Monthly Archives: March 2019

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 8 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right


From La La Land, the Director’s Cut, we assume…

Starting Five

Bracket To The Future

While ESPN’s Rece Davis was chatting with Dickie Via Satellite yesterday afternoon, some noob in Bristol accidentally posted the women’s tournament bracket—whose reveal was scheduled for 7 p.m.—on the side of the screen and on the bottom crawl. You had one job. No one even reacted to it for a few minutes, proof that not even ESPN employees watch ESPN all that much any more.

You had one job.

We’re not mad. We’re kind of giddy. We imagine Adnan Virk enjoyed a good laugh at this one. The question going forward is whether anyone at ESPN has enough of a sense of humor to make this a “Not Top 10” moment.

You had one job.

2. Rosemary’s Baby

Follow the money. No private institution did more to prop up Donald Trump’s false claims of successful billionaire status in the past 20 years than Deutsche Bank. You cinephiles may recall an early scene in Casablanca when Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) refuses a prominent Deutsche Bank executive entry into his backroom casino; Rick had the right idea.

Vrablic, circled in red, one of the 20 million people who attended Trump’s inauguration in person

This withering New York Times piece reveals how the German national bank, particularly private banker Rosemary Vrablic, abandoned all fiscal common sense and basic decency to get in bed with Trump time after time after time, to the tune of $2 billion in loans, in exchange for being seen as edgy and standing out among lenders while also enjoying being in his celebrity orbit.

The most astonishing reveal, for us: After Trump defaulted on his loan for his Chicago hotel, he attempted to sue Deutsche Bank (claiming the reason for his fiscal troubles were a force majeure, “an act of God,” based on the fact that Allan Greenspan had called the sub-prime crisis an economic “tsuanmi.” But here’s the kicker: later Deutsche loaned Trump the money to pay back the loan to…Deutsche. The balls on that guy.)

It took nearly 70 years, but the Germans are finally exacting revenge for losing World War II.

3. High Nunes

It’s not easy breaking into the Top 10 of Trump Tools, but Devin has been holding down a 5 to 7 position for 2 years now.

California Congressman and Corey Lewandowski-wannabe Devin Nunes has filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter for, basically, allowing its users to exercise free speech.

Snowflake!

Of course, the insidious aspect of this is that Nunes’s action, hoping others will follow suit by filing suits, is to pummel outlets such as Twitter with lawsuits that will be costly simply to defend, thereby twisting their arms to stop allowing free expression. We’ll see how Jack Dorsey and others react.

In the meantime, it’s instructive to remember that in February of 2017 Nunes co-sponsored a bill called the “Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act.”

If there’s one signifying trait of Trump Tools, it’s the absence of acknowledging their unabashed hypocrisy. They get that quality straight from the boss himself.

4.  And In The Process, Improving Their Seed

*The judges will not accept “Whore Eagle!”

So autocorrect also plagues control room graphics computers, too?

Either way, congratulations to the Tigers. And it’s nice to see that Rifle is not the only coed NCAA sport.

5. Record-Sized Trout Caught


The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (if that’s what they’re calling themselves this season) are about to land the largest fish ever caught: Mike Trout, for 12 years. What did the Angels use as bait? Southern California lifestyle and $430 million.

Reserves

Net Nyet…

Biblio Files

The Hidden Harbor Mystery

Frank. Joe. Fenton. Aunt Gertrude. Chet (and Iola) Morton. Biff Hooper. Callie Shaw. Tony Prito. The entire Bayport gang.

We haven’t picked up a Hardy Boys book in nearly 40 years, but we owe F.W. Dixon (whoever he/she/they was/were) an incalculable debt of gratitude because it was these books that instilled in us our love of reading. Mom and dad would blanch at the idea of giving me a quarter for a copy of Action Comics or Detective Comics (I was a DC lad), but they never thought twice about forking over $3 for a Hardy Boys book.

Nearest I can figure Bayport was either located on Long Island or Connecticut, or should have been. Frank, dark-haired and 18, and Joe, blond and one year younger, took us all over this country and later the globe and for a small kid opened up a world of adventure. They made sleuthing so much fun—and no one ever got shot.

What Harry Potter is to this latest generation, the Hardy Boys were to mine. Or at least to me.

