaching revolving door because it cannot win: two years ago, under Steve Baik, the team went 35-0 and won the CIF state championship.

Baik left on his own accord and last year first-year coach Stephan Gilling led them to a 30-3 record. Then Gilling either left or was fired after having to deal with this type of crap.

The turbulence was always due to LaVar Ball, whose sons Lonzo, LiAngelo and LaMelo played for Chino. Before Latimore was hired LaVar went to the school administration and asked to add four players to the team. Latimore would have none of it. “I came in and my mission was to coach the team. I wasn’t going to have a parent tell me what to do,” said Latimore. “Period. Or I wasn’t going to take the job. I had that conversation with the administration. He left and moved on. Guys are united and we’re having a lot of fun.”

Okongwu blossomed this season, more than doubling his scoring average to 24 ppg

So LaVar pulled his last son, LaMelo, out of school and said he’d home school him and coach LaMelo himself (“I’m going to make him the best basketball player ever,” LaVar said in his Trumpian tone). LaMelo, on his way out the door, suggested someone should do a “30 for 30” on his old school, on “how it went from best to worst.”

Well, LaMelo and LaVar spent the winter in Lithuania. And last weekend Latimore led Chino Hills to the Division I state championship in three years. The team lost its best player, 6’9″ Onyeka Okongwu (27 points, 14 boards) for the final 4 minutes of its 73-68 title win over Las Lomas due to foul trouble, but as Latimore said afterward, “This team is bigger than any one player.”

Or stage dad.

By the way, if this sounds a little bit like Hoosiers (Latimore is Norman Dale, LaVar is that mean-ass dad who threatens Norman, and Okongwu is Jimmy Chitwood), it should.

Music 101

Just The Way You Are

Billy Joel‘s 1978 breakout hit (No. 3 on the Billboard charts) was written in homage to his then-wife and business manager, Elizabeth Weber. Eight years later he was married to Christie Brinkley and his drummer would jokingly replace the lyric “I love you just the way you are” with “She got the house, she got the car.”

Remote Patrol

The Martian

7 p.m. NatGeo Channel

We’ve always thought of this 2014 Matt Damon flick as Cast Away in outer space. But it’s a better film. This will be followed by One Strange Rock (10 p.m., NatGeo), which is the network’s answer to the Planet Earth series (and does not star Jon Lithgow).

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters*

*THIS IS STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS BUT WE ARE BOARDING A PLANE SO WE’LL GIVE YOU WHAT WE’VE WRITTEN THUS FAR AND WHY ARE WE YELLING WE DON’T KNOW!

 

Tweet du Jour

 

 

Starting Five

Xavier Sneed and Bruce Weber survive and advance. A K-State v Kansas final remains a possibility.

1. Seeding Is Believing

 

On Tuesday ESPN.com suggested that the NCAA tournament should be reseeded to account for the plethora of upsets in Rounds 1 and 2. On Thursday night the bottom four schools in ESPN’s re-sod—No. 13 Florida State, 14 Loyola, 15 Michigan and 16 Kansas State—all won.

And yes, that’s one half of the remaining teams. One of this four will play in the national championship game April 2.

2. The Worst Wing: Express

Too much to cover for one day, so we’ll zip through:

Dow down 724 points…

10 out of 10 “bad stock market day” pics show a bald man putting a palm to his forehead

***
Karen McDougal: I’m a playmate, not a pay-mate. She tells CNN Trump tried to hand her cash after sex.

***

H.R. McMaster (of the house) resignw and will be replaced by “BOMB THEM NOW AND ALWAYS!” dude John Bolton. If you’r scoring at home, this was 8 days ago…

 

 

 

Also, Trump lawyer John Dowd resigned yesterday (at least one a week fired or resigns, just like The Apprentice). We suspect he got tired of Trump telling him he’s going to speak

 

Like McMaster, Dowd’s exodus was reported by the press, who were then called liars by the Worst Wing, but the press was vindicated within a fortnight.

 

3. Lady And The Trump

That’s Poland’s first lady, Agata Kornhauser-Duda, doing the blow-by handshake at a public event in Warsaw last summer. We honestly don’t know why it suddenly became a big issue on Twitter yesterday. Anyway, great dress Melania. You Eastern European women gotta stick together.

