Monthly Archives: July 2018

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

Starting Five

Daily News Blues

Growing up in central Jersey, by the shore, we were a Sunday after-church Daily News family. I began with the Comics section and then moved on to Sports if my dad had finished with it by then.


So here we are, decades later, and the Daily News, now owned by a soulless corporation with an even more soulless name, Tronc, gutted its staff yesterday. Roughly 50% of the editorial staff was fired and 26 of the 35 sports department staffers. We learned about it on Twitter, then watched a video of Daily News alum/Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay lamenting the tragedy from a feed provided by The Big Lead, an aggregation sports web site that does almost no original (unless it’s media-related) reporting…and that’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?

That, and as TBL’s Ryan Glasspiegel pointed out to me, CraigsList, which was killed your local paper’s Classifieds section.

So here we are. New York City has one less tabloid newspaper, for all intents and purposes, than it had the day before. And that’s too bad, but that’s just where the world is headed. People still crave news. They just don’t have as much ink on their fingers as they once did.

2. Apocalypse? Now

Japan: The hottest temperature ever recorded in that country (short of two days in August of 1945), 106 degrees. It’s going to be 117 in Phoenix today, by the way.

What is Hephaestus up to?

Greece: Raging wildfires have claimed the lives of at least five dozen people.

Laos: The Xenamnoy Dam bursts. Several are dead, hundreds are missing.

Dominican Republic: 60 tons of garbage washes ashore. 60 tons!

Never fear, though, because the MegaMillions is up to $512,000,000 and who knows how high it will go before tonight’s drawing.

3. Blame Gary. Blame Aaron, Too

Gary Hustle he is not

We watched the final three innings of Yankees-Rays from a barstool at J.G. Melon’s on the UWS. We saw how the Yanks battled back from four down to put up three runs in the seventh. We winced as Adam Warren allowed the first two Rays batters to get on in the bottom of the seventh, then glimpsed hope when he struck out the next three batters.

In the top of the ninth, the score still 7-6, Rays, we saw leadoff hitter Brett Gardner beat out an infield grounder and then Aaron Judge take ball four on a 3-2 count. First and second, nobody out, you had to like the Yankees’ chances.

Then manager Aaron Boone did a curious thing: he had number three hitter Didi Gregorius lay down a bunt. The Yankees don’t bunt (it was Didi’s first sacrifice of the season). Especially not in the ninth inning. But Didi did it, and it was “successful”. The problem? Now first base was open and Giancarlo Stanton, who had nine base hits in his previous nine at-bats at Tropicana Field, was up.

Intentional walk. Aaron Hicks hits into a force-out at home. And then Gary Sanchez hits a grounder up the middle. The force at second is too late but because Sanchez jogged more than halfway down to first base, watching the play at second, a relay throw to first nails him by a step.

Sanchez is rightly being crucified this morning by what New York newspapers still remain. If he runs to first base, the score is tied and the Yanks have two men on base. But the skipper, Boone, also deserves excoriation. He took the bats out of the hands of the number 3 and 4 hitters on arguably the most potent lineup in the game. That’s really where the Yankees lost last night.

It’s their fourth consecutive loss to the Rays in Tampa and it also puts them at 13-13 since they last arrived in Tampa last month.

4. Hader-ade

Milwaukee Brewer All-Star Josh Hader entered a game in relief and received a standing ovation—again. This happened last night, the second time in three days in Milwaukee.

You can’t get in too much of a lather for what a then 17 year-old from Millersville, Maryland, a pseudo rural-suburban town betwixt Baltimore and D.C., posts on social media. I mean, you can if you’d like, but homophobic and racist language is not uncommon at that age, as a placeholder for young men who are desperately in search of laughs or approbation but are desperately wanting in wit.

What’s absurd, of course, is that Brewer fans are standing and cheering for Hader. What’s even more bizarre are the “Don’t you know what you’re doing?!?” editorials we came across yesterday from the Sports Bloviation precincts.

Here’s Pablo Torre and Bomani Jones from ESPN’s High Noon…

 

Here’s Adam Schein from CBS Sports…


An excerpt: “I don’t want to hear that he was 17, that’s not an excuse for hate. For someone  to dislike someone for race, religion or sexual orientation. And if you’re standing up and cheering, you’re endorsing it.”

Damn straight, you four-eyed New York Jew, is what the very viewers to whom Schein was appealing/admonishing probably thought—or said aloud to loud guffaws at the local brat and brew house.

Here’s ESPN’s Taylor Rooks:

Rooks: “Watching that video, Josh Hader is not what worries me is the crowd. What does this reaction say about us?”