(So we’re going to use this space to frequently highlight favorite books of ours. We invite you to send in some of yours, but instead of doing so in the Comments, please email us at trumansparks88@gmail.com. If we use your book we’ll happily provide your name and a comment or two you’ve added. There will be no pecuniary reward, but upon your death you will achieve total consciousness).

Remote Patrol

From Russia With Love

Netflix

Binge, James Binge.

The streaming service is doing us an invaluable (Her Majesty’s Secret) service by making available, by our unofficial count, 18 007 films. That includes the very best, such as this one, Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Spy Who Loved Me. We suggest you take them in order, beginning with 1962’s Dr. No. while this one, which is set largely in Turkey, comes next.

 

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

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by John Walters

Tweet Me Right


Starting Five

As ACC As 1-2-3

A trio of ACC schools land No. 1 seeds to the Big Dance: Virginia, North Carolina and No. 1 overall seed Duke. Why exactly the Blue Devils also have B1G regular-season and B1G tourney champ Michigan State in their bracket is a mystery to us.

Other No. 2s: Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.

Also: No one really got hosed. I mean, UNC Greensboro with a 28-6 record, we’d have put in over St. John’s or Arizona State, but the committee probably likes Bob Hurley vs. Chris Mullin in a First Four game (ABOLISH THE FIRST FOUR ALREADY, PLEASE) for all us oldsters.

Duke is 3-3 versus the other No. 1 seeds. Gonzaga, 1-1. Virginia, 1-2. North Carolina, which MH has cutting down the nets, is 3-2 versus the other No. 1s.

Duke and North Carolina have NEVER met in the NCAA tournament, which is as bizarre as it sounds. If they were to meet this spring, it’ll be in the championship game.

2. A New New Zealand

Four days after 50 people are murdered in New Zealand, the Kiwi government announces that it will implement tougher new gun laws within 10 days. Kinda the way governments all over the world grounded the MAX 737 after a 2nd airplane went down in the past six months. It’s like, Hey, this is a very dangerous gadget, maybe it’s not the best idea to have a MAX 737 or an AR-15 just out on the streets or in the skies. What a revolutionary thought.

3. New York-LA Stories

In the NBA, both L.A. franchises met both New York clubs on opposite coasts and both games came down to the buzzer. In Manhattan, the Knicks, who have the league’s worst record, dropped the Lakers in the afternoon, 124-123. It wasn’t just that the ‘bockers won, but that they rallied from an 11-point deficit with 3 1/2 minutes remaining and twice blocked LeBron James’ shots in the final minute, including in the dying seconds. The game-ending block came from little-used Mario Hezonja.

At night, inside Staples Center in L.A., Lou Williams buried a Jordan-over-Ehlo style 28-footer at the buzzer to give the Clips a 119-116 win over the Nets. Williams, now in his 14th season, has started just 109 games in his career (an average of fewer than 8 games per season), but has a career scoring average of 14.2 points per game. The NBA’s career leading scorer in points off the bench, Williams could be nailing down his third NBA Sixth Man of the Year award. HOF’er, someday?

4. Beto Is Running (8-Minute Miles)

In chilly Iowa, Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke ran a St. Patrick’s Day 5-K and finished in 24:29, good for third place in his age bracket (42-49). A former collegiate rower at Columbia (which means he was rowing the mighty Harlem River during workouts), O’Rourke is obviously still a runner as that time is very good for a man his age (46).

He may not win his party’s nomination, but everyone running for president, he’s the fastest runner.

5. Nobody’s Pawn

This is eight year-old Tani Adewumi, a Nigerian refugee who lives in a homeless shelter with his family in Manhattan. They fled Nigeria because as Christians they were worried they’d be targeted by Boko Haram and also, probably, because it is a “shithole country” and they want to make America great again. Of course.

Anyway, two weekends ago Tani won the New York state chess championship among 3rd graders despite only taking up the game last year (a side note: we play chess against the app on our laptop every day and have yet to win a game. Like, ever. We are going to hire Tani to teach us strategy). Tani went undefeated during the tournament, defeating many students whose parents have hired their children private chess tutors. The trophy he won is taller than he.

A teacher at his school at P.S. 116 in the Murray Hill area of the city says that Tani does “ten times the amount of chess puzzles as the other students.” The school waived his after-school chess club fees when he expressed interest in joining last year because, you know, refugee privilege.

