Monthly Archives: May 2018

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

And Pardon The Self-Promotion…

Starting Five

1. Capital Letters

In Las Vegas the Washington Capitals and Alexander Ovechkin at last broke their maiden, winning the first Stanley Cup game of Ovi’s fabulous career. The Russian scored one goal in the 2-1 win but everyone was babbling about net minder Braden Holtby’s game-saving save late in the third period. Series knotted at 1-1 as we return to the Capital aboard Ovi Force One.

2. Iceland vs. ICE land


This is one of SI‘s four World Cup covers this week (Egypt, England, Mexico sorry, defending champion Germany and host nation Russia, you don’t get one…something about Communists and Nazis?).

And this is Time’s cover from two months ago, illuminating a different type of ICE land.

3 The President Must Wear Flame-Retardant Pants

Earlier this morning….

And then there was this from last year…

4. Sounds Like Han Solo

His name is Juan Soto, he’s only 19, he’s been in The Show for less than a month and he’s already batting leadoff for the first-place Washington Nationals. Soto, of the Dominican Republic, is hitting .375 with an OBP of .459 and an OPS above 1.0. He won’t turn 20 until October 25, by which time he may be playing left field in the World Series.

5. The Walking Dead (Updates)

That’s Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, who was reported murdered by forces in the Kremlin on Tuesday and then showed up at a press conference in the Ukraine on Wednesday (now THAT is a commitment to duty). Babchenko staged his own murder story to, well, we’re not sure why, but we’re sure the Kremlin may be happy at a later date to amend this false narrative.

Lincoln, who is British, will no longer have to work on that slight Southern twang any more

Meanwhile, in other Walking Dead news, series star Andrew Lincoln has announced that he is leaving the show. We left it about two seasons ago when it became overly redundant and sadistic.

Music 101

The Show Must Go On

In 1973 Leo Sayer, who co-wrote this tune, released it and would perform it live dressed as a French clown. Just a year later Three Dog Night covered Sayer’s tune and had a much bigger hit with it, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard charts. That circusy jingle you hear at the beginning is called “Entrance of the Gladiators” and was composed in 1897 by Czech composer Julius Fucik.

You’ll notice that Sayer sings, “I won’t let the show go on,” while Three Dog Night sings, “I must let the show go on.”

Remote Patrol

Cavs at Dubs: Game 1

9 p.m. ESPN

Live look-in at the Cavaliers’ chances of winning

If we line these series up next to the Rocky films, isn’t this the one in which LeBron goes to Siberia to train? Livin’ in America, eye to eye, station to station….

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Roseanne Barred

Roseanne,

You don’t have to put on the Alt-Right,

Those days are over,

And now you no longer air on Tuesday nights…

A nasty tweet stating a former female Obama aide, Valerie Jarrett, was the progeny of the Muslim brotherhood and the Planet of The Apes. ABC acted swiftly, canceling Roseanne Barr‘s eponymous sitcom reboot. Now she’s blaming her tweet on Ambien…as our old friend @StevieCade tweeted, perhaps the Rockets should use that excuse for their Game 7 shooting.

2. Is Bryan Lyin’?

Last night The Ringer ran with a story that insinuates that Philadelphia 76ers GM Bryan Colangelo operated perhaps five burner Twitter accounts that he used to spread gossip about the team’s own players and even share information that had not been made public. The Sixers copped to two accounts—the only two The Ringer shared with the Sixers when they placed their call of inquiry.

Colangelo, 52, is the son of legendary NBA exec Jerry Colangelo, who launched the Phoenix Suns, was president of USA Basketball (during its post-2004 resurrection), and who was installed as a sort of Mr. Wolf to the Sixers a few years ago to oversee “The Process.” Maybe Bryan never felt loved there because his pops got him the gig?

The bigger question is, Was this real journalism or not-fully-completed reporting? There’s a lot to suggest that The Ringer is onto the truth, but they have not actually proven their case, which a well-reported story is supposed to do. As Jason Robards famously told Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, “You haven’t got it.”