Let’s not even delve into how the same people who stood for Hader would react to being scolded by an African-American female.

Dig: We’re not disagreeing with a single point these folks made. They are being earnest and forthright and, yes, they’re on the proper side of WWJD. What we are saying is that they’re at least a step or three behind. Or hopelessly naive (they’re not). We’re way past pointing out to Americans that their support of homophobia and bigotry and misogyny is wrong, aren’t we? I mean, these people know what they’re cheering for and they outright reject your premise. And the fact that East Coasters of various non-white or non-Christian or non-male tints are the ones scolding them, well, now they’re just throwing an empty Natty Light can at the TV and barking, “Git ‘er done!”

The ascendance of the man currently occupying the Oval Office has emboldened parts of America to let their hate flags fly. Racist and homophobic slurs are no longer muttered under one’s breath. Americans now utter them with at least the same volume they use while ordering the Extra-Value meal at the drive-thru.

And having stereotypical East Coast elites who are either female, non-Caucasian or non-Christian excoriate them is not about to bring them back into the fold (not that having straight while Christian males such as myself will do it, either). They knew who they are. They’re proud of it. We don’t live in Caitlyn Jenner Courage Award/Everyone Retires Jackie Robinson’s Number Land any more.  The Alt-White is making its last stand, and they’re not concealing their bigotry any longer. They’re basking in it.

Your mandate is not to clutch pearls and ask, Don’t you know what you’re doing? Your mandate is to call them what they are: Racists. Bigots. Hypocrites.

Two final points: 1) “Josh Hader” is a first-ballot All-Aptly Named Teamer, 2) Hader deserved NO punishment from MLB for his tweets. First, he typed them long before he was in the MLB. Second, you are entitled to your views, no matter how ugly most of us feel that they are.

5. Kitchen Confidential

In the wake of the suicide of chef/man-about-the-planet Anthony Bourdain, I at long last read his book, Kitchen Confidential. A few thoughts/observations:

  1. A fantastic, honest and insightful read. Bourdain loved the industry and it bleeds through on every page. 2) There’s a chapter near the end in which he tells the story of a chef friend who fired a cook and then that cook went and hung himself. Eerie. 3) There’s another chapter even nearer to the end in which Bourdain is sent on a work excursion to Tokyo. After a hesitant day or two, he completely throws himself into the adventure and one gleans the seeds of his later and wildly successful television career. 4) The “What do you know about me?” anecdote is an all-timer, 5) At the very end Bourdain jots down a list of tips for aspiring chefs/restaurant employees. Here are a few to which we, part-time restaurant employees for the past decade, wholly subscribe and we’ll even add one of our own:Be fully committed. Learn Spanish. Don’t steal. Always be on time. Never make excuses. Never call in sick. Have a sense of humor.*

Mine? Always pass to the right. What do I mean? If you are fortunate enough to work at a busy restaurant, you’re going to have dozens of encounters each shift in which you are headed in one direction and an approaching colleague is headed in the other. And you are both usually in a hurry and the space is ordinarily tight. Always, always, always pass to the right of the other person so that it’s not a game of chicken. It amazes me how many people don’t follow this rule. When I recently suggested this to one of our younger female servers after we’d collided, she laughed and said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Oh, yes. It does matter. Repetition, consistency and attention to detail are what separate any successful restaurant, and most work places, from ones that will not survive.

*These rules apply just about everywhere, no?

Also, we never met Bourdain. We don’t know why he took his own life. What we do feel comfortable saying, having read the book, is that he lived for the energy and the camaraderie and the chaos and the hooliganism of his kitchen at Brasseries Les Halles (which shut its doors for good last August). And once he became a TV star, we imagine the money and fame were too much to walk away from, but that we suspect he missed having his community. It may have been as simple that he felt lonely and lost.

Music 101

Shout It Out Loud

In 1975 the age of flaccid rock peaked with the release of the song “Feelings,” which went to No. 6 on the Billboard charts. This after a concatenation of beige cords-and-clogs tunes by artists such as James Taylor, Carole King, The Carpenters and Seals and Crofts made many wonder if anyone in music believed in fun anymore. And then came KISS. This tune, which has opened many a concert by the band, was their first single off their 1976 album, Destroyer.

Remote Patrol

The Shallows

8 p.m. FX

Blake Lively in a wetsuit and bikini on a rock versus a menacing shark. There’s your elevator pitch.

Lively between a rock and a hard place

Badlands 

8 p.m. TCM

We’ve never seen it, but it’s a young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, 1973, and it’s not the only film title Bruce Springsteen would lift and use for one of his all-time top ten songs (the other being 1958’s Thunder Road, starring Robert Mitchum). If there are others, we trust the most knowledgeable Springsteen fan we know, Randy, will fill us in down below.

