Monthly Archives: October 2018

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

A Mighty Brees

As a mighty breeze (Hurricane Michael) bears down on the Gulf Coast, New Olreans Drew Brees breaks the NFL all-time passing yardage record. The league office on Park Ave. and 52nd timed this one right, putting the game on Monday Night Football (you could extrapolate out back in the preseason when Brees would likely topple the mark), as Brees set the mark on a 62-yard touchdown throw to rookie Tre’Quan Smith in the first half.


For the record (and that’s what the night was all about), the 39 year-old, 6’0″ at best Purdue alum completed 26 of 29 passes (a career-best 89.7%) for 363 yards and 3 TDs as the Saints routed the Redskins 43-19.

The native Texan passed, via passing, Peyton Manning on the all-time list (72,103 to 71,940) and now has 499 TD passes. Tom Brady is the all-time leader in that department with 500.

2. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day

On a day that recognizes Native Americans (October 8), the Indians and Braves were bounced from the  MLB postseason and the Redskins were exposed in prime-time. Also, the Chief Wahoo character was retired in Cleveland. The Great Spirit works in mysterious ways.

Hopefully our North-of-the-Border reader, Moose, will chime in if there were any ironic sports occurrences in Canada regarding it being their Thanksgiving yesterday.

3. 16-1 on 161st

Holt was fired up after his cycle-completing 9th-inning blast, and who can blame him?

Speaking of irony, the Yankees lost Game 3 of the ALDS to the Red Sox by the score of their subway stop. Historic firsts: in the ninth inning the Bombers put in a position player to pitch in the postseason (catcher Austin Romine) for the first time in their vaunted October history and Boston’s Brock Holt connects for a two-run homer, which gave him the cycle, which makes him the first player EVER to hit for the cycle in the playoffs (Rule No. 7). So if you stuck around in the Bronx for this massacre until the 9th inning, you at least got that payoff.

4. Tierney Time

That’s Tierney Wolfgram of Woodbury, Minnesota, and when this 15 year-old sophomore walks into classes at Woodbury Science and Math Academy this morning (assuming she had the day off yesterday because of Columbus Day), she’ll have quite a story to tell: She finished 6th in the women’s division of the Twin Cities Marathon on Sunday, where the finish line is just a few miles west of her front door.

Running her first marathon, the two-time Class I-A defending state cross-country champ clocked a 2:40:03. A Wolfgram is nearly as quick as a telegram. That’s the best junior marathon time in 34 years and the second-best overall after Cathy Schiro’s 2:24:34 in 1984.

5. The Pacific is Already Weird


Forget LeBron. The Phoenix Suns of Anarchy fired GM Ryan McDonough (Seans’ kid brother) this weekend, which is kinda weird since he just presided over the team’s top overall pick in the draft. Up the coast, Stephen Curry is receiving preseason technicals when not hitting no-look half court shots and Steve Kerr is smart enough to get himself booted from preseason games that no one has any interest in seeing, anyway.

As for McDonough, he’s made some good drafting decisions: Devin Booker, Josh Jackson and DeAndre Ayton are the Suns’ nucleus (of course, as the largest body of anything in our solar system, the sun has the largest nucleus of anything you really know about), but the franchise has had five coaches in his five seasons. Also, owner Robert Sarver is kind of a dunce. So there’s that.

Music 101

The Main Event

It was 1979 and Barbra Streisand still cared about being in the public eye. This is her last film + soundtrack that we can remember. This tune was technically categorized as disco and spent four weeks at No. 3 on the Billboard chart. Sure, it’s a cheesy tune, but the woman’s vocal talent is undeniable. If you’re scoring at home, yes, we’ve put ’70s Babs songs in the blog on consecutive days.

Remote Patrol

Red Sox-Yankees, Game 4

8 p.m. TBS

For the sixth time in seven years, baseball’s best player is nowhere to be found in October. Imagine LeBron doing that.