And yes, Agata did eventually shake Donald’s hand, but not first. Not when it was offered.

4. Ruth Judges Bill

The writer of this piece at redstate.com (consider the name of the site), Andrea Ruth, either isn’t very good at making an argument—the essence of editorial writing—or she is being intentionally disingenuous. I’m going to go with the latter.

Bill Murray appears on Today on Wednesday and of course because he spoke out in favor of the students NATIONWIDE who are trying to bring common sense to gun laws, Ruth and redstate had to attack. Here’s his first quote that she assailed:

I was thinking, looking at the kids in Parkland, Florida who have started these anti-gun protests, that it really was the students that began the end of the Vietnam War. It was the students who made all the news, and that noise started, and then the movement wouldn’t stop. I think, maybe, this noise that those students in Florida are making — here, today — will do something of the same nature.

You may disagree with the students as to their strategy for making schools safer. You may not like that Murray is supporting them. That’s fine. But the analogy is accurate; perhaps not in scope but in all the principles: young people protesting being put at unnecessary risk via the decisions of politicians who would never expose themselves (or their children, let it be noted, almost all of whom attend tony private schools) to the same risk. And that’s what analogies do: identify common principles, as opposed to identifying common details or similar scope.

Of course, Ruth fails to appreciate this, writing, “The Parkland students aren’t being sent to war, they’re being sent to school.” Duh. She does write, “It’s true the students are the ones making the noise and getting on the news, but the difference is, as always, in the context.” Again, duh. Analogies aren’t clones; they’re comparisons. She then writes, “Murray goes on to spout more nonsense…” which is an indication that she believes what Murray said above is nonsense, even though she just also wrote, “”It’s true the students are the ones making the noise and getting on the news.”

So to recap thus far, she begrudgingly admits that Murray’s analogy is accurate but then calls it nonsense because it’s not an apples to apples comparison, which is not what analogies are.

Now it gets better. I’ll let this tweet summarize the second half of my argument:

 

Murray apparently makes the horrible mistake of espousing peace—Happy Easter, everyone!—and she assails him for that by saying that man’s nature is not peaceful, so he’s stupid. Murray never claimed that man being peaceful is man’s nature, only that—as Jesus did—we should aspire to a peaceful nature.

It says a lot about her and about Red State America that someone proposing peace is vilified. Their argument is how can we have peace without violence? Do they know how ridiculous that sounds?

You don’t want anyone’s clammy hands on your AR-15? We get it; we don’t agree, but we get it. At least makes logically consistent articles. And don’t hide behind Jesus when you would ridicule anyone who echoes His words.

Maybe we should offer our editing services to RedState.com. But we don’t think they’d want them.

5. The Sea and The Old Man

Meet 70 year-old Aleksander Doba of Poland, who last summer at the age of 70 completed his THIRD solo trans-Atlantic crossing by kayak. This is his story and a well-told one it is.

Music 101 

Free Ride

Texas native Edgar Winter was aptly named, as he may be the most (only?) famous albino in rock ‘n roll history. The Edgar Winter Group had Top 20 hit in 1973 with this hit that is now a staple of classic rock. We mean, after all, a double-necked guitar and an over-the-shoulder keyboard in one performance?!?

Remote Patrol

March Madness Sweet Sixteen

7 PM

CBS Kansas vs Clemson

TBS Villanova vs West Virginia

9 PM

CBS Duke vs Syracuse

TBS Purdue v Texas Tech

We can’t name a single player on Clemson’s team and they don’t even have a cool nun on their sideline

We’re hoping for a Pur-Duke Elite Eight game, but our picks tonight are Clemson, Villanova, Duke and Purdue. Are there two teams who’ve been written about/discussed less than the Tigers and Red Raiders, by the way?

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

 

This extinction is entirely man-made.

And then…

 

Starting Five

“Stuart! What are youuuuu doing here?”

1. The Californian

Despite the affirmations of Albert Hammond, it does rain in southern California, even if you’re the presumptive number one overall pick in next month’s NFL draft and it’s your pro day and scouts are there to see you throw.