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour


Agreed. Want proof? Look at the Hudson River south of the George Washington Bridge. Then look at the Hudson River above George Washington Bridge.

Starting Five

Twitter: Weapon Of Mass Distraction

Let’s simplify it as if we are talking to Trump’s base…

Obama = BAD

Muslims = BAD

America = AMERICA FIRST!


(What does it take to have your Twitter account suspended these days, anyway?)

So, as the walls close around you about both Karen McDougal (the tape) and the truth coming out about the FISA warrant for Carter Page (the FBI did disclose the source of the Steele dossier was the Clinton campaign and the Trump-appointed judge approved it, anyway), Donald ducks the truth and returns to two of his greatest hits (above) by sending out a late Sunday night ALL CAPS threat against Iran.

McDougal: tale of the tape

Remember, it was President Obama (BAD!) who signed a nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran (Muslims: BAD!) and that the major part of Trump’s agenda for his MAGA base is to wipe out everything that Obama did (perhaps that will include the 250% increase in the DOW under Obama’s presidency; we’ll see).

Our favorite part of this kerfuffle was Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accusing Iran’s leaders of governing in such a way that leads to their own personal financial enrichment. That’s the cabinet member calling the kettle Trump if we’re ever heard it.

2. Spencer For Ire

It isn’t too much to say that even if you don’t find Sacha Baron Cohen funny, you have to admire how this man tricked some of the most important figures in the world into making asses of themselves (just by letting their guards down) for his Showtime series, “Who Is America?”. Not that Georgia state representative Jason Spencer fits that “most important figures” description, but he just set the bar for most embarrassing performance.

As ridiculous as the above clip is, it doesn’t show our favorite moment, which is below:


As tweep @piff_da_god asks, “Why did he bite…you know what, never mind…”

Spencer’s histrionics are the most worthy of attention, but let’s not overlook that in another interview, with former president vice president Dick Cheney, Cohen asked, “What was your favorite war?” and he also persuaded Cheney to sign his waterboard kit. What Cohen is revealing is that these people are just as vile, or more vile, than you might have thought.

Not to be outdone, Michelle Wolf‘s riff on ISIS versus “ICE is” is outstanding satire. And our friend and former steakateria colleague Jeremy Holm makes an appearance (he’s the square-jawed dude with brown hair, the first ICE agent to appear and speak).

3. Cliff Dying

This is at least the third selfie-related cliff fatality we’ve posted in 2018. An eighteen year-old British male died while taking a selfie at Cape Solander, a popular whale-watching promontory near Sydney, over the weekend. Earlier this month we had the young man from Illinois who died at the Grand Canyon and earlier this year a dude who fell in another  Australian seaside incident.

Incidentally, we spent a day at the beach last week and watched four teenage ladies spend most of the afternoon taking selfies with one another. It’s as if it’s not important to enjoy yourself in the moment as it is to provide the impression, on social media, that you were having a good time. We remember a long-ago era when young women were able to take photos without sucking in their cheeks to resemble fish. This has been the GOML portion of today’s post.

4. Beatrice Shatters Steeple WR

At a meet in Monaco, 27 year-old Beatrice Chepkoech of Kenya shattered the world record in the steeple chase by MORE THAN EIGHT SECONDS, finishing in 8:44.32. They may want to remeasure that track. In the same race, American Courtney Frerichs finished second and broke Emma Coburn’s American record by two seconds, crossing the finish line in 9:00.85.

It needs to be noted that the record Chepkoech broke belonged to Ruth Jebet, who was caught doping (EPO) and is facing a ban in the coming months for an as yet undisclosed period of time. Jebet, like Chepkoech, is Kenyan.

5. Notre Dame: Now Overrated at Being Overrated

Te’von Coney: Not overrated

When we saw that Yardbarker was putting out a “Top 10 Most Overrated College Football Teams of 2018“, we thought two things: 1) It’s July and bully for them for coming up with tasty clickbait and 2) the Fighting Irish will be on this list.

As we scrolled down and did not see a French word (or two) in bold print, we began to wonder if they’d forgotten Brian Kelly’s team. Then—voila! (incidentally, not the French word we were searching for)— there were the Irish at No. 1. Yes, Notre Dame is now even overrated at being overrated.

Are the Irish, who went 10-3 last season, including a home loss by two points to eventual national runner-up Georgia, overrated? Where are they ranked in preseason polls?

