We’re embarking on a pilgrimage to a magical northern Indiana spot today, so this has to be quick.
Starting Five
You know why this man is smiling
Berkeley Bros
On the same day that Cal alum Aaron Rodgers (’04) signed a record-breaking, four-year extension with the Green Bay Packers valued between $176 and $180 million (with $103 million guaranteed upfront), fellow Cal alum and Super Bowl-winning linebacker Mychal Kendricks (’11)was charged with insider trading. The Cleveland Browns, Kendricks’ current squad, later cut him.
2. Don McGone
No, not that Don. Sadly. The White House announced that its chief counsel, Don McGahn, will be exiting in the coming weeks. Certainly it had nothing to do with the White House learning that McGahn had spent 30 hours talking to Robert Mueller and his staff recently.
3. The War of 13-12
36 hits, 25 runs, 13 pitchers, four lead changes and one player, Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich, hitting for the cycle. That’s the story from Cincinnati on a late August night as the Brewers defeated the Reds, 13-12.
4. A Nearly Dead Ringer
No, someone in Montgomery, Texas, was not attempting to recreate a scene from The Strangers last week. This 32 year-old woman rang the doorbells of at least five homes at or after 3 a.m. Why? She was reportedly trying to escape a domestic abuse situation (we know: Zach Smith lives in Ohio. Hey, don’t @ us!). Her 49 year-old boyfriend was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
5. Flying Fish
Holy smokes! To stock remote lakes, @utahdwr drops this 1-3 inch trout from airplanes. Apparently 95–99 percent survive the fall, and it’s less stressful for the fish than traveling by land. 🐟🐡 pic.twitter.com/IJdzTPx5ux
This apparently is a thing. In Utah it’s easier and less traumatic on the piscine species to air drop them into a lake than to drive them from a hatchery.
Music 101
Spiderwebs
The early ’90s was flush with fantastic and diverse bands: Nirvana and Pearl Jam, obviously, but also No Doubt and Green Day and Live and Counting Crows and The Cranberries and Smashing Pumpkins and the Lemonheads and Matthew Sweet and Blues Traveler and Oasis and and Weezer and Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead. I traveled a lot those days for SI, and the radio was a constant and satisfying companion. What happened? Why did it have to end?
Meanwhile, I will never forget walking outside from work one late summer afternoon in the early ’90s and seeing Gwen Stefani and the band rehearsing this song from atop the marquee of Radio City Music Hall. Pretty cool moment.
Remote Patrol
8 1/2
8 p.m. TCM
Fellini’s classic. We had to watch it for a course in college and remember nothing from it except that maybe we missed chicken patty night because of it. If you’re not into avant-garde Best Foreign Film Oscar winners that are widely considered to be among the top ten films ever made, there’s Northwestern at Purdue on ESPN at 8 p.m.
Google and Amazon plan and think in terms of twenty year time horizons. The current case of totalitarian neurosyphilis will run its course in an increment of months, like any other poorly treated infection.
Her team lost in overtime, but anyone who stayed up late (on the East Coast) and witnessed her performance in Game 2 of the WNBA semifinals between the Phoenix Mercury and Seattle SueBirds (or Seattle Stewies) can bear witness to the fact that Diana Taurasi is the greatest women’s basketball player EVAH.
The Mercury trailed by 19 at Seattle in the 3rd quarter, but the Chick from Chino began to will them back. She buried a trio of three-pointers in the final three minutes, the first from Mercer Island and the last two off-balance as she moved to her right. The latter of those two, to tie the game, came with three seconds left in Sue Bird practically in her bra.
We Must Mention: Seattle led by four in overtime and Phoenix got the ball back with a few seconds remaining. Analyst Rebecca Lobo noted that all five Seattle players should just stay in the free throw lane because the only possible thing that could go wrong here is if they fouled and Taurasi made a three, setting up a potential four-point play. She’s ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Of course, the Seattle coaching staff/players ignored that sage advice, manned up on Taurasi, and fouled her as she drove and shot the three. They were bailed out by the facts that A) she missed and B) the ref did not call it, which is why you get this stalk-off staredown above.
2. Aaron Cox
Cox, left, and Trout, right, both starred at Millville High
It’s not even a blip on the radar screen here in the East, but the death of Mike Trout’s brother-in-law, Aaron Cox, 24, has been cataclysmic inside the Angels clubhouse. Trout is from a small southern New Jersey town, which is where he met his future wife, Jessica. Aaron was Jessica’s younger brother, who starred at the same high school in baseball that Trout did.
