by John Walters

Starting Five

We Need A Leader, Not A Cheerleader

It happened again on Tuesday when our nation’s President as well as his own acting Press Secretary (John Miller never really dies, does he?) invoked his Pom Pom Powers: “I’m not going to go out and start screaming, this could happen (on why he did not inform the nation of the pandemic potential clearly outlined in Peter Navarro’s memo more than two months ago). I’m a cheerleader for this country. I don’t want to create havoc and shock.”

I’m a cheerleader for this country.

This cynical and insidious ad campaign sounds as if it was cooked up in Stephen Miller’s dark, soulless mind. Here’s the concept: When the news is bad, and it’s mostly your fault, play the rah rah, sis-boom-bah! card. Dismiss truth and transparency (because it will hold you accountable), using as your excuse that you’re here to root for the red, white and blue.

Now look at New York governor Andrew Cuomo: transparent, knowledgeable, informed, concerned, realistic, credible.

It’s quite incredible how much better of a national leader Gov. Cuomo shows himself to be every single day of this crisis than Donald Trump. Our thoughts are with Randy Rainbow exactly (minus the sexual overtones).

Coronering The Market

A couple thoughts on the coronavirus reported death tolls… 1) They’re not accurate. They can’t be. For numerous reasons, the first of which is that coroners are receiving bodies faster than they can test them, often because they don’t have testing kits. A death is a death, of course, but rest (or cardiac arrest) assured that the actual number of people dying from the coronavirus, both domestically and abroad, is higher than what has been reported. 2) I’m all for transparency, too, but I tuned in to a channel yesterday morning where on the right side of the screen was a running tally of cases and deaths, both in the U.S. and worldwide. I began to wonder, if the U.S. were involved in a Vietnam-type conflict in 2020, would a cable news channel keep a running body count tally onscreen? Is everything sports these days? Do we eventually get numb to the actual human toll of all these deaths when all we see is data?

Beyond The Pail

Came across this Carol Burnett Show sketch this morning and it’s worth it. One thought: How come the players at SNL, at least many of them, need to read from cue cards while doing their sketches while here, in a sketch that went nearly 10 minutes, Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman had their lines memorized? Granted, they weren’t doing it live, but I don’t think they shot many re-takes on CBS, did they?

Prine Time

Didn’t really know a lot about John Prine, the New Orleans-based songwriter who passed away yesterday from COVID-19 complications at age 73. When I think of under-appreciated songwriters named John who have collaborated with Bonnie Raitt (she collaborates with everyone…such a hussey), my first thought is of John Hiatt.

But I got to appreciate Hiatt from that Stephen Colbert clip we ran last week and you could tell that more than a songwriter, he was simply a gifted writer. Here’s what he told Paul Zollo in an interview for Bluerailroad about songwriting, which is essential again in any good writing:

“I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks. Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you’re talking about intangible things, like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation. 

And here, from Rolling Stone, is a list of 25 essential songs from a man who served in Vietnam and also worked for the U.S. Postal Service. Rest in Peace.

SportsYear 1870

The Cincinnati Red Stockings lose for the first time in nearly two years, 8-7 in 11 innings, to Atlantic of Brooklyn (the National League is still six years away from formally organizing)…The first America’s Cup challenge race hosted in the U.S.A. is staged in Newport, R.I., with the New York Yacht Club’s entry, Magic, emerging victorious… Also on the Thames, but not on the same day, Cambridge defeats Oxford in the Boat Race, their first win in nine races… Columbia joins the world of college football (increasing its membership by 50%) and loses its only game, to Rutgers… Both Young Tom Morris and The Colonel repeat as winners in the British Open and the Grand National, respectively… The top American boxer, Jimmy Elliott, is arrested for highway robbery and assault. Elliott is sentenced to 16 years in prison and will serve eight. Hashtag It’s All Been Done… An anonymous surgeon writes to The Times (of London) complaining that rugby football is dangerous. Hashtag ItsAllBeenDone (#IABD).

by John Walters

Starting Five

Saul In A Day’s Work

Last night Better Call Saul had its “Pine Barrens
episode. And nearly its “To’hajiilee/Ozymandias” episode. With an assist from the first 30 minutes of No Country For Old Men (Alan Sepinwall in his review notes that it’s akin to “Four Days Out” from Season 2 of Breaking Bad and also picks up on the space blanket tie-in that I missed) and the Marathon des Sables. This one will go down as, if not quite a classic, certainly a landmark episode in the series.

