Monthly Archives: March 2020

STARTING FIVE

by John Walters | 15 Comments

ALL THE BEST PEOPLE

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1235415582931066880?s=20

and…

https://twitter.com/jahimes/status/1235315665134931968?s=20

and

and…

Coronavirus may be a pandemic, but stupid is a uniquely American epidemic. Symptoms may be a red baseball cap and an inclination to think that carrying a gun will solve your problems.

NIT-Re Dame

The Fighting Irish, clinging to life for an NCAA berth, led No. 7 (or No. 6) Florida State by 13 points with under 10 minutes to play in South Bend. Then they were outscored 25-10, including 5-0 in the final minute, to lose 73-71.

This will be the first season since 2014 that neither the men’s nor women’s program reaches at least the Elite Eight in the NCAAs (men in 2015 and 2016, women in 2017-2019). And head coach Mike Brey, now in his 20th season, has a problem: too many other Catholic schools are either out recruiting or out-developing Notre Dame: Villanova (two national championships in the past five years), Dayton (arguably player of the year in Obi Toppin), Marquette (nation’s leading scorer in Markus Howard) and Gonzaga (perennial Top 5 team the past few seasons without a super superstar).

There are five Catholic universities ranked in the Top 14 and Notre Dame is not among them. That would have seemed unfathomable years ago.

The Irish are 18-12 and sure, six of those losses are by 2 or fewer points… but you have to win more of those. They’re NIT-bound unless they get at least to the ACC championship game. At least.

Women Of The Year

Time magazine, which for decades named a Man of the Year, went back and named a woman for the honor for every year from 1921 onward. Enjoy this gal-lery.

Of note: In 1985 the Woman of the Year is named Wilma Mankiller. And somehow in 2005 Bono made the cover. Because of course he did.

Petri Dish

We’ve been enjoying the work of Washington Post humor columnist Alexandra Petri of late. Turns out she ascended to her gig, as an op-ed columnist for WaPo, at the seasoned age of 22. The daughter of a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, Petri graduated from Harvard with a PhD in whimsy, or at least it would seem so after reading this profile on her.

You’re On Your Own

This blog’s most vocal reader is currently grooving with the MH staff’s opinions, thoughts, so we thought we’d crush the honeymoon right here. With this suggestion to bring down the deficit.

So here’s the deal: the average life expectancy of an American male is 76.1 years. For an American female, 81.1 years. Our proposal: following retirement Uncle Sam pays out Social Security and Medic-Aid (or Medicare, whatever you call it) until you reach those ages, depending on your sex. After that, the U.S. government stops footing the bill. That’s what family is for. Or your savings. Or churches. Etc.

Now if you think that’s heartless, the question becomes how much is being asked of people in the primes of their lives in order to provide care for those whose quality of life isn’t quite what it used to be. Often, not even close. Were Social Security and other government programs designed to take care of people for a full quarter century? And you might say, well why not just push the retirement age back? And my answer would be because if given the choice, I’d rather have the years from, say, 64-68 free to do what I like with government benefits than I would the yeas 77-81. But that’s just me.

No one’s giving you a death sentence. It’s just a matter of saying that this is on you, or your loved ones, or on someone who knows you and has turned AMZN into a 36-bagger. I’ll hang up an listen.

FILMS: 10 FOR THE ’20S

by John Walters | 2 Comments

Lon Chaney in “Phantom of the Opera”(1925)

Instead of ranking films individually by the year from the 1920s, particularly since I don’t think I’ve seen one all the way through, I’ll simply list ten that I think we all should aspire to see before drawing our final breaths.

Now, since we’re limiting it to the 1920s, we won’t be listing the landmark 1915 film, Birth Of A Nation (considered to be the first real feature film that created a spark). Nor will we be listing its less celebrated sequel, Afterbirth Of A Nation, a pro-abortion film that understandably caused a bit of a stir.

So here are 10 films from the Roaring Twenties we should all see. Or at least record them when they appear on TCM and tell yourself that you’ll watch them at a later date, which is what I do:

  1. The General (1927): Buster Keaton practically invented hare-brained stunts and he performed them all himself. Born into a vaudevillian family, Keaton was an acrobat, actor, writer, director, all of it. But you have to see the gags and stunts he created to truly appreciate what he really was: a genius. Along with Charlie Chaplin, the first of the Hollywood legends.
  1. 2. Metropolis (1927): A pioneering German science-fiction drama, directed by Fritz Lang, best known for its poster that hangs in 10% of liberal arts majors’ dorm rooms. Set inā€”get ready for thisā€”the 21st century. Good time to see how prescient they were.

3. Wings (1927) : This has nothing to do with the airport in Nantucket and a lovable, lunk-headed mechanic named Lloyd. Although, like the sitcom, the plot does revolve around two flyboys, but not brothers. On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood (next door to where Jimmy Kimmel now tapes his show) and this was named Best Picture. Simply for that reason you should see this (also, the film was thought to have been lost for years before a print was discovered in a film archive in Paris).

4. Nosferatu (1922): Before Dracula looked suave and debonair, there was this German creature from your nightmare. Inarguably the patriarch of all horror films.

5. Safety Last (1923) : If there’s one image from the silent film era that will stand the test of time, it’s Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock 12 stories above street level. No special effects here; Lloyd did his own stunts.

Before films took out insurance policies

6. The Jazz Singer (1927) : Another landmark film at it was the first to utilize sound throughout. Okay, so it’s Al Jolson in blackface, but that too is historically worthwhile: to show you how much times have changed.