Earlier this month Cox, who was a minor-league pitcher battling back from injuries, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Trout wore his name on the back of his jersey last weekend. In his first at-bat since returning from an injury and dealing with Cox’s death, Trout hit a triple.
3. Baby, It Swarm Outside*
The judges wonder, What is a Hot Gog?
*The judges will also accept, “Bee-vacuation”
On what might have been the hottest day of the year in New York City, a swarm of bees gathered on the umbrella of a hot dog stand in Times Square (and ordered 3 dogs, kraut, no relish). City officials wisely removed the bees without doing harm to any of them, since bees are probably as responsible for the continued success of all living creatures as any one species in the animal world.
Of course, some people failed to grasp this. If they were smarter, they’d realize that the best move toward public health would be to remove the hot dog stand. Don’t @ us, we love hot dogs, too, and are frequent visitors to Gray’s Papaya, the “Famous Hotdoggery.”
How did the bees get to Times Square, you ask? They took the B train…
4. Amazon $2,000?
Morgan: Not a bullish Bezos bank
This morning Amazon (AMZN) shares got a 2% boost when investment bank Morgan Stanley (not to be confused former Patriot wideout Stanley Morgan, but then why would you?) raised its price target on the Bezos Behemoth to $2,500. The stock, which closed July at a price of $1,777, is now at $1,970. Those who were saying that it could top $2,000 by the end of 2018 are adjusting their predictions to “end of the summer.”
MH’s fiduciary arm, Walker Capital, owns a large stake in AMZN, but not as large as that of MH’s chief consumer and critic, Susie B. If AMZN hits $2,500, that lady is gonna be rich Rich RICH. Would she attempt a hostile takeover of Medium Happy, or will she simply continue her passive aggressive takeover in the comments section? Stay tuned….
5. The Grange Award Nominees (and Pick)
Let’s dispense with the suspense: we’re letting our feelings for good friend Thom Gatewood get involved and picking his grandson, A.J. Dillon of Boston College, to win the Grange. Last season as a true frosh Dillon, from New London, Conn., rushed for at least 149 yards in six of the Eagles’ final seven games, i.e., when they at last made him a starter. He’s also very good at body-slamming defensive backs who dare to take him on mano a mano.
This move alone would have gotten Dillon onto our list
Our other finalists….
2. Nick Bosa, DE, Ohio State: Super stud who will play in some big games (at Penn State, versus Michigan) in November.
3. Khalil Tate, QB, Arizona: Like Dillon, didn’t make a peep in September, then became a starter in October and lit the Pac-12 on fire.
4. Jonathan Taylor-not-Thomas, RB, Wisconsin: As a true frosh, finished third in the nation in rushing last season and he may have the nation’s best offensive line in front of him. Also, Wisconsin plays no one until it visits Ann Arbor on October 13.
5. Bryce “What Is Love, Baby Don’t Hurt Me, Don’t Hurt Me, No More”, RB, Stanford: We really didn’t want to add another RB to the list, and we feel that David Shaw would probably put him out on the field even if he had a pair of torn ACL’s, Type-2 diabetes, a hernia and syphillis, but the kid can flat-out fly and he has marquee games versus USC and Notre Dame in September to get the Grange Express rolling. So, reluctantly, we’ll add his name and watch as Tom Rinaldi gushes about how he’ll become a doctor and cure 97 types of cancer.
Music 101
Live Forever
It doesn’t happen often: a song you’ve never heard of by a band you’ve never heard of plays on the radio and before that song is over, you know both it and the folks playing it are gonna be YUGE. Oasis never fulfilled their promise of being the greatest British band since the Stones or Beatles, but then again, who from the U.K. has been better than the Gallagher brothers since the early ’90s? Radiohead. Okay, perhaps. Coldplay? SHUTCHO MOUTH!
We contend there are more Oasis songs people would rather listen to than Radiohead, by the way. Their greatest error is not being as magnificent over the long haul as this song suggested from 1994 suggested they could be.
Remote Patrol
Bogie & Bacall
TCM
8 p.m. The Big Sleep
10 p.m. Key Largo
Now that is a dame
They smoldered onscreen and, despite a 25-year age difference, fell in love and got married off. Bogie, born on Christmas day in New York City in 1899, was the son of a cardiopulmonary surgeon (we didn’t know the profession existed 100 years ago) and a Mayflower descendant. Betty Bacall was a nice and lovely girl from the Bronx (just like the mother of this site’s author).
Here are two of their better films, both of them in the noir category.