Jimmy travels southeast, near the New Mexico/Mexico border, to be Lalo’s bag man. To pick up his $7 million in bail money that the Salamanca twins drop off to him. On a carefree drive home in his Esteem, he is ambushed by three vehicles. They take the two bags of cash and are about to put a bullet into his forehead when shots ring out. Turns out Mike Ehrmentraut had his back.

Mike shoots down all but one of the thieves. Now it’s time to hike through the desert (hints of Biblical trials). Finally, Jimmy is ready to give up and die when Mike explains why he does what he does: to provide for a better life for the people in his life. Suddenly the thief who got away, still on the hunt, drives into view (with a passenger). Jimmy doesn’t care any more. He makes himself an open target and tells Mike to get his rifle ready. Mike takes care of business in a scene that, while being shot, must’ve scared Bob Odenkirk half to death and had him muttering “Vic Morrow” under his breath. If you saw it, you know.

Kim, meanwhile, sets up a meeting with Lalo. Exposes herself while not accomplishing a thing. As Lalo smartly tells her, her husband will either show up with the dinero or he’s dead. So why tell her the drop point? Meanwhile, as Mike told Jimmy, “She’s in the game now.”

Yes, she is. Is Kim fated to become the Hank Schraeder of Better Call Saul?

The good news: Jimmy doesn’t have to drive that Esteem around any longer. And he’s got $100,000 to go car shopping.

The other residual effect: this episode cements Jimmy’s and Mike’s bond. Mike literally saves Jimmy’s life. Jimmy demonstrates to Mike that he’s tougher than either of them thought.

When it comes time for the Emmys/Golden Globes next time around, Better Call Saul is going to win Best Dramatic Series for this season. You just watch. This has been its strongest season yet, with incredible imagery.

Pandemic Playlist (Cont.)

Thanks to everyone who contributed yesterday. We give AIR’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” the jury prize as the top suggestion. Here’s a few more that came to mind as we slept…

1. Invisible Touch ……………………………………….. Genesis
2. Lost In The Supermarket ………………………….. The Clash
3. All By Myself ……………………………………………… Eric Carmen
4. Can’t Touch This …………………………………….. M.C. Hammer
5. Dancing With Myself………………………………… Billy Idol
6. The Mask …………………………………………………… Roger Glover

10K (And Counting)

The U.S. coronavirus body count eclipsed 10,000 dead yesterday and it’s already breaching 11,000 this morning. Who knows where it will stop, although we’ll go out on a limb and predict there will be fewer than 100,000 domestic deaths due to the coronavirus.

A friend, a Trump supporter, pointed out that deaths in so many other categories are down this year which is a little like pointing out that all the theater goers at Our American Cousin probably got their money back. But, hey, there’s always a bright side.

Meanwhile, have you noticed something wonderful? The streets are quieter. And, in major cities, the air is cleaner due to few cars and almost no airplanes. If coronavirus teaches us anything, I hope it will be that fossil fuels need to disappear and that car horns are pure trash.

Lastly, stocks are up for a second consecutive day on news that the rate of new cases is decreasing. We’ll see if our “leaders” jump the gun on ending the shelter-in-place and stay-at-home edicts or if they remain disciplined. Hey, I’m no doctor but I do like to think of myself as “a social scientist.”

