Monthly Archives: October 2020

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

LAWRENCE OF AWAY-BIA

Clemson quarterback and preseason Heisman Trophy favorite Trevor Lawrence is the latest high-profile athlete to test positive for the coronavirus. Probably because he was on the field celebrating with the Dodgers.

Lawrence, a junior, will miss this weekend’s Clemson game at Boston College. He’d probably be back in time for next Saturday’s Notre Dame game but will have been in isolation for 10 days, which means he would not be able to practice with his teammates until game day.

90,000-PLUS

For the first time, the U.S. recorded more than 90,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day yesterday. And while those diagnoses will lead to, statistically, fewer than 500 deaths, it’s still something, no? I mean, that’s how we’re thinking these days: what’s another mid-air collision between two 747s among friends?

Also, yesterday, more than 1,000 Americans died due to the coronavirus. But of course, you’re welcome to take cocaine-addled Don Jr.’s word for how the battle against Covid-19 is going.

Worth noting: The U.S.A. ranks like 145th among countries in terms of population density and yet leads the world in coronavirus deaths and cases. Keep America Great!

Deadliest Wreck

Off the coast of Senegal, a ship carrying 200 or so migrants to the Canary Islands capsizes and more than 140 people perish. It’s the deadliest shipwreck of 2020.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a vessel carrying 200 people left the Senegalese coastal town of Mbour last Saturday, bound for the Canary Islands.

A few hours into the journey, the boat caught fire and capsized near Saint-Louis, on Senegal’s north-west coast.

The Fellowship Of The Tweet


Just how bad does Twitter founder Jack Dorsey want a role in the next installment of a Hobbit film? We’re not experienced in the growth of facial hair, but we’d think he’s been working on that look for at least a year, no?

Travis Roy

Yesterday Travis Roy passed at the age of 45. If you do not recall him, his story is heartbreaking. Roy, a Maine native, was a freshman hockey player at Boston University in 1995. Just 11 seconds into his first shift for the Terriers, he was slammed into the boards and suffered a broken neck. Roy was paralyzed from the neck down.

Yesterday he died during a procedure he needed to offset some complications. Fate dealt Roy a cruel, cruel blow and from all accounts he did his best to become a crusader for others who were quadriplegics and paraplegics. Here’s hoping there is an afterlife and that he is free once more.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Wiscons-out

The University of Wisconsin will not play football this Saturday. After freshman quarterback Graham Mertz (20-21 in his debut) tested positive for the coronavirus, and then an additional eleven players and staff did, the Badgers suspended all football-related activities for seven days.

Their game at Nebraska this weekend has been canceled. The Huskers have replaced Wisconsin with Chattanooga, which I’m fine with as long as the request to play began with, “Pardon me, boy…”

You Don’t Know Jack

This week’s Lou Holtz Award for ” ’80’s Sports Legend Who Reveals Himself To Be Out Of Touch With Reality” goes to golf icon Jack Nicklaus, who won a thrilling Masters in 1986 when he was 46.

Wondering how many white male golfers will admonish Jack to “stick to sports.”

The Million Dollar Highway

A buddy of mine is embarking on this road in southwestern Colorado this morning and I’ve already paid him my last respects. Not that I respect him all that much, but he is a fun guy.

The MDH, a.k.a. Highway 550, stretches from Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque, up to Montrose, Colorado. But it is the stretch between Durango and Ouray, an Alps-like area with hairpin turns, that garners the most “oohs” and “ahs” and “oh no’s!”

Cult 45 (or “The End Of The Innocence”)

Every word of this opening from Frank Bruni’s essay in The New York Times this morning. Every. Word.

It’s always assumed that those of us who felt certain of Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2016 were putting too much trust in polls.

I was putting too much trust in Americans.

I’d seen us err. I’d watched us stray. Still I didn’t think that enough of us would indulge a would-be leader as proudly hateful, patently fraudulent and flamboyantly dishonest as Donald Trump.

We had episodes of ugliness, but this? No way. We were better than Trump.

Except, it turned out, we weren’t.

How do you put it any more succinctly, candidly and accurately than that?

I had conversations with two Uber drivers yesterday (my very first day as a customer). Both were white, one was a 26-year Marine veteran, and both indicated they “could not vote for Trump.” I’ll go out on an extremely short limb and say that both of them voted for him in 2016.