I wanted to give this movie a hug. No, that’s not quite right. I wanted this movie to hug me.
I’m certain I’m not the only one who feels that way. This movieinevitably crumbles into romantic comedy formula, and I hoped for more comedy in all that romance from start to finish, but despite those imperfections I was won over enough to see past the flaws. It is an infectious story about a girl from the wrong side of the tracks trying to fit in with a high-society family. It is also a legacy marker for Asians in Hollywood film, anchored by actress Michelle Yeoh as a dragon of a potential mother-in-law.
I don’t know what CRAZY RICH ASIANS would be without Yeoh and all that fire in her eyes. Flimsier perhaps, and the production might have resorted to stunt-casting, hiring every Asian actor/actress working today so the rest of us in the audience think “Look! They got that actor, too!”
The movie starts off with a 1995 prologue on a dark and stormy night in London, when Yeoh’s young family, drenched and practically shivering, asks the hotel desk clerk for the keys to the suite. The clerk and the manager tell her to leave, despite the family’s paid-for reservation. The racists won’t even let the family use the hotel phone to make another reservation elsewhere. Yeoh, ever the protective lioness, then spits back one of the best cinematic “fuck you” moments in a movie I can remember without actually using that language. By the end of the scene, her young son looks back at the two cowering hotel employees, and the standard is set: Mom is a fixer. My mom is the universe. Don’t mess with my mom.
That boy grows up to be one of the most eligible bachelors in Singapore (Henry Golding, he’ll get some more work after this), a kind and decent fella, and as the film quickly points out with a shirtless scene, the hot guy of the story. Not long after his reveal, that boy’s cousin, Astrid (played by the gorgeous Gemma Chan), is introduced as a modern-day goddess, Oxford-educated with a perfect-looking and also shirtless husband to boot. The movie likes to attack stereotypes that way: Asian men are the lookers, as attractive as any white or African-American man, and the women are intelligent, formidable and most importantly, in no way subservient. What is universal here: It’s not a good sign that Astrid’s hubby showers before coming to bed.
But let’s back up and come to America. We are introduced to the girl at the center of the movie, Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at NYU. An expert in game theory, we meet her during a lecture wher, she outplays an unsuspecting poker player after he becomes too emotional on a single hand with high stakes.
Afterwards Chu meets her boyfriend from Singapore at a Flatiron District bar, and he suggests something a little more East. “In the East Village,” she asks? No, he’s about to be whisk her off to the Far East to his friend’s wedding. When they get their first-class sleeping berths, Rachel begins to wonder how rich her guy really is because, after all, he uses her Netflix password. Meanwhile, the rest of that Flatiron bar sends out a barrage of social posts about how this Singapore prince has finally found his princess, alerting the Yeoh character and that entire country that an interloper is about to touch down and steal him away. More high stakes hands lay ahead for Rachel.
The movie smartly resists turning Rachel into an overwhelmed ditz. It also has a lot to say about first-generation Asian-Americans – not only can they can be considered outcasts by their adopted country, but a strong possibility exists they will not be welcomed by their country of origin if they ever return. The derogatory term “banana” is tossed around in this movie, yellow on the outside, white (American and selfish) within. And so that’s how Rachel appears to many of those in Singapore society before she gets her bearings, and even after winning many of them over, there is that impossible mother-in-law to contend with.
Like many, I remember Yeoh best from CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. She gave life to one of the great female warriors in cinema history, tougher than Sarah Conner in T2, fiercer than Ripley in ALIENS, and more cunning than any of the badass women still standing in GAME OF THRONES. That’s a worthy adversary in any rom-com. And when that warrior-actress spits at Rachel “You will never be good enough,” it definitely elevates the moment way above the average in this genre.
There are other fine flourishes. The director of production, Vanja Cernjul, shot Singapore with a rose-colored lens. He showcases a food court scene with two happy couples that should be the country’s next tourism commercial, and a mood-lighting wedding scene that involved running water really stood out as well. And Constance Wu hangs in there to the end as Rachel, perfectly relatable. If you aren’t rooting for Rachel the moment she steps off the plane, then you’ve been eating with a silver spoon in your mouth since you were born, which is, of course, the point.
Don’t mistake my praise for high praise … the movie is fluffy and entirely predictable in a PRETTY WOMAN or MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING kind of way. They even have a montage where the gay best friend of the family gives our heroine a makeover, trying on different outfits so she looks like a modern-day princess. There’s a scene where the wacky college friend, the movie’s comic relief who represents Asian “new money,” nonetheless gets serious when the plot demands it and the heroine wants to run back to America, telling her bluntly “You’re afraid.” The cynic in me knows Hollywood wants the same but different, and the different this time is the All-Asian cast. And perhaps only this time.