“Mammy, how I love ya/how I love ya” (I only know this from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons)

7. Battleship Potemkin (1925) : A Soviet film that retells the story of a 1905 mutiny aboard a Russian battleship. Ordered up by Comrade Lenin for the 20th anniversary of the actual event to signify that, when duly repressed, the proletatiat can and will rise up. Considered by some to be the greatest film of the era.

8. The Gold Rush (1925): We have to include at least one Charlie Chaplin film in this list, though his greatest film, City Lights, was released in 1931 (we may have failed to include that in our list the other day; please forgive).

It’s no fun to have your signature mustache absconded with by Hitler

9. Nanook of the North (1922): The first documentary feature, a non-fiction film focusing on an Inuit hunter. In the 1920s, the ability for an audience to experience a place almost no one had ever seen and probably none would ever travel to was tantamount to visiting another planet.

10. Phantom Of The Opera (1925) : Lon Chaney in one of the first iconic film roles in Hollywood. Also vying for this recognition would be Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921).

****

Lest we forget…

11. Steamboat Willie (1928): Walt Disney’s first animated feature. What was to become of that enterprise?

Is MSG No Longer A Spike Lee Joint?

by John Walters | 6 Comments

If everything Spike Lee says here is true, then yes, I’m on his side:

However, I’d love to get the other side of the story on this one. Is this really the first time the New York Knicks have asked him not to use the employee entrance? Has he never had a conversation before with owner James Dolan about this arrangement?

Again, if everything Spike is saying here is accurate, then yes, he has a right to be angry.

But I’d love to know more.

In the immediate aftermath of this kerfuffle, the media of course took Spike’s side and there was talk of “not alienating your No. 1 fan.” I’m less concerned with how they treat him, or how he feels, than I am about how poorly the roster has been put together for a quarter century now.

I’m old enough to remember the DeBusschere-Bradley-Reed-Frazier-Monroe Knicks, with sixth man Phil Jackson. That’s six Hall of Famers right there and if you ever want to see the living definition of team chemistry, that was it. As a Knicks fan, that matters far more to me than Spike Lee’s feels. Sure, if he was treated poorly, then he’s got a point. But if this is a matter of the media looking to care about something that in no way affects anyone’s life or really, the Knicks’ interests, then this is no better than 7th graders on the playground trying to gin up a fight between two parties because they’re bored.

Maybe the Knicks mistreated Lee poorly. Maybe there’s more to the story. I dunno. I’m just not going to a Knicks game because Spike Lee is sitting in the front row calling as much attention to himself as possible. In fact, I’m not going to a Knicks game because the product hasn’t come close to matching the price tag in decades.

STARTING FIVE

by John Walters | 3 Comments

Tweet Me Right

Jill, Savage*

*The judges will also accept “Campaign Supernova”

As her husband owned Super Tuesday, so too did Dr. Jill Biden own this protester in Los Angeles. Talk about having your running mate’s back. In other news, Michael Bloomberg can now be elected tribal chieftain of American Samoa while our favorite candidate, Liz Warren, the person you’d most likely put in charge of your junior high science project or senior prom decorating committee, finishes a distant third.

Still, considering the two candidates ahead of her are past their 76th birthday, four out of five actuaries are recommending she remain in the race.

My President

https://twitter.com/ReformedBroker/status/1235172703591641088?s=20

Jurgen Klopp, football manager, Liverpool F.C.

Do You Know INO

We don’t own Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO), but if you own the biotech stock you’ve had a good week thus far. It closed at $4 per share on Monday. Today it will open at $8.69 per share. Why?

The company announced that it will accelerate its trials for a coronavirus vaccine to early April, as opposed to June/July, which is accepted. Of course there’s nothing in that statement that says the vaccine has a chance to be any more viable than anyone else’s, but that’s the crazy stock market we live in.

The Dow: Down 3,000 points last week. Up 1,295 on Monday. Down 800 yesterday. Scheduled to open up 700 this morning. Enjoy the ride. Here’s your air sickness bag.

Jack and Jake

One more reason to love Jack Nicholson, from Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye, which is all about the making of Chinatown and the Hollywood scene in the early Seventies. Nicholson returns to L.A. from shooting another film in Spain on October 13, 1973. The next day he’s in wardrobe for Chinatown. The day after that he’s in an orange grove an hour or so east of Los Angeles for the first day of shooting on Roman Polanski’s film.

It’s literally the first morning of shooting. The scene calls for the farmer to knock Nicholson’s character, Jake Gittes, out with his crutch. “Hit him over the head as hard as you can,” Polanski directs the other actor.

The next shot calls for Gittes to be laying in the dirt, knocked out. “Keep your eyes closed,” Polanski tells Nicholson as he sets up the shot. Polanski spots an ant and places it on Nicholson’s face in hopes of capturing it crawling up his cheek. All the time he reminds Nicholson to keep his eyes closed.

“Roll camera,” Polanski orders but the ant changes direction.

“Cut,” Polanski says, and places the ant back on Nicholson’s cheek.

“So let me get this straightā€”” Nicholson drawls.

“Eyes closed,” Polanski reminds his star.

“When the ant gets this right, we’ve got a take?”

“Correct.”

Loving Cup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-atuvoMXVw

While we’d never pretend to be an expert on the Rolling Stones (direct all your queries to our good friend, college classmate, former SI colleague and now attorney-at-law Martin J. Burns), we will say this: If there’s one Stones song we’ve come across in our later years that we don’t understand why it didn’t get more air play in the Seventies (and beyond), that tune would be “Loving Cup.” From the 1972 classic album Exile On Main Street.

It’s so bluesy and jangly, you know it’s them before you even have to ask.

You be the judge.