3. The Good Shepherd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwLdVU5Tc3E

In a news room full of sycophants for Donald Trump, Shepherd Smith alone seems to get it (not that there aren’t a newsroom full of sycophants for Obama across Sixth Avenue at MSNBC, but there is more than a whiff of difference between the two presidents’ ardor for honesty). When the Great American Fact-Out finally ends, he alone will be able to exit the Newscorp. Building with his coif held high.

4. Manhattan-henge

 

With a sunset to the west that seems perfectly situated between the skyscrapers followed shortly thereafter by a full moon rising from the east, this is an ideal week for celestial-bodies lovers to be inhabiting Manhattan. Sure, we cannot see many stars due to the sheer amount of artificial light emanating from our streets and buildings, but we do have this.

If you’re here, 57th or 34th Streets are the best roads on which to experience this.

5. What If LeBron Joined The Warriors?

He’s going to be a free agent (again) this summer and he’ll turn 34 in December and he can more than afford to accept a deal that won’t financially cripple a team’s roster AND he probably wants to win another NBA ring or two (which he most likely won’t do in the next fortnight, barring an injury to Kevin Durant or Klay Thompson). So why wouldn’t LeBron James, alias “Sweet Pea” on this site, join the Golden State Warriors (alias “the SuperVillains”)?

The Jazz may be the West’s best non-Dubs team that is not filled with divas.

The Boston Celtics would not want him. The Sixers are too dysfunctional (see No. 2). The Lakers and the Clippers are not headed to the NBA Finals any time soon. Gregg Popovich would not want the Drama. The Rockets? Maybe, but they already have two divas. We actually ruminated on this for awhile on Monday and our three best choices for LeBron, if he wants to at least return to the NBA Finals, are one of the two teams in this series or the up-and-coming Utah Jazz (who have the best rim protector he’d ever have played with in Rudy Gobert and a burgeoning, selfless All-Star in Donovan Mitchell).

But what if LeBron were to join Steph, Draymond, KD, Klay and Kerr and promised to just be himself and sign on for two seasons with an option for a third? And what if Adam Silver did not block it? If he really wants to play in the NBA Finals and, secondarily, live in California, here’s his golden opportunity.

Also, we are not just saying this to troll our most loyal female reader, but just to bring it to light: If Michael Jordan had never gone off to have a torrid but ultimately unsatisfying affair with baseball, he likely would have WON eight NBA Finals in a row. Not made eight NBA Finals in a row. Won them.

Music 101

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Ezra Koenig went from growing up on the Upper West Side, to migrating to northern New Jersey, to returning to the UWS to attend Columbia, to teaching at a public school in Brooklyn, to fronting the alternative rock band Vampire Weekend. This was the fourth single off their monster 2008 eponymous debut album, which naturally appeared on the Columbia Records label.

Remote Patrol

Stanley Cup, Game 2

Caps at Knights

8 p.m. NBC SN

If the game is as entertaining as the Medieval Times on Ice pregame spectacular, you’re in for a treat.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Starting Five

Curry and K.D. combined for 61 points in Game 7.

Two by Four

Cleveland will meet Golden State in the NBA Finals for the fourth consecutive time. That’s never happened in NBA, NFL, MLB or NHL history.

It didn’t come easy. The Cavs and Dubs both needed to win Game 7s on the road. While the HOFers on both teams displayed mettle, they got help from the upstarts. Boston went ice cold in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter and shot 7-39 from beyond the arc in Game 7 (Terry Rozier was 0-10). Houston, meanwhile, set an NBA record with 27 consecutive misses from beyond the arc in Game 7, shooting 7-44.

Still, credit both the Cavs and Dubs from overcoming 3-2 deficits and the Dubs especially for overcoming double-digit halftime deficits in both Games 6 and 7. In the second halves of both games, Golden State outscored Houston by a combined 58 points.