Pink Moon Fever

Tonight is “Super Pink Moon” night, the night of the year when our closest celestial neighbor will come closest to the Earth (a mere 221,772 miles away) all year. Also, because the Earth, Moon and Sun are all in alignment, we’ll get a full moon. So maybe turn off “Tiger King” for 10 minutes, go outside and experience the wonder of it all, baby. Nature puts on the best shows —and there’s no monthly subscription.

SportsYear: 1869

–On March 3, The Colonel wins the 31st running of the Grand National, an annual 4-mile steeplechase horse race run at Aintree, near Liverpool, England.

–On March 17, Oxford defeats Cambridge by three lengths in the already famed Boat Race on the Thames. The Dark Blues set a course record of 20 minutes and 4 seconds on the 4.2-mile course. It was their ninth consecutive victory in the race that dates back to 1829.

–On June 5 Fenian, a two year-old, wins the third running of the Belmont Stakes, held in Jerome Park (located then in Westchester County, but has since been claimed as the northern Bronx). Fenian’s owner? August Belmont, the race’s namesake.

–June 15: Irish-born heavyweight Mike McCoole, who already owns a saloon in St. Louis, defeats Tom Allen on a 9th-round DQ. McCoy is the world’s top fighter.

–Tom Morris, known as “Young Tom Morris,” wins The Open (a.k.a. The British Open) for the second year in a row. The year before, at age 17, he’d become the youngest winner in the event’s history (and still is). Morris was born at St. Andrew’s, where his pops (same name) was the head greenskeeper and himself had won four Open championships. You can practically hear Mike Tirico whispering this info into your ear.

–November 6: You know this one. Rutgers defeats Princeton 6-4 in front of approximately 100 spectators in New Brunswick, N.J. One week later Princeton returns the favor, winning 8-0. The Ivy League school is named national champions. Even then, with only two teams, college football courted controversy.

A few hours after Rudy Gobert was diagnosed with the coronavirus and the sports world tilted off its axis, I hatched the idea for a daily column (or ESPN segment) that would educate viewers on the modern history of sport. For a few reasons: 1) first, I felt as if I had so much to learn and that I can’t be the only one and 2) If there’s one thing ESPN and SI and The Athletic, etc., desperately need this minute, it’s content.

I reached out to a few folks. Interest in the project was not exactly animated. And you may not be, either. Twenty years ago I worked on a series of sports books for a buddy of mine, Jim Buckley. They were aimed at teens and the idea was an annotated history of the 20th century in sports. Jim let me do the year 1900-1940 and I came away gobsmacked. History is fun! And I learned a lesson we all should know by now: It’s all been done.

Yesterday at my blue-collar job a fellow inmate employee dropped a term I’d never heard: the Dunning-Kruger Effect. To define, it is “a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability. It is related to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.”

In other words, ignorance is bliss.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States!

Anyway, as my co-worker explained, the Dunning-Kruger Effect has the postulate of “the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.” How much more you need to learn. I see a lot of Dunning-Kruger Effect happening at MAGA rallies, at Trump pressers, and also on Sports Twitter where people who cannot name more than three NBA players before Bird and Magic feel confident throwing around GOAT accolades. So I thought, Why not attack the Dunning-Kruger Effect right here, while we all have a little time?

We’ll start with the year 1869, not because that’s the first year of modern sports but because it’s the first year that sports began to matter in the USA. One thing I read while beginning my research that intrigued me: a good origin point for modern sports is 1830. Why? That’s the year the lawnmower was invented. Makes sense when you think about it.

We may begin today, may be tomorrow. We’ll see what time allows.

We found this on the home page of The Arizona Republic this morning. Maybe someone is very incompetent. Or maybe someone just wanted to slander someone at CNN who often takes shots at President Trump. If you click on the sponsored content, it’s actually about Chris Cuomo‘s CNN colleague, Don Lemon. But to think, of all the CNN prime-time anchors you could write a story like this about (and how is someone still being with his or her partner even news, by the way), to use the one person who’s actually married to a female.

by John Walters

Starting Five

” A Lot Of Death”

By this time tomorrow the number of Americans who will have died from COVID-19 in the past five weeks will have doubled the total who died at Pearl Harbor (2,403) and in 9/11 (2,996) combined. And the weirdest thing is that President Donald Trump is still making this all about him.