(Kind of the perfect metaphor for the Trump presidency).

Both of these men were decent guys, and good thinkers. I don’t know why so many people like them were hoodwinked four years ago. To so many of us, it was obvious. Those who continue to willingly be hoodwinked, well, I don’t know what’s up with them. Or would rather not entertain what the answer is.

They Don’t Even Care

Here’s yet another metaphor for what’s wrong with this country. The challenger here, Jon Ossoff, pointing out both the greed and the corruption of the incumbent, David Perdue, a literal stuffed shirt, who doesn’t seem all that bothered about having his past sins exposed. After all, he’s got the money and enough white supremacist/evangelists will always be in his corner because they don’t want those damn immigrants taking “their jobs,” even if they are unemployed, on government assistance and perhaps running a family meth lab.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Dis A Ray

Wow.

History will record that at the time Blake Snell was pulled from a do-or-die game in the World Series for the Tampa Bay Rays, he had struck out each of the first three hitters in the Los Angeles Dodger lineup twice. And their leadoff hitter, Mookie Betts, was about to come to bat for the third time.

So, in case you are not paying attention: six plate appearances for the Dodgers’ top three batters and six strikeouts.

The Rays led 1-0 with one out in the bottom of the sixth. Snell had struck out nine and allowed two singles, the latter to the Dodgers’ No. 9 hitter. The 6’4″ former Cy Young Award winner had PLENTY of gas left in the tank. And manager Kevin Cash pulled him.

Understand: this is a forever moment. This isn’t the second game of a three-game set in mid-May. Blake Snell, Kevin Cash, the Rays: they’re never coming back to this moment. Even if they all return to the World Series.

Blake Snell was pitching the game of his life in the most important game of his life and Cash, adhering to some arcane saber metric guidepost, robbed him of it. Robbed the entire team. Remember in Hoosiers when Norman Dale tried to diagram a game-winning play that would make Jimmy Chitwood the decoy and the rest of the Milan High team looked at him like he was batshit crazy? That was what happened last night in Arlington.

It’s tough enough to lose. It’s unforgivable when you out-manage yourself. Moneyball, yes. Cashball, no.

This Justin

No sooner had the Dodgers secured their first World Series title in 32 years than Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt reported that the reason third baseman Justin Turner had been pulled in the late innings was because he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Then things really got weird.

First, one of my students phoned and posited the thought that what if the Rays had won Game 6? Would Game 7 have been postponed as the Dodgers quarantined? Then there was Turner out on the field celebrating with his teammates, which is completely understandable and yet, probably against MLB protocol.

THEN it really got weird when Fox’s Ken Rosenthal reported that Turner had tested positive on Monday, and again on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/CamCox12/status/1321324023213518850?s=20

I may not be understanding Rosenthal well, but why is he talking about whether or not Turner should’ve been on the field during the celebration? Why isn’t he talking about why Turner was even in the game in the first place? He tested positive on Monday. Shouldn’t the second test have been about whether he could return to the field?

In other words, why let him take the field in Game 6 before a second test, for lack of a better word, exonerated him? And who is at fault here? MLB? The Dodgers? Turner? All?

Crazy ending, but then it fits our year.

And You Want To Be My Latex Salesman

Ole Miss coach was recently fined $25,000 by the SEC for questioning a call in the Rebels’ loss to Auburn on Saturday. Lane-changer was totally correct on the call, which cost his team a touchdown, but he whiffed (twice) on the math later when he suggested snarkily how he’d pay his fine.

Someone must have been sitting in the same math class as Mara Gay growing up.

A Higher Porpoise

Love this moment. It almost makes up for the spring break jackasses being responsible for a baby dolphin’s death a few years back because they all wanted to pose with it on the beach as it suffocated. Thankful for people like this.

Poocher Perfect

I guess we could’ve devoted this final item to what miserable human beings the Trump family are, and how the president left his rally goers in Omaha literally out in the cold as Air Force 1 flew off into the night, with all of them having to find their way back to their vehicles in freezing temps in lots that were nearly four miles away. At least nine of them were taken to hospitals and treated for hypothermia (as many—most?—are older and obese and probably will test positive for the coronavirus, too) and I suppose you could make a point about how it’s all a perfect metaphor for who Trump is and where his dumb(struck) acolytes will find themselves in the near future.