The Sporting News: 9th (too high)

ESPN: 12th (a little too high)

Athlon: 14th (about right)

USA Today: 16th (about right)

CBS: 17th (a smidge low)

The Yardbarker story takes issue with the Irish being in the top ten, but almost no one will have the Irish in the top ten. Related: the toughest four games for the Irish are Michigan (9/1, home), Stanford (9/29, home), Florida State (11/10, home) and USC (11/24, L.A.).

In our minds, the Skunk Bears pose the greatest threat, but it’s a season-opening prime time game and UM, which lost 38-0 ( officially 31-0, but we all know the real score) the last time it visited South Bend, will be starting Shea Patterson in his Maize-and-Blue debut. It’s a toss-up to us.

Stanford will be tough, as Bryce Love and JJ Arcega-toss-a-jump-ball-to-me-in-the-endzone-and-we’ll-keep-doing-this-as-long-as-the-refs-call-a-PI-Whiteside return. No gimme.

Florida State. You wanna talk overrated? The Seminoles finished 7-6 last year and Jimbo Fisher somehow landed the biggest contract in college football by exiting Tallahassee. Not worried.

USC. Could be tough in the Mausoleum, but Sam Darnold is gone. We rank this as Notre Dame’s third-most difficult contest.

Reserves

Go West, Young Man (and Middle-Aged Men, and Women, and Couples, and Siblings)

Turning 30 years old last Friday was the wonderful buddy comedy Midnight Run, a film as underrated as Notre Dame football is overrated. Robert DeNiro was never better and Charles Grodin parlayed this performance into dozens of Letterman appearances that revealed he wasn’t really straying too far from who he really is. But it got us to thinking, seeing as how Rain Man also was released in 1988, about a defined era in American film in which an odd, or at least unlikely couple, pile into vehicles of different sorts and make cross-country treks, always going west.

(Arguably the greatest final scene in ’80s teen movie history, and let’s give an enormous round of applause to Viveca Lindfors, who nails the English professor role)

Our short list: Midnight Run; Rain Man; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; The Sure Thing; Thelma and Louise. All five of these films were released between 1985 and 1991 and all of them, even the last one, have elements of humor. What was happening domestically here to inspire this adventure theme and is it okay if we name it the Grapes of Mirth oeuvre?

Our favorites, in order: Midnight Run, Thelma and Louise, The Sure Thing, Rain Man, PT&A. If we’ve missed any like-minded films from that era, go ahead and tell us.

Music 101

I Need To Know

Most if not all of us attended junior high or high school with at least one “guitar hero” (at my school, it was Chris Redl), a somewhat introverted kid who didn’t play on any sports teams but at some point pulled out his six-string and showed us what he’d been doing in his bedroom all those afternoons. Tom Petty was the paragon of that kid, but besides that, and this tune exemplifies it, he was blessed with the ability to craft clean, clutter-free songs that simply RAWKED.

This song was the first single off the Heartbreakers’ second album, You’re Gonna Get It!(1978), and it peaked at No. 41. For shame.

Remote Patrol

The House On Haunted Hill

5:15 p.m.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmgAsLr2bgI

One of the first horror films my parents were dumb enough to allow me to watch, and I think they let me sleep in their room the next three nights. I was 12. Starring Vincent Price as an eccentric millionaire who invites seven strangers to spend an entire night in his mansion and for those who remain all night, a $10,000 prize awaits. So obviously the film is a little dated. It was released in 1959.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour

This cartoon is 50 years old, but could have been drawn last night.

 

Starting Five

Someone needs to ask if intelligence officials found a hidden recorder in the soccer ball

From Vlad To Worse

What was it that Hillary called Trump? “Putin’s puppet?” Yeah, well what did she know?

The “It’s Just Lunch” date between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin went so well, as far as they’re concerned, that the American president has invited him over to his house for a sleepover.

Here’s what we imagined: Putin arrives and Trump has him and his entire entourage arrested and imprisoned. And he pulls the “A-ha!” moment on all the libs. You thought you knew me! This was all a two-year ruse in order to bring the world’s most ruthless dictator to justice. I had all of you fooled. Even Mueller!

[Yesterday’s news came as a shock to National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, Soothes, Relieves]

That would be the greatest geopolitical sting move of our lifetimes, and it might just work. Hell, Trump might even rise above 45% in the approval polls. It won’t happen, but just imagine if it did.

2. Missouri Compro Capsize

A tourist duck boat with 31 people aboard in Branson, Missouri, capsized into Table Rock Lake when a sudden storm swept in Thursday evening. Thirteen passengers perished.

The video above, apparently shot from a nearby, larger vessel, shows the boat going down. The commentary is, at best, a little tone-deaf.

3. About That All-Star Game

First-half AL MVP Mookie Betts struck out twice in three at-bats and we don’t think he’s going to make contact on this one.