Still, in the final moments, as the fireworks exploded around a high-rise building in Singapore, and the performers celebrated, I found CRAZY RICH ASIANS charming both for what it is, and what it may represent. CRA is already a groundbreaker for Asian cinema and a word-of-mouth hit, pulling in over $50 million at the box office in its first nine days of release — off a reported $30 million budget. That’s a nice line of credit to have.
It’s too early to say with certainty, but maybe the film serves as inspiration for today’s generation of Asian creatives, who, I hope, will get a widely-released Hollywood film made that is a true original. Yeoh and this cast obviously deserve to be known for more than their former typecasts: as samurai warriors, WW2 suicide bombers, token Asian friends, blackjack dealers, and English-mangling chefs at a Benihana. Within the confines of a rom-com, they show their mettle here as actors, and that’s the issue: We shouldn’t have to be alerted to it, we should have known it already.
1 Don’t get easily offended
2 Read more than they talk
3 Enjoy intelligent discourse
4 Quickly admit when they’re wrong
5 Comfortable changing their opinion
6 Surround themselves w/ intelligence
7 Seek to understand every perspective on a topic
This was retweeted 170,000 times. We mention this only because the real Warren Buffett spells his surname with two “t’s.”
Starting Five
Halep-eno
In the opening match of the U.S. Open, women’s No. 1 seed Simona Halep of Romania is bounced in straight sets by Kaia Kanepi of Estonia. The 26 year-old Halep, French Open champ and the world No. 1 player, became the first top-seeded woman to lose the opening match in Flushing Meadows history.
At least she didn’t lose 15-0 to the Nationals this week.
Halep also lost in the first round here last year, to Maria Sharapova.
Kanepi is 33.
2. Ginobi-LEAVE!!!
After 16 magical, maddening seasons in which he buried key three-pointers, perfected the Euro Stop (Traveling!!!), taught Euro-style flopping to the NBA, never learned to shave his head to hide an encroaching monk’s bald spot, and won a quartet of NBA championships, Manu Ginobili of the San Antonio Spurs (and only of the SAS), is retiring.
Fellow teammates and future Hall of Famers Tim Duncan (retired) and Tony Parker (Charlotte Hornets) have already departed. Does this mean south Texas native Michelle Beadle is done watching basketball, too?
If you see Charles Barkley today, give him a hug.
3. Carnage In Indiana
A slumber party. A vehicular breakdown just a block from home. Teens at the slumber party come out to help push the car. Another vehicle rams into them. Four dead. That’s what happened Saturday night on a state road near Seymour, Indiana (John Mellencamp’s home town).
The victims were a trio of female teens, ages 14 and 15, and a 16 year-old boy. Four other teens were hit. The driver of the broken down SUV, Cara Selby, 37, is the person who was hosting the slumber party. The driver of the other vehicle, Elizabeth Watson, is 24. I imagine she’s got some explaining to do as to why she struck that vehicle (and I wonder if it had anything to do with reading a phone while driving).
4. The Crypto Kid
We failed to tell you about the new Bitcoin doc on CNBC last night (caught bits and pieces during a dead hour at the cookoutateria), hosted by Melissa Lee. One reason the doc succeeded is that they found a face to put on the saga of cryptocurrency, and he was Bitcoin’s version of Puck (not for you Shakespeare fans, but for you MTV: Real World fans).
The Crypto Kid, actual name and home town unknown, read a paper on Bitcoin almost 10 years ago and got a job solely so that he could invest everything he earned in Bitcoin. He’s still, reportedly millions of dollars in earnings later, living almost like a homeless person in order to pour all of his capital into Bitcoin. He lives in that tree house above, rent-free.
What’s fascinating about Bitcoin, and the documentary explores this, is that you have very smart and successful people betting on Bitcoin (and not just the Crypto Kid) and very smart and successful people (.e.g, Warren Buffett) telling you it’s a scam. One side is going to be very, very right and the other will be wrong. Who’s going to be looking foolish in five years? Is it the college dropout in board shorts and a tiger paw scarf? Or the Oracle of Omaha?
p.s. We really cannot wait until Adam McKay (The Big Short) turns the Bitcoin phenomenon into a film and we wonder who will play this character, who seems like someone McKay would’ve conjured if he did not already exist.