2. Gareth Bale-Out

Goal No. 1

The Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid was knotted 1-1 in Kiev after 60 minutes when the Spanish side decided to sub in Gareth Bale. In the match’s final 29 minutes he scored two goals and nearly got a hat trick in leading Real to its third consecutive Champions League championship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_sM9H402M

Goal No. 2 (above)

Because Bale is Welsh and the Wales must qualify as its own nation as opposed to being part of Great Britain, you won’t be seeing him in Russia when the World Cup begins in a little more than two weeks.. That’s a shame.

3. Jakob’s Ladder

Norway is not renowned for producing great milers. Finland, yes (Paavo Nurmi). And yes, Grete Waitz was Norwegian but she was a marathoner.

Well, now it has. At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene last Saturday 17 year-old Jakob Ingebrigtsen crushed it with a 3:52 mile. Last year on this same track on this same weekend Ingebrigtsen ran a 3:58, becoming the first 16 year-old ever to crack sub-4 (legally) and also the first person born in the 2000s to do so.

4. Water-Logged

A flash flood in Ellicot City, Maryland, about 13 miles west of Baltimore, caused major damage and swept away at least one National Guard member. Said Maryland governor Larry Hogan, “They say this is a once in every 1,000 years flood, and we’ve had two of them in two years.”

5. Will Power + Horse Power = Checkered Flag

After a crash with 12 laps to go in the Indianapolis 500, the cars went under the yellow. On the restart a few laps later Will Power, who finished 2nd three years ago with the Penske team, surged ahead and won easily. The 37 year-old Aussie was the runner-up in 2015 by just 1/10th of a second.

Music 101

Day By Day

This hit from the 1972 musical Godspell was released as a single and reached No. 13 on the Billboard charts and every middle school talent show in the U.S.A. that year had two earnest girls performing it. In the single release, the vocal credits went to the cast of the show—lead singer Robin Lamont was not individually credited. She’d later go on to appear in the Seventies horror classic He Knows You’re Alone, then earn a law degree and become a district attorney in Westchester County (now we feel incredibly slothful).

Remote Patrol

Steve Martin & Martin Short

An Evening You Will Forget For The Rest Of Your Life

Netflix

It’s hard to appreciate, if you were not around for it, what a superstar Steve Martin became in the late 1970s. His concerts sold out as if he were Taylor Swift and “A Wild And Crazy Guy” was an album you actually wanted to own (“Some people have a way with words; others………not have way“). Anyway, at about the same time Martin Short was making a name for himself as this quirky comic on SCTV, a Toronto-based sketch comedy show which would air on Friday nights late on NBC and which was in danger of upstaging SNL—so Lorne Michaels, a Canadian himself, poached Short from the cast as a two-fer. Anyway, here they are with their own two-man live show.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

On the bouquet list

Wide World Of Sports

We’ll stop short of calling this the best sports weekend of the year, but it certainly may be the most eclectic. Just a few of the happenings: Champions League Final, Real Madrid vs. Liverpool, from Kiev (Saturday, 2:30 p.m., Fox), NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Semifinals, Albany-Yale followed by Duke-Maryland (Saturday, Noon, ESPN), Monaco Grand Prix (Sunday, 9:05 a.m., ESPN),  Indianapolis 500 (Sunday, noon, ABC), French Open, opening round (Sunday, noon, NBC), Coca-Cola 600 (Sunday, 6 p.m., Fox), Major League Baseball (ESPN will televise back-to-back-to-back games Monday, beginning with Astros-Yankees at 1 p.m. with Justin Verlander on the hill), AND, beginning tonight and going straight through Monday if both series go to Game 7, Celtics-Cavs (Fri.), Rockets-Dubs (Sat.), Cavs-Celtics (Sun.) and Dubs-Rockets (Mon.).

Do try to step away from the television, though.

2. The “No Fun League” Becomes The “Now Fine League”

It was Neil Armstrong who invoked, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind (who was his writer?),” while it was Colin Kaepernnick who took one small knee for justice, but where will that lead? Yesterday it led to the NFL announcing that beginning this season, teams will be fined if players kneel during the anthem (our suggestion: Stand during the anthem with your back to the flag), but that players will be allowed to remain in the locker room during the anthem (out of sight, out of mind).