Because it’s all we have before both league championship series, as the other three divisional series  turned out to be total duds. Our “analysis”: Houston has the best team and the Brewers will be the favorite of all who don’t have a rooting interest. Meanwhile, Mike Trout remains the best player in baseball and in seven full seasons has played in three postseason games. Baseball is not basketball.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

Carnage In New York

Twenty people dead. Twenty. From one accident involving two vehicles (really just one was both moving and occupied). What the hell? The accident occurred around 2 p.m. Saturday in upstate New York in the town of Schoharie, at the junction of Routes 30 and 30A. An SUV-style limo carrying 17 passengers was traveling perhaps as fast as 6o mph as it roared down Route 30 toward the intersection with 30 A. The T-crossing is marked only with a Stop sign and the limo driver either failed to heed it or simply was going too fast to stop.

The limo struck an unoccupied Toyota truck and two pedestrians standing outside the Apple Barrel Country Store, killing them, then plowed into an embankment. The passengers, celebrating a 30th birthday and doing a winery tour, were all likely not in seatbelts. It was instant death for all but one person, who later died at the hospital.

It’s difficult to fathom, the sudden and massive loss of life from an accident really involving just one car. It’s the largest transportation loss of life in the U.S., planes included, since 2009 when 50 people perished in a plane crash in Buffalo, also upstate New York. “That limo was coming down that hill probably over 60 miles per hour,” said Jessica Kirby, 36, the manager of the Apple Barrel Country Store. “I don’t want to describe the scene. It’s not something I want to think about.”

Eerily, thirteen years and four days earlier in upstate New York, a tour boat, the Ethan Allen, capsized on Lake George, killing….20.

The Ethan Allen went down October 2, 2005

Most of the victims were around 30 years old and lived in Amsterdam, N.Y. They included two recently married couples and four sisters.

2. Konfirmation Daze

We’ll have more to say on this later this week, but for now…

and this from Jimmy Kimmel.

3. A Star Was Born

With all the hype for A Star Is Born this past weekend (we have yet to see it, but Friend of MH Katie McCollow did and she have it three stars and a meh), we felt it our duty to remind you that there were three previous iterations of this film with the identical title: the original in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, the previously acknowledged best with Judy Garland and James Mason in 1954, and the god-awful one with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand (too old for the role by then) in 1976.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7AIBlzCluc

As our sister said of the Lady Ga Ga-Bradley Cooper version, “Get out the Oscar wheelbarrow.” But you should know that while the previous three versions earned a collective 17 Oscar nominations, it only won two: Best Original Story in 1937 and Best Original Song (“Evergreen”) in 1976.

It’s also worth knowing that most Academy Awards nerds consider Judy Garland’s snub at the 1955 Oscars for Best Actress as the greatest injustice in the history of the award. Garland lost to Grace Kelly, who played a non-glamorous type-against-type in The Country  Girl (see: Charlize Theron, Monster). It’s bizarre: Garland, one of the greatest actresses and film icons ever, never won an Oscar. It is said that this defeat—she had just given birth and was unable to attend the ceremony—sent her into a downward spiral from which she never truly recovered (talk about life imitating art). If you’re wondering why people believe so strongly that Garland deserved the Oscar for this performance, watch this clip:

If you’re scoring at home, Garland begins her soliloquy at 1:04 and finishes at 3:35. That’s 2 1/2 minutes of uninterrupted speaking, emoting, etc., and she’s magnificent. Spell-binding. Damn, as soon as Grace Kelly saw this clip she snatched that Oscar, ran off the podium and married herself a damn prince and retired. She knew. Everybody knew. Judy wuz robbed.

We’ll see what happens next winter, but our gut tells us this film will have more Oscar success than its predecessors.