No one called off Sam Darnold‘s pro day, however, and the USC passer threw in the rain and the world didn’t end. By all accounts, Darnold is not going to be able to escape the clutches of the Cleveland Browns. So do the Giants take Saquon Barkley or do they pick a quarterback, and whom?

2. No Chicks Allowed

White House meets with Saudis, Wednesday. Is it still International Women’s Day?

3. Whether Stormy

CBS announced that the 60 Minutes Stormy Daniels interview will air this Sunday (with a lead-in from an Elite Eight game, natch!) and that it will last 20 minutes. As one tweep offered, “I usually watch Stormy Daniels on screen for about three minutes and then strangely become disinterested.

Frank Bruni of the NYT had an interesting insight as to the president’s dearth of tweets or put-downs regarding one Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Daniels, a.k.a. Peggy Peterson.

Meanwhile, like you, we have empathy for Melania. I mean, it can’t be easy to be the First Lady as news breaks that your husband is a philanderer and the opposition party is trying to impeach him. That’s probably why, as was the case with Hillary Clinton, Melania is garnering so much empathy.

Yes, we kid. So the question is, How come America hated Hillary for standing by her husband but feels so protective of Melania for not abandoning hers? A few reasons: 1) Melania is prettier 2) Hillary is smart 3) Melania almost never speaks and 4) and this is the big one, Hillary is ambitious.

4. Bitcoin Gets En-Dorsey-ment

Twitter CEO and nowhere-near-as-nerdy-looking-as-Zuckerberg tech magnate Jack Dorsey came out yesterday and proclaimed to The Times (UK), “The world ultimately will have a single currency, the internet will have a single currency. I personally believe that it will be bitcoin… probably over ten years, but it could go faster.”

Whoa. And after we just sold all of our Bitcoin. Sure, Susie B. has her ears plugged and keeps repeating, “Tulips! Tulips! Tulips!” but what if Jack’s right? And shouldn’t he know more about the future of business and tech than we do? And what if you took that gamble? How many chances will you have in your lifetime to increase your net worth 10x or 100x or even 1,000x on one wager?

I mean, if you passed on Apple and Amazon…something to think about.

5. The Slugger

When your name is Blaze Jordan, you don’t need a nickname. The 15 year-old Southaven, Mississippi, native has yet to start lifting weights but is possessed of farm boy strength. As an 11 year-old he smacked a 395-foot home run and two years later he was able to launch rockets 500 feet. He’s 6’1″, 215 pounds and he’s only just starting to shed the baby fat.

Blaze Jordan. Remember the name. How would you forget?

Music 101

Stormy

The Jacksonville-based band Classics IV had a No. 5 hit with this moody paean to a lass whom singer Dennis Yost hoped would “bring back that sunny day.” The president cannot hope for anything near that much, we imagine.

Remote Patrol

March Madness

7 p.m.

CBS Nevada vs. Loyola

TBS Texas A&M vs. Michigan

9 p.m.

CBS Kansas State vs. Kentucky

TBS Florida State vs. Gonzaga

Hamadou Diallo can fly

A double doubleheader, although TCM is coming guns a’ blazin’ with a doubleheader of Sunset Boulevard (8 p.m.) and Gone With The Wind (10 p.m.). We like Nevada, A&M, Kentucky and Gonzaga, but not William Holden or Vivian Leigh.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

 

Starting Five

A Colonel Of Truth*

*The judges will also accept “Pox On Fox” or “Take This ISB And Shove It”

Going where Congressman Paul Ryan, Senator Mitch McConnell, and mouthpieces such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters and Laura Ingraham have dared not tread, retired Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters found the temerity to acknowledge the distinction between conservatism and Trumpism and put his money where his mouth is. In a letter to colleagues at Fox, where he had been a contributor for a decade, Peters announced his resignation. In his words…

 

As you may have expected, Fox News fired back (presumably from its No-Spin Zone): “Ralph Peters is entitled to his opinion despite the fact that he’s choosing to use it as a weapon in order to gain attention. We are extremely proud of our top-rated primetime hosts and all of our opinion programming.”