5. Is This The First Great Monologue In Film History?
Before last Friday, I’d never heard of M except as a letter of the alphabet and an early New Wave band that gave us “Pop Muzik.” Turns out it’s a 1931 German film by Fritz Lang that starred Peter Lorre in the role that turned him into a star.
Sure, before 1931 there were other films of note (Wings, Birth of A Nation, Safety Last, etc.) but most were silent films. We tuned in to TCM, curious about the premise: a serial killer who preys on little children is haunting Berlin. And we listened to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz explain that this is the role that turned Lorre into a film star, even though it’s entirely in German.
And then, through most of the film’s first 80 minutes, we barely see Lorre, who is the killer. Finally, he is captured—not by the police, but rather by the city’s criminal underworld, who despise that the cops have been cracking down everywhere in their hunt for him. He’s been hurting their business. So they find him before the cops do and assemble their own kangaroo trial.
Lorre: The Minister of Sinister
What follows, above, is mesmerizing. If you love movies and were, like me, completely ignorant about this scene, take the time to watch it. On film, at least, no one had ever done it this good before and few have since.
The Paul Harvey rest-of-the-story note: Lorre was born Laszlo Lowenstein in Hungary. His parents were Jewish. If he doesn’t become a famous actor and depart for America in 1934, who knows what becomes of him? Perhaps he dies in a concentration camp. Of course, film lovers will note that the Nazis did capture and kill Lorre’s character in Casablanca, a film for which he has received far greater notice than M.
Music 101
Hawaii 5-0 Theme
Growing up on the Jersey Shore in the 1970s, we rarely saw barreling waves at Sandy Hook the likes of which exploded onto our TV screen one night a week during the opening credits of Hawaii 5-0, a CBS police drama that ran from 1968 to 1980. It was never anyone’s favorite show or the most-discussed, but it did have a theme song that provided, what you might say, a Hawaiian punch. And a catchphrase no other cop procedural has topped: “Book ’em, Danno.”
The theme was composed by Morton Stevens, a Julliard alum who was not unfamiliar with Pacific islands when he took on this project. He had previously worked on Gilligan’s Island.
CBS just loves cops and Hawaii. The year Hawaii 5-0 ended after a 12-year run, Magnum P.I. made its debut and would run for eight seasons. This year, reimagined versions of both series will air on CBS.
Remote Patrol
Phoenix Mercury at Seattle Storm, Game 2
10 p.m. ESPN 2
He’d probably never do it, but if you were to ask Geno Auriemma to rank his favorite five players he’s ever coached, three of them would be playing in tonight’s game: Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart of Seattle and Diana Taurasi of Phoenix. Rebecca Lobo would also make that list, and then Geno might add Maya Moore or Kerry Bascom or Meghan Pattyson or maybe some wildcard name just to demonstrate that he’d actually given the query some thought.
Taurasi remains the best women’s basketball player I’ve ever seen and as far as I’m concerned, the best of all time. She’s also the WNBA’s all-time leading scorer. Her backcourt mate on the 2002 NCAA championship team, Bird, is the WNBA’s all-time assists leader. Stewie won four national championships in four seasons.
More than 50% of households in Connecticut (excluding Fairfield County) will be tuned into this game tonight.
Arizona senator John McCain, who among other things may be the most famous POW in American history, succumbs to brain cancer at the age of 81. Playwright Neil Simon, who wrote a play in which a sportswriter owns a two-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue, dies at the age of 91.
Now through death their names will forever be linked, like Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson (who would truly have made an odd couple).
There’s a lot about which to muse on either, such as Why did the scion of two generations of four-star admirals reside in a landlocked desert state? Or, How do you get lost in Yonkers? You’re pretty much bordered by the Major Deegan and the Bronx River Parkway east and west, Van Cortland Park to the South, and Yonkers Ave. to the north.
Anyway, we’ll leave the above here. There’s not much that better sums up what America is in 2018.
2. All-Name Teamers at QB
We can’t remember who found both, other than that both came to our attention via Twitter (take that, Instagram!). First, from the Upper Peninsula locale of Michigan Tech University comes 6’3″ freshman quarterback Steele Fortress. The kid is no joke: a three-time All-State player at Parma Western High, where he threw for 4,155 yards and 50 touchdowns. If only Harbaugh had offered…
Don’t @ us! We typed in “General Booty Football” in the search page and got scores of photos akin to this. This kid’s going to flummox and yet also beguile photo editors.