I suppose we could’ve riffed on that. But I’d rather show intelligent and amiable dogs. All of whom I’d rather hang out with than the average Trump supporter.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters*

*Double Espresso edition: smaller and extra-caffeinated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3G9mpGE_9w

Phillips 8-7

One of the most tremendous moments in World Series history. The last batter on the bench, facing a 1-2 count, lofts a single into right center. What follows is two errors, one baserunning gaffe, two runs, and an airplane moment in left field.

Fully Elongated Penix

An hour or two earlier in Bloomington, Indiana, Hoosier QB Michael Penix, Jr., stretches every inch of his frame to score (dubious) on a two-point conversion for the win against Penn State. This play only happened because the Nittany Lions scored with 1:42 to play when stopping for a first down would have ended the contest. The Atlanta Falcons learned nothing from this, losing in the same fashion the following day versus the Detroit Lions.

Under Cover Of Darkness

That sense of anger and sadness from more than 50% of the nation has less to do with who or what Amy Coney Barrett stands for and everything to do with how she backslid into a Supreme Court confirmation. And now you have Brett Kavanaugh proposing that he’ll be sure as hell to dismiss mail-in ballots.

Joe Biden may win Wisconsin… and Pennsylvania…and Ohio… and even Arizona. Will it even matter? That’s what Americans are asking themselves this morning. And if it does not, then our democracy is dead for the foreseeable future.

The question I keep asking myself is why would anyone believe that Mitch McConnell, William Barr and the S.C. judges are suddenly going to play fair. I don’t believe they will. Viva la revolucion!

Metcalf Roping

Seattle’s D.K. Metcalf with the definitive effort play every coach will show for the next 1,000 years. He could go on the speakers circuit off this play alone. Of course it helps to have world-class speed.

Meanwhile, when is Pete Carroll going to learn to NOT throw the ball deep in the red zone toward that particular end zone in this particular stadium????

On MAGA and Fascism

A couple clips from last night. First, this one:

And then, here’s Sacha Baron Cohen:

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

Welker Wins

Once more, we watched none of the presidential debate, but from the social media approbation we sense that its winner was moderator Kristen Welker. So if you are scoring at home the worst of the three debate moderator was the Old White Guy Legacy (the son of legendary 60 Minutes news man Mike Wallace) while the best was the Woman Of Color.

Shocker.

How It Started…

…How It’s Going

By the way, two things: 1) More than 50 million Americans, including your humble (Ha!) scribe, have already voted and it is only October 23rd. That total represents 36% of the total votes from the 2016 election. I wonder what that might mean. 2) We ran into an older man walking around the supermarket with his wife yesterday clad in a shirt that read “If You Don’t Like Trump, Then You Won’t Like Me… And I’m Okay With That.” And of course even though he was wearing cargo shorts, he was toting a sidearm. If Trump loses I’m wondering how many fellows like this man might become super-spreaders of gun fire in public places.

Oh, Danny Boy, The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2c0hEZ6w5E

This play last night more than sums up the New York Giants’ season, but New York pro football for the past decade. And yet, it is so beautiful and meme-worthy. Yes, that is World Series announcer Joe Buck, who is hogging all the sports events for Fox. I mean, he is really, really good but Buck flew from Dallas to Philly to cover the game and will be back in the booth in Dallas/Arlington tonight for Game 3.

“Man Lying On Couch Covered In Thin Layer Of Cheeto Dust Refers To Favorite Sports Teams As We…”

This breaking story comes courtesy of the Babylon Bee and I don’t know if it’s trying to compete with The Onion, but it’s quite a funny story. Our good friend Smo, who was on the text chain where the story came to my attention (via our other good friend, Fink!), noted that “Cheeto Dust” is my favorite J Crew color.

Black Hands Matter (All Hands Matter)

Those are the hands of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and are they black because an Oscar Wilde-type literary fantasy came true? Is God slowly turn Mitch into a black man? Another curse brought down by RBG? Or is he C. Thomas Howell’ing it in order to get into Harvard?

Who knows? The most plausible-sounding guesses we’ve heard on the Twitter relate to blood thinners or other circulatory issues. Is that simply heavy bruising? Mitch also has a slight discoloration of similar pigment just above his lip?