In case you’re wondering: the family arrived here less than two years ago. Mom works as a home health aide while dad drives an Uber (he rents the car; that’s quite the high overhead) and already has his real-estate broker’s license. Some people…

Remote Patrol

Singin’ In The Rain

9 p.m. TCM

This Gene Kelly-Donald O’Connor vehicle was not even nominated for Best Picture after it was released in 1952 and we think we know why: critics were confused that the picture’s most famous scene was a dance number in the rain even though the setting is Hollywood. Kelly’s splash dance is spectacular, but Donald O’Connor’s “Make ‘Em Laugh” is more acrobatic and every bit as entertaining.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Mirk Madness

Allow us this indulgence for an indefinite period of time this month. We’re titling this one, “It’s Not My Turn To Clean.”

Starting Five

1. Horror In Christchurch

Forty-nine dead, and that figure will likely rise.

A white nationalist in his late twenties, an Australian who proudly referred to himself as a fascist in an 74-page manifesto, mows down Muslims during Friday Prayer at two mosques in Christchurch.

New Zealand, a nation of five million people that averages less than 50 homicides per year,   has been touched by the same white supremacist violence that Europe and the USA has endured this decade. This attack reminds us most closely of the terrible attack in Norway back in the summer of 2011 on an island summer camp. The difference here, of course, being that the victims are Muslims.

Both attacks, however, were fueled by fierce anti-immigration and anti-diversity animus.

One absolutely chilling aspect of this attack: while driving between the two mosques, the killer stopped at a cross walk to allow pedestrians to pass in front of his vehicle.

The Port Arthur, Australia, mass murder of 1996 claimed 35 lives and resulted in radical changes in Australian gun laws. Is it possible that this murderer, an Aussie, chose New Zealand because it’s such a softer target?


Meanwhile, the man in the Oval Office was quoted on Breitbart News just yesterday as saying the following: “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very pad.”

Pardon us for misconstruing the meaning of that.

2. Zion’s Back

Zion Williamson, remember him? The Duke frosh was 13 of 13 from the floor for 29 points with a splashy array of dunks and power moves, plus 14 rebounds and 5 steals in Duke’s comfy 84-72 win against Syracuse in the ACC quarters. This in his first game back after missing five full games and most of a sixth.

When you watch Zion, you just see a human—we think—operating at a different energy level, a different gear than the other players on the court. And that’s saying something since two of his teammates, R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish, will likely be top five picks in June’s NBA draft.

We recall back in November (?) when Duke alum Jay Bilas, in Hawaii to cover Duke-Gonzaga, gushed over Williamson’s primal force on the court but felt obliged to remark, “And he’s not even the best basketball player on his team—R.J. Barrett is.”

Nope. Barrett may be the more scintillating scorer off the dribble. But there’s little doubt that Zion is the best basketball player, in or out of Durham, in college hoops. One more thing about Zion: his talent and passion is so pure, so unaffected, that he transcends Duke-ism. People who HATE Duke basketball still love Zion. He’s outside of its orbit.

3. Veto and Beto (Note: They Don’t Rhyme)

In the same 24-hour news cycle, El Paso’s finest, Beto O’Rourke, announces that he will run for president while the current president announces that he will veto a resolution that would block him from declaring a national emergency in order to secure funds to build his border wall.

Just this week alone: 1) the Senate (with seven Republicans breaking ranks) joined the House in voting to end funding to Saudi Arabia (as if they need the money or weapons) for its war against Yemen, 2) the House UNANIMOUSLY (420-0) passed a resolution to make the Mueller Report public (Senator Lindsey Graham blocked this from going to a vote on the Senate floor), and 3) 12 Senators broke ranks to vote against Trump’s national emergency declaration.

The tide appears to be turning somewhat. “It’s about separation of powers,” Senator Robert Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said. “It’s about respecting the principles of the Constitution.”

As for Beto, we kinda feel as if he’s the WhiteObama schoolgirl crush (see our Music 101 featured artist today) candidate of the moment. The thing too many folks on the other side of the aisle don’t give Obama credit for? He’s actually very smart and very aware of how what he says is digested by both allies and enemies. Beto, at least at this moment, is still a little too “I can’t believe we’re opening for The Hold Steady.” He’s a little too light, too wafty.

