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Monthly Archives: July 2019
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
Starting Five
The War of 14-12
A midsummer classic between the Yankees and Twins at Target Field last night as New York wins 14-12 in 10 innings and just over five hours. To wit:
—Didi Gregorius collects five hits and seven RBI, the first shortstop to ever do that in one game (Rule No. 7). In a word, Greglorious!
–The Twins led 8-2 in the fifth. Then 9-6 at the top of the eighth. From there, the Yanks scored four runs to go ahead, 10-9. Then the Twins hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth to take an 11-10 lead. Then in the top of the ninth, two out and nobody on, No. 9 hitter Mike Tauchman earns a two-strike walk and Aaron Hicks hits a home run, 12-11 Yanks. Bottom nine, Aroldis Chapman walks the bases loaded with no outs, but escapes with only allowing one run: 12-12.
Top 10, Yanks score two on three base hits and a wild pitch. 14-12. Bottom 10th, Adam Ottavino walks the bases loaded and is lifted with two outs. Chad Green enters to pitch to one batter, Max Kepler, and this is how the game ends…
This was New York’s 100th game of the season, and they are now 65-35. That’s the best record in the A.L. The Twins lead the A.L. Central. Could be a fun October series.
Bob’s Nothing Burgers
At long last, Special Counsel Bob Mueller will testify on Capitol Hill this morning, but his boss at the DOJ has already issued a stern “Stay in your lane” warning, and he probably would’ve anyway. Don’t expect much revelation or extrapolation from the Circumspector General.
Slay Ride
Yesterday we “reported” about the young couple that was murdered in Canada as well as a pair of missing teens whose burner camper van was found 464 miles away (along with the corpse of a middle-aged man. Today the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has named those teens, Kam McLeod and Breyer Schmegelsky, both 6’4″, as the suspects in all three murders.
The RCMP hasn’t said why they believe that, but you can now trace a tale of them killing the older man, taking his vehicle and burning theirs, and then heading east and murdering Chynna Deese and Lucas Fowler. Motive on all three murders unknown, at least publicly.
This is vast, vast area, with few and far between gas stations, we imagine. Expecting every last one to have an RCMP looking for their vehicle, a silver RAV4. So you’d think their next move would be to carjack someone else’s vehicle or simply to hide out and not drive anywhere.
AD: Awesome Debt
Twelve-year NFL veteran running back Adrian Peterson is headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day, but before he arrives in Canton he may first be making a stop at the poor house (is there an actual poor house?). Yesterday it was revealed that Peterson, a.k.a. AD, has defaulted on more than $8 million in loans to at least three creditors and if this keeps up, he may just become our 46th president (he turns 35 next March).
A lawsuit filed on behalf of DeAngelo Vehicle Sales, which claims that Peterson owes them $5.2 million (who goes $5 million in debt to an auto retailer besides a pro athlete?). Further information has come out that suggests that the current Washington Redskin RB is deep in debt because he gave a lot of his more than $100 million in career earnings to someone to invest who then robbed him blind.
Rule No. 13: Open a Schwab account, put all of your cash in Apple (AAPL), walk away for 10 to 20 years, return very happy. It’s not that complicated, people.
Rule No. 74: Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
Once Upon A Time
This is how you promote a film 1) without having to sit on the couch and engage in empty chit-chat and 2) getting even more play out of it by creating a viral YouTube video. Well done, whoever thought of this idea.
Reserves
Where In The World
We showed a different aerial view of this spot yesterday and told you it was somewhere in North America. The place is called Tofino, and it is on the western coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I want to go to there.
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Starting Five
Gareth Bale Out
Inveterate MH readers are well aware of our ages old sports crush on Gareth (“assistant to the vice president”) Bale. In 2013, not yet 25 years old, the 6’1″ Welsh striker who played for Tottenham was named the Premier League Footballer of the Year. Dynamic and athletic, Bale was poised to become the face of the Premier League for the next half-decade.