Of course, President Hypocrite praised the ruling, going so far as to say that those who kneel “should not be in the country.” Blind loyalty to the flag is the exact opposite of patriotism. Freedom is patriotism, and with freedom comes the ability to disagree with the  majority, no matter how unpopular your stance (even if your stance is to not stand) may be, as long as you do so non-violently. Which is what kneeling is.

Anyway, our two suggestions for NFL players who want to protest now not just police killing of black men but overt submission via Roger Goodell: 1) stand, but do not face the flag or 2) write a note to the league office saying that you are unable to stand during the anthem due to painful bone spurs in your feet.

3. Judge For Yourself

Yankee slugger Aaron Judge told ESPN that he would not partake in the Home Run Derby during All-Star festivities this July in Washington, D.C., adding, “Pressure [on me to comply] won’t do anything.”

Bully for him. Last year Judge hit 30 home runs and was hitting .329 in the 84 games prior to the All-Star break. He then won the Home Run Derby. In the first 60 games after that, he hit just 14 home runs and batted .195. It was as if his bat was corked with Kryptonite.

Currently, Judge is batting .284 with 13 home runs and has the fourth-best OBP in the American League. Pen him in as a starting outfielder in the All-Star Game along with Mookie Betts and Mike Trout.

Yesterday afternoon on one of ESPN’s incessantly insipid gab fests (the one with Marcellus Wiley), they bemoaned this decision, and I believe Wiley said something like, “He HAS to do it.” He really doesn’t. And he really shouldn’t.

4. Harvey Weinstein: Lost In New York

Movie mogul monster Harvey Weinstein finally turned himself into police in Manhattan at the 1s Precinct this morning, was arrested, and charged with rape. He was then released on bail at $1 million.

 

5. Where Are They Now?

Yesterday, to quote the site Mediaite, “The Department of Health and Human Services informed Congress yesterday that they had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant kids the agency was responsible for placing with American sponsors.”

Oops. We suspect at least three of them are sleeping in Kramer’s dresser drawers, but where are the rest? Most of these children are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, so they have not likely been kidnapped by NBA draft scouts. But they may be pawns in a vicious game of human trafficking.

Reserves

Quickly, because we have a 12-hour day of serving burgers and beers outside ahead of us (Do you people have ANY IDEA what I sacrifice for you each morning??? We know, we know, no one is forcing us): James Harden is 0-fer-20 from beyond the arc in Houston’s past two games and the Rockets have won both. Go figure…Amazon ($153.2 billion) passes Disney ($152.9 billion) in terms of total market cap. Let the paradigm shift begin.

Music 101

Can’t Find My Way Home

If you ever have the chance, see the 1985 film Fandango, starring very young versions of Kevin Costner, Judd Nelson and Suzy Amis. It’s set in 1970 Texas and this song by Blind Faith closes out the film. That’s Steve Winwood, the song’s writer, on vocals.

Remote Patrol

Game 6: Celtics at Cavs

8:30 p.m. ESPN

The first of two times this weekend people may be asking, “Is this LeBron’s final game in a Cavalier uniform?” Unless you live in Maryland, and you may ask, “Will Sweet Pea ever shave his beard?”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 11 Comments

by John Walters

Update: The Fighting Sweet Peas lost in Boston. We’ll return for Game 7 on Sunday. Til then, we’ll let Susie B. provide coverage in the comments. YAWN.

Starting Five

O’er The Land Of The Free

Two headlines, one right above the other, on ESPN.com this a.m.

“Trump: NFL ‘Doing The Right Thing’ With Anthem”

“Video Shows Tasing, Arrest of Bucks’ Brown”

First off, if Donald Trump can recite the words of the Star-Spangled Banner, much less tell us to what the song pertains other than “MURICA!,” we’d be shocked. Second, when a four-time draft dodger gets uppity about respecting the military, much less the flag, the only salute he’s worthy of is an old-fashioned Italian-American mo’fongu.