2. Frost, Nixon

She is not a crook

The two big stories in New York City yesterday: 1) a spring storm is on the way that may dump as much as 10″ of snow on the streets (I’m dreaming of a white equinox…) and 2) actress Cynthia Nixon has entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary race.

It took less than 24 hours for Christine Quinn, a supporter of Democratic incumbent Andrew Cuomo, to refer to Nixon as “an unqualified lesbian.” In fairness to Quinn, she is a lesbian who lost a run for mayor of New York City and thinks of herself as “a qualified lesbian.”

3. There IS an Oklahoma Draftee Who’s Like Bitcoin—And It’s Not Baker Mayfield

Oklahoma freshman Trae Young, who led the nation in both Scoring (27.4 per game) and Assists (8.7 per) this season but was unable to lead the Sooners to a first-round NCAA tourney victory, has announced that he will enter the NBA draft.

For much of the late fall and early winter, our friend Jason McIntrye, founder of The Big Lead, has described another Sooner jock headed for another pro draft as “Bitcoin.” McIntrye likens Heisman-winning OU quarterback Baker Mayfield to the cryptocurrency. Per Jason: “People still don’t really understand how [Bitcoin] works or why it’s become such a phenomenon…The same can be said about Baker Mayfield…most draftniks still don’t have a firm grasp on what his NFL ceiling can be, or whether or not they can trust his character.”

The real question is whether Mayfield’s career will be more like Brett Favre’s or Johnny Manziel’s?

That’s not really an apples to apples comparison. Draftniks DO understand what makes Mayfield successful on the field and recognize that the former walk-on led Oklahoma to a pair of college football playoffs and compiled the TWO best single-season passing efficiency rating marks of all college football history. That’s like putting together the two best single-season slugging percentage marks, in separate seasons of course, in baseball.

Unlike Bitcoin, Mayfield’s bonafides are legit. His talent may not translate to the NFL—we’ll see—but his popularity is about more than hype. He proved he was legit over four college seasons at two different schools.*

Young, on the other hand, is a lot like Bitcoin. He was oven-mitt hot in December and then began to cool off in January. His Sooners went into a tailspin in late January and all of February and March as his performances began to suffer. With his sleight size (he’s listed at 6’2″ but closer to 6’0″) and poor defense, he may very well be an NBA bust. The team that drafts him, much like the dude who put all of his earnings into Bitcoin in December, could live to regret that maneuver (note: we are ALL out of Bitcoin now).

It’s not that Young is ALL hype; it’s just that he was very hot in December, then defenses figured him out and you’d have made more money shorting his career after New Year’s. And there’s no guarantee at all that he’s a good investment going forward.

So, yes, there is an Oklahoma athlete like Bitcoin: Trae Young, not Baker Mayfield.

*We’d still be very, very afraid to draft Mayfield. Too short and too prone to injury at the next level. Darnold, Allen and RosenRosen are safer picks, much as we hate to admit it.

4. Freducation

Mr. Rogers would have turned 90 yesterday and we love that someone is finally producing a documentary on him. Here now is the trailer for Won’t You Be My Neighbor (release date: June 8)

And here’s our favorite magazine profile we’ve ever read, by Tom Junod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Kp5YeqrlE&t=140s

5. A Good Guy With A Gun

Gaskill lived up to the second syllable in his name

We don’t want to be hypocrites, which is to say we don’t want to blindly hold to a position just because we’re stubborn and recalcitrant. So yes, pour one out for Blaine Gaskill, the resource officer at Great Mills (Md.) High School, who confronted the school shooter and fatally wounded him. Of course, if the 17 year-old shooter, Austin Rollins, who wounded a girl he knew, had been toting something more than a handgun, the events would have unfolded differently, we imagine.

Reserves

Friend Or Phone

Apparently President Trump phoned Vladimir Putin in the wake of this weekend’s presidential “election” in Russia to congratulate Vlad on winning. This despite despite warnings from multiple national security advisers and briefing materials that read “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”

Trump ignored the written warnings and lauded Vlad, anyway. Reminds us of the old Swedish king joke. The king goes hunting for moose and in the clearing he sees a young, unarmed man. The king lifts his rifle and aims. The man, seeing this, shouts loudly, “I AM NOT A MOOSE!”