First, we’re not as curmudgeonly as you may think: we actually enjoyed the in-game, on-field conversations with All-Stars. Shortstop Francisco Lindor was endearing in two languages and centerfielder Charlie Blackmon was flat-out funny. We’re naming him the game’s Most Voluble Player.

Second, 10 home runs (an All-Star Game record…by a mile) and 24 strikeouts. This is where baseball is headed. More power on both ends. Everyone is now Dave Kingman or Nolan Ryan and more importantly, that’s where the dollars are. Doubles are tolerated and singles are quaint and fielders are, most of the time, superfluous.

Consider, it was 10-inning game, which means 60 outs, which means that 40% of the outs came by strikeout. That would equate to each pitching staff whiffing 10.8 batters per nine innings.

4. Everybody Take A Knee

You know that scene in every decent rebel film where one person has the courage to stand up, then another, and another and—”O Captain, my Captain!”—by the end of the scene you’ve got goosebumps on your forearms and the room is getting dusty? Well, we’re now waiting for that scene to take place in the NFL, and we’re hopeful that it is imminent.

Miami Dolphin owner Stephen Ross has become the NFL’s marquee owner in terms of castigating the Kaepernick types. Listen to what he said in March:

“Initially, I totally supported the players in what they were doing. It’s America and people should be able to really speak about their choices.

“When that message changed [i.e. Trump’s tweets inaccurately conflating kneeling with a protest of the military], and everybody was interpreting it as that was the reason, then I was against kneeling. I like Donald (Trump). I don’t support everything that he says. Overall, I think he was trying to make a point, and his message became what kneeling was all about. From that standpoint, that is the way the public is interpreting it. So I think that’s really incumbent upon us to adopt that. That’s how, I think, the country now is interpreting the kneeling issue.”

Ross, a Michigan alum, is the largest individual donor in school history, having given $378 million to the Skunk Bears

Think about that. Yes, Ross is a 78 year-old man, but he’s also a brilliant attorney. And he’s Jewish. He’s basically arguing that while people say that the Holocaust was the product of a sick man manipulating society and using anti-Semitism as his weapon to commit genocide, the president has said it was just a means of redistributing wealth and that argument is good enough for him.

We wonder if the Miami Dolphins can send their own owner to sensitivity training. Meanwhile, we do hope the Dolphins en masse kneel for the anthem during their first game. Or that some team does. There’s nothing more American than saying, “Don’t tread on me.” Besides, it’s not as if the Dolphins can suspend the entire team, can they?

5. Bringing a Knife To A Gun Massacre

A reminder that 59 people were murdered in Las Vegas last October by a man who never got within 100 yards of any of his victims.

In Lubeck, Germany, 14 people are injured, some seriously, when a man on a bus went nutso and began stabbing passengers indiscriminately. Re-read that: “injured,” not killed. While Germany does not outlaw guns, its gun laws are far more restrictive than ours. Then again, whose laws aren’t?

Anyway, if only there’d been a good guy with a knife on board, maybe fewer people would have been stabbed. You’re never going to eliminate nutso, but you can control the level of carnage nutso is able to create.

Music 101

Please Mr. Postman

This late 1961 song by the Marvelettes was not only the first Motown recording to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts, it’s also one of very few to hit No. 1 in two different decades by two different artists (the Carpenters had a No. 1 hit with it in 1975). Thus concludes our theme week. You guess the theme?

Remote Patrol

Groundhog Day

8 p.m. AMC

Caddyshack

10:30 p.m. AMC

Quite the comic doubleheader here, and we’re just realizing that two of Bill Murray‘s greatest movies revolved around rodents. The legendary Douglas Kenney (and countless kilos of cocaine) wrote the latter film, which was released just three weeks after Airplane! in 1980. Kenney, who’d also written Animal House, considered himself a colossal failure in comparison to the writers of Airplane! (Surely, you can’t be serious…) and was dead less than five weeks later. Did he kill himself or did he slip on the edge of a cliff in Hawaii? As one friend noted, “He slipped while thinking about jumping off the cliff.”

p.s. Ted Knight (Judge Smails) stole Caddyshack and at the very least deserved an Oscar nomination. No one has ever done a better job of portraying a rich, white, golf-fanatic blowhard without actually becoming president.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet du Jour


This would be funnier if it were not indeed true.

Starting Five

The Lamest Generation

Mark Twain famously said (almost everything he said he said famously) that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” By the way, can you imagine a parlor in which the only three people are Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill (oh, and LaVar Ball)? Also, heady stuff from a dude whose own name was a lie.