4. Khabib Khabobs

McGregor got beaten up twice

We don’t know if the mayhem following the UFC match between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov was orchestrated or not. We’re not UFC fans, mainly because it looks like human cock-fighting to us. Yes, it takes skilled fighters but where it differs from boxing or or even tae kwan do is that it involves either submission or literally being knocked out. There’s something dehumanizing about that; it’s not the same as, but it is, to us, not unlike cheering for rape or assault.

 

That’s our opinion. Your mileage may vary. Either way, what happened after the fight doesn’t surprise us much considering the types of folks who enjoy this as entertainment. Yes, we are being judgmental. No, that doesn’t bother us at all.

5. No Safe Harbor

Tragically, in the Age of Trump, the world is becoming a dangerous place for both women and people who speak or write the truth. And the people who hurt them are more brazen about it. In Bulgaria, television journalist Victoria Marinova was raped and murdered. Marinova’s last interview was with two journalists who were looking into corruption in the EU. Coincidence?

Meanwhile last week in Turkey, Washington Post global opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi was likely murdered inside the consulate for his own country, Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi, 59 and a Saudi exile living in the U.S., had gone inside to obtain an official document for his wedding, leaving his fiancee outside. Inside the building, it has been reported, were 15 Saudis who had flown in that day expressly to detain him, torture him and murder him. Inside the building.

Khashoggi’s corpse was reportedly dismembered and the entire episode was taped.

I think you know how our Dear Leader will react to this event.

Music 101

Fantasy

Do yourself a favor and purchase Earth, Wind & Fire Greatest Hits as soon as you’re finished reading this. This song, composed by the band’s late co-lead singer, Maurice White, was inspired by his having seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Released in 1978, it only peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard chart. There was just a glut of great music then. We were spoiled. I may have made this point before.

Remote Patrol

Better Call Saul

9 p.m. AMC

The Season 4 finale, “Winner,” is already here. Werner has gone AWOL, simply to visit his wife in Germany. But Gus ain’t having any of that. Jimmy is going to appeal his law license being revoked. Kim is still Team Jimmy.

It’s been a disjointed season, a purgatory of sorts for most of our characters, and the main ones’ story lines (Jimmy and Mike, namely) have not overlapped or even collided occasionally in intriguing ways. More than anything, it has often felt, to us, as if the writers have painted themselves into a corner and have tried to get themselves out of it within one episode’s time by creating a contrived remedy. There have been no “A-Ha!” moments, as in Breaking Bad, no looming crises. Most of all, though, it has felt as if the writers don’t have any better clue as to how to advance the story than you or I do. It’s still a great show, because the characters are so charming, but this entire season, sans Chuck, has felt as if the show is idling, waiting to find a bewitching way to get us to the final descent of Jimmy to Saul.

 

CHRIS PICKS: WEEK 5

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by Chris Corbellini

 

Week 5 Picks: Who’ll stop the Rams?*

(“And I wonder/Still I wonder/Who’ll stop the Rams…”)

Goff and Gurley sell tickets, but does anyone want a piece of Ndamukong Suh?

Vegas likes the Rams, I like the Rams, NFL Twitter likes the Rams, and people who put in the extensive film work like the Rams. They are rolling. All that movement and bounce on offense could play to sell-out crowds at Lincoln Center. So, should we just go ahead and skip the regular season and playoffs and crown LA your Super Bowl 53 champions already?

Maybe. BetOnline has them at +350 to win the Super Bowl, with the Patriots, fresh off a Thursday night win against the Colts, in second at +700. If the mark of an NFL powerhouse is exceeding expectations one year earlier than expected — and remember, this is Year 2 of the Sean McVay Experience — then perhaps our eyes aren’t lying to us, and we are seeing the beginning of something special. It was easy to enjoy LA’s offense against the Vikings on national TV in Week 4 — Goff looked like an NFL MVP, answering every test question McVay called for him with a pearl of a throw, and let’s not forget he’s the second-best player on his offense.