The king fires. Kills him. As they walk toward the dead man, one of the king’s aides says, “Sire, that man said, ‘I am not a moose.'” The monarch looks at his aide dismissively and says, “I heard him say, ‘I am a moose.'”

Aboard The H.M.S Beagle

In Birmingham, England, an unidentified man became the frontrunner for the 2018 Darwin Award when he was killed by an electronic foot fest in a movie theater. The man had dropped his cellphone between seats in the “Gold Class” seats and when he knelt down to retrieve it, the electronic foot rest came down and trapped him. As he panicked and struggled to escape—a friend and a theater employee eventually broke the foot rest and freed him—he appears to have gone into cardiac arrest. We feel for him and no, have not asked what movie he was watching.

 

Music 101

Amsterdam

Befriending one another while undergrads at Tufts University in Boston, the band Guster found moderate success in 2003 with this tune dedicated to a European city everyone should visit (in their 20s). This definitely belongs on MH’s Top 20 Songs of The 21st Century—So Far list.

Remote Patrol

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour (as another school shooting goes down, this time in Maryland)

 

Starting Five

1. Requiem For A Heavyweight

Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, has died due to “age-related complications.” The species looks, no, looked, like something right out of the Paleozoic Era, and now it sorta is. This is a tragedy that will only accelerate over the coming decades: Africa is ground zero for rare minerals that are used to power phones and nuclear power, which means that superpowers such as China, Russia and the U.S. will only increase their interests there (ask your buddy at the Dept. of Defense how many troops we have in Africa).

That plus poaching has put this and other species at risk. There are still two female northern white rhinos remaining, and no one has told MH staffers if there are any, um, remnants of Sudan remaining. Let’s hope.

We’re all we’ve got left

Anyway, central Africa is the true Garden of Eden, home to most of the most wondrous species of animals on Earth. It’s dreaming, we know, but what a wonderful act it would be if every non-African person would get out of Africa. Maybe that’s what the movie’s title was all about?

2. Cambridge Analytica Is Not Why The Rockets Shoot Mostly Threes

 

We’re still not really sure what Cambridge Analytica is. Three days ago we would’ve said it’s an encyclopedia company founded by Nate Silver. Anyway, they’re apparently bad actors based in the U.K. who manipulated Facebook info for propaganda.

3.  Bizarre Deaths, Part 5,391

In Tempe, Arizona, 49 year-old Elaine Herzberg is struck by a driverless car being tested by Uber as she tried to walk her bicycle across Mill Avenue. It looks as if Herzberg was jaywalking on Sunday night when the vehicle, going 40 mph, struck her. She’s the first known self-driving vehicle fatality. People on Twitter came to the defense of A.I. so quickly that one had to think they mistakenly thought they were defending an A.R.

Meanwhile n Mississippi, a nine year-old boy fatally shoots his sister for not handing over a video game quickly enough. See, video games really DO promote violence.

4. The Nude Yorker

This week The New Yorker artist Barry Blitt took one of the older axioms (“The Emperor has no clothes”) and tried it on the 45th president of the United States. Perfect fit.

Blitt has sketched more than a dozen New Yorker covers taking aim at Trump (he refers to him as “the gift that keeps on grifting”) but the Canadian-born artist, who turns 60 next month, is an equal-opportunity lampooner. This cartoon from 10 years back drew ire from the left.

5. Justin Is Just Out

Beloved Dodger troll and All-Star Justin Turner breaks his wrist whilst being hit by a pitch during a spring training game and will be out at least until May. Turner, the NLCS MVP, was struck in the first inning by Kendall Graven of the Oakland A’s.

Music 101

Reminiscing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM4MBKjg0qk

The MH staff recalls this song being all over the radio in autumn of 1978, a monster hit for The Little River Band. The song went to No. 3 on the Billboard chart and was one of the most massive Easy Listening hits of the era.

Remote Patrol

The Graduate

8 p.m. TCM

Actually, both Rounders (7 p.m., STARZ) and Se7en (8 p.m., BBC) are also on tonight, and we enjoy them better, even if neither have Simon and Garfunkel songs or a seductive Ann Bancroft.