But we digress. Donald Trump’s lie (would/wouldn’t) traveled halfway around the world but it took 27 hours, which is the gap in time from whence he said, “I don’t see any reason why it would be” to “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be.” So outrageously and comical inept and odious is this president that we don’t even have time to go deep into the fact that he said this while holding a sheet of paper on which he had written, in black Sharpie, “NO COLUSION.” (sic)


Anyway, Mr. Trump’s Fantastic Fib (“I’m just glad he clarified it,” said Marco Rubio) and the lack of fallout from Congress underscores one simple fact: Tom Brokaw needs to write a sequel to The Greatest Generation and title it The Lamest Generation. It should include profiles of men such as Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, and all the rest who do the bidding of white fascism at the expense of liberty.

We need to add: Last night it was leaked that both former CIA director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey, before inauguration day, briefed Trump on the fact that both agencies had concluded and had proof that Russia hacked the election. Which is to say that for 18 months now Trump has been lying about knowing whether Russia hacked the election. And the GOP-led Congress reacts to this with a “meh.”

Fear of the loss of white supremacy is a powerful drug, we guess.

2. Cohn Jobs

There also needs to be a film about Roy Cohn, the U.S. attorney whose two proteges, Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump, espoused polar opposite views while each inflicting America with mass hysteria that caused unfathomable damage.

Let’s begin with Senator McCarthy. Cohn, who was McCarthy’s chief counsel, was the button-pusher and master manipulator behind the Red Scare of the 1950s. Nothing ever came of it in terms of actual damage to the United States from the Communists, but you may recall a small country in southeast Asia that cost 68,000 American lives a decade later. One wonders if our government would have been so spooked by the “Commie threat” if Cohn hadn’t pushed McCarthy to pursue his own witch hunt crusade.

McCarthy and Cohn

As Vietnam was ending, and Donald Trump was not attending, Cohn got his hooks into the burgeoning real-estate mogul from Queens and taught him all his tricks. And so here we are, more than 60 years after the apex of McCarthyism, with Trump pushing the line that the Russians and Vladimir Putin are our friends. Which is kind of the exact opposite of what McCarthy said. The only common link is to scare undereducated (white) Americans and instill in them a paranoia.

Cohn and Trump

What’s funny about this is that Cohn spent his entire adult life as a closeted homosexual. No better way to keep folks from poking at the skeletons in one’s closet than to imagine skeletons in theirs and scream about it. In a 2008 profile of Cohn in The New Yorker, author Jeffrey Toobin quotes Roger Stone as saying, “Roy Cohn was not gay. He was a man who liked having sex with men.”

That’s the kind of doublespeak for which The Worst Wing has become famous.

3. There Are No Negroes In Montenegro

The map, to assist an utterly incompetent president who would never be able to find it on one on his own

In an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News on Tuesday, Donald Trump referred to Montenegro, which has a population the size of Vermont (approx. 600,000) and a land area the size of Connecticut, “a tiny country” filled with “very aggressive people.” Jeez, what would you call New Jersey, then?

Trump continued on Montenegro, which was admitted into NATO last year, “They may get aggressive, and, congratulations, you’re in World War III.” Now, to be fair, World War I did begin after an otherwise historically insignificant figure (and popular British band about 14 summers ago) was assassinated, causing Austria to declare war on Serbia, in which Russia declared was in turn on Austria, in which turn Germany declared was on Russia, in which turn France, England and the U.S.A. declared war on Germany. Even Australia got involved. Japan, too, and they were on our side.

When we sang, “Take me out,” we didn’t mean literally….

However, the difference here is that NATO was created post-World War II so that Russia, the Big, Bad Wolf of Europe, wouldn’t begin picking off tiny countries such as, I dunno, Ukraine. And two years ago Montenegro accused Russia of plotting an election-day coup to assassinate its then-prime minister in order to install a pro-Moscow politician who would reverse course on NATO membership (remember, Montenegro only joined NATO last year, AFTER this election). The plot failed and, oh, by the way, can you imagine Russia attempting something so nefarious?!? Influencing the outcome of another country’s elections?

So now here’s Trump whining about the inconvenience of defending Montenegro should Russia attack it, literally. The MH staff reads (and puts out) a lot of tweets, but the one that caught our eyes yesterday was one in which the tweep noted how Trump attacks the European Union and NATO and lavishes nothing but praise on Putin. And the tweep drew the conclusion that this is bigger than just Russia maybe having something on Trump. This is about, in a joint strategy shared by Russia and Trump (and his nuttiest supporters) a global movement toward white-supremacist fascism. That’s the big picture outcome which they are pursuing.*

*The staff has Trump On The Brain this morning. We don’t apologize, but we do acknowledge it.