Like so many Brits before him, Bale instead looked afar and decided to seek greatness on foreign soil. He engineered a transfer to Real Madrid, where he was forever in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo (as all humans are destined to be). Then Ronaldo left before last season for Juventus and Bale oft-injured and oft-disappointing, failed to pick up the load.
Bale still has three years remaining on his contract, but his relationship with coach Zinedane Zidane (“ZZ Klopp,” as we like to call him) may be damaged beyond repair. “Gareth didn’t play because he didn’t want to,” Zidane said of last Sunday’s preseason friendly versus Bayern Munich in Washington, D.C.
Rumor abroad is that Bale, 30, will be transferred to a Chinese Super League club. Here’s hoping that he is sent to an MLS club instead or back to the Premier League. We were always against his personal Brexit (in the reverse direction). He would’ve been a legend in England had he remained.
FAANG Bites Back
Remember, not so long ago, when tech stocks were down and the Trump administration and/or Congress was making Amazon, Apple and Facebook its whipping boys? Calling Zuckerberg to appear before Congress and threatening Amazon with an anti-trust suit and calling Tim Cook feckless? The ol’ “Smarties are bad elitists” crap that Trump has been peddling?
A look at these stocks on the final day of May, not even two months ago, and at their opening prices today:
Facebook (FB)……. $177……………..$202
Amazon (AMZN)…. $1,775………..$1,996
Apple (AAPL)………$175…………….$208
Google/Alphabet (GOOGL) $1,105…..$1,142
Three of the four are up between 15-19% in less than two months. Only Netflix has cratered since then among FAANG, due to increasing competition and having raised its monthly subscription rate.
Facebook reports earnings after tomorrow’s market close, Amazon and Google after Thursday’s, and Apple after next Tuesday. Stay tuned.
Murder In B.C.
They met two years ago at a youth hostel in Croatia. Chynna Deese, a 25 year-old from Charlotte, and Lucas Fowler, 23, and from Australia, were young and in love and adventurous. Their next adventure was to be a tour, in a 33 year-old blue van, across western Canada to visit the country’s national parks.
It was not to be. The couple were murdered along the side of the road—their van had apparently broken down—in far northern British Columbia, most likely on Sunday evening, July 14. It took police three days to identify their bodies.
Deese and Fowler were murdered on the Alaskan Highway and not the notorious Trans-Canada Highway, which is also known as the “Highway of Tears” because of the dozens of unsolved murders that have taken place along the remote road the past 50 years.
Furthering the mystery, a pair of male teens who were en route to the Yukon territory for work have vanished. But their camper-van, which had been put aflame, was discovered. The body of a middle-aged man was found not far from the van.
While the two locations are nearly 500 miles apart, both are in northern British Columbia and in very remote areas.
TJM on TCM
Check out this lineup of films: Lost Horizon (1937), Gone With The Wind, Stagecoach, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Only Angels Have Wings (all 1939), It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) and High Noon (1952).
One man appeared in all of these films, and always in a supporting role: Thomas John Mitchell. Born in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1892, Mitchell may be the greatest male character actor ever. Certainly, he owns the most impressive resume. He was also the first male actor to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony (a TOE?).
If you recognize him, you probably do as George Bailey’s forgetful Uncle Billy, who leaves behind the fat envelope of cash that plunges George into suicidal despair. He won his Oscar for Stagecoach, the film that is better known as John Wayne’s coming-out party as a Western icon.
Where In The World?
A friend was telling me about a spot where she and her family recently visited, and I remembered the name. Then I looked it up. Looks heavenly, does it not? It’s somewhere in North America. You’re welcome to take a guess. It’s sort of a surfer’s haven and it’s fairly remote. Answer tomorrow unless you’d like to place your guess in the comments.