4. The Big Leave


What do we make of The Big Lead founder Jason McIntyre not even mentioning on his as-active-as-ours Twitter feed that he will no longer be part of TBL? The we’ll-report-what-others-reported-first sports site (pot calling kettle aggregated content, we know, but we’re a one-man band working for free) was sold yesterday and the new owners are retaining four TBL writers, none of whom are its founder.

Give JM credit. He was first-to-market here back in 2006, sold his site for seven figures and arbitraged it to a migration from the Philly suburbs to Manhattan Beach and a role on Fox Sports. We’re not a huge fan of his TV/radio schtick—he’s bought all the Clay Travis Self-Promotion 101 videos—nor of his blithe absence of accountability when he makes stupid prediction (“Christian Hackenberg is going to be great!”) after stupid prediction (“Baker Mayfield is Bitcoin!”) and just moves on to the next one without acknowledging his manifold errors.

But JM did launch a site that has proven successful and we applaud the self-starter in him.

5. H’ Ole!

At the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, first round, Ryan Moore aces the 17th hole on the fly. Can’t do better than that.

Music 101

Easy Come, Easy Go

In the Seventies swoon-worthy teen idols were such gifted vocalists that microphones were not even required during live performances. Here’s Bobby Sherman, who was basically a real-life Greg Brady/Johnny Bravo: Sherman grew up in the San Fernando Valley, played high school football and also, reportedly, 16 musical instruments. This 1970 single was one of three top-10 hits he recorded. A few years later, while appearing in a guest spot on Emergency! (remember Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto?), Sherman was so inspired that he left show business and became an EMT with the Los Angeles Police Dept. He continued doing so for 25 or so years, and he’s still alive. Rock on, Bobby Sherman. Rock on!

Remote Patrol

Duke vs. North Carolina

9 p.m. ESPN

Coby White, Hair Apparent

Round 3. The Tar Heels won the first two matches this season, but Zion Williamson only played 33 seconds of those 80 minutes of competition. Here the Triangle teams tussle for the third time in the Tar Heel State, in Charlotte, in the ACC semis. The winner here is a No. 1 seed in the tourney. UNC may still be if it loses.

Young Frankenstein

8 p.m. TCM

That’s Franken-steeen!

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 6 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right


That’s O’Rourke, Harris, Pet, Gillebrand and Castro. Belated Happy Birthday to Mr. Tapper, a good-humored smart dude with a good heart, who turned 50 yesterday.

Starting Five

Sadio Mane scored two goals in Liverpool’s 3-2 win at Bayern Munich yesterday

Do I Detect A British Accent

The Round of 16 of UEFA Champions League concluded yesterday and guess what? All our   Barclays Premier League squads that received bids to the annual 32-club tournament have advanced to the Round of 8: Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United, Manchester City and yesterday, Liverpool.

The Champions League is the March Madness of soccer with a twist or two: instead of the USA it’s Europe and instead of conference champions and the best at-large teams, it’s various nations’ top league champions and best at-large clubs. The Premier League receives four slots each year but this is the first time in 10 years that all four clubs have advanced to the quarters.

For those of us more casual soccer fans, know that Lionel Messi’s Spanish club, Barcelona, and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Italian club, Juventus, have also advanced. Messi scored two goals yesterday while Ronaldo had a hat trick on Tuesday.

2. You’re Grounded!

Take off, hoser!

After two Boeing MAX 737 flights crashed, each minutes after takeoff, in the past six months, killing more than 350 people, the following nations and/or continents and/or cities grounded the aircraft from their airspace: Europe, United Kingdom, Oman, China, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Ireland, Iceland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy,  Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland. Greece. Latvia. Lithuania, Luxembourg, Dubai, India, Mongolia, Vietnam, Bermuda, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Turkey, South Korea, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and UAE.

Two countries you may have noticed not on that list: Russia and the United States.

Finally, yesterday, President Trump grounded the MAX 737, which honestly we feel is kind of off-note since planes don’t kill people, gravity does (Rule No. 1). If you make the MAX 737 illegal, then only bad guys will fly them, right? Isn’t that how it works?

Also, Paul Manafort was sentenced to another 3 1/2 years in jail, his lawyer got shouted down working the “No Collusion” falsehood afterward, and almost immediately following the sentence New York charged Manafort with 15 new felony counts, and that is a jurisdiction in which President Trump has no pardoning power. So, not great, Bob!