Yeah, the Rams look like the perfect sunny-day team at the quarter pole. Still, the Chiefs are off to a 4-0 start with Patrick Mahomes completing passes left-handed, the Patriots could have another run in them with Edelman back, and the Eagles aren’t completely sure what they have with a healthy Carson Wentz yet, they just know it’ll work in the long run. The league is in good position, Trump’s tweets be damned, with all the young QBs excelling and Brady playing well into his 40s. September was fun. Cinematic, even, with the Rams re-inventing the Fun Bunch.

Now we wait to see if the chill and injury uncertainty of October and November will be enough to knock LA back from Super Bowl contender to playoff contender. What impressed me most last week on GamePass was how hard the Vikings DBs were drilling Rams WRs, and yet that bunch kept hopping back up. Maybe, I thought. Maybe these guys have the stuff of champions. Which is not exactly fair to the rest of us bracing for winter – LA is the City of LeBron, Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Malibu beaches, 70-degree New Year’s Days, In N Out, the Another Day of Sun montage, and so many beautiful people just off the bus, asking for the address of the nearest Netflix show to star in. Santa Monica even has a damn Dunkin Donuts now on Wilshire.

Go away, LA.

Home team in caps. William Hill odds, as of Friday afternoon.

Rams (-7.5) over SEAHAWKS

A Todd Gurley game. He’ll remind everyone he can slice between the tackles, too. Seahawks safety Earl Thomas is gone, flipping the bird to management as he was carted off the field last week, and don’t think for a second his teammates didn’t absorb that. To beat the Rams, you need to rally around that effective-but-horseshit “we’ll shock the world” storyline, and prove you are better than the record indicates. I see none of that with Seattle yet. The Seahawks are weak at spots on the defensive line, and linebacker Austin Calitro, one of the lowest-rated players on Pro Football Focus this week, will surely be targeted as well.

I’m sure there will be a couple of false start penalties due to Seattle’s 12th man. And the Seahawks will shorten the game some, focusing on those talented receivers and giving up as little as possible vertically. So, Gurley will be given a chance to go all Beast Mode, and while he’ll feel every one of his 25+ touches afterward, it’ll still add up to a winning, 100-yard day.

Vikings (+3) over EAGLES

“Hey, what about us?” is another motivational tactic NFL teams use, and I see the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles wholeheartedly embracing it … after they lose this week. I wanted to pick Philly here, but changed my mind earlier today after watching the Vikings-Rams film. There’s just something about the zip of Cousins passes, and the nasty edge that Stefon Diggs has after he catches the ball, as if to say: Thielen’s my guy, but I’m out to prove I’m number one.

Adam Thielen, the pride of Mankato State…

Of course, judging by Thielen’s targets, he’s No. 1. He has 56, which also leads the NFL. This may be a good thing for Diggs this week – according to Pro Football Outsiders the Eagles are 31st in the league against the No. 2 receiver. I think he’ll be the difference-maker in Philly.

Titans (-5.5) over BILLS

Don’t overthink this, Tennessee. Make this a fourth straight victory, fly under the radar while the rest of us concern ourselves with KC and New England, and fly home healthy. On third and longs you have just one weak link, a linebacker, and that can be disguised with pressure. So, go for the shutout, and give Derrick Henry an ego boost with a 25-carry afternoon.

Redskins cover (+6.5) against SAINTS


Ooh. This one. Me gusta. Neither is lacking in motivation, with both playing to stay in first place in their respective divisions. And they look so evenly matched – the Redskins are coming off a bye week and are more balanced than people realize, while the Saints offense is a track team at the Superdome, with Kamara deciding he’ll run anchor leg the rest of the season – so I see Washington covering. I could also see this one stretching to OT (say, tied at 21), and if it does, Drew Brees will pick away at Washington and get his offense in position to win it by a field goal.

