by John Walters

Starting Five

Crazy Rich Caucasians

At this weekend’s CPAC—Chronically Paranoid And Christian—they desecrated the legacy of John McCain, pushed the flag into the MeToo movement, warned that the Democrats are here to take away your newborns and hamburgers, and a dude who earns $5,000,000 annually proselytizing for gun rights fulminated about elitists while standing in a room where firearms were prohibited.

Also, President Trump spoke for two hours and 20 minutes, uninterrupted, a feat that has inspired us to coin a new term: filibluster.

2. Mulaney Mastery

If he’s not the best John to appear on SNL since Belushi, he’s certainly the best John who once lived in Chicago and has a seven-letter surname to appear on SNL since Belushi. John Mulaney, erstwhile SNL writer and rising comic, returned to guest-host for the second time and not coincidentally it was the strongest SNL by far of the season. What makes that assertion more bizarre is that the cold open and Weekend Update were relatively weak.

The skits, though, were vintage early SNL stuff (we’re talking late Seventies). And Mulaney made them sizzle. Our four favorites: 1) What’s That Name?, which took SNL’s overused game-show sketch concept but put a hilarious spin on it (Mulaney’s long-time partner in comedy from SNL, Bill Hader, played the host; this sketch had been cut in 2011 back when Mulaney was a writer), 2) To Have And Have Not, with Kate McKinnon as Lauren Bacall and Mulaney as Bogey, 3) The Wedding Dance, which cannot be appreciated enough for the choreography Mulaney had to get down in just a week’s time, and 4) Bodega Of Love, which was music theater-geek heaven that cribbed parody tunes from Willy Wonka, Little Shop of Horrors and Rent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X1Xd9jl_o

It’s funny. When Mulaney auditioned for SNL a decade or so ago, Lorne Michaels saw that he was smart and witty but they did not think of him as a performer. They slotted him as a writer. It would seem, as Mulaney lives in NYC and is married, that all would benefit if they begged him to return as a Tina Fey-like head writer/performer, no?

3. C’mon, Get Happy!

Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston (the Davos for sneaker heads) this weekend, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said, “A lot of players are unhappy.”

He’s right, of course. Anthony Davis? Not happy. LeBron James? Not happy. Kyrie Irving? Not happy and for the second time in as many years pundits are saying how it’s right for the perennial All-Star and his current team to divorce.

The average—AVERAGE—NBA player salary is more than $7 million per year. The average height of an NBA player is, we’re guessing here, 6’5″ to 6’6″. NBA players don’t have as long a season as MLB players and are not subject to the brutal and potentially catastrophic collisions that NFL players are. Moreover, their work uniform is basically what you and I had to remember to bring to school for 4th-grade gym class.

“A lot of players are unhappy.”

There’s a lot going on here, and Silver put part of the blame on anxiety caused by social media (pro tip: that’s not going away any time soon, guys). The lesson, which we learned long ago, is easy, and it’s about grass not being greener elsewhere. The happiest people are those who, regardless of money or height or teammates, those who wake up and decide that they’re going to make the place they’re at the best place it can be.

And if you can lure Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins, that ain’t bad, either.

4. Here’s The Beef

That’s former Ole Miss wideout D.K. Metcalf, whose 1.63% body fat on a 6’3″, 228-pound frame had NFL scouts and pundits agog in Indianapolis this weekend (never mind that Notre Dame wideout Miles Boykin is essentially the same size, just an inch taller, and comparatively posted the same numbers as Metcalf in all the drills—better in some, slightly worse in others). Anyway, Metcalf probably weight-roomed himself into a first-round pick, if not first-half of first round.

Our deal: For the second consecutive year, the best player in the NFL draft has a first name that begins with Q. Last year it was Quenton Nelson, whom the Colts took at No. 6 and who started immediately and made the Pro Bowl as a rookie. Barring injury, Nelson is a sure-fire Hall of Famer.

Quinnen is your top pick. Or should be.