Music 101
Hurting Each Other
In the early Seventies it was impossible to take a long family car trip without hearing a Carpenters tune, and that was okay. Siblings Richard and Karen Carpenter released three No. 1 hits and five No. 2 singles during their career, which was beset with personal problems: Richard became addicted to Quaaludes and had to take a year off in 1979 while Karen died four years later, at the young age of 32, from complications due to her long bout with anorexia nervosa. This is a biopic just waiting to be made. No one but no one sounded like Karen Carpenter.
Remote Patrol
2001: A Space Odyssey
10 p.m. TCM
Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece tracing the arc of mankind from the first murder to a sinister supercomputer. From 1968. And you probably cannot name a single actor from the picture (I can’t). The film has a 2:45 running time, so get your blankie and pillow out.
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Tweet Me Right
The best Shark Week promo we’ve seen…
Starting Five
CNN’s The Movies
It was my good friend at Sports Illustrated, Mark Beech, who first got me interested in old films. Back in the late 1990s and early 00s, when we were both single, Beech loved to talk about the movie on TCM he’d stayed home to watch the night before. I’m like, Here you are living in the epicenter of Bachelor Heaven and you’re living the lifestyle of Aunt Bee?
But he gradually pulled me in. It was due to Beech that I first saw Casablanca. I was in my mid-thirties. Then he’d find hidden old gems such as the original Wicker Man (way creepier than the Nic Cage version). Before long I was hooked and the next stage was that we created an annual one-day film festival, to be held in my apartment on the bleakest day of winter. We named it the Johndance Film Festival and in our greatest year probably had about 10 people attend. Everyone chose one film and we did our best to see all of them. A few that made the bill over the years: The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man, Nobody’s Fool, An Affair To Remember, Night of the Hunter, etc.
Anyway, needless to say that I was looking forward to CNN’s six-part series, The Movies, that launched three Sundays ago. Tom Hanks’ production company was to be behind it. I got a bad feeling right off when the first installment was “The Eighties.” I thought, Uh-oh, they don’t trust contemporary audiences to appreciate films made before they were born (and they may be correct, but still, for hardcore film buffs, disappointing).
The next two installments have been “The Nineties” and “The 2000s” and now, CNN must feel, if you’re still hooked, maybe they can serve you your vegetables and you won’t feign a tummy ache: “The Seventies,” “The Sixties” and, “The Golden Age” (all films before 1960).
If that’s not disappointing enough, the series feels like a cursory survey course. The tweet above pretty much describes the format and, oh yeah, every comment by every person interviewed is glowing and positive. For me the last straw was them showing a scene from Bridesmaids in which Maya Rudolph and Kristen Witt discuss men waving their d***s in their faces during sex and afterward Rudolph says, “I was really proud of that scene.”
It’s not that CNN’s “The Movies” is bad. It’s just that, like movie popcorn, you ingest it easily but there’s no feeling of sustenance. There’s no depth. No theme. Nothing edifying. And it feels as if just about every famous person sat down for the interviews either out of affection for Hanks or because he or she knew their film was going to be given a lovefest.
It’s not bad at all. It’s just that maybe it has attempted to cover too much material and when there is a not critical counterpunch (you’re going to tell us how this century has become the century of the movie franchise, why not explain why: unadventurous studio heads who are part of publicly owned media conglomerates and the safe $$$$), it feels empty.
The Ten Commandments
Watching the Yankee game yesterday and pinstriped pitcher James Paxton walks the Rockies’ leadoff hitter. Worse, it was their No. 8 batter. The Rockies go on to score four runs that inning. I’m thinking, You never, ever, ever do that. Ever! Never walk the leadoff batter.
Then it occurred to me that that should be a baseball commandment. And that maybe every sport needs its own Ten Commandments. So I’m starting a list now and soliciting suggestions.
Baseball Commandment No. 5: Thou Shalt Not Walk The Leadoff Hitter.
Back in the day Rick Reilly would think of a nugget like this and turn it into his “Point After” column, spend a few hours writing it, and that would be his work for the week. He’d pocket a handsome paycheck for the effort, too. What a time to have been alive.