Brees needs 201 yards to overtake Brett Favre (71,838) and Peyton Manning (71,940) to be the most prolific passer in the NFL’s history. That seems inevitable, but perhaps the Saints will get crafty and use that milestone as a decoy on Monday night. They could put it all on Kamara’s back between the 20s, with returning back Mark Ingram punching in one or two TDs during goal-line situations. In fact, if Brees has to sling it all night that could be a bad thing for New Orleans – as it may indicate that Alex Smith is tearing up the Saints D (which is ranked 29th in DVOA). Again, I do see the Redskins covering here. This should be another fun one.

My own Brees story: I finally met him last November in New Orleans, first at the team facility and then at gorgeous City Park, where he was coaching his kids’ flag football teams. It was a perfect Friday night with high school football being played in two different spots, and youth soccer and flag taking up the rest of the park’s many fields. My film crew and I initially got lost — driving at night in that park there was so much inky blackness, followed by pockets of street lights illuminating little kids playing sports and eating pizza with moms and dads, with whistles and cheers and the occasional high school band playing in the distance when the home team scored. You just … felt it. Americana. This was the family New Orleans so few tourists ever see as they guzzle hand grenades on Bourbon Street.  We just had to find our guy and shoot it.

It didn’t take long. At the epicenter of all of it was Drew Brees, smiling and cheering on the kids.

.

A future Mayor, if he wanted to be.

At the facility, I thought he was relentlessly positive, as QBs tend to be. Even if a team is winless, the upbeat mask must go on (someone forgot to tell Jay Cutler). And Brees so has that. But there was no faking the gregariousness he showed on that City Park field to friends and strangers alike. That guy is real. New Orleans feels it. He was New Orleans. He is New Orleans.

You can argue he was the bronze medalist of NFL QBs for years, behind Brady and Manning but ahead of everybody else, and stuck around long enough to sit on the gold medal stand as the league’s all-time leader in passing yards. For a long while, he seemed destined to be in the Warren Moon/Jim Kelly/Dan Fouts strata of future HOFers who were so fun to watch and yet didn’t win a Super Bowl – and then he finally pulled it off, dueling with a native son of New Orleans, Manning, to win the city its first NFL championship.  And perhaps the NFL Films shot you’ll remember most is of him holding his baby son aloft as the confetti fell and he had won a title. It’ll certainly be the shot they show last during his Hall of Fame presentation.

But to me, I’ll remember him best from that perfect night in City Park, high-fiving kids and chatting with fellow parents as if he were a landscape architect from Metairie. The only thing that distinguished him from everyone else was a compression sleeve on his right arm – a right arm that soon will have thrown for more yards than any other player in pro football history.

Last week: 1-3
Overall: 4-9

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

Sham On Us, Shame On You

Wow. The FBI handed in its report at 2 a.m. on Thursday morning and while it wasn’t written in Crayola, it appears that Lenny Briscoe would have been unable to unearth more information before the first commercial break than the Bureau did.


Senator Dick Durbin…

Senator Jeff Merkley…


So the GOP (and Jeff Flake) got what it wanted—political cover— failing to interview any corroborating witnesses and then claiming there was no evidence of corroboration. The old white chauvinist males are satisfied. America’s females are wholly frustrated and disappointed. It sounds like every liaison between a Republican pol and his mistress (or wife) of the past 50 years.

2. Labor Days

Taking what they’re giving/Cuz we’re working for a living

The unemployment rate, it was announced this morning, fell to a 49-year low. It’s at 3.7%, the lowest since December of 1969. We’re not informed enough to provide the collateral effects or reasons behind this, we just know that we’ll be working two jobs all day between now and Sunday night. That’s good, right?

3. Weaponizing Victimhood

Trevor Noah on Trump and white male victimhood. Noah: “Trump knows how to wield victimhood to the people who have the least claim to it.”

Noah brings up a point that we also made in a tweet last night, which is, “How many men have been falsely accused of a sexual assault versus how many women have actually been sexually assaulted?”