4. Isn’t That Fedorable?

North Carolina football coach Larry Fedora sauced up somnolent ACC media days yesterday when he uttered the following: “It hasn’t been definitively proven that football causes CTE, but the fact that the connection has been made has impacted how people view the sport.”

You bet your ass he doubled down: “”The game is safer than it’s ever been.”

So you have a man in power who denies obvious scientific conclusions while making hyperbolic statements without merit. Sound like anyone you know?

And, yeah, he also said that he spoke to a military general who concluded that you can draw a direct line between U.S. military supremacy on the globe and the fact that we are the only nation that plays football (we’re not), but then how come Canada isn’t more of an international military force? And how do you explain that entire Vietnam quagmire thing? Were the Vietcong running a no-huddle Tet offense?

5. Here’s The Story…

Does this Studio City, Calif., home that is currently on the market (asking price: $1.8 million) look familiar to you? It should. It’s the home where Mike, Carol, Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby and Cindy Brady once lived. And Alice, too.

Here’s the bizarre part: It’s only, in reality, a two-bedroom house.

One wonders: Can current Californians afford a $1.8 million home on an architect’s salary with the wife staying at home? Never mind the live-in maid and the six hungry mouths.

Reserves

Ummmm

ESPN, the network that three years ago handed Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner a Courage Award, last night put all of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse victims from Michigan State on stage and self-proclaimed the moment as “powerful.’ And then the next day Mike Tirico hosted The Golf Channel’s coverage of The British Open. Potato, potahto harassment, her-ass-meant.

By the way, just for perspective’s sake, this is tantamount to putting all of Harvey Weinstein’s victims on stage at the Oscars. How would that have gone over, I wonder?

Music 101

One Tin Soldier

Originally written an released by the Canadian The Original Caste in 1969, it was covered by Coven in 1971 and re-released for the film Billy Jack. For those Arizonans reading this, yes, that is the Prescott town square.

Remote Patrol

British Open

All Day The Golf Channel

 

From Carnoustie, Scotland. Three-time champ Tiger Woods tees off just before 10:30 a.m.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

 

For the second time in 40 years, a Joe Walsh leaves the Eagles to embark on a solo career.

Starting Five

Finland Follies

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the road to Helsinki is paved with maleficent ones. Why anyone is in the least bit surprised that Donald Trump publicly sided with Vladimir Putin over the FBI and the Dept. of Justice during their joint press conference yesterday, which followed a two-hour one-on-one-plus-interpreters-only confab in a room, believe it, called the Hall of Mirrors, is surprising to us.


Putin is not only whom Trump aspires to be as a ruler, but there’s a high probability, as the evidence slowly leaks out, that Putin has Trump by the short hairs either in terms of devastating intel or fiscal leverage, i.e., he funded Trump.

Trump committed treason yesterday. He did not adhere to the “Be Best” code.

Clip ‘n save: Each of those two translators are not immune from a future subpoena, if it comes to that. We imagine one of them will be difficult to extradite, but the other, not so much. Then again, if I were either of those two translators, I’d hire a few food tasters and pronto.

2. Once More, Sorkin Called It

Ironically, we were watching Season 6, Episode 14 of The West Wing (“The Wake-Up Call”) last night , during which White House Communications Director-cum-Deputy Chief of Staff Toby Ziegler is pulled into a meeting with a delegation from Belarus.

The elders, after throwing off decades of brutal dictatorship, have traveled to Washington to write a constitution for their newly democratized nation. They insist on mirroring the American model  (three branches, a president, etc.), but Toby beseeches them to explore the parliamentary model.

“I was thinking we should push beyond American-style government,” the White House’s designated cynic says. “Only four presidential democracies have lasted 30 years. Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison [the framers of the U.S. Constitution], they got lucky.”

When the Belarus figures and an American constitutional scholar (played by Christopher Lloyd, whom I know as Reverend Jim but you may know as Doc from Back To The Future) argue that the British Prime Minister is “weak” and “subject to shifting coalitions,” Toby fires back, “She’s subject to the people’s representatives so she can be ousted if she summarily starts locking people up who don’t like the White Album!”

A Belarussian objects that the man they want to elect president is “a good man and he wouldn’t do this. He would create a stable environment for the country.”

“For the next 10 years, yes,” agrees Ziegler. “But this document isn’t about your current presidential hopeful, it’s about the 60 guys who come after him. You need systemic protection, safeguards, that can last beyond a generation. You gotta look beyond the moment, beyond the here and now.”