This year it’s Alabama interior defensive lineman Quinnen Williams, who had the fastest 40 time for a 300-pounder in 13 seasons. And he’s a beast on the field. Word out of Indy is that new Cardinal head coach Kliff Kingsbury is going to draft Kyler Murray (all 5’10” of him) with the No. 1 overall pick, and we like the Heisman winner, but what a colossal mistake that would be. You’ve got a shot at what may be an even better version of Aaron Donald and a second-year quarterback who was taken in the top ten last year. The Cardinals are going to screw this up, aren’t they?

5. Deadly In Alabama

Tornadoes sweep across Alabama, killing 23 in one county, Lee, on Sunday. It’s the deadliest tornado day in the U.S. in five years.

The other day I came across a column I’d written for SI On Campus in April of 2005. It’s about poker, specifically Texas Hold ‘Em. I doubt it ever made it to the web. Thought a few of you might enjoy it.

Hands Across America

During a three-month jag through Poker Nation, the author went all in, bluffing TAs and getting schooled by future MBAs

by John Walters

Seductive eyes. Charming smile. Eric has been coveting my stack of chips from the moment he met me. And he is good. Real good.

“I was playing in a game against my accounting professor,” the Indiana sophomore tells me, “and I raised without even looking at my hole cards. The flop comes 6-7-9 rainbow. I go outside for a few minutes. Then I check, and he checks. A 9 on the turn. Now I look, I’m holding 6-6. I got the boat (6s full of 9s). So I go all in and win $150. I mean, it was blind luck.”

Eric took his professor to school. And now he was looking to do the same to me. Eric is the devil—don’t think I didn’t notice that he beat his professor with a 6-6-6.

Three months ago I didn’t know a big blind from a duck blind. The first time I sat in on a game, on Super Bowl Sunday at the University of Florida, I was relieved of my entire $20 buy-in after only two hands. Gainesville? Lossesville.

Greater moments of ignominy awaited on my Heart (Club, Diamond, Spade) of Darkness odyssey. When an internet poker honcho’s offer to put me in touch with Doyle Brunson was met with apathy on my end, he asked, “Do you know who Doyle Brunson is?”

“Uh, no,” I replied.

“He’s the Babe Ruth of poker.”

Wait a beat.

“Who’s Babe Ruth?” That, I have since learned, is called re-raising with rags.

“The thing that separates good players from marginal players,” Flounder, a Duke senior, told me a month later, “is knowing when to fold.”

To think it cost me $100 in Durham that evening to learn that lesson, whereas I would have only had to spend $10.97 (plus shipping and handling) to purchase Kenny Rogers Greatest Hits. Remember when eight guys would sit around a table and smoke pot instead of splitting one?

But by now, sitting next to Eric in Bloomington, I too have become a poker face. I marvel at how addictive hold ’em is, remember what an undergrad at Central Florida told me: “My roommate is begging me to quit playing poker. Can’t stand what it’s doing to me—and she’s a stripper.”

I’m in. Eric’s in. Everyone else, after the two of us raised pre-flop, has folded. The flop comes a 3-5-8 rainbow and I raise. Eric re-raises me. I have yet to read Super/System or Super/System II, Doyle Brunson’s epochal how-to tomes on the game (whereas Eric, when I asked, “Have you read Super/System?” replied, “Which one?”), but I’m putting Eric on a high pair. The rainbow (three different suits) means he is not drawing to a flush, and his pre-flop raise indicates…well, what do I know? I’ve lost $140 researching this story.

Still, this is my moment. “I’m all in,” I say, pushing my last $60 of chips to the center of the table.

Eric grins. Studies me. Ten minutes ago I won a big pot holding nothing better than K-2 off-suited. Is the dude from SI bluffing again? Eric wonders.

“All in,” he announces, turning over his hole cards. His friends “ooh” and “ah.” My head drops as swiftly as the trap door on a hangman’s gallows.

“Got a pair of kings,” Eric says. His eyes radiate. The glow from his smile can be seen in Terre Haute. The $160 pot is—

“But you don’t,” I answer as I turn over my cards, “have a pair of aces.”*

*Looking back on the story, Eric could have won if a king had come down on the turn or the river. It did not. Not sure why I forgot to mention that.

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

John Beilein was just trying to coach 😂 pic.twitter.com/SW5TFg2tmA

— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) March 1, 2019

The best part is that the Wolverines were leading by at least 20 points at this stage.