We hate to say this, and this is us, not Noah speaking here, but if Kavanugh is confirmed and Trump’s “males are the real victims” strategy wins the day, then we totally condone violence. Seriously. Women, if any man sexually assaults you, shoot him in the…you know where. Do it. Because that’s your only chance at justice.

4. A Tale Of Two Editorials

So White House Chief of Manipulation Bill Shine likely phoned his old boss at NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal, and got his “client” Brett O’Kavanaugh some space on yesterday’s Op-Ed page. O’Kavanaugh went with the “That Guy You Saw Up There Isn’t The Real Me” approach, or as our Twitter pal Rebekah Howard put it, “Clean-up on aisle 3.”

The tag-line:

“Yes, I was emotional last Thursday. I hope everyone can understand I was there as a son, husband and dad.”

Oh, we understand, Brett. This morning The New York Times, piling on to what just about everyone who has passed the bar in the past 25 years has advised, put out its own editorial titled “How Brett Kavanaugh Failed (And Why The Senate Should Vote To Keep Him Off The Supreme Court).”

As we were mulling this last night, we thought about what the Supreme Court has long represented. Unlike a Senator or governor or even the President, all of whom are elected and thus whose office owes itself to the whims of the people (who are all too often idiots), the Supreme Court justice is nominated, confirmed and appointed. He or she is the closest thing we have in America to the Pope. For all of our life “be on the Supreme Court” is analogous with someone who has the highest, most unimpeachable character or integrity.

Brett O’Kavanaugh fails that test.

We recall a few weeks back Jeff Flake actually stating, out loud, that O’Kavanaugh’s volunteer coaching of a basketball team tells him that Brett has character. Hell, we spent three years volunteer coaching basketball teams and our kid wasn’t on it.

I’ll tell you what, as a man his age, seeing someone like Brett O’Kavanaugh being nominated for the Supreme Court really tells me: If I’d known the bar was this low, I might have pursued a different career path.

5. The Girl With The Sword In The Lake*

*This is the one Stig Larsson book the judges have not read

Last July in Sweden, eight year-old Saga Vanecek pulled this sword, believed to be 1,500 years old, from the bottom of a lake. Saga was actually born and raised in Minneapolis; her family relocated to Sweden last year (take us with you). She’s a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, but now also Vikings in general.

Music 101

Sugar-Coated Iceberg

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

Founded by lead vocalist Ian Broudie, formerly of Big In Japan, the Lightning Seeds of Liverpool sounded like an ’80s band but actually did most of their damage in the 1990s. This song came out in 1996, off the Dizzy Heights album.

Remote Patrol

Baseball Four-pleheader!

Indians-Astros

2:05 p.m. TBS

Rockies-Brewers

4:15 p.m. FS1

Yankees-Red Sox

7:32 p.m. TBS

Braves-Dodgers

9:37 p.m. FS1

Do you realize that this year’s Cy Young winners will not be in the postseason? But you can still catch Justin Verlander, Corey Kluber, Chris Sale and Clayton Kershaw on the hills. Plus,  it’s overlapping baseball. Two games on simultaneously from 4:15 until at least 10:30.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Starting Five

The A Train Stops Here*

*The judges are here to tell you that actually, it doesn’t, though the D and the 4 do.

For the past three months, the Oakland A’s were baseball’s en fuego grande. Billy Beane’s team, with baseball’s lowest payroll, was 34-36 on the morning of June 16. They went 63-29 the rest of the way, but could never quite catch the Yankees in the AL wild card home-field advantage chase (they came as close as one game back on September 13).

Hechavarria, whom the Yanks acquired on the last day of August, went skyward to rob the A’s of a double in the 7th.

Last night in the Bronx, that seemed to make all the difference. Luis Severino had, unlike last year, an unadventurous top of the first, then Aaron Judge smacked a two-run laser to left as the Yankees’s second batter. The Bombers broke it open in the sixth on a Judge excuse-me double followed by an Aaron Hicks triple, followed by a Luke Voit triple off the top of the wall in right.