3. TheYang And The Restless

So what do you know about Andrew Yang, who declared his presidential candidacy all the way back in November of 2017? Born and raised in Schenectady (pop had a PhD in physics, mom a masters degree in statistics), he’s 44, with an undergrad degree from Brown and a law degree from Columbia. Of Taiwanese descent.

In the past 19 years Yang has worked as an entrepreneur and with health-care start ups. His big proposal is a $1,000 a month “Freedom Dividend,” which will be given to all adults over the age of 18, his response to the coming wave of automation and AI. As he calls it, and not incorrectly, the “robot apocalypse.” Yang has received enough donations from enough states to qualify to be part of the Democratic (that’s his declared party) debates.

Whether or not you agree with his Universal Basic Income idea, here’s the truth, Ruth: automation and AI is going to put millions (more) Americans out of work. For us, and we’ve witnessed this first-hand on both sides, simply giving people an income without work doesn’t solve the greater problem. Sure, people need money to get by, but what they need nearly as much is a real reason to wake up every morning. And let’s face it, not everyone can pen a daily blog that is read by literally dozens of people.

So while the Freedom Dividend is a progressive and thoughtful idea, some leader further down the line is going to have to reckon with the idea of a few very, very wealthy Americans, a score of robots making the rest of the populace irrelevant, and then an overwhelming majority of potheads, drug addicts and Fortnite participants. So, kinda like now…

Maybe they/we can all just pick up plastic in the Pacific? Which leads us to…

4. Wanna Get Away From It All?

A last resort without a resort

Last night we were researching the planet’s longest flight (oh, no reason), which is a just shy of 19 hours trek from Newark to Singapore courtesy of Singapore Airlines (no, not the MAX 737). And we were slightly surprised to discover that the flight from Newark heads eastbound, which gives you a clue of just how VAST the Pacific Ocean must be that it’s shorter to fly across the Atlantic, across northern Africa and the Middle East and even India, than it is to fly across the USA and the Pacific.

P.I. is actually inhabited, you see

So we thought, Okay, given that, what is THE most remote island/islands in the Pacific? While a very good argument may be made for Hawaii, we’re going to go with the Pitcairn Islands in the southern Pacific. The Pitcairns are a chain of four volcanic islands, and while Henderson Island (below) accounts for 85% of the land mass, the only inhabited island of the four is Pitcairn (above). It boasts approximately 50 residents who sprung from four main families that were a mix of Tahitians and mutineers from the H.M.S. Bounty (yes, that Bounty).

Henderson Island, virtually uninhabited: further proof that hell is other people.

So, how remote is it? Pitcairn, a British territory, is 3,464 miles east of New Zealand (so, yeah, a much greater distance than from Maine to San Diego) and 3,570 miles west of Lima, Peru. How do you get there? Well, if you don’t own your own yacht, you’re going to be booking passage on another person’s yacht. There are no flights and no cruise ships and no, it isn’t cheap.

Go to Maui. You’ll never know the difference.

5. Citizen Caine

That tall, dashing, wavy-haired, blue-eyed rake was the true Swingin’ Sixties London sex bomb to which Austin Powers always aspired. It’s Michael Caine, love, and he turns 86 years young today. If you’re not too familiar with his films, we suggest:

–Alfie (1966)

–The Italian Job (1969)

–Zulu (1964)

–Get Carter (1971)

In “Dressed To Kill.” It’s a man, baby, yeaahhhhh!

–Hannah And Her Sisters (1986)

–Dressed To Kill (1980)

Music 101

Doll Parts

Lots of great one-off lines from Nineties tunes, but none better than “I wanna be the girl with the most cake.” It never got to the point of, No, Kurt is Courteney’s husband, but Courteney Love’s debut album with her band Hole was so much better than “Band-aid can also play guitar.”

Remote Patrol

The Twilight Zone

Netflix

The pilot episode, from Oct. 2, 1959, “Where Is Everybody?”

More than a few modern TV geniuses, such as Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, consider this anthology series that Rod Serling created to be in a class by itself. Netflix now has all 156 episodes of the epochal, ground-breaking series that ran from 1959-1964. Television history right here, with a psychological twist. It’s a cookbook!

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right


Love Mike Brey. Man, will heads explode in Bristol when the Irish win the ACC tournament.

Starting Five

From LBJ To OBJ

Angelina dumped Brad (or Brad dumped Angelina). Either way, they knew what they had but one or both of them was tired of the other’s sh*t. And that’s what it feels like knowing that the New York Giants traded Odell Beckham, Jr., to the Cleveland Browns.