Garbage Time
Remember, I dunno, how long ago was it—2009 to 2016—when Barry Obama was president and a certain segment of the population was perennially unhappy and critical? One of them even used the word “garbage” to describe it.
Fox’s Chris Wallace does, and yesterday morning he hung White House Goebbels Stephen Miller with his boss’ own words. Maybe Miller figured that since he’d be appearing on Fox News that this would be a lay-up. No such luck.
Addiction
Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald was asked about declining attendance in college football last week and as his response, he held up his smart phone. And while our phones are not the sole reason for sparser stadium crowds, and while his answer may have launched a thousand “Get Off My Lawn!” jeers from millennials, everything Fitz says here is dead-on.
We’re all guilty. I am. Smart phones are the great 21st-century addiction, and the irony is that devices that have exponentially increased our capacity for communicating with those not in our immediate vicinity have, in only a decade or so, conditioned us not to communicate with those IN our immediate vicinity. No one is present any more. Smart phones, more than lap tops, are the devices that may ultimately foretell the end of community, and that’s the first step to the end of society. The Matrix is real, Neo.
Shane Asylum
What would you prefer as your big takeaway from the 2019 British Open in Portrush, Northern Ireland? That Gaelic favorite son Rory McIlroy shot a quadruple bogey on the very first hole and failed to make the cut? That not-as-favorite and not-as-slim countryman Shane Lowry won going away? Or that Brooks Koepka, who finished in a tie for fourth place, ended up in the top four in all four majors in 2019 without winning any of them?
Music 101
Heatwave
Hardly an inspired choice after this simmering summer weekend—outdoor bars in NYC were closed because who wanted to sit outside? Martha and the Vandellas were the original Motown girl group, and this 1963 song, fittingly released in July, soared up to No. 4 on the Billboard charts. Linda Ronstadt’s 1975 remake hit No. 5.
Remote Patrol
Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee
It couldn’t have been easy for Jerry Seinfeld to persuade the notoriously reclusive Eddie Murphy to leave his mansion, but considering that the two of them appeared on the same bill at a Chinese restaurant in north Jersey in 1976, Eddie must have felt he could trust him. Stick around for a film insight by Eddie and also, near the end, Jerry sort of explains why he does this series.
MOONFRAUD?
EDITOR’S NOTE: What better day than Sunday for blasphemy? Before you rip my lifelong friend for what he has written, for what I’m about to post below, all I ask is whether you have the scientific chops, the physicist’s know-how, to disprove his theory. I am not endorsing it. But dismissing it because “that many people could not keep this a secret” is not the proper response.
I’m honestly looking for someone who understands science better than I do (“Yeah, science, Mr. White!”) to disprove his hypothesis. One day after the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, I run this not to be a contrarian for the sake of it, but to hopefully elicit a reader response that will at long last bring some clarity and/or resolution to this argument that my friend, a Stanford-educated lawyer who holds a couple of patents in engineering, has long made.
by Michael DePaoli
If you’ve ever wondered how come a helicopter cannot simply hover above the Earth and have the Earth rotate below it, so that simply by hovering you could travel from, say, Los Angeles to Casablanca (roughly the same latitude) there’s a simple explanation: Earth’s atmosphere also rotates.
So when we talk of the Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969, we must understand that outer space is this vast void with no atmosphere and that the Earth’s atmosphere, just like the Earth (and The Eagles’ “Hotel California”) is in constant rotation. Think of physical Earth as the hub of the merry-go-round and the atmosphere as the staging area with all the horsies. Your job as an astronaut is to approach that merry-go-round as it is rotating and climb aboard.
The first step, which happens while the Lunar Module is orbiting the moon, is a maneuver known to NASA as the Trans-Earth Injection. This firing of a rocket is done to put the module on a path for what is known as a “free return trajectory.” In short, the spacecraft is dropping through space right toward the Earth’s atmosphere.
