Chris Matthews Banned

We were watching when the MSNBC host, Chris Matthews, aged 74, interviewed (interrogated) Elizabeth Warren last week and yes, we cringed. We cringed four years ago when, during a lighthearted interview with the hosts of Weekend Update, he said to Michael Che, “You’re a funny guy. Funniest guy, who do you think? Funniest black guy?”

I believe the women—and I want to hear their stories. pic.twitter.com/PjDUlXXHWi

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 26, 2020

As Jost cackled, Che shrewdly said, “Bill Cosby. That way the headline won’t be about you.”

So we weren’t surprised when Matthews called it quits (was fired) last night. Surprised by the abruptness of it all? Sure. He came on, said his piece, they went to commercial, and there was Steve Kornacki sitting in the chair. But after a few notable miscues last week, plus Laura Bassett’s essay in GQ, the straw had finally broken the political camel’s back.

Matthews, who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies, is a product of his era. His sexism and prejudice was so ingrained that I don’t think he really ever understood that he was offending people. It’s a little (a lot) like the Archie Bunker character: Archie always had a good heart, he just didn’t know how to speak to anyone who wasn’t a white male.

And here's the shot when the commercial break ended and the camera cut to a stunned Steve Kornacki, who was obviously not prepared for Chris Matthews' announcement, nor to fill in the hour of airtime when #Hardball would usually run. pic.twitter.com/idqhwvi3rl

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) March 3, 2020

Also, this was an unscripted walk-off by Matthews. Maybe his NBC bosses told him he’d have until the end of the week. Or more likely, until the end of the show. Likely they figured he’d save this speech until the episode’s end. Instead, Matthews led with it and then walked out of the studio, leaving Steve Kornacki to pick up the pieces.

Ants Marching *

*The judges will also accept Ant-astic Voyage, though it messes up our DMB conceit

Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, the co-creators of Better Call Saul, have never been more confident. They know they have the best show on regular cable and they’ve already created one of the best series, if not the best series, from the Peak TV era. They are allowing themselves and their writers as much creative freedom as possible while still sticking to the story and that creativity has best been exemplified throughout the show’s five-year run via the pre-credits intro.

Last night’s was one of their best, a veritable Planet Earth sequence, as one ant and then plenty ascend the mountain that is Saul Goodman’s upended mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The chef’s kiss? A soundtrack of yodeling mountain climber music.

The symbolism: that cone is the last vestige of Jimmy/Saul’s purity. The ants are the dedicated criminals who have come to devour and infest what, if any, chance he ever has to be a lawyer on the up and up. As Nacho later tells him, “When you’re in, you’re in.”

Eight Is Enough

Remember yesterday’s item about the Big Ten? You don’t? Well, go find it, I”ll wait. Anyway, after the latest rankings were released, there are now two more Big Ten schools (Illinois and Wisconsin) in the Top 25 for a total of eight. Eight Top 25 schools, still none above ninth (Maryland). And Indiana, which once upon a time held the same lofty status as Duke and Kentucky and Kansas do now, is not among them. Color us a little dubious on the Big Ten. Seven of those eight schools occupy the final 10 spots in the AP poll. Plenty of good teams beating up on one another? Or just no one who’s particularly great? And the largest concentration of college hoops writers living in the Midwest, perhaps.

I’m Running Out of Coronavirus Puns

Latest milestones: More than 3,000 dead. Approaching 100,000 infected worldwide and at least 100 (known) in the United States. Although Wall Street already seems to have developed an immunity to it, as the Dow Jones climbed more than 5% yesterday.

Tuesday

Since it’s Super Tuesday, let’s pay tribute to all the other Tuesdays out there:

Til Tuesday

Tuesday Weld

Fat Tuesday

Ruby Tuesday

Taco Tuesday

Tuesday Afternoon

Tuesdays With Morrie

Thing I just learned: Tuesday is taken from the Olde English “Tiwesdaeg” , which is an homage to the day of the Norse god Tiw (or Tyr), who is an adaptation of the Roman god of war, Mars, as Latin for Tuesday was “Martis” or “the day of Mars.” And in French as you know it’s “mardi.” It’s all about war, folks.

1. Hell’s Angels: Not only did it provide branding inspiration for the most bad ass motorcycle gang ever, but at $3.8 million, this film, produced and directed, by Howard Hughes, cost four crew members (three of them pilots) their lives. Hughes himself performed the most dangerous aerial stunt himself, crashed, and suffered a skull fracture. I remember happening upon this on TCM a winter or two ago, during the zeppelin lightening scene (the less said, the better), and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. And then I thought, they’re actually doing this, it’s not special effects, ‘cuz it’s 1930. Also, the film that launched the career of Jean Harlow, here 18 and asking, “Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” If you ever get the chance to see this WW I flying ace film, do so. It’s magnificent. The action sequences are insane.
2. Animal Crackers: Early Marx Brothers with Groucho as big-game hunter Capt. Spaulding (“One morning, I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas I don’t know“). Poor Margaret Dumont. She had to play the straight man/wealthy dowager/butt of all jokes in every one of these films.

Never Saw But Maybe, Some Day:

3. Little Caesar: Starring Edward G. Robinson as an Al Capone-like figure, this is said to be the film that launched all future gangster films. Robinson would reprise this type of character most famously in Key Largo more than a decade later. No pizzas were harmed in the making of this film.

4. The Big House: The first prison melodrama, bloody and realistic. No mention of Zihuatanejo, though.

Most of the other films had to do with either gold-digging women or loose divorcees or both. It was a popular theme at the time.

Biden, His Time

Grampa Joe wins the primary in South Cackalacka…. Biden versus Bernie? The Dems need to mass-produce baseball caps inscribed with “Make America Gray Again.”