Starting Five

The Bryce Is Right*

*The judges, being Jennifer Garner fans, will also accept “13 Going On $330 Million”

Thirteen years, $330 million, from the Philadelphia Phillies. Bryce Harper, come on dowwwwwwn! Not only is Harper a perennial MVP favorite for at least the next five years (though he did have a down year last season), but his I’m-just-as-hunky-as-Chris Hemsworth looks and big bat will make him a big favorite in the City of Brotherly Love.

We’re a little surprised. Harper grew up in Las Vegas and, knowing he was choosing where to spend the remainder of his career, we thought he might opt for a West Coast club such as the Dodgers. Nope.

Phillies at Nats, April 2. The boo birds will be singing.

And yes, whoever signs Mike Trout next year will probably have to give him a state or an outer planet to retain him.

2. Morality and Michael Cohen

We can only assume that Brooks dons himself in Brooks Brothers

New York Times columnist David Brooks frequently catches flak for being the ultimate in out-of-touch elitist populism—and we know that some of our readers already skipped beyond this item after reading its first three words—but we just want to say that we read this column last night and kept thinking, “Uh huh. Yes. That’s right. Yes. You get it. True.”

Read it for yourselves. We found it an accurate summation of the conundrum facing this republic of ours, and how we got here.

3. Fair Or Foul?

At the Connecticut Indoor State Championships last weekend, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood finished 1st and 2nd in the 55-meter sprint. Meanwhile at the collegiate level, CeCe Telfer of Franklin Pierce University is the top-ranked 55-meter sprinter in Division II.

Miller and Yearwood are both transgender athletes, while Telfer only a year ago competed on her school’s men’s team under the name of Craig.

It’s a little early, perhaps, to understand all the physiological effects and nuances of the gender transformation process, but we hardly think that if you question it that you are not woke. Or that you are just as bigoted or pig-headed as someone who didn’t want Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier.

It’s at least fair to ask if this is fair. People who are born as males and develop musculature as males and then suddenly alter their hormone intake for a year or so…well, does that make them females in terms of competing on a level playing field? The results suggest that people at least need to study this more.

4. Catch Of The Day

This is a seven-foot long hoodwinker sunfish that washed up on the beach in California not far from Santa Barbara this week. The oddity here is that the hoodwinker has only been spotted off the coasts of Chile and New Zealand. So how did it come to cross sub-tropical waters and find itself near California?

This goes back to the MH theory of “What would happen if we just shipped a bunch of polar bears to Antarctica?” Answer: There’d be a hell of a lot of unhappy penguins, but what else? Anyway, the world is coming to an end but don’t worry, Jesus is going to get off the Barca-lounger and save us all because, certainly, we deserve it.

5. Ty-rain-osarus

Days of unrelenting rain has transformed entire Northern California communities into islands, stranding thousands. https://t.co/idea4RPUBL pic.twitter.com/x3PL5iYnv1

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 1, 2019

This is where photo captions can make a big difference. Our intrepid canoeist is not starring in Jurassic Park 4: Drenched World, but rather a resident of Guerneville, California, paddling through a flooded miniature golf course. Props to the photog who saw the potential here.

Music 101

Little Red Corvette

There are, to our knowledge, no songs about Ferraris, Jaguars, Porsches, Lamborghinis or even McLarens. No one knows what a Barchetta looks like other than that it’s red, the song “Tesla Girl” precedes the vehicle by at least two decades, and Mercedes only got a line in an Eagles song about an unearthly desert lodge. But Prince wrote a famous ode to America’s signature high-performance vehicle even if only as a metaphor. From 1983…

Remote Patrol

Gran Torino

7 p.m. (& 9:30 p.m.) AMC

During this scene, we were really hoping Clint would say that he couldn’t remember how many bullets he had remaining in the chamber.

If there’s a “Get Off My Lawn” genre of films, this and Falling Down belong as the highlight double feature. Grouchy Clint Eastwood, which is his default mood in films these days (he’s always been grouchy, he was just too handsome for you to notice before), a bunch of Crazy Lower-Middle Class Asians, and a red-headed priest (whom we served at a party last summer and who sheepishly acknowledged, Yeah, it is I).