Yanks 7, A’s 2. We Want Boston!

2. Swift, But Is It Justice?

Give us your vaginas!

Since when does anyone in the federal government hand in their homework on time, much less nearly two days early? The FBI, which pursued the Bart O’Kavanaugh case with the dogged zeal of, well, Scooby Doo entering a haunted amusement park, submitted its findings last night. Mitch McConnell and his crew are determined to get gratification as soon as possible no matter how much resistance the other side puts up. Does that at all sound familiar to you, Dr. Ford?

Meanwhile, we’d advise you to read this from Drew Magary in GQ from the summer. For those of us bitching about Trump, the painful truth is that he’s only the symptom. The people are the problem. We’re all living in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

3. Pray For Scottsdale

By sundown on October 2nd the Phoenix area had already witnessed its second-wettest October on record, thanks to nearly three inches of rain pelting the desert in the month’s first two days. Remnants of Hurricane Rosa, which struck the northern coast of Mexico on the Pacific side, the storm left—and we’re not kidding—a golf course or two between Hayden and Scottsdale Roads under water.

Locals will whine that Rosa is just another unwelcome, undocumented Mexican visitor.

Locals know this as the Green Belt, a narrow park that includes a golf course and bike trail that was built, knowingly, in a flood plain. So when Arizona gets its 100-year floods, which occur every decade or so, you get pictures like the one above.

4. Operation Eichmann

Banner (left) and Klemperer in Operation Eichmann (1961)

So maybe you’ve seen or read about the Oscar Isaac film Operation Finale, which was just released and traces the true story of Nazi war criminal and fugitive Adolph Eichmann. It stars Ben Kingsley as the bad buy.

Two nights ago we flipped over to TCM, as we always do, and they were airing a film from 1961 titled Operation Eichmann. It’s the same character, the same story. So what, you ask? We’ll tell you so what…

The man in the title role was Werner Klemperer, whom you may recognize better as Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes. But what really got our attention was a dinner scene in which Eichmann/Klink is coldly discussing with one of his sergeants how he prefers gassing Jews because “it is so clean” a method of extermination. As ghoulish as that sounded, and remember this is only 16 years after the end of World War II, the actor playing the sergeant in that scene was John Banner, whom you know better as...Sergeant Schultz.

Banner and Klemperer playing Nazis for laughs

That’s right: only four years before Hogan’s Heroes’ 1965 TV premiere, Klink and Schultz were playing Nazis straight. And discussing the Holocaust as two people would ridding themselves of termite infestation (Banner’s Rudolph Hoss explained that he liked gassing because it did not negatively impact the morale of his soldiers).

5. Divers Drown

Remember all the attention that cave-bound Thai soccer team received back in June? Fortunately, all 12 boys and their coach survived, though one diver did perish attempting to save them.
Well, this weekend in Malaysia, a half dozen rescue divers drowned in a vain attempt to save a teen who had fallen into a disused mining pool while fishing. The divers apparently were caught in a whirlpool and their equipment was flung off them. The teen is still missing. It’s odd how feel-bad stories don’t receive as much attention as feel-good stories when it comes to rescues.

Music 101

Have You Seen Her?

 

The Chi-Lites never garnered the acclaim that similar early ’70s soul acts such as The Temptations and The O’Jays did. This 1971 release from the Chicago act was their first hit, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard charts. And here they are lip-synching it on Soul Train.

Remote Patrol

NLDS Doubleheader

Rockies-Brewers

5 p.m. FS1

Braves-Dodgers

8 p.m. MLBN

I like to pronounce it like “tornado” even if that’s wrong

That’s correct: They’re going to play ball at Miller Park during happy hour and later in Los Angeles during rush hour. Advantage, Brewer fans. If you don’t know much about Christian Yelich or Nolan Arenado, here’s your chance to watch two men who should or will soon be MVPs. The latter is a five-time Gold Glove winner at third base.