Third, the Sterling Brown incident is so commonplace these days that YouTube oughta launch a second channel devoted solely to “Black Men Being Pulled Over.” The issue isn’t the law in these situations; it’s control, it’s humiliation, it’s…dominance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaSL4Io4yWA

So now Roger Goodell, in all his wisdom, has bequeathed that if you don’t stand for the flag, referees will throw a flag. The players and the more enlightened owners (and even the refs) would demonstrate a great deal of understanding if players from both sides knelt during the anthem (offsetting penalties).

2. Death In Yosemite

 

We were incredulous after we took in this view at the cables on the base of Half Dome last August and learned that no one had died there since 2011 (understand, it’s a 9-mile hike one way just to reach this point). That statistic changed Monday, as a man fell to his death while ascending the cables in a thunderstorm.

Alaska: Thrilling, yes. Drilling, no.

We still love that national parks allow us to pursue adventure, sometimes to the point of fatality. It sort of makes a greater point about the planet we inhabit. Meanwhile, here’s a fantastic story in The New York Times about a couple that has visited all 417 U.S. national park sites (there are 60 national parks).

Which reminds us: We’ll take “America The Beautiful” over “The Star-Spangled Banner” every day of the week.

3. ALL CAPS

Ovechkin is not just a pretty face; wait, “is just not a pretty face.”

When the week began, Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals trailed 3 games to 2 to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Prince of Wales Conference final. But they won Game 6 at home and last night, in Tampa (Tampa Bay is not actually a city but rather a body of water), skated past the Lightning 4-0 to advance.

For Alex Ovechkin, the greatest player of his generation this side of the blue line of Sidney Crosby (arguably better: Sid The Kid, 411 goals and 705 assists ; Ove, 607 and 515, it’s his first Stanley Cup final trip in his 13-season career. It’s a great day for the NHL. Washington takes on Las Vegas and we don’t know which city more deserves the nom de place of “Sin City.” But we do know you cannot spell “sincerity” without “Sin City,” without even rearranging the letters.

4. It’s Over, Time (Inc.)

As a former Time-Lifer, someone whose first real post-college job entailed walking into the Time-Life Building on the corner of 50th and 6th each morning (the same building into which Don Draper strolled when Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce was formed), this oral history on the decline of Time, Inc., is a melancholy read. The building that once held Life, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, People, Entertainment Weekly and Money is now a ghost ship, as are those very magazines.

You’d walk down to the second-floor cafeteria (“The Caf”) and stroll down a long hall way on whose walls were some of the most famous photographs of the 20th century (it was Life magazine that purchased the Zapruder film and then did not show every frame due to its graphic nature).

Every periodical has its period, we guess. If you’re a magazine nerd

5. Flake News

Photo taken in past 24 hours. This is the smile of a Republican legislator who hasn’t sold his soul to the president.

Outgoing Arizona senator Jeff Flake (GOP, but not MAGA) delivered an address to the graduates of Harvard Law school at their commencement yesterday:

I do bring news from our nation’s capital. First, the good news: Your national leadership is … not good. At all. Our presidency has been debased. By a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division. And only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works.

This is, in the Eighties, what we’d refer to as a “Benetton ad.”

“Now, you might reasonably ask, where is the good news in that? Well, simply put: We may have hit bottom. Oh, and that’s also the bad news. In a rare convergence, the good news and bad news are the same: Our leadership is not good, but it probably can’t get much worse.”
The bad news would be if Flake is wrong. If we have not hit rock bottom. Time will tell.

Music 101

Dance With Me

Some 70s songs, for worse and not for better, you will never be able to evict from your memory. This 1975 tune from Orleans, a band that was formed in Woodstock, N.Y. in 1972, reached No. 6 on the charts. The following year they’d release an even bigger hit (Can you guess it?) with….

 

…..”Still The One.”

Remote Patrol

Game 5: Dubs at Rockets

9 p.m. TNT

The TNT pre- and post-game crew is still riding a crest (that they’ve been riding for nearly two decades). As for the game, we probably should not watch as the laissez-faire refereeing will upset our anally-minded self too much. Suffice it to say that the Dubs blew a 12-point 4th quarter lead on Tuesday when they could have put this series on ice. Now they’ll have to win again in Houston.