In just the past five days:

Thursday: “Did you know I was number one on Facebook?”

Friday:

“I want to come way under the models (a reference to the casualty projections). The professionals did the models. I was never involved in a model… at least this kind of model.”

Rimshot! At the coronavirus presser.

After Pearl Harbor: “A day that will live in infamy…” –FDR

After 9/11: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.” — GWB

During COVID-19: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” –DJT

Frank Bruni’s column in this morning’s New York Times examines Trump’s dearth of a soul. Myself, I’ve found there are two types of original recipe MAGA types remaining. Those who are so far lost that they’ll still not abandon him and those who simply say, “I don’t listen to the news any more,” because obviously that’s easier than saying, “I was wrong.”

I used the quote from this weekend as the hed here because it’s so Trump. In a moment that requires an artful use of language, the President reverts to his 3rd-grade level vocabulary. This is what you voted for, America.

Pandemic Playlist

Has someone produced one of these yet? Here’s our incipient effort:

1. The Air That I Breathe …………….. The Hollies
2. Miracle Drug……………………………… U2
3. Keep Your Hands To Yourself…… Georgia Satellites
4. Alone Again, Naturally…………….. Gilbert O’Sullivan
5. China…………………………………………. Red Rockers
6. Doctor, Doctor………………………….. Thompson Twins
7. Masquerade……………………………… Berlin
8. Love Is Like Oxygen……………….. Sweet

Help us out here. Contribute to the playlist…

Doubling Down on Dowd

Two terrific columns by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times in the past five days. Late last week, she visited (via Skype or FaceTime or some such gizmo) Larry David, for whom Shelter At Home is a lifestyle decision, for a breezy conversation about quarantining (he probably has compiled enough notes in the past month to fill Season 11) and Curb.

Then on Sunday, she put on a HAZMAT suit and took out the industrial-strength radioactive flamethrower to torch the Trump presidency, its response to this crisis, and to its insipid and cruel choice to put Jared K. in charge (“He Went To Jared”). Kushner may be Jewish, but he’s the perfect Nazi.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning (With TCM)

Between sundown Saturday and noon Sunday —now, we’re not proud of this, but we’re not exactly ashamed, either — we watched four films, plus intros and outs, on Turner Classic Movies: Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), Address Unknown (1944) and Mrs. Miniver (1942). Observations, epiphanies and random thoughts to follow:

— Targets, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, was somewhere between a student film and a first effort. Bogdanovich was the beneficiary of a deal between infamous director Roger Corman and the prince of terror films, Boris Karloff. Five years earlier Karloff had starred in an awful film, The Terror, directed by Corman (also starring an unknown Jack Nicholson). Because the film never earned $150,000, Karloff did not receive his deferred $15,000 fee. So Corman approached Karloff and said that if he’d give him two more days of shooting, he’d get the money. Karloff agreed.

Corman told his protege, Bogdanovich, then 29, that he had Karloff. Now all he needed was a script. So Bogdanovich and his wife, Polly Platt, came up with a goof. A film that begins with Karloff watching The Terror in the screening room, pronouncing it awful, and declaring that he’d never make another picture. Then Bogdanovich crossed this subplot with the story of a freeway shooter, which he says he took from the tower shooter one year earlier in Austin, Texas, though it’s impossible to see this film without being reminded of the JFK assassination.

A great film? Not quite. But it has shades of Tarantino (of course it’s the other way around) and it gave enough people enough confidence in Bogdanovich to let him make his masterpiece, only three years later.