Then, from Cornerstone Christian Prep in San Antonio comes General Booty. His grandfather is former Buffalo Bills QB Joe Ferguson (who used to hand off the ball to O.J.), and his father is Abram Booty, who played wide receiver at LSU. His uncle is Josh Booty, who played QB at LSU and then USC.
Note: We wrote a story on the Booty family for SI when both Josh and Abram were still in high school in Shreveport, La. Josh was the higher-rated QB out of Louisiana that year between he and a kid named Peyton Manning. Yes, we do feel old.
3. Maddening
At a Madden competition at The Landing in Jacksonville, a well-known mall, a 24 year-old fatally shoots two before being killed himself. T & P, we guess. T & P. That was, on the 238th day of the year, the 233rd mass shooting, which is defined as “four or more shot and/or killed, not including the shooter.”
The victims: Taylor Robertson, 27, of West Virginia, who had won the Madden ’17 Classic, the game’s national tournament. The other, above, Eli Clayton, also a player, from Woodland Hills, Calif.
The shooter, 24, who also died, was not an undocumented Mexican worker, so Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly will likely have little to say about him.
4. Get Lost!
You don’t get a tan like this living in TriBeCa
Last Friday we wrote about Michelle Beadle‘s pigskin polemic on Get Up! that had taken place the day before. We opined that she missed LA and wasn’t crazy about pre-dawn alarms and staring at Mike Greenberg’s mug for 3 hours each morning (we mean his coffee mug, of course!).
Well, Beads was likely already out the door, as over the weekend ESPN announced that she was headed back to La La Land exclusively for NBA hosting duties. She failed miserably and got what she wanted. Wouldn’t it be nice if life worked out that way for all of us?
Why didn’t ESPN give Jemele Hill a show called “Woke Up!”
Meanwhile, ESPN colleague Jemele Hill is headed all the way out the Disney door, severing ties with Steamboat Willie as of September 1st. Hill was never our cup of tea, but she’s obviously smart and ESPN thought enough of her audience-garnering capability to give her its nightly 6 p.m. show (along with Michael Smith) less than two years ago. What happened other than her calling President Trump a “white supremacist” on Twitter in the interim (we’d make a “calling a spade a spade” reference but in this climate we’d probably be fired by someone in Indianapolis).
Hill’s position at ESPN was untenable pretty much as soon as Trump called her out (clapped back, you might say) in a tweet. Then she just became little more than a symbol of ESPN’s woke-ism, which does not play well west of Philadelphia and east of Berkeley.
5. The Joy Of Six
Luke Voit, who began the season with the St. Louis Cardinals, hit three home runs at Camden this weekend and has supplanted Greg Bird at first base.
Eight days ago, on the morning of Sunday, August 19, the Boston Red Sox led the New York Yankees by 11 games in the A.L. East. Eight days later, with the Yankees missing three key starters, two of whom are All-Stars (Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez) and the third who would be if he did not play the most loaded position in the A.L. (Didi Gregorius), the Yanks are just 6 games back.
Boston got swept three games at Tampa Bay this weekend (“Little Trop of Horrors”) while the Yankees took all four games at Baltimore. Worth noting: The Yanks were swept at the Trop in late June and the Red Sox swept four in Camden Yards only two weeks ago. It all evens out, we guess.
All of which is to say that the A.L. East pennant race, which many assumed was over when the Yanks dropped all four at Fenway at the beginning of August, is alive and well. The Yanks still have seven easy games immediately ahead of them (Chicago and Detroit, all at home) before heading out west for a Labor Day matinee versus the A’s.
Buckle up, baseball fans.
Music 101
What Is Love
Trinidad native Haddaway isn’t about to apologize for this 1993 song that is shamelessly derivative of everything Seal had released up to this point. The song soared to No. 1 in 13 different countries (topped off at No. 11 in the USA) and became a dance club staple. Of course, it would best be remembered as the musical cue for the SNL duo of Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell to get their A Night At The Roxbury groove on.
Remote Patrol
Citizen Kane
4 p.m. TCM
Charles Foster Kane: Tough sledding ahead
Do we expect even 5% of you to park your arses in front of a TV at 4 p.m. on an August Monday to watch what many cinephiles consider the best movie ever released? No. We’re placing this here to wonder aloud why TCM would air it at such an odd hour? They’re just taunting us (the MH staff has NEVER seen it. Never. This and Moby Dick, i.e. the novel, are the two biggest holes in our cultural literacy).
Anyway, the fourth episode of Better Call Saul also airs (9 p.m., AMC). Is Rhea Seehorn going to have to spend the entire season in an arm cast?
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