Mayor Pete Drops Out

Not the first time a group from South Bend sees their season come apart in SEC Country.

— Andrew Hammond (@ahammALDC) March 1, 2020

Mulaney Knocks It Out Of The Park—Again

For a third time in less than two years, John Mulaney returned to his old haunts at 30 Rock to host Saturday Night Live, And, as with his other two hosting gigs, the sketches were sharper and funnier. And Mulaney has an affection for old Hollywood. The first time he hosted, he and Kate McKinnon did a send-up of To Have And Have Not’s iconic scene (“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve?”). This time he and Cecily Strong sent up a famous tune from The Sound Of Music.

Speaking Of Knocking It Out Of The Park…

Mike Trout hitting rockets isn’t exclusive to the baseball field. pic.twitter.com/tuEyIzxqQ5

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) March 2, 2020

Mike Trout is ready for the Pebble Beach pro-am, and probably for baseball season, too. This ball was likely launched at Top Golf in Gilbert, Ariz., and if you’re familiar with the area, then it probably landed in Apache Junction or ricocheted off Superstition Mountain.

How Big Is The B1G?

In the latest AP poll we’ve seen, the Big Ten placed six schools in the Top 25: Maryland (9), Penn State (16), Iowa (18), Michigan (19), Ohio State (23) and Michigan State (24). A few oddities about that:

–In the preseason rankings, the last school on the above list, Sparty, was ranked No. 1 overall in the nation.

–Two schools that are 3rd and 4th in the league standings, respectively, Illinois and Wisconsin, did not crack the Top 25.

–Six teams in the Top 25, but none in the top eight.

–The best school in the Midwest this season, both by record (25-2) and the rankings? Dayton. The best player in the Midwest? Markus Howard. Neither are affiliated with the B1G.

–Are any of these B1G schools Final Four material? Will any of them even get a No. 1 seed? It seems anathema that a conference with six ranked teams couldn’t place its conference champ as a No. 1 seed, but this might just be the year. We’ll see if the committee favors the outliers with the great records (Gonzaga, SDSU, Dayton, etc.) or goes with more traditional Power 5 schools. Maybe Kirk Herbstreit will be asked to weigh in.

Today would’ve been Lou Reed‘s 78th birthday. Reed, the founder of The Velvet Underground who then went on to a solo career, was never as commercially successful as his music was memorable. Born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, Lou Reed created a sound that is New York City. At times it’s the bleakness and despair of waiting for the D train to take you back to Brooklyn at 4 in the morning and wondering if you’re going to fall asleep (or worse) on the platform; at times it’s the sound of heading out for a gonzo night on the Lower East Side, or being in the midst of it.

It’s raw, it’s pure, it’s authentic and it’s messy. It’s New York. And Reed’s look was as inimitable as his sound. Sunglasses, black leather jacket, that massive rug of thick dark hair. He was his own caricature, his own character.

Last night we took a walk on the wild side and saw a Lou Reed/VU tribute band play a set down at the Bowery Electric. On a dirty boulevard. Here are five songs by Andy Warhol’s favorite band/artist worth listening to on this day:

5. Femme Fatale (1967): Sung by Nico, the lovely German model who was part of the Velvet Underground, but written by Reed. Inspired by Warhol, who gave Reed the line, “Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale?” about one of Warhol’s top film sirens, Edie Sedgwick. Only four years later, in 1971, Sedgwick herself would die at age 28 of a drug overdose.

4. Heroin (1967) : Released on the band’s debut album, it was actually written by Reed in 1964. Here’s Reed describing how it came about: “I was working for a record company as a songwriter, where they’d lock me in a room and they’d say write ten surfing songs, ya know, and I wrote “Heroin” and I said “Hey I got something for ya.” They said, “Never gonna happen, never gonna happen.'”

3. Oh! Sweet Nuthin (1970): The final track from the band’s fourth and final album, Loaded. The album’s title comes from their record company’s request to come back with a record “loaded with hits.” The Velvet Underground never wrote hits; they just wrote songs that future musicians (R.E.M., Nirvana, Billy Idol, the Black Crowes, etc.) would cover over and over and over. This song could’ve been written and sung by Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers.

2. Walk On The Wild Side (1972): From Reed’s second solo album, and produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson. His best-known song and most commercially viable, climbing to No. 16 on the Billboard charts. Doo, da-doo, da-doo-doo-doo….

1. Dirty Blvd (1989): From Reed’s album New York, this hit No. 1 on the Modern Rock charts.

Further Listening (We couldn’t stop at 5):

1. Sweet Jane (1970), also from Loaded:

2. There She Goes Again (1967) : Later covered by REM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3E5YIP-DvU

3. I’m Waiting For The Man (1967):

Scary, scary monsters! As if the Depression wasn’t horrifying enough.

Have Seen:

1. Frankenstein: Mel Brooks talks about seeing this film as a lad in Brooklyn and being convinced that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was going to cross over from wherever he was in Europe and wreak havoc on his block. This film inspired Brooks to make movies. Boris Karloff in a defining role as the bolt-necked brute.
2. Dracula: The Vampire Strikes Back. The horror film that would set the mood, and standard, for all that followed. Bela Lugosi is the original bat man.
3. M: Starring Peter Lorre as a psychopath who preys on little girls in Germany. In many ways a scarier monster than the first two on our list.

Wanna See:

4. City Lights: Considered Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece, and the final silent film he made.

5. The Front Page: The original version of the story that would be remade eight or nine years later and achieve greater acclaim as His Girl Friday.

6. The Public Enemy: Jimmy Cagney in his ultimate tough guy/gangster role, see, you dirty rat! With Jean Harlow and Joan Blondell.