Big Blue knew it had arguably the most dynamic and gifted wide receiver in the NFL. OBJ had a fat new contract and knew that with Saquon Barkley in the backfield not all the pressure would be on him. In fact, it would open things up for him.

But nobody was happy, and that’s the theme of pro sports and so much else today. Nobody’s happy where they are or with what they have. The FieldTurf is always greener…

And because every Ying deserves a Yang, as the Giants lose OBJ the Jets pick up Le’Veon Bell. So now Met Life Stadium houses two of the five best backs in the NFL.

2. Hail Mary’s!

We watched the final 30 minutes (in game time) of the WCC Championship Game between   Gonzaga and St. Mary’s and what we saw is one team executing its game plan, for the entire 40 minutes, to perfection, and the other playing in a desultory fashion, kind of willing itself to win based purely on superior talent.

This is what an upset in March looks like.

The Gaels, who only five weeks earlier in Spokane lost to the Zags by 46 points, beat them 60-47 in Las Vegas. Center Jordan Hunter (above) pulled down 15 boards and had 12 points, but this was a complete team effort in defeating the nation’s top-ranked team. The Zags, the nation’s leader in Scoring Offense (88.8 ppg), were held to more than 41 points below their average.

Saint Mary’s (22-11), by winning, eliminates any question as to whether they belong in the Big Dance. Bully for them and for their outstanding coach, Randy Bennett.

3. Shameless

There’s so much wrong with the Pay For A Roster Spot scam that we don’t know where to begin. The calculus is like, “Girls With Fish Lips Selfies x Lawnmower Parents x $$$$ divided by Corrupt University Coaches and/or Administrators = This Scandal.”

Dig, even two dinosaur epochs ago when we were in high school there were kids who made varsity or even started because of the influence (or $$$) their parents wielded. We were at a private high school, where big donations mattered. And we all know that universities give favor to legacies, especially when parents are rich and/or famous. Charlie Hall, the son of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, is probably a pretty decent Division III player but does he belong on a Big Ten roster (one point and five rebounds in three full seasons)?

At least he has a sense of humor about it…

But at least JLD did it the old-fashioned way. What’s going on here, with famous parents such as Aunt Becky (Lori Loughlin) and even more prestigious schools (Yale, USC, Stanford) is pure old privilege intersecting with an available commodity. All of these humans need to be placed in the galleys to row those oversized Ben-Hur style boats. We need to bring those ships back, if for no other reason than punishment.

To read more about the salacious details, here you go…

4. Sign Of The Times

You know who ordinarily signs books? Their authors. You know who doesn’t? People whose lives are an affront to everything that the book espouses.

It happened last week, but when President Trump signed copies of the Bible during a brief stop in Alabama to assess tornado damage, it was almost glossed over. But it shouldn’t have been. It was like an end-times revelation moment.

You can vote for Trump. You can support him. But only the most dead-fish eyes folks of those among us would ever claim that Trump and the Bible plow common ground. He’s a walking refutation to 11 of the 10 Commandments.

There’s simply no clearer evidence of the connection between Christian evangelism and white supremacy than the celebration of this moment. And again, not for the 100th time, how would the Right have reacted if President Obama had done this? Eggggggggs-actly.

5. A New Rubric For Rubik’s


The Rubik’s Cube was a yuuuuuuge deal back in 1980 or so, and it should be noted that we were awful at it. Horrible. And then to see this teenager solve it with his feet? We’re going back to bed now…

Music 101

Lawyers, Guns And Money

Our good friend Sorp suggested this Warren Zevon classic from 1978. We don’t think the song, released at the peak of the disco era, even charted, but it’s since grown in stature and is a cult classic. It never hurt that Zevon was an unconventional and beloved musician. As he was dying of cancer 16 or so years ago, he appeared on Letterman and dispensed sage advice: “Enjoy every sandwich.”

Remote Patrol

Liverpool at Bayern Munich

Champions League 

3 p.m. TNT

Liverpool’s Salah is one of the world’s top players

Liverpool has just one loss in 30 matches in English Premier League play this season. Bayern, per usual, is atop the Bundesliga table. When they met in their first leg of their Round of 16 tandem, the match ended scoreless. Winner take all this evening in Munich.