–I’d never seen The Last Picture Show in full until a year ago and now I’ve seen it twice. It fully deserved its eight Oscar nominations (Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman each won in the Supporting Actor/Actress categories, and deservedly so). Between the black-and-white footage, the whistling wind, the desolate prairie and the Hank Williams tunes, Bogdanovich perfectly captures the bleakness of a dying north Texas town. He also got really lucky with casting (not sure if he or a different casting director deserves a cookie here): unknowns Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and Ellen Burstyn give career-making performances, while Cloris Leachman shows chops you never quite saw on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ben Johnson is simply incredible. You won’t see a finer performance anywhere.

Curiously enough, the production designer here is Polly Platt, Bogdanovich’s wife. But during the shoot she lost her husband to the film’s ingenue, Shepherd, who was 20 at the time. Over the next few years Shepherd would date both Bogdanovich and Elvis Presley (she’s a Memphis native), ultimately choosing the former b/c The King was too reliant on drugs. Final note: Shepherd landed the part after Bogdanovich and Platt saw Shepherd on the cover of Glamour while waiting in a checkout line and Platt said, “That’s Jacy (Shepherd’s character).”

–Like Targets, I’d never heard of Address Unknown, a bold and ballsy film about Nazi brainwashing that was released in the midst of World War II. Eddie Mueller put it on Noir Alley for two reasons, as he would state after th film aired: One, because he’ll never pass up an opportunity to show off the work of director William Cameron Menzies (the man who was responsible for all the imagery you remember from Gone With The Wind) and two, because the film is so relevant today.

Yes, Eddie went there and good for him. On a weekend after Jared Kushner all but Seig, Heil!’ed his father-in-law, it needed to be said. The film, like Mueller’s comment, has the temerity to show Nazis to be every bit as Fascist and awful as you’d think, but it also takes a moment to explain from whence their mindset sprang. This isn’t just an “All Nazis are evil” film. It’s an examination of how and why they got there. If you ever get a chance to see this film, do so. It’s artistically shot, in the stark manner of Metropolis, but it’s also a gripping story.

The title won’t make sense to you until the final scene, by the way.

–Finally, we end with an MH favorite, Mrs. Miniver. It won eight Oscars in 1943, including Best Picture and Best Actress (Greer Garson). A few notes: 1) Garson’s husband is played by Walter Pidgeon, the spitting image of Don Draper. Hollywood sensed their on-screen perfection as a couple, and paired them in eight films together (quite like William Powell and Myrna Loy). However, a year after this film was released, Garson would actually marry the tall man in the photo above, Richard Ney, who played her son Vin and was 12 years younger, 2) Garson’s acceptance speech at the Oscars was 5 1/2 minutes long, still the longest in the show’s history, and it instigated the move to put a time limit on acceptance speeches, 3) Again, this film was released in 1942, when the outcome of the war was still much in doubt. There’s a moving scene in the film in which the title character tries to provide comfort to an injured German soldier. He refuses, and brags about how the Germans destroyed Rotterdam in less than a day and killed 30,000 innocent. He’s proud about it and predicts that the Nazis will do the same to England. She slaps him in the face, but unlike a modern film she doesn’t bust out a can of whupass (even though she has his gun). Only minutes later the scene is played for one of the film’s best laughs after Mr. Miniver brags about how brave he was during the Dunkirk evacuation and frets that it must have been so boring for her to be home and doing nothing.

Four great films, one long weekend on TCM. Oh, and Ben Mankiewicz is moving into “national treasure” territory.

Classic REM (Cont.)

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

On successive summer nights in 1985, I saw REM (in a theater in downtown Phoenix) and Tom Petty (at an outdoor pavilion off I-10 in what is now just south of Ahwatukee). We had no idea how spoiled we were.

The show above, I believe filmed in Germany, took place less than two months later. If you were listing REM’s most lyrically pleasing songs, I’d put these two atop the list. Though, as you can see here, “Fall On Me”, which would not appear until the following album, Life’s Rich Pageant (1986), was still very much a work in progress live. Something that makes each tune special: Mike Mills’ backing vocals. Also, Michael Stipe’s inimitable voice never gets enough credit. No one sounds quite like him; Mills’ ethereal vocals are a perfect complement.