Interesting. That scene was penned in 2005. Imagine…

By the way, if you want to see one of the most crisply written and funny scenes in the entire series (now on Netflix), skip back two episodes in Season 6 to the “365 Days” ep, and find the scene in which Toby asks Annabeth (spunky spark plug  Kristin Chenoweth) to teach the First Lady about stock car racking. I can’t find it on YouTube, but it’s a hoot.

3. Lock Her Up!

We probably all should have put our antennae up a few years back when the media described twenty something Maria Butina as a “Russian gun rights activist,” seeing as how” there’s nothing close to a second Amendment in Russia and, with a de facto dictatorship installed the past 18 years, there’s not about to be one.

Yesterday, in the second instance of impeccable timing by U.S. justice officials in the past four days, the Justice Department unsealed documents showing that it was charging Butina, 29, with espionage. She is the 26th Russian so charged this year.

The charges were filed under seal Saturday, Butina, who resides in the U.S., was arrested Sunday, and the charges were made public (and Butina appeared in court) on Monday, mere hours after the Trump-Putin reacharound. Impeccable timing.

One (of many) noteworthy things to take away from the affidavit detailing the charges against Butina, who allegedly twice tried to engineer private Trump-Putin meetings and also infiltrated the NRA as a conduit to financing politicians ($$$ goes from Russia to NRA to pols; see how easy that is?), theres’ this, as explicated by The Daily Beast:

“In that March 24 email, she proposed to this American contact of hers something she called “Project Diplomacy.” The GOP, she wrote, is “traditionally associated with negative and aggressive foreign policy, particularly with regards to Russia. However, now with the right to negotiate seems best to build konstruktivnyh relations.”

–“Now with the right to negotiate.” What exactly gave Butina that “right?” Could it be back channel money to the GOP? Or was it blackmail? Also, this email was written on March 24, 2015, nearly three months BEFORE Trump declared his candidacy. Were the Russians already working behind the scenes with Trump or had they already targeted the GOP in general?

4. Netflix Takes A Hit

Netflix stock is as unbreakable as Kimmie Schmidt

MH’s fiduciary arm, Walker Capital, has enjoyed a bountiful 2018 so far with its heavy investments in Amazon (up more than 50%) and Netflix (up more than 100%) when trading ended yesterday. But then Netflix announced its second quarter earnings and fell one million new subscriptions short of its guidance (5.2 million versus 6.2 million) and the stock plunged nearly 13% (about $50 per share) after hours.

What does Walker Capital advise? DON’T SELL! And if you want, buy more. Look again: a company that did not exist as a streaming video service a dozen years ago just locked up 5 million NEW subscribers in the past three months. You wanna know how many subscribers most magazines have? Far less.

Yes, Amazon and the new AT&T/Time Warner merger, and Disney, will provide more competition in the coming years. But that’s only because Netflix demonstrated there was a viable market here where once nothing existed. It’s a blip.

Shares of Netflix (NFLX) are still up 1,000% in the past five years. That’s pretty, prit-tee, good (oops, wrong streaming service).

5. Cliff Diving

It’s been a bizarre year for female Oregon drivers and the Pacific Highway along the northern California coast. On Sunday a couple on a camping trip near Big Sur spotted a white SUV at the bottom of a 200-foot cliff, on the rocks at the foot of the Pacific Ocean.

As the couple searched more, they found 23 year-old Angela Hernandez, apparently the vehicle’s driver, who had been missing for more than a week. Hernandez told investigators she had swerved to avoid a rabbit (no details on whether she meant a bunny or a VW type).

On the bright side, those sunsets must have been sublime

Anyway, that’s odd. Surviving a 200-foot drop off the PCH with no life-threatening injuries, then lasting another full week along the bottom of a cliff along the Pacific and not succumbing to hypothermia, etc? Who was riding shotgun with her, Rob Konrad?

Anyway, Ms. Hernandez must be steamed that she received so much less coverage than the Thai boys soccer team.

Music 101

Doctor! Doctor!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APyl6Cnbfzw

The British trio that were Thompson Twins released this single in 1984 off their album Into The Gap. The symptoms are “burning, burning” and lead singer Tom Bailey, who incidentally has an underrated, powerful voice, wonders “if it’s love I’m feeling.” That’s one term for it, Tom.

Remote Patrol

MLB All-Star Game

8 p.m. Fox

Might HR Derby champ Bryce Harper also win All-Star Game MVP?

In the days before cable and Blockbuster Video and then streaming, this event was the unchallenged television highlight of the summer. Nothing else came close. Then all those things, plus inter-league play, were spawned, and the midsummer classic lost its luster. It’s still fun for a few innings, then the starters are replaced, and a bunch of second-rate yokels who had to be there to represent the Rays and Padres decide who will host Game 7 of the World Series. Can’t say it makes much sense.