The trick is in the angle of reentry. Come in too perpendicular and you’re going too fast and will burn up (you’ve all seen Apollo 13, I imagine). Come in at too slight of an angle and you’ll skip right back out into space. Imagine trying to slice an orange with the fastest cutting action you’ve ever used and then attempting to stop the blade’s movement before you cut off a wedge of that orange. That’s what we’re talking about.
The Reentry Corridor, that transitional area where the atmosphere yields to outer space, is located some 54 nautical miles above the Earth’s physical surface. After the Trans-Earth Injection, Apollo 11 was purportedly traveling at escape velocity relative to both the Earth and Moon. In other words, at a velocity so great that, having pierced the Reentry Corridor, it would do so once again except on an outbound route once it hit that circumference point again.
So, why did Apollo 11 not just escape? Or, more precisely, how did Apollo 11 traveling at escape velocity after the Trans-Earth Injection (a good name for your next indie band, by the way) recapture the elliptical orbit necessary to use the Re-Entry corridor?
NASA reported in 1969 that upon re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere at the altitude of 400,000 feet, Apollo 11 was traveling at precisely the velocity of 24,000 mile per hour with a re-entry insertion angle of precisely negative 6.48 degrees. So how does a vehicle traveling FORTY-TWO TIMES FASTER than a 747 at cruising speed, falling toward Earth due to gravitational pull, manage to avoid skipping back into space while at the same time somehow being able to put on the brakes? Parachutes?
It would seem the safest way to leap onto that moving carousel would be to take a very soft angle toward it (like, you know, 6.48 degrees), but then you’re probably going to miss it and skip right back into space. However, if you come at it too directly, too close to a perpendicular angle, you’re likely going to crash, no? Try running directly at that carousel at full speed, then multiply your full speed by 42, and see what happens.
After re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, what was the terminal velocity of the Apollo 11 Command Module at an altitude of 100,000 feet? We don’t know. NASA never provided it. How did the module decelerate with all the effects of gravity and already having entered the atmosphere traveling 24,000 m.p.h.? And how did the stress placed on the module by such a rapid deceleration not break it apart? Or how did it not incinerate?
It’s a lot easier for news media to call someone a “conspiracy theorist” than it is for just one of them to properly explain how the Lunar Command Module somehow pierced the Earth’s atmosphere at just the proper angle and was also able to decelerate traveling that fast. It’s like that old Bugs Bunny cartoon when his plane is about to crash and it stops two feet before hitting the surface. As Bugs explains, “It ran out of gas.”
Why is it that when it comes to the lunar landings we suspend the scientific method, and we forbid any question to be asked, and we ridicule anyone who might doubt the official story of the Moon missions? Why do lunar landing doubters always focus and refocus and focus again on the Moon photographs when by now it should be painfully obvious that NASA would never be stupid enough to release a bad photo?
When someone does not understand the Trans-Earth Injection nor the Re-Entry Corridor, does that person have the right to proclaim that all lunar landing doubters are lunatics (a word that literally derives from the Latin word for moon, “luna”)?
Not to put too fine a point on it, and these are all secondary points, but in the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission our government was willfully misleading us about the status of the war in Vietnam. It also felt tremendous pressure to beat Russia to the moon as a massive beat in the Cold War stakes (watch the 1968 Robert Altman film Countdown). Is it really that inconceivable that our government, at that time, would mislead its populace? Is it at all dubious to you, with the technological advancements we’ve made in the past half-century and looking back at where tech was in 1969, that we were able to perform this feat, literally an astronomical feat, then but have not even come close to attempting to do so in the past 45 years?
With so many catastrophic events unfolding (e.g. climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and the Electric Daisy Carnival), do the Moon landings really matter, anymore?
Seriously, send this list of questions to your astrophysicist friends, or your seventh grade science teachers. Answers! We need answers.
If you want to delve deeper into this issue, you can check out my book, On Being Wrong: Moonfraud. Available on Amazon.