Monthly Archives: September 2019

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 7 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Life, death, fire, Iggles.

Starting Five

Red Light District

Sanford Stadium and Georgia wholly disregarded the advice of the Police on Saturday evening (“You don’t have to put out the red liiiiight”) as Notre Dame came to visit for the first time. The Irish acquitted themselves well, but in what has became a near-annual tradition, came away with a respectable loss versus a highly-ranked team (USC ’05; Florida State ’14; Clemson ’15).

BRUUUUUUUUUCE!

Turns 70 today. So much has already been said and written, so much more should be. Everyone has their pop culture/artist heroes. For me, it’s Roger Staubach, David Letterman and Bruce. All of whom are now septuagenarians.

Fleabag’gin The Emmys

The TV show Fleabag, which is written by and stars a female with a hyphenated name, is filmed in London and appears on Amazon Prime, cleaned up at last night’s host-free Emmys. Creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge hauled in three Emmys, including upset wins against Veep and fellow hyphenated star Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Best Comedy and Best Lead Actress in a Comedy.

Our favorite televised thing of the year, Chernobyl, also picked up three Emmys. It was also the target for snarky filler lines such as “Chernobyl was filmed i Studio City in front of a live audience” and “Chernobyl, the little nuclear disaster that could.”

Game Of Thrones won Best Drama and like 11 other awards but, just like in the show, the women were treated callously and without mercy. The only individual acting award went to The Imp, Peter Dinklage.

Pandemonium In Pullman

For one half in Pullman, it felt like a baccalaureate exercise. Mustachio’ed man of the hour Gardner Minshew had flown 2,800 miles to return, in jorts, to the stadium that made him famous. His successor, Anthony Gordon, was on the way to breaking Minshew’s school-record 7 touchdown tosses in one game. The ESPNers were talking up Gordon’s Heisman chances and Mike Leach’s “Insurgency In Warfare” course.

And then suddenly Chip Kelly and UCLA authored their own episode of Pardon The Interruption. Trailing 49-17 early in the third quarter, the Bruins stormed back for an incredible 50-second half points and defeated the Cougs, 67-63. We’ve lost sleep over many a Pac-12 After Dark contest, but this was by far the Pac-12 After Darkiest.

Giant

Send your apologies to New York Giant general manager Dave Gettleman, who used the sixth pick in last spring’s draft to select Duke quarterback Daniel Jones, was roundly pilloried for it, and now appears to be having the last laugh.

In his first career start yesterday, on the road in Tampa, Jones led the G-Men to a 32-31 victory. Jones, with two fewer starts in 2019, has one more win than Kyler Murray, the first overall pick in the April draft.

Killer Cliff of Connecticut

Both a father and son perished after falling 75 feet off a cliff in Connecticut, a state that is not ordinarily infamous for its craggy promontories. Steven Price, 71, and his son Mark, 30, had been riding ATVs in a quarry in Farmington, Conn., a lovely town about 20 miles northwest of Hartford.

This happened last Wednesday night. The dad had gone over to peer off the edge of the cliff (never a good idea) and tripped. His son moved to save him and they both fell. Rule No. 1, quarry-style.

Music 101

Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’

There we were at the Fairway market yesterday, groping avocados (not a euphemism), and an old-timey song came over the speaker system. It could’ve been a Sam Cooke song. Not sure. The refrain went something like, “Nothing, nothing, nothing could keep me…” and now I forget the rest. I mention all of this because A) I’m commissioning one of you to locate the song and B) because now I know from where Journey stole the melody to its 1978 breakout hit. The “nothing, nothing, nothing” lyric is “lovin’, touchin’, squeezin’.”

For perspective’s sake, Journey had been a band before this song, but Gregg Rolie had done the vocals. Then they brought in Steve Perry, who sang lead vocals here, and the band exploded. We remember it well, early autumn of 1979. And this song got wall-to-wall play on the radio. It was Journey’s first Top 40 hit. Rolie, who had co-founded both Santana and this band, did not take the demotion well, leaving Journey a year later. Then they released Escape. Maybe shoulda stuck around.

Yes, but did it have legs? Ask the producers of Glee:

Remote Patrol

Bride Of Frankenstein

11:15 p.m. TCM

“The cocktail hour MUST go from 2 to 4 while we’re taking photos!”

In which the producers pose the age-old question, What’s more terrifying than a 7-foot tall corpse come to life with the brain of a mental patient? Being married. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

Jag Off(ense)

The NFL at last has a quarterback folk hero who may save the league from itself (and the Jaguars from Jalen Ramsey). Gardner Minshew, the East Carolina transfer who almost wound up as Alabama’s third-string QB last season as a grad transfer but instead trekked to Pullman, Wash., where he led the FBS in passing before becoming a 6th-round pick, led the Jags to their first win of the season last night in his first NFL start.

If you loved the 1970s, you’d love Minshew, who’s a bit North Dallas Forty meets Smokey and the Bandit. America and ESPN won’t be able to get enough of him but thankfully he’s in Jacksonville, where the media rarely ventures. Let’s hope the mustachioed Minshew buys himself a muscle car real soon and that everyone hopping over each other to do the next in-depth profile of him catches mono.

We will take a personal pat on the back and remind you we warned you about Minshew making an NFL roster a month ago. Meanwhile, last night’s Jags’ win provided a moment for Tom Brady, the face of the league to commit his most subversive act of his entire career (that he will admit to):

…and

Tom’s right, you know. The NFL, and CFB, are over-obsessed with penalties thus far in September, particularly with QB hits. Flags on rough but not illegal (at least up until this season) hits on QBs cost Denver its game on Sunday and nearly cost Tulane its win against Houston last night. And it cost Jets DB Jamal Adams $21,000 for a clean hit on Monday night.

Speaking of the J-E-T-S, they also have a dude making his first NFL start this week who played under Mike Leach at Washington State: Luke Falk (above). The problem is he’s playing in Foxboro against Brady and the Pats. If for any reason he miraculously leads the Jets to victory, he’ll deserve to become a folk hero, at least locally.

“Yankees Clinch! Thuuuuuuuuh Yankees Clinch! (The A.L. East)

The New York Yankees, once George Constanza’s employer but never Jerry’s favored NYC franchise, clinch the A.L. East in typical 2019 fashion: the Yanks beat the Angels 9-1 thanks to four home runs, three of which were hit by players who were not in the Opening Day lineup: D.J. LeMahieu, Cameron Maybin and Clint Frazier.

(28 being the next number in terms of World Series the Yankees would win)

Aaron Boone becomes the first manager in MLB history to win at least 100 games in each of his first two seasons (Wowwww). And the Yanks win the A.L. East for the first time since 2012.

New York is currently 1/2 game behind Houston for the best record in the American League. It’s a mixed-bag outcome. The loser of that race gets an easier first-round opponent (Minnesota, most likely, as opposed to a surging Cleveland or Oakland, again most likely) but then cedes home-field advantage in the ALCS.

19th Nervous Meltdown

Okay, this encounter between the former mayor of New York City and the son of a former governor of New York (and brother of the current governor of New York) was rambling and unfocused the first half, as Chris Cuomo allowed Rudy Giuliani to fulminate at length. But near the end, you get to the “You’re damn right I ordered the ‘Code Red’!” moment.

Cuomo asks Rudy if he asked the Ukrainians to investigate Joe Biden. Rudy says no. Less than a minute later Rudy admits that he did, as the president’s lawyer, ask Ukraine to investigate Biden. Then when Cuomo pounces on the inconsistency, which there is obviously video evidence of now, Rudy returns to flatly denying it. The things you are hearing, and the things you are seeing, do not believe them. That is the Trump mantra.

Follow The Bouncing Bianna*

*The judges will also accept “Amanpour One Out For Bianna”

This morning CNN announced the hiring of Bianna Golodryga, who it felt as if just five minutes ago was co-anchoring CBS This Morning (not a terrible gig) and who not too long before that was a weekend co-anchor at Good Morning America where she looked way too much like fellow GMAer Paula Faris’ kid sister. It was like Single White Female meets Network.

Julia Boorstein, based in L.A., probably gets stopped and asked is she’s Jessica Chastain daily

We’ve long thought that Bianna and CNBC’s Julia Boorstein are two of the more underutilized talents in the news biz: they both have star potential. Golodryga was born in Moldova and her parents emigrated to the U.S. when she was an infant, settling in Houston. She graduated from the University of Texas (“Hook ’em”) and is fluent in Russian and, just for good measure, Romanian. It appears as if CNN is grooming her to be the next Christianne Amanpour, but then CNN doesn’t really send correspondents anywhere anymore, do they? Unless they’re named Anderson Cooper?

Tulane, TuPlays, TuMuch

This went for 18 yards

You’re Tulane. You’ve been irrelevant at least since the days of Shaun King (the quarterback, not the confused SJW) or maybe even 1931, when you went to the Rose Bowl and lost to USC.

So now you get a Thursday night matchup versus Houston on your own field and more importantly, on ESPN. And you’re quickly down 28-7. But you battle back to score 24 unanswered. Then Houston kicks a tying field goal in the final minute.

Are you playing for overtime? NOOOOOOOO! This is YOUR moment on the national stage, playa. Shoot your shot. And that’s exactly what Green Wave coach Willie Fritz did. With two plays:

  1. A fake victory formation play in the final :18 that allows an 18-yard gain up to midfield and gets the crowd stoked that something bigger is about to come:

2. Next up, a pass that was probably intended to set up the Green Wave (never mind the blue unis) for a game-winning field goal but instead went to the hizzy. And that’s an assistant coach’s son who just transferred in from Oklahoma State scoring it.

Tom Brady, THIS is what you should be watching on Thursday evenings (unless you’re watching your wife, which most males would be happy to do).

Meanwhile, Hello boys and girls, can you spell “harbinger?” I knew that you could.

Music 101

Touch And Go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvzMF8EWero

Panorama was The Cars’ third album and their first relative dud, but we still like this song. Let’s end the week as it began, with a tribute to Ric Ocasek.

Remote Patrol

Utah at USC

9 p.m. FS1

Tune in at 8 p.m. as Reggie Bush returns to the Coliseum with the Fox studio crew (and the Trojan loyalists chant “We want Urban!” to his partner). This is Clay Helton’s last stand. If the Utes dispose of USC–would be their second loss to a Beehive State school in six days—then someone will drive Helton to LAX and fire him on the tarmac.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

(Close) The Book Of Eli?

Did anyone expect Eli Manning to play 16 seasons in the NFL, all of them until this one as the starter? Or for him to win not one but two Super Bowl MVP awards.

The New York Giants demoted their veteran quarterback on Tuesday in favor of rookie Daniel Jones. Perhaps the most telling stat of Manning’s star-crossed career is that after 232 starts, the team’s record in those games is 116-116. He’s not a Hall of Famer in our eyes, but in those two postseasons when the G-men needed him most, he more than showed up. And he may have completed the most incredible pass in Super Bowl history which, for all the acrobatics of David Tyree on the other end, never happens if Manning does not somehow magically escape the clutches of a New England pass rusher.

Manning’s always been a good dude. So he took the demotion with grace. How long before he joins big brother and Brad Paisley in those Nationwide ads is anyone’s guess.

Jerry-mandering

In this morning’s New York Times, an entire article is devoted to this photo from Monday’s Corey Lewandowski circus. The story is titled “This Picture Tells You Everything You Need To Know About Impeachment” . In it writer Nicholas Fandos likens photographer Doug Mills’ shot to “a Renaissance painting.” Read it if you like.

We didn’t pay attention to Monday’s proceedings. It was just another incident of Democrats behaving like William H. Macy’s character in Boogie Nights when he sees what’s happening in the alley behind the party with his wife. And as for Jerry Nadler, he reminds me of the guy in line at Zabar’s who mildly protests when you cut in front of him but then does nothing more than say “Sheesh!” to the old lady standing next to him.

This Justin

For the record: We don’t care.

But this does mean that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau can forget about auditioning for Saturday Night Live.

“To Infinity—And Beyond!”

This could make for quite an interesting game of Marco Polo.

In London, plans are underway to construct a 360-degree infinity pool at the top of a 55-story hotel. The pool’s center will be glass-bottomed.

You may ask yourself, How do I get here? (Thanks, David Byrne). A spiral staircase leading from below will provide access, and much like a submarine surfacing, the staircase will rise and protrude through the surface when someone wants to access the 600,000-liter pool.

Great. Because if there’s one thing with which we’ve always associated London, it’s outdoor swimming.

Half Time

In Copenhagen last weekend, Kenyan distance runner Geoffrey Kamworor sets a new world record in the half-marathon: 58:01. The previous mark, set one year ago, was 58:18. A seventeen-second drop is quite a discount.

Kamworor, who won the 2017 New York City Marathon, has won three world championships at the 13.1 mile distance. And this is a reminder that the half-marathon should be an official Olympic event. It would be a crowd pleaser that could be run on the streets of the host city at the midway point of the Olympic Games. Easy Peezy, as they say.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

Don’t Come Back, Shane

Less than two weeks before his debut as a new comic on Saturday Night Live, Shane Gillis is fired by Lorne Michaels. Just too many racial slurs. Wow.

I’ve never heard Gillis’ act, but comedy is supposed to be pretty simple. If the audience laughs, you’re doing your job. If not, then go find another line of work. Gotta wonder if SNL will even cover this situation in the season premiere.

We’re not gonna explore the whole “Cancel Culture” movement, but it might’ve been funny if SNL kept Gillis around just long enough to invite Lesley Jones to return one last time and have her go Mogambo on his ass.

Closer Meets Loser

Resisting the urge to proclaim, “Look at my Panamanian!”, President Donald Trump bestowed the Medal of Freedom on former Yankee closer Mariano Rivera Monday. Mo was the first baseball player in MLB history to be unanimously voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame; Trump is the fifth president to lose the popular vote but still be elected president.

Trump said that Rivera began his career “in 1955” but by now you know that the president doesn’t really mean what he says unless he means what he says and it’s up to you to recognize the difference.

Pardon The Catharsis

Here’s Mike Greenberg‘s “I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Gonna Take It Any More!” moment, with a huge assist from Marcus Spears (why are former LSU defensive linemen so good on TV?). It’s so refreshing to get actual animus from an ESPN talking head, as opposed to what Screamin’ A does daily.

Is it just me or did this moment both remind you of that scene from Network but also the scene from The Green Mile in which Michael Clarke Duncan’s character gives Tom Hanks’ character a big ol’ hug and takes away all the pain?

A Yaz Goes Deep At Fenway

For those of us who remember the Seventies (and those of you who recall the Sixties…we see you, Susie B.!), there was no player more synonymous with the Boston Red Sox than Carl Yastrzemski. Yaz, now 80, remains ninth on the all-time Hits list with 3,419. Among Red Sox lifers, only Ted Williams was a better hitter (though military service kept him from compiling more base knocks).

So here comes Mike Yastrzemski last night, the grandson who’s a rookie for the San Francisco Giants, making his debut at Fenway Park last night in a late September game in an otherwise lost season for Red Sox fans. And what does he do? Gives fans of both clubs something to cheer about.

The Giants won 7-6 in 15 innings with Yaz, batting leadoff, going 2 for 7.

“The Hottest Spot In New York IS”

A few years ago at Newsweek our brilliant cubicle mate Alex Nazaryan pitched and then produced a piece on New York City hotel bars. We admired the temerity: visit swanky cocktail bars in Manhattan hotels and have the magazine underwrite all in the name of journalism. Genius, Alex!

We feel that our old friend, now covering politics for Yahoo!, may need to revisit his piece and add a new wrinkle: Department store bars. Above is Le Chalet, located on the 8th floor of Sak’s Fifth Avenue, which sits right across the street from Rockefeller Center. Basically, it has the view of 30 Rock that you see at the opening of 30 Rock.

If you find yourself on the 8th floor—designer women’s shoes, mostly—you may have to do a lap or two before you discover the discreet entrance to Le Chalet, which opened in February. There’s also an outdoor terrace.

And Nordstrom is opening a shop on Broadway and 58th that will also have a bar. Look, this is simple math: middle-aged women of means who think nothing of posting a four- or five-figure shopping tab are certainly not against a glass of rose or chardonnay.

Music 101

Call Me

Contrary to popular belief, the booty call was invented in the Sixties. Here’s Donna Loren performing it on Milton Berle’s variety show in 1966, but the song was originally recorded by Petula Clark one year earlier. It’s been covered by dozens of artists, but the version you may know best is by Chris Montez. If you suddenly feel you’re in the Pan Am airport lounge in 1966, well, you may be right.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

Starting Five

Bye Bye Love

They were just another band out of Boston. But they weren’t Boston. Nor were they Aerosmith. The city by the bay—Massachusetts Bay, that is—produced a trio of iconic rock bands in the mid-to-late Seventies: the aforementioned pair and our favorite of the trio, The Cars.

On Sunday night the founder and quasi-lead singer of that band, Ric Ocasek, was found dead in his Gramercy Park apartment home. Ocasek, a towering and Tim Burtonesque figure at 6’4″, was 75.

A year before his death Ocasek split from his longtime model-wife, Paulina Porizkova, and also saw the long-overdue induction of The Cars into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where he’d gone to high school.

For us, we consider The Cars’ eponymous debut album perhaps THE most playable album, beginning to end, we’ve ever listened to. It’s pretty much perfect. We can still remember where we were the first time we heard “Bye Bye Love”: in the western Arizona desert, on a Thanksgiving morning drive to Disneyland when we were 13. That song is our favorite from Ocasek’s band (even if Benjamin Orr is the lead singer on it). God bless The Cars, god bless Ric Ocasek.

One Ticket To…

  • Dude’s holding a cigarette on his debut album cover. The end was written long ago.

We thought we’d give Eddie Money (nee Eddie Mahoney of Levittown, Long Island) his own item. Money, whose career peak nearly overlapped that of The Cars—mid-to-late Seventies to mid-Eighties—died Friday at the age of 70 from complications due to esophageal cancer. He’d been a longtime smoker.

Always a solo act, Money had a couple big radio hits early on (“Baby Hold On” and “Two Tickets To Paradise”), started out in the family business: he became a New York City cop as his dad and grandpa were/had been. But he left the force and ultimately moved to the Bay Area during the Summer of Love. He supported himself by selling bell bottoms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnRCk6DN9EE

(For the kids, that’s Ronnie Spector, original doo-wop girl, and this is Late Night with David Letterman at its peak, 1986)

Three things we particularly love about Money: 1) when everyone thought he was over, by a long period of time, he conjured a hit that drew on his early teen years as a doo-wop singer, “Take Me Home Tonight.” Not only is it infectiously catchy and fun, but it became a staple of MTV in 1986. 2) He never quite looked cool on stage but he always looked like he was trying, and 3) In HBO’s The Kominsky Method last year, he had a cameo as himself playing in an Eddie Money cover band at a casino for tax purposes (give the writer who thought of that conceit a gold star).

Fired Up

Sideline heaters in the NFL have come quite a long way…

Meanwhile in Denver, in the final minute, THIS was flagged as unnecessary roughness and likely altered the outcome of the Bears-Broncos games. Somewhere Y.A. Tittle is howling.

NBC’s Why? Cam

So prepared was NBC for viewer and Twitter “overreaction” to their new technological innovation, the “Sideline Sky Cam,” that they came out with a preemptive mansplaining piece about it on NBCSports.com this weekend. Also, you have to love the “Here To Stay” aspect of the headline. I’m sure Josef Stalin would approve of the authoritarian nature of that. It’s not, “a new view we’re trying out,” it’s “get used to it, kids, you have no say in the matter.”

So why even bother writing the persuasive piece, Rob Hyland? You don’t care what we think, anyway.

This play is a textbook example of why, for us, it’s a fail. The player coming in motion from the bottom of your screen, Avery Davis, will take the shovel pass and turn left upfield. The camera, with such a tight angle on the LOS, almost completely loses him. And then, near the end of the play, the shot is so tight on him that you don’t get much of a sense as to how much Davis beep! beep!’ed his way past the Lobo secondary.

As a replay angle, it has its merits. But you know, football and basketball are perfect for television because the field of play conforms to your television: they’re all rectangular. Give us the panoramic shot so that we can see what’s going on and there’s no need to move the camera DURING THE PLAY. Our eyes will figure it out. We’ve only been doing this our entire lives.

Meanwhile, we’ll refer to this as the Chicago Sky Cam, showing how that WNBA team lost a playoff game to the Las Vegas Aces on a final-seconds turnover. Love it.

Thank You For Vaping

Here’s the difference between OxyContin and vaping: no one ever pretended that the latter was good for you. If you ask us, there should never be any prohibitions on vaping because Americans of high school age and up should have the right to A) look as douchey as they possibly can and B) slowly kill themselves while doing it. I mean, even if vaping were not bad for your health, if you cannot see how much of a douche you look like as you sit at a table with your friends and then clandestinely move your fist to your mouth with your vape stuck tucked into your palm so that you can do a quick puff (I so relish catching these D-bags doing so at the cookoutateria and explaining in a voice all their friends can hear that you cannot vape here), then you sorta deserve what’s coming to you.

It’s all part of the freedom mandate. Give me liberty AND give me death.

As for OxyContin, whose manufacturer Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy today as a hedge against the mass class-action suit being filed against it, no mercy. They were selling their product as a painkiller designed as therapy when actually the highly addictive drug is responsible for probably more deaths annually than guns. F them and F the entire Sackler family, which an NY AG investigation found last week had wired up to $1 billion in transfers to other entities they control, and financial institutions, to hide it from plaintiffs and to post a lower balance sheet when the attorneys come calling. That’s straight-up Donnie Trump gangsta’ism.

Remote Patrol

Browns at Jets

8 p.m. ESPN

We mention tonight’s Monday Night Football matchup only because it’s the 50th season of MNF and these two franchises met in the inaugural matchup on September 21, 1970. Since then they’ve combined to win…(checks notes